Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

“I did do all those things!” Pao cried, getting angrier, her fist wrapping around the magnifying glass. “I did them because my dreams happen to tell me what’s coming. And no, that doesn’t make me a hero, but it does give me the power to help!”

  “Yeah,” Dante said, his club swinging in a wider arc now. “Your mysterious prophetic dreams. The ones that show you when everyone’s in danger way too late to help them without risking a bunch of other people’s lives.” His eyes bored right into hers. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you have those dreams, Pao? Why you’re connected to the head of every monster in the flipping world?”

  “I don’t . . . know why I have the dreams,” Pao said, though of course she had wondered a thousand times. “All I can do is use them to help the people I love.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” he asked. “Big, powerful scientist Pao with the magic dreams and the explosive temper. You really don’t see what you are. But I do.”

  Dante swung the club at her.

  He really did it.

  Pao’s moment of shock was almost too long, but she jumped back and avoided the first swing, drawing out the magnifying glass just in time. She willed it to become a staff before Dante’s club reached her on its second arc.

  The lens lengthened in one direction, the handle in the other, and within a second, the staff was solid and balanced in her hand, its knife head glinting dangerously in the starlight.

  She parried Dante’s blow with the center of the staff, pushing him off her, surprised at how much power the weapon gave her every movement. Pao had never been much for athletics, but this was different. This was everything.

  Dante’s eyes widened in surprise as he was forced back against the stone well. “What is . . . ? Where did you get that?”

  “You mean my Arma del Alma?” Pao asked. “Guess you don’t know everything about me after all.” Her satisfaction at interrupting his attempt to define her was the only thing preventing her heart from breaking into splinters.

  He readied for another attack.

  They were supposed to be fighting side by side, not against each other.

  Was this really how their story ended?

  “I’ve seen the real you, Pao,” he said, stepping forward, putting his whole weight into another swing. “He showed me everything. How weak you are, how much you don’t deserve to be the face of some ghost-fighting rebellion.”

  “Who showed you?” Pao asked. “Where is this coming from?”

  “A much better friend than you,” Dante said. “Or did you think you could isolate me from everyone? Keep me from ever knowing anyone besides you, the way you tried to do with my soccer friends.”

  “I just didn’t want to lose you, Dante!” she said, dancing out of range. “I still don’t! Please, think this through. Where are you going to go after this? What are you going to do?”

  Dante swung again, and Pao blocked and kept her distance, not willing to strike back. “I’m going somewhere where you can’t get into my head anymore,” he said. “To join forces with someone who really has the power you only pretend to have. Someone who’s been hurt as much as I have by people like you.”

  “Please,” Pao said, jumping back when he lunged. He overextended, and Pao couldn’t help thinking it would be the perfect time to attack. But she still couldn’t make herself hurt him. “I want to help you. I want to help your abuela. You guys are my family—please don’t give up on me!”

  “Don’t talk about her!” Dante said, swinging again, this time too wide, leaving his left side exposed. He had never learned how to protect himself, only to attack with full power.

  Pao let the opportunity pass yet again, keeping her staff still even as the magic in it urged her to fight back. Not yet, she told it. We’re not there yet. She hoped they would never get to that point. She hoped it so hard her heart felt like it was being put through a lemon-squeezer.

  “You’re not our family, Pao,” Dante continued, relentless. “Your family is the reason this is all happening. I tried to keep you away from us, tried to protect myself and my abuela, but you just couldn’t take a hint.”

  Hit him, said some combination of the staff’s humming magic and Pao’s own shifting instincts. Her amygdala, which had always been calmed by Dante’s presence as an ally, was rapidly recategorizing him as a threat.

  But she didn’t obey.

  “Do you know what she sacrificed to get me out of here alive?” Dante was asking her now. “To raise me on her own? And then you drag the very forces that killed her son back into our lives. You steal her memory and force me to go on this terrible mission when I should be with her! I should be with her!”

  This time, Pao didn’t block fast enough. The club crunched her shoulder, and she cried out. Her whole arm tingled like it had been shocked, and it felt hot and cold all at once.

  He’d really hit her. Pao registered the fact almost clinically, like she was a judge sitting on the sidelines, subtracting friendship points, instead of standing here in front of him holding a weapon.

  Pao righted herself from the blow and saw that he was standing still, club at the ready, wanting to finish his speech before he struck again.

  Dante didn’t believe Pao could attack him. But he didn’t know her anymore. He was proving that with every misguided word out of his mouth. He didn’t know her at all.

  Pao lunged forward, her lightweight staff unimaginably quick. She used the handle only, taking care to keep the blade away from Dante. His unwieldy club—great for high-powered shots against clumsy monsters—couldn’t keep up with her strikes. Soon she had him against the well, her staff pinning his club arm uselessly to his side.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” Pao said, panting, her arm searing where his club had hit it, her knees weak from exhaustion and heartbreak.

  “It’s always like this,” Dante said, a horrible grin lighting up his face. “Heroes fighting villains. Since the dawn of time. Why should we be any different?”

  “Because I’m not a villain,” Pao said. And you’re not a hero, she thought.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Dante said, still grinning as he spit blood into the grapevines. “You’re the one always going on and on about the importance of critical thinking. You really should have figured it out by now.”

