Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
No me llores,
porque si lloras
yo peno,
en cambio si tu cantas yo siempre vivo,
y nunca muero.
Don’t mourn me,
if you cry for me I grieve your pain, instead if you sing to me I’ll always live, and my spirit will never die.
“LA MARTINIANA,” A MEXICAN FOLK SONG
ONE
Yadriel wasn’t technically trespassing because he’d lived in the cemetery his whole life. But breaking into the church was definitely crossing the moral-ambiguity line.
Still, if he was going to finally prove he was a brujo, he had to perform the rite in front of Lady Death.
And she was waiting for him inside the church.
The black Hydro Flask full of chicken blood thumped against Yadriel’s hip as he snuck past his family’s small house at the front of the cemetery. The rest of the supplies for the ceremony were tucked away inside his backpack. He and his cousin Maritza ducked under the front windows, careful not to bump their heads on the sills. Silhouettes of the brujx celebrating inside danced across the curtains. Their laughter and the sound of music filtered through the graveyard. Yadriel paused, crouching in the shadows to check the coast was clear before he jumped from the porch and took off. Maritza followed close behind, her footsteps echoing in tandem with Yadriel’s as they ran down stone paths and through puddles.
Yadriel’s heart fluttered in his chest, fingers brushing along the wet brick of a columbaria wall as he watched for any signs of the brujos on graveyard duty tonight. Patrolling the cemetery to make sure none of the spirits of the dead were causing trouble was part of the men’s responsibilities. Spirits turning maligno were few and far between, so the brujos’ rounds mostly consisted of making sure outsiders hadn’t snuck beyond the walls, keeping the graves clear of weeds, and general maintenance.
Hearing a guitar being played up ahead, Yadriel ducked behind a sarcophagus, dragging Maritza down with him. Peeking around the corner, he saw Felipe Mendez lounging against a tombstone, playing his vihuela and singing along. Felipe was a more recent resident of the brujx cemetery. The day of his death, barely over a week ago, was carved into the headstone beside him.
Brujx didn’t need to see a spirit to know one was nearby. The men and women in their community could sense it, like a chill in the air or an itch at the back of their mind. It was one of their inherent powers, given to them by their Lady. The powers of life and death: the ability to sense illness and injury in the living, and to see and communicate with the dead.
Of course, this ability wasn’t very useful in a cemetery full of spirits. Instead of a sudden chill, wandering through the brujx cemetery left a constant icy tickle on Yadriel’s neck.
In the dark, he could barely spot the transparent quality of Felipe’s body. Felipe’s fingers moved in a ghostly blur as they plucked at the strings of his vihuela—it was his tether, the material possession most important to him, that kept him anchored to the land of the living. Felipe wasn’t ready to be released to the afterlife quite yet.
He spent most of his time in the graveyard playing his music and drawing the attention of the brujas, both of the living and the dead variety. His girlfriend, Claribel, always chased them off, and the two spent hours together in the cemetery, as if death had never parted them to begin with.
Yadriel rolled his eyes. It was all very dramatic, if you asked him. It’d be nice if Felipe could pass on already, then Yadriel could get a good night’s rest without being woken up by Felipe and Claribel’s bickering or, worse, his terrible renditions of “Wonderwall.”
But the brujx didn’t like forcing a spirit to cross over. As long as the spirits were peaceful and hadn’t turned maligno, the brujos left them alone. But no spirit could stay forever. Eventually, they would become violent, twisted versions of themselves. Being trapped between the land of the living and the land of the dead wore on a spirit, chipping away at their humanity. The parts that made them human eventually faded away until the brujos had no choice but to sever the connection to their tether and release them to the afterlife.
Yadriel motioned for Maritza to follow him down a side path so Felipe wouldn’t see them. When the coast was clear, he tugged on the sleeve of Maritza’s shirt and gave her a nod. He sprinted forward, weaving between statues of angels and saints, careful to not snag his backpack on their outstretched fingers. There were aboveground sarcophagi and some mausoleums large enough to fit an entire family. He’d walked these paths hundreds of times and could navigate the maze of graves in his sleep.
He had to stop again when they came upon the spirits of two young girls playing tag. They chased each other, dark curls and matching dresses billowing out around them. They giggled madly as they ran straight through the small birdhouse-like tombs that held cremated remains. The tombs were hand-painted in bright colors and stood in crowded rows of golden yellow, sunburst orange, sky blue, and seafoam green. Glass doors revealed clay urns inside.
Yadriel bounced on the balls of his feet as he and Maritza hid. Seeing the spirits of two dead girls running around a cemetery would probably freak most people out, but little Nina and Rosa were nefarious for other reasons. They were both huge tattletales who couldn’t be trusted to not rat him out to his dad. If they got dirt on you, they held it over your head and subjected you to torture the likes of which you’d never seen.