JUNE, 1999
There was nothing in the world more volatile than an impulsive teenager. That’s what it was, impulse—boiling emotions bubbling under the surface—that sent 16 year old Andy Barclay speeding down to the border. It was summer break at Kent Military School and Andy slipped through the cracks. When he hopped in his car and started driving south he wasn’t sure if he would come back or not. He could only focus on what was directly ahead of him, and he couldn’t see past any of that. He just drove, and drove, and drove, compelled to do something with his young life, compelled to take the trauma that had shaped him and instead shape it into something useful. It was the summer of 1999, and Andy Barclay was on his way to Mexico.
He was off to kill a monster.
When Andy was six years old his mom brought home a doll that was possessed by the soul of a serial killer, a doll who killed a bunch of people around him and tried to take Andy’s body. When Andy was eight, that doll came back to upturn Andy’s already upturned life for a second time. Then, a few months back, Chucky found Andy again, this time at the Kent School, and more lives were lost. It flipped a switch in the boy. He wasn’t going to sit back anymore, he couldn’t sit back knowing that there was so much evil out there and no one was doing anything proactive to stop it. Andy knew he wasn’t alone—he wasn’t the only child ever disrupted by monsters—but he was a survivor, and he owed the other children out there something. He survived, he had to make that mean something.
It was rumors that led Andy to Tijuana, rumors of missing children and other strings of disappearances in the border town. El Cucuy—they called it—a boogeyman, a bedtime story parents told their kids to get them to behave. You better watch out of El Cucuy will get you. Andy was free falling without a shoot. He was a kid, he didn’t know what he was doing; impulse got him there but it was only going to get him so far. When he got to Tijuana he found a cheap room to rent—something that was significantly easier than he was expecting considering he was 16—and he started digging. The more he looked into these missing children, eight of them by that time, the more he heard stories of El Cucuy. It looked like he had his monster, he just needed to figure out what to do next.
JULY, 1999
The first month in Mexico went okay. Two more kids disappeared without a trace, but Andy was getting closer. He could feel it. He read up on everything he could about that boogeyman el Cucuy and listened to the stories the locals shared with him. He narrowed in on specific hunting grounds and even found a way to kill the son of a bitch. That last part wasn’t easy. Some local scammer tried to sell Andy some bullsh*t with claims that it was the only way to defeat el Cucuy once and for all. When Andy called the guy out for his bullsh*t it started a fight and Andy got his ass kicked. He did find someone legitimate to help him eventually, though. He made sure everything was on the up and up first but eventually he bought himself a blade made from conquistador steel. It was said that the blade was enough to kill a dragon, and some even spoke of el Cucuy as if he was a dragon. A slice across the throat, a stab to the heart; that was supposed to be enough to kill the beast. Andy practiced with that knife every night. When the time came… he was going to be ready.
The Week of the Dead festival was a tourist trap, an excuse for vacationing coeds to dress up, get drunk, and appropriate cultures out of season. It didn’t matter if it was the middle of summer, Tijuana sparked to life with dancing, and music, and skeletons as if any day could be Dio de los Muertos. The celebration meant crowds, and rowdiness, and distractions. It was the perfect hunting ground for el Cucuy, which meant Andy was on the hunt, too.
As the sun started to set, Andy walked around the festival with a jacket on. It was too hot for the jacket—even with dusk settling in—but he needed it to conceal the conquistador steel knife he was gripping underneath. The weapon was enchanted, you see, infused with magic that was supposed to give a the user everything he or she would need, if they were noble enough. Or at least that was what Andy was told. The handle would grow warm if he was near el Cucuy and the closer he got the hotter the blade became. He just had to keep holding on. So he wandered through the festivities—past the parades and drinking and parties—and he moved with the flow of the crowd, trying to find his monster.
