by Kenya Wright
Hard, thick Spanish exploded out of his grandma’s mouth. She jerked her hands around and stabbed the air with her long fingernails. The people never stopped circling. They continued to move around the massive fire. I looked to the house. Servants peeked out of the windows at the entertaining site of nude chanting as well as Alvarez and his grandma’s arguing.
“Welcome to my world,” Hex said behind me.
I almost jumped. “Do they do this all the time?”
“My brother and grandma’s arguing, or her fellow witches rebuking the family curse?”
“I was talking about the arguing, but I think I would rather hear about this family curse.”
Alvarez and his grandma moved toward her cottage--or more likely, Alvarez guided her that way as she continued to scream at him in words I couldn’t understand.
“You two have been gone for a long time. Where did you go?” Hex raised his eyebrows.
“To the beach. Alvarez was upset about his mom and assistant.”
“He shouldn’t have been. They didn’t do it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Our family is cursed.”
“How?”
“How much has Al told you about our mom--or who he likes to now call Dayanara?”
“He hasn’t said much.”
Sticking his thumb in his mouth, Hex gestured to his studio. “Then let’s go over there. I’m sure you’ll want a drink after I tell you this.”
We walked toward his studio, putting the fire and craziness behind us.
“My mom was always crazy. Al tries to convince me that it was my dad who made her that way, but it’s not true. I think that maybe Al’s father kept our mother’s mental episodes away from him. Once Al’s dad died, she lost it, and started practicing corazón muerto, but she didn’t have my grandma in the states to guide her on the right way to serve their gods. Instead, she spent her free time around the wrong practitioners, evil ones. My dad belonged to that group, and later they married.”
We arrived at the door. He held it open for me.
“Okay, so this curse has something to do with your mother and father?” I asked.
“Yes. My dad feared death. I mean everybody does, but he was obsessed with the possibility that no afterlife would be there for him. That it would all just end with darkness. So he searched for spells to make him immortal.”
“That’s insane. There’s nothing out there that can make you immortal.”
“Anything is possible, Elle. Anything. If enough is sacrificed.” Hex stepped over to a small black cabinet behind his biggest sculptures, opened it to reveal a few bottles of red wine, and pulled them out. “Forgive me. We’ll have to drink these from paper cups. Like I said, I usually don’t drink a lot because it’s hard for me to stop once I start.”
“Cups are fine.”
He grabbed two from the sink, filled them, and handed mine to me. “My father found one spell that involved killing many people.”
“Excuse me?” I froze right there with my cup right next to my lips. “Are you telling me that your father killed a lot of people?”
“Yes. My mom and dad did it together.” He moved my cup to my lips. “You may want to drink for the rest of the stuff I have to tell you.”
“Good idea.” I took a huge gulp.
“When Al was home, they hadn’t even found the spell yet. Not that Dad would have done it around him. Al and Dad argued all the time. Al thought he was an evil bastard. Dad just never accepted Al as his own kid. Plus, he beat him and Mom whenever Al did anything wrong. For whatever reason, Dad never touched me. Once Al got older, bigger, and way taller than Dad, the beatings stopped, but there was always this huge tension in the house whenever they argued, like if they were to go after each other, one of them wouldn’t be alive in the end.”
“You really think it was that bad?”
“Al or Dad would have killed each other if they’d had the chance. I have no doubt about that.” Hex poured some more wine in my cup, even though I wasn’t finished. “So once Al left for the navy, things changed a whole lot. Dad found a curse to make him immortal and it was all he talked about to my mom. I would sneak and put my head next to their bedroom to listen to their conversations. The spell called for several sacrifices to their gods. Donalito is kind of the head god. He is the creator of the universe where all of the other gods and goddesses live. So my dad tells my mom that Donalito demanded ten female hearts on a night of a full moon in order to gift them with immortality. So a good year after Al left my dad and mom searched the city, kidnapped ten different women, young and old. And when the full moon came, they killed them all one by one in front of me, right under the moonlight.”
“Ten?” The wine went down hard. My fingers trembled at the very thought of someone killing that many people so brutally. “They killed ten people?”
“Yes. My dad did most of it. Once he started my mom tried to stop him several times, but he locked her up in the bathroom.”
“But she helped him kidnap them?”
“Yeah.” He poured himself another glass. “But when it came down to the actual killing part she couldn’t do it. And she hated the fact that he wanted me to witness the spell so that one day I could do it for myself. She hated having me involved in anyway.”
I finished my cup. “Could you pour me another one?”
“Sure.” He did. That time he filled my cup all the way to the rim. “When they first kidnapped the women, I would sneak them food and water. Dad kept them locked in this big metal shed behind the house. We lived far out in the Redlands where our closest neighbor was several miles away and nothing but farmland could hear their screams. At the back of the shed was a crack that was big enough to fit my hand through. Every day I would spend hours sawing at that crack and trying to make it bigger so they could escape.”
“Oh my god.”
