Spellcaster

Mateo couldn’t pay any attention to that, or to anything else besides the fact that the world had apparently gone mad.

7

MATEO STARED AT SOMETHING NOT OF THIS EARTH.

Precisely what it was he couldn’t have said. The first word that popped into his stunned mind was ox, and the second was wolf, and yet it seemed to be a man, too. As it crouched over the dank asphalt of the alleyway, it lifted its heavy, horned head; eyes that burned with white flame stared at Mateo—through him—and he felt a chill so deep that he thought he might actually freeze. Its fur bristled; even though it stood in shadows, Mateo could see that much.

Before he could say or do anything else, though, the thing—disappeared. Which was the only way he could describe how it went from being solid to transparent to just not there.

Within five seconds Mateo was as alone in the alley as he’d ever been, with no other sound but a can skittering along the pavement in the nighttime breeze. The harsh glare of the streetlamp nearby cast its usual stark shadows. He hadn’t thought to check whether the horned thing had a shadow or not.

Mateo went back inside La Catrina, shut the back door, and leaned against it.

I’m not insane. I’m not. Easy to say. Hard to believe, given that he had just seen a monster, which had then vanished in a way he associated more with science-fiction movies than real life.

But whatever he’d just seen—it didn’t feel like one of his dreams. He was awake. Aware. That hadn’t been a vision of the future, or even a nightmare. It had been very solid. Very near.

Except for the part where it vanished, he told himself. Come on. That couldn’t have been real.

Quickly he turned back to his final tasks at La Catrina for the night. If he concentrated on his chores, then he wouldn’t have to think about what he’d seen. Or not seen. Maybe he could even forget about it.

Side work finally done, Mateo folded his black apron and hurried back out to his motorcycle. Right now all he wanted to do was get home. He didn’t see the horned thing again; at first he thought whatever weird thing had happened to his brain had ended.

But things weren’t back to normal.

Something about Captive’s Sound had … changed.

When he looked upward, it was as if there were a film between him and the stars overhead—like a grimy window between the town and the sky. And it was as if there were a deep, dark line in the ground, curving along the street as far as he could see in either direction. A fault line, he wanted to call it, except that it was visible and invisible at the same time. Mateo stretched one foot toward it, a kind of experiment, but the road felt perfectly smooth underneath. Yet there was this odd sensation, almost like vibration, that came up from it.

A stray cat nearby hissed at him and darted away. Mateo often put milk or leftover scraps of the fish tacos out at the end of the day; the strays knew him, sometimes curling about his legs so fondly that he had to shoo them off before he could straddle his motorcycle. Did even the cats see that something was wrong with him?

Is this what it’s like? Going insane?

Mateo put on his helmet, got on the bike, and revved the motor. He needed to get home. Once he was home, he’d feel better. He had to.

The ride was even weirder, though. The farther he drove through Captive’s Sound, the worse it seemed. Those strange lines in the roads—they were everywhere, and he had to remind himself to focus on traffic instead of the ground to keep himself from having a wreck. And some of the houses had a strange, watery light around them, as if they were melting. It was like being in a Van Gogh painting: colors too bright, perspective skewed, and the sense that everything was being broken down into pieces.

Except Mateo had liked Van Gogh when he took art history. Van Gogh was beautiful. Captive’s Sound was grotesque.

This started at Nadia’s house. Once again Mateo thought of what he’d seen when he looked into the attic—like a flash, a purple flash of light surrounded by all those dark red sparks—and then there had been that incredible shiver when his eyes met Nadia’s. But the shiver … well, that was just Nadia’s dark eyes. The light, though—

Seriously, what do you think purple light had to do with this? Why would that make you feel so weird? Either you’re going crazy or you’re coming down with the flu. Or you’re going crazy and coming down with the flu for extra fun.

Somehow he got home, pulling up to his house right as he thought he couldn’t take it anymore. The ocean roared even louder in his ears—or was that his own blood rushing through? His heart was beating fast, his skin sweaty, all of it adrenaline overload.

At least Dad wasn’t home yet. Mateo slammed the door behind him and stumbled to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. It wasn’t much, but it seemed to help.

At least, until he stood up and looked in the mirror.

His face was the same, but around it was—Mateo would have called it a halo, except that it was dark instead of light. Within it twisted shapes, too foggy and indefinite to be identified, but his mind supplied suggestions. Snakes. Broken glass. Thorns.

Water dripping from his forehead and chin, Mateo lifted his shaking hands to try to touch the halo. Would it feel like slime? Like razor blades? It couldn’t be anything good; it had to hurt, but somehow he had to prove to himself that it was really there.

Instead his hands passed right through it. Mateo felt a slight chill against his fingers, but nothing else.

In his reflection, the halo swirled around his fingers, seeming to stick to them like tar.