The Haunting of Alejandra E-Book

V. Castro

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 396

Beschreibung

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…

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Alejandra

Atzi

Alejandra

Cathy

Alejandra

Alejandra and Matthew

Frances

Alejandra and Melanie

Melanie

Alejandra

Cathy

Alejandra and Cathy

Cathy and Alejandra

Flor

Alejandra and Cathy

La Llorona: The Woman

Epilogue

About the Author

“A powerful story about motherhood, trauma, love, and the ways myths can and should be rewritten… If you’re a horror fan and you haven’t picked up V. Castro, you need to fix that.”

SARAH LANGAN, AUTHOR OF GOOD NEIGHBOURS

“Sometimes, being a woman can be hell. In V. Castro’s dark, heroic tale, a woman draws on her familial roots to save herself and her children—by facing down a soul-devouring demon.”

ALMA KATSU, AUTHOR OF THE FERVOR

“V. Castro has been a great horror writer in the indie horror scene for years, and this novel marks her arrival at the big leagues and hopefully will turn many new readers on to her work.”

GABINO IGLESIAS, LOCUS MAGAZINE

“V. Castro charts a terrifying legacy of tears with The Haunting of Alejandra, an empathic epic that maps out the birth of a curse and tethers itself to the very ancestry of its tragic protagonist.”

CLAY MCLEOD CHAPMAN, AUTHOR OF GHOST EATERS

“The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro is a much-needed gem in the horror genre. It's an intricate tale that blends together folklore, grief, and revenge to create horrifying images that are sure to be etched into the imaginations of readers for years to come. Whether you know the story of La Llorona or not, this novel is a must-read.”

SERGIO GOMEZ, AUTHOR OF CAMP SLAUGHTER

"Utterly terrifying and wholly immersive, this novel will wow readers with its confident and unflinching tale of a woman reclaiming her power."

LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW

“[A] warm, empathetic story of domestic and generational terror… one of the best horror novels of 2023 so far.”

PASTE MAGAZINE

“The provocative novel is haunting and packed with dark secrets.”

TODAY

“Creepy yet insightful.”

CULTURESS

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The Haunting of Alejandra

Print edition ISBN: 9781803365619

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803365633

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: October 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © V. Castro 2023.

Published by arrangement with Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Dedicated to my beautiful childrenand all the women in my familywho came before me.Thank you for your love.

We must listen to the women who came before us. We change the future by unloading the sorrow of the past. We sever the cord of generational curses. Some cords are meant to shrivel to blackened dead flesh. They are our blood, but we are not them. We do not have to accept it. None of it.

—FLOR CASTILLO, SOLDADERA AND MOTHER, 1919

ALEJANDRA

PHILADELPHIA—2019

Alejandra sat beneath the square showerhead in their newly refurbished bathroom. Her feet touched the glass, and her head leaned against the tiled wall. The bathroom was the only place in the house where she could lock the door.

She felt numb as she imagined her mind and body crumbling, her every cell fragile as limestone. The image came to her of a skull, like the ones from centuries ago at the bottom of cenotes in Mexico. For the last four years, she had been that skull.

The doorknob jiggled.

“Mom, Mom, hurry up,” a small voice called for her over and over.

Just five minutes. One minute.

Please.

One second alone to breathe?

She looked toward the door. Her body trembled with the overwhelming desire to shrink to the size of the blood clots trailing down her legs.

Her period arrived like clockwork every month—the only thing she could predict after her tubal ligation. No more children. Never again.

She already had three children. Each birth had left an open wound where each of those pieces of flesh had been hacked off from her.

Since then, Alejandra’s inner world had felt like the scary part of death: They say nothing exists after the brain short-circuits to darkness and the heart squeezes out its last bloody tears. And that was her. For years she abandoned herself to be a willing sacrifice to please everyone around her, and now nothing existed within her anymore. Even her own hand was not a hand at all, but a blade she used to carve her heart for anyone who asked her for it.

Beyond the beaded veil of water on glass, a white form appeared in front of the towel rack.

Alejandra didn’t have her glasses or contact lenses on. It was likely just steam. Or was it her towel? She could have sworn she’d hung it on the hook behind the door. She glanced in that direction. The towel was there. She turned back to the rack, her neck popping from the quick movement.

The form lingered.

What could have been a towel now appeared to be a torn dress. It looked almost like a white mantilla. Her poor vision moved in and out of focus.

From the center of the silhouette rasped a voice so minute it might have come from her own mind.

“You want to end it. Let me help you.”