There were American college students drinking as they walked down the street, pretty girls with their faces poorly painted to look like skulls, and there were children, some local some tourist, laughing, and playing, and having a good time as fireworks cracked and boomed in the dark sky above them. Andy’s gaze kept falling to the children. He thought about the monster he was after and how evil he had to be to take something as innocent as that and devour it. It made him angry, he boiled as he thought of his own childhood and the pain that came along with it. Andy’s grip tightened on the handle of the blade and he felt it start to grow warm. The warmth made him freeze in place; the monster was close. He looked right, then left, then right again. There were tons of people around him but nothing seemed monstrous. Andy took a step to the left, but the handle went cold. He doubled back and when he went to the right it grew warm again. He pushed through the crowd, following that direction, and the knife only grew warmer, and warmer, and warmer.
Andy stepped out into a courtyard, shouldering past the crowd that was in his way. This area wasn’t too crowded. There were a few people hanging out their windows in the buildings that surrounded the courtyard—smoking cigarettes or enjoying an evening beer—and there were a few other individuals, locals and tourists alike, passing through. The handle Andy held on to was burning hot now, and he had to white knuckle it just to hold on. Still, he didn’t see a monster. Standing in the center of the courtyard there was a woman who stood out from the rest. She was a teenager, maybe around Andy’s age. She wore a beautiful red dress with matching red ribbons in her long night-black hair. Her face was painted in a traditional Day of the Dead manner, with a deep black around the eyes and pale whiteness around it, as if her face was a skull, but compared to the tourists whose makeup was rushed and sloppy, this woman looked perfect. Andy could only stop and stare, forgetting to blink and forgetting about the knife he held under his coat that was burning marks into the palm of his hand.
The girl with the skull paint on her face started to dance for no one in particular. She pulled out red fans and danced to the music seeping into the courtyard from the main street around the corner. As she started to dance, people stopped to watch her. Some were just tourists passing through, others were children who poured in from the streets around them, smiling and laughing and enjoying the dance. Some kids danced along, and the girl with the skull paint on her face welcomed them to dance with her.
The burning in Andy’s hand became too much, it snapped him back into the moment and he realized that the knife burned more when he saw this woman. He dropped the knife to relieve some of the pain in his palm and the knife sat in the bottom seam of his jacket. He looked up and the girl with the skull paint on her face looked back at him as she continued to dance with the children. All the other adults around them had gone, it was just Andy, the girl, and the children in that courtyard. When Andy looked up even the smokers and drinkers hanging out of their windows were gone. Around the corner, the band that was playing the music ended the song and a splattering of drunken applause followed. In the courtyard, however, the children that were dancing with the girl with the skull paint on her face cheered and called for more. The girl spoke to the children, but Andy couldn’t hear what she said. He watched her put her fans away, focus in on one child in particular, and take that child—a shoeless eight year old boy who smiled widely despite the fact that he was missing baby teeth—by the hand and guide him away. The girl with the skull paint on her face looked back toward Andy and made eye contact, and Andy didn’t need to touch his blade to know that he had found his monster.
While the other children scattered and ran back to whatever lives they had, unaware of how close they came to disaster, Andy moved through the courtyard. He grabbed at the knife hidden in his jacket again and felt that the handle was searing hot. He followed in the direction that the monster made up to look like a beautiful girl took the child, and he sped up with every step forward. Ahead, he saw the girl with the child, he watched her leading him away by the hand and saw that the child was still smiling. The knife burnt at Andy’s hand but he didn’t care. He thought of himself from years back, small and helpless, and wondered what life would’ve been like if he had someone to step in and save him before everything he had known in life was taken away. The monster and the child turned a corner, disappearing down a back alley. Andy sped up, jogging to close the distance but when he reached the corner something strange happened, the grip on the knife went cold. He spun around that corner but froze… it was a dead end, an empty alley. El Cucuy, or whatever that thing was… was gone, and so was the child. All Andy could do was stare down that empty alley and let his failure wash over him.
