The Bewitching

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches. That was what Nana Alba used to say when she told Minerva bedtime stories; it was the preamble that led into a realm of shadows and mysteries.

Could someone plateau at twenty-four? Could your brain shrink? She felt tired and listless all the time. Often, she was sad for no reason.

She’d preferred to slip into the tales of Shirley Jackson rather than go out dancing with her friends,

cutting through Briar’s Commons, which the students called the Witch’s Thicket because a witch had supposedly lived there in the time of the Salem trials. Or else the Devil dwelled under a tree. The stories contradicted one another as all good oral narratives must.

As for the Devil, he seemed to live everywhere in New England. There was a Devil’s Rock and a Devil’s Footprint and a Devil’s Pulpit.

Minerva emerged in front of Joyce House, which had the honor of being the oldest structure on campus, built in 1750. It was shuttered, with renovations to begin next year. It dearly needed this renovation; the once picturesque structure was now dull and battered, but she found it entrancing. Often, when doing her rounds, she looked at its upstairs windows and felt an almost electric tug. It was the lure of history; she adored older buildings and was repelled by the new. They said the building was haunted, but then people said the same of all the old dorms. It did not frighten her.

Minerva had tracked down one of Tremblay’s stories, translated into Spanish and reprinted in a horror anthology that had been put out by Minotauro in the eighties, and had fallen hopelessly in love with her prose. New England and witchcraft featured prominently in Tremblay’s work. Minerva’s original plan had been to dig into the autobiographical elements in The Vanishing and tie it all together in an essay with the context of New England’s history and folklore.

It wasn’t that she meant to cut him off—she simply figured she’d reply another time, and it was hard to go on dates when she didn’t even want to change out of her pajamas. Her energy was exhausted simply by following her everyday routine and maintaining a semblance of normalcy. Perhaps she’d be able to cocoon herself during the summer, to emerge revitalized.

She had thought so much about him in the last few months, wishing dearly he’d visit Piedras Quebradas. She had even cast a little spell she’d learned, summoning him. She did not often indulge in such practices, for fear of what others would think if she admitted she believed in folk magic. Her mother abhorred superstition and even though her father had believed in enchantments, in monsters and witches, she tried to be like her instead of him. Besides, Alba understood these games children played must be sloughed off as she became a worldly woman.

Alba found herself juggling household responsibilities and tending to her siblings. Lola was six, docile, and took her little brother, Moisés, by the hand, which at least meant she watched over him. But the twins! They were seven and didn’t want to learn their letters, wash their hands, or comb their hair. Alba was in a constant battle with them. Magdalena was terrible in her own special way, always mumbling under her breath and pointing out Alba’s mistakes. Even though she was only eleven, she attempted to bully Fernanda and undermine her big sister.

By the time he returned to visit the farm, Arturo was a youth of nineteen with dreams and prospects. Alba was delighted by the sight of him, and even when he dropped out of university and their family chided him for it, she thought him a most brilliant man. Each of his visits was delightful. No matter whether it had been more than a year or just six months since she’d last seen him, he seemed to have grown more sophisticated, his clothing more fashionable, his manners more attractive. He lived in the city with his father and Julia and attended all manner of dances, exhibitions, and gatherings. When he spoke, it was like sweeping into the pages of El Mundo Ilustrado.

In truth, she was impractical, and liked to cook elaborate dishes or sweet treats. The thought of plucking a chicken or skinning a rabbit was abhorrent, and she submitted to such mundane tasks only when her watchful mother demanded it. But she didn’t want Tadeo speaking so bluntly about her, even if it was true.

Why had her father, rougher, with little interest in fashions and soirées, picked a lady from the city for a wife? And why in turn had a girl who liked the scent of perfumes more than the fresh country air accepted the proposal of a young farmer? Alba liked to think it had been love at first sight, and yet the thought of two people who were so wildly different made her frown. She wished to marry someone who shared her interests, who was sensitive and idealistic, not her complete opposite.

“He’s retreated upstairs because you’re rude.” “I don’t think it’s rude to speak the truth. He looks like he’s packed to go on a trip around the entire state of Hidalgo. Aunt Julia says he’s a spendthrift and she doesn’t want him living with her anymore. Now he suddenly shows up with all his shirts and neckties when he couldn’t bother to come for Father’s funeral? He’s come to live here. But I don’t give free room and board.”

she didn’t feel the same love for Piedras Quebradas. She didn’t mind helping her mother with the garden where they grew vegetables and herbs. But she hated when they castrated the pigs or cut off a chicken’s neck with a sharp axe. She felt like screaming every time her mother killed a chicken and the corpse twisted and shook, seeming almost to dance. “When you’re married and keep your own house, you’ll have to do as much, even if you have the help of your maids,” her mother had told her on one occasion, when she practically fainted at the sight of the bird’s carcass. “I can’t. I’m no good at it,” Alba said, and stared at the blood spatters left by the poor chicken. She wanted to paint pretty watercolors, like the one she had gifted Tadeo for his fifteenth birthday, or raise gentle doves, not chop the necks of birds.