Alejandra whispered back with the sensation of hot water burning her throat, choking her: “No.”

The steam billowed with the water. It reminded her of the day she’d tried on wedding dresses.

A loud bang on the door made her head jerk and legs tense as they folded into her body. “Alejandra, it’s dinnertime. Are you coming down to cook? The kids are hungry.”

Her eyes broke from the amorphous figure to the door then back again.

The figure was gone.

“Give me a minute,” she called out as best she could through her tearful confusion.

“All right, but you’ve been in there over twenty minutes.”

Matthew’s voice brought her back to the present, the reality she wanted to escape from. His voice had a childish whine. His footsteps down the stairs could be heard through the door. She was relieved he would not be lingering in the hallway to question her further. She rose from the floor to rinse the blood from her legs. Her duties waited, leaving her no time to wallow. Now all she could think about was her hope that the children would actually eat what she cooked. Or would it be another mealtime of watching them spit it out? Every time they did, a feeling of rejection burrowed into her like termites.

Alejandra turned off the water and stepped out of the shower to dry herself quickly before they called to her again from outside her door. She couldn’t stand to hear any of them repeat her name. Her anger would flare up—aimed at herself for being weak. Sometimes her knees threatened to buckle when she thought of how she didn’t own a single thing in the world. She had no money of her own. No job. Her name was not even on any of the bills. Half her life lived as a shadow.

As she ran the towel down her legs, she noticed a slimy substance on the glass door where the hallucination had appeared. It’s probably from the children, she told herself. Alejandra put on sweatpants and a T-shirt, then wrapped her hair in the towel.

Before leaving the bathroom, she paused with her hand on the light switch. Something as deep inside her as the lining of her uterus told her what she already knew: What she had seen was not a hallucination. The presence of something or someone lingered in the heat of the room. She could tell by the way the mist parted and shifted.

Alejandra held no illusions of having any value in the world. But her emotional and mental instability felt monumental, like a large wave in the distance. She felt it gaining height and speed before it crashed onto the shore and pulled her into the depths of the unknown.

She switched off the light, then rushed to the kitchen. The staircase creaked beneath her feet with each step. She paused when she reached the bottom. The stained-glass window in the front door caught her eye. Fractured yellow-and-red light splayed across the floor in broken shards. Her maternal instinct told her to sweep them up to prevent anyone getting hurt by them. A darker instinct told her to use one of them on herself to no longer feel the pain.

But even if they had been real glass shards, would she have had the energy to grab one of them and plunge it into her flesh to end it all? She remembered the encounter in the bathroom and the imagined words, “You want to end it. Let me help you.” She placed both hands over her face as if to block the images and sounds her mind was conjuring that could not possibly be real. Only her pain was real, because it was always sitting on her shoulder.

From the kitchen, the voices of the children bickering and Matthew telling them to stop broke her thoughts of death.

You are still adjusting to the new house. Get a grip, she told herself.

Just three weeks ago, they had moved from Texas to a quiet and leafy suburb of Philadelphia. Matthew had gotten a new job that offered a salary and bonus that they could not turn down, and this large six-bedroom house was one of the many luxuries afforded by his new position.

She had tried to overlook the fact that she didn’t much like the neighborhood, the school run commute, or the repairs that would inevitably fall to her to oversee. But the move made sense for Matthew, and the space was more than most people could hope for. Be grateful. Don’t start, Alejandra, she told herself. It was meant to be a long-term, putting-down-roots kind of home. So why didn’t it feel like home?

She had brought just two things to remind her of her birthplace. One was the Frida Kahlo coffee-table book she found at a secondhand store before leaving Texas. The cover was the painting of Frida in her white back brace and flowing white skirt against a barren background. Tears streamed from her eyes, yet her face remained stoic. Inside of her was a crumbling Doric pillar.

The second was a photo of Alejandra and her birth mother, Cathy, displayed in the hallway. It had been taken in the coffee shop they regularly met in. They were both smiling. Alejandra wanted to smile like that again. And she wanted to tell Cathy what was going on inside her, but she didn’t want to spoil their budding relationship; they had only just met when Alejandra moved away.

The bickering in the kitchen grew louder. Matthew stood in the kitchen with the same curious look as the children as she entered. “What took you so long?”

She inhaled a deep breath. Her impatience with him was something not easily washed away in a shower. “You could have started making dinner.”

He gave her a wide smile and furrowed his brow. “But that’s your thing. I don’t know what you have planned because you buy all the groceries. You always do the cooking.”

