The Return of Skeleton Man Read online

  I know that voice. It’s Corazón. I turn to look and know something else right away. I am in one of my dreams. For instead of a short Mayan woman in her twenties wearing the inconspicuous clothing of a hotel employee, the figure that stands—or, rather, floats—before me is in no way either small or ordinary. She is the exact image that had come to my mind at the party when I tried to imagine Corazón in traditional garb. From the quetzal-plumed crown on her head to the jaguar-skin robe and the anklets of gold, she is the image of someone who is more than an ordinary human being.

  I don’t ask her who she is. I know that she is the one who loves children, who opens that bridge between those who breathe and those who have passed from this life.

  “Little Sister,” she says again. Her lips are not moving, but I hear her voice, spoken inside my head. “I have come to help you against the evil one who seeks to do you harm. He thinks this Day of the Dead is his time for revenge. He thinks he will gain power from this time when the darkness of night grows stronger. But he is wrong. He is no friend of either the living or the ancestors. He will get no help from los muertos.”

  Her breathless words give me hope. But I wonder why she is the one who has come into my dreams to help me. Where is the rabbit that has been my guide in the past?

  The Lady smiles. It is a smile that doesn’t just end at her face but continues to send a glow of warmth that fills the air and touches me and gives me energy. “Little Sister,” she says, “your friend is known to our people, too. We know him as the quick little one who can be killed by the touch of a stick yet uses his wits to defeat those who are greater in strength. He is a great helper. It is good that Rabbit has chosen to be your friend.”

  She gestures around her. “This time, though, I am the one who has come to help. This is my time, my season, and this festival is mine. Even though they do not fully understand what they are doing, those who have brought this festival here have summoned me.” She smiles again and drifts closer to me. “Yes, in human miles it is a long way from Mexico. But this is all one land, and the heartbeat of the earth, el latido del corazón de tierra, sounds everywhere.”

  The Lady reaches down a hand to touch me. “You will wake up now,” she says. “You will know what to do. Your enemy’s weakness is his own thirst for revenge. I do not promise you success, but I promise you the chance to succeed if you behave with courage. Adios.”

  She lifts her hand from my shoulder and, with a sudden flicker like when a movie ends and the theater goes dark, she and the place where she stood—or floated—are gone.

  I’m awake. Really awake this time. I’m not in some groggy semiconscious state or in a dream. I can hear water dripping again and it is still dark because something is over my head. I’m covered by a heavy blanket and my wrists are still tied.

  It all comes back to me then, everything that happened when the lights went out. The sky had been clouded over, so there was no glow from the moon or the stars, just deep, deep dark. There was a moment’s silence and then chaos. Kids were yelling—some screaming in panic and others just yelling because that is what little kids do when all the lights go out. People were shouting at one another, some telling everyone to be calm, others calling out the names of their children or their husband or their wife. People were pushing and someone fell in between me and Mom and I lost her hand. I reached for my father’s belt, but it wasn’t there.

  I was being moved one way and then another by the surge of the crowd. It was like being caught in a riptide. But that was not the worst part. I knew that somewhere in this panicked human wave there was one being who was as calm and focused as a great white shark. I knew who had caused the lights to go out. What he had held in his hands must have been not a cell phone but a device somehow used to knock out all of the power to Mohonk Mountain House, including any backup generators. And those binocular-like things he had pulled down over his eyes were not part of a costume. I now recognized them as night-vision goggles, because my dad had a pair. While everyone else was blind, Skeleton Man could see.

  I knew he was coming toward me and I knew I had to hide. I fell to my knees and crawled through the crowd of confused people, hoping that I had dropped out of his sight. I remembered seeing a table nearby and hoped I was going in the right direction. When my head hit the table leg hard I knew I’d found it. I was half-stunned and worried that I’d cut myself and that blood was dripping down my forehead, but I still pulled myself under the table as far as I could and hoped I was hidden.

  But I wasn’t.

