Minerva spun the crank, set the pin in place, and went down the row. Old issues of the newsletter had been bound up and sat on the shelves, offering a plethora of information on cotillions and gatherings of years past. She saw Carolyn Yates featured prominently in several of these issues: Carolyn smiling at a spring formal, or posing with the members of the tennis club. Ginny, however, appeared only in one 1934 story about art students at work in the studio. There was a picture showing her at an easel, smiling. You could see Carolyn in the background, and another unknown girl.
An issue from January 1935 had something more substantial. A short story cautioned students against rumors and innuendo, saying:
Although it may be tempting to speculate on the reason behind the departure of second-year student Virginia Somerset, students should be reminded about the pitfalls of conjectures and dramatic theories. Even though Miss Somerset has not been in touch with her old friends and associates at Stoneridge, this does not mean that she has been harmed in any way. Miss Somerset may in fact resume her studies at Stoneridge at a future date.
Minerva returned the volume to the shelf and considered whether it was worth thumbing through more issues.
The stacks groaned as a crank turned, and Minerva slid the headphones down to rest on her neck. Someone must have lifted the locking pin.
“Stacks!” she called out, which was the usual warning any student uttered when a bozo began turning the crank without doing their due diligence.
The stacks continued to roll closer to her. “Hey, I said I’m here!”she yelled again, but quickly began walking down the row toward the safety of the aisle.
She tripped and landed smack on her face. For a moment Minerva lay there stunned, the pain too sharp to elicit more than a groan. Then she scrabbled up and out of the stacks. She tumbled into the aisle as the stacks clapped shut. She’d almost been squeezed between two metal shelves. Minerva rubbed her jaw and furiously stomped down the aisle looking for the culprit.
“Hey, are you stupid?” she yelled out.
But the aisle was empty. She checked the next aisle. No one was there. She wandered back to the row where she’d been working and looked at the crank. The safety notice above it had been defaced. Someone had blacked out the words, leaving only the cartoon of the iron maiden visible.
1908: 5
Another horse died onFriday. There was no reason for these deaths, no illness that marked the animals’ last days. Alba’s mother told the men to bury the corpses and grimly surveyed the land. They prayed no other evil would befall them, but four days later two goats were killed by a wild animal. No one, however, could determinewhatwild animal. The goats had been savaged, their heads practically torn from their necks. Her uncle said it was the work of mountain lions, or perhaps a wild dog. Whatever it was, it struck again.
Every night, Alba stayed up trying to listen for the sound of howling, but there was only the music of crickets or the soft stirring of the wind. Whatever had killed the goats was clever. It left no tracks and did not announce its presence.
She had a dream in which Tadeo ran out of the house, naked, and collapsed in the field of barley. He screamed but no sound came out. He clawed at his face and rolled against the stalks, snapping them with a loud crunch. When she woke up it was not yet dawn and she spent an hour shivering under the bedsheets.
Valentín stopped by the farm the next afternoon. She saw him approaching the front door of the house and rushed outside to meet him before he could be intercepted by her mother or her uncle. They’d take him to the dining room or the sitting room, andshe did not wish to be inside. She felt stifled and anxious; she could not possibly sit in a chair and converse. They walked away from the house, quiet, quick, and wary.
“I heard about the dead animals,” he told her.
“A mountain lion killed a few goats,” she said.
“Jacobo said you’ve had two dead horses and some goats.”
She nodded and carefully adjusted her shawl. Valentín slid his hands into his trouser pockets. They followed the path that cut through the green fields of half-grown barley. There were years when the spring and summer were too hot and then the rains too heavy, and the crops were blighted by chahuistle. To avoid such fate, her father went into the fields each May and spoke loudly among the crops, warning any nahuales and evil sorcerers to leave their fields alone. It was part and parcel of the superstitions her uncle dismissed as nonsense.
Ironically, this year, with her father dead and her brother gone, no one had bothered with such speeches, and yet the barley would soon ripen into a bountiful crop. She could feel it, as in previous years she’d had portents and could tell when the chahuistle would emerge simply by gazing at the fog kissing the sides of the mountain.
“I know your family doesn’t believe in such things, but I’d say it’s a bewitchment. What’s more, I bet it’s the work of a teyolloquani,” Valentín said, looking serious.
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.
“My mother and my uncle will be angry if they hear you discussing such things,” she said.
“But it makes perfect sense. All this bad luck you’ve been having, and now the dead animals! It’s a bewitchment, all the signs are there. I know they’ll tell me I’m crazy, but it worries me. Ican’t keep quiet, can I? And you’ve sensed it, haven’t you? 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.
Therewasa 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?
When she did try to tell the others that something was amiss, her uncle asked Alba not to trouble her mother. If her father had been alive, he might have taken her portents seriously, but he’d died. Her brother was gone. Alba’s mother was too burdened by grief to pay attention to Alba’s misgivings.
She had no one to speak to, yet she hesitated, unsure, not because she thought Valentín would dismiss her worries, but because then she’d be admitting that she was indeed afraid.
“I heard something the other night,” she said, her voice low, and she hugged herself as she spoke. “There was an animal outside my window, but it was no creature that I could recognize. It did not sound natural. And I dreamed of Tadeo last night, only it felt real. I don’t know what to do, something terrible is happening but no one seems to realize it.”
“Have you told your mother?”
