by Eli Easton
HE WAS there in the back room, unpacking some boxes sent from New York, with Abuela tallying up the day’s receipts in the front, when Alejandro called his cell phone.
“Yo.”
“Are you alone?”
Matthew laughed. “Why?”
“I don’t want Abuelita to hear this,” Alejandro replied. He sounded dead serious.
“What is it, amigo?” Matthew lowered his voice and added, “She’s out front. I’m in the storeroom.”
“Good. Listen, I’m sending some stuff back through FedEx. Three boxes from Abuelita’s friend. But there’s something I don’t want her to see. Can I send it to your house?”
“What is it? Porn?”
Alejandro didn’t laugh. “No. It’s a book. A very old book.”
“Uh… sure.” Now he was really curious. Alejandro didn’t keep many secrets from his grandmother. What, apart from porn, could he be so anxious to hide? “Is it a present or something?”
“No. It’s hard to explain over the phone. Just don’t let her see it. And don’t open it!”
“Why not?”
“Just do what I say, huero. Don’t make me kick your ass.”
“Don’t you mean lick my ass?” Sadly, Matthew already knew the answer to that. Alejandro had never shown the slightest interest in him.
“You wish, cara de culo.”
Matthew laughed. “That just means you’ll lick my face.” The insult translated to “butt face.”
“In your dreams.”
ALEJANDRO DISCONNECTED and put his phone back in his pocket, thinking about how much he really would like to lick Matthew’s face… and ass, for that matter. And anything else the handsome blond boy offered him. He’d been attracted to him since the day Matthew moved in next door. Matthew had just been a skinny little white kid back then, but when Alejandro gave him shit, he gave it right back. Alejandro didn’t know it at the time, but he fell a little in love with Matthew that day. He’d been falling more and more in love with him every day since then.
Only now he knew it. But it was too late. They’d grown too close. And the thought of actually dating Matthew felt… weird. Like thinking about dating his brother or something.
He walked back to the desk at the FedEx office and handed the clerk the fourth package he’d addressed. “This one’s going to a different address.” He thought about paying for it all with the money Abuela had given him, but on second thought, he said, “I’ll pay for it separately.”
Alejandro stepped out of the French Quarter Postal Emporium—a much smaller building than its name suggested—into a bright July afternoon. He wandered lazily down Bourbon Street, whistling the tune to Sting’s “Moon Over Bourbon Street.” He was done rummaging through Grand-père Passebon’s dusty shop, there was a full day left until his flight home, and he was in one of the coolest cities he’d ever visited.
Time to do some sightseeing.
Chapter Two
THE PACKAGE arrived the next morning. Matthew wasn’t expected at the botanica until after it arrived. He’d told Abuela he was waiting for a delivery that morning, though he didn’t tell her who it was from. She didn’t have a problem with him coming in late, because as far as she was concerned, she was doing him a favor by allowing him to work some hours there—not the other way around.
Matthew tossed the package onto his bed, kissed his mother good-bye, scratched his dog on the head, and ran out to the botanica. There, he found Abuela suspiciously eying three boxes the FedEx guy had dropped off.
“Alejandro sent these,” she said in Spanish.
“He told me he was sending them yesterday. They’re from the botanica in New Orleans.”
“Sí, I remember he went down there,” she said with exaggerated patience. “Do I look senile?”
“Sólo un poco.”
“Mocoso!” (“Brat!”) She pretended she was going to backhand him, though she’d never laid a finger on either him or Alejandro. “I have no idea where I’m going to find room for this much crap!”
It was a challenge. They spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking the boxes and trying to wedge icons of the saints, candles, and other things Alejandro had thought worth saving onto the overcrowded shelves of the tiny shop. Some of the saints could go in the window, on the other side of the heavy cloth that prevented curious outsiders from peering into the inner depths of the botanica. There they presented a fairly innocuous “front” for the shop that might pass for a Catholic religious display to strangers walking by.
Only people who worshiped the saints knew the icons weren’t Catholic, or perhaps a devout Catholic might notice something off about them—that some had darker skin than most Catholic saint figurines or that the colors of the clothing seemed brighter. Some of the figurines resembled dolls more than the Catholic icons found in churches. Because these saints were really African gods—spirits would be more accurate—in a European guise. Back when slaves were first being brought to the Caribbean, they’d been forced to accept Catholicism, but they’d continued to honor the African spirits in secret. They’d simply hidden them behind the guises of the saints. St. Theresa became Oya, the queen of the dead. St. Barbara became Chango, the spirit of fire and thunder. Matthew’s favorite was Eleggua, in the guise of St. Anthony. He was the patron of luck and destiny and something of a trickster, but Abuela had told him and Alejandro when they first came out to her that he was the guardian of gay men and women.
How, exactly, the worship of the saints found its way from Caribbean slaves brought to the United States to the Latino community, Matthew didn’t know. Maybe he’d find the answer someday in the books on the botanica’s shelves. For now, he was only mildly interested. His mother was more or less an atheist, which made his friendship with Alejandro and Abuela a little easier. At least she wasn’t constantly freaking out about him losing his soul to the devil or anything like that. But that didn’t mean Matthew was a believer himself. He just found it all kind of cool and interesting.