  Two hard, bony hands fastened on my shoulder and pulled me forward. I tried to strike out, but a terribly strong, bony arm wrapped around me, pinning my arms to my sides. I started to scream for help, but my scream was cut off by a moist cloth that was pressed over my mouth and my nose and after that there was nothing to remember other than that last moment of terror, knowing that I had been taken captive by Skeleton Man.

  Until now. Until waking up to the sound of water dripping. I move just a little bit to curl myself into a ball. Then I pause. I don’t sense anyone watching me, but he might be here. Listen, I think. Listen. I listen hard, but I don’t hear anything other than drip, drip-drip, drip, drip-drip, the sound of melting snow falling on stone.

  I decide it’s safe to move. I bring my knees up as far as I can and thrust my bound hands down below my heels. I have to rock back and forth and it’s really hard because my ankles are taped together too. But there’s just enough room and I manage to squeeze my legs through and thrust them back. Now my hands are in front of me and I can bring them up to my mouth. There is another piece of tape over my mouth. It hurts, but I manage to peel the tape halfway off with my fingers. And now I can get at the tape around my wrists with my teeth. I find a loose edge and pull, then spit it out, grab again, and pull. I’m unwrapping it only an inch at a time and the taste of the tape is making me feel sick, but I don’t stop. I keep at it. Grab, pull, spit. There’s nothing else in my world but my teeth and this tape around my wrists. I can’t stop, because I don’t know how long I have before Skeleton Man comes back.

  At last I get down to the final wrap. It is stuck so hard to the skin of my wrists that it burns as I pull it free, but I don’t even pause. I reach down to my ankles and unwind the tape from them as well. They aren’t as tightly wrapped as my hands were. Maybe Skeleton Man ran out of tape. Maybe he wasn’t as totally prepared as he thought he was. Maybe he had underestimated me again, as he did when I escaped him the first time.

  But I don’t throw the blanket off right away. There is a little hole in it and I put my eye up to it and look. I can see through it just enough to make out where I am. It looks like a cave with a tunnel leading into darkness. Someone, and I know who that someone is, has been using this place for quite a while. There’s a cot against one wall with a Coleman lantern next to it, and a hot plate and containers of food. To one side of the cot are shelves piled with wires and boxes and electronic equipment. The equipment is connected by a cable to several large storage batteries on the floor. There’s a table on the other side of the cot, close to the mouth of the tunnel. A cell phone is sitting on that table. My cell phone. If I get it, I can call my parents, call for help.

  But before I can move to throw off the blanket, I hear the scrape of a boot against rock. And through the hole in my blanket I see a ski-masked face wearing a pair of night-vision goggles appear in the mouth of the tunnel. Skeleton Man has returned.

  15

  In the Cave

  The tall, gaunt figure takes three slow steps, moving like a heron stalking its prey in the shallows, ready to strike at any movement. I freeze under the blanket. As he reaches up to take the night-vision goggles from his head, I quickly push the tape back over my mouth, grab the stuck-together ball of tape I’ve stripped from my wrists and ankles, and thrust my hands behind my back. He is taking the ski mask off now. For a moment it seems as if the face he is uncovering is that of a skeleton, nothing but white bone.

  But then I see
that he has human features, that his face is the same face I have seen before. It is the harsh, sharp-featured countenance of a man who might be called old, were it not for that awful vitality in his eyes, the intensity in the set of his hard mouth. I quickly close my own eyes as he leans toward me, reaching out one hand to pull the blanket off my face.

  “Hunnhhh,” he growls. “Still out cold?”

  I feel his fingers grasp my cheek and pinch hard, but I will myself not to react. He hasn’t pulled the blanket down far enough to see that my ankles are no longer taped together. He doesn’t notice that the hands I’m holding behind my back are now free. The blanket is thrown over my head again. It’s dusty and some of the dust gets into my nose. It is hard, so hard, not to sneeze. But somehow I manage to control myself, to keep breathing as slowly as someone in a drugged sleep.

  I can hear him moving things around. I can’t see through the hole in the blanket now, but I’m not even going to try. I have to stay still. I have to wait for a chance to escape, and this is not it.

