World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  “And do what? Sit there in the open?”

  “In the light, on the pier, nobody can sneak up on us. The boatman will come. We’ll all go back together.”

  Whether she believed what Jack was saying, or whether she realized he wasn’t changing his mind, she gave up her arguing. She crouched next to Jesus, who was bleeding from the temple, and helped him into a sitting position.

  Rosa went to Jack. Given he didn’t have any free hands—one was holding his shirt to his wound, the other the pistol—she wrapped her arms around his legs and pressed her head into his stomach.

  Elizaveta touched him on the shoulder reassuringly, and she was about to say something when there was as knock at the door.

  1957

  1

  The fire cracked and popped and danced, an orange entity in an otherwise black and quiet night. Don Javier Solano sat on the hard-packed ground before it, the flames warm on his face, the photographs of his family held in his hands. The top one showed his wife, Paola, next to his two daughters, Carolina and Fátima. He and Paola married without either of their parents’ permission when they were both nineteen years old. They eloped from Veracruz to Mexico City the following year and opened a tamale stand. It didn’t make them rich, but it paid the bills and put food on the table, and they were happy. Solano knew he would have been happy even had they been dirt broke. Paola had that effect on him. She was pure and good, the kindest person he’d ever known—the last person in the world that deserved to be buried to death in the bed where she slept.

  Carolina, his eldest, had inherited her mother’s beauty, though she never had the chance to grow fully into it. She was fourteen when she too died in the bed where she slept. This was not only unfair, it was tragic. She had so much to live for, so much to give back to the world, so much joy to spread. She wanted to be a schoolteacher and eventually a principal. “But not like the mean principal at my school,” she always added. “I would be a nice one. I would actually listen when students had a problem.” She had a fantasy of living “down the block” so Javier and Paola could visit often, owning a dog and a cat and a rabbit, with a large kitchen so she could cook massive dinners for everyone.

  She had been a great role model for her younger sister. In fact, Fátima had worshiped her, often imitating Carolina’s hair styles and mannerisms and fashion. Fátima…always giggling, forever into mischief, innocent, angelic. The tears Solano had been fighting sprung to his eyes. She would be ten years old now. Ten years old and a triplegic, bed-ridden, nothing working but a head and an arm. Sometimes he thought it would have been better had she died with her mother and sister in the firecracker explosion. She would have been at peace.

  The explosion occurred in the dead of night. There was a sound like thunder, and then the walls and ceiling were falling down all around him…then there was shouting and flashlights, firefighters lifting chunks of concrete off him, escorting him through the rubble of what had once been his bedroom, telling him not to look back. Barely conscious he did just that, looked back, and saw Paola—or what had become of his wife, for all that was visible beneath a slab of concrete was a blood-slicked arm and leg.

  Solano must have blacked out, because the next thing he remembered was waking in a hospital bed, a doctor telling him Paola and Carolina were dead, but Fátima was alive, in critical condition. She was in a room on her own, hooked up to a machine, tubes going in and out of her. She didn’t respond to his voice, but she was breathing on her own. He remained by her beside, praying for her throughout the night. In the morning she regained consciousness—and doctors were able to determine the extent of her injuries.

  Finally Solano grieved, quietly and privately at first, but then his silent tears became racking sobs, and his sobs became howls of anguish, so loud and tortured two nurses escorted him from the building.

  2

  Solano spent the night in a bar drinking himself into an unthinking stupor. He woke in the morning on the street. He supposed the bar staff had carried him out there when they closed and realized he didn’t have identification or money.

  He knew he should return to the hospital. Fátima was alive. She needed him. But he couldn’t bear to see her so fragile and helpless. He couldn’t bear to tell her she would never walk again, never run, never ride her bicycle, never do anything on her own. Besides, what could he do for her? He couldn’t give her back her legs, or her arm. All he could do was pity her. He wouldn’t be able to help it. And she didn’t need that. She would be better off without him.

  He went to his apartment building. The police had cordoned it off, but an officer let him inside what remained of his unit to collect his wallet and pack some clothes into a bag. He tried not to look at the bloodstains shouting at him, but they were everywhere, and if he had a pistol right then, he might well have blown his brains out.

  He spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly around the city…and he kept right on wandering for the next year, sleeping in parks or alleyways, scrounging trashcans for food, panhandling for change to buy cheap tequila.

  Eventually he ended up in Xochimilco. By then he’d pulled himself together enough to hold down a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, and a few months after this, a job taking families through the old canals on a beat-up gondola. The gardens and greenery had a calming effect on him, the smog and noise and bustle of the city seemed a world away, and he began spending his free time exploring the waterways on his own. Sometimes he would disappear for days on end.

  And then one day he never came back at all.

  3

  Solano had been living on the island on Teshuilo Lake for eight months when the family showed up. Until then he had not seen another soul so deep in the canal system. Frightened of being discovered, he kept hidden in the jungle, watching them in secret as they picnicked and went swimming. Then to Solano’s horror the father struck the little girl with a rock and left her to drown in the shallow water.