  “Figured what out?” Pao said, her temper getting the better of her. She angled the staff so that the blade was closer to Dante’s arm. “Just tell me already!”

  “Why don’t you ask your precious papi,” Dante said. “Didn’t you promise me he had all the answers?”

  “I beat you,” Pao said, ignoring the dig about her dad. “Fair and square. So if you won’t tell me what you mean, then at least tell me where we go from here.”

  Pao was asking herself that question, too. What was she going to do with Dante now that she had him trapped? What could she do? She had only ever fought ghosts and monsters before. They didn’t generally stick around after a battle. Pao, as many foes as she’d felled, had never taken a prisoner.

  She’d always prided herself on seeing the big picture, being prepared for anything. But how could she ever have prepared herself for this?

  “You think you beat me?” Dante asked, laughing, his teeth red with the blood he’d spat. “Evil and naive. It would be cute if it wasn’t so sad.”

  It was the word cute that did it. There was a time not too long ago when Pao would have loved to hear him say it. But he never had then, and now he was using the word as a weapon against her.

  She pressed the staff harder, the blade inching closer to his skin. She’d never thought she could hurt him, especially not on purpose, but in this moment it was seeming more and more possible. If he wanted to put them in these roles, if he couldn’t stand to let her be who she was, then he was right. He was her enemy.

  The blade was there, ready to cut into skin. She should have realized Dante wasn’t even trying to stop her, but she didn’t. Not until he used his other hand to open a golden locket, di
rt falling away as the two frames parted.

  “No,” Pao said, pulling back the staff instinctively, getting ready to knock the trinket out of his hand. “You wouldn’t.” But it was too late.

  Dante spoke a few inaudible words to the locket, then dropped it on the ground between them. Pao knew what would happen a split second before it did, even though she didn’t understand how it could. The Bad Man Ghost stretched out of the frame like he was toothpaste being squeezed through a giant toxic tube.

  In seconds, the fantasma was restored—the same terrifying monster he’d been ten years ago. Two stories tall, cowboy boots and belt buckle on full display.

  Only this time, his eyes glowed bright green. All fifteen of them.

  “You’ll never beat me,” Dante said to Pao. “I’m the good guy.”

  And then he ran off, leaving her alone with a roaring monster and a broken heart.

  The first time she’d faced this monster, Pao had goals in mind.

  To keep the fantasma away from baby Dante and Señora Mata as they retreated. To reach the locket and purify it before the fantasma searching for it destroyed more than the family it had already torn apart.

  This time, things were different. Pao had no one left to protect. Naomi was nowhere to be found (had she continued her search north for the Niños alone?), and Dante was gone.

  Dante was gone.

  For good.

  On the ground at her feet, the locket Pao had risked everything to find ten-years-slash-half-an-hour ago lay motionless, its gold luster faded to an unremarkable brassy tone that told Pao any magic that had once been stored in it had dissipated.

  And speaking of dissipating, hadn’t the fantasma dissolved when Pao poured Florida Water on the locket? She’d given the specter what it was searching for so it could go in peace. If it had been sent to the void, how had Dante called it back?

  But there was no time to puzzle over that mystery. The fantasma roared, and Pao scrambled behind the well for cover. Using her brand-new staff against a kid with a club (Pao refused to even think his name until this was over) was one thing. Using it, alone, against a thirty-foot-tall monster with the power of the void behind him? That was a little different.

  With a single swipe of his massive, filthy-nailed hand, the fantasma scattered the stones of the well, sending them crumbling into the depths.

  Okay, Pao thought. Maybe it was a lot different.

  Pao was exhausted. She was miserable. She had been battered and bruised and broken and brought back to life (not exactly in that order), all in the past few hours.

  Still, she stepped out from behind the pile of rubble that had once been the well, holding her chin high, her shoulders square, and her Arma del Alma out in front of her.

  She wasn’t going to let that boy be right about her. She was going to prove she could be a hero, no matter how little she’d wanted to be one. No matter what he or anyone else thought.

  It was with that desire to prove the world wrong that Pao struck her first blow against the monster, a swipe to his shin that made him cry out in anguish and confusion. She smiled, imagining how she must look to him from all the way up there. A tiny girl, barely the height of his knee, in skinny jeans and a black hoodie with a long purple stick.

  But she had hurt him. And she was going to do it again.

  Her next blow got him in the thigh. He was really angry now, swatting at her with his big, slow hands like she would stand still and take the hit the way the pile of stones had.

  He would be disappointed, Pao thought grimly. Can’t sit still was the one criticism all her report cards had in common.

  She struck again and again, in the back of his knees mostly, but the ankles, too. She made a couple of stabs straight down into the toes of his gigantic cowboy boots. Each time, he howled in pain and swung a massive fist or a boot at her, but slowly, due to his massive size.

  Each time, Pao dodged and struck him again.

  The only problem was, her arms were getting tired, and she was out of breath from running and weaving. Soon, she’d be exhausted enough to make a mistake. She had to end this before then, and whacking him again and again from the midthigh down wasn’t going to do it.