Her belly sank as she envisioned a snapshot of cooking for him for the next fifteen years. But the children were listening to their conversation, especially nine-year-old Catrina, who was waiting for her mother’s response with an expectant stare. Alejandra couldn’t deal with this now. The steam from the shower had somehow carried itself into her head in the form of a heavy exhaustion. “Can you at least wipe down the table?” she asked Matthew.

He glanced back at the glass tabletop. “Yeah, sure. It’s disgusting from whatever they ate earlier.”

Alejandra walked to the fridge to take out something that would expire soon and would make a meal with minimal effort. She used to love to cook, but it had become a chore. The thought of ordering food crossed her mind until she imagined the conversation that would ensue as they tried to decide what to order. They had reached a place in their relationship where they couldn’t even agree on Indian or Chinese.

She grabbed a bag of prechopped vegetables and an easy roast-in-the-bag chicken with new potatoes. One pot for the vegetables and the one roasting tray for the chicken to toss in the oven. It would take just over an hour for it to be done. Two episodes of some cartoon on Netflix would keep the kids quiet with Matthew sitting next to them. She hoped that they would remain in the other room because her patience had evaporated like water left to simmer to the bottom of a pot. It wouldn’t be long before something inside of her burned.

*   *   *

“Elodia, could you please eat something?” Alejandra was on the verge of tears watching all three children pick at the meal. Her only job in the world was making a mushy pile of food that Elodia would later spit out. Will and Catrina poked around their plates. Alejandra’s face felt hot.

Matthew laughed. “They’re just kids. What do you expect? By the way, can you take my dry cleaning tomorrow? You don’t have anything to do. I have to rush out.” She stared at Matthew with an icebox-cold heart as he doted on giggling Elodia.

How happy Matthew had been to have another child. All his many dreams had come true in the last few years. He had a stay-at-home wife with beautiful, healthy children and no money worries. Without knowing it, or appreciating it, he had all the wind to propel him forward as he coasted with the ease of a kitesurfer on a picture-perfect day. Meanwhile she was that tugboat in the back pulling something bigger through deep waters. She listened to Matthew chewing, knowing he didn’t have an inkling of how often the thought of death crossed her mind.

The one time she’d told him she’d thought of ending her own life was after a Saturday alone with all three children. He gave her a look of puzzled irritation before saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way. Why do you feel like that? Look at everything you have.”

His answer was enough to close her mouth and shut off the valve in her heart that had once been reserved for him.

There was not much she felt sure of in this life, but one thing had become clear: The disintegration of any love she once possessed for Matthew had to be connected with the painful chasms cracking open in her soul. No, Matthew was not solely to blame, because she had chosen him, after all. But Alejandra had to figure out what was happening to her before she let go of the desire to continue breathing.

Matthew’s voice pulled her from her somber inner dialogue and back to the dining table. “What’s that face for?” Alejandra looked up from her food. Not again, she thought.

“I’m just tired.”

He made his displeasure known with his raised eyebrows and a cross expression that magnified every wrinkle and gray hair. There was only a two-year age difference between them. But when he made that face, he looked ten years older. It made her feel like she’d married a version of her adoptive father, Jim.

“You’re so miserable, Allie. But it’s never going to leave you because that is who you choose to be.” Her adoptive father would say this to her when she hadn’t managed to smile or exhibit enough excitement. In a house of eight adopted siblings, she always felt like an outsider looking in. She was also treated like an extra pair of hands. It was her duty to help with all domestic matters. Her adopted parents never bothered to ask her, Are you okay?

Charlie, her adopted sibling who was two years older, was the only one who would give her reassuring glances and a playful wink when their parents were hard on them about how they did chores and how they presented themselves to the outside world. It made her feel less alone.

Unfortunately, his time at the home was cut short, because he left as soon as he turned eighteen. He promised to keep in touch but never did. That was before cellphones or social media.

Not satisfied with her answer, Matthew turned his attention back to the children.

“All right, kids, bath time.” The three children ran past them and up the stairs for their bath, which Alejandra was grateful she didn’t have to run. She could stay downstairs alone and clean up. God forbid the table have the smallest smudge on it. Matthew rose from the table. The harder he scowled, the deeper the creases in his forehead and around his eyes appeared. “Just be happy,” he sniped. “Look how lucky you are to be home all the time, in a nice home with no worries. You want for nothing.”

“I just want you to listen, Matthew.”

“I am listening, and all I hear is complaining and negativity.”

She kept quiet and swallowed his words. They sat in her stomach like little dormant seeds. Later they would bloom into anger.

