World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  “Rosa,” she said.

  “Okay, look, Rosa. Why don’t you come out of there?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You can come meet my friends.”

  “Your friends?”

  “Yeah, I’m here with…” I had to mentally count. “Five of them.”

  She sniffled, then rubbed her leaking nose and eyes with the back of her hand. “Are they nice?”

  “Two of them are tools. But the other three are nice.”

  “Tools?”

  “Like, uh… Do you know what a dork is?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, they’re like that. Dorks. One’s called Muscles.”

  “Is he strong?”

  “He thinks he is.”

  “Maybe he can protect us?”

  “Protect us?”

  She bit her lip and didn’t say anything.

  “Is there somebody else on this island, Rosa?”

  She remained silent.

  “Come out, Rosa,” I said. “Come meet my friends. You can’t stay under there all day.”

  “What’s the other dork’s name?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Rosa smiled hesitantly, as if unsure what was funny.

  I said, “God.”

  “No it’s not!”

  “What a stupid name, right?”

  “He can’t call himself God.”

  “Hey, I agree totally.”

  “What about your other friends? Do they have stupid names too?”

  “Their names are Pita, Pepper, and Elizaveta.”

  “Those are better.”

  “I agree.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “The island? One of my friends—Pepper—he works for a TV show.”

  Rosa’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Do you know what a documentary is?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s like a real-life movie. You know, like those animal shows and stuff? Only Pepper’s shows are about ghosts.”

  She seemed surprised. “He knows about the ghost?”

  I frowned. “What ghost?”

  “The ghost on the island. The ghost that…” She bit her lip again.

  I studied her silently. I had a dozen questions, but there would be time to ask her them later. Right now I needed to get her out from under the bed, to the others. They’d know how to talk to her, get her to open up. I said. “Are you hungry, Rosa?”

  She nodded.

  “We have water. I think we might even have a candy bar. Do you want a candy bar?”

  She nodded again.

  “Okay. But you have to come out of there first.”

  I offered my hand to her. After a long moment, she took it.

  7

  We walked side by side, holding hands. I would have felt awkward doing this with a child back in the city, and I felt equally uncomfortable now. But the girl—Rosa—didn’t want to let go. She really was spooked by something. Which was what I was trying to figure out. What was the ghost she thought she’d seen? Shadows playing tricks with her eyes? A glimpse of a doll in the dark? A figment of her imagination?

  Moreover, why was she on the island in the first place? Someone brought her here from Naucalpan obviously, but who? And where were they now? The island wasn’t big enough that you could lose someone on it. Sound carried out here precisely because there was little sound of anything to begin with. All Rosa had to do was yell and whoever she came with would hear her.

  Which meant something had likely happened to her guardian. But again I was stumped. Because if the person slipped and cut their head open on a rock, or had a heart attack or some other serious medical emergency, you’d think Rosa would tell me. Yet the fact she was mum on this, as well as the so-called ghost, led me to conclude the two were related. Something happened to Rosa’s guardian, and for whatever reason Rosa believed a sinister spirit was responsible.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  Her voice startled me. “Huh?” I said, even though I knew what she meant.

  “You don’t think there’s a ghost on the island.”

  “Did you actually see one?”

  “No…” She frowned, struggling with what to tell me. Then she blurted, “It killed my brother.”

  I stopped. She did too. She looked up at me, and she seemed so small, so afraid.

  I said, “Your brother brought you here to see the dolls?”

  “To show his girlfriend the dolls.”

  His girlfriend? I crouched next to Rosa. “How many people did you come here with?”

  “Just them. My brother, Miguel, and his girlfriend. He wanted to show her the dolls. We made camp, and then…then he wanted to be alone with Lucinda, and he told me to go away.”

  “Lucinda is his girlfriend?”

  She nodded. “So I went away. I found a pond. I was trying to catch frogs. And then I heard my brother scream, and he never screams.”

  “What happened to him?”

  She scrunched up her face, fighting more tears. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “He told me to run. He sounded like…”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he was dying.”

  “What about his girlfriend? What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. I ran away until I found that house.” She pointed back toward Solano’s cabin. “I fell asleep on the bed. But when I woke up, it was dark, and I was scared, so I hid underneath it.”

  “You’ve only been here for one day?”

  She nodded.

  I stood, took her hand again. One day, I thought. Which meant if what she was telling me was the truth, and if someone had indeed attacked her brother, then the person could still be around. I recalled the feeling of being watched earlier. The dolls—or a living person? I looked past Rosa, then over my shoulder, my eyes searching the trees.

  “Come on, Rosa,” I said. “Let’s get to the others.”

  1954

  It was a warm spring day. María, now in the third grade, spent recess walking in the field behind the school. She held Angela in her right hand, the doll’s feet dragging on the ground. Her mother often tried to stop her and Angela from being friends, but she would always throw a temper tantrum, yelling and crying, until her mother gave in.