After they’d unpacked all the boxes and found places for everything, Abuela shooed him out of the shop. She always liked to be the last one there at night, so she could go around and make sure everything was in its place without the two boys “stumbling around like goats” and getting in her way. There were also a few altars set up in corners of the shop that needed to be tended.
Before he stepped out the door, the old woman insisted upon spritzing him with Florida Water, as she did every night. He hated the stuff. It smelled like cheap cologne—which, of course, it was. But he’d gotten used to the nightly ritual, just as Alejandro had. As always, Abuela muttered under her breath when she did it, “To keep you safe.”
“Gracias, Abuelita.”
Matthew went back to his apartment building and let himself in. Fifteen-year-old Gabriela Rojas was in the stairwell, making out with her boyfriend, but they ignored him as he climbed the stairs. His mother was working late, so it was just him and Spartacus. Spartacus was Matthew’s pit bull, named after a character in a TV series his mother didn’t like him watching. The dog was still kind of a puppy, though he was already massive. It was unlikely he’d be any good at protecting Matthew and his mom if a burglar broke in, since he was inclined to trust everybody, but Matthew had gotten him as a companion anyway. And he was great for that.
“Hey, pup!” Matthew laughed as he opened the door and the pit bull nearly knocked him back out onto the landing. “Hold on a second! Let me get the light.”
He felt around for the light switch just inside the door, and a second later, the apartment lit up. The first thing Matthew saw was his muscular ball of puppy love making excited circles in front of him. The second thing he saw was the shredded paper and cardboard strewn across the living room carpet. It took him a moment to figure out what it was.
Then he remembered Alejandro’s book.
“Oh shit!”
SPARTACUS HADN’T eaten the entire package. The external wrapping was pretty much destroyed, but once the dog had
gotten through to the wooden box inside, he’d contented himself with gnawing on just one corner for a bit. Considering his powerful jaws could have made short work of the entire box, that was something, at least. But if the box was an antique, Alejandro was going to be furious.
Matthew sat on the couch, picking bits of the paper wrapping off the box, while Spartacus curled up beside him, happily gnawing on one of the immense rubber Kong toys he was supposed to chew on when he was bored, totally oblivious to how much distress he’d just caused his owner. The wooden box was damaged beyond repair. In addition to the corner, which simply wasn’t there anymore, one side was splintered and there were several places where Spartacus’s canines had punched holes all the way through the wood.
He’s going to kill me.
Alejandro would never harm a hair on Spartacus’s cast-iron head, of course. But Matthew would be in for it. He should have had the sense to put the package on the counter or a shelf out of the dog’s reach.
The box had once had a carving on the lid. Matthew recognized it as a veve—a symbolic picture representing one of the African spirits. The elaborate crisscrossed veve on the cover represented Ogun, the smith, and was sometimes used for protection. But much of it had been chewed up, destroying any power it might have had. Matthew felt a slight chill of superstitious dread pass through him at the sight of it, as if whatever the lid had contained was now free to get out. The feeling wasn’t helped by the bizarre chain wrapped around the box. It was fastened with a padlock, but thanks to the gnawed-off corner, the chain on that side was slipping off, so the entire thing could slide off the box without having to open the lock.
Matthew let the chain fall off and peered into the broken corner of the box. He could see what looked like a book in there, but he couldn’t tell for certain that it hadn’t been damaged. Alejandro had told him not to open it, but of course he hadn’t anticipated this circumstance. It couldn’t hurt to assess the damage, could it?
Matthew popped open the wooden cover of the box and looked at its contents.
It was a book, as Alejandro had told him. But it looked cheap, homemade, as if someone had written it by hand and then stitched the pages together. The cover was warped with age and apparently nothing more than cardboard with a hand-drawn paper cover glued to it. It was clearly old, though Matthew had no idea how old. The paper was yellowed and the edges were curled. The corners of the cover illustration were peeling away from the cardboard. The illustration itself was odd—an old man in a robe and a frankly silly-looking pointed hat, with skeletons and devils floating in the air around him. Maybe a hundred years ago, people would have thought it looked frightening, but in the light of modern horror movies, it was more goofy. Still, Matthew felt uneasy looking at the book, as if he was seeing something he shouldn’t be.
El Gran Libro de San Cipriano. The Great Book of Saint…. Cipriano? He’d never heard of a saint by that name.
He glanced up and was startled to see Spartacus staring at the book too. It wasn’t that the dog was growling or cowering or anything else particularly strange. He was just looking at it fixedly. But Matthew still found it unsettling.
He closed the wooden cover again and gathered the chain in one hand. “It’s a good thing you didn’t eat the book,” Matthew told the pit bull, getting up off the couch. “Alejandro’s gonna be pissed off enough when he sees the mess you made of the box. Don’t expect me to take the blame.”
Spartacus ignored him and went back to chewing on his Kong.