  The sounds tell me that he is still moving about. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. Here inside the cave I can’t tell if it is day or night. But my hope is that it is night, late at night. So late that, after all his exertion, he’s tired.

  I direct my thoughts to him: You are tired, you are very tired. You need to rest. Go to sleep, go to sleep.

  When I finally hear the sound I am waiting for, I almost sigh in relief. It is the creak of the springs of the cot. Then I hear two thuds and see in my mind’s eye the boots he has pulled from his feet resting on the cave floor. The cot creaks again as he stretches out on it. I hold my breath, listening even harder. He is rolling back and forth, getting comfortable, and now his breathing is turning into a snore. I think he is asleep.

  I begin to move, bringing my hands back around, pulling the blanket down from my face, just a finger’s width at a time. I can see him now. He is sleeping on his side, his face turned away from me. I roll to my knees and begin to crawl across the floor of the cave.

  The thought goes through my head that I should do something to him, try to knock him out, try to tie him up as he did to me. But I don’t see anything I could hit him with and I have this feeling, more than a feeling, that if I tried, I would fail. He would wake up and grab me. I have to head for that tunnel. It must be the way out. I get up off my knees, the blanket still over my shoulders, and keep moving. I move slowly, the way my father taught me to move when you are stalking an animal. I don’t tiptoe, but I lift my feet and put them down carefully, rolling from instep to heel with each step. As I pass the table, I reach out and pick up my cell phone with one hand and Skeleton Man’s night-vision goggles with the other.

  For just a moment his breathing deepens and his snoring becomes words. I freeze in midstep.

  “No, not yet,” he growls in his sleep. “When she is awake and can see my face. Then…It will be painful, yes. Piece by piece, yes. I will have my revenge piece by piece.”

  Then his words turn into a snarl that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, for it is not like the sound a human being should make. It makes me think of some huge, ravenous animal ripping at the flesh of its kill. But he doesn’t roll over or sit up, and his breathing again turns into a low snore. I start moving.

  When I reach the mouth of the tunnel, I quicken my pace. The passageway is dimly lit by lanterns placed every hundred feet or so. I don’t look at those lights. When you move through darkness, you should never look at a light, for it will lessen your perception. But as I pass each lantern I turn it out so that the darkness I leave behind will be that much deeper and maybe that much harder for him to make his way through to follow me when he wakes up.

  The passageway is very long. In all the reading I’ve done over the last few days about the Shawangunk Mountains, I’ve found no mention of a cave like this, and I wonder how he found it. Is it a place where he’s been before? And if so, how long ago was it when he was here last? A year ago, ten years, or at a time when he was one of those monsters that the Lenape people warned their children about in the time before the coming of the Europeans? Another hundred feet, another lantern. I’m climbing now as the floor of the passageway slopes up. There are no more lanterns, but I don’t have to put on the night-vision goggles. A circle of light glows from the mouth of the cave ahead of me, and beyond that is the glitter of snow-covered earth.

  When I step outside I see that the clouds have cleared from the sky. It is cold, but not the cold of deep winter. I’m warm enough with this blanket around my shoulders. The full moon is shining down. I’ve never welcomed the sight of the moon more than I do right now.

  “Thank you, Grandmother,” I say to the moon in a soft voice. As I smile at it, it seems I can see more clearly than ever before the shape that our old people remind us can sometimes be seen on the moon’s face. It is Rabbit, who leaped up there long ago. He’s looking down and helping me too.

  I’m not sure where I am. There are thousands of acres in the Shawangunk range with no roads, just foot trails leading through the forest, up and down the ridges and cliffs. But I do see how I was brought here. Parked in front of the mouth of the cave is a bone-white four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicle. It’s the first one I’ve seen since we came to Mohonk. Motorized vehicles like snowmobiles and ATVs are strictly forbidden in the Mohonk Preserve. But the cover of the storm must have made it possible for him to sneak this in. The cave is at the bottom of a cliff that rises above me. Tracks in the snow lead back from the cliff down into the woods.

