World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  The following season I recorded my first win at the Chicagoland Speedway and finished seventh in the point standings. Sadly, that was the year Marco died from a brain aneurysm and Jesus took over as Chairman and CEO of Conquistador Brewery. His first order of business was to disband the racing team and sell the operation. He argued the costs of sponsoring a race car outweighed the publicity generated, as the company’s three varieties of beers had yet to receive a significant boost in sales. I didn’t know what a “significant boost” entailed, and I didn’t care much. Aside from not wanting to be under Jesus’s thumb—we’d enjoyed a healthy dislike for each other pretty much right off the bat—I had a slew of new offers from other teams.

  In the end I signed with Smith Motorsports for the ’99 season and began racing fulltime in the Winston Cup Series, NASCAR’s top-level circuit. I earned my first career pole position for the Daytona 500, but then crashed at the Las Vegas Speedway, finishing forty-first. However, I rebounded with consecutive wins in the Coco-Cola 600 and Pocono 500. All said, it was a breakout season. I won four races, two poles, twelve top five’s, and fifteen top ten’s. I also took NASCAR’s Rookie of the Year—and just like that I became a household name. I was being interviewed by Motor Week Illustrated, Sports Illustrated, SPIN Magazine. The guys on SportsCenter were always talking about me (and cracking jokes about my name). I received two lucrative endorsement deals, I bought a private bus to travel in, a gated house in Vegas, the Porsche. It was all beyond my wildest imaginings.

  Then the accident happened, and everything changed.

  4

  It took me close to twenty minutes to reach the far side of the island, which made the island larger than I’d originally guessed. My beer-filled bladder felt ready to burst, so I unzipped and aimed at a patch of elephant ear plants, careful to avoid the backsplash. My urine was bright yellow due to dehydration. I hadn’t brought any water, and I wondered if anyone else had. Jesus, probably. He was so obsessive compulsive it wouldn’t surprise me if he organized in advance which ties and cufflinks to wear for each day of the week.

  I shook, zipped, then slipped the daypack off my shoulders. Mosquitos and other bugs had joined the cloud of flies hovering around my head, all of them buzzing and biting, causing me to repeatedly smack myself. Then a kamikaze fly shot up one of my nostrils. I snorted and waved my arms angrily, my hands striking a couple of the annoying fuckers.

  I opened the pack’s main pocket and withdrew a liter bottle of vodka. Yup, I had my priorities right. Forgot the water but remembered the booze. I twisted off the cap and took a small sip, ladylike, to acclimatize my palette. Then I took a long belt. The vodka burned a trail down my throat and hit my stomach with a warm punch. As an afterthought I glanced the way I’d come, to make sure nobody was coming looking for me.

  Nobody was.

  Bottle in hand, I wandered from the shadows beneath the deciduous and coniferous trees to the marshy edge of the bank. There wasn’t a patch of blue left in the sky, and it was no longer a question of if it would storm but when. I wondered what this meant for us. Would the boatman return early to pick us up? Or would he wait out the storm…which could last…how long? One day? Two? Surely he wouldn’t leave us stuck on the island for that long? On the other hand, if the rain and wind and flooding were bad enough, he might not have a choice.

  Oddly I found I wouldn’t mind being stranded on the island. I’d always been a nature person. When I was five years old my father sold the patent to one of his inventions for a good chunk of cash and bought an RV to travel the country. Most of what I remembered from my childhood involved national parks and campfires and breakfasts at interstate McDonald’s. I didn’t attend grammar school. My parents homeschooled me—or RV-schooled me, I guess you’d say—though this involved less arithmetic and history and more hunting, fishing, and basic survival skills. Only when I was old enough to attend high school did my parents settle down in a trailer park in Vegas, where they still lived today.

  So, sure, as far as I was concerned, roughing it for a day or two on the island would be a bit of an adventure. Pepper and Elizaveta were good company. Pita and I would likely make up by nightfall. I’d have to put up with Jesus and Nitro, unfortunately, but whatever. And this place would be something else at nighttime, wouldn’t it? The Island of the Dolls in the dark—how you were supposed to see it.

  Three dolls to my left caught my eye. They were tied to a tree, one at chest level, the other two much higher. How Solano got them up there, I didn’t know. I doubted he had a Craftsman ladder tucked away somewhere. Then again, living fifty years on an island by yourself, you had time to build yourself a ladder.

  The doll at chest level was one of the more normal looking ones on the island as it hadn’t yet been disfigured by the elements. It had a button nose and chubby cheeks and a frisky smile. Actually, it sort of resembled Pepper. It even had short black hair, which I thought I could style into a pompadour.

  I took another drink of vodka and decided Pepper might like a souvenir of the island. I set the bottle at the base of the tree and withdrew my keys from my pocket. Attached to the keyring was a Swiss Army knife I’d purchased at La Merced, a public market on the eastern edge of Mexico City’s historic center. I used to go there to buy chili peppers and other vegetables, and to stuff myself with the street food. There was one particular stall that sold what might have been the best quesadillas and tostadas in the world. Nevertheless, I hadn’t been back to the market in a while because I got tired of the underage prostitutes propositioning me at ten bucks a pop.

