Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “I did what you asked,” said Dante’s voice, echoing strangely through the trees. “The ghost has been released.”

  Pao skulked behind a trunk. The last thing she needed was for Dante and his new “friend” to see her here.

  “Good,” said another voice in response. It was deep and gravelly—sinister in a way that chilled Pao’s blood.

  How could Dante think this made him a hero? Bowing down to a dude wreathed in extreme sketchiness (at best) who made you give a report? Hadn’t he ever seen a movie? Read a single comic book?

  This was villain behavior if ever Pao had seen it. Why was Dante so ready to believe in this guy and so reluctant to trust Pao?

  “The next phase is being readied as we speak,” said the strange, echoey voice. “Can you be sure the fantasma will come?”

  “Absolutely,” Dante said, and Pao recognized the eager-to-please tone he used with his soccer captain—an eighth-grade boy Pao secretly thought was a complete jerk.

  “You’d better be right,” said the tall shadow just before Pao’s dream began to fade. “The entire operation depends on it. . . .”

  These were the words that replayed themselves over and over in Pao’s mind on the long predawn walk to the bus stop. Dante had promised the creepy shadow-wreathed guy a fantasma. Was he talking about the Bad Man Ghost? Did he really think that fifteen-eyed freak was any match for Pao? Dante hadn’t counted on her having an Arma del Alma.

  But Pao had the feeling Dante was talking about something else. A new ghost even worse than the ones they had already faced.

  Where was it coming from? What did it have to do with the forest? Or the anomaly, or Pao finding her dad, or Dante’s betrayal?

  Her head swam with questions, and she was grateful that Dante’s mom wasn’t asking any of her own. All the woman’s curiosity seemed to have been scared out of her by the appearance of Pao’s staff last night.

  Naomi, too, seemed lost in thought, walking quietly beside Pao down the dirt road.

  Pao hated the fact that her go-to reaction was suspicion. Wondering if Naomi was hiding something—if Dante had told the girl more than she was letting on. Pao shook it off, not wanting to give Dante the satisfaction of leaving her paranoid.

  “It’s just up here,” Dante’s mom said, pointing to a wooden sign hand-painted with a neat picture of a bus and the word PARADA above it. “The bus is mostly for farmworkers going north to the apples and pears. It won’t be too crowded this time of year.”

  “Will the driver mind that we don’t have a parent with us?” Pao asked, glancing at Naomi as if to confirm she still looked as fourteen as she had when they left the house.

  Dante’s mom shook her head. “Children travel looking for work all the time. No one will think twice as long as you keep your . . . magic stick hidden.”

  Pao thought of the Niños, of Sal after his parents had been taken, of every orphan child who’d ever had to make their own way. Not all of them ended up part of some mythical story, with a found family of lovable renegades to keep them safe.

  Some of them ended up riding a bus alone to another state looking for work.

  Some of them were lost, abandoned, and forced to become adults long before they should have.

  I should remember to feel lucky more often, Pao thought, despite it all.

  “What about money?” Naomi said, snapping Pao out of her thoughts with a harsh reminder of the two dollars balled up in her pocket. The moment in the kitchen when her mom had sent her to the movies with a ten-dollar bill seemed like years, not days, ago.

  Either way, Pao was sure she didn’t have enough to get to Oregon.

  “The bus isn’t expensive,” Dante’s mom said, shaking her head. “Twenty dollars each.”

  Pao glanced at Naomi again. She knew the other girl had enough to cover the tickets, but would she want to waste half her money on Pao?

  Naomi nodded grimly. “We can handle it.”

  “Let me hand the driver the money just in case, okay?” Dante’s mom said. “Tell them you’re my nieces and I’m sending you home to your parents.”

  “Why would you lie for us?” Pao asked, the bus’s headlights just visible over the crest of a small hill. “You don’t even know us.”

  “You’re friends of my boy,” she said, more to herself than them, Pao thought. “You’ll find him. You’ll keep him safe.”

  It was more than she’d ever done, Pao thought, but she wasn’t going to say that to the first adult who’d been willing to help them since they’d left home.

