There is a legend, and it varies in telling. Some say it’s 500 years old, others, less than 100. It centers on this: a woman is left by a man.
Is it Malinche, Cortez’s translator and concubine? Is it a peasant who fell in love over lies? Either way, there are children. Most say two, and most say this: The woman is deceived, destroyed, heartbroken.
The man desires the companionship and matrimony of one closer to his station, one of his own race, nationality.
Once content to confine his time with the mother of his children, the lowly status of her lineage grows troublesome to him, and their current proximity to poverty, while once poetic, romantic, intoxicating in its reality, becomes laborious, repulsive, complicated and terrifying.
Could it be catching, the squalor? If you mix yourself into that cocktail of ill-repute, can you come clean of its contents and rise to your rightful spot in society?
First, there is love.
Let’s say the couple occupies themselves in the sunshine of the world, clipping flowers that they dry by hanging upside down in front of open windows—the perfume of their drying, soporific and warm.
There is no music, but alas they are dancing.
Draped in quilts of lavender-dyed cotton, the man and woman read fairytales to their children—cautionary things that expound on the positive results of behaving with virtue, dust-flavored stories where witches drown and spoiled princes are punished.
But it’s terrifying to turn your back on your training, and in these moments the man is bungled by internal whispers that revoke his current joys and manifest self-doubt.
The man’s protocol, preached to him since birth, is this: Find a woman of strong history, pleasing form and well-postured behaviors, woo her, win her, and have her bear you children. Endow these children with your knowledge. Bless them with your name. Gift them with inheritances. And pray that your line endures strong for eternity.
To the woman chosen, this notion is lost. To her, you seek love. She can’t conceive the trepidation mounting in her husband’s heart every time her family appears dressed in tattered clothing, playing music on botched instruments with broken strings, drinking until they forget their own language.
She is prideful in the strength of her own charms. She believes the warmth of her affections are celestial-sent, predetermined by heavens. In her mind and soul, the matrimony she’s engaged in is somehow woven into the fabric of the galaxy and her husband’s eyes see beyond her flaws because love allows for every kind of forgiveness.
But, this is far from true.
When alone, wandering amongst his own kind, in the town he never invites his family to from fear of humiliation, he encounters myriad women who embody the stock he knew he was supposed to search for. Often, he curses himself for chancing upon his bride, in a world foreign to him, alive with mystery. It is this mystery he accuses, blaming the unfamiliar surroundings as the catalyst for his faulty feelings. The mother of his children is still pleasing to look at, to hold, but now that the magic of her strangeness has tapered, been undone and made homespun, a nausea at the eternity he’s promised her has mounted, made him miserable.
It is not so much a plan he hatches as a notion. He leaves himself open to the suggestion that he might still find his way. After all, their wedding did not occur in his church, under his Lord’s eyes, but rather near a river at dusk, the faint wisps of orange sunlight leaking like streaks from the horizon.
“If I am approached,” he tells himself, “I will not thwart the advances.”
In this way he deceives himself into believing that any engagement that might grow out of his openness would be fatalistic, sent by God, and who would he be to intervene?
Maybe he is sharpening a sword, maybe he is cleaning a rifle, maybe he is checking the mailbox—it all depends on when the story occurred. There is nothing definite beyond this: the man finds a more suitable lover.
On a lark, he meets a woman with money from a respectable family, and, because they are more suited to each other, they fall madly in love, and the man sets his designs on stepping away from his former family and into this new lady’s life.
He barely explains this to his wife, says merely, “I’ll not be home again,” and the wife is heartbroken.
Here the legend becomes murkier, splits in two.
Some say the wife does it immediately, some say years transpire before it’s done.
This is a possibility: the man’s new woman cannot bear him children. They try, over and over, they try, but the results are always the same—nothing happens.
The man knows, for his life’s plan to be fulfilled, that he must have children to pass his name to. The new wife knows this as well, lays in blankets weeping and watching the sunset, lighting candles and speaking with Jesus.
It is a great internal debate that twists in the man’s soul. On the one hand, he already has two children, on the other, they must stay secret or it could be his undoing.