  She passed a group of kids in her grade playing a game with a ball. The boy with the ball threw it up into the air and all the other kids ran. When the ball came down he caught it and yelled a country name, and all the kids stopped. Then he went after the closest one and threw the ball. It hit a girl on the head, and everyone cheered.

  María continued on. She didn’t understand the rules. Besides, it didn’t look very fun. She was much more interested in her present activity: collecting leaves. She didn’t know why they fell off the trees, but she liked to pick them up in case the trees ever needed them back.

  Eventually she came to the wooden split-rail fence that separated the school from the farm. On the other side of it was an open-air stable that consisted of a corrugated iron roof on posts. A black horse and two cows stood inside it. The horse saw her and came over.

  “Hi, horsey!” she said. “What are you doing today?”

  “I like horses,” Angela said.

  “I do too. But I don’t like how they smell.”

  “That’s manure.”

  “I know. Horses don’t have toilets like we do, so they go on the ground.”

  “Do you like cows?”

  “Yeah, but they smell even more than horses.”

  She continued her conversation with Angela and didn’t notice the two girls in her grade approach until they were right behind her.

  “Hi, María,” Lydia said. She was a bit fat and mean, and María tried to avoid her if she could. A few days ago Lydia told her she was going to tie María to a chair and kill her mom and dad in front of her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m petting the horse.”

 
“I’m petting the horse,” Devin repeated in a dumb-sounding voice. She was tall and thin and had dark skin. “Why are you so stupid?”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Yes, you are,” Lydia said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What’s it like to be stupid?”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “You are. You’re a stupid head. You’re a stupid head who carries a doll around. Everyone thinks so.”

  María’s eyes became hot and wet.

  “Are you going to cry?” Lydia said.

  “No.”

  “Go on, crybaby. Cry. That’s what crybabies do.”

  “I’m not a crybaby.”

  “What’s in your hand?” She grabbed the stack of leaves María had been holding.

  “Those are mine!”

  “Why are you carrying leaves?”

  “They’re mine!”

  Lydia ripped the leaves into little bits and threw them up in the air, so the wind scattered them about.

  “Ewww!” Devin said, covering her mouth with her hands. She pointed at the horse.

  Lydia shrieked in amusement.

  María turned to see the horse, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to be looking at.

  “Is that…?” Devin said.

  “Gross!”

  “So gross!”

  Lydia whispered in Devin’s ear. Devin listened, then began nodding and giggling.

  “Look, María,” Lydia said, pointing. “The horse has five legs.”

  María noticed the fifth leg for the first time. It was pink and crusty and peeling. Also, it was shorter than the other four. It didn’t even touch the ground.

  “Do you see it, María?” Lydia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It needs help.”

  “Huh?”

  “You need to pull it down so it touches the ground.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “If you don’t, the horse will fall over. It will die. It will be your fault.”

  “I don’t want to touch it.”

  “We’ll tell Mrs. Ramirez you killed the horse.”

  She looked at the leg. Maybe she could just pull it quickly. Then the horse would be okay, and Lydia and Devin would leave her alone.

  She stepped to the fence.

  “Go on!” Lydia urged. “Pull it down.”

  “I can’t reach it.”

  “Climb under the fence.”

  María hesitated.

  “Hurry up! Climb under the fence.”

  María went down on all fours. Leaving Angela on the ground, she crawled beneath the fence rail. Then she was right next to the horse.

  “Grab it!” Lydia said.

  “Pull it!” Devin said.

  María grabbed the horse’s leg. It was smooth and thick and warm. She pulled it. But instead of going down it went up, breaking free of her grip, disappearing into some kind of sheath.

  María looked back at Lydia and Devin, confused.

  They were bent over, laughing so hard tears came to their eyes.

  María smiled hesitantly, wondering what she had done that was so funny, and wondering if maybe they would be nice to her now.

  Jack

  1

  I heard them before I saw them. Pita was speaking in Spanish in a long monologue. By the sound of the choppy, unnatural cadence of her speech, she was reciting what she’d memorized for the documentary.

  Sure enough, when the trees filtered away, she was standing before the hut that contained the shrine, over-enunciating her words and gesturing to the dolls attached to the wall, as though she were an action reporter covering a breaking news event. Pepper stood ten feet away, his video camera perched on a tripod. He was watching Pita on a small LCD screen. Nitro was behind him, arms folded, legs slightly apart, his back to me. Jesus sat against a tree, the leg with the sprained ankle stretched straight before him.

  When Pita saw Rosa and me she did a double-take. She stopped midsentence, her mouth ajar.

  The others turned, confused, surprised.

  Rosa shied behind my legs and gripped my hand tighter.

  “Who the fuck is that, chavo?” Nitro blurted.

  Jesus and Pepper were both saying something to me. I didn’t have time to reply to either because Pita had come hurrying over. She unclipped the microphone from her collar, squatted next to me, and starting spurting off Spanish to the girl.

  Rosa mumbled something back. Pita frowned. They exchanged a few more words.

  “What?” I said.

