HorrorMex : Witches

MEX

Number 1 | January de 2017

Horror Mex

The new face of fear is born from an ancient fear

Let´s narrate Mexico.

From there is that HORROR MEX comes to life, from the desire of sharing the stories that are inspired by our legends, from what our grandmothers used to tell us, uncles or relatives of what had happened to them at nightfall.

Who of us had the joy of growing up with these ghosts stories that our grandparents or relatives used to tell us after midnight? Stories that happened on their hometowns or on that same house where we listen to them. The environment changed, either if we turned off the lights or left them on for those who feared, because we all knew we were about to hear a great story.

Undoubtedly, the best thing of these stories was hearing them in a house located in a small town, those houses located in the middle of the countryside, with empty walls and dirt on the ground. Listening to them beside a warm stove, with a cup made of clay between your hands while your eyes burn from staring directly at the fire. While walking through the empty streets of a town in the middle of the night, and surrounded by the noises of the countryside, it becomes easy to understand why they used to believe in supernatural beings… or why these beings allowed themselves to be seen so easily.

But listening to these stories in the city also has its charm. In the city, where there’s no place for superstition. Only that in here the stories have a different hue: ghosts being seen after suffering during their lifetime, that caused and continue causing evil, or whose stories continue being unknown to us.

Haunted places that once were the scene of the worst tragedies.

There’s no need for us to copy the foreigner monsters to create wonderful stories; we have so many legends, from the past and from the present, horrors happening today…we’re all aware of them; and we also have the supernatural horror.

Horror Mex is not only a magazine; it’s a community where our priority is giving the Mexican horror a better chance.

So with anything else to add, here’s the very first edition that all the team from Horror Mex have prepared with love and deep enthusiasm.

Enjoy it.

J.Neros

Editor

J.Neros Editor Board

J.Neros La Chica llamada Cuervo Lilly Haggard Magazine Design

Daniela Estrada Illustrators

J.Neros Idu JuliĂĄn Ana ArgĂźelles Alan Aguilar Axel Contreras Fernando Carrera Cover

Nekane LaQueDibuja Translators from original language

Lilly Haggard La Chica llamada Cuervo Public Relations

La Chica llama da Cuervo

HorrorMex@hotmail.com

/HorrorMex

4 It’s told in my town by the nights...

Horror look through my window and said…

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The Green Witch A Sacrifice Memoirs of a Witch The River Witch Witch of mine

I live horror 31 The Witch at the stairs 35 The Pact

talking with horror 38 Ezzio Avendaño

It’s told in my town Witches

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by the nights…

AOn hearing this word, most think of women in black dresses, with long beaked hats, who stir potions in large cauldrons and, by night, fly with the help of a broom. Some only think in women of voluptuous bodies who dance naked around the fire in the company of the devil. But the common point is to be wicked, women who like to do evil.

Now we speak of a new meaning of witch, one that says they were intelligent women, who used plants to heal; independent women who did not submit to the yoke of man and, for this reason, were demonized… but those are not the ones that interest us at the moment; nor the good, young and beautiful witches who come to the minds of those who grew up watching programs with just that kind of witches.

There are not many who, on hearing the word witch, think of ours, the witches of mexican towns who seem to be gradually forgotten, obscured by foreign witches.

But what do we know about these witches?

There are many things that are told about them, and that is the great thing, they are full of mystery.

Witches range from young to decrepit old women. In most stories, the commonalities are that these women have the ability to remove their legs and change them by the legs of a guajolote. They can transform themselves into balls of fire. They are women who take the form of large black birds, guajolotes.

It is told that in the hills fireballs can be seen flying from one side to another.

“They are the witches,” they said. They feed on the blood of babies who have not yet been baptized. They take the blood out of their heads. …The bells rang… They all ran… I was able to open my way through the tumult… A woman cried… The baby was all sucked, its skin ashen and its body covered with what appeared to be purple bruises… it was dead…

They hypnotize the parents, so that they do not wake up with the cries of the children. Those who manage to awake tell that they saw a silver thread hanging from the ceiling, which, if cut, flows blood, for it is the tongue of the witch. Open mirrors and scissors must be placed to protect children.

Sometimes people managed to catch them. They beat them up. If the witch managed to escape, and the next day a wounded woman appeared, they would know she was the witch. If she did not escape, at sunrise, instead of finding a bird, they would find the corpse of a woman legless.

They are the stories that tell the fear, the fear of the parents to wake up and find their baby dead, sucked by the witch.

But there are more stories, stories in which sucked babies do not appear. …They bewitched you… Someone desire the worst for you… you have to do a spiritual cleansing in order to eradicate evil… …They knew he had caught them, he knew they were witches, that’s why they bewitched him, so he could not say a thing.

They narrate the horrors of those who were haunted. The martyrdom they suffered from witchcraft, disease and their pain; the anguish of seeing their acquaintances in pain, for it was the means to hurt them, through their loved ones.

Horror Mex had to start with a special theme, and that’s why I chose witches.

Beings that in the last years have caused me an enormous fascination and who, in my childhood, terrified me at the mere idea of opening my eyes and seeing a witch peering out of my window. .

J. Neros

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The

Green Witch Written by La chica llamada cuervo Illustration by Axel Contreras

Do you know where people go when there´s nothing else to do? Where do they go after they have destroyed everything and the only thing left to do is burn their brain to die? But well, in order for you to keep on destroying yourself you still need a little brain, so there’s where we’d go: to play a game in which we blow each other’s brain with a hot gun.

