Corridor of Light through a Jewel

“You must not tell them stories like that,” Fran scolded. “The children were up all night. They were terrified. Molly threw up from the terror of what you told her. They sobbed and sobbed, and you never rose to go and look at them. I had to rock them both in my arms until four a.m. just to make them settle down. Even this morning while you were still asleep when you should have been busy looking after them, they were asking me if it was real and it was going to come for them. What would possess you to tell them of the Chupacabra?”
Esmeralda smiled. “Mrs. Paterson, every child needs a nightmare or they would not grow up.”
“Need a nightmare? Do you really believe that? Esmeralda? What, then, was your nightmare?”
“I shared it with them. I told them that after it had eaten the goats in the Sanchez’ grove next door, it would come for them. I told them about its spiny arms, its long fingers with claws at the end, how its eyes glowed like light passing through jewels, and how it made the eyes of its victims glow with the same light. That’s how it finds those it wants in the dark to tear them apart. It follows the corridors of light through their eyes.”
Mrs. Paterson was silent and turned to look out the dining room window onto a cluster of orange trees in the yard. The sun was casting threads of light through the trees just before it disappeared behind the ridges of the Sierra Madres. Hiring Esmeralda had been her husband’s idea. When they moved to Mexico, he had told his wife she needed leisure time, that servants, nannies, were affordable. He had told her that with the time he’d be spending at the shale fields she would feel lonely in a new country. She could spend her days and even her evenings working on her novel about a family that grew up in northern Alberta. Esmeralda was supposed to be a solution to so many problems.
“Esmeralda, I can’t have you telling horrible stories to the children. Cody and Molly are too young for that kind of nonsense. You have frightened them, not just last night, but night after night.”
“I tell you, Mrs. Paterson, every child needs a nightmare. It makes them grow up. It makes them understand the world.”
“And what do you understand about it, Esmeralda? I don’t want you telling my children that life is a nightmare. I want them to believe that the world is what they make it, and that it is not a box of horrors. I am afraid that you will have to seek other employment. Please pack your things tonight and leave in the morning.”
Esmeralda simply nodded and began to leave the room. “How can I prove to you that every child needs a nightmare? Nightmares, after all, are simply the reality of life revealing itself before we can learn to live with the truth.”
Mrs. Paterson said nothing as the nanny left.
The house was silent except for the sound of crickets outside the bedroom window. A large moth buzzed at the window screen, and, finding itself frustrated, flew away into the darkness. The children were asleep. It was their first night unbroken by dreams in weeks. But Mrs. Paterson could not sleep.
From the other end of the house, she heard a pained scream from Esmeralda’s room. Putting on her gown as her husband turned on the light, she could hear the children crying, and then screaming. They, too, had been awoken by the nanny’s shriek. Mrs. Paterson ran the length of the corridor to the servant’s room and switched on the light. A goat-footed thing with horns, the size of a wild perro was climbing out the window. It turned and looked at her. She realized that the children were already in the room, standing beside her. As the creature mounted the sill, it turned and smiled, and threw a glance to Esmeralda, who was lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood.
Cody hid his face in his mother’s gown, but Molly approached the body on the floor, pointed, and turned to her mother.
“Do you see, Mommy? I can grow up now.”