Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  Before Dante could respond, the front door banged open, and a flickering fluorescent light was cast onto the porch.

  Black spots were creeping into Pao’s vision now, dancing along with the green. She needed to sit down. To get rid of these terrible spots.

  And throw up, maybe?

  But she didn’t have a chance to do any of those things before the woman who had opened the door stepped through it onto the porch. Dante’s soccer-star posture collapsed in on itself as her shadow fell over him. Pao’s brain was pitching and rolling like the deck of a ship, but she knew she needed to be on her feet for this moment.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked in a voice that was somehow harsh and hopeless all at once, and Dante folded even further. Pao’s skin felt like it was on fire. Sweat was beading up at her hairline, making her shiver a little as the green spots stretched into dancing paper dolls, glowing against the dingy house. Naomi’s eyes darted to the spirits, but Dante’s didn’t move.

  His gaze stayed fixed on the woman, who had stringy black hair nearly reaching her waist and a lit cigarette in one hand. She wore stained pink sweatpants and a sleeveless black top.

  When she turned, her face caught the light from the window, and she looked familiar somehow. Too familiar to be someone Pao didn’t know.

  That was Pao’s last thought before her knees went all jelly-filled. Naomi caught her again, but this time it was useless. Pao was going down. The green was taking over her vision, the arms of the paper dolls reaching out for one another, closing in.

  They were about to take her, when Pao heard it, as faint as if it were coming from another world.

  Dante’s voice, speaking to the woman in the doorway.

  “Hey, Mom,” she thought she heard him say. “Can we come in?”

  Mom? Pao thought deliriously, and then Dante, and the porch, and all the rest of it were gone. Swallowed whole by the green light.

  Pao awoke in the forest and wanted to scream in frustration.

  She didn’t need to be here, walking down a wide path dappled with green light as eyes watched her from between the leaves and pine needles.

  Not when Dante was scared. Not while Señora Mata’s clock was ticking. Not when everyone she loved could be in danger.

  Her arm was still wounded here, the pain only dimmed, like it was the same song with the volume turned down. Pao held it gingerly as she walked, wondering what was happening to her physical body. If the infection or venom or curse was spreading through her bloodstream. If she was dying.

  “Just show me what you need to show me! I have places to be!” Pao shouted, too angry to feel afraid for once, even with all she was facing.

  She hadn’t expected the forest to react, but a moment later, one pair of eyes detached itself from the wall of trees.

  The creature (girl?) they were attached to was tiny—no bigger than a toddler, though her features were much more mature than a child’s. She had a round nose, a mouth like a bow, and vivid green hair in a short cut that stuck up at odd angles. Her brown skin was dusted with gold freckles that sparkled in the sunlight coming through the canopy.

  Then there were the eyes. Those glowing green eyes that had followed Pao down every forest path she’d walked since this all began, looking at her now like they were waiting for an answer to a question she hadn’t asked.

  A duendecillo, Pao decided, remembering her favorite pictures from her cuento de hadas book as a kid. She’d never believed in the little gnomes, of course. Still, as a kid, when she’d walked around the cactuses outside the Riverside Palace with a magnifying glass (looking for insects or shiny rocks), a part of her had always wondered what she’d do if she found one.

  But this was hardly the time for childhood imaginings, she thought, squashing the hopes of her inner six-year-old.

  “What do you want?” Pao asked, trying not to care how cute the creature was. She just needed to get through this dream and return to reality before it was too late. “Listen, I . . .” Pao began when the duendecillo didn’t immediately answer.

  “Ven conmigo,” the duendecillo said in a squeaky voice. Pao had been working hard to make good on last summer’s promise to learn Spanish if she got out of the void alive. She knew from her Duolingo app that ven conmigo meant that she should follow.

  The teeny forest denizen took off with a bouncing gait down the path.

  Pao groaned loudly at the sky. “Why can’t magical creatures ever just tell me what they want?” she asked. “It’s always ‘let’s go on a mysterious quest through a weird forest’ or ‘why don’t you spend days answering riddles while your friends suffer at the hands of a madwoman?’”