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lmost everyone uses a black pistol, but not me, I have a golden one, I won it at a bet, I won the gun and also the chance to shoot the loser in one knee, it was a good night, but as always, a few hours later I didn’t feel anything, just numb and boredom empowering all over the neurons I had left.

The cigarettes that burned my fingertips only calmed the anxiety for a while. I needed more, to feel something, anything. I took a shot of whiskey and used my tongue to kill the cigarette.

Down in the street you could hear people talking about different places where you could find something exiting to do, but all the places where exactly the same: dirty bars with half naked women dancing, places full with people and wet cocaine that just hurts your throat.

I walked some streets until I got bored and entered to one of those smelly places that I used to know.

In there with only twenty pesos you could buy a cold beer and with thirty more a woman appeared sitting in your legs. So there I was, looking to those disgusting human beings trying to get near me.

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“You always leave saying you’re not coming back but here you are again with those black eyes looking straight to this cheap beer,” said a homeless guy who always tried to share a drink with me.

I kept silence, I didn’t want to answer and let my boredom turn into anger.

“What’s wrong? You’re not in the mood for having some action in the restroom with me? Shall we wait until you drink a little more?”

Then it happened, I couldn’t stop it. The hate inside me was unleashed like a heroin injection that just ran through my veins taking over my mind; I pushed the woman from my legs and kicked the old man to the floor and in five seconds my golden gun was inside his mouth. I have to admit that the idea of his dirty saliva in my pistol made me sick, but little things are as fun as the look full or horror from the guy under your boot knowing his life depends on your mercy and good heart.

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I heard some words trying to leave his mouth and saw how he pulled something out of the pocket of his pants, it was a small paper card. I moved my boot out of his chest and took my pistol out of his mouth. He gave me the card while I heard him laugh as some lunatic. I saw him got up, drank my beer while imitating the sound of a gun.

Poor old man losing his mind, I thought while I read the letters on the card. It was totally green and it had an address written in black. It was close, some streets away from downtown near the main church and I was getting bored.

I left the bar and walked to this new place, it was easy to find, it had a green door. I knocked once, two times, three times, I hate waiting, four times and on the fifth one a woman wearing a black dress opened the door and let me in.

It looked like an elegant bar, a place with weird and rich people; and I just love rich people, they

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had the worst perversions and never had a second doubt before spending a fortune to make it come true.

I sat down in a green velvet coach and ordered a martini, apple martini, green as well. I loved the decoration, everything was green, even the cup holders said: The Green Witch, I laughed and took another drink, boredom started to gain power over me, it was like if boredom was knocking at my skull asking me to do something about it. I guess people noticed how impatient I was since a few seconds later the girl with the black dress showed up, hold my hand and took me to another room.

There was a big green table in the center of the place with little glasses. I sat down beside a man who automatically put his hand on my leg, I never really understood that reaction of men who think they’re allowed to touch a girls crotch just because they’re drunk. But I left him keep his hand there.

Then the girl in the black dress took a green pistol out of her green purse and placed it in the center of the table. One of the man took it facing his head and pulled the trigger. We all stared at him in silence but nothing happened, just a little mark on his temples, so we continued, until the gun reached the man sitting by my side. I smiled, he took the gun while he looked at me and pulled the trigger just to split all of his inner brains all over my face. The green table was covered in red blood and his body fell all over it, he was the first loser. I pushed the dead man’s hand away from me and took the gun from his fingers and place it in my head but as I was about to pull the trigger someone stopped me, the girl in the black dress staring directly at me.

“You’re going to use different bullets baby doll,” she said smiling at me and put a green bullet inside of the gun.

I smiled at her and pretended to send a kiss while I pulled the trigger just over my temples. All turned cloudy, nothing more but darkness.

I’m not sure how much time I lost before I woke

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up. The girl in the black dress was healing the wound in my head, I stood up and looked myself in the mirror, we were almost identical, we looked like twins, I was also wearing a little black dress. She stood by my side and showed me the wound, it was a green whole in the right side of my head. She laughed and showed me hers, she had the same whole on her head.

“Welcome baby doll.”

“Thanks, witch,” I answered kissing her lips, her mouth tasted like ashes, but that smell of sulfur or death vanished all the boredom in my mind, I had finally found my place

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A

SacrifIce Written by La chica llamada cuervo Illustrations by J.Neros

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n my family we always talked about a curse. It was funny getting all together at Christmas dinner and point whoever we thought was going to be the next to fall into the curse. The problem started when the curse actually became true and we had to sit all together surrounded by the death and a corpse reminding us it wasn’t a game.

Funerals can be exhausting, but this one, the last one, had drained all the energy out of our bodies.

My brother and I had the habit of playing hide and seek while our parents pretended the cryings under their dark glasses. It was our thing, but in this one, our grandfather’s funeral, everything was different; it represented the lost of our childhood, saying goodbye to the innocence. That morning mom took us to her bedroom and gave us a pair of dark glasses that had been in her closet. She had one for each one of us: a new tradition had started.

Grandpa died at dawn, but mom decided it was better to start the ritual until the morning.

The one who passed away was his father, but there was no sign of sorrow in her face.

She painted her lips red, as she did almost every day, carefully, they looked perfect on her, but her eyes seemed to be empty.

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The road down the church was completely quiet, it was the first funeral we did not drive listening to music.

