Castro The Haunting of Alejandra

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80336-563-3
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

The story of a woman haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona as she unravels the dark secrets of her family history in this ravishing and provocative horror novel from the author of Goddess of Filth. Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. But Alejandra is struggling and times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, a crying woman in a ragged white gown. When Alejandra begins exploring her family's history, she learns that tragedy is not the only thing she shares with her ancestors. Because the crying woman was with them, too...

V. Castro is a Mexican American writer from San Antonio, Texas now residing in the UK. As a full-time mother she dedicates her time to her family and writing Latinx narratives in horror, speculative fiction, and science fiction. Her most recent releases include The Queen of the Cicadas from Flame Tree Press and Goddess of Filth from Creature Publishing. Connect with Violet via Instagram and Twitter @vlatinalondon or www.vcastrostories.com

Autoren/Hrsg.

Castro, V.

Leseproben

ATZI

MEXICO—1522

Atzi sat in her single-room hut in the thick stranglehold of humidity after the rainstorm and thought of death.

Death was the only escape from the curse of being a branded and conquered woman, as Atzi was. She was a thing they used and ridiculed. They called her brown skin inferior and savage. Yet they lusted after it, and her. Not even the goddesses carved in stone were safe from desecration. The great temple in Tenochtitlán had been recently destroyed to make way for a new god, who offered eternal salvation if only you surrendered every part of yourself.

It occurred to her that generations upon generations would suffer. She thought of their stories. Their voices. Their histories, all up in flames. All of it, unwanted. It was after their defeat at the hands of the conquistadors that the real nightmare had begun for her people, especially for the women and girls who had to submit to these strange men. Atzi knew she carried the seed of the invader inside of her. It made her very soul sick. Never mind the disease they had also spread, wiping out thousands like an invisible sword sweeping across the land.

As she thought of it, she swayed between vomiting and outbursts of sobs, the seething hate never leaving the front of her skull. Nothing could quell the aches from her captor forcefully taking her sexually whenever the mood struck him. His assaults had landed daily. Soon she began to feel an aversion to the aroma of cooking meat, followed by nausea: the first signs she carried the foreign invader’s child.

The man might as well have been a demon. All of them were demons: They had arrived in a horde, in waves of conquest and exploration and destruction, all done in the name of their king and god. Unfortunately, the disease that killed her people had somehow passed over her. By some unforeseen stroke of luck, her firstborn daughter, Yaretzi, remained safe. Yaretzi had fled with Atzi’s sister and grandfather as far away as possible, though Atzi wondered if any place could be safe forever from the new world being created by the invaders who had arrived with a cross in one hand and sword in the other. The conquered would be cut down with one or the other if they did not submit.

“Go!” Atzi had told her family. “I will offer myself to one of them to buy you some time. Just flee and hide. What other choice do we have?” They reacted at first with collective shock that soon turned to anguish.

No one could ever stop Atzi from the time she was a child from doing whatever she set her mind to. It had taken the end of their world as they knew it to steal her inner light. Atzi and Yaretzi embraced each other tightly, hoping they would always remember each other even beyond death. Atzi breathed in Yaretzi’s unwashed hair, remembering her small infant head cradled in her neck soon after her birth. She whispered to her daughter without looking her in the eye, “Live your life the best you can. Don’t forget me. Don’t forget your importance.”

Her surviving family members all knew the fate that awaited Atzi. Her grandfather could not look at her. His sagging brown eyes betrayed his sense of shame at being beyond the age to fight. They had been abandoned by the gods, who could offer no hope. They had to create their own hope.

With her family gone, this new reality had become too much to take. Atzi decided to take her own life using the small brown seeds of the ololiuqui. In small doses they created visions, but she had heard that if you took enough, death would welcome you home. She could rid herself of the conquistador’s seed, but no herb could prevent him from planting another. Death was the only sure escape. Atzi took the ololiuqui seeds into her mouth and swallowed. She lay on her mat waiting to travel to another world. Their bitter taste lingered in the back of her mouth. It seemed fitting for the fate that awaited her and everyone here. A rustling in the corner of the hut disturbed her meditation. Heavy breath that smelled like the head of a newborn filled the room. Was she dead? The seeds couldn’t have worked that fast.