  Pita looked up at me. “She says she doesn’t want to speak Spanish because you can’t understand.”

  “Sounds logical to me.”

  “What did you do, brainwash her?”

  Rosa pressed tighter against my legs. I peeled her off me and crouched so we were at eye level. “What’s the matter, Rosa? Remember, they’re my friends.”

  “I don’t like the dork,” she said.

  “Dork?” Pita was indignant. “Me?”

  Rosa pointed past her to Nitro. “Him.”

  Nitro guffawed.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Nobody likes him. But you can talk to Pita. She’s nice.”

  “What are you doing here, honey?” Pita asked. “Where are your parents?”

  “They’re at home.”

  “So who are you with?”

  Rosa threw her arms around my neck and buried her head into my chest. I hesitated, then patted her on the back. “Where’s Eliza?” I asked.

  Pita looked around, as if just noticing she was gone. “I don’t know.”

  “Nitro,” I said, “go find Eliza. She shouldn’t be on her own.”

  “Fuck you, Jack Goff.”

  “Do it!”

  For a moment I didn’t think he was going to, he was going to stand there in stupid defiance. Then Jesus gave him a godfather nod.

  Scowling, Nitro wandered off into the trees.

  To Pepper I said, “Do you have any more of those candy bars you had on the boat?”

  “Lucky I have a sweet tooth,” he said, nodding. “I have one more.” He went to his bag, retrieved the candy bar, and brought it to Rosa. “Here you go.”

  Rosa raised her head from my shoulder. She took the candy bar and said, “Are you Pepper?”

  Pepper beamed. “Have you seen my show?”

  “Jack told me your name,” she said.

  “And did he tell you Nitro was a dork?” Pita asked.

  “Who’s Nitro—? Oh, you mean Muscles?”

  Pita shot me a look.

  “Nice, Jack,” Jesus said.

  “Here,” I said to Rosa. “Let me do that.” I unwrapped the candy bar, then handed it back to her.

  She took a small bite, then another, and another, all the while chewing quickly.

  “The poor thing’s ravenous,” Pita said.

  “Rosa,” I said, easing her away from me and standing. “Can you give us a sec? I’m going to tell them what you told me, okay?”

  She nodded without taking her eyes from the candy bar.

  I moved a dozen yards away, indicating for Pita and Pepper to join me. Jesus got up and hobbled over on his good foot. When we were out of earshot, I said, “I found her beneath a bed in what I think must have been Solano’s house.”

  Pita frowned. “What was she doing?”

  “Hiding from you?” Jesus said.

  “Not me exactly,” I said. “She told me she came here with her brother, Miguel, and her brother’s girlfriend, Lucinda. Yesterday, by the sound of it. Anyway, she says she was catching frogs or something when she heard her brother scream. He told her to run, and she did. She hasn’t seen him since.”

  They stared at me like I’d just told them I’d been abducted by aliens.

  “That’s what she told me,” I insisted.

  “My God, Jack!” Pepper said. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

  “Why would she lie?”

  Pita said, “Maybe she’s mad at
her brother so she made up this fantasmal story?”

  “Fantasmal?”

  “Jack!”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. She seems genuinely frightened. Besides, wouldn’t her brother have gone looking for her? The island is big, but not that big. Wouldn’t we have crossed paths with him by now?”

  “We didn’t know the girl was here,” Jesus pointed out.

  “She was hiding. If her brother was looking for her, he’d be calling out and stuff.”

  “Okay, hold on a minute,” Pepper said. “We’re jumping ahead. We need to slow down. What happened to her brother? What made him warn her away?”

  I hesitated. “She thinks a ghost attacked him.”

  “A ghost?” Pita’s eyes widened. “You mean, the ghost of the little girl who haunts this island?”

  “Come on, Pita,” I said.

  “Come on, what?”

  “This is serious. Something’s happened—”

  “I am being serious, Jack.”

  “You think a ghost attacked Rosa’s brother?”

  “Why not?” she said defiantly.

  “She’s entitled to her opinion, Jack,” Jesus said.

  I looked at Pepper for support. He might like to debate the existence of ghosts and spirits and whatnot, yet he was a pragmatic guy, and I didn’t think he really believed what he preached. It all went part and parcel with his act.

  Nevertheless, he was looking at his shoes, unwilling to back me. He knew how religious Pita was, how superstitious. He wasn’t going to reveal himself as a false prophet, rain on her parade.

  “Okay, whatever, ghost, no ghost,” I said. “Bottom line, we know one-eighth of fuck all right now. We’re just speculating. So what’s important, what we have to do, is find Rosa’s camp. We can figure out what happened then.”

  “Easier said than done, Jack,” Jesus said. “This island has to be a couple of hundred acres easily. And it’s all jungle.”

  Pita had taken her mobile phone from her pocket and was holding it up in the air. “No reception,” she said.

  “I could have told you that,” Pepper said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. There isn’t a radio tower for kilometers.”

  “Rosa?” I called. “Do you think you can find the way back to your camp?”