They were her friends, or they had been until the last month, when she’d avoided them, too wrapped up in academic pursuits and thesis burnout to seek their company. Same as she was avoiding her mother—she didn’t want to talk to anyone. Inevitably, they’d ask about papers, research, everything she didn’t wish to discuss. She shouldn’t have come. Not in her current mood, not with the anxiety that kept simmering in her belly. The reason she’d shown up was because she had a feeling she ought to, the thought embedded in her mind almost like a thorn. Nana Alba used to call these feelings portents and said they should be heeded.

Minerva didn’t like hanging around people who were drunk. She never could figure out how to act with them. Anytime someone yelled I’m so wasted!, it sounded like nails on a chalkboard rather than careless glee. She didn’t understand the desire to end up kneeling in front of a toilet and puking up one’s dinner. Besides, she couldn’t afford to squander her evenings drifting into an alcoholic daze when she needed perfect grades.

On the night of the new moon evil witches liked to dance against the treetops; that was what her great-grandmother used to say. They’d slip out of their human skins and grow wings, turn into balls of light, and cavort in the sky. The teyolloquani, the most fearsome of all, drank the blood of their victims and ate their hearts.

That’s what their name means, “heart eater,” Nana Alba had said. Listen, this story, you should hear it and learn how to fight them. About how to know them. Know the signs. A true witch is born, the day of their birth marks their path.

There were no warlocks haunting the treetops at Stoneridge, but there had been that curious feeling, the portent, and it had guided her to the party. Luck, perhaps, was at hand.

“There is no formula that can show you how much this land is worth. It’s as much a part of me as my flesh and my bones.”

“Virginia Somerset was wealthy and very different from Betty. That was her name, the girl who vanished. They were roommates.”

“Betty assumed Virginia had come to a bad end. I suppose she always did have an imagination, and I also suppose Virginia was acting strange in the weeks before she went missing. I was convinced she’d reappear one day, telling us how she’d gone away and traveled the world. I hoped that would be the case. But she never returned.” “When did she disappear?” “December of 1934.”

“Virginia’s mother had been a Spiritualist and she’d passed away in 1929. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Virginia clung to ideas of paranormal activity and life after death. She believed in automatic writing and painted under the influence of spirits. I never understood her paintings or her drawings.”

The plot of Tremblay’s novel, which was set in seventeenth-century New England, revolved around a circle of young women who begin to believe one of them is a witch. The novel culminates with the disappearance of one of the women. Her novella, “All Saints’ Day,” also involved witchcraft, and her short stories often starred young, unhappy protagonists who met tragic ends. The connection to New England, to witchcraft and the supernatural, was latent in all the tales.

He smiled, but the smile was sardonic. She stared at him, surprised that he called his grandmother by her first name. Minerva would never have been able to get away with that. It seemed…well, Nana Alba would have said it was presumptuous. But people were different here. Times were different, too.

In 1929, when it all started, many folks shrugged it off. Who could blame them? People had been having a merry time for most of the decade. Women bared their knees and rouged them up, men parted their hair in the middle and tried to imitate Rudolph Valentino, and they all sipped illicit liquor and danced the weekends away. Even as late as 1931 the papers were saturated with stories urging people to buy stocks at a bargain price. We thought things would turn around. But they didn’t. Then, one morning, it was as if we all woke up from a spell, panic-stricken, and realized the ditch we’d rolled into.

I didn’t contradict Carolyn when she found my new roommate, Virginia Somerset, “entirely insufferable,” in her own words. Carolyn Wingrave was beautiful, witty, and wealthy. Her father owned the Wingrave Manufacturing Company, which was a cotton mill that employed hundreds of people in Temperance Landing. Everyone in the area knew the Wingraves; they’d been around for ages.

This was an innocent world, insulated from strife. It was a world of light. After Ginny’s disappearance I would know the shape of shadows.

Virginia Somerset arrived at Stoneridge as a second-year transfer student. She came from California, where her father maintained a thriving medical practice.

she was new money, and while I thought Ginny was effervescent, Carolyn found her gauche. She was also a Catholic.

Ginny kept her thick, dark hair long and her eyebrows natural. While the girls at Stoneridge wore dresses with puffy sleeves and frilly bows, or else put on fur-trimmed woolen suits, Ginny sewed her own clothes and wore dresses that looked more like tunics, showing her slender arms, with colorful sashes around the waist. The hems often reached her ankles, and she looked more like a playful nymph than a proper lady. She liked to knit, using five different types of yarn to make gloves that left her fingers exposed. She went around hatless, weaving ribbons and beads into her hair. She was, most important, a Spiritualist,

That is how we met. Her communion with the dead struck me as odd, almost sacrilegious, but she dismissed my concerns with such good humor that I was utterly charmed. Soon enough it didn’t seem strange to me that I had a roommate who would periodically sit at her desk and write down words dictated by a ghost. Ginny did not go into a trance. It was none of the stuff you see in films. She’d simply sit and scribble. It did not bother me. But it bothered Carolyn.

