Halloween Carnival Volume 1 Read online

  Then the lid suddenly gave, swinging free—

  Something fell from the interior spikes right onto Trick and Javier, something that was white and made a terrible clacking sound as it hit the stone floor.

  It was a skeleton.

  Javier and Trick stared down. For a few seconds neither spoke. Then Trick said, “Jesus. Poor bastard died in there.”

  Javier gulped and nodded, then turned to examine the rest of the room. His light played across other grim objects—a rack, braziers, some sort of chair with manacles—until he found something that made him cry out.

  Trick leaped to join him—and what he saw brought a fresh curse from his mouth.

  “Christ on a crutch…”

  They were staring at two small iron cages, cylindrical, so that the victims were forced to remain upright, no taller than Trick’s thighs.

  Each cage held a tiny human skeleton.

  “Children…” Javier said, his speech slurred in horror. “Just little children.”

  Trick nodded, equally horrified—and then something tickled at the back of his thoughts.

  Something about…La Llorona…

  “Not children, Javier—niños!”

  Javier looked at Trick, uncomprehending.

  “The bruja said we’d find out something about La Llorona if we went through the mirror, right? And La Llorona is missing her kids…”

  Trick saw the light go on in Javier’s expression. Javier swung the candelabrum back toward the two tiny corpses. “These are La Llorona’s children!”

  Trick nodded.

  Javier thought, frowned. “But wait…these can’t be her children. She drowned them.”

  Trick rolled that around in his mind. “Well…that’s what the legend says. But what if the legend is wrong?”

  “Maybe,” Javier answered. “But does that mean…madre de dios, did she torture her own children to death?”

  Trick plucked a taper from the candelabra and walked over to examine the adult skeleton on the floor. “Is this her, d’you reckon?”

  Javier joined him, kneeling. “I do not think this is a woman. I think this is a man.”

  Trick poked gingerly at the large bones. “I think you’re right, Javier. Her husband, maybe.”

  “Then did she kill her husband and children?” Javier asked.

  Trick glanced at the door, at the lock they’d shattered. “No, she couldn’t have. The door was locked from the inside.”

  Trick suddenly remembered something—something Aurora had said—and he turned to Javier excitedly. “What was that story Aurora told us, about the great ancestor who went missing with two of his children?”

  Javier’s eyes clouded for a second. Then his voice rose an octave. “Yes—Rogelio!”

  “Right.” Trick gestured at the sundered bones on the floor. “That’s Rogelio. And the children are over there. Aurora said he was cruel, didn’t she? Way I figure it, the sonuvabitch had it with the kids, brought ’em down here, tortured the poor little half-pints to death, then couldn’t take it and closed that thing”—Trick pointed at the iron maiden—“on himself. Because the door was locked and behind a secret entrance, they never found him.”

  Javier nodded. “Yes. It makes sense. And his wife…”

  Trick filled in: “…is your La Llorona.”

  Now Javier shook his head wildly. “No, no, no. The legend says La Llorona drowned her children…”

  “The legend is wrong.”

  Javier rounded on Trick, his cheeks flushed. “Our legend is not wrong! This Rogelio was not the husband of La Llorona!”

  “But think about it, Javier,” Trick said, in what he hoped were calm-inducing tones. “That’s why she roams the river banks asking ‘Where are my children?’ If she’d killed ’em herself, she wouldn’t have to ask that, would she?”

  “No,” Javier said resolutely. “The legend is not wrong!”

  “Why are you being so pigheaded on this, Javier? It makes all the sense in the world—”

  “I am not pigheaded! It is simply that…that…”

  Trick suddenly grinned. “You just can’t stand the idea that the husband killed those kids, can you? ’Cause you guys down here are so macho and all.”

  Javier didn’t answer. For a long time.

  Finally, Trick said: “Javier…if I’m right, and these are La Llorona’s children…maybe we can help her.”

  That caused Javier to turn and look at him. “What?”

  “Maybe we can finally give her back her children. End her search.”

