The dogs started going missing when I was in third grade.
First it was Mr. Muñez’s Chihuahua. He’d let it out in the backyard before bed and when he went to check on Paco, the dog had vanished. There were no missing links in the gate and no holes where Paco could have squirmed through. Poof, gone. Just like that.
The only trace left was a splatter of warm blood smeared on the dried grass leaves.
Every night, another dog would vanish. No one understood what was happening. No matter what we did to protect our dogs, something would find its way into our yards, our garages, our houses.
“It was only a matter of time before it followed us to the States,” my abuela said. The town took her words as a warning. She spoke of the monster’s appetite. How dog blood would not be enough to satiate its hunger; it preferred larger meals. Mostly, she was ignored like the crazed man on San Pablo, his sign reading: The End is Near. During the day she slept, leaving me to take care of myself. At night, she’d rock back and forth on her chair, smoking cigarettes and watching the streets like a brown gargoyle.
In the mornings, I’d wake up and check on her.
She mumbled about my mother a lot, dreaming of times before she died.
Sometimes I waited and listened, eager to hear my mother’s name spoken in such a soft way. Other times I couldn’t stand the sound of it.
I’d shake her arm and brush the cigarette ash off her lap. Her thighs were hard and sharp with age. “Abuela,” I’d say, “I need to get ready for school.”
She’d make me breakfast, dress me, and walk me to the bus stop, her eyes always scanning, looking for the beast.
The kids at school made fun of her. “Carlos,” they’d say, “your abuela es loco en la cabesa.”
I wouldn’t say anything back.
My abuelo was the one who picked me up from the bus stop after school. When we got home, Abuela was usually asleep, snoring loudly. I’d eat some cereal or a banana and then my abuelo would take me to the fields where we collected figs. The sun beat down on my head and my hair was drenched in sweat from hard work. The kids from school skated past or biked through the fields, and they’d yell at me until I turned red.
When we were done for the day, we carried the basket of mushy, fleshy figs together and poured it onto a scale. My abuelo’s boss paid us based on the weight. All the money went towards our mortgage and grocery bills.
We’d go home and Abuela would have dinner ready. My abuela was always yawning and stretching her back. We ate in silence as the sun sank into the Earth and the moon rose from the dirt. Huevos and frijoles, tortillas on the side. I did my homework while my abuela brewed dark coffee, the aroma of hazelnut and dirt sweet in the air. She hugged me and kissed the back of my head before she stationed herself outside on the rocker. When my homework was finished, I’d join her and she’d tell me stories of her homeland.
It was a month after Paco had been taken that Santiago Torres went missing. A kidnapping, his parents told the news cameras. Their little boy had been kidnapped while walking home from soccer practice.
My abuela thought differently.
Everyone in Pinedale gathered at Saint Agnes Church that night with flashlights and walkie-talkies ready. We were to radio the police if we saw any suspicious cars or people. Kids were allowed to search too but needed an adult with them. My abuela cautioned everyone to be careful; the beast came out at night.
“Do not be so insensitive,” Father Rubio said, much to the approval of the crowd. “It does not help to spout such tales.” His accent was thick, but my abuela claimed he didn’t know how to speak Spanish, said she never heard him utter a lick of it.
I walked next to my abuela, calling out Santiago’s name. Even though I didn’t care for him and the other bullies in school, I didn’t want him to be hurt or lost.
“No use,” my abuela said. “He’s gone by now.”
Mrs. Goldfield found a pool of blood on Elm Drive along with Santiago’s gym bag. There wasn’t another search party for him after that.
When I came home from school the day after the search party, I found my abuela in the front yard, hammering nails into thick pieces of slatted planks.
“What is that?” I asked, letting my backpack drop on the lawn. I hugged her meaty leg. Her perfume smelled of dead roses.
“A trap,” she said. It was a box like animal control used when they captured skunks and raccoons. The edges were bulky wood and the bars were made from what looked like palm tree leaves. There was a large hatch in the center the size of my torso.
