Dancing with the Devil and Other Stories from Beyond / Bailando con el diablo y otros cuentos del más allá

by René Saldaña, Jr.

  Joey stood and began his walk across the floor for the fourth or fifth time. He was dead set on getting this thing done. He was going to take action. After all, he did like this girl very much. Plus, Juan was right: She’s here with me, and no out-of-towner’s gonna come here and take away what’s mine. Halfway across the floor, though, he stopped cold, as if on a dime. Over by the doors, there was this guy dressed to the tees. Sharp in his blood red zoot suit.

  Noelia had not been lying about how suave this stranger looked. The guy made his way across the floor. Joey didn’t recognize this stranger, either. He was ten feet away from her, and Marlen was looking right at him. Then he was right on her, and she was shaking her head no but smiling yes at this outsider. The guy held out his hand, smiled at her and insisted she dance with him. She was coy. She shook her head no again, but this time she took his hand, anyway. When she stood to walk down the bleachers with this stranger, her long hair bounced. She ran her free hand through her hair, flipping it over onto her left shoulder. Joey stood by and watched as Marlen glided to the middle of the dance floor, and he wrapped his arms around her waist.

  Poor Joey. He lowered his head and started back to his spot on the bleachers. Ten o’clock was so far away. Juan grabbed him by the arm as he danced past him: “Man, oh, man, he beat you to her. Maybe you can get the next dance. She’s here with you, right? But you gotta be ready. Don’t start getting soft now.”

  “I’m all right, man. Don’t worry about me,” said Joey. Then he sat and looked at the girl he was in love with since the fourth grade, dancing with a stranger—and he was very good at dancing from what Joey could tell. The lights were dim, so maybe the stranger wasn’t that good, really. As if he knew what was in Joey’s heart, the stranger turned to look at him and smiled an evil smile. His lips disappeared, and he showed his pointy teeth. Am I seeing things? wondered Joey. He rubbed away his heartache, shook the cobwebs from his head and wiped away what he thought may have been tears from his eyes. He looked again and the stranger was no longer smiling at him. Right—I must have been just imagining it, he thought. I’m such a fool for this girl I’m seeing stuff that isn’t there. He forced himself not to look at her. He stared at the floor under him, between his shoes. His eyes felt like they were burning. Itching. With his head down, he let a few tears run, which eased the burning.

  Had he been watching her instead, though, he would have noticed that the stranger began spinning round and round, faster and faster. So fast, in fact, that his shoes came off his feet. Had Joey been looking out for her, he would have seen what she saw upon looking down as she tried to let go of this stranger. His feet were no human feet at all. One of them, the right one, was a goat’s hoof, the other, the left, was that of a rooster. She tried to scream, but his hand quickly covered her mouth. She looked into his eyes and noticed that they were nothing but flames. She tried flailing her arms for him to let go. She succeeded only in tipping his hat back on his head. That’s when she saw two horns sticking out of his forehead. The hat had been covering them all along. But Joey saw none of this. If only he had been watching Marlen.

  The others on the dance floor did notice that something was happening but thought it was a magnificent spectacle, so they formed a circle around these two hot dancers. They saw the girl’s dress twirl, her arms swinging about in some wild magic, and the stranger smiling, caressing her face. Soon enough, the stranger’s feet, if we can call them that, struck up sparks, and just as quickly, flames arose from the floor. There was soon a tower of fire engulfing the couple. All of the others scattered, not realizing what was going on, not caring for one instant that one of their classmates was being consumed by this fire.

  As quickly as the flames had appeared, they disappeared. Nothing was left but smoke and the shape of a circle scorched into the floor. There was smoke rising in a pillar to the ceiling, and the smell of sulfur. “Yes, sulfur,” Jockstrap later said to the investigating police officers at the scene. “It smelled of sulfur, and Marlen and the stranger were gone.” He was crying, visibly shaken.

  Joey told the officers he’d seen nothing.

  Had he been paying more attention to the girl of his dreams, perhaps he could have saved her. Perhaps his pure love for Marlen could have been enough to defeat the stranger’s evil. But Joey hadn’t paid attention, and now she was gone.

