A Tucson Halloween tale

Of witches and chupacabras

David, Pablo and Francisco we’re almost too old for Halloween.

In the village of San Augustin the three little boys were known to be as full of salsa as their bags were full of Halloween candy. David bragged to his friends, “Nothing can scare me anymore.”

Francisco shouted, “Boo!” and David jumped and dropped his bag of candy and everyone laughed and scrambled after David’s candy which had spilled onto the ground. “Pendejo!”

When Pablo bent down to grab some spilled candy for himself he noticed something missing. “Hey, hold on. I must have dropped my own bag of candy. Back there in the arroyo.” Pablo jumped up and turned and ran off into the darkness behind us. Back in the direction of Llarona’s wash. The people of San Augustin said the beast lived there. The candy was good but not that good.

David, the older boy, shouted at Pablo. “Don’t go back there. You can have mine.” David heard the stories. Pablo ran back for his candy anyway. Francisco looked terrified, “We should go find him. God will not forgive us.” So the two followed Pablo’s footprints back to the wash. Francisco froze. “There’s a baby crying! Can you hear it?”

I didn’t want to die. “I don’t hear any baby, Francisco. Where’s Pablo? Let’s turn around. Let’s go get our parents! ”

“There. Down there in the arroyo. I hear a baby crying.”

The boys clutched their bags of Halloween candies. Francisco, saying his prayers, tiptoed down into the wash and into the dense bramble of mesquite and creosote. David heard “the baby”, too, but he stayed in the open on the dirt path, peering into the dark where one friend had vanished and now another. He was alone. A coyote howled and he jumped. He heard sounds like javelina running. He shouted into the dark, “Are you in there, Francisco?”

Francisco sounded like he was a million miles away. “I saw a chupacabra running!”

“What?”

“It’s stolen a baby!” And then silence. “Are you guy’s in there?” Nothing. More silence. “Francisco. Pablo! Come on guys. Let’s get out of here.”

Something was running out of the arroyo bramble towards David. He dropped his bag of candy and ran for his life. He wasn’t going to be victim number three.

Little David found himself out of breath, and out of Halloween candy, in San Augustin’s cemetery on the steps of the home of the groundskeeper for the village’s graveyard. Catching his breath, David saw families were beginning to appear with candles. David’s parents rest here. He comes often. And later this night he was going to share a picnic of cookies atop his mother and father’s simple white slab with a candle he’d been saving for weeks. “Maria y Paco Flores. 1810-1843. Familia para siempre.” The marigolds looked beautiful tonight when he told Carlos, the kind old groundskeeper, what happened to his two friends and Carlos explained as he rang the village’s bell, "It was Llarona, little one. We have to warn the villagers and find your friends."

"What?"

"Llarona. She refuses to die. Many have seen her.”

“Have you?”

“I saw Llarona.”

“She’s real?”

“ Crucified on a saguaro by Apaches. When I was no higher than a tumbleweed. Damned if she isn't back kidnapping our children again.”

David said, "They heard a baby !"

“That was no baby. The chupacabra makes sounds like a baby to lure children into the dark where it catches them and carries them off into the darkness. As a gift, for Llarona.”

Carlos called together some villagers and together they marched by torchlight to the dirt path down to the wash. The orange moon rose over the jagged mountains in the distance that looked like the bottom of a jack-o-lantern’s smile. By torchlight Carlos and a handful of villageers followed the footprints of the chupacabra deep into the mesquite forest. Little David was the first to see his friends. “There they are! Tied like goats to a dead Ironwood tree!”

"I see them” said Carlos. .

"Look. There she is. Llarona! And the chupacabra!”

Llarona growled and hissed at them as she swirled like smoke into position between her catch and the villagers. Her eyes glowed red.

“Kill them,” she snarled. The chupacabra charged at them, frightening the villagers and the boys. But not the old cemetery keeper who stood his ground. The old cemetery keeper knew just what to do. He fell to his knees, threw a candy at her feet and prayed a prayer he had heard many priests say over many a casket. “ Look with favor, we pray, O Lord, on the offerings we make for the soul of your servant, that, being cleansed by heavenly remedies, her soul may be ever alive and blessed in your glory.” He crossed himself, kissed his crucifix and winked at the beast. The chupacabra turned to vapor. The witch howled in anger like a wounded bobcat.

The villagers surrounded the witch. Their torches held her back. Carlos took out his pocket knife and untied the two boys from the ironwood tree. Llarona hissed, stretched out her hand and flexed her bony fingers at Carlos. “Curse you, old man!” From out of the mesquites tarantulas rained down on Carlos. He fell back and begged for help. “Get them off me, mother of God, get them off me!”

David, had kept tarantulas as pets. He fearlessly plucked them off of Carlos. “Be still old man. Be still.“

For years when David claimed he talked to the animals no one ever believed him. The villagers just laughed. David began hooing like an owl and screech owls came and he barked at the moon like a coyote and everyone could hear the yipping pack of coyotes running towards them.

Llarona just looked at Little David. ”Have you gone mad, boy? Has your brain turned to pumpkin mash? I’ll make empanadas out of all of you!”

Owls landed in her hair and began ripping it out with their talons. Llarona screamed, “Get these beasts out of my hair!”

When the pack of coyotes appeared there were jackrabbits with them and the jackrabbits and coyotes ran circles around the old witch in the sandy wash. No one was laughing at David’s claim that he talked to Gila Monsters and tortoises and Kangaroo rats now. And the jackrabbits and coyotes ran faster and faster until they turned her into a dust devil that spun and spun and corkscrewed up into the stars and vanished forever.

The people cheered.

Every year when the Day of the Dead came David, Pablo and Francisco would visit their friend, the cemetery groundskeeper, Carlos, at the village cemetery, decorated for All Soul’s day, crowded with villagers visiting their dead ones, candles lit, treats everywhere and musicians serenading everyone. Together, David, his friends and their friend Carlos light candles, put marigolds on the gravestones, and give candy to children.

And at the height of “Dia de los Muertos” it is David's job to invite the owls to hoo, the coyotes to howl and the jackrabbits to dance in the moonlight with the living and the dead.

Have a safe Halloween.