“I would bring them water and food, just slip whatever I could and then start the sawing again. It was so scary. Dad worked as a truck driver for a beer distributor. Since I went to school all day, I would only have an hour or so to saw that crack before he came home.”
“Did your mom know you were doing it?”
“Yes. At least I think so. She had to know. She was sitting in the house while I did it. But she never said anything to me or Dad. By then she was no longer sleeping or speaking in comprehensible sentences. Dad didn’t want anyone to know how bad Mom was so when my grandma or Al called, I said Mom was sick and just talked to them myself. To keep me quiet about it to my school officials, Dad said he would kill Mom. I never doubted him and did what I was told.”
“Except when it came to trying to free the girls?”
“Yes. If they got free, I figured I would leave the saw there so he would think that one of them gotten it somehow and did it themselves. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but it was the best I had at sixteen. But I never got to save them.”
My heart broke for Hex. His eyes watered and he turned away from me. “Dad killed them all that night, right in front of me. And when he was done, he made me drag their dead bodies into the shed one by one. When I dragged the last body into the shed, someone pushed me forward and locked me in. I thought it was Dad at the time, but later the cops told Al it was my mom. She’d broken the bathroom window, climbed out of it, got a gun, and snuck outside.”
“She killed him?”
“Yes. That’s why Al calls her Dayanara. It means husband slayer in Spanish.”
“That’s a really sick thing to call her, with everything that’s happened and all of what you’ve been through.”
“Al is not the sanest man, either. He and Grandma use the name to honor her, but it just sends her further down the crazy path. Like I said, she isn’t that sane either. None of us are, which brings me to the curse.
“When Mom killed Dad she didn’t bind the spell to the earth. She didn’t do anything, but walk back into the house and call the cops.”
“She left you inside the shed
?” I asked.
“Yes. The cops freed me. But that’s not what’s important. When doing any complex magic one must open the door to the gods and close the door when they are done. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try my best.” He set his cup down. “In corazón muerto the person uses the four elements to open the lines of communication to the gods. Burning herbs that the particular god likes would take care of the elements fire and earth. Liquor is spit into the flames, which represents water and the smoke from the fire serves as the element of air.”
“That’s what your grandma and friends are doing outside now, with the huge bonfire and spitting the liquid into it?”
“Yes. The blood covering them is there to protect them from the gods’ power. Sacrificial blood is armor for them.”
“I don’t understand why that would protect them.”
“It’s one of the first laws. When the protective shields of our world are pulled down so that humans can talk to the gods, they run the risk of having a god pull them back into their existence. However, Donalito created the universe for only the gods and the earth for only the humans. He only allows communication between the two when it is in a way to honor him. Sacrificial blood is an honor to him, and therefore the gods can’t touch anyone who gives respect to Donalito.”
“Alrighty. I’m going to need another cup.”
“I told you.” He poured me some more and did the same for himself.
“That night Dad used the first woman’s blood as the sacrificial armor and then opened the lines of communication with the elements. The gods came through to see my dad’s honoring of Donalito with all the deaths of the women. Grandma says many of them would have been jealous that Donalito got so many sacrifices.”
“But isn’t Donalito sort of the head god? At least that’s what it sounds like, since he made the universe.”
“No. There isn’t truly a head god in this religion. Donalito was just lucky enough to invent a place for all of them to live as well as form the earth and grow humans for their entertainment. It was just the nature of his power that makes him so important to practitioners of the religion. He’s sort of the operator for all communications, but in no way is he the most powerful.”
“If they’re so powerful, why would they even want to communicate with us?”
“Gods can do anything but live on earth and experience the things that humans do. They’re a bit envious of us at times. When we talk to them, they’re able to slide inside of our bodies and experience our memories for themselves. Once they do this, they tend to grant the human a wish. Grandma says the trick is to get your wish and then close the line of communication so that the god doesn’t try to suck up all of your memories and experiences, because the drain would kill the average human.”
“So that night, your mom didn’t close the lines of communication and something may have gotten through?”
“Exactly.”
“What do you think about all of this?”
“That they’re all crazy and that there weren’t any gods there that night. I was there. It was only bad things and evil. But according to Grandma, when Mom killed Dad, she never closed the lines of communication. She was supposed to say some sort of chant, pour the liquor over the fire and other things. But she didn’t, and some of the gods remained on earth for a while. Grandma says Donalito had to come down and bring them back, and due to that, he cursed our family.”
I tossed him a skeptical glance. “Cursed your family?”
“Everywhere we move the earth turns gray and barren. Cancer has hit and taken out ten women in my family, mainly aunts and cousins. Grandma does huge sacrifices to Donalito so that we’ll be back in his favor, but every year Donalito does something new and it always comes in ten. Even worse, Grandma isn’t sure Dad’s spirit ever truly left our realm. With the gods walking about on earth around his spirit, she thinks Dad may have made a bargain with the gods to remain, some sort of promise to do their bidding.”
“So you believe this?”