  “You are insane, my gringo friend—”

  “No, listen, Javier: If we give her these—the remains of her children—maybe she’ll finally rest in peace. And maybe you’ll get Reyo Dorado back.”

  Javier stiffened. “My horse is already dead.”

  Trick pressed on. “But we don’t know that. Of course we have no guarantee that she’ll come again—”

  “She will come tomorrow night.” When Trick looked at him questioningly, Javier elaborated. “It is All Souls’ Day, the final night of Días de los Muertos, a night for the spirits. She will certainly come.”

  Trick hooked one thumb in his belt and cocked the other at his chest.

  “And I’m gonna be waitin’ for her when she does.”

  —

  Trick spent the rest of that night wrapping the two tiny skeletons in the frayed remnants of an ancient tablecloth before sneaking the bundle up to his room. He thought it would be a mistake to tell anyone—even Aurora—what he’d found, since it would certainly entail visits from the police and confiscation of the remains.

  It proved to be a sleepless night for him. He lay awake all night, contemplating his plan.

  So, what, do I believe in this silly Mex ghost story now?

  At some point during the night, he knew he did.

  He’d tried to convince himself that La Llorona really had just been some publicity stunt, or maybe a clever female bandit playing on the superstitious…but then he’d remember the sound, that horrible sound, the wailing and the cries of Javier’s golden horse.

  He believed. Hell, he’d once been married to a woman who he’d believed could be his wife forever. This wasn’t that much tougher to buy, was it?

  But if this La Llorona really was a ghost, and she—it—really had killed that extra, and probably Reyo Dorado…what were his chances of surviving a direct confrontation with it? Would the thing recognize its children (if they really were its children)? Would it lash out at Trick, believing he’d been the child-killer? Would it only kill him, or…

  …will I become just like it, prowling these goddamn Mexican riverbanks forever?

  He knew he could ask Javier to do this; the brave young man undoubtedly would. But he liked Javier, a lot; he even liked Armando. And Aurora…

  No. The gringo would do this for them.

  —

  It was Trick and Javier’s first day of shooting. Trick started in the morning, with a brief scene in which he and the doomed Mexican sheriff arrived at the hacienda to begin investigating. Javier also shot his arrival scene, followed by his introduction to “Rosita.”

  Tensions were high on the set. It was November 2, All Souls’ Day, the last day of Días de los Muertos, and the crewpeople had erected an ofrenda, or an elaborate altar to the dead, in the main room of the hacienda. Once Trick would have laughed off the offerings of food and tequila and tobacco and flowers, but no longer. He even poured a shot of tequila and set it down before the photo of the dead extra.

  Shooting wrapped a half-hour before sunset. Armando was frustrated at not being able to continue—the film was already behind schedule—but he understood the emotions provoked by this night.

  By sundown the crew was sealed in the hacienda, many of them clutching rosaries as they gathered around the ofrenda.

  —

  It was just before midnight when Trick appeared in the courtyard clutching his cloth-wrapped bundle. Javier, nervously smoking a cigarillo, glanced
up; for a second his jaw dropped. Then he stood and joined Trick, speaking to him in low, anxious tones.

  “You’re really going to do it?”

  Trick nodded. “I think it’s worth a try.”

  Javier abruptly dropped his smoke and tried to wrench the bundle from Trick’s hands. “No, I should do it.”

  Trick didn’t give up his hold on the cloth. “Javier, I’m doing it.”

  “It’s not right—it should be done by someone who knows La Llorona, who lives in her country—”

  Trick didn’t budge. “Maybe…but goddamn it, I’m doing it.”

  Javier began to simmer. “Do you think I don’t have the courage, is that it?”

  “No, Javier, that’s not it at all. It’s…well, dammit, we don’t know if this’ll work, and if it doesn’t—I’m past my peak, anyway, but you’re still young, you’ve got a whole life left to you, a whole lotta bulls to fight and señoritas to romance. Now let go and don’t argue with me again on this.”

  Javier considered, then dropped his hands and stepped back, looking away from Trick. “You know I will never forgive myself if you are hurt.”

  “Then I won’t let myself get hurt.”