“Woah,” I said with excitement. “Will that catch the monster?” I picked up the hammer and let its weight drag my arm down.
She took the hammer from me and grunted. “It should, but I’ll send your abuelo to the store for more supplies after work.”
Jacob Scott skated by on his longboard, the skitch-skitch of his wheels growing louder as he neared. He peered over the metal fence and squinted.
I wanted to melt into the grass but instead, I waved. He didn’t wave back. He snickered and propelled himself away. Before he was completely out of sight, he turned and yelled, “Wetback!”
My abuela coughed into her shirt and demanded, “Go get me some tissue, Carlos.”
I went inside and asked my abuelo to take out the Kleenex box. I had to get ready for work.
Abuela told me about her journey across the border.
They hired a coyote to bring them. My mom was only two at the time. There were many days without water and even more without food. She didn’t know how long it took to get here, but it had felt like an eternity.
My uncle Samuel was taken—kidnapped, I guess you could say—when they crossed the border. One of the coyotes took him as payment. My abuela fought for him, but she was threatened at knife point. The man told her to walk away with most of her family, they could take more if they wanted.
She didn’t see Samuel again.
Abuela kept chicken gizzards and pork fat on the lawn.
Flies nested in the lard and the occasional stray cat licked at the stubby bones. The house reeked of death, but my abuela wouldn’t listen when I asked her to stop.
“It’s bait, mijo,” she explained and then went back to scanning the streets as though there was something there.
Three more kids in seven days. A curfew was put into place and everyone had to be in their homes by six.
Abuela continued to rock on the front porch, yelling at every person who walked by to hurry home. She checked the cage daily, grumbling to herself, guilty after each death as if she had killed them herself.
Her brother died when she was ten. He was three.
He’d wandered from their hut into the dewy green fields among the goats and the chickens. His body was found in the morning, his neck bent, the grass stained with blood in the shape of a halo. All the goats were drained to a pulpy sludge.
They buried him in the yard. My abuela told me it was the palest she’d ever seen a person. His veins were blue and bulging out of his skin. His eyes were wide open, but he looked straight through her to the heavens.
My mom wasn’t supposed to die. At least that’s what my abuela said. “It’s your father’s fault she’s gone.”
I tried to tell her it wasn’t, but she hissed and smacked her lips.
“Always a white man’s fault,” she said, taking a long drag from her cigarette.
“Abuela—”
“He was the one driving, wasn’t he? Drunk off his ass.”
I didn’t say anything for the rest of the night.
Before my abuela crossed the border, my abuelo found another woman in the States.
He went to work under the Bracero program and sent money back to the family along with a letter detailing his life in California.
He was supposed to return in six months, but his last letter explained he’d found a lover and he wasn’t coming back to Mexico.
My abuela gathered her children and paid the coyote to lead them to Fresno. That didn’t go as planned, but Abuela was resilient. When she found my abuelo, she forced him to marry her and take care of the kids.
Sometimes I find my abuelo crying into his beer, the tears salty on my lips when I kiss him goodnight.
Two weeks later and ten kids in total were gone. All after-school activities were canceled and no one was allowed out of their homes once the sun began to sink into the horizon. Father Rubio visited every house nightly, splashing holy water on the front lawns and doors.
My abuela told him it was useless; the beast didn’t care about getting wet. It wasn’t a demon or a devil, but one of God’s creations. Father Rubio blessed the house anyway, making sure to flick me with water before leaving.
As he walked away to the next house, he glared up into our palm tree and shook his head solemnly. He was looking at the trap. “All good that’s doing.”
My abuela repeated the same words and told him to never come back.
My abuelo used to stop by the liquor store after work on Fridays. He’d buy a six-pack of Bud Light and a box of de la Rosas for me. My pay for a week’s hard work.
When we got home, Abuela would scold him and make him pour the beer in the sink.
“Don’t let me catch you bringing home that crap again, José,” she said with fire coming out of her mouth.