He left the kitchen without looking at Alejandra. The tension between them remained in the air like a smoldering vapor. In that vapor floated the dust of all the unloving and inharmonious things they had ever said.

*   *   *

A week had passed since Alejandra’s breakdown in the shower. Her routine propelled her from hour to hour. Once her third child had begun to walk, the daily task of putting everyone else first had become as difficult as climbing a mountain of felt. No matter how hard she dug her feet in and scratched at the fabric, she was always close to falling to certain death.

And yet, residing in the same space in her heart as her despair was her love for her children. That love was a sweet blossom she held on to tightly until the thorns on its stem made her bleed. Those wounds were the stigmata of motherhood, precious and painful.

The windshield wipers squeaked away the rain, and the shouts from the fighting children in the backseat of the McDonald’s-scented car became distracting. Hunger from skipping lunch made her shake. But not eating was the quickest way to get that postbaby “snapback” everyone around her liked to talk about while wearing their athleisure. No hips or belly. Hard and toned said you were in control. Instead, her body felt gross, distorted like overused Silly Putty.

Elodia was wailing.

“Catrina, help your sister . . . please.” Alejandra’s please barely a whisper through the tears she could not hold back. “Catrina . . . Please.”

Nine-year-old Catrina was sitting between two car seats with her hands over her ears and eyes squeezed shut. “Make them stop, Mommy! I hate crying babies! Take them away.” Eighteen-month-old Elodia shrieked. She’d tried to wiggle out of her car seat to retrieve a toy just out of her reach, and now her little hand was stuck painfully in the strap. Four-year-old Will complained because he was thirsty, and all the drinks were sitting sweating in the passenger seat.

Alejandra’s foot pressed harder on the gas, uncontrolled, her fingers trembling on the wheel. Her uterus was seizing. After her three C-sections she sometimes experienced phantom movements. She watched the speedometer approach the limit and then go over. Maybe I should leave in the middle of the night while they’re all sleeping and find a lake to drive into. Their screams and wants and pleas will forever be silenced because I will be silenced. They won’t even realize I am gone.

Why am I so awful? Why can’t I be normal? Alejandra’s mind fogged like the window. She didn’t want to harm her children. Only herself.

A message popped up over the directions on her GPS. She tried to keep her eyes on the road and read what it said. It was from Matthew.

I’ll be home late tonight. Expect me around 7.30/8. And save dinner for me.

Her body slumped. She knew she would have no help tonight with the housework and the kids and no close friends or family to call on. And not just for tonight: In the morning Matthew was leaving for a two-week business trip to California. He loved his new job because it put him in charge of a larger team. Before this he’d hated not having a team to direct and not having direct access to a CEO or, at the very least, the board members of a company. Now his bucket list had more check marks than the shopping list she’d written on the back of the last grocery receipt.

When they’d moved, Alejandra had quit her job in data entry and sold what shares she had in the company. Once they’d settled in their new home, the responsibilities of the family had all fallen on her as Matthew devoted all his time and energy to his new position as a director of sales. The space and time for her to find another job had dwindled until it became more convenient and financially sensible for her not to return to work.

Some parents might’ve loved this. Many friends told her how they envied her, but was it what she really wanted? “We are a family. Your decisions are our decisions,” Matthew had said. “This is what we agreed on when we first met. You agreed. You can’t go back on what we agreed on. Life doesn’t work like that. You are a wife and mother first. That was your choice. Why do I have to even remind you of that? That’s what normal people do.”

He’d left no room for changing her mind or heart.

She grumbled as she swiped the phone forcefully to return to the GPS app.

“Fuck!” She slammed on the brakes.

There was a red light and a car ahead. The sound of screeching brakes, and then crashing metal. But the children stopped crying and taunting one another immediately. Thank god they’d recently bought a tank of a seven-seater that could withstand a tornado.

“Mom!” Catrina screamed.

Alejandra looked back to make sure the children were all right. Catrina glared at her.

“Now what am I gonna eat?” A burger and all its sticky contents had spilled on the floor.

Fried bologna sandwiches, like I had to eat when I was a kid, Alejandra thought. These kids had never eaten a slice of bologna in their lives, only nitrite-free organic honey-baked ham—thinly sliced. What would the other mothers at their new neighborhood school say about bologna? “I’ll make you fish sticks, or you can finish Elodia’s nuggets.”

“Whatever,” Catrina said under her breath.

Alejandra didn’t have the energy to respond because an angry woman with her hazard lights on was shouting at her to get out of the car. Others were yelling at Alejandra to put on her own hazards as they honked and drove around her.