A grayish-white figure floated across the dirt floor like smoke rising from burning corpses. It had to be a vision from the seeds. Atzi shook her head and blinked. She was thirsty, so thirsty she could empty a cenote. Perhaps she should have jumped into one instead.

“You have two inside of you. I want them.”

Atzi managed to turn her head toward the voice. “What are you? A deathbed vision?”

“I am very real. I want those souls inside of you. Their tender flesh will be delicious. I can smell your malice and pain. I find it pleasing.”

Atzi’s head lolled. Nausea threatened, but she had to keep the seeds down. Let them work their lethal magic.

“Go away. Let me die in peace. I have endured being ravaged. I have endured seeing my people slaughtered. Please . . .”

“I want to make a deal.”

Atzi willed herself to look at the smoky figure again. “What?”

“You have another daughter already grown, nearly time for her to bleed. I promise she will be safe and escape all this unspeakable horror of conquest. She will live a long, healthy life, ensuring your bloodline continues.”

Atzi raised her chin. A seed of hope, something she’d thought was nearly dead, gave her a spurt of energy as the hallucinogenic plant began to work. “Show me you are real.”

The shadow morphed, taking the shape of a human with translucent skin that glowed white like a full moon, or a cluster of stars. Each vertebra was calcified to a sharp, bony barb. The figure blew an iridescent gaseous dust into her face, giving Atzi a vision of her daughter as a grown woman living in a village near a river. Her sister washed clothing in the water next to her. Atzi managed a smile with both joy and despair, knowing she would not see it with her own eyes.

But if this demon could save her child, perhaps it could also take vengeance on her behalf. Her contempt rose like the impending doom of a solar eclipse. It filled the emotional craters created by her assaulter. So many scars at the hands of these invaders claiming what was never theirs to take. Let this creature devour them. “Let us make a deal. When I die, take the souls of these demon seeds that were forced upon me. Kill the man who did this to me . . . He has a leather horsewhip. Let him feel the sting. Make it slow. Extract every tear he took from me. From all of us. Take his family and save my daughter.”

The creature let out a wicked cackle. “It will be done . . . for a price. You ask for much. As I have these souls, and yours, I also want your blood and tears to be bound to me. Your seeds forever mine. I will take them now, then you will take yourself to the sacrificial cenote and cast yourself inside. As asked, I will bring catastrophe upon the house of your tormentor. More to fill my belly and time.”

Atzi’s eyes no longer retained any light. The seeds made her feel dizzy. Saliva involuntarily escaped from the corners of her mouth. She growled while heaving, “Yes, curse their houses. If our children can’t be safe, then neither can theirs.” With a final scream she pounded on the dirt floor with both fists. Never again would she see her beloved daughter. This thing might not keep its promise. It didn’t matter. Atzi had nothing to lose. Women with nothing to lose are dangerous. “I accept.”

The form hovered over her with its belly quivering from hunger, ready to consume this energetic meal. It placed its mouth over her left eye and began to inhale with the force of a hurricane wind. Blood and salt jetted into its mouth. Quasar-bright eyes widened as it gorged itself on her pain. Clots floated in midair from Atzi’s open mouth until it bit down and swallowed the fetuses whole. It coughed a spray of blood onto her left arm, singeing the skin with a sharp heat. Atzi cried out as she looked at the wound. From her wrist to nearly her elbow, dark-brown spots marked her skin.

A starlit sky of a birthmark. Generations of souls, she imagined. A sky full of lives.

“Rise,” it whispered. “Your freedom awaits.”

Atzi pulled herself off the floor half alive, the emptiness of her womb bringing a sense of relief. From the small wood chest where she kept her clothing she removed a clean white huipil and matching skirt that fell to midcalf. Fresh clothing before sacrificing herself. She walked sluggishly through the village she would not miss because she no longer recognized her people’s lives.

From the edge of the village, she walked another half hour to the closest cenote. Every step forced more tears to stream from her eyes. Snot ran across her lips like rippling saltwater on sand. Vines of blood streaked her legs. As heavy as her legs felt, there was a lightness in every step of kicked-up dirt.

Her daughter would live and be saved from this fate. She smiled as she neared the hole in the ground that led to other worlds, the world of her gods. If only she could die in childbirth and be given a warrior’s welcome. Their beliefs. But what was done was done. Soon, she could be at peace. Just before reaching the cenote, she stopped. Her heart pumped frantically. This was the end. Courage, she told herself as she continued to move forward with the...