  The bus pulled up. It was bright red with green-and-yellow lettering on the side, which Pao couldn’t read because it was all in Spanish. There were only three other people on board this early, and they all looked to be asleep.

  “¡Todos a bordo!” said the bus driver in a raspy bark. She took a swig from a travel coffee mug and ashed her cigarette out the window.

  Naomi slipped Dante’s mom the money behind her back, and the three of them stepped forward.

  “¿Todas ustedes?” the driver asked. Another glug. Another drag.

  “No, solo las niñas,” Dante’s mom explained while Pao tried to make out the conversation. “Son mis sobrinas. Van a casita en Oregon.”

  The driver looked like she could have cared less.

  “Cuarenta dólares, por favor,” she said in her bored drawl. Even Pao understood this part as Dante’s mom handed over the two precious twenty-dollar bills.

  “Muchísimas gracias,” Dante’s mom said. “Manténgalas a salvo, por favor.”

  The driver somehow nodded and shrugged, like whatever Dante’s mom was asking her was out of her hands.

  Dante’s mom pressed herself against the side to let the girls pass. “Be safe,” she told them. “And please, help him. Whatever he’s done, it’s . . . probably because of me. I can’t save him myself, so I’m counting on you.”

  Pao nodded grimly, sensing that Dante’s mom wanted to hug them. She stepped away before the woman could act on the impulse. Pao appreciated her help, of course, but she wasn’t ready to forgive her for what she had done to Dante.

  “Good luck,” Pao told her, then walked to an empty seat in the back of the bus.

  Naomi followed, settling in beside her, and after the driver’s cigarette was flicked unceremoniously out the window, the bus sputtered to a start.

  Pao’s sole experience with the state of Oregon thus far was from playing Oregon Trail—her fourth-grade teacher had been embarrassingly obsessed with all things ’90s. The one part of the game Pao actually remembered was the screen that said YOU’VE JUST DIED OF DYSENTERY!

  Not the most promising tagline for the next portion of their adventure.

  “Oregon, here we come,” Pao said quietly.

  Her head against the window, Naomi was already snoring.

  The first half of the drive went by in strange dollops of time.

  Pao dozed off, only to be roused by an old man with what looked like a chicken in a baby carrier. He snapped at Pao for stretching her long legs in the aisle. Next she was awakened by a rough shove. Her head had lolled embarrassingly onto Naomi’s shoulder.

  “At least I didn’t drool on you,” Pao said, sitting up.

  “Lucky for you,” Naomi said with a glower. “You’re skinny enough for me to boot out this window.”

  “Good thing we’re only going twenty-five,” Pao said, the bus’s slow rumble and frequent stops frustrating in her haste to get north.

  “Fast enough when the tire crushes your skull.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Pao pulled off her sweatshirt, balled it up, and squished it against Naomi’s arm. “Here,” she said. “A buffer in case of drool.”

  Naomi’s scoff traveled the length of the bus, but she didn’t push Pao away again. Soon her snoring sent Pao back to sleep, her head lolling in the opposite direction.

  This time, the dream came in flashes. Single images, like a slideshow.

  A forest road, her father curled up on the ground in
a fetal position, the green mist covering him. Come to me, Paola, said the trees. Before it’s too late . . .

  Next, Dante, dressed in a white outfit trimmed with gold, his hair slicked back, looking like a true hero. His club was at the ready, his eyes closed. But just before the image changed, he opened them, and they glowed green.

  Last, a forest clearing with a pool at the center. Three duendecillos huddled at the edge, chattering in their high-pitched voices. It sounded like an argument. In the dirt beside the pool, one of them drew a picture with a stick. The girl with long hair, a tall staff, and a confused facial expression—a remarkably lifelike portrait for such a crude implement—was unmistakably Pao.

  The other duendecillos shook their heads and stomped their feet, but the artist kept drawing and speaking to them like she was trying to convince her fellows of something vital.

  Just before the forest started to dissolve, marking Pao’s return to wakefulness, all three of the duendecillos looked up at something, identical expressions of horror on their faces.

