The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias

Author:Gabino Iglesias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

“That’s enough of that shit. Let’s get moving. Look at the corner,” Juanca said, pointing at the floor. Unlike the rest of the house, which had ash-colored tiles, the kitchen had laminate flooring. On the floor, bunched up against the corner, was what looked like a white ball of braided nylon twine. I bent over to pick it up.

“You want to wrap it around your hand so it won’t slip,” said Juanca. “When you have a solid grip let me know. We’re gonna go toward the fridge. Pull hard. The wood panels are heavy. When we pull, the floor is gonna lift. When it’s almost straight, we have to grab it and bring it down on this side of the kitchen carefully, got it?”

I nodded while wrapping the twine around my right hand.

Juanca moved back a bit and we pulled, but nothing happened. I stopped pulling.

“Sigue jalando, cabrón. No te rajes.”

I pulled again, harder this time. After a second, something gave and the floor started moving up. There were about a six feet of floor coming up. It was like watching the kitchen bend in on itself. It got heavy. We pulled harder. I dug my feet in and leaned back. My arms felt the strain. The twine bit into my flesh. The floor kept rising. The piece we were lifting was about eight by six feet but weighed more than I thought it would.

When the piece of flooring became vertical, Juanca jumped forward.

“Grab it, grab it!” he said.

I moved to it, my hands up. Juanca pulled a tad more and gravity took over. The floor smacked against my palms, heavy and solid.

“Okay, now bring it down slowly.”

We scooted back. Right in the middle of the dirt patch we’d uncovered was a large, dark hole about three feet in diameter.

“Is that…is that the tunnel?” asked Brian.

“No, pendejo, that’s the entrance to the underworld,” said Juanca. “El Chamuco is waiting for us. Come on.”

The hole looked about as inviting as an angry bull.

Juanca pulled out his cell phone and turned on its flashlight. The light coming from the phone illuminated a rusty ladder on one side of the hole.

“I’ll go first. When we get down there, there’s a box with flashlights. We’ll each grab one and leave it at the other end.”

“How deep is that thing?” asked Brian, his face contorted like he’d just seen maggots writhing on a pile of roadkill.

“About fifty feet,” said Juanca.

“Fifty feet? You have a hole in your kitchen that goes fifty feet into the ground? That’s impressive, man, not gonna lie.”

“Nah, this is minor stuff. Only reason we had to go that deep is because of the river and some of the construction. Other tunnels that were less deep collapsed or would get flooded when we got heavy rain. This one is small but it gets the job done. The one we’re gonna use to come back? Yeah, that one is impressive. You’ll see. Now let’s get going.”

Juanca sat down on the floor, his legs dangling into the darkness.

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