The new wife’s depression does not abate. She stays hunkered down in misery, breaking from her woes only long enough to endeavor to conceive again. Each time becomes more wretched—mechanical sex where no one opens their eyes, and afterwards she sits in odd positions that she’s discovered in books, because these unique postures are supposed to aid with conception. They do not.
Long is the season of their sadness, and the man schemes a longshot.
He goes to the new wife in her nest of sorrow.
“Do you love me?” he asks.
“More than anything,” she tells him.
“Will you always?” he says. “No matter what?”
She becomes curious. “You know I will,” she says. “I don’t understand?”
“Promise me,” the man says. “No matter what.”
“I promise,” she says, “no matter what,” she says, “I always will.”
Then comes the confession along with the scheme, “I can go for them,” the man says, “I will bring them here,” he says, “they will be our children,” he tells her, “yours and mine.”
Joy glows in the new wife’s eyes. “What are you waiting for?” she asks, and the man goes.
Again the legend leaves us to assume. We know nothing of the specifics beyond this—the man travels to his neglected abode. Perhaps, on seeing his return, the old wife goes wild with hope, “Has he returned? Will he stay forever?”
Imagine then the pendulum of her emotion when he professes his purpose, “I’ve only come for the children.”
She breaks in the ache of those words.
Miraculously, she escapes the ex-husband, grabs up her children, flees with one in each arm.
The man gives chase.
Through brush, thorny trees, barbed grasses and crags, he pursues her to the river bank where the two were united in marriage. There, in that horrible hour, darkness of night upon them like a curse, the moon casting shadows with its pale yellow light, the woman decides that if she cannot have her children, no one can.
She looks at them, one last time. At their eyes, confused. Their cheeks tight with fear. Mouths open, panicked breathing. Children perceive everything. How could it turn to this?
Once
upon a time
cradled and sung to
now . . .
They say that drowning does not hurt, but you wouldn’t know by the scene.
The woman clinches a handful of hair, from each child, a fist of hair, and buries their faces in the river.
Wild must be the thoughts. Facedown in the water, screaming for Mommy. But Mommy is there. Mommy is holding you. Mommy is holding you down.
Breathe.
Eventually your body makes you.
Breathe.
There is no option.
It thinks it’s doing the right thing.
Pulling the brackish water deep in the lungs.
The flavor of river bottom flooding the senses.
Sometimes bad choices keep lasting forever.
Mindy’s head buzzes in the
drone. She staggers, winces, clambers to her feet.
The scream comes again, “Where are my children?” And again the world seems jolted with the wail, and Mindy’s on her knees again, her hands hotly scraped on the cement, bleeding.
From behind the counter, Tessa watches Mindy through the cracked window, sees her rise, fall.
The disturbed world shows grainy, and Tessa’s ears hiss, echo. She screams for Mindy, but can’t hear herself screaming. The sensation is she’s lost somehow, but Tessa knows just where she is. Shock hits her, her ribs shake and rattle like she’s a kicked dog in fear of being kicked again, and she doesn’t want to be alone.
She emerges from behind the counter confusedly, hoping to catch Mindy who has staggered and fallen, risen from the street several times and is now walking with fingers in her ears.
Tessa follows.
Out into the dark of night, shadowed queerly by the transformed moon, she watches Mindy moving forward in a broken gait, her motions staggering.
In the street, debris drifts. Scraps of paper, plastic bags, empty cans scatter on robust winds. Dust is heaved about giving coarse texture to each breath Tessa takes.
Tessa screams, “Mindy,” but Tessa can’t hear it, Mindy can’t hear, or doesn’t care to turn.
They continue on, Mindy in the lead, Tessa nearly crying, trying to catch up but unable to hurry her advance—both girls sort of wandering forward.
“Mindy,” Tessa says, “Mindy.”
But Mindy stays with fingers buried in ears, only removing them briefly to swipe away bits of magazine pages that blow against her.
“Mindy,” Tessa says, and this time she sort of hears it, though her own voice seems far away. “Mindy,” again, and now the words are clearer. “Mindy,” she calls, and Mindy turns.
Their stares reflect each others’ terror. Then, again, loud as destruction, “Where are my children?” And again their sense of sound is muted, hidden, but they go to each other, clutch each other in embrace, cower together in the center of the road.
Tessa sees her first.