My abuelo got sneaky after that. He started to drink in the truck on our way home. At every stop sign, he chugged the cold beer. He looked like he was in pain. He tossed the empty bottles into the junkyard before we headed home.
One night, when the moon was full and the wind was calm, I woke to my abuela’s large, round eyes glaring at me. She had shaken me out of my dreams, her nails sharp on my arm.
“What is it, Abuela?” I mumbled, my eyes still heavy from sleep.
She placed a wrinkled finger over her lips and motioned for me to follow.
In my pajamas, I tiptoed with her through the living room and out the front door. The porch light was on. She stood in the middle of the spotlight, pointing at the street.
“Abuela,” I started but then stopped when I noticed movement in the yard. In the box, now on the floor, a creature scratched at the palm tree leaves, whimpering.
The beast looked like a dog, but larger and with scales instead of fur. Long needles lined its neck like a mane. It looked at us, panting, clear slime spilling from its gums. Its teeth were sharp and tiny. Its nose was pushed back like a pig’s. The tail was smooth, a snake’s elegant shape. It hissed and then whined.
“What is it?” I asked. I took a step forward but then thought better of it.
“A memory from home,” Abuela said. She hobbled off the porch, motioning for me to keep behind her.
It was dark, but because of the porch light, I was able to see everything. My abuela kneeled in the wet grass, her bones creaking and snapping and popping. She hovered her hands, blackened from the shadows, over the trap. The creature sniffed the air.
I watched in amazement and smiled at how pure this monster seemed. But then I remembered that close to a dozen children were missing. Its teeth, like a cone of fangs, had munched my classmates until there was nothing left. “Should we call the police?” I asked. “Or kill it?”
“Neither,” my abuela said. She lifted the cage off the creature.
I had a friend in first grade who was bullied a lot. Niko.
He wore thick, plastic glasses that were attached with a magnet at the brow. I got in trouble one day because I punched a boy who threatened to beat Niko up if he didn’t hand over his Pokémon cards. I was suspended for three days.
When my abuela drove me home from the parent-teacher meeting, she smiled and told me I wasn’t in trouble.
I was elated, but also confused. “Why not, Abuela?”
She said, “Because you are loyal and brave. Those are not things we should be punished for.”
I leaped back. The creature scratched its ear with one of its hind legs. It watched my abuela with its dark, beady eyes.
My abuela clicked her tongue and reached toward the beast. Her fingers were still, unlike any other time when they wavered without a cigarette in between them.
“No,” I started, but she raised her other hand in a fist.
The creature sniffed her hand, then, with a quick spin, it fluttered onto the street, its tail wagging like a dog’s.
“Carlos, grab the flashlight under my chair.” My abuela cocked her head to the porch. “Hurry now, it won’t wait long.”
The urgency in her voice made me follow her orders without question. I found the flashlight easily and handed it to her. “Let’s go then,” she said.
And we followed the beast.
I was always told to stay away from the junkyard.
Lots of the boys at school liked to sneak in and hang out there, sharing a cigarette or a bottle of clear rum stolen from their parent’s purses and cabinets. Everyone knew about it, but no one did anything to stop them. Abuela told me that if she ever saw me there or heard that I was there, she’d smack me so hard that skin would peel off my face.
The junkyard was at the end of Reed Avenue. Mr. Cortez owned it. Half the time he was high and or drunk. Needles littered the front entrance, which he always kept open, and if you ever saw him roaming the yard, he usually had a thin line of blood trickling from his arm.
His place was half a mile from our house and sometimes we’d wake to find Mr. Cortez passed out in our backyard. Abuela would send him off with some tamales and tell him he needed to be better.
He never listened.
The junkyard loomed in front of us. The bright LEDs were on, but the lights in Mr. Cortez’s trailer were off.
The road was dirt and with each step, a cloud of dust formed at our feet. I could see the creature’s faint, goat-like hoofprints.
