Mexican Ghost Tales of the Southwest

by Alfred Ávila

  While walking in the darkness, he told her, “You are Chinese, so I won’t tell people about you. They will only spread gossip and slander against me. There aren’t too many Chinese people around here, except in the fishing hamlet some distance away.”

  She walked softly behind him, hardly making any noise. He looked back at her. She glowed in the darkness, with the phosphorescent glow of breaking sea waves on a moonlit night. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him because he was drunk. He kept on walking, looking back every so often to see if she was still with him.

  Upon reaching the village, a few dogs started howling. “Strange,” he told the Chinese woman, “they usually bark and growl at me. But tonight they stay away and howl.”

  There was a saying in the village that when a dog howls at night, somebody has just died. He thought about this and laughed out loud. “Can’t be me. I’m still walking around!”

  They walked into his home. He showed her the small room that had been his wife’s bedroom. She had passed away years before, and he had been forced to live by himself. He missed her very much, but time heals the open wounds of sadness. Now, he was happy again. The Chinese woman would take care of the chores. He would be able to spend more time with his friends in the neighboring village.

  He woke up the next morning with an aching head from his hangover. He knew he had too much to drink last night. The woman … was that a dream? But the smell of pinto beans and fresh corn tortillas in the stuffy air told him otherwise. He went out to the well, washed himself, and drank a little water. It tasted so good and sweet! He walked back into the house.

  All the rooms were dark. The Chinese woman had covered the windows with thick curtains, and very little light came in. When he asked her why, she explained to him that the strong desert sunlight hurt her eyes.

  “It’s all right. I can live with it,” he said.

  He thought maybe that’s why she was so pale, that the Chinese lived this way. He told her to rest. She then left for her small room.

  He called to her, “I’ll be going to see my friends in the next village. I’ll be back late.” She didn’t answer him.

  As the weeks went by, he started to lose weight. Too much drinking, he thought, and the late hours. Every night when he came down the beach path after drinking with his friends, the woman would be waiting for him. Together they walked the path back to the house. He was usually drunk and would hum a lively country song, as the girl walked softly behind him with her baby in her arms.

  She always had that strange glow and the smell of the sea. A fisherman’s daughter, Tigre Acero mused to himself. He asked her what her name was one night, and she said her name was Li Ying, which means Pear Tree in Chinese. He laughed out loud when she mentioned her name. He laughed and laughed.

  “You should have a name like María or Luisa or Rosa,” he told her.

  She scowled at him. “You are very rude and have no manners.”

  He felt bad when she scolded him. He knew that he had ridiculed her name and had been disrespectful to her. He apologized to her for being so impolite. She slowly smiled at him, and he knew she had forgiven him.

  He grew even thinner and found it hard to get around. Even going to visit his friends was becoming difficult. He stayed home more, sitting quietly with a bottle of tequila on the table. Li Ying would scurry around the rooms dusting and cleaning. She would come over to the chair where he was sitting and stroke his hair and face very gently. He felt happy with her. But when he looked too long into her dark almond eyes, he was afraid.

  Since he was not feeling well these days and was no longer able to visit his friends, they began to visit him instead. They came in the daytime because it was easier for them to walk the beach path and they were afraid of the beach at night. They would always come over with a couple of bottles of tequila. They would open the curtains wide and let the sunlight in.

  “You shouldn’t live in the dark,” they told him, “That’s why you are becoming so pale. Pretty soon you’ll look like a gringo!”

  Whenever his friends came over, Li Ying and her baby disappeared. He did not find this too strange, thinking perhaps she was bashful and fearful of his rustic friends. She would always come back at night. The dogs would howl when she arrived. She told Tigre Acero it was because they smelled a stranger; she was not of Mexican-Indian stock like the rest of the people.

  His health continued to get worse. He remained in bed more and more. She had to help him get up. He hobbled around with a stick as a cane. His skin was getting paler and ghostly. His eyes were beginning to protrude from his sunken face. His friends would drop by more often, and Li Ying would disappear with her baby more often. He never told anyone about her, not even his friends.