A woman in white, her flesh unnatural, and behind her, with her, moving with mirrored steps, multitudes of craggy children dawdle, their countenances suggesting an un-deadness, withered things as though plucked from graves, made animate.
Tessa taps Mindy, makes her look, needs to know if she’s dropped off into insanity or if others perceive the horror advancing toward her.
And Mindy screams, Tessa can tell by her face, she can’t hear it, but she knows Mindy’s screaming, so she knows, that which is before her is really there. A kind of army of oddities. Pale figures in disturbed and dated clothing.
And then the woman in white is screaming again. Tessa can’t make out the words, but the words are, “Where are my children?”
Old Burt picks up the dropped guns, grabs a few more from a duffle, distributes them to Manny and Tyler, motions them to follow.
The three move through the mess of Scrape, the litter swirling, the world seemingly undone.
Down the streets they hobble, their gun barrels wandering from side to side in anticipation.
“Can you hear me?” Old Burt screams.
There are dead animals lumped about their feet, and Tyler kicks at a squirrel, says, “What killed ’em?” But no one hears it, because all their ears are ringing.
Then Manny says, “La Llorona,” because he sees the woman in white.
How did she move?
As a boy I had a toy soldier with a key in its back. When turned, the key wound gears. You would set the thing on a flat surface, and the unwinding of the key began—a tiny, machine noise preached from the critter—and it labored forward robotically.
This jerky, near inanimate ambulation, was akin to the woman’s stroll. Clipped movements tugged her forward, and the children amassed behind her followed accordingly.
Inside the sleeping bag, Teddy tries again, “Can you hear me.”
This time Scarlett answers, “Yes,” then, “me?”
“Yeah,” Teddy says.
“What is it?”
Teddy laughs, “I have no idea.”
“Should you check?”
“I’d rather not.”
Scarlett giggles. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I’ll keep you safe.”
The two are still sticky from lovemaking, but again they go at it, because they’ve nothing else to do.
Blue Parson pulls the last beer from the water and opens it. “What the fuck was that?” he asks.
Manny, Tyler and old Burt stand back to back to back, their guns aimed at the children whose blueness is repulsive.
“What the shit?” says Tyler. “What do we do?”
Old Burt shakes his head. “Was there something silly in that blunt?” he asks.
“Not besides weed,” says Tyler.
“What’d you call her again?” says Old Burt.
“La Llorona,” says Manny, “gotta be,” he spits, “I always thought it was bullshit.”
“What’s she do again?” asks Tyler.
“Nothing, I don’t think,” says Manny, “just looks for her babies,” he says, “dead ones.”
“Well she fucking-A found ’em didn’t she?” says Old Burt. Hundreds of the children wander around them, headed, seemingly, toward the bay.
Tyler sighs. “Should we shoot any of ’em?” Tyler asks.
It’s quiet a bit. All that can be heard is the daffy steps of the children passing by. One of them is picking its nose. “Well they ain’t really doing anything is they,” says Burt, “to deserve it?”
“Nah,” says Tyler, “I don’t guess.”
“I wanna shoot one,” says Manny.
“I don’t know,” says Burt, “what if they retaliate.”
“With what?” asks Manny. “They ain’t got no weapons.”
“Yeah,” says Tyler, “but there’s lots of ’em.”
The woman in white screams again, and the three wince in pain.
“Fuck,” says Old Burt, “can we shoot her?” But he’s not certain if anyone can hear. She screams again and Old Burt raises his .38. He aims at her back, pulls the trigger twice. He can’t hear it, but the pistol kicks twice, and two rounds plunge into her pale dress and black blood purges from the spots the shots sink, and thick rivers of the stuff drips from her, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
One of the dead boys walks by Burt, and Burt places the .38 to his head, fires, and his little head explodes across the shirt of the girl walking beside him—brain grit and skull splinters—and the headless boy droops to the dirt, but the boy following him reaches down, grabs his wrist, and drags him along, the dead boy’s blood leaving a trail in their wake. Other than that, they move along unbothered by it.
Burt looks at Manny, Manny looks at Tyler, they all look at each other. Burt shrugs, says, “Fuck it, they’re dead anyway,” and, yes, the murders ensue.
The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World Page 2