AUGUST, 1999
Everything quieted down after the Week of the Dead. The boy Andy couldn’t save, he was the last kid to disappear. He found out later that he was the son of a local mechanic; a mean sonofabitch who reportedly beat his son and wife but was now so consumed by loss and grief that he didn’t have the strength to be so cruel anymore. Andy walked around Tijuana with his conquistador blade every night but he never felt it get hot again. The girl was gone. El Cucuy had moved on, which maybe was a good thing… the children were safe again, but Andy couldn’t help but feel disappointed knowing that he couldn’t kill the monster in time, that so many children were already gone and that so many more were still at risk because the monster still lived. Eventually, he stopped his patrols. He gave up trying. He wasn’t sure when he was going to go home yet but he still had a month before school started back and he had to return to Kent Military Academy, so he decided to drink the rest of the summer away in a local cantina.
For three nights in a row, Andy sat at the same table with his head slumped forward and disappointment leaking out of him like a flooded lake. No one ever paid him much attention. He sat there with a beer on one side of the table and his useless magic knife on the other side of the table. He was so lost in those doldrums that he didn’t even notice someone take the seat across from him.
“¿Está ocupado este asiento?” The girl’s voice was gentle and kind. Andy looked up and saw her already helping herself to the seat, and his jaw hung open with disbelief and his eyes squinted to make sure he was really seeing what he was seeing. Across from him was a beautiful young girl with jet black hair, ruby painted lips, and enchanting eyes. She didn’t need the skull paint on her face for Andy to realize who he was staring at. His hand instinctively reached for the knife on the table but it was hotter than he was expecting, and he had to pull away to keep from getting burned.
“You don’t need that,” the girl shook her head, speaking in English now. “You already know who I am, and if you were capable of killing me you would’ve done so weeks ago, I think. You know who I am, don’t you, Andy Barclay? That’s why you came here, isn’t it? You came here to kill me?”
Andy stared without blinking. Eventually, he spit out the words, “El Cucuy.”
The girl laughed, “La Coca… but it’s okay. I have lots of stories about me, most empty and useless. I don’t blame you if you’re only working with half-truths. You can call me Rosa, though.”
“You’re a monster,” Andy shot out, trying to keep from raising his voice. His eyes were watering. “You took those kids, you killed them, ate them? I came to stop you.” Andy grabbed at the knife, now not caring that it was too hot. Little wisps of smoke rose up from under his grip, but he held on anyway.
“You’re holding on,” Rosa said, almost impressed. “Maybe you could kill me. But would you really want to?”
“You’re evil,” Andy said through gritted teeth.
“Evil?” Rosa replied. “Is that so? A monster, maybe, but evil? Are all monsters evil, Andy? Have you met many monsters?”
“I’ve met enough.”
Rose shrugged and reached across the table for Andy’s beer. He flinched and she froze, but when she saw that he wasn’t going to swipe at her with the knife she took his beer and helped herself to a sip. “Lo siento, I’m just very thirsty.”
Andy glared as he watched her bright red lips wrap around the tip of his bottle. She set the bottle down on her side of the table, and Andy glared. “Give me one reason not to kill you.”
“I can give you more than one, if you’d like,” Rosa smiled. Despite all of this, she was smiling. “I didn’t kill those kids. I didn’t eat them.”
“But the stories—?”
“—the stories were stories, Andy. People use stories to make sense of things they can’t make sense of.” Rosa leaned back in her seat and Andy looked down at his hand holding the smoking knife. He set it down and let his burned hand relax.
“How do you know my name?” Andy asked.
“I am la Coca,” Rosa shrugged. “There isn’t a suffering child out there who I don’t know. I feel the pain inside of you, Andy Barclay, just as I felt the pain in all of those niños I helped this summer. I took them, yes, but I didn’t kill them, I didn’t eat them. The stories say I take bad children, that isn’t true. I take children from bad parents. I feed off of the grief and pain left behind, which may be enough to label me a monster, sure, but we all need to eat. The children are in better places, with families who will care for them, with people who will care.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Believe me, don’t believe me, it makes no difference to me, Andy. But this is my truth. I came to share it.”