  He used to go to the market to buy his food. Now a local woman from the market had to deliver his foodstuffs. She did not like to remain in the house. Something frightened her. She did not understand what it was, but she didn’t discuss it with him. When people came to the house, they could also sense something strange. But they couldn’t see Li Ying, so no one knew of her presence in Acero’s house. Only the dogs knew. Only Tigre Acero could see her. He was a bewitched man.

  He had grown fond of Li Ying and even loved her, though he would never admit it. With the passing of days and months, he knew he needed her more. He looked forward to seeing her return in the evening, especially now that his health was failing.

  One morning, a very good friend of his named Cruz came by to see him. He had heard that Old Man Acero was very sick and probably would not last another month. Maybe it was tuberculosis.

  “I’m going to bring the healer, to see you,” Cruz said. “She should have come hee a long time ago; then you wouldn’t be so sick.”

  After Cruz left, Acero could hear Li Ying softly singing a Chinese song to her baby. The tune sounded very peculiar to his ears, and it caused him to shake from some unknown fear. He had never heard her sing before. To him, it sounded like a funeral chant.

  Finally, his friend Cruz arrived with Amalia, the curandera or healer. Amalia was a short heavy woman with sharp Indian features. As soon as she walked into the room, she stopped and stood still for a long time.

  “Something is very wrong! I sense a powerful evil presence here,” she said, “I can’t do much for your friend.” Her words stopped cold. She trembled and ran out of the door of the house, a look of horror was on her face. She looked back as if a demon were chasing her. She kept on running. For an old fat woman she moved fast, as if in fear for her life.

  Cruz was surprised by her actions. “She’s a fraud! Nothing but a fraud! And she calls herself a healer!” Acero looked at him with disappointment.

  “Don’t worry, my friend,” Cruz said, “I have another idea. I’ll be back later. Don’t worry. I’ll be back!”

  Li Ying came out of her room and sat beside the old man in bed.

  “Where have you been?” he asked her.

  “I was in my room,” she said, “with my baby.” She looked at him with a twisted smile on her lips. Her black almond eyes were gazing at him fiercely. He had never seen that look before. He felt so helpless and scared.

  Later that afternoon, his friend Cruz arrived. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, “but I had to go by boat to a village and pick up a healer who knows herbs and medications. His name is Mr. Tong. He is from the Chinese fishing village down the coast.”

  As soon as Mr. Tong walked in, a strange thing happened to Old Man Acero. He started to shake and tremble and began to cry.

  “Why do you look so startled, Mr. Acero? Why are you shaking so much? Why do you fear me?” Mr. Tong placed his hand on Acero’s chest and Acero fainted. Mr. Tong looked around slowly, like a cat sensing a mouse. He could feel the evil in the house, but he was not afraid.

  The Buddhist talisman he wore on his chest would protect him. It was a yellow strip of paper with Sanskrit characters written on it in red ink. Mr. Tong was not only a healer, but also an exorcist. He was a very
respected man in the community, a scholar of the ancient schools that have long since disappeared on the Chinese mainland.

  “Who lives here with you?” Mr. Tong asked the old man when he recovered from his faint.

  Acero hesitated, then said in a weak voice, “A young Chinese woman and her baby.” Tears were coming from his eyes.

  “Where did she come from, and what is her name?”

  “She said her name was Li Ying. I met her about a year ago on the beach at Seal Rocks one night coming home.” Acero told Mr. Tong the whole story of their meeting.

  Mr. Tong looked at Mr. Acero and said, “You are in great mortal danger! I do not have time to explain. Mr. Cruz will remain here with you tonight.”

  Mr. Tong pulled out yellow sheets of paper from his bag, a bottle of red ink, and a brush. He started to write Sanskrit characters on the papers. He then pasted these sheets of paper on the doorways and windows with glue he had hastily made from rice flour.