  As soon as the man and woman returned to the gondola and turned a bank out of sight, Solano collected the girl and brought her to shore, where he attempted to resuscitate her. Miraculously his efforts worked. She coughed and sputtered and opened her eyes. Then she looked at him and said, “My name’s María.”

  “My name’s Don Javier Solano.”

  “Where are my parents?”

  “You don’t remember what happened?”

  She stared at him vacantly.

  “Your parents left you here.”

  “They left me here.”

  “But it’s okay. I’m going to take care of you.”

  “You’re going to take care of me.”

  “Is that okay?”

  She seemed to think about it. “Okay.”

  4

  Solano slipped the photographs of his family back into the sleeve of his wallet, then he considered the wallet. It was time to move on, he knew. He had to put his old family, his old life, behind him. María was his everything now. God had sent her to him. She was his redemption, his second chance to do right for someone in need, to make up for the wrong he had done to his own daughter.

  He looked at the fire. No—he couldn’t bring himself to burn the wallet. Perhaps he could bury it somewhere? That seemed more appropriate.

  He got up and went to the hut he had been spending his days building. María lay on a straw mattress, sleeping soundly, the doll she called Angela, which he’d also rescued from the canal, clutched tightly in her hand. He knelt next to her and pulled the quilt to her chin.

  Tomorrow he was going into the city to trade produce for matches and rice and sugar and other supplies. It would be the first time he left María alone, and he was terrified of something happening to her. But she told him she would be okay, and he believed she would be. Despite her mental shortcomings, she was resilient and capable of taking care of herself.

  Smiling down at her, he decided he would get her something from the markets. She really liked that doll.

  Maybe he could find her another o
ne?

  Elizaveta

  1

  Elizaveta watched as Jack opened the front door to the cabin cautiously. She didn’t know who to expect—a hulking axe-wielding maniac?—but the woman in a poncho and torn jeans standing on the threshold definitely wasn’t anything she had imagined. She was petite, perhaps Pita’s height, but skinny as opposed to curvy. Her hair, like Pita’s, was long and wavy, though it was not only wet and knotted from the storm but festooned with dead leaves and twigs. She wore some sort of mask, what appeared to be the face cut from a doll. It was strapped to her own face with twine. Where the doll’s eye would have been were two holes through which a pair of very real eyes, brownish-red and intense, peered out.

  In one hand the woman gripped a doll by its hair, and in the other, a long knife.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Jesus blurted.

  “My name’s María,” she replied in a shrill, clear voice, eerily mechanical. Elizaveta couldn’t see her mouth moving behind the doll face, and she almost believed the voice to be a recording.

  “She has a knife!” Pita said. “She killed Nitro! Shoot her!”

  Jack, who had already taken a couple of steps backward, aimed the gun at the woman. She stared directly into the bore but showed no fear.

  “Tell her to put down the knife,” he said in English.

  Elizaveta stepped beside him. Holding out her hand, she said, “Can you give me the knife, María?”

  “It’s my knife,” she said.

  “Yes, I know. But can you give it to me for now?”

  “It’s my knife!” she snapped viciously.

  Elizaveta raised her hands, palms outward. “Okay, okay.”

  There was a brief lull. Then the woman—María—said, “I’m hungry.” She sounded perfectly pleasant again.

  “Jack, she’s hungry,” Elizaveta said, translating for him. “Give her some of your vegetables.”

  He dug a carrot from his pocket and held it out for her. “Last one.”

  She simply stared at it.

  “Don’t you want it?” Elizaveta asked her.

  “Where should I put my doll?”

  “Why don’t you give her to me?”

  “She’s my doll!” That viciousness again.

  Hands up, palms outward. “Okay, okay!” Elizaveta considered. “Why don’t you put her on table then?”

  María looked at the table. “I’ll put her on the table.” She went to it, moving in a flat-footed staggerstep, her back stooped, and set her doll in a chair. Then she returned, took the carrot from Jack, and stared at it for a long moment.

  “Are you going to eat it?” Elizaveta asked.

  María pushed the doll face up her forehead.

  2

  The woman was not horribly burned or mutilated. She did not suffer from a disfiguring illness. She was in fact quite beautiful. The years had not been kind certainly—she must have been at least fifty, her leathery skin wind-burned and sun-creased—but her bone structure would be the envy of many women. The vertical marionette lines alongside her mouth were carved especially deep, giving her the hinged-jaw look of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  She took a bite from the carrot, revealing a missing incisor. Then she chewed, staring myopically into space, apparently not bothered in the least that five strangers were staring at her with equal parts incredulity and confusion.

  Elizaveta looked at the others. Pita and Jesus remained by the far wall, speaking quietly to one another. Rosa stood behind Jack, peeking around his legs.

  “I don’t think she’s all there,” Jack said softly.

  “Shhh,” Elizaveta whispered. “She can hear you.”

  “You think they have an English school out here on this island?”

  Elizaveta watched María, but the woman showed no signs of understanding what they were saying. “Who do you think she is? Solano’s daughter?”

