“I’m going to go check it out,” he told Maritza, heading for the church. Even if it wasn’t Miguel, whoever it was—a spirit or the living—might be in trouble.
“If I’m a brujo, then it’s my responsibility to help lost spirits cross over, right?” he said over his shoulder as he hoisted himself over the small fence.
Maritza didn’t look so sure, but she followed him anyway.
Yadriel searched the leaning headstones, trying to catch sight of movement, or a clue, or anything as they crept toward the old building. The tingling sensation was now a steady buzzing under his skin, like when he got phantom sensations of his phone going off in his pocket.
“This place kind of gives me the creeps,” Maritza whispered at his side, rubbing her arm. “What if it’s haunted?”
Yadriel huffed a laugh. “Of course it’s haunted, this is literally a cemetery full of spirits,” he said, trying to use sarcasm to calm his own nerves.
Maritza punched his arm. “I mean like a monster or something.”
“There’s no such thing as monsters.” Yadriel went to one of the tall windows, but, even after wiping at it with his sleeve, he still couldn’t see anything but blackness inside.
Maritza stopped and stared at him, wide-eyed. “You didn’t just say that—did you really just say that?” she demanded before throwing her arms in the air. “That’s classic start-of-a-horror-movie dialogue you just threw out into the universe!”
“Oh my God, you are so dramatic,” Yadriel told her. “I’m going to check it out,” he said, more to himself than anything. “You can wait out here alone or go inside with me,” he told Maritza.
He got all the way to the front steps of the church before he heard Maritza cuss under her breath and chase after him.
The wooden door to the church was dark and warped. Yadriel crept up the steps, barely catching himself from stepping on a long, rusty nail. He swept a few more scattered nails to the side with his shoe and noticed some boards in a stack to the left.
He tried the door handle, and it turned easily under his grip. He lifted his eyebrows at Maritza, and she scowled back. With effort, he pulled the door open. The wood groaned as it dragged over stone.
Through the doorway, darkness yawned into the depths of the church. The odors of dust, wet soil, and mildew tickled his nose. Before Yadriel could dig the lantern out of his backpack, Maritza flicked on her flashlight. Yadriel’s fingers brushed against the cool steel of his portaje and he pulled it out. The weight of it in his hand was reassuring. If there was a malevolent spirit haunting the old church, he would need his portaje to release it.
And if it was a criminal on the lam, well, it’d come in handy for that, too.
“After you, fearless brujo,” Maritza said with a grand gesture.
Yadriel cleared his throat and, with lifted chin, went inside.
The lantern doused everything in a cool blue light. The beam of Maritza’s flashlight swept back and forth between several pews that stretched toward the front of the church. When Yadriel closed the door behind them, it became oddly quiet. The heavy stone muffled the constant thrum of noise that came with living in the city.
Yadriel tried to ignore the strange pressure in his chest, like someone had tied a string to his ribs and was pulling him farther into the church.
A carpet ran down the aisle. At one point, it had probably been red, but time had turned it coppery brown. Lancet windows lined the walls, set in intricate molding. Wooden beams arched high into the apex of the ceiling where the light of the lantern couldn’t reach.
“I haven’t been here in ages,” Maritza said, her voice uncharacteristically soft as they moved between the pews.
“Me either.”
Up ahead, several glass prayer candles winked in the blue light from the altar. “Not since your mom caught us playing hide-and-seek and we got grounded for being ‘disrespectful,’” he added.
Maritza laughed fondly. “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” she said, her beam of light now focused on a door to the left of the apse. An identical one stood to the right.
“If Bahlam appears and drags us down to Xibalba, I’m going to be pissed,” Maritza hissed.
Yadriel rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure Bahlam, the jaguar god of the underworld, is hanging out in this old church, waiting for a couple of teenagers to—”
The feeling in Yadriel’s chest tugged more urgently, cutting off his words.