  “She cannot return as long as the placards remain where they are,” he explained to Cruz. “There is an ancient Chinese belief that there are two spirits, or souls, inside a human. There is a higher spirit and a lower spirit. When a person dies, the higher spirit leaves the body and the lower spirit remains until the body begins to decompose. Then the lower spirit leaves the body and returns back to its origin to be reborn again with the higher spirit.”

  “Sometimes, for reasons unknown, the lower spirit remains in the body and does not want to depart this earth. The lower spirit becomes an evil vampire that will prey on humans, slowly draining their life force and killing them. This is what is happening to your friend,” said Mr. Tong.

  “The Chinese woman fits the description of Li Ying, who drowned about ten years ago. Her body and that of her baby were lost in stormy seas. Look after your friend, Mr. Cruz. I will go to Seal Rocks. Li Ying’s ghost can not harm me. The Lord Buddha will help me put her miserable spirit to rest.” That ended the conversation as he walked away with his lantern glowing and swinging in the darkness of the night.

  Meanwhile, Li Ying had returned to the house. She was surprised to find that she could not get close to the entrance because it was covered with the holy placards that Mr. Tong had glued to the doors and windows. They blocked her path.

  She cried out to Acero, “Please! Please! Let me come in!” Cruz was frightened and remembered what Mr. Tong had said about her being a vampire. Li Ying’s baby started to wail.

  “Please, if you love me, remove those papers from the door and let me in.” Acero made a desperate effort to get up, but Cruz held him down. Acero could not stand to hear her sad, mournful pleas.

  Then there was quiet. Only the howling of the village dogs could be heard. She had disappeared as Acero lay in bed crying and Cruz watched over him.

  As Tong moved closer to the beach, Li Ying appeared with her baby in the shadow of a tree. He said to her, “I have come to release you from this earth. You should never have remained. So tell me, where is your body?”

  “I will not tell you!” she screamed at him, baring her huge fangs, “I will destroy you first. I will not leave this earth!” She made a move as if to lunge at him. But she suddenly noticed his talisman and backed away swiftly.

  “You must go,” he told her, “In your present state you are a demon doing evil. This must come to an end! I will remain here until dawn. I think I know where your bones are!” He pulled out a string of Buddhist prayer beads and commenced to pray the sutras.

  She screamed at him and pleaded, “I don’t want to go. Have mercy on me and my baby! Please! Please! You must let me exist. I must exist! I will stop you!”

  “No,” he said, “You must leave this earth and go on to your next fate, to be reborn again in the cosmos.” He would no longer listen to her and continued to pray in a low voice.

  Li Ying cried all night, cradling her baby. In the early dawn, she faded away into the air, still crying very sadly in heart-rendering sobs. She knew that she had lost the battle.

  As soon as she had disappeared, Mr. Tong stopped praying and started to walk down the beach toward Seal Rocks. He walked over to the rocks in the low morning tide, climbed up on them, and started to search.

  He went over to a large crevice in the rocks. There he found the remains of Li Ying and her baby, their skeletons bleached by the sun, broken up a little, but still intact. The crevice had protected the bones from being scattered by breaking waves. Mr. Tong worked his way down into the crevice and stood there saying a Buddhist prayer for the dead. Then gently, one by one, he placed the bones in a small bag that he had brought with him. He gathered all the bones, then he headed back to Acero’s house. It had been a long night for him and he was tired, but the job was not done yet.

  He stopped to talk with the Cruz family and with Acero. After refreshing himself with food and drink, he bid them farewell. Old Man Acero would survive to live many more years. He would miss Li Ying, even after he found out that she was draining him of life.

  Mr. Tong returned back to his village, and everybody was happy that he had found the remains of Li Ying and her baby. He never mentioned to anyone how he had managed to find their bones or under what circumstances. That was a secret he would take to his grave. A funeral was held for the remains, then they were cremated. Mr. Tong had insisted upon the cremation. He knew that this was the only way to force the lower spirits to leave the bodies and go back to the cosmos.

