Page 18 of Castle of the Cursed
I’ve already locked the door, but I keep eyeing it. I doubt a wall of wood will be enough to keep such a creature out. I need to reach Nurse Leticia. Maybe I can send her an email from the computer at the clínica. Clearly, I wasn’t ready to leave the center.
Unless there’s a reason I’m here, says the small voice in my mind that compulsively argues with me. It makes me feel like I’m always playing devil’s advocate with myself. Dad called it my instinct to challenge everything. He said it would keep me honest and make me a good investigator.
Raul’s Rule #2: A detective’s best compass is in their gut.
The phrase flies back to me, as if Dad were whispering it in my ear. I go to my duffel and dig to the bottom, until I pull out a picture frame.
Behind the glass isn’t a photograph but a handwritten list titled Raul’s Rules. They’re a dozen things my dad used to say on repeat when he was on a case.
Some of these he said so often, Mom and I would finish the sentence for him. That’s why for his thirty-fifth birthday, I picked out a sheet of pretty blue construction paper and wrote out twelve of his most popular sayings.
Whenever we landed somewhere new, he would prop that frame on a surface to designate his work area. He said he liked to keep the list close while working a case. The sight always made me proud, like I was contributing to his investigation in some small way.
I set the rules on the gold-trimmed desk by the window, and my gaze jumps up to the first one: Don’t think; FEEL.
Whenever he opened a case, Dad’s first instinct was to empathize with everyone involved—even the culprit. He insisted the best investigators were humans first, detectives second. Killers are people, too, he would say, semi-seriously.
But since my parents’ deaths, I haven’t wanted to feel. In fact, feeling is the last thing I want to do.
I keep going down the list, in hopes Dad has left me a clue what to do next.
Raul’s Rule #3: Keep an open mind.
Does that mean I should consider the black fire, the smoke, and the shadow beast could be real? I almost laugh, except there’s nothing funny about my life right now. I have no idea how to distinguish what’s fiction from what’s fact.
I need a librarian for my thoughts.
I read the next line:
Raul’s Rule #4: Keep a written record.
That’s how Dad would get started—by taking notes. He used to fill up every corner of his notepads with his scribbles. When I asked him why he wrote everything down, he said, You have a better chance of solving a puzzle if you’re holding all the pieces.
That could have been an honorary thirteenth rule.
Beatríz left me a notepad and pen on the desk, presumably for my Spanish lessons. I sit down in the hard-backed chair and skip about a quarter into the blank booklet, burying the entry so the ink will be hidden deep within the pad.
I press the pen’s point to paper, jotting today’s date in the corner. Then I fill out my timeline of unexplained occurrences:
12 years ago—survived a black fire in a purple room
7 months ago—survived black smoke and a blaze of silver on the subway; later, dreamed of a shadow beast with silver eyes
Tonight—chased by the shadow beast from my dreams
“I found us a more modern book to read,” says Felipe as soon as I step inside the store, and I follow him to the attic.
“This traces the history of Oscuro,” he says once we’re seated in the same spot as yesterday.
“By the 1700s, la Sombra’s parties were over. This is when they began keeping better records.” There are colorful page markers sticking out from the text; it’s clear Felipe reviewed and annotated the book ahead of time. He’s either a very thorough tutor or exceptionally passionate about the subject.
He opens to the first marker and reads: “De a poco, se fue formando un pueblo a la sombra del castillo.” I recognize the words sombra and castillo by now, but not the rest.
“Slowly, a town began to form in the shadow of the castle,” he translates. “Formar means form, so formando means something that is in the process of forming.”
Felipe is in full-on tutor mode. As he leafs through the book, he stops after every sentence to define the main vocabulary and review verb conjugations. After years of begging my parents to teach me Spanish, I should be grateful for the language lesson—but right now I’m more eager for information.
I need to know if there’s any chance the smoke, the black fire, and the shadow beast could be real.