We arrived to the church.

The first one to go inside was my brother, one strong step that forced me to follow him.

Mom stayed behind, her red lips looking motionless and her black glasses ref lecting the building.

“Let’s go,” said my dad while he walked in.

All the family gathered together.

The ceremony ended and we stayed there for several hours with the tears running over our faces, the dark glasses turned out to be useful.

The way back home was quiet.

As soon as we got home mom took me to her room. There are no more games to play.

“You know you’re not a girl anymore, ¿right?”

“I know,” I answered immediately, but I didn’t

really knew, I did not understand what it meant to take care of everyone, to not be afraid, to be a brave person.

“Good, now mom needs to get some sleep.”

After saying this she took a handful of pills and I sat by her side watching her rest.

Some hours after I woke up, we were inside the car driving mom to the hospital to get a stomach wash. I learned new words that day, and there, in the world´s coldest waiting room, while I was drinking my first Nescafe machine coffee, my dad told me the true story of the curse.

“From long time ago it is well known a witch was born in your mother’s family, in that moment nobody knew her secret and her parents tried to hide it from everyone; However, by discriminating her, made her anger grow,

force her to believe that she was a monster, so, a monster was what she gave them. She uttered a curse on the others: painful deaths, psychosis, uncontrollable lust that would lead them to incest. Of course, nobody believed it and that’s why every Christmas people celebrate the great mistake of that girl making one person carry the burden of the curse and setting free the other ones. Your mother used to be that girl, one who carried with the secret, but now it seems she left that role to you. I know it’s tough, it’s not easy to understand the curse and that now it depends entirely to you, that you stopped being a child to become a monster, but you have to understand this is for the best, you want the best for your family, don’t you?”

As soon as he finished the story, I felt a terrible pain in my body. I stared at him with fear.

“It’s pretty normal, my girl. It’s just the psychosis gaining power over you, your mom will be so proud when she finds out you accepted to take the sacrifice.”

From that moment on everything became confusing; my world became a dark place and so did my room, I was one of the monsters. That was what it meant to stop being a child.

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My brother used to visit me and told me stories about how the whole family had return to the tradition of gatherings and toasting, how they forgot my name, they had cornered me as the monster of the family, the witch, the one who keeps all the sins from a thousand generations. They have banished me to be that thing that caused them shame, to be the one to cleaned up their name.

As days went by I started to empathized with the first witch, I was able to understand her pain, her eager to hurt who mocked her, who humiliated her, I joined all my strength together, my tears became little bad wishes I had for them, each night the loneliness made me stronger, my body started to change and to loose it’s human figure and my head learned some new ways, but still I wasn’t scared, I had the spirits of one broken girl protecting me and the willingness of every girl who once was humiliated, by my side carrying me to the top.

There was nothing I couldn’t do, or so I thought, until the room was filled up with more people, it wasn’t only me then, I

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wasn’t alone any more, I was numbed by all the pills while the others hallucinated about a distant world. How it was possible they were there in the same room by my side?

Was it possible they didn’t know who I was?

They didn’t seem to be scared of the witch.

All my muscles started to get numbed also but I had left one hand to keep on writing and one brain full of hate that knew how to plan a good revenge. Someday the witch will be reborn, I told to myself as I swallowed one more pill.

And then one day that big white door that kept me locked from the outside world reopened with a surprise: my mother. She was wearing her classic dark glasses and her perfect red lips; it seemed like if she had forgotten the sadness at home; I watched her drink a coffee from the machine and get closer to me until she kneed by my side.

I wanted to speak, to hate her, but my lips were muted.

“Thank you, my child, thank you for the sacrifice,”she said after kissing my cheek, “few times they get it right and catch the real witch.”

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She got on her feet again and walked away from the room without looking back. The sacrifice was already done, the witch was muted

Memoirs of a

WITCH

A story in the world of “A witches tale”.

Written by J.Neros Illustrations by Idu Julián

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om used to tell us the same story every night. It went like this:

“Long time ago, many, many years ago, a girl of unparalleled beauty was born. She was so beautiful that even the Devil fell in love with her. HE turned into her shadow so they would never be apart. As she kept growing so did his desire for her. And he wasn’t the only one. There wasn’t any man around that didn’t desire her as a wife, but the Devil pushed them away from her. He didn’t stop there; he polluted the family harvest, her friend’s and anyone who was near her. The Devil wanted her all by himself so he pushed everyone apart.

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The young girl wasn’t only pretty, she was also smart. She was aware of the evil around her, waiting for the exact moment to tempt her; but she was a servant of God. Every day she collect all the branches she found on her way and late at night, while she prayed, she took them close to her heart.

She carved each one trying not think on the pain it caused on her hands.

One day, before the dawn and while her parents were still sleeping, she left home.

She walked all day without leaving the path.

She knew she wasn’t alone. Even though she didn’t see him, she could feel the Devil following her.

There was a big apple tree waiting for her at the end of the road. The young lady climbed to the top of it and waited till sunset.

“Help! Somebody help me!” she screamed The Devil came to her rescue.

“I’ll help you get down from there if you promise to sleep with me” he said.

“Go away Devil, you won’t tempt me.”

The Devil ran away from the road and into the woods where he buried himself and then sprout as a tall, good looking man, He returned and, once at the foot of the tree, he yelled again.

“I’ll help you get down from there if you promise you’ll sleep with me.”