  If the duendecillo heard her grumbling, she showed no evidence of it. And Pao, remembering the last plucky dream guide she’d had, counted her blessings. Sure, Ondina had turned out to be all right in the end, but dealing with her sarcastic quips on the banks of the dream river had been nothing short of pull your hair out infuriating.

  Pao followed the duendecillo until she turned off the beaten path, then she hesitated. Pao had never left the main road of the dream forest before. And just because this dream guide was absolutely adorable didn’t mean she couldn’t also be dangerous.

  “I think I’ll keep going this way!” Pao said loudly. “Thanks anyway, though!”

  Inside her, six-year-old Pao was throwing a fit.

  The duendecillo seemed to have heard her this time, because she marched back with a determined look on her freckled face and grabbed the hem of Pao’s shirt, shaking her head.

  “Ven conmigo,” she said, panting as she used all her tiny strength to pull Pao down the narrower path to the left. “¡Quiero ayudarte!”

  Quiero was “I want,” Pao knew. And ayudar was either “help” or . . . “teapot”? That didn’t sound right. She guessed the duendecillo wanted her help with something. But wasn’t that what monsters always said before they led you to their den to be eaten?

  “I’m sorry,” Pao said, shaking her head. “I don’t have time right now. I’m just gonna . . .”

  But before she could finish, pain shot through her arm, so sharp and abrupt that Pao sank to her knees.

  “Quiero ayudarte,” the duendecillo repeated, a note of finality in her squeaky little tone. This time, when she tugged on Pao’s sweatshirt, Pao followed as best she could.

  The path was twisted and narrow, trees pressing in ominously from every direction. Pao, used to the wide open sky of Arizona, found her breath coming shorter, like there wasn’t enough space for her lungs to expand in this dripping green tunnel.

  They walked for about a half mile more than Pao could stand, her pain worse than ever, causing the ground to tilt and shift beneath her feet. Several times, she fell. Always the duendecillo tugged on her sweatshirt, saying “Ven conmigo” in that tiny voice until Pao was following again.

  At last, just when Pao thought she would pass out again (was that even possible in a dream?), the path opened up to a small clearing where a waterfall trickled into a pool surrounded by moss. Sunlight sparkled invitingly on its surface.

  Even as the searing pain sent her stumbling again, Pao could appreciate the beauty of the place. But what were they doing here?

  Her head pounded. What happened when you died in a dream?

  Seeming to grasp that Pao wasn’t the best at translating, the duendecillo didn’t try to speak again. She just bounced over to the edge of the pool and pointed into it.

  “I see it,” Pao said thickly. “Very pretty. But my arm . . .”

  Again, the tiny creature pointed at the water, this time with her eyes wide open, like Pao was missing an obvious point. When that still didn’t do the trick, she pressed her hands together and pantomimed diving in.

  “You want me to swim?” Pao asked, absolutely certain she would drown if she tried it. The pool wasn’t very large in diameter, but the bottom wasn’t even visible. It was like a dark watery tube plunging straight down into the center of the earth.

 
; The duendecillo nodded frantically, her green hair growing disheveled and falling into her eyes.

  “I can’t,” Pao said, shaking her head dejectedly.

  But the duendecillo was already beside her again, pulling Pao to the edge of the water, though she could barely stay on her feet.

  Pao weighed her options. On the one hand, maybe this dream was important, and getting in the water would reveal something vital. On the other, maybe she was dying, and this was her brain’s version of walking into the light.

  Either way, wouldn’t drowning in a beautiful, sparkling pool be better than lying beside it in agony as some demon poison sapped the last of her strength?

  There were no other choices. Pao knew she wasn’t even going to make it back to the road in her current state, and the longer she stayed in this place, the sharper everything became. The more real it seemed.

  She wasn’t sure how she knew, but Pao had been leaving her earthly body behind as she walked through this forest. It was time to do something.

  Without thinking, without wondering, Pao jumped into the water, leaving the duendecillo and the forest behind as the water closed over her head.