Your existence is a fucking hazard, she told herself. If only she could just sit on the curb with her hands over her ears to stop the noise.

She would have to somehow tell Matthew she’d gotten into a fender bender on the way home from school because she’d been too busy wallowing in her thoughts after his text. She remembered again that for two weeks she would be on her own to do the feeding, washing, school run, bath time, and bedtime for three children. Two hands to love and care for six of theirs.

Alejandra had never told him she often sat in her car in the school parking lot and cried behind her sunglasses to hide her tears. She cried about everything: her inability to effortlessly care for her children, entertain them with activities instead of TV, cook meals from scratch, hold intelligent conversations, be hot in bed (at least be interested in the same person after all these years), and wear the same dress size as she had at twenty-five.

When she was hurting that badly, the only escape seemed to be death. She had no money of her own and no ambition. Matthew was not the kind of man to turn her out on the streets with only the clothing on her back, but he could. Anything of worth was in his name. All the money was earned by him. Not a damn thing was in her name. She did not even have her own last name. Not the last name of the children.

Reviving her career or starting a new one seemed an impossibility. First, her work experience was so far in the past that no place would hire her now without going back or retraining. And who would take care of the children? Matthew made it clear he couldn’t spare the time. And it was his salary that kept them going. The vacations, the house, the restaurants, the nice things on a credit card without limit, the school fees. The odd texts from friends in Texas gave Alejandra the encouragement to go on, but it was not enough to make her feel like she had a community.

The condensation fogging the windows and windshield inside the car took her back to her breakdown in the shower. Her eyes darted to the right and left, as if she was worried something might appear. Something white, like a wedding dress.

Alejandra put on her hazard lights so that she could get out to speak with the lady standing next to the Volkswagen Jetta. The Volkswagen had only minor dents in the bumper. Before exchanging information with this stranger, Alejandra took a deep breath to appear in control. Her face would not betray her turmoil. After all, she had become good at hiding it: Hiding was what she did best, even from herself. No one would ever believe how many times she’d stood at the precipice of taking her own life.

In a matter of minutes, the exchange was over.

But still Catrina whined, “Can we go home now?”

“That is where we are headed. Home.” Alejandra signaled to merge and glanced in the rearview before pressing the accelerator.

She jumped and pressed her foot hard on the brake upon seeing an elderly woman wearing a white scarf over her head who was staring directly at her. The long edges of the scarf tied beneath the woman’s chin whipped in the wind. Red light illuminated her face, giving the hollows of her sagging skin a skull-like appearance. Alejandra could feel herself shaking as she looked back to the road. She took a deep breath before checking her rearview mirror again. Alejandra looked to her right.

The woman was nowhere in sight.

*   *   *

Alejandra spent the evening in her usual routine of cooking, bath time, and putting Elodia and Will to bed first. This allowed her to give Catrina a little one-on-one attention.

“Tell me a story, Mom.”

Catrina was tucked in bed with a small brown bull Matthew had brought her back from a business trip. She had soft toys from his travels all over the world. Alejandra finished putting away Catrina’s folded clothing in a half-empty laundry basket before settling next to her to read a story with her. Alejandra touched Catrina’s hand. Side by side their café au lait birthmarks on their forearms touched. Will liked to call it her “night sky” because the small brown dots resembled a cluster of stars. Only Catrina shared the mark.

“What kind of story? What book do you want?”

“I don’t know. Not a book. It’s almost Halloween. Something scary. Different. Something you were told as a kid.”

Before Alejandra could open her mouth to say no, she stopped herself. All the bedtime stories she’d been told as a kid were from the Bible. She’d grown up in a devout Evangelical household. Instead of Halloween they’d had a “harvest festival,” which turned out to be just a dull church revival.

Some quiet, vague voice nudged her to tell Catrina the story of La Llorona: the crying woman in white drawn to tears and sadness. She thought again of the lingering mist in the shower. It had looked so much like a phantom.

“You want to end it. Let me help you.”

She made a decision. The story was a dark one. But one day Catrina would be an adult finding out who she really was. And one day she would choose a partner. The thing that Alejandra wanted most for Catrina was for her not to give those important life decisions away to others because she felt inadequate. Everyone deserved to write their own story.

And maybe this story would help save her.

“I will tell you the story of La Llorona. When I was about your age one of my Chicana friends from school told me this story. She wanted to know why I couldn’t celebrate Halloween and if I knew about Día de los Muertos. I told her my parents didn’t believe in Halloween. That is when she told me the story her mother told her.”

