by Sergio Gomez
“Yeah, what about them?” He asked, not quite sure where he was going with this.
“Remember how sometimes, in the really bad movies, you could see the zippers on the monster suit?”
Charlie chuckled. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Just think if we find anything scary in there, there’s probably a zipper somewhere around its butt.”
Charlie laughed, but there was a mixture of nervousness and humor in the laugh.
Alejandro stopped the truck in front of the barn. He turned to Charlie, his face grave now, no joking manner behind it. “Zipper or no zipper, we’ll keep each other safe, okay?”
Charlie nodded. “Okay.”
“Chin up, we need to be brave.”
He nodded again, and felt like crying for some inexplicable reason.
“I’ll open the barn doors, you grab our bags and as much else as you can carry.”
Without another word, Alejandro opened the truck door and jumped out into the middle of the storm.
10
A puddle formed around them from the water dripping off their clothes and bags.
Alejandro put the soaked bags down and swept the lantern across to get a better look into the barn; a bale of hay in the distance, a broken wagon wheel, and lots of dust, other than that the light didn’t reveal anything of interest.
The silence inside the barn was almost suffocating—and it had a weight to it that made them have to whisper, as if somehow speaking at a louder voice would disturb a force hidden in the darkest crevices of the barn.
“You have the stove?” Alejandro asked, turning to Charlie.
The sudden light in his face made Charlie have to squint. He nodded and held the camp stove up so Alejandro could take it. Just as he did, his stomach growled.
“Hungry?” Alejandro asked, smiling. But the smile was a nervous smile. He didn’t know why…not yet.
“Yeah, a little bit.”
“Me too.”
Alejandro took the rifle off his shoulders and laid it down gently. Then he set the lantern and stove down and went through his bag for the needed supply to make dinner. “I’ll make us some chicken and eggs. You want to go look around the barn?”
Charlie looked around. The breadth of their light only went so far as to the walls on either side of them. In one corner, besides the broken wagon wheel, was a small shelf with a lonesome paintbrush on it. Other than that, all they could see ahead of them was darkness.
“Yeah, sure,” Charlie turned to go, and then turned back when the thought popped into his head. “Can I take your gun?”
Alejandro thought about it for a second and then shook his head. Although he had the rifle from the brothers he didn’t want Charlie to wield the gun on his own yet. “Just don’t go too far and keep calling back here every five minutes so I know you’re okay.”
The impulse to argue over why he couldn’t hold the gun—just hold it, really, the barn was as quiet as a church during prayer and he didn’t think he’d need it—arose in Charlie, but the teenage rebellion wasn’t at full bloom yet and it died off as quickly as it had risen.
He accepted that he couldn’t take the gun, despite that he had just let him shoot it earlier in the day, because Dad said so. “Alright, maybe next time.”
“You’ll get your own when we find one.” Alejandro said, turning his attention back to the stove.
That was Charlie’s cue to go away until the food was done. He dropped his bag on the floor next to his dad’s and then faced the dark stretch ahead of him.
Just old farming equipment, that’s all.
With the light in front of him he made his way through the barn, walking with the caution of a person expecting to step on a switch that would turn the floor into a giant trapdoor and find themselves free falling to their death. He made it past the shelf with the lonesome paintbrush and so far nothing out of the ordinary. The most noteworthy thing was a dirty shovel leaning against the wall and a broken rake that lied across it like a wounded comrade.
Continuing down the stretch of darkness he moved the lantern left and right, hoping the light would catch something worth inspecting, anything at all, but all there was left in the barn was dirt and broken farming equipment layered thick with dust and dirt.
A part of him hoped that something scary—scary but safe—would have been in the barn. Like a trail of dried blood on the wall or an animal’s skeleton. He felt weird that he had this desire deep down inside.
He was about to turn back, but out of the corner of his eye he saw something reflecting light back at him. Maybe nothing interesting, maybe just a shovel, but he took a couple of steps closer anyway.
A smell that was familiar—familiar in the sense that he knew he smelled it before, but didn’t know what it was exactly—touched his nostrils.
His curiosity overloaded, and he ran across the barn, almost tripping over his own feet. The sparkling spot got brighter and as he drew nearer to the first light revealed the lantern revealed another sparkling spot farther in the distance.
Closer to the source of the sparkling, his light revealed yet another one.
Meanwhile the smell grew stronger, but still he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. An image of the fat man lying in the middle of the carnival flashed through his mind.
The smell got bad enough that his eyes began to water, but he pressed on anyway. Up ahead more sparkles revealed themselves like stars in a cloudless sky. He had to know what these were, had to.
But when he finally arrived, when the mystery of the sparkles was finally revealed to him, it all fell in to place for him.
That smell that hung in the air, the pungent, potent, eye-stinging smell, was the smell of death.
His lantern cast over the source of the sparkles. They weren’t diamonds or mystic faeries or pieces of gold—no, they were river rocks with specs of dirt in them that shined. No different than the ones they occasionally found on the shore when they went fishing. Except there were hundreds of them gathered here, forming circles around piles of dead bodies.