  After a moment, Trick added: “Besides, after this is all done I got a hankerin’ to try your horseback bullfighting myself.”

  —

  At midnight the wailing started.

  There was no distant approach this time; it simply began right outside the hacienda’s walls.

  The crew members all shrieked and huddled together in terror. Armando, trying to keep his people calm, ran forward as he called out, “¿Son cerradas las puertas?”

  Someone responded, “¡Sí!”

  Armando spotted Trick and switched to English. “Trick, there’s no cause for alarm. The gates are bolted. We are safe—”

  Except just then La Llorona came through the heavy wooden gates and into the courtyard.

  Trick had somehow thought La Llorona would look like the translucent, glowing ghosts from stories he’d read as a child; but the spirit he saw now looked as solid as any of the cowering crew members, despite the fact that she’d just crossed through six inches of solid oak. She wore the tattered remains of a white grave shroud, and for a moment Trick wondered if it was a hoax, if Armando had somehow arranged a secret path through the gates.

  Then he saw her face, and his doubts were driven out by stark fear.

  Her eyes were so sunken from her eternal grief that they were nothing but dark hollows in her face, framed by wisps of black hair. She wasn’t really walking; her feet moved in some sort of reflexive motion, but they didn’t really connect with the ground or propel her forward.

  And she was coming forward.

  She wailed again, her arms outstretched as if groping for answers.

  “¿Para es muy ninos?” she cried. Trick felt that voice singe his nerves.

  But it didn’t stop him from stepping forward.

  La Llorona fixed on the motion and began to move toward him. It took all his courage to stand there.

  “Trick!” Javier called behind him, and Trick sensed the younger man’s motion.

  “No. It’s okay.”

  As the apparition neared him, Trick—trying to keep his hands from shaking so badly that he dropped his bundle—knelt, unwrapped the cloth, and revealed the two tiny skeletons. He took a step back, calling to Javier: “Javier, tell her these are her children.”

  Javier called out a Spanish sentence to La Llorona.

  Her face turned down toward the remains—and suddenly her wailing stopped.

  She stood there for a few seconds, frozen; then she glided forward to bend over the bodies. She tried to touch them, but her hand passed through the bones.

  Finally, she straightened, turned that hollow visage one last time on Trick—

  —and faded out, like the last shot of a movie.

  Trick knew, somehow, that it was the end of La Llorona’s story. She wouldn’t be returning. Or if she did, it would be at next year’s Días de los Muertos, when she would come to an ofrenda to share food with her beloved children.

  Suddenly Trick was surrounded, among the living, and he felt relief flood his body. Armando was there, and Aurora.

  “Trick,” Armando said, grabbing one of his hands in a hearty shake, “you will have to explain all this later, but right now—I am very grateful to you. You have saved our picture.”

  “Thank you, Armando,” Trick answered.

  Then Armando feigned giving him a hug, but really leaned in close to whisper in Trick’s ear: “Please go along with the publicity-stunt story.”

  Trick grinned. “No problem, Boss.”

  Next, Aurora came up and kissed him. Even though it was on the cheek, Trick felt the heat rise in his face and he knew he was blushing.

  “Gracias,” she said, softly.

  “Aww, de nada,” Trick told her.

  Finally, Javier stepped up to slap Trick on the back. “My friend, you are a very brave man. We’ll make a Mexican of you yet.”

  Trick laughed. “You know, Javier, that sounds just fine to me.”

  Suddenly they both heard the sound of a horse whinnying outside the gate. Javier’s face nearly split open in joy.

  “Reyo Dorado!”

  Javier ran off to open the gate and reunite with his horse.

  Trick, meanwhile, hoped they’d be able to find a bottle of tequila (preferably añejo) somewhere in the hacienda.

  If he was really lucky, maybe he’d even get to see Aurora drunk on this last night of Días de los Muertos.