“Alright,” said the girl who knew who was hiding under that disguise.

The Devil, still looking like a man, climbed the tree and when he was one branch away from reaching her she jumped. She took a handful of cruces from her dress and sticked them into the ground all around the tree.

“Pretty girl, take those crosses away or I’ll

hurt myself.”

“They are only crosses. If you’re a good man, nothing wrong is going to happen.”

“Pretty girl, I am a good man, but please took those crosses away and let me down” “Liar, you Devil!”

“Pretty girl, I’ll give you anything you ask.”

But the only thing she really wanted was the evil to be away from her. She left the Devil trapped in the tree with the crosses she had carved every night and went back home.

God rewarded her for keeping herself away from temptation, and in the good path, by giving her a numerous family.”

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My sister´s face ref lected astonishment and admiration every night at the end of the story. She loved to chant the story in a quiet voice. Me, on the other hand, pretended to sleep. For me was a screwy story, though I liked the part in which the Devil asked the young lady to sleep with him. I knew exactly what it meant, not like my sister, who thought sleeping with someone was the same thing she and I used to do with our clothes on. Whenever we reached that part of the story I used to stop listening to my mom and created a new story in my head, one in which the young woman accepted.

I tight my legs while I imagined the Devil on top of the girl. I also used to do a list of things I would ask the Devil for.

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Night by night I used to control myself, but the night before that happened I laughed under the sheets as soon as mom finished telling the story.

“What are you laughing at?”

Those where mom moods. She never punished us. If we ever misbehaved, she would ask us the reason of our actions.

That night wasn’t the exception. She asked me in the same tone as if she would ask if I wanted something more for dinner.

“Well,” I said, “the young lady was stupid for rejecting the Devil. What use could she

have from family God provided when the Devil could have give her so much more?”

I didn’t mention the part of sleeping together. That would have disturbed mom even more.

I don’t remember what she answered, in case she did, what I do remember is the frightened look my sister gave me. She always acted so innocent.

Fernanda kept quiet and she lost in the memories while looking into the farthest lights of the city. The moonlight covered her face and the air that entered through the window turn her nipples hard.

“Anyways, who invented that story? It was stupid. I never understand why she told us that. Now I know they were the ones who did it. Mom grew up with that story and so did us. We were their little experiment, until that night, and then I continued being the experiment. They wanted to make us believe that if we fought our own nature God would save us,” she sighed and look toward the sky with disdain, “God. God who turned his back on us from the beginning. It didn’t happen the same way as the story.”

Fernanda stepped away from the window and walked in circles ignoring the cries of the baby.

“They have made my sister believe there’s something wrong with me. They tried the same thing with me, but there isn’t. “ She walked to the cradle and pat with the tips of her fingers the bars as she walked around it. The baby´s face was all red and he looked more wrinkled than the usual. His screams reached deaf ears. His

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parents, who were sleeping in the bedroom next door, wouldn´t rescue him.

“But you don’t care about all that, right?” she pat his cheek with her fingernail.

Fernanda took the baby within her hands and raised it. She put it back in his cradle and jumped in. Then she took the baby and covered it, she took her time to unzip the baby’s pajama and undressed him. She took away the dipper and the reek spread through all the room.

“It’s nothing personal. I need to feed myself, just like your parents do with animals. Everyone feeds from the species underneath.”

She squeeze the small and ridiculous penis and guided her lips toward the soft and young skin.

She finished and the baby dropped back to

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the cradle with a rap. She looked at him, and as much as she tried she wasn’t able to feel anything, neither compassion nor guilt.

She only felt disgusted for the most useless and dirty creatures of the world.

She cleaned the narrows of her lips and took the bag of bones in which the baby had become. She couldn’t leave him, not without risking to be caught. The Landa seemed to be everywhere, always looking and waiting the moment to go out like cockroaches, waiting to attack.

She stood on the edge of the window and waited for the fire to emerge from her skin.

She would throw the little filth in a lonely place. She started the f light.

The next night would be the same, and so the next. It would always be the same way until the Landa caught her or kill her…or she might do it herself. Maybe. She wouldn’t let them lock her again

But first she needed to find her sister, Lucia, the first one in the family who hadn´t been kissed by the Devil on her birth.

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THE

River WItch

Written by Lilly Haggard Illustrations by Alan Aguilar

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fter three long months Lalo couldn´t get used to his new work.

Waking up every day at four am, so he could be ready to go at four fifth, was getting harder as days went by.

without the worried tone. “He’s not going to go to work, he has a day off.”

He worked in the same factory his dad did: Sabater de México SA. A glass spanish company. The promise of having his own money and being the man of the house – after his father, of coursesounded so good he accepted without doubting, though he wasn’t even eighteen. He was going to fight for his little brothers- there were four of them- and maybe, someday he was going to study a career and leave to the city to have a better job. Works were better paid there. He wanted to have it all and was pretty sure money would help him achieve it.

Perfect, he thought, the only thing missing to make this day more miserable: going to work by his own.

But now, as his mother kindly put his lunch on his bag he kept thinking he didn’t want to continue with his routine. Every day he had to break glass bottles in order for them to be melted afterwards.

His father was an artist: he melted glass to create figures, but Lalo… well, he only broke glasses, and he hated it, but someday all that was going to change, he was going to have lots of money and he was going to be happy.

“Take care Lalito,” said his mother. He hated when she called him like that. He wasn’t a kid anymore, how much times he needed to repeat it?