“I don’t know. When Grandma sees things, they come true. She saw the deaths of these girls. Al said it wouldn’t happen. He hid the first girl from me. The one he saw right before you came to work for me. Brenda was a good friend of mine. I painted her many times and she helped me learn about video cameras. Al had Reece tell me she flew away. I even emailed her to see how she was, but never heard anything back.”
Instead of acknowledging that I’d hid it too, I sipped my drink.
“For Patricia, Al told me she died from some weird asthma attack. Deep down inside I knew it was bullshit, but I chose to believe it so that I could do my art the next morning. However, once Reece and Mom were carted off by the cops, I was confused and ran to his office to ask what happened. I didn’t find Al. Instead, I found three dead girls strung from the ceiling.”
I held my hand to my chest. “Three girls were killed tonight? Do you think Reece did—”
“No. There was no way Reece could’ve done it. She flew off somewhere to get a file for Al. This was the gods.”
I shook my head. “The gods? Come on, Hex. This is ridiculous. Somebody is out here killing girls. This isn’t the gods. This is some sicko hurting people.”
“I’m not so sure. There was a message written under the girls’ bodies in blood. It said, ‘Hello, son. I’m back.’”
Chapter 22
Alvarez
“It said, ‘Hello, son. I’m back.’” Grandma came out of the kitchen fully dressed. “There’s no way Reece could’ve done that. And neither Dayanara, she had that sneaky investigator watching her the whole time. So who did it?”
Three women were killed tonight? I’ll have to call their families and notify them.
I rubbed my temples. “I don’t know who did it, Grandma.”
“Donalito did it! That’s who! I told you he would not stop, and even worse he’s allowed that sick man to come back and terrorize us.”
I sighed. “You think Snyder has returned as some powerful evil spirit?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, like I’m some crazy woman who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. If you don’t believe me, then look at the security video. I saw it and your Detective White saw it, too. He almost messed his pants, he was so scared. Those girls’ bodies slid into the room on their own and rose into the air by themselves. No one else was around.”
“I’ll have to see this for myself.”
“And then will you get me the hearts?”
For fuck’s sake! It always comes back to body parts.
“I’ll make a call to the coroner.”
“I need them fresh!”
“Yes, Grandma.”
“That’s the only way to appease Donalito until I find something to deal with Snyder’s return. You know Dayanara tried to tell me.” Grandma moved around the kitchen fast, grabbing pots and putting them back where they were as well as opening the fridge and then closing it. Her hands shook the whole time as she moved her gaze from side to side. “Dayanara kept mumbling that he was coming, but I wouldn’t listen. Once again I ignored my sweet daughter. I’m always ignoring her and then so many die from my mistakes. I have the vision, but never get the visions in time to do anything about it.”
“Grandma, calm down.”
“Five girls now.” She took spoons out and laid them in stacks on top of each other. “Five girls. There will be five more innocent little girls who haven’t even lived half as much as my life. That’s not right, Al. That’s wrong and unfair.”
“Grandma, come here.”
She shifted to laying forks in weird little piles. “Everywhere we go, the soil dies right under our feet. Our poor family is smaller and smaller. Our women are either sterile or dying from illness. What Snyder and Dayanara did was wrong, and now we all have to pay for it.”
I went to my grandma, stopped her fork-piling, turned her around, and wrapped my arms around her small frame. “Grandma, this isn’t your fault. This is no one’s fault. In fact, t
his isn’t the gods. This is some crazy person on our property, trying to hurt us.”
“If only that were true.”
“It is.”
“No. Five more will die. I already saw that tonight. It’s why I called in more support. They’ll be here to help me spread more well-wishes to the gods. We think we’ve found a spell that can lift the curse. I’ll need the hearts and other things.”
“I’m not comfortable with more people being on this property. I need fewer—”
“I won’t be ignored anymore. Besides, you’re busy. I can smell orange blossoms all over you.” She leaned back and looked into my eyes. “I knew something was odd when my oldest grandson bought a bunch of candles and lit them, when he’s never lit or enjoyed a candle in his life. You got those candles because of that new girl, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but let’s not get off topic—”
“You like her?”
“Yes. Maybe even more.”
“She’s the light in your darkness,” Grandma said.
“Yes. She is.”
“There’s a bad man coming for her. Do you know that?”
I tensed. There were times when I pretended to ignore my grandma’s visions and then there were moments when I listened wholeheartedly. In the end, I never disregarded what she said. I didn’t practice this weird religion of hers, but it could never be denied that when Grandma claimed something was going to happen, it tended to be a fifty-fifty chance that it would. “When you first saw her you said that a bad man was coming. Do you still see him?”
“Give me the hand you’ve touched her with tonight.” She extended hers.
I’d touched Elle everywhere and with almost every part of me, but I didn’t tell Grandma that. I offered my right hand to her. “Here.”
That white film spread over her eyes and concealed her brown pupils. Humming left her lips. A cold thickness seeped into me like tiny icicles digging into my skin. “Oh yes. Ellie, he’s screaming. Ellie. Ellie. Over and over again.”
“What does he look like?”
“He has black hair like yours but longer. He’s white and wild. He’s painting right now. I see her on the canvas.”