Andy sniffed. “Who gives you the right?”
“Who indeed?” Rosa took another sip of the beer and set it down again. “I’m going to use the restroom. If you still feel the need to kill me, go straight for the heart. That’s the easiest way.”
Rosa stood up, let her gaze linger on Andy for a second, and turned around to leave. Andy simmered with confused rage as he watched her disappear into the lady’s room. He didn’t know what to do. His body was frozen with indecision. Even if she didn’t do the things her story said she did she was still a monster, right? Monsters had to be dealt with. She took those kids away from their families like the state took him away from his mother. She did it to feed, to eat the grief left behind, what if all that other nonsense about them being in a better place was bullsh*t? Andy rubbed his temple and bounced his knee up and down as nerves consumed him. A second later, he gripped the burning handle of his magic knife, stood up, and marched into the ladies room.
He found her standing in front of a mirror at the sink when he got in. She was touching up her red lipstick, and she made eye contact through her reflection, noticing the knife in his hand.
“If you’re going to do it, do it.”
Andy hesitated. A tear rolled down his cheek. Rosa turned around.
“I’m not evil,” she said. “I may be a monster like you call me, but I am not evil.”
“What I’m feeling,” Andy banged on his chest with his free hand. “Are you feeding off of this? My pain? Is it tasty, is that why you came here?”
Rosa shook her head, “I have no interest in your pain, Andy Barclay. I feed off of the misery of the miserable, those who make the world suffer to match their level of discontent. You are not a meal for me, you are like the children. You’re someone who needs to be guided back to happiness.”
“No, no that doesn’t make any sense,” Andy looked down at the knife he was holding. It didn’t burn anymore. “I don’t have anyone. I’m alone… I came here alone. There’s no one to take me from.”
“I’m not guiding you now, I’ve already guided you.” Rosa smiled. “You came here searching for me. In a way, I led you away from home, made you missing. The social workers and teachers who treat you like garbage and look at you as a burden, they’re the ones I’m feeding from, but the meal has dried up. Their grief was a surface grief, pain over the consequences of their failure and not the fact that you may be in trouble. But I didn’t do it for me, for a meal… I led you away for you.” Rosa moved in closer. “I needed you to see that the world is full of evil, and the world is full of monsters, but not all monsters are evil.”
Rosa was right in front of Andy now. She reached for his hand, and he dropped the knife when her fingers touched his wrist. The knife hit the bathroom floor with a clatter. Andy breathed deeply and let shock wash over him. This had never been a hunt… it was a lesson. Rosa put a hand on her cheek and lifted his face so he had to see her.
“I know the pain you’ve gone through, Andy, I know how Charles Lee Ray destroyed your life… but you’re almost a man, and you must understand the difference. Evil. Monsters. Once you can tell the difference, nothing will be able to stop you from helping those who need you most.”
There was nothing in the world more volatile than a impulsive teenager. Andy pulled Rosa in close and kissed her, unsure of what the kiss meant or what it could mean, but knowing that he needed to do it. She kissed him back and on her lips he could taste the sour residue of his own pain, but through it, searching for the truth against her tongue and in her mouth, Andy saw what that pain could become. There was evil. There were monsters. They didn’t have to be one in the same. Andy kissed Rosa for a while more until she was gone, disappearing in his hands. He looked down and his magic knife was gone as well. He stood alone in the women’s room, exhausted and in need of processing all of this, but he didn’t stay long.
Andy turned and left and the next morning he was heading out of Mexico. He wasn’t sure what his future had waiting for him—if he would return to Kent and finish his time at the military school or continue on with his new lease on freedom—but he didn’t let the unknowns of the future slow him down. It would take him some time to fully understand the lesson La Coca wanted to teach him, and it would take some time for that lesson to come in handy, but eventually it would, and every time Andy Barclay met a monster he or she liked in the future, Andy thought of the summer of 1999 and the time he spent trying to hunt la Coca.
It changed him forever.