Everything in my body was telling me to return home, to run, and never look back. Hide in the living room and pray for my abuela to return safely. But she kept pushing me forward, the flashlight trembling in my hand. She spoke soft words into my ear, reassuring me that everything was okay, she was in control, this was all part of the plan.
Flattened cars piled on top of each other lined the road like a corn maze. Heaps of trash: old refrigerators, babies’ clothing, and crinkled grocery store bags were scattered randomly. Why anyone would want to hang out here was beyond me. And the smell. Like the meat my abuela left out in the yard.
All was quiet. I could hear my heart beating.
We turned a corner, the crushed cars surrounding us, and I almost dropped the light. Just ahead, the ground opened like a gaping hole. It was a gradual descent into nothingness, a cave formed by unnatural means. I trained my flashlight on it and found the creature crawling inside.
My abuela urged me forward, but I looked up at her and said, “No. Please, Abuela.”
She smiled warmly and said, “Trust me, Carlos. We must go.”
I couldn’t get out of bed for months after Mom and Dad had died.
I was asleep with my eyes open. Whenever I tried to move my arms or legs, they’d feel like the blood had been drained from them.
My abuela took care of me. She fed me soft foods so it didn’t hurt when I chewed. She cleaned the sheets without a word when I soiled them after a bad nightmare. She loved me when I thought no one in the world did.
Years later as I look back on that night, the night the beast came to get me, I often wonder how she did it. All of it. Without her own blood being drained.
The cave seemed to go on forever. It led down. My calves began to hurt five minutes after entering. It stunk of death and copper. Bile rose in my throat and I had to swallow to get rid of the sensation. I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt collar.
“Keep the light on it, mijo,” my abuela said. The ceiling was tall enough so she didn’t have to stoop, but she was starting to slow down, tired from the trek.
The cave opened to a large space with corners even my flashlight couldn’t reach. In the center of this large space, a mountain of carcasses touched the top of the cave, twenty feet high. Mutilated dogs piled on each other, their tongues lolling like gray worms. Small, big, Chihuahua, German Shepard. Some I recognized, others I didn’t. Their bones bulged through the skin and flies feasted on their decaying, translucent flesh. At the bottom of the mountain, Santiago Torres, along with a dozen other children, lay lifeless. Their skin was pale and the veins glowed through an unnatural black. Their faces were contorted, their necks bent in awkward, impossible positions. I screamed and turned to run, but my abuela held me still. “Shh, mijo. Shh, it’s okay.” She approached the children, knelt on her knees, and began to pray. I couldn’t hear much, but I saw her convulsing, the sound of her sobs echoing in the cave.
When she was done, she wiped her cheeks and sniffed. “Okay, mijo, let’s—”
Suddenly, there was a snarl to my left. I moved the light towards the noise.
Three creatures crept toward us, their teeth bared.
When my parents died, Abuela told me that memories were God’s greatest and most torturous gifts. I didn’t know what she meant back then, but I do now.
“Hey!” my abuela barked.
The creatures paused, looked at each other, and then bowed slowly. Two of them were large and muscular, their scales multilayered and dark. The one in the middle, the creature we had caught, was smaller and more energetic, its body shifting in its skin.
My abuela clicked her tongue and smacked her lips, approaching the beasts with arms spread apart. She looked back at me. “Carlos, come.”
I shook my head. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be far from here. I wanted to be with my abuelo and my mom and my dad.
“Carlos, come here,” she demanded. I walked to her side. The creatures had not moved. Their tongues slumped out of their mouths, that clear slimy liquid dripping from their jaws.
“Carlos. I have told you of my brother.”
I said nothing. The beasts looked up at me. They saw me, knew me. Understood.
“But I have not told you everything.”
Once there was a little girl who everyone in the village pitied because she had lost her brother to the beasts.
“Pobre chica,” they gossiped on the streets. “Pobre chica solitaria.”
They called the girl strange and different. They told her parents they should have her looked at by the doctors. But her parents were too busy mourning to remember they had a daughter in the first place.