“What’s a Chicana?”

This question caught Alejandra off guard. It had never occurred to her to pass down knowledge of their identity to her daughter. She had always suppressed it in herself.

Her adopted family had told her nothing of her heritage. They had not even whispered about Día de los Muertos to her, even though it felt true when she discovered it through her friend. She had always felt drawn to the color and mystery of this holiday. She went to the school library after finishing lunch and browsed the books on Mexican culture and history. There were the images painted by Spanish priests alongside their descriptions of the pagan Aztecs satisfying their deities through blood. Then there were tales about the slaughter of indigenous people by steel and disease before the survivors were forced to convert. Their own rituals changing until Día de los Muertos was birthed to celebrate the old ways while satisfying forced assimilation.

She wanted to cup a small, brightly decorated sugar skull in her hand, perhaps press her tongue against the crown to see if it tasted like normal sugar. The elaborate altars illuminated with candlelight that emitted ghostlike smoke over plates of food for the dead. The dead could be reached on this day when the veil between the material and spiritual worlds melted like sugar in simmering water.

But after she graduated high school and then became a young woman, followed by marriage, she made learning more about her heritage less of a priority.

“A Mexican American woman. We are a blend of many beautiful things.”

“Like a unicorn?”

Alejandra couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, I suppose. Half horse and half magic.”

“That sounds cool. But can you tell me about La Llorona first? Is it a true story?”

“I have no idea. But all stories begin somewhere. I’m warning you, it might scare you, real or not.”

Catrina shifted her body upright and pulled the comforter—robin’s egg blue with a large unicorn print—closer to her chin. Alejandra looked at her daughter’s innocent face. Sometimes she regretted producing that beautiful face, because all her own pain remained stagnant for years.

“There isn’t one version of the story of La Llorona. It’s told in many countries in many different ways. This is the version my friend told me.

“Once upon a time in Mexico, there was a beautiful unmarried woman with two small children. She had many suitors, but she fell in love with a wealthy man who was older than her. He lived in the largest house and owned most of the land surrounding the town.

“They crossed paths when he saw her selling fruit in the market. For months he visited her and bought more fruit than a single man would ever need. During one of his visits to her market stall he said he didn’t want children. He wanted a companion to travel with and share his wealth with. She was tired of working the market stall and wanted to feel beautiful and important. She thought being married to a man like this would make her life perfect.

“And so, in desperation for true love, she drowned her children. She thought his unconditional love would make her happy. When the man found out what she’d done, he said he could never be with her and left. Worse, he’d known she had children all along, and would have accepted her if she’d just told the truth. Filled with regret, she killed herself in the same lake she murdered her children. For her sin, she was destined to roam the land for eternity, wearing a white dress, and crying for her children.”

Catrina stared toward the closet with glassy, vacant eyes.

“Why weren’t her children enough?”

Caught off guard by the question and by Catrina’s distant gaze, Alejandra followed the direction of her child’s eyes. The closet had opened at some point during the story. The sequins on a dress hanging inside glittered. At least, she hoped they were sequins and not eyes.

Eyes.

Why would you even think they were eyes? So ridiculous, she told herself then turned back to Catrina.

“Uh, back then women did not have the same opportunities as now. We couldn’t dream very big. You couldn’t vote, own land, and some never went to school. All that was expected was to get married and raise a family no matter what interests they had. Maybe she did what she was told by her mother and great-grandmother despite having other dreams. But it’s just a story. Unfortunately, the story of La Llorona is not told in her own words. If it was true, we still don’t know what really happened to her.”

“Are we enough for you? Did you have other dreams?”

The pain began in the center of Alejandra’s chest. It rose inside her like a geyser.

“Of course you are enough.” Alejandra always wondered what harm she did by even entertaining the thought of wanting to run away from her children, even if only for a short spell.

Catrina returned her eyes to the black crack in the closet door. She appeared almost hypnotized. “No, I hope we live long enough.” The little girl’s voice sounded monotonic and hollow. As if it were not her own voice.

Alejandra gently touched the sides of Catrina’s arms. “What did you say?”

Catrina blinked and looked back at Alejandra. “Huh? Did I say something?” Then the little girl’s expression softened, and she returned to Earth, her voice sweet and childish again. “I love you, Mommy. I’m not scared. Thank you for thinking I’m big enough to understand. It makes me feel special.”

Alejandra kissed her daughter on her forehead, feeling an outpouring of love that could’ve flooded the entire world. She rose from the bed thinking that just maybe she could give her child what she hadn’t received enough of.