“Yes mom ,” answered as he got on his bike.

“I’m serious,” by the way she was saying it she really meant it, there wasn’t any doubt about it. “Don’t wait for your dad,” she said

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Lalo decided to take the other road, the one leading to the river. His father had forbidden it without any specific reason. He always spoke about the river witch and Lalo used to make fun of him for believing that. He thought people were stupid. But Lalo didn’t believe in those things, he had gone many times to the river with his friends and never seen a thing.

Convinced he wasn’t going to see anything, he rode his bike around the mud but got himself dirty, so he decided it was better to walk. The river was a little dry at that time so it was easy for him to get near. He could see the corn plantations and the dawn getting near.

A bird flew over the plantations, he tried to see what kind of bird it, an owl? But it wasn’t an owl.

The bird opened it’s wings and continued flying over him, but as he saw it carefully he discovered it was around two meters wingspan. The strange bird started to change it’s shape and turn into a mantle. Lalo started at it with his eyes wide open.

Everything was happening really fast. The mantle was carried the river and turned into a dress. Then the dress started to change into the body of a woman who started walking toward him. It was the perfect moment for him to run away; but he didn’t, Lalo was so shocked he couldn’t move a muscle, he grabbed his bike as if his life depended

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on it. His heart was biting so hard he thought it was about to escape from his mouth.

The woman approached him and waved at him.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen: she had dark, deep eyes, and large and black eyelashes. He could see her curves and magnificent body under her white dress. Her nice round breasts made him blush. She had long, black curly hair that fell her back; but the best about her were definitely her big and pink lips she bite while she smiled. Was she La Llorrona? Was she the river witch? Who was she? Lalo couldn’t say anything more than hello as he stood in front of her.

“I’m glad you’re able to see me,” not only her body was amazing, her voice sounded just like the sin itself. “Not everyone can. I have something I want to give you. I buried a treasure and it can be all yours as soon as you pass three tests.”

A treasure? He had believed it was all legends, silly things his father and neighbors used to tell each other.

“Three tests,” she repeated, she seemed to be in hurry. “You only need to carry me on your back and I’ll guide you all the way to the treasure.”

Maybe it was a mixed between the desperation

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on her voice and gestures, or maybe it was his need to become a rich man and stop working; it could have been anything, a spell, whatever it was Lalo accepted the deal by nodding his head in a silly way. He stepped away from his bicycle and let her jump on his back. She ordered him to walk through the plantation. They walked around twenty minutes. All that time he kept thinking on the consequences of being late for work, but he kept on walking, he also thought about the money he was going to earn and what he was going to do with it.

“Here’s where the first test starts. Are you ready?” she whispered to his ear.

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The woman explained that he was going to hear noises and he’d believe all of that was real, nevertheless nothing of that would be and he only needed to keep on walking straight to a cave he could see far from there. The money was buried inside of it. He only needed to get there, take it and become a free man for the rest of his life.

The only condition: not let her fall neither turn around to look at her.

Lalo continued walking, decided to pass the test, but

every moment she turned a little heavier than before. He felt he couldn’t continue anymore and he started listening the sounds of a cow chewing on the back of his neck. Lalo continued walking even when he felt his legs were about to break. The weight on his back seemed to turn a little lighter, and then the second test started. The woman returned to her human form, but now he could hear a snake near him, caressing his neck.

Lalo made a huge effort not to let her fall. He was horrified by snakes and was afraid it would

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bite him. But then the sound of those animals stopped and for a brief moment he heard a man laughing far away from him.

He didn’t want to turn around to verify if it was the devil laughing behind him. He closed his eyes and got ready for the last test.

All of the sudden he felt her naked skin touching his back, her arms were uncovered touching him and he felt her lips kissing his skin. He could feel her breasts pressing against him

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making him conscious he was carrying a woman.

The cave and the treasure were five steps away from them, but in that moment the woman’s hand found his virginity, his weak spot. He paralyzed as he heard her say: I want you, so he couldn’t hold himself and he turned around to look at her.

A terrifying scream and cry: why? Why have you done it?, and then, nothing. The woman vanished and left him on his own, no treasure, just the cave.

He heard the man’s laugh once again and saw him on the entrance of the cave, wearing a black suite and a tie; he could see now how the woman was by his side. The man grab her by the hair and took her inside of the cave where they both disappeared.

The one condition: don´t turn to see her nor let her fall.

Lalo wasn’t sure what to do next, should he follow them or should he just walk away?

Slowly he tried to look inside the cave, it was only a mountain of dirt and it was so small not even his two year old brother Pedro could go inside.

He took his bottle of water and drained it over the ground, then left, took his bike and continued his road to work.

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Witch Of Mine

Written by J. Neros Illustrations by Fernando Carrera

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here was l no moon that night; nonetheless, Felipe managed to see that the door to Isabel’s room was half-closed. He pushed it, just enough to look inside and, after a while, he recognized the bulge she was under the serape that went up and down to the beat of her breath; a slow breathing of someone who rests without any concern. He clenched his fists so tightly that hi marked his fingernails on his palms.

There it was again that image, the vision, that had first appeared in his mind a month ago and which, with each passing day, threatened to become a reality: Isabel, unconscious on the floor in the middle of a pool of blood, while he beat her.

He went up the roof, begging Virgin Mary for it to be the night. His usual chair was waiting for him. He took a seat in the cold, hard wood and waited. He crossed his arms and buried his head in the collar of the coat.