She waited in the fields where her brother was sucked dry, every morning and evening. She watched the grass sway from left to right. She held a sharp stick she whittled to a point. Waiting, waiting for her revenge.
Six months passed and no sign of them. That’s when she had the idea to lure them with chicken livers and goat blood. She laid out her sacrifice and waited in the tall grass, gripping her weapon so tight that her knuckles burned white.
Just when the sun touched the Earth’s skin, she saw a creature, green and black and brown, crawl towards the meat, licking its lips, its eyes enlarged and sweaty. It had begun to feast when she leaped out of the grass and struck it with her spear. The point drove deep into its hind leg. The girl pulled the spear free. Blood sputtered from the gaping wound. The creature stared at her with pleading eyes. The girl lifted her weapon to strike the final blow but stopped when the beast began to whimper.
“Eres una bebe,” she whispered.
She dropped to her knees and tore a piece of her shirt off. She applied pressure to the pup’s leg. Two creatures approached from within the tall grass. The girl gasped but held the cloth still. The creatures licked the baby’s head and when the girl moved aside, afraid, they licked its wounds. The blood stopped flowing and the creature yapped happily.
Its parents, for who else could they be, sniffed the girl’s feet, then howled softly at the moon. They started away, but then the baby, half the size of the slimmer adults, barked. The parents looked back and the girl swore they nodded.
She stood and followed them further into the plains.
My abuela stroked the small one’s mane as she finished her story. Its eyes were squinted and its nose was scrunched. The folds of its ears were hairy. It looked at me the way a baby looks at a bottle.
The flashlight sat undisturbed in the middle of the room. A dull light domed from its tip.
“Abuela,” I said. “They killed the kids.”
“Yes.” She set the small creature aside. It scurried to its parents. “I know. And I am terribly sorry for their death.”
“We need to tell someone.” I choked. The stench was dissipating and that scared me. Getting used to the smell of decay was not a normal response.
“No. We cannot. They will kill them or they will display them as freaks and use them for money until there is nothing left and then they will kill them.” My abuela frowned. “Carlos, this is not their home. They are in a foreign land. We must take care of them now that they are here.”
“What?” My chest tightened. The muscles in my arms felt heavy and tense.
“It is our duty—”
“Why is it our duty?” I backed up towards the mouth of the cave.
She shrugged, a slight frown on her lips, “Because someone will exploit them and no one else will take responsibility.”
“Abuela, they’re monsters.”
“No.” She rose effortlessly. Her body seemed to spring up like it was lighter, younger. “They are lost.”
The baby creature paddled to me, the skitch-scratch of his claws rapped calmly on the floor. Its eyes glowed green like moss and its tongue, moist and slippery, was coated in the viscous clear saliva.
“They know you are mine,” my abuela said. She grabbed the baby and hoisted him so that we were face to face. “They know you are lost too.”
I cautiously reached out and let its hair curl around my fingers. It was coarse like wire, but also warm and comforting.
“I was mad at them.” My abuela handed the pup to me, grabbed the flashlight, and started toward the exit. “I was mad at them for killing my brother. But I soon understood. As will you.” The other creatures followed without looking back. “For months, I swore I’d kill them the minute I could. But an untamed beast is not an evil one, Carlos.”
The fur was harsh on my skin. I wanted to let go of the creature. To drop it on its head and then kick its ribs for every child it murdered. But then it blinked, then yawned. Then, in the crook of my arm, it fell asleep.
I followed my abuela, the guiding light. The mountain of corpses disappeared behind me. The creature snored peacefully.
A couple of boys found the bodies a week after we did.
There were ten funerals that weekend, each with coffins four feet in length. I went to everyone, thankful that the caskets were closed. No one should see what it looks like to have all the blood drained from a child.
When their parents cried, they screamed their names. They had to be carried out of the
church because they had no energy left.