  Pao had expected the water to be cold, but to her surprise it was pleasant, like in a bath right when it’s no longer too hot to submerge yourself.

  But the temperature was only one part of the sensation. The sparkling on the surface of the pond hadn’t been the sun after all. Winking around Pao were little glowing lights, and the water felt effervescent against her skin, like bubbles.

  And then she realized that the pain in her arm was lessening dramatically. Like that volume knob was being turned down, and down, and . . .

  Kicking frantically, Pao broke the surface and took a huge breath, hooking her non-wounded arm over the edge of the pool and twisting herself into a pretzel to look at the bite.

  There was nothing there. Not even a scar. The pounding in her head, the numbness in her hand, and the shooting pains that had sent her to her knees in agony . . .

  Gone. Like a crazed cadejo had never tried to amputate her arm at all.

  “How . . . ?” Pao began, looking around for the duendecillo, but she was alone in the clearing. “Hello?” Pao called, trying to climb out to dry land. “Is anyone—”

  She was cut short by the sound of suction beneath her. It caused a whirlpool that began to slurp all the glittering, healing water out of the tube.

  “Help!” Pao called, not believing she had made it this far, and been healed no less, only to die by going down the drain. Apparently her fear of that as a three-year-old had been justified, she thought deliriously.

  Pao was sucked down, down into the mossy tunnel, spinning until she was dizzy and barely knew which way was up.

  Just when she’d started to wonder if she’d be stuck here forever, like some kind of purgatory reserved especially for girls who were unfortunate enough to die of demon-dog bites, she reached the end. Of the tunnel, anyway. She was still going downward, but now it was through the sky.

  Pao wasn’t proud of it, but she screamed as she tumbled through the air like she’d just tried skydiving without an instructor or a parachute, the wind ripping her hysterics from her throat before she ever heard the sound.

  Below her was nothing but cracked earth and barren, twisted grapevines.

  Grapevines, Pao thought. Was she falling back down to Raisin Valley?

  Was she awake now, or still asleep?

  The question was enough to make her stop screaming at least, but it made little difference. If she were dreaming, she probably wouldn’t die. If she were dying in her dream, smashing into the ground at 120 miles per hour wouldn’t change her outcome.

  And if she were awake?

  Well, okay, if she were awake, this was really bad.

  Pao screamed again, for so long that when she opened her eyes there was a visible dirt patch among the grapevines, growing larger as she plummeted toward it. A rusted red car the size of a pinhead grew to the size of a golf ball as she tried to blink away the streaming tears the sky was pulling from her eyes.

  She was hurtling toward the ground now, bracing for impact. . . .

  But it never came.

  She landed on the hood of the red car without a scratch.

  So, a dream, then? Pao asked herself as she slipped down to the dusty ground.

  She was in front of the same house Dante had brought them to, but everything was just slightly dissimilar. Like one of those “spot the difference” games from the magazines in the dentist’s waiting room.

  This car, for instance. She hadn’t seen it when they’d first pulled up. And the color of the house was brighter, the grapevines thinner and shorter than she remembered.

  So I’m in the past, Pao thought, walking through the lot.

  And Dante had called that woman Mom. . . .

  “Dante?” she called out hesitantly. “Are you here?”

  Nothing. Then, suddenly, a ball of dust came hurtling toward her at light speed. Pao leaped out of the way, turning to follow the cloud with her gaze. It looked like Road Runner from the old Looney Tunes cartoons, racing through the desert as the coyote chased it.

  But as Pao watched, the dust cleared, and she was looking at a little kid—no older than three. His black hair fell into his face, and his cheeks were smudged with dirt and something red and sticky. He wore blue shorts and nothing else, not even shoes.

  She didn’t usually have much use for little kids, but this one had eyes that drew her in—brown-black, too wise for his tiny face, and definitely more than a little mischievous.

  There was no doubt about it—this was Dante as a toddler. Dante before four-year-old Pao had met him. Dante as a Raisin Valley Road Runner with strawberry jelly on his face.