  Anyway, I bought the pocket knife because, given how much I’d started drinking over the last year, always having a bottle opener handy was a no-brainer.

  I opened the knife’s sharp blade, gripped the doll, and was about to cut the string securing it to the tree when its eyes blinked open.

  I started, looking around for Jesus or Nitro. They weren’t anywhere in sight, of course. This was not another prank. I’d caused the eyes to open when I gripped the doll. I’d disturbed the pendulum inside it, or whatever mechanism was responsible for controlling the eyelids.

  I used my fingertips to close the doll’s eyelids, the way you might close the eyelids of a recently deceased person. As soon as I ceased contact, however, they flipped up again, so the doll stared at me with its disturbingly lifelike eyes.

  Cutting the little monster free, I stuck it in my pack, collected the vodka, then started back the way I’d come.

  5

  I chose a different route back which I believed would reveal more of the island while offering up a whole new freak show of dolls. I wasn’t disappointed, as Solano’s obsession seemed contained by no boundaries. As the forest closed around me, the canopy and understory blocked out much of the sky to create a syrupy, shadowed world. Birds cawed and chirped and beat their wings far above my head. Cicadas whirred louder than before, an angry, palpitating sound that could suddenly and inexplicably stop before starting up again. Bugs bit my legs and arms and neck, and the sensation of being watched returned, making me feel suddenly alone, isolated.

  Jack, a doll to my right whispered. Its voice was like the rustle of leaves, so close and clear I turned my head despite myself, my eyes searching the cluster of dolls wedged into the various crooks of a tree. Are you lost? You’re going to die—

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said, to hear my voice, a real voice.

  I took a belt of vodka and pressed on, following the well-beaten path. For a while I tried to pick out a doll to give to Pita—a peace offering of sorts—but I couldn’t find any that resembled her. For starters, about ninety-nine percent of the dolls were Caucasian, which I found strange. China had Chinese dolls. Japan had Japanese dolls. Weren’t there any patriotic doll makers in Mexico?

  Eventually I came across one doll with black hair that could pass as Pita if you ignored the pigmentation. Nevertheless, I left it where it was because it was seriously evil-looking, and if I gave it to Pita, she would likely accuse me o
f making fun of her.

  When I was roughly halfway back to the side of the island where we’d disembarked, I came to a dilapidated cabin. Unlike the hut Pepper and I had investigated, this was much larger and featured a porch with an actual swinging door.

  I tried the door, expecting it to be locked. It opened, and I stepped inside. The main room was dark and carried the forgotten smell of wood rot and age. There was a contrary feel to it, perhaps because there were no windows, though gaps between the corrugated iron roof and the timber walls allowed for some natural light.

  When my eyes adjusted to the murkiness, I found myself in what you might call a living room. There was no TV or stereo or anything resembling modernity. But there were two rattan chairs, a table, and a bookcase, all of which appeared to have been rescued from a trash heap. More junk littered the floor, or at least what I considered to be junk, though Solano would have likely begged to differ. Some of the detritus included glass bottles, tires, an umbrella, a lunch box, a handsaw, a hammer, even a very old car seat.

  And of course there were dolls—a riot of them, thirty, forty, more. Most were like those outside, discolored and blistered and boiled from the tropical sun. They were affixed to the walls, a cornucopia of creepy, crawly, bump-in-the-night abominations, and once again the sight of so many of them filled me with a niggle of trepidation and sadness.

  I wondered why they made me feel like this, and some Freudian mumbo-jumbo I read once came to mind, something regarding an inherent contradiction. Dolls are inanimate objects, they’re lifeless, but because they look like us, they appear alive—and when something that’s not alive appears too alive its familiarity turns to unfamiliarity, our brains reject it as unnatural, and our feelings for it sour toward revulsion.

  A roundabout way, I guess, of saying dolls are just plain spooky.

  I crossed the room to the table where one doll sat alongside what might have been a shoebox. The wooden floorboards creaked beneath my weight. My heartbeat thudded in my ears, likely because even though Solano was dead, I felt as though I was trespassing, invading his privacy—which was exactly what I was doing.

  I peered in the shoebox.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting to discover—spare doll parts?—but certainly not makeup. Yet that’s what I found, loads of it, far more than any woman would ever need. I selected a metallic tube of lipstick, removed the cap: Firetruck Red. I dumped it back in the box and examined the doll. Its face was painted with eyeliner, eyeshadow, blush, and lipstick. Moreover, it was in much better condition than its outdoor cousins. Limbs intact, dressed in clean clothes, free of cobwebs and filth. The word “groomed” came to mind.

  I picked up the doll. Its eyes were dark, reptilian, almost calculating, its earlobes pierced with bronze hoop earrings, its fingernails sporting vermillion nail polish. I sniffed its hair—a pleasant citrus scent.