It was unmistakably them; the burly forearms, the sleek patches of black hair, the humanoid faces, the claws at the end of some of their fingers. Charlie’s mouth opened without his approval, and he yelled at the top of his lungs. No words, just a fear-driven yell of panic.
Across the barn, Alejandro grabbed the rifle and shot up to his feet. He sprinted to where Charlie’s light was coming from, the rifle aimed and ready to fire.
*
When he got to his son’s side he was relieved to find that he was in no danger (noting that this was the second time this happened in the last few days). But the feeling of relief only lasted as long as it took him for him to see the five foot high piles of bodies.
Los Noches were piled on top of each other, laid about haphazardly, like a truck loaded with them had come into the barn and just emptied out its bed on the ground. Muscular arms and legs poked out every which way. Some of the limbs were stiff with rigor mortis and others flopped to the side like rotted bananas.
“Dios mio…”Alejandro uttered.
Charlie stopped screaming moments before he was at his side, but he stood there with saucer eyes, gazing at the dead creatures. Alejandro grabbed the lantern from Charlie’s loose grip.
“Quedate cerca,” Alejandro said, stepping around the circle of river rocks.
The lantern revealed three more piles of dead Noches, all similar height and surrounded by sparkling rocks.
“It’s a mass grave of them.” Alejandro said, hoping that putting it out in the open would make it more believable.
“What about the rocks?” Charlie asked.
Alejandro shook his head. It didn’t make any sense that these piles were decorated by rocks that were specifically chosen. There was no way in his mind Los Noches could have done this. Their brains wouldn’t be able to conceptualize honoring the dead in such fashion, all they knew was to kill.
“Must’ve been humans who…I don’t know…regretted killing
all of these creatures and wanted to make amends with themselves or something like that.” It almost sounded plausible.
“That means we’re close to other survivors, right, Dad? If there are this many dead,” he looked at the piles surrounding them and recounted how many there must have been in each, “that means the people who killed them have to be around, right?”
Alejandro was about to answer, but the sound of the barn doors bursting open stopped him. In front of them, and opposite of the barn doors they had come in from, the dark sliced open like someone had cut it with a knife. In the doorway the silhouettes of three Noches stood side by side, the two smallest ones were holding hands.
“Oh shit!” Alejandro screamed. “Charlie, run! Go, get out of here.”
“No!” Charlie reached out for the gun at Alejandro’s hip, but Alejandro smacked him away.
“Get out of here, now!” Alejandro shouted, shoving the lantern toward Charlie.
The look Alejandro had seen take over his dad’s face after he had killed the brothers at the river returned. With some reluctance he took the lantern from his dad and stepped backwards.
The bigger of Los Noches jumped up and down as if in response to Alejandro’s command. The smaller two, to Alejandro’s surprise, turned and ran out of the barn.
Without warning, the big one charged forward.
“Vete!” Alejandro said, biting at the air.
The command worked, he heard Charlie running and the light around him grew smaller. Alejandro aimed the rifle at the sliver of purple light at the other end of the barn and pulled the trigger.
It was blind shooting, but the rifle fired fast and at this distance it would turn the creature into minced meat when it hit. With the lantern’s light all but gone, the flash of the rifle was the only thing he had to see by.
As the bullets shot out, the flare from the bullets being launched out of the barrel lit up several yards in front of him like a strobe light. He saw the Noche coming from the side of where he was aiming and swayed his aim in that direction.
Over the almost deafening spray of the bullets he heard the creature scream—a sound akin to a bear with a foot caught in a trap. In one of the flashes he caught a glimpse of the creature and saw a bullet had torn through the side of its torso and blood was running all the way down to its thigh, but it wasn’t enough to stop it from coming forward, because again it moved out of his aim.
The flashing revealed how short the distance between him and the creature was, and he knew he was down to seconds. If he didn’t kill it with this next series of bullets he was as good as dead.
He swayed his aim to the other side, where he presumed the creature had retreated to. But he missed, and the bullet holes on the wall were like constellations letting in daylight into the dark of the barn.
The image of a quarterback being mowed down by a 300 pound lineman came to mind as he felt the weight of the creature take him off his feet. A volcano of pain erupted in his stomach as all the air rushed out from his lungs. The rifle flew out from his hands and went off as it clattered to the ground.
Pinned to the ground, underneath the weight of the creature, his last hope was the pistol. His arm was free and he reached down to grab it—his last hope at surviving this confrontation—and his heart stopped when his fingers grasped around air instead of the butt of the gun. The gun must have also been sent flying when he got tackled.
So this is it how it ends for me.
He closed his eyes, and was ready to accept death.
The creature moved up on him and was sitting on his chest. It reached out with a clawed hand for his face, and Alejandro closed his eyes.
And just like the speculation suggested, images of his life flashed before his eyes, as vividly and lively as if he were watching them on a television.
*
It’s his fourth birthday party and he’s wearing a cheap cowboy shirt with a badge that’s too heavy for the cloth the shirt is made out of. The badge says “sheriff” on it. He has a holster with an orange gun sitting in it. On his head there’s a hat that’s even cheaper than the shirt he’s wearing, made from the kind of plastic that dents and can never be brought back to its original shape.