  After her next hit (a long-distance jab right to the patellar tendon), Pao ran toward the house. It was empty now, and she knew from her trip into the past (not to mention, like, the laws of physics) that he couldn’t fit through the front door.

  He’d have to crouch, Pao realized, picturing the way he’d stuck himself in the hole he’d made in the door during their last tangle. If he was down that low, she’d be able to hit him in one of his eyes.

  That should do the trick, she thought, crossing her fingers as she darted through the screen door, leaving it bouncing behind her in a way that would have made her mom scream “Paola!” But right now, she wanted to make as much noise as possible. She had to keep him interested long enough to entice him to try widening the gap in the wall again.

  Pao thought of the woman who lived here, who’d presumably already had to rebuild the front of her house once, and said a silent apology as she headed for the kitchen.

  “You can’t get me!” Pao called at the top of her lungs.

  Outside, the fantasma screamed in frustration, hammering at the windows in an all-too-familiar way.

  Good, she thought. Keep it up.

  In the kitchen, Pao went straight for that super-loud drawer under the oven, the one her mom was always yelling at her for banging open even though no one could pull it quietly.

  As she’d predicted, it was full of greasy cookie sheets and frying pans. It had obviously been a while since anyone had cooked in here (or cleaned, Pao thought, the smell of the sink full of dishes making her a little queasy).

  Armed with noise-making devices, Pao headed back to the living room, where the fantasma was already prying at the siding, attempting to widen the too-small doorway. The sound was awful—wood splintering and screaming like it was being tortured.

  Anytime the fantasma stopped, or even slowed, Pao banged a frying pan against the biggest cookie sheet she could find, making a cacophony that reignited the monster’s fury and sent him tearing at the boards again.

  Pao’s staff was beside her, propped against the couch, ready and waiting. She knew she could strike a blow through the window or front door, but she remembered what the fantasma had done to a certain toddler’s father.

  She didn’t want to be snatched out the window by one of those long-reaching arms. She had to wait until he was stuck again. That’s when she’d have him.

  The waiting was agony. Several times, in fact, Pao wanted to step into the doorway and critique his dismantling skills. Finally there was a hole big enough for one of his hands to reach through, and half his face, and he was swatting at everything, those ragged, dirty nails desperate to claw Pao into pieces.

  Almost there, she thought, dropping the pans and taking her staff in hand again.

  Almost.

  She heard it at the least opportune moment. Screaming and pounding—faint but definitely there. Coming from inside the house.

  Pao didn’t think before she turned to look at the boy’s bedroom door. The one that she’d found locked earlier.

  The split second her focus was elsewhere was enough for the fantasma to get his chance. He seized Pao around the ankle—causing her to drop her staff in surprise—and slammed her into the wall, sending shock waves of pain through her body.

  In Pao’s brain, there was no plan anymore, just alarm bells, fire truck sirens, and the screams of people on runaway roller coasters. She was going to be smashed to bits by a mutated old farmer ghost that had been resurrected by her ex–best friend. And there was nothing she could do about it.

  If only she hadn’t dropped her staff, Pao thought, remembering the way it had felt in her hand as the monster got a grip around her waist and squeezed the breath out of her. With a weapon like that, she could have fought back. She could have survived.

  When the
long, thin purple stick suddenly met her outstretched hand, Pao didn’t know what was happening at first. Then she realized that, merely by thinking of her staff, by visualizing it in her hand, Pao had actually summoned it to her.

  Any doubt she’d had about deserving an Arma del Alma was dispelled for good in that moment. This staff was as much a part of Pao as her own arm.

  And, luckily, with infinitely more destructive capability.

  The fantasma was still stuck in the doorway. He held Pao at arm’s length, half his eyes and his mouth squished into the now-wider door frame.

  She just had to get to his face, Pao knew. Eventually he would try to slam her against the wall again, or eat her, or something else terrifying. That’s when she would strike.

  The moment arrived before she was ready. Like way before. Pao flailed, knowing she wouldn’t be able to get into position in time, but somehow the staff knew what to do (or was it reading her thoughts? Either way, it was really, really cool).

  The staff spun in Pao’s grip like a compass needle pointing north, and by the time the fantasma had dragged her toward its open mouth, Pao was perfectly situated to jam the Arma del Alma into the closest of the fifteen eyes with all the force she could muster.

  Thanks to the wild swings of the giant hand still grasping her, half the staff was buried in his big, ugly head in less than a second. There was no roar. No wail of agony or frustration or rage.

  There was only one long sound, like air being let out of a balloon, as the fantasma deflated. His hand became too small to hold on to Pao, leaving her sprawled on the living room floor gasping for breath.

  This time, though, when he reached his former size, he didn’t float away.

  He exploded.

  Pao saw the pieces of burning material flutter down like glowing red rain through the ruined door until, finally, there was nothing left but the scorch marks on the front porch to prove he had ever been there at all.

  Dragging herself to her feet, knees shaking, Pao walked onto the porch to retrieve her staff. She wanted nothing more than to lie down on the sofa again, to close her eyes and sleep until her heart stopped hurting and her body stopped aching.