  “Wait!” Pao said, but when she reached out her hand, it was only to encounter the back of the bus seat in front of her. She was awake and the forest was gone, but the duendecillos’ fear was still palpable.

  “Well, it’s not like I’m going anywhere,” Naomi said, turning away from the window.

  “No,” Pao said, still shaking off the dream feeling. “It’s not you. It’s just . . .”

  “More dreams?” Naomi asked.

  Pao peered around to make sure no one was listening. The last thing she needed was some superstitious old abuela hearing her talk about dreams and fantasmas and duendecillos and getting her kicked off the bus. Pao wasn’t quite sure where they were, but it was definitely still a long walk to Oregon.

  Fortunately, no one seemed to be paying them any attention. Everyone was either asleep, wrangling their children, or conversing in Spanish at various volumes.

  “More dreams,” Pao finally confirmed. “They’re always set in this one forest. Sometimes my dad is there, sometimes Señora Mata, but in the last one, it was Dante . . . talking to some clearly evil shadowy guy. They’re planning something. I feel like . . .” She trailed off, not wanting to sound melodramatic.

  “What?” Naomi asked, no teasing or mockery in her tone.

  “Like maybe we’re walking into something we’re not ready for.” And as she said it, Pao felt the weight of her own words. Like confessing it had made her fear real, and now it was threatening to swallow her whole.

  Naomi laughed, a kind of severe, barking sound that Pao wasn’t sure she’d ever heard before.

  Pao looked at her, a little affronted by her reaction. “I think we’re in way over our heads here, okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” Naomi said, still laughing. “But, like, when has that ever not been true?” She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of Pao’s balled-up sweatshirt. “Like, girl. We’re just a handful of teenagers up against a fathomless void of monsters, ghosts, and raw power just waiting to be corrupted by the next maniac. I know you’re new to the Niños, but we’ve spent decades being in over our heads, and it’s never stopped us before.”

  Pao wouldn’t have admitted it to her, but Naomi’s nonchalance about the whole situation made her feel better immediately. Ever since Dante had left, Pao had felt like the entire burden of this mission was falling on her shoulders.

  But she wasn’t alone. She had an immortal ghost hunter with her, someone who had seen and fought more fantasmas than Pao would probably ever encounter in her lifetime. Just because Naomi wasn’t exactly the leadership archetype Marisa embodied, with her rousing pep talks and the too serious and otherworldly for you demeanor, didn’t mean she wasn’t a capable comrade.

  “I’ll take your silence to mean Thank you, Naomi. Your perspective on this matter has really helped me manage my anxiety about what’s to come!”

  Pao punched her arm lightly. “Giving yourself a lot of credit for basically saying Yeah, we might die, but we always might die, aren’t you?”

  Naomi laughed. “I like you better without moody-what’s-his-face around.”

  “Last summer I thought you liked him,” Pao confessed after a beat, readjusting her long legs again, getting a dirty look from the woman in front of her when her knees bumped against the seat. “It made me want to hate you. Who’d have thought he’d be gone, fighting against me, and it’d be you and me on this bus on the way to stop evil.”

  Naomi snorted loudly. This time, the woman in the seat in front of them audibly clucked. “I’m sorry, what?” Naomi said. “You thought I liked him? Like in an I want to hold hands at the movies and practice kissing the back of my hand pretending it’s him kind of way?” She looked utterly offended, which made Pao feel stupid, but also a little lighter.

  “Yeah,” she said, shaking her head to indicate she knew how ridiculous it sounded.

  “You didn’t get that, I don’t know, maybe he wasn’t my type?” Naomi raised her eyebrows significantly, and Pao thought back to the cactus field. The way Naomi had talked about Marisa. “Plus, it was pretty obvious that was your whole thing.”

  “I don’t know,” Pao said, not sure why it was important to her to explain this, but finding she needed to anyway. “I wanted it to be me and him so much. Like, in some future version of my life, we’d have this awesome story to tell about how we’d always known each other and . . .” Pao couldn’t continue because she didn’t really know what she’d wanted anymore. It all seemed so far away now.