There was not wind, still, the cold stung his bones.

The town was dark and silent, and though Felipe felt alone, he wasn´t. There were more men, like him, standing guard over their houses. Most struggled to not fall asleep. Not Felipe, even if he wanted to. He had not slept since the death of his baby. Awake, he could ward off bad memories; asleep, nothing protected him from them. And the thing is, he could not longer name them dreams, because they were all an exact copy of the reality: the little baby’s body covered with tiny bruises and his skin stuck to the bones. On the other hand, the image of his wife at the slopes of the hill did not disturb him. If his wife had decided threw herself, it was because guilt would not allow her to live. Yes, it has benn the witch who killed his baby, but who allowed that? His fucking wife. She and Isabel. The babies had been dying, both in the village and in the outskirts, they knew it and did not care. They called him crazy when he wanted to relocate Isabel into the baby’s room, facing the street,

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and move the baby to her room, the room next to his and the only one without windows. His wife went crazy, said that she would not let anything happen to Isabel and that it would be better to accommodate both in the same room. Obstinate, foolish woman. He must have changed them regardless her opinion.

Felipe sighed and looked to the sky. His first wife had given him two girls. The second, another. Nine years later his dream of having a baby boy came true, and all for what? So that three months later the boy would be taken away.

What would he have done to change his son’s place for Isabel’s…

He felt as if an ice slid down his back when, behind his back, he heard a whistle. He sat up and held his breath. Then came another whistle, a little closer than the first, and Felipe kept his eyes fixed on the front.

Far away, above the hills, he saw a fireball rising in the air.

Excitement seized him. Excitement he did not see in

the eyes of his companions when meeting with them.

They were still in the darkness. They did not want to give themselves away. They would light the torches at the agreed time, they would turn them on after catching the witch. Everyone knew what their task was. They separated and Felipe walked through the streets of the town with his back against the walls. Once alone, he could feel how he was invaded by the fear of the others. He was afraid for him and his companions.

When they had gathered, they had lost sight of the fireball and no one had seen which direction it took.

He also doubted that the witch would continue in that form. He was afraid because he realized he did not know what to expect, what he would find. The only thing he thought he knew came from the stories he had heard as a child from his parents and grandparents: fireballs, black birds, women with guajolote legs… which of these was real? It had never occurred to him to ask because he had never cared. He only enjoyed the stories even when, at night, the fear would not let him sleep.

He gripped the stick tightly in his right hand and continued his way. He was petrified when he heard, not far away from him, the cries of a baby. He held his breath. The cries became bellowed and Felipe felt

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a loathing towards the parents. Why didn’t they shut it up? It would wake the whole town and the witch would flee and his revenge would vanish. A thought crossed his mind and made his skin prickle. Had he been like that, months ago, deeply sleep, while his son cried when he felt the presence of evil, when he felt how life was leaving him? He ran toward the cries.

He could barely discern a strange silhouette that was walking on the roof of one of the houses in front of him. He did not stop to think. He shouted and waved the stick in the air. There was a shriek and saw the silhouette of the witch running on top of the roofs of the houses.

“After her!” He shouted.

He forgot all precautions. After so many nights, he had finally found the witch and was not going to let her escape. He ran after her, guiding himself more by his ear than his sight, and he did not stop even though his legs ached. He reached the open field and all trace of the witch vanished. Felipe looked around and his eyes began to sting. He wanted to cry, anger tears, and these would have slipped down his cheeks, if it weren’t for a strong impact on his head that threw him

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against the ground. He tried to get up, but something prevented him doing so. Something that kicked him and scratched the back of his head. He felt as if a giant bird had jumped on him. He could hear his flutters and felt the feathers against his face. The earth and grass entered through his nose and mouth and everything turn dark.

When he opened his eyes, his head was spinning. His vision was all blurry. He stood up and tried to keep his balance as he walked toward the figures of his companions. They all formed a circle around a van.

“Hold her! Do not let her go!” shouted someone in the middle of the cries.

Felipe took the torch and lit the back of the truck. A decrepit old woman struggled to free herself from the ropes that had her under control. The noise of his body against the metal was unbearable. She was naked, her skin hung from all sides and her legs were black and glittered with the firelight. She stopped and turned her head toward him. Her hair slid down her face and the witch looked into his eyes. She smiled at him. Felipe lost his temper as he imagined those lips on his son’s skin.

He climbed into the truck and clenched his fists. He had dropped the torch at some point without noticing it. Despite the fear the being at his feet infused him, he began to beat his fists against her face to erase that smile.

No one did anything to stop him. On the contrary, someone threw a stick at him, and when Felipe hurt his knuckles, he took it and continued to strike. He pound, pounded until his arms stopped responding.

He flopped down onto the ground and covered his face. For the first time, he allowed himself to cry. The accumulated fatigue of weeks subsided, because as soon as he closed his eyes, he fell asleep.

The sky began to clear and the rooster song awoke him. The morning chill soon awakened the group, which had failed in overcome fatigue. Felipe stretched his legs and arms to loosen up his muscles.

His clothes were soaked with blood and his hands were burning. The town, there in the distance, slowly woke up with the light of the sun.

Once awake, the men walked, together, to the back of the truck. They wanted to see, in the light of day, the body of the witch. She was still breathing, even laughing, but with the first ray of sunlight, she died.

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The old woman disappeared in front of their eyes.