He’s standing in the middle of a park, in front of a blue cake decorated with blue meringue that’s melting under the hot sun. His brother Carlos is next to him, busy trying to swipe a finger across the meringue in a way that no one notices.
His mom is in front of him holding a camera that’s almost as big as her head. She’s saying, “Listo? Listo? Ay te viene!” because there’s a surprise coming, and the camera is there to capture his expression.
For a second his mind turns away from the memory of the party and to the memory of when his parents saw the picture weeks later. His reaction hadn’t been the one his parents had hoped for, and lying there with the harbinger of his death pinning him down, seconds from killing him, the feeling of disappointing his parents makes him cry.
Then the birthday scene comes back, and he’s looking to where his mom and the rest of his family are pointing for him to look. Out from behind a tree comes out two men inside of a beaten up horse costume.
The two men have no practice walking together in unison to give the illusion of a single entity, and their efforts comes off looking like a donkey with a bad hip drunkenly walking through a kid’s birthday party. Carlos begins to cry and hides under the table.
His reaction is to scowl in horror at this twisted up depiction of his favorite animal. That’s what all of the pictures show; Alejandro scowling and their dad pulling Carlos out from underneath the table as he screams his head off.
*
The birthday party goes away, no black screen or fading like in the movies, just flashed away and replaced by the image of him sitting by the river with the girl who would in later years become his wife. They’re sixteen—he knows this because she’s wearing a Backstreet Boys concert shirt and her dark wavy hair has gold highlights in it.
He feels like there’s an ocean of fish swimming in his gut, and every time they touch the walls of his stomach he wants to jump and run away. There’s too much pressure in this situation, too much for a sixteen year old to have to deal with.
Sure, he’s kissed girls before and he’s had other girlfriends—but this one is different. This is the ONE. The one that people search their entire lives for and here he got lucky and found her at sixteen. It’s too much to handle, too much!
But he tames the fish and controls his thoughts. They’re staring out at the water, the sun sinking down behind the horizon, the clouds rolling through the fusion of orange and blue sky stretching out as far as they can see. It’s pretty much a perfect Pennsylvania day.
He shuts all doubts away, turns to her and says, “Maria, I have something to tell you.”
She looks at him with those big almond eyes, and they’re beautiful. More beautiful than anything he could ever imagine. They grow big, and it’s like he can see the fear taking over her eyes. All the fear she’s ever felt, reflecting back at him in those big beautiful eyes.
Fear of what? Fear that he’s breaking up with her? Or fear that he’s going to say what he’s thinking of saying? He doesn’t know, and doubt creeps back into his head.
Get it over with, cabron, he tells himself.
“What is it?” She asks.
“Maria…” the words seem to have gotten choked in on his throat, but he fights through even that and the words come out, three of the hardest words he’s ever said in his life, “I love you.”
Her eyes get bigger, and now he doesn’t see fear in them. He sees something else in them, something he had never seen before, and now he’s scared.
But before he can convince himself that he just messed this up, that he just destroyed this beautiful two-year relationship they had, she smiles at him and says it back, “Alejandro, I love you too.”
*
He smiled at the memory. Not knowing that the hand was halfway to his throat.
/> *
He’s in a hospital room, the blinds are closed so only a sliver of sunlight creeps through them. His dad is underneath a blue blanket, his eyes are half open and there’s a faint smile on his face.
“Me gano, mijo, el pinche cancer me gano,” he’s saying this over and over in a voice so low and weak he didn’t know his dad was capable of.
It feels like every artery attached to his heart is being jerked. His face is hot, underneath from the anger and on the surface from the tears streaking his face. He grabs his dad’s hand, and it’s as light as a baby bird, the strong working hands that had put in hours and hours of work so he and Carlos could have what the other kids had were gone, replaced by the fragile hands of a man on his deathbed.
Alejandro wants to say something, he wants to tell him he loves him and he appreciates him for everything he did for them, but nothing he thinks sounds right. None of it seems powerful enough to fit the situation.
His dad squeezes, as hard as he can at this point, and through the slits of his eyelids Alejandro can see his dad is looking directly into his eyes.
He coughs, and then says, “Alejandro…dile a Carlos que me perdone, mijo…dile que me perdone por tratar lo mal…y que lo quiero mucho. Que siempre lo he querido.”
Alejandro squeezes his dad’s hand and more tears spill out from his eyes. “Si papi, si.”
“Dile a tu mama que los cuide y que la amo, eh? Si, mijo, me haces ese favor?”
Alejandro nods his head. “Si pa, si, si.”
“Te amo, mijo. Te cuidas, eh? Y nos vemos, te voy a estar esperando, pero no vengas rapido…me escuchas chamaco? No te quiero ver hasta que se acabe el mundo.” His dad laughs.
And Alejandro remembers that it didn’t surprise him that he laughed even on his deathbed. He had always been a fighter, had always been one to deal with the curve balls life threw at them, death just happened to be the final pitch thrown, and his dad had managed to laugh even at that.
The heart monitor beeps, and the line goes flat.