  God’s Will Be Done

  “If God wills it,” said María.

  “Yes,” answered Julia. “If God so wills it, I’ll go to the dance next week, too.” The dance was the first one of the year, one of four dances to be held in Peñitas de Abajo. The town officials had hired a professional band from San Antonio, and the townspeople were excited. People would be coming in from all around: Palmview, Abram, El Ojo de Agua, Tierra Blanca, La Joya. Some from as far away as Sullivan City.

  María and Julia had gone to last year’s dances because they had finally turned old enough. But Cecilia did not attend them, could not, as a matter of fact, because she had been too young. This year, though, she had come of age. She had celebrated her quinceañera just last month. So now that she was fifteen, she would expect to go, and to her parents’ dismay, there’d be boys there. With their permission, she’d be allowed to the dances, but they’d be keeping a careful eye on her.

  What her parents didn’t know was that she already had her eyes on a boy from Mission, whom she had met on a visit with her Tía Marta. Her mother and aunt had gone into a store to look for materials for Cecilia’s quince dress, something Cecilia was tired of doing. So much taffeta, so much silk. She had told her parents that she did not even want a fifteenth birthday celebration at all. “Don’t be silly, mija,” they said. “Every girl wants a quinceañera.” But she would not help anymore than she had to. She fought her parents at every step.

  When her mother and Tía Marta were gone out of sight, a boy introduced himself to Cecilia on the sidewalk in front of the Border Theater. “I’m Ernesto, and you are the breath that sustains me.” He won Cecilia over in just one sentence. She looked into his eyes and saw their future together. There was no question—this was going to be her husband. She was a little nervous, so the upcoming birthday celebration absolutely slipped her mind; however, she did tell him about the first big dance in Peñitas de Abajo coming up soon. “I’ll go to the dance to see you,” he told her. “We’ll dance the night away.” Oh, how she looked forward to seeing him again and dancing with him. She gave him all the details in quick whispers, occasionally looking over her shoulder. He jotted it all down on his cell phone.

  When he turned to leave, he nearly bumped into her mother, who scowled at him, took Cecilia under her wing of pink satin material she had just purchased, and hissed at him.

  “That boy is not the one for you,” she told her daughter on their way home. “I saw how you were looking at him and he at you, but trust me, mija, there is more to love than starry-eyed love.” She glared at Cecilia, who was staring at the bundle of material. “I will not allow it. Try to recall what the priest said last week in church: that children should honor their parents. That means that you should obey me, obey us, and trust that we know what is best for you. It’s one of the commandments.”

  That was two months ago. Today, Cecilia was looking out her bedroom window, dreaming. Her cousins, visiting from Mission, were rifling through her box of jewelry.

  “I heard at school that Ernesto’s going to be at the dance,” said Julia.

  Cecilia perked up, just ever so slightly. She had told her cousins about her dreams. Had told them that if she had to, she would marry Ernesto against her parents’ wishes. They had gasped at her audacity, but hoped that she would go through with it so that more doors would be opened to them as a result of her actions. “At least what I did is not as bad as what Cecilia did,” they’d say to their own parents, when the older folks refused to let them do something. “Yes,” they’d agree. “At least it’s not as horrible as what that ungrateful girl has done to her poor, poor parents. She should be asha
med of herself.” And then the girls from Mission would be allowed to go places and to do things girls had not been allowed to visit or do before.

  “I want to dance with him all night,” she told them.

  “But you know your parents won’t allow it,” warned María.

  “But I will,” answered Cecilia.

  Julia crossed herself so as not to be punished by God, and María said, “Only if God allows it.”

  Cecilia stood and twirled around, her brows raised, eyes burning a hole through María’s forehead. “And I say I’ll go to the dance and spend the entire night with Ernesto, whether God likes it or not.”

  The two cousins looked at one another and excused themselves immediately, saying that they had to get back home for supper, even though supper for them would not be ready for another hour. On the drive home, one said to the other, “Can you believe that girl?! How sacrilegious can she be?!”