Yes, there was still a body, but it was not the decrepit body of moments before. Neither it had legs. Blood flowed from her thighs, and the part of the bone that was visible began to dye red. Felipe looked around the young body. He knew that something was wrong when he directed his vision from her sex, a smooth sex that had attracted the eyes of all of them, to a flat chest. That was not a woman’s body, that was a girl’s body. Felipe remembered the woman, the one who had come to the village months ago. He remembered her swaying hips and breasts that rose and fell with her gait. That was the witch. That had been told by their wives and mothers and, within a few days of her arrival, the little children and the elderly had begun to die.

Felipe kept watching. Something told him to stop, to look away or he would regret it, but he could not.

Despite the blows and blood clots, Isabel’s face was still recognizable. Now he couldn´t keep watching.

He lifted his head and saw a naked woman in the distance. The witch. She greeted him with her hand and her lips, from which blood flowed, formed a smile.

Felipe looked down again and his blood froze at the sight of his daughter, who, though dead, also looked into his eyes with a smile.

The Witch

At the Stairs Illustration byt Ana ArgĂźelles

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My grandparents’ house is located in the archaeological zone of Cuicuilco, maybe for that reason many people in the house have faced different paranormal experiences; at least experiences they cannot explain.

Those stories go from listening to footsteps to seen ghosts.

Since I didn’t receive permission to speak all the details about this experience I need to omit some of them such as the street address, names or how are we related, except for my grandfather who still lives there.

«They have tried cleaning the house or praying for it, still the environment keeps feeling heavy and cold.

At least I don’t like the feeling of it; it doesn´t matter how warm the day is, inside is always cold.»

My grandfather loves telling us scary stories and I love listening to all of them. Now he’s over 90 and he’s still pretty lucid, he has an amazing memory and he always has an interesting conversation.

His bedroom is the first one after the main door, his window is facing the street and it’s a little wam. He has his own bathroom. He loves taking baths of sun in the morning or at noon. We’re there in front of the main door, he’s looking at his watch and tells me it’s almost noon. He can’t use the stairs anymore so I bring him food.

“Let’s get inside, girl,” he tells me as he grabs his walking stick.

“Or your aunt Juanita will forget to bring me food.”

We laugh together. Of course my aunt never forgets to feed him at the same hour of the day. I stand up and follow him, I sit on his

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couch just behind the window.

My aunt Juanita comes down with his food, helps him and then leaves.

There are more people in the room, my mother and my aunt Adriana

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“So dad, how was it that time?” asked aunt Adriana.

“It was one of the worst experiences I’ve lived in my whole life,” he answers while eating his soup. Even when his hand shakes a little, he’s able to continue eating by himself. We are just there watching him, making sure everything is alright.

“

“And I didn’t hear or saw anything,”my aunt continues.

“Because you were facing back to the window.”

“How was the window?” I asked because back to that time they hadn’t finished building the entire house.

“Well, it was a large room,” grandpa continues. “The window was a bigger, you could easily see the stairs.”

The room we’re talking about is at the end of the hall, in front of the stairs that leads to the second floor. It wasn’t divided like that before; it was just a big room leading to my grandfather’s bedroom. The window was bigger.

“The kitchen was behind the window and we had chairs beside it” “At the end of the stairs you could find your mother’s bedroom.”

“But just after I left,” my mom interrupted; she left because she was about to get married.

“You packed everything and changed my room.”

“Oh yes,” confirmed aunt Adriana. “In those times we still had the wood pillars because we were about to enlarge the celling. “ “We still had the laundry at the end of the stairs,” mom commented.

“And in that moment my aunt was behind the window,” I said.

Grandpa, who had started eating his soup, stopped and answered.

“Yes, because she was beside the kitchen so she had to stand up to feed her baby.”

“Yes, right, I had just arrived with Manuel, “ my aunt

explained how she had just gave birth to her child and came back from the hospital. “It was early morning, right dad?”

“Yes. It was around two or three in the morning. I was awake because I couldn’t sleep, since those times I couldn’t sleep and my girl had to get ready because her boy wouldn’t stop crying. She went to the kitchen and heated some milk for the kid, then she sat down beside the kitchen to feed him.”

“I was sitting there, I covered him with a blanket. It was a cold night.”

“I didn’t want to sit so I started walking trying to catch some sleep again; and then I saw her at the stairs.”

“But, how was she?” I asked, surprised “She was a thin, old woman.

She had an ugly face, yellow tooth. Her hair was black and it almost looked like it was drifting. I think she was wearing a white dress. I stared at her, I thought it was Juanita, your aunt, but she wasn’t, she didn’t look like her and she always stayed in the room upstairs. I got closer to the window and tried to look outside, I saw her touching the glass, looking at the little boy. Truth be told, I

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did fear, I thought it was a witch. I walked to the hall and there was nothing in there, just the cat,” he shows me his curved arm. “It was all bristly.

There was no one else there.”

“I heard the cat, but when I looked back I didn’t see anything.”

“And, have you seen her again?”

“Some other times we have seen the shadow of a woman. Then your cousin Alberto was born and also the witch came back to get closer to the boy also the same day we came back from the hospital” “But she wasn’t able to hurt them,” aunt continued still with a tone of fear in her voice. I didn’t want to ask if she ever hurt them, but I asked, I wanted to be sure.

“Well no, she never did, they were never lonely, we lived some ugly experiences when they just arrived home.”