We kept them in the house. My abuelo didn’t like them, not one bit. When my abuela told him he could leave if he wanted to, he grumbled and shut up.
It was our little secret. My abuela taught me how to tame the creatures. We trained them to eat raw beef and pork. The little one I named CJ. He slept with me, his needle-like fur quickly became a soothing pillow I couldn’t sleep without. They didn’t drink from us, or any other human for that matter.
As I grew older, the creatures did not.
“They do not age the same as us,” my abuela explained one foggy morning in November. They sat with her, next to the rocking chair. Abuela moved it to the backyard where my abuelo had built a tall fence, one that the creatures couldn’t break through. “By the time you are fifty, Carlos, CJ will be an adult and no longer a pup.”
“How come?” I asked, rubbing the back of CJ’s back, careful not to stick myself.
“It’s the blood.”
Once there was a little girl who everyone in the village avoided because she walked through town smelling of fish and fur.
Rumor had it that she spent her time with the chupacabra, the very same who devoured her brother. When the village leader questioned her about the beast’s whereabouts, she remained silent and feigned ignorance.
Her parents, eager to find the creatures and slay them, asked her why she kept them safe, why she let her brother’s murderers live freely and be able to commit the act again.
She simply replied, “They will not because I am taking care of them now.”
When she died, not long after we tamed them, the older two died with her. She said it would happen like that. The attachment was too close to sever.
Once there was a little girl who everyone in the village feared because she was the one who controlled monsters.
Rumor had it she drank with them, bloodshot eyes and full lips proved it.
Her parents died from broken hearts. The hole which their children filled now empty. They disintegrated into the earth. The little girl did not cry at the funeral. They long ago stopped being her parents.
She continued to tame the beasts, teaching them it was not right to drink from children. She hunted goats for them, horses, rats, anything with warm blood. They drank greedily, but with gratitude.
There came a time about four weeks after their meeting when all the animals in the village were sucked dry. The little girl could not even find a mouse in the streets or a cat in the alley or a dog chained to a tree. The village suspected it was her doing but were too afraid to intervene. They did not want their kids to be next.
When the little girl had no more to give, she cried and told them to leave somewhere with an abundance of prey. But they must not eat the children. Never eat the children. The beasts stayed one more night with her and left by dawn. She awoke alone, cold from the morning wind.
CJ stays with me in the house my grandparents left us. He’s a good partner to have, for a man who the villagers call a fucking beaner. There are rumors that the man in the ugliest home on the street has an alligator for a pet. Or maybe a dog. Or maybe a combination of the two.
The world changes every year and I remain the same. The village becomes whiter. The shops are renovated and the homes are built larger. They offer me thousands to sell my house. But I don’t have it in me to leave. All my memories are here.
One day, a man in white overalls knocks on the door. I’ve seen him lurking around the property, a catch pole in his hands, whistling as if he was searching for a lost dog. CJ barks in the way that sounds more like a croak.
The man barges in and sees CJ lying on the sofa. “Animal control. I have—”
Before he can say another word, I let go of CJ’s collar and whistle a tune my abuela had taught me long ago. CJ attacks the man in the white overalls before he can turn around to run. CJ drags him further into the living room and I close the door shut.
“Bears. Dogs. Cats. Rats. They all do it.
“When faced with certain starvation, an animal will do whatever it can to survive, and that includes humans, Carlos. We will take what isn’t ours, and we will kill if anyone gets in our way. When you get down to it, every single one of God’s creations has two impulses. And that’s to survive.” She swallowed and let out a shaky breath.
“What’s the other?” I asked.
“What’s that, mijo?” She opened her eyes. She lay weak in bed, tumors sprouting in her lungs and breasts. Those same tumors, small and unassuming back when the children went missing, were what had brought the beasts back to her. They sensed there wasn’t much time left. They sensed her impending death and like a pilgrimage, they traveled across the lands to pay their respects.
“What’s the other impulse?”
“Oh.” She tried her best to smile. “To protect the family that they have.”