But then in her peripheral vision she caught a glimpse of the glinting sequins in the closet. She whipped her head to look inside.

“What’s wrong, Mommy? Are you afraid of something?”

She didn’t want Catrina to sense her fear. “There is nothing. I thought a dress had fallen inside the closet. Sweet dreams, my love.”

Alejandra shut the bedroom door, not wanting to walk down the stairs and leave Catrina alone, or spend time with Matthew, who should’ve been home. She felt trapped by her trepidation. Stop being so anxious, she said to herself while closing her eyes and exhaling deeply.

All she wanted to do was get into bed to read a book. But the rest of the clothes had to be put away, and Matthew would expect her to spend time with him. Recently, though, Alejandra had an overwhelming desire to be alone.

As she began to walk down the creaking stairs, she could hear Matthew in the kitchen. A flush of frustration made her muscles ache, her steps fill with lead, and her chest tighten. Matthew was whistling. It made her jaw clench.

Lately his presence felt like a plastic bag over her head. Still on the staircase, she instinctively grabbed her neck with one hand, as if there really were a bag around it, before inhaling deeply though her nose. What if she removed his hands and removed the bag? She didn’t want to think about the fuss it would cause. They’d call her selfish, unloving.

“Alejandra, you coming down? Is this plate for me?”

She rolled her eyes. As helpless as a fucking baby in the body of a forty-four-year-old man.

It was time to appease and entertain Matthew—usually they’d watch a show on Netflix or Amazon Prime as long as he was in the mood for it. After watching a show they’d retire to bed, where he would stay on his side of the mattress playing iPad games while she shifted around trying to get comfortable and quiet her mind.

Many nights Alejandra lay in bed with her sleep mask over her eyes, simply relieved she’d made it through another day before it rolled into another one identical to the last. If she was lucky, there would be no dreams. The dread of her impending dreams made her toss and turn and kick off the blankets.

Of late she’d had two recurring dreams. In the first, she tumbled in sand and fought viciously with an entity she could neither touch nor see. But the blows from her unseen assailant were very real. The assailant would claw at her belly like a snarling beast in the wild emptying a carcass. Picking. Pulling. Slicing. As if it wanted to eviscerate her. She could hear her children crying in the distance even though they were nowhere to be seen. While her body became a bag of organs, she would hear the howls that she was helpless to calm.

It would end with Alejandra no longer sensing the assailant and her children falling silent. As she lay half alive and crying, the sand would transform into water, and then the water would drag her body under in a whirlpool. Just before her eyes closed, the silhouette of a half-creature, half-woman in a white dress would stand over her. Her white dress and the loose skin on her head whipped and twisted in the wind. From the figure’s mouth hung viscous strings of blood and saliva. The woman would watch her as if memorizing the moment of Alejandra’s demise.

The dream reminded her of the nature shows Catrina loved to watch. She watched them sitting at the edge of the sofa in silent fascination, her full-moon eyes taking in the vicious scenes of predator and prey. No one was allowed to make a sound as she absorbed the narrator’s every word. Alejandra had hopes Catrina would become a vet or study biology. She was willing to invest in any way to make it possible for Catrina to pursue the path she chose. Perhaps part of the reason she had picked Matthew was because he could give her children all she had never had: real security in a wild world that resembled a jungle or the Serengeti. She’d seen in her own adopted family what uncertainty with limited resources and so many mouths to feed looked like.

Other times the dream took her to a body of placid water with gauzy steam rising from the surface. A hidden cenote. There, women floated on their backs, eyes wide open, tears streaming from the corners, their clothing, long brown hair, and limbs splayed in the water, their palms up as if to catch the rain or rays from the sun to claim whatever the gods had to offer them. One in particular always stood out to her. She wore a black cotton-and-lace dress with a matching black veil, like the kind of dress a woman would wear in mourning in the early twentieth century. In one hand she carried a rifle, and two bandoliers crossed her chest. The combination intrigued Alejandra, but she didn’t know who the woman was. More women stood at the edge of the cenote. A centimeter closer and they would tumble in. Behind them was another row of women, followed by another. This created concentric circles of women like the ripples from a drop of rain hitting a puddle. They all stared at her, not speaking, their lips slightly parted as if ready to shout, muscles in their shoulders and legs tensed as if they were waiting for some action to take place, terra-cotta soldiers lined up just for her. Their silent tears on their cheeks reflected the sunlight. Sometimes the brightness of their tears caught her eyes, and though the light felt blinding, it was not painful. She knew that all she had to do was speak the words to make them move and she’d summon their power, an electric spiritual charge at her disposal. The vibrations of that power were so strong she could feel them rattling her bones. Alejandra wanted to be part of that wreath of energy. Did it even exist in the real world?