  Wanting to avoid God’s punishment for simply being seen with Cecilia, Julia and María didn’t visit her the rest of the week before the dance. After all, God was God, sacrilege was a mortal sin, and a cousin was only a cousin blood or no blood.

  As for Cecilia, their absence didn’t bother her one bit. She couldn’t care less what her cousins thought. She also thought cousins were only cousins, and they were a dime a half-dozen. “If they want to be like this,” she spoke to herself, smiling back at her reflection in the mirror, “then I can’t do anything to change their simple ways of thinking. I have to look out for myself. No one else matters.” She stood and started walking to her bed, turned back to the mirror and corrected herself: “No one that is, except for Ernesto. Ernesto and me.” Both of her selves smiled.

  The day of the dance finally arrived. At the dance hall (which also served as City Hall and as the town’s emergency shelter in case of hurricanes) a monstrous banner announced the night’s event toting it as “The Dance of this Century!!!” Yellow and purple streamers of crepe paper flitted in the wind. With a few hours yet for the doors to open, everyone was out and about getting ready for the evening event.

  The men of the town formed a line outside Ramiro’s Barbershop for a cut and a shave. When it was Mr. Murillo’s turn at the chair, he also asked for a shampoo. The other men turned their heads slightly in his direction to make sure they’d heard right, because that was supposed to be a thing for women, and this was a barbershop, not a beauty salon. Those closest to the door who heard the man’s request passed it on down the line, which now reached the Circle 7 store. By the time the last men in line heard the whisper, it had changed to “Mr. Murillo was turned away at the beauty salon where he had asked to be made up in rouge and mascara for the dance, and when he was asked to leave, he cried. Now Ramiro’s giving him a lavender shampoo because it supposedly has a calming effect and nourishes the roots of the hair, which in turn keeps a man from going bald.”

  “Well,” said the last man in line, “if it’ll keep these last few hairs on my head, I also want to get a shampoo.” This information made its way back to the front of the line, and the man after Mr. Murillo, when it was his turn to take the chair, said, “Ramiro, I hope you have enough shampoo for every one of us. There’ve been studies done that show that men become smarter with shampooing.”

  The women visited Señorita Teresita’s Fine Materials, where the women dove elbows-deep into silks and velvets of all colors. Señorita Teresita had studied fashion in Paris and had been considered a hussy when she first returned, because she had left home against her parents’ wishes. In a last ditch effort to keep her from going, her father had said, “You know, mija, when you come back, no man will want you for a wife.” She’d already bought her plane ticket and was determined to make something of herself independent of her family and a husband.

  The women had stayed away from her store when she’d first come back, but she advertised her “wares” on television, so as soon as the women took notice of the many exotic materials she had returned with from Europe, the women became her most ardent defenders. They had fallen instantly in love with these strange cloths, and so Señorita Teresita became the town’s first businesswoman, and eventually she would bring in more money than even Don Reginaldo, the baker. Today, the women were looking for sashes and wraps that would accent their evening attire. Their choice materials, they would use to cover their bare and powdered shoulders.

  All this activity Cecilia was not privy to, but she didn’t care. Tonight she would be meeting Ernesto, the man of her dreams, whom she would marry and live with happily ever after. Today, she would be bathing in a tub full of rose petals, rubbing her knees and elbows with aloe and massaging coconut oil on her shoulders, thighs, legs and stomach.

  She had already chosen her outfit on another of her trips to Mission. It was a kelly green, velvet, knee-length dress with sheer sleeves. She would also be wearing her great-grandmother’s emeralds.

  Some ten minutes before the dance was slated to begin, Cecilia heard her cousins calling from outside. She went to the door, stepped out and all of them studied each others’ outfits. Each was satisfied with her own looks for the night, not becoming jealous of the other. All three of them were beautiful young women, and all had bathed that day in some sort of fancy water and rubbed all kinds of mysterious and sweet-smelling oils on their bodies, magic potions that would attract all the young men.