  “Hi, Dante,” she said, tears filling her eyes as she stepped toward him, knowing he couldn’t see her because it was a dream, but wanting to be close to him anyway.

  “Hi!” he said back in his little child’s voice, and Pao jumped so suddenly she almost fell down.

  “Can you see me?” she asked in disbelief.

  Little Dante giggled, putting his hands over his eyes and then flinging them wide.

  “Peekaboo?” Pao said tentatively, and he giggled again.

  “It’s time to go!” he said then, his baby voice all lisps and rasps. He held out his hand for Pao’s as a cloud blotted out the sun, sending the lot into an eerie premature twilight.

  Pao couldn’t help it—she took tiny Dante’s hand. “Where are we going?” she asked with a laugh.

  He stopped at the edge of the vineyard and looked up at her, his wide dark eyes serious now. “Gotta hide,” he said.

  “Why do we have to hide?” Pao asked him with a smile, the way you would to a kid playing hide-and-seek if you were babysitting.

  Well, if you had ever babysat.

  “A monster’s coming,” Dante said, and she would have laughed again, but a little tremor passed through him from head to toe. He was afraid.

  “What kind of monster?” Pao asked, matching his serious tone.

  “Come on!” He tugged on her hand, not unlike the duendecillo had done, and pulled her into the grapevines.

  They were only a hundred yards away when Pao heard it—a crash so loud it seemed to shake the ground at their feet. Little Dante whimpered beside her, then ran faster, pushing aside the dead vines and pressing deeper into the field.

  “What’s happening?” she asked him, though she didn’t really expect a three-year-old to understand it well enough to explain.

  “The monster’s coming,” he repeated, and then the crash sounded again.

  They weren’t far enough away to miss it when it happened—the hood of the rusted red car Pao had landed on came flying through the air, falling only a few feet from them.

  Dante’s little bare feet ran faster.

  “What is the monster?” Pao asked him, feeling like she should go back to find out, see if anyone else was in danger, but not wanting to le
ave baby Dante on his own.

  He stopped and turned to look at her, crooking his little finger until she was close enough for his liking. When she was, he stood on his tiptoes and whispered in her ear:

  “It’s a bad man monster.”

  Pao was afraid now. Tiny Dante seemed to have lost the will to run. He sank onto the ground, hugging his little knees with his chubby baby arms and tucking his head.

  For a moment, Pao wanted to hide with him, to make sure they were both safe. But she stood up instead, and what she saw chilled her to the bone.

  It was a fantasma, that was for sure. But if it had once been a man, it had mutated beyond recognition. It stretched to the height of the house, its face the size of a metal trash can lid, with at least fifteen pairs of eyes appearing and disappearing across the top half, while the mouth on the bottom half screamed.

  The sound was a wordless, terrible howl Pao had begun to associate with impending doom.

  Little Dante began to cry into his bare knees.

  “I have to go help the other people,” Pao said, more to herself than the toddler. “If you can see me, maybe they can, too.”

  “Don’t go!” he cried, clutching at her legs. “Please don’t go!”

  Pao’s heart felt like one of Bruto’s tug-of-war ropes. How could she leave little Dante? How could she stay?

  In the end, the Bad Man Monster made the decision for her. As Pao watched helplessly, Dante’s arms wrapped firmly around her left calf, the horrifying fantasma smashed one of the house’s windows and reached one of his pale, too-long arms inside.

  “No!” Pao said under her breath, trying to untangle Dante’s arms so she could run and help whoever was in this house. But he was crying now, clinging to her desperately. She was stuck there, gaping in horror as the arm slithered out the window like a ghostly snake, a man in its grip.

  “¡Papá!” Dante shrieked, and this time Pao had to hold him back. “No, Bad Man, no!” he screamed, tears and snot smearing his face.

  Pao didn’t realize she was crying with him until her tears hit the dirt at their feet. She covered the toddler’s eyes as the fantasma shook the man in its grip like a limp rag doll, screeching again when nothing happened, and tossed him aside like a granola-bar wrapper.