That last night before Matthew’s trip she had dreamed of the women. They had given her comfort. When she’d woken, she’d thought in the dark, I want you to be real, before checking the time on her phone. 4:44 A.M. There were still hours left to sleep. She lay there with her eyes closed, trying to fall back asleep. Instead, she found herself praying to the dark ceiling of her bedroom that she would find her way into the sunlight again.

The stillness of the room alerted her to every sound in the house and every sensation in her body. She got up to pee, and as she walked barefoot the cold bathroom tile sent a chill up her legs. As she sat on the toilet, something brushed the hair on the right side of her head. In her peripheral vision she sensed a dark shadow moving across the white tiles. She slowly reared her head toward the movement. The hair on her left side rose slightly as a soft breath puffed against her earlobe. She jumped off the toilet to look around, urine dripping down her leg. If her heart had lived outside of her body, the hammering would’ve been louder than a car crash. She sat back down and placed both hands on her head. What the fuck! What is wrong? You have everything. Everything! Stop being such an ungrateful cunt. Control your mind. You have to get over this.

After sitting with her eyes closed and experiencing no other sounds or sensations except her breathing, she wiped her leg then flushed the toilet. Before leaving the bathroom to go back to bed, she glanced at the wall, where there was nothing except bath toy-shaped shadows.

*   *   *

The morning arrived to take her only source of help away. They hired a local girl to babysit sometimes, but Alejandra felt guilty using her because taking care of the kids was her only job. The guilt came from that gnawing feeling that she had no right to ask for anything. She reserved the babysitter for the nights she went out with Matthew.

As they waited for Matthew’s Uber in the driveway, he inspected the damaged car again with a frown. “It’s not that bad. I expected you to wreck it a bit when we bought it. What the hell happened? Were you speeding? Not paying attention?”

“I just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t notice the car in front of me braking.”

He raised both eyebrows and cocked his head, giving it a little shake. “Arrange to get it fixed while I’m away. Remember, you’re the adult here. Don’t let them run you.”

He kissed her on the lips softly, trying to make it feel romantic. “All right, difficult woman. I love you anyway.”

He often called her “difficult woman” in jest. She hated it. Was she difficult to love? A difficult woman despite catering to him at every opportunity, even when he gave her a cold shoulder or stormed away like a fourth child? His lips pecked hers, and it didn’t strike a loving chord within her. When did she become numb to the slightest show of affection from him? He pulled away from her and grabbed his bags to meet the Uber pulling up to the curb.

“I’ll call you and the kids, but I have drinks and dinners most nights. See you in two weeks.”

She could feel the agitation rising inside her, just as it had in the car before the accident. Meanwhile, Matthew would soon be sitting in an airline lounge alone with a glass of wine, playing Candy Crush. No small hands slapping the phone away. Then he would sit on an airplane with someone serving him food while he watched a new movie. No small voices demanding that he change it to Peppa Pig so they could watch it for the hundredth time.

At least she would now have a couple of hours of free time after the kids went to bed. Despite the chaos that erupted at times and the sheer exertion of tending to a family without help, there was a freedom in being alone when he was away. It allowed her time to fulfill her wants and needs without his displeasure. He frequently made it obvious he was displeased with her when her needs didn’t align with what he wanted in that moment. She could listen to the music she liked but Matthew hated. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was one of her top albums to play loud. She could also watch the movies she wanted but he hated: Shudder would be on every night.

While he was searching for porn in his hotel room, she would masturbate under the covers with one of the three vibrators he’d bought for her as Valentine’s Day gifts, thinking about the men and women she found attractive. The women would be far more beautiful than she had felt in a very long time. At times she wondered who he thought of when they fucked, because surely it wasn’t her if she wasn’t thinking of him. Sex with Matthew wasn’t bad: It satisfied her and gave her physical sustenance. He was the only man who had ever made her orgasm from penetration because he’d taken the time in the beginning of the relationship to find out what she liked sexually.

Yet nowadays, her feelings for him got in the way of that thrill of mental and physical attraction that could make sex amazing and soul-binding. She still initiated sex with Matthew regularly because the need to disengage from being a tired mother to just being a woman was still so strong. The release and relief were a necessity for survival. And damn if it didn’t feel like she was in survival mode most days.