  Jack shrugged. “Must be.”

  “What about the other two in the photo then?”

  “Ask her.”

  “She’s dangerous,” Pita hissed. “We have to at least tie her up.”

  Jack said, “You think she’ll talk if you do that?”

  “She has a knife!”

  “I have a gun.” Then, to Elizaveta: “Ask her.”

  Elizaveta cleared her throat. The woman looked at her.

  “Hi, María,” she said.

  “Hi,” she replied in her peculiar voice.

  “I’m Eliza.”

  “My name’s María.”

  “I know that, María. Do you live on this island?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Are you alone?”

  She hesitated.

  “Are you alone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I said I don’t know!”

  Elizaveta glanced at Jack. He was frowning, apparently having followed the gist of the questioning.

  “She talks funny,” Rosa said.

  “I talk funny,” the woman parroted.

  Rosa giggled.

  The woman smiled.

  “I’m Rosa,” she said.

  “I’m María. My dad let me out of my room today.”

  “Your dad?” Elizaveta said.

  She held out her hand, which gripped the partly eaten carrot. “I painted my nails today.” Her fingernails were indeed a bright orange, though the paint was chipped. They clearly weren’t done today; perhaps a week or so ago.

  Rosa asked, “Did you paint them?”

  “Yeah.” She was still smiling.

  “They’re pretty.”

  “I have a spare finger.”

  Elizaveta didn’t understand. She was wondering if María meant she had a mutated extra digit when she noticed that only three of the woman’s four fingernails were painted orange. The index finger nail was untouched.

  She said, “Is your father on the island, María?”

  “He’s gone to the city.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Elizaveta was dubious. “Are you sure?”

  “I said yesterday!”

  “Okay—yesterday. What’s his name?”

  “He’s gone to the city.”

  “But what’s his name?”

  “He’s my father.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “My name’s María.”

  Elizaveta swallowed her frustration.

  “She’s got no bloody concept of time,” Jesus said in English.

  “Ask her a time question,” Pita said.

  “You ask her,” Elizaveta said.

  “She likes you.”

  “I’m not getting through to her.”

  Pita licked her lips.

  “Go on, try,” Jesus said.

  She grinned at María a bit foolishly and said, “Hi, María. I’m Pita. Are you happy today?” She was trying to sound disarming but came across as more frightened than anything.

  “My name’s María.”

  “How old are you, María?”

  “I’m ten years old.”

  “No you’re not!” Rosa said.

  “I’m ten years old.”

  “I think you’re a bit older than that, María,” Pita said.

  María stared at her—glared at her, that switch inside her flipped to angry once again. Then she returned her attention to the carrot. After looking at it for a long moment, she took a bite.

  “She’s a fucking lunatic,” Jesus whispered in English.

  “Don’t provoke her!” Pita said.

  “She’s clearly not making any sense. She thinks she’s fucking ten years old! Jack, will you tie her up now so we can get the hell out of here.”

  “You want to leave her tied up here by herself?” he said.

  “She killed Miguel and Nitro, man! Tie her up! We’ll send the police back to get her.”

  Jack ignored him and said, “What’s she been saying?”

  Elizaveta shrugged. “Jus
t…stuff. Jesus is right. She’s not making any sense. She said her father went to the city yesterday, and she’s ten years old. I don’t think she’s going to be much help—what?”

  Jack was frowning at María. “What’s she doing?”

  Elizaveta looked at the woman. Her eyes were fixed on Jack, intense, unblinking.

  “María?” Elizaveta said.

  She didn’t reply.

  “María?”

  No answer.

  “Why’s she just staring at me?” Jack asked.

  Jesus smirked. “She’s got the hots for you, Jack-o.”

  Jack tweaked the pistol back and forth.

  María didn’t react.

  “María?” Elizaveta said.

  Nothing.

  “Maybe she’s sleeping?” Rosa said.

  “Her eyes are open,” Jack said.

  “María?” Elizaveta said.

  She blinked. “My mom and dad had a baby.”

  “What did she say?” Jack asked.

  “That her mom and dad had baby,” Elizaveta said. “I think she just had seizure.”

  “What the hell do you know about seizures?” Jesus said.

  “I’ve seen seizures before,” she said, referring to the epileptic children she knew in the orphanage in which she’d grown up.

  “Don’t you shake and stuff?” Jack said.

  “There are many different kinds of seizures.”

  “My mom and dad had a baby,” María said again. “And her name is Salma.”

  Jack said, “Ask her about Miguel. Ask her if she knows what happened to him. Rosa,” he added, “can you go into the bedroom with Pepper for a bit?”

  She pouted. “But I want to stay with you.”

  “We’re going to be talking about some adult stuff. It’s best if you go in the bedroom. I’ll call you when we’re done.”

  She kicked at an imaginary object, scuffing the sole of her shoe on the floorboards. But she obediently went to the room.

  “Close the door!” Jack said.

  She closed it behind her.

  He gave Elizaveta a nod to begin.

  “María?” she said.