I was lucky that Carolyn had taken me under her wing, that she’d allowed me into her circle of friends. I couldn’t jeopardize my standing by taking Ginny’s side. I attempted to cool Carolyn’s hot temper whenever she began bickering with Ginny, but these attempts were unsuccessful. I was placed in an impossible position. I liked Carolyn and was grateful for the many times she’d given me a ride in her glossy white car and the occasions on which she’d let me borrow her shoes or a bracelet.

In October, however, Carolyn evinced a drastic change in her attitude toward Ginny. She became more pleasant, less judgmental, and even began inviting Ginny on our outings.

I remember October as one long, pleasant succession of days filled with laughter and light.

You could be taken with Ginny at first sight, and you could certainly be hopelessly in love after a dance. She was alive. I’d never met someone as alive as her. Every word she said, every motion of her hands, it was electric. She was a radiant creature. I was happy to bask in her warmth. Happy to be her friend, happy just to long for her if her heart was already taken by Edgar. They were sugary sweet, those October days spent in Ginny’s company.

Perhaps evil had infected our world long before, the same way a worm awaits at the center of an apple. You take a bite, taste the concealed rot, spit out the awful flesh, and gaze at that pale, leprous worm wiggling at the core of the foul fruit.

“A life without luxuries would be terribly dull,” he said. “Once in a while we must have a taste of what we desire.”

The sources of her restlessness were hard to pinpoint. Some of it was the constant thought of the thesis, the newly discovered manuscript she must copy and analyze. But there was also the campus itself, lonely at this time of year, with the few resident directors who remained and the skeleton crew doing maintenance or manning the library. She did not mind loneliness, she embraced it at times, yet there was a strained feeling in the air. Something felt off.

She had that terrible split second of panic in which she did not know what shape a man’s rage might take.

Our laughter turned even more uproarious, threatening to really get us in trouble with the house mother if we didn’t rush inside, which we did. Yet now, when I think back to that night, I wonder if the laughter was not hollow. I think we were all terrified children attempting to shield ourselves from true horror, and that we recognized the indications of a great evil, a terrible darkness, stretching out like a gnarled, clawed hand that scratched the back of our necks.

“They say it was witchcraft. That some evil person from Los Pinos put a spell on Tadeo and killed him.”

Could Tadeo have been bewitched by one of those beings? For Alba, magic was the spells she’d learned from other children: spells to coax someone to visit you, like the one that required the knotting of a cord around a piece of cloth. These were games, innocently played, and carried no dire consequences. She wasn’t quite sure she believed in other forms of magic, in darker things, in real power. Or that she should even consider that the terrors from her childhood tales could be true. Ghosts did not truly roam the mountains and the fields, but she was troubled.

It shrieked once again. When barn owls cried out, they might sound like a gasping person, and sometimes like a screaming one. But she knew that cry and this was a different sound, something she’d never heard before, even though she recognized the noises of many animals, living as she did in the countryside. Yet it was not an owl of any type, not a dog, not a person, but perhaps all three. It was a whine and a growl and a yelp, thick and rough.

The black marks on the door—which she’d be able to wash off with soap and water should the handyman be difficult to locate, thank God they were grease and not paint—added to that feeling of unease. She’d told Hideo about it, and they both agreed it was probably the work of Conrad. Vandalism would be well within his skill set. Yet that petty act seemed more sinister considering her recent reading material.

chahuistle.

teyolloquani,”

There were all sorts of witches in the stories their father used to tell. Some of them could conjure hail to blight the crops or change into the shape of animals. But the most dangerous were the witches who sucked human blood and devoured the hearts of men, for in the heart resides the life force of all creatures. The teyolloquani was formidable, the kind of being you spoke about in a murmur for fear of summoning it.

There’s a foulness here, almost like a stench.” She looked back at the house. She ought to walk back inside and tell Valentín to stop speaking nonsense. But she couldn’t. Something deep inside her body made her stare at him instead. There was a foulness. Ever since that day when Tadeo went missing, something felt askew inside the house, as though the walls in each room were crooked. The air itself felt heavy, charged, like a cloud pregnant with rain. She’d noticed cracks that had not been there before in the kitchen tiles, or a broken piece of pottery by the back door. In her room, any flowers she cut withered with incredible speed. The house, warm and familiar, was now like a house she’d never visited before. A stranger’s house. All these things she’d seen and felt but could not speak clearly about. How to put into words the nameless dread that assailed her when she climbed the stairs? Or the fear of her window at dusk?