  I’ve driven ATVs before. But when I look close at this one, I see I’m not going to go anywhere on it. The key is gone from the ignition. It must be in Skeleton Man’s pocket.

  I lift up my cell phone, thinking I can find out if my parents are okay and tell them I need help. I notice that the little phone seems even lighter than usual and I open up the back of it. The battery has been taken out.

  And that is when I hear an angry, awful shriek from inside the cave. Skeleton Man has woken and discovered that I’m gone.

  16

  The Cliff

  When the glaciers receded from here fourteen thousand years ago, they left behind a landscape of cliffs and valleys and peaks. Over the centuries, massive chunks of rock fell off the mountains to make huge piles of stones. Those talus piles are everywhere in the Shawangunk range. Rock climbers come from all over the world to scramble through the stones and scale the sheer rock cliffs. Mom and I had taken the trail across Rhododendron Bridge onto Undercliff Carriage Road a day ago to watch some of them working their way up the Trapps Cliffs. They were so high up that on their climbing ropes they looked like tiny spiders, strung together by thin strands of web.

  The memory of watching those climbers may seem like a strange thing to have going through my mind now. A part of me wants to run as fast as I can. But running would not be a good idea. I don’t know the trails here and I am sure he does. I can’t use the ATV, but I’m sure he has the key and can use it to pursue me. I wish I had a knife so I could cut the tires. I don’t have time to open it up and do something to the engine.

  But I do have another way to go. Up.

  I tie the blanket around my neck and start scrambling up the huge stones that lay around the mouth of the cave, concealing it from the sight of any casual passerby. The snow makes the rocks slippery, but my moccasins are the real old-time kind, with one exception. When my mother made them, she built in arch supports and glued on durable soles that have a good tread on them. They are not just made for dress but for dancing or walking—or climbing.

  I’ve climbed at least seventy feet before he comes out of the cave. I’m not looking back over my shoulder or down. It isn’t wise to do either when you are climbing by daylight and even more foolish when you have only moonlight to show you where to find hand-and footholds. But I just know he is there. I can feel his hungry, inhuman eyes staring up at me. It is a good thing I can sense him there, because the scream that comes fro
m his throat is so eerie, so piercing, that it might otherwise have shocked me into missing a handhold, losing my grip, and falling.

  “Aaaaaarrryyyyaaaaahhhh!”

  It sends a chill down my back that is much colder than the feel of the stone cliff on my bare hands. I freeze for just a second. The night-vision goggles that are perched on my forehead slip off and fall down the slope. I hear them strike rock and shatter. But I don’t lose my balance or my focus and I start climbing again.

  Something hits the cliff next to my face with a hard thwack, sending a sharp shard of stone across my cheek. I scramble up even faster and the next softball-size stone that he throws hits near my feet, the third strikes an arm’s length beneath me. The fourth hits even lower than that. I think I’m out of his range now, but I don’t slow up. If one of those stones had struck me, it would have knocked me loose, like a little bird struck by the spin of a throwing stick. From this height, I would not have survived a fall like that. Skeleton Man is not trying to catch me—now he wants to kill me.

  The thing about rock climbing, though, is that you really can’t hurry. If you do, you make mistakes. You have to be sure of your holds, certain that you haven’t wedged your foot on a shelf of rock that is loose, and grasp firmly before you try to pull yourself up. We have a new climbing wall at our school and I’ve spent more than my share of time on it. So you might think I would be more sure of myself. But I’m not. I don’t have a harness and a line on me. I don’t have a chalk bag that I can dip into to keep my hands dry. I’m climbing at night on a rock face that is partially covered with snow. And I haven’t even had time to study this cliff I’m scaling, to eyeball it to pick out the best route. I’m climbing blind. But I don’t have any other choice.

  There are plenty of loose places on this rock face, places where if I put my weight on the flat stone, it would lever out and fall, taking me with it. The thought goes through my mind that it might start a rockfall that would come down on top of him. But it isn’t worth the risk if it means I have to go with it. So each time a spot starts to give as I brush away the snow and begin to put my weight on it, I quickly move my hand or my foot to another, safer hold.