  #Make­Halloween­Scary­Again

  Mark Allan Gunnells

  Status from the Facebook page of Dustin Davis, Author, posted October 25:

  What happened to Halloween, folks? When I was growing up, it was a night of monsters and goblins and fright flicks and thrilling scares. Now it’s all church Trunk’r’Treats, Fall Festivals, and HOCUS POCUS! Anything remotely scary has been scrubbed and sanitized right out of it. Let’s return the holiday to its dark roots, put the horror back in the season. Let’s #Make­Halloween­Scary­Again!

  FOUR DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

  I shoulda taken that job at Burger King, Kenny Henson thought as he piloted the motorized golf cart through Greer City Park. He’d been working as a groundskeeper for only two weeks, but that was long enough to know that he hated the gig. Here it was six a.m., the sun wasn’t even up yet, the autumn air had a bite to it that made him wish he had a thicker jacket, and he was going around with a flashlight, picking up trash.

  And there was a lot of trash. Before taking this job, he’d never realized how incredibly nasty and inconsiderate people could be. They came to a public park just to treat it like their own personal garbage dump. Food containers and drink cans, crumpled-up receipts and other pieces of paper, candy wrappers and empty cigarette packs. What killed him was that he would find piles of this junk within steps of a trashcan. In fact, the park had trashcans everywhere! There was almost no direction you could walk without passing one, so there was no excuse other than being a jerk. The grossest things Kenny had found so far were a dirty diaper down at the gazebo and a used condom on one of the benches.

  This job might pay more than Burger King, but he wondered if the extra three bucks an hour was worth it.

  He parked the cart by the picnic area next to the playground. Grabbing a fresh trash bag, he started weaving around the tables, gathering up all the garbage. Yesterday there had been a birthday party here, and even though part of the contract when a group rented out the picnic area was that they were responsible for cleaning up after themselves, they never did. Why should they when they had losers like Kenny to pick up after them?

  The bag was half full when he moved into the playground, snatching up a few potato-chip bags and a Hawaiian Punch pouch. The city of Greer was too cheap to spring for one of those grabber poles, so he had to pick up the trash with his bare hands, albeit donned in latex gloves. By the swings he founded a disc
arded stuffed giraffe. He was supposed to turn items like that in to the lost and found, but instead he tossed it in the trash bag. If the little brat who lost the toy cared about it that much, he or she would have hung on to it during playtime.

  The sun peeked its head up over the horizon, giving the sky a rosy glow, but it was still dark enough that Kenny had to use his flashlight. As he walked around the front of the covered slide, the circle of light fell on a dark puddle at the base of the slide. Kenny stepped closer, hunkering down to get a better look but keeping a bit of distance in case it turned out to be vomit. This further inspection revealed a large collection of dark red, congealing liquid.

  Blood, he thought, and the coppery scent that reached his nostrils seemed to confirm it.

  Ducking lower, Kenny aimed his light up inside the circular tube. He could see the tips of dirty sneakers, and streaks of the blood made trails down the slide.

  “Oh god oh god oh god oh god,” Kenny muttered to himself as he stood on wobbly legs and made his way around to the ladder that led to the top of the slide. Part of him wanted to get the hell out of there, call the police from inside his own car on his way to his trailer out on Malinda Drive.

  Yet another part of him wanted to see, the same impulse that made him slow down as he passed a bad accident on the interstate.

  He felt numb, but he climbed the ladder and shone the light down into the slide. A man was wedged into the tight space, on his back with his head tilted toward the opening. Kenny recognized the man as the homeless guy he’d shooed out of the park earlier in the week for washing off in the fountain out by the amphitheater. Only the last time Kenny had seen him, the man hadn’t been sporting a ghastly, gaping slash across his throat, blood soaked into the tattered sweatshirt he wore. His eyes were open and as empty as a black hole. Something had been scrawled across his forehead in blue marker like some macabre tattoo.

  Letting out a strangled cry, Kenny jumped all the way back to the ground and took off, bypassing the golf cart as he sprinted toward the parking lot next to City Hall. He yanked his cell from the front left pocket of his pants and punched in 911.

  He kept thinking of that hollow stare and suspected it would haunt his dreams for years to come. Also that odd message written on the man’s forehead. Even looking at it upside down, Kenny had been able to read it clearly, printed in block text.