Matthew looked around for a place to put the box. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he really didn’t want the thing in his bedroom. He finally settled on the closet near the front door, hiding it behind the winter hats and mittens on the top shelf. Then he went back to the couch and put the DVD in for Ip Man, despite having watched it about twenty times already.
He thought about calling Alejandro about the damage done to the box, but he chickened out. It would be easier to explain when Alejandro got back. His flight was due in late that night, so Matthew would see him tomorrow.
Every once in a while as he watched the movie, and later, as he got up to bake himself a frozen pizza, he glanced at the closet. He didn’t know why. It was stupid. Did he think the book was going to jump out of the closet and chase him around the room? The image that brought to mind, with the book flapping its covers through the air like a bat, made him laugh. But it didn’t make him any less uneasy. He wasn’t generally superstitious—at least, he didn’t think so—but he’d feel better once the book was out of his apartment.
Chapter Three
THE DARK thing slithered down the wall and across the floor of the apartment, hugging the edge of the room, though all was still and dark. It avoided the splash of light near the wall, where some kind of cold blue flame flickered, but quickly returned to the comfort of the baseboard. It disliked being out in the open.
It was hungry.
It sensed food had been left for it on top of the counter, but when it climbed easily up the side to explore the surface on top, it found little to satisfy it—bread, cheese, and mashed tomato. Peasant food. It needed food with power—blood and flesh.
It sensed something… something nearby that could ease its hunger… and slithered back down to the floor. Following the contours of the room, it came to a closed door. There was a thin gap between the door and the floorboards, and the thing easily slipped through.
Inside, it found a bed, in which two warm bodies slept. The human was protected by a faint, lingering trace of magic—not much, but enough to make him unappealing. Yet the dog was not. The dark thing curled around the unsuspecting animal, which whimpered softly in its sleep, and then insinuated itself in through the nostrils, through the mouth, through the ears… claiming the animal with every breath, marking it as its own….
HIGH ABOVE the New England countryside, Alejandro started in his sleep and woke from the nightmare to the pilot announcing twenty minutes until landing at Manchester Airport. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wedged between an elderly woman who insisted on taking her smelly shoes off and a business man who kept eying Alejandro as if he might make a grab for the man’s wallet.
Something was wrong. He’d never considered himself to be particularly psychic, but the dream had been too vivid, too disturbing to ignore. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and verified the time he’d heard from the flight attendant. Just past one in the morning.
It was possible Matthew would be awake. He sometimes stayed up late watching a movie. He’d been sleeping in the dream, but hopefully that’s all it had been—a dream. Hopefully, Matthew and Spartacus were all right. They had to be all right.
Twenty minutes, at least, until he’d be allowed to use his phone. He wasn’t sure how he’d be able to stand it.
MATTHEW WOKE in semidarkness, with only a street light coming through his second-floor bedroom window to cut across his ceiling in a broad band of orange-yellow, and found Spartacus standing over him, looking down into his face. It wasn’t something the dog had ever done before, and it was unnerving.
“What’s up, pup?”
In response, the dog that had never once shown any aggression to his owner—or anyone, for that matter—lowered his ears and growled deep in his throat.
“Spartacus—”
That merely caused the pit bull to draw his lips back and growl louder, his canines clearly visible. A drop of saliva fell onto Matthew’s shoulder.
THE MOMENT they were on the ground and the captain announced passengers could use cell phones, Alejandro flipped his out of airplane mode and dialed Matthew’s number. It rang a few times but went to voice mail.
Shit.
“If you’re still awake, huero, call me back. I just landed in Manchester.”
He left the phone on vibrate and slipped it into his pocket. Then he waited, fretting, while the plane taxied to the gate. Everything was probably fine. Nightmares were usually just that. None of his dreams had ever come true before, so
there was no reason to think this one would. Besides, it hadn’t even made sense. Just a vague sense of something menacing loose in Matthew’s apartment. Matthew would probably laugh at him if he told him about it.
Still, Alejandro knew he wouldn’t be able to rest tonight until he checked on his friend.
SOMETHING WAS very wrong with Spartacus. He didn’t appear to recognize Matthew at all. Was it possible for dogs to sleepwalk? Should Matthew try shouting at him to see if it would shake him out of it? Matthew was afraid to even move, never mind make loud noises. For the first time since he’d met the lovable pit bull at the shelter and wrestled with him, he was frightened by those sharp fangs and powerful jaws.
Was he bitten by something? Is he rabid?
The thought filled him with dread. Matthew couldn’t remember encountering any animals recently when he’d walked Spartacus. Nothing that could have bitten him, anyway. Just some squirrels and chipmunks. Besides, he would have noticed if the dog had bite marks on him.
The buzzing of Matthew’s cell phone in his pants pocket halfway across the room set the pit bull off. As soon as the phone broke the silence, Spartacus started barking ferociously, as if Matthew was an intruder. Instinctively, Matthew grabbed the dog’s collar with one hand, shoving him back just long enough to yank the pillow out from behind his head and shove it in Spartacus’s face. He rolled off the bed as the pit bull savaged the pillow, tearing it to shreds.