  “Let’s go,” they said. “Let’s walk instead of drive. This way it’ll take us twenty minutes to get there so we won’t be the first ones there and look all desperate.”

  Even though she was ready, and had been for the last thirty minutes, Cecilia said, “I haven’t finished getting dressed. I don’t want you to have to wait for me and miss out on the first dance. I’ll be another twenty-five minutes at least. So, please, you two go on. I’ll meet you there.”

  Not only was she sacrilegious, but vain, they thought. She’s ready to go and still wants to be late so that she can make a grand entrance. But, they reasoned, she had just turned fifteen and this would be her first dance; being fashionably late was her right, after all. However, they would not let her get away with this the next time. “Okay,” they called back from just outside the gate. “We’ll see you there, then.”

  Another twenty minutes passed, and Cecilia was becoming more and more anxious.

  Her parents had left for the hall earlier to carry a cauldron of pinto beans. Cecilia was alone in the house and couldn’t keep still, but didn’t want to over-exert herself so as not to perspire and ruin her make-up and powder. She fidgeted instead, hopping from foot to foot, twiddling her thumbs and stretching her neck toward the opened window, straining her ear to listen for the music.

  When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she told herself in the mirror, “It’s time for me to go.” As she stepped out into the world beyond her gate, she breathed in all of the evening air with its fireflies and citrus from a nearby orchard. She imagined her first and eternal dance with her Ernesto.

  In order to get to the hall, she had to take a path through the woods, which would wind back and forth, up and over dead tree trunks, and under Spanish moss hanging to the ground practically.

  Well into the woods, she stopped cold. Right in front of her, and blocking the path, stood a big black bull with horns that seemed to pierce the sky. It had a ring in its nose through which it snorted. It turned to look at her.

  Afraid for her life, Cecilia turned to run back home. Soon after, she slowed down to a walk, keeping a careful eye on the path behind, making certain that the bull was not following her. When she decided it wasn’t coming after her, she chose an alternate path to town. It was a scarier and darker one, but one that a bull would have a hard time getting to because of the thick huisache bushes.

  Now she had to hold back prickly branches and detour around patches and patches of cactus plants eager to sacrifice their needles to annoy any member of the human race. That was okay because she would soon be making her entrance and then Ernesto would . . .

&nb
sp; Cecilia couldn’t believe her eyes. Again, directly in front of her strolled the bull. How could it have gotten here faster than me? she asked herself. It just didn’t make sense to her.

  She saw a clear path to her left, what she knew to be a short cut back to the other pathway, and she ran for it, leaving behind the bull, its nose-ring, its snort and its horns. She zigzagged around cactus patches, letting a few branches from the huisache slap at her arms, lightly scratching her cheeks. When she reached her original path, there again was the bull.

  Dumbstruck and frightened, she ran back home. She locked herself in her room and stared out the window to find out if the bull had chased her. She argued, “I’ll give myself thirty minutes. By then the bull will have left. Then I’ll go to the dance.” Every two minutes she looked out the window because she had a clear view of the front gate and the path she would have to take later. When the half hour had come and gone, she stepped out the front door, and the bull appeared as if out of thin air at the gate, blocking any chance of her leaving through it. She ran to the back, hoping to use the back gate to leave, but as soon as she stepped onto the back porch, there stood the same black bull blocking that exit, too.

  She ran inside her house and jumped onto her bed, face down and began to cry. Not too long after that, she fell asleep. She was devastated. She’d miss the dance, and she’d miss holding and being held by her Ernesto.

  When her parents got home at midnight, they looked in on her and would have woken her up to find out what had kept her from the dance, but she had such a serene look on her face that they didn’t wake her. They had heard rumors that an insufferable boy would be there ready to talk to Cecilia’s father about dating his daughter.

  The following morning, Julia and María knocked on her bedroom door. Seconds later, Cecilia peered out from behind it, still in her gown and jewels. The dress, though, had become horribly and irreparably wrinkled overnight. She let them in cautiously, looking out of the room after they’d entered. Then she tip-toed to the window, peeked out and sat on the bed only after she’d made certain that there was no bull outside.