  Did Solano bathe the thing?

  I wished Pepper were here to see it, because it was proof I was right. Solano had been a crazy bastard. Maybe even a raving lunatic.

  I pictured him sitting at this table at nighttime, an old man worn down by time and aged by the weather and hardship of living off the land, working by candlelight, brushing the dolls hair, or carefully applying blush to its cheeks, or lipstick to its lips, or polish to its nails, mumbling incoherently to it as he did so, maybe asking how her day was, or what she was going to do tomorrow, or, hell, had she met any Ken dolls lately.

  Yet why? What had he been thinking? That it was a flesh-and-blood child?

  Did he fuck it?

  This question startled me. He wouldn’t, couldn’t—it was a doll, for Christ’s sake. Then again, some people had pretty sick fetishes, and he was lonely as a cloud out here, no human company…

  I was tempted to lift the doll’s dress, pull down its knickers, see if Solano had altered the space between its legs in any way. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to know.

  The sight of a gaping hole would make me sick.

  Suddenly I didn’t want to touch the thing any longer, and I set it back on the table. I moved on to an adjoining room, the floorboards once again creaking beneath my weight. I poked my head into what turned out to be a kitchen. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of something rotten. Dishes were piled on the top of a roughly hewed counter. Alongside these were a knife, a spoon, and a fork. Staples such as pasta, salt, rice, and sugar occupied a single shelf. A basket on the floor was filled with dry corn which Solano likely ground into flour. There was no sink or stove because he wouldn’t have had running water or electricity. I assumed there would be a fire pit nearby where he would have boiled water from the canal and cooked his food. Pepper mentioned the locals traded him dolls for produce he grew. I hadn’t seen a vegetable garden anywhere, but then again I had only seen a small slice of the island.

  My eyes swept the floor, the shadowed corners, for a dead mouse or small animal, something that had crawled in here to die and was responsible for the stench. I didn’t see anything.

  Back in the living room I went to one of the two rooms I had yet to explore. It was a Spartan bedroom: bed, dresser, window, that was all.

  The door to the second room was closed. I gripped the doorknob and was about to twist it when a sneeze originated from the other side of the door.

  I froze, dumbstruck.

  Please, Jack—first a doll opening its eyes, then another talking to you, and now one sneezing?

  But then what had I heard?

  I pushed open the door, half-expecting a Chucky doll to scuttle toward me on its small child’s legs, a big knife gripped in one hand.

  The room was empty save for a bed and a dresser.

  “Hello?” I said, regardless.

  No reply.

  I didn’t want to check beneath the bed. It was something a child would do, to assuage their paranoia and superstition. Nevertheless, I knew I couldn’t avoid doing so, because I’d heard something after all. I hadn’t imagined that.

  I touched a knee to the floor and looked.

  6

  The little girl was on her belly, hands at her sides, fingers splayed on the floor, like a sprinter about to bolt from the starting blocks—or come straight at me. Matted black hair obscured much of her face. She wore an embroidered cheesecloth top and pastel-colored jeans.

  When I regained my wits, I cleared the lump in my throat and said, “Hi.” This sounded not only lame but, given the circumstances, sinister as well, what a stranger says to lure an unsuspecting child into his car. “I’m Jack,” I added.

  The girl didn’t reply. I guessed she was seven or eight. She had a round face with small features that suggested she would one day grow up to be an attractive woman.

  I wondered if she could be Solano’s daughter. Had he had an affair with a local woman and been charged with raising the illegitimate child? Or was it more sinister than this? Had he kidnapped her and held her prisoner here until he died? If so, how long had she been on the island? Her clothes weren’t in tatters, but they weren’t clean either.

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. I wasn’t good with kids, wasn’t one of those people who could converse with them using falsetto voices and fake laughs.

  I thought about getting Pita, but I discarded this option immediately, knowing the girl would be gone when I returned.

  “What are you doing under there?” I said—then realized she likely didn’t speak English. “Er… Que haces…haciendo?”

  The girl swallowed. Her eyes darted to the door, then back to me. She was going to make a run for it. And what would I do? Let her go? Grab her? Close the door, trap her in the room, and shout for help?

  No, no shouting. Jesus and Nitro would never let me live that down.

  “Umm… Puedes entender? Mi español... mal…”

  The girl said something so softly if I hadn’t seen her lips moving I might not have believed she’d spoken.

  “¿Qué?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said louder, but still not much more t
han a skeletal whisper.

  “You understand me?”

  She nodded.

  “So you speak English?”

  “We study it at school.”

  I hadn’t known English was studied in Mexican schools at such a young age, and I said, “Where’s your school?”

  “Balcones de San Mateo.”

  “Is that in Mexico City?”

  “Naucalpan.”

  Which was north west of the city. “So what are you doing way down here on this island?”

  “I—” She bit her lip. Tears shimmered in her eyes, then spilled down her cheeks.

  “Hey, hey,” I said. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” I lifted my baseball cap with one hand and ran the other through my hair. “What’s your name?”