  “It sounds like you wanted family,” Naomi said, not ungently. “And believe me, I get it. But there are better ways to stick someone to you forever than convincing yourself you want to kiss them when you don’t.”

  “Like what?” Pao asked.

  Naomi was quiet for a minute, then laughed and said, “I honestly have no idea.”

  Pao laughed at this, too, quietly, so as not to upset the scowly woman again.

  “So what about you?” Pao asked.

  Up at the front, the bus driver yelled, “¡Próxima parada, Sacramento!”

  “What about me what?” Naomi asked. “You want me to share a personal anecdote to make you feel less weird about spilling your guts to me completely at random?”

  “Basically,” Pao said, her cheeks heating up.

  “Look, there’s not much to tell, okay?” She was quiet for a minute. “I kill stuff, I sleep, I eat—”

  “You snark,” Pao interjected.

  Naomi smiled a wide, catlike smile. “I do snark, don’t I?”

  “With the best.”

  “I just . . . haven’t really left a lot of room for the other stuff. And even when I tried . . .” It was Naomi’s turn to trail off, cast her gaze out the window like maybe she’d see Marisa and Franco out there and it would all make sense.

  “Sorry,” Pao offered. “For bringing Franco back from the void. If I’d known it was gonna salt your game so much, I would have left him down there to be fish food.”

  “‘Salt my game’?” Naomi asked, snapping back from her moody window-gazing to laugh incredulously at Pao. “What does that even mean?”

  Pao’s face heated up again. “I don’t know! My mom says it!”

  “Well,” Naomi said, “you didn’t salt my anything. Not anything that wasn’t already overseasoned, if I’m following your weird metaphor correctly.”

  “She’s a total dweeb if she picks him over you,” Pao said, meaning it.

  “It’s not even like that,” Naomi said, though her cheeks flushed a little. “I just want to be there for her. Help her. Support her without dimming her shine. She deserves that.”

  “Yeah,” said Pao. “But you deserve stuff, too.”

  Naomi nodded, and for once, she didn’t seem to have anything snarky to say.

  The next miles crawled by in companionable silence, yet neither of them napped again. Pao was too afraid to dream, and Naomi seemed to be deep in thought as she kept her gaze fixed out the window.

 
After a while, Pao turned on her phone, hoping to check in with Emma, but there was no cell service on the back roads the bus favored, and she couldn’t risk leaving it on long enough for anyone to track the signal.

  Instead she watched the landscape grow greener and greener, her anxiety building along with the scenery’s beauty. They passed rolling hills that went on for miles. They drove beneath a massive snow-white mountain.

  Ten miles from the Oregon border (according to a reflective green sign), the bus slowed and pulled over on the shoulder of the highway. It didn’t look like an official stop.

  A man climbed aboard, his patchwork coat and pants made entirely of different scraps of bright-red material. He even wore a bright-red Santa Claus hat.

  His thumb was still extended as he climbed the stairs, which explained the random highway stop. “Misericordia, por favor,” the hitchhiker said to the driver. “No tengo dinero, pero tengo muchos chistes, eh?”

  Pao couldn’t hear the driver’s reply, but a moment later, the man was walking down the aisle, the hems of his red pants soggy from the rain that had begun to fall outside.

  Instead of taking a seat, he stopped and talked to the passengers one by one. If they laughed, he stuck out his hat. One or two people dropped in a coin or dollar. Some pointedly ignored him. Okay, most.

  Given how peaceful the bus had been before he’d gotten on, and how precious little peace there’d been to go around lately, Pao couldn’t help but be irked by the intrusion.

  She took in a deep breath to the count of four, held it for four, released it for four, and held it for four, like she’d read on the internet. When your temper flares, try to humanize the person who’s upsetting you, Pao recalled, and so she tried. This man was alone, out in the rain without protection or resources. . . .

  If she were stuck in this same situation as Pao, Emma would say something like True revolution involves empathy even for people who really freakin’ annoy you.