  The people in the village talked about Mr. Acero’s miraculous recovery, but they never learned what had really taken place. But even if they had known, they would not have believed it. The villagers said he walked around muttering to himself. Maybe his excessive drinking messed up his brain, they would say. But only he knew the secret of the Chinese Woman of the Sea.

  LA LLORONA OF THE MOON

  LA LLORONA OF THE MOON

  It was a quiet night with a full moon gliding across a glittering star-studded sky. A warm wind was blowing. Michela was awake, sitting up on her bed and looking at the stars. They seemed to her like shiny gems suspended from strings in the sky. She did not feel like sleeping because of an argument she had had with her mother about cleaning the ashes out of their woodburning adobe oven.

  “Bad girls are punished for being disrespectful to their parents and their elders,” said her mother.

  Michela laughed. “I don’t care, and I don’t believe in your Indian gods. They’re only idols that don’t move or speak. I’m not afraid of old foolishness.”

  Her mother looked at her in alarm, tears in her eyes. She told her daughter, “The gods of your ancestors will never forgive you for desecrating their images with vile words!”

  Michela ran out of the house, climbed a huge pile of rocks, and sat in the shade of the largest boulder where she grabbed a stick and tormented a lizard lying in a crevice away from the hot desert sun. She sat there alone, looking back at the house, wishing she could escape her hard life in the desert.

  Her father had left for the United States to earn a few more pesos, but he never returned home again. She had asked her mother about her father.

  “Why doesn’t he come back?”

  Her mother always told her, “He will return one of these days.”

  After a few months she quit asking and gave up on him. She had a feeling that she would probably never see him again, that he was gone forever.

  The evening with its red-orange colored sky approached fast. Michela, who had fallen asleep on top of the cold rock, awoke startled. It was time to go back to the house and eat. She jumped off the rock and started walking toward the house, kicking up sand with her bare feet. She saw her mother cooking by the kitchen window. The strong smell of pinto beans and corn tortillas made her tummy growl from hunger.

  Nothing was said when Michela sat down on the mat to eat with her mother. She was ashamed of the things she had said earlier that day. She felt the steady gaze of the Indian idols from their niche on the far wall. Her mother had lit a candle at their feet.
The flickering light made the idols look like they were moving and pointing at her. She felt a shiver of fear run down her spine.

  After eating their meager meal, her mother went to the doorway and waited for Uncle Edmundo to arrive. He came once a week on horseback, leading a burro loaded with sacks of beans and corn. That was the only way Michela and her mother survived in the desert.

  Edmundo tried to get his sister to move in with him and his wife, but she refused, saying her husband might return some day and that when that happened, he would not find them home.

  “That accursed man is not going to return,” her brother told her.

  “Don’t talk bad of my husband, little brother,” she cautioned him softly.

  That evening, after putting the sacks on the kitchen floor, Edmundo got ready to leave.

  “Be careful going home!” his sister told him. “It’s a full moon. It’s the night of the La Llorona of the Moon!”

  It was a local superstition that on the first night of the full moon the Wailing Woman was allowed to escape her bonds from the rivers and go gather all the evil souls that she could find—like thieves, murderers, bad children, and other types of horrible people. She carried her harvest down deep into the inner core of the earth where eternal fires burned and the unfortunate were placed in flaming pits to await their gruesome fate. There the ancient Indian gods, angered because they had been forgotten, would sacrifice the foolish mortals as in the days of old. Thus, the gods would be satisfied and the sun would continue to rise over the land.

  Michela thought of her mother’s words, “Bad girls are punished!” Those words made her uneasy as she sat in a dark corner of the room. Her tired mother was sleeping soundly in the other room. She could hear her labored breathing.

  Then Michela saw it! In the eerie triangle that the moonlight cast on the adobe-block floor, a mist was forming. A tall thin woman materialized, pointing her finger at Michela. Michela was frozen with fright, unable to scream. Tears welled in her eyes.