“After that we would never leave them alone.”

Said my mom.

“But was that all?” I asked them.

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“Some other times we saw the witch upstairs or some other times we saw her coming down,” my grandfather continued. “But those are other stories. It’s well known that the witches look for the new born babies, they dry them, that might be the reason she was still around.”

“Oh no, I never let my boy alone.”

“Well no,” added my mom. “That’s why one should never let your new born kids sleep alone.

Witches can come and take them, and then you find them, all drained out, dry with their tongue turned like paper.”

The Pact Ilustraciones de Ana ArgĂźelles

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Even after some years my grandmother (well, my grandmother’s sister) cannot talk about that particular situation without feeling uncomfortable.

Whenever someone ask her she just avoids the subject and gives a brief answer. I don’t blame her, it was a terrible situation.

“Yes, and if I do die first I’ll come back for you.”

“Great! I love it. Let’s be together, even in death.”

“You and me, two old women…I can only imagine how fun it’d be.”

When she was a young woman, around the 70’s in the city of Guanajuato, her cousin Eugenia was her best friend. They were always together and they loved each other.

Months passed without them thinking about that pact they made. But the boy who fell in love with Eugenia couldn’t get over her, he insisted even when she was dating another boy at the moment.

“We were like sisters,” my grandma says.

The holidays started and my grandmother, her family and Eugenia’s family went together to the Christmas celebration taking place at downtown. There were lots of food, everyone ate in there, also Eugenia, but she was the only one who got sick afterwards. Her health started getting worst until she got to a moment when she couldn’t get up from bed.

Eugenia used to be a young free woman, pretty and cheerful. She was full of life. It was exactly because of her personality that many boys were attracted to her; one of them fell deeply in love actually, but that love wasn’t corresponded.

They both shake hands and closed the pact.

“

The first one who dies will come back for the other one.

One day they both ran away from that boy to their favorite hideaway: an old and twisted tree, they covered within its branches and hid behind the leaves.

“Let’s make a pact,” Eugenia started “What kind of pact? To never get married?”

“No, not that one, but to always be together.”

“Deal.”

“But, the first one who dies needs to come back for the other one.”

“So you mean, if I die first I must come back for you?”

”

There wasn’t a doctor in town that could help her, it was so horrible her parents decided to look for a santero* to come and see her. That man used an egg, a chicken and some herbs; but his only conclusion was that the kid who fell in love with her payed a witch to place a spell on her for rejecting him, it happened on the Christmas dinner, where everyone had eaten but the spell had only been directed to her.

Eugenia dried to death, her body was rotten from the inside and she usually defecated warms. There wasn’t any doctor or healer who could safe her.

At the end all that beauty, youth and cheerful faded away in an awful way, all because she rejected a boy.

My grandmother stayed with her until the end, and not even then she remembered the pact they did before.

The first one who dies will come back for the other one.

She started hearing some footsteps outside her house, then whispers, and some days after Eugenia´s death, she could hear her screaming her name reminding her of the pact they did. But it didn’t end there, not only she could hear Eugenia screaming her name but everyone around her could also hear it.

Finally, after some months of sorrow, she gained the strength enough to face the ghost hunting her, she asked to let her live, for more time. It took a little longer for Eugenia to understand it, but she did, with the time she stopped hunting her and left her live in peace.

“I know you don’t believe in these things,” she tells me and my mom without looking at us, still looking at the floor and nostalgic. “I wouldn’t believe it either but I lived it.”

other people from my family who witnessed the story told me the same details except for the part where she managed to free herself from Eugenia.

“I do believe you.” I honestly answered.

I still don’t have all the specific information about it but I don’t want to push her with it, I know the pain is real and it’s still alive with her.

I do because it’s easy to know she’s not pretending, it’s hard for her, her sorrow is still alive and she wasn’t the only one who experienced it. Some

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Talking With Horror

Ezzio Avendaño current Academic Coordinator of the C.C.C.

Ezzio talks about the genre of terror as the part of his life that has formed him the most and which he loves so much for representing his growth and his current passion. He talks about the difficults in horror genre and the importance of never giving up believing. He talks about nostalgia while his study is a tribute to all these crushes that have formed him to this day and have continued to motivate him for his future projects.

How has your approach to something call C, which was the of movies where the most beautiful horror genre been? classification. In those days were thing is not just watching the movie Without realizing it starts as a big affection that now may already be called as a love to cinema; to the cinema as a total event of going there, see the posters, to fall in love with an image, to understand that there’s a story; try to put the money together to buy a ticket and watch a movie.

were movies that, although I was excited to see them, I couldn´t, because they would not let me in.

But with the recorders o Betamax came a wonderful event called blockbusters.

Is in there, in the blockbusters, where I watch The Hills Have Eyes, The Evil Dead, Bad Taste (by I am from that generation that faces Peter Jackson). They are the type

but the event itself: renting them in secret, watching them in secret, knowing that it’s forbidden. We were the generation that grew with a forbidden cinema inside our homes. It can be said that we are a generation of nostalgia; the same nostalgia that is not only the movie, but the whole period; the event and fashion that came from watching a horror movie.

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“ They are the type of movies where the most beautiful thing is not just watching the movie but the event itself: renting them in secret, watching them in secret, knowing that it’s forbidden.

Why did Another brick in the wall is decided to be made with zombies?

The 80’s is an era in which Italian cinema begins a lot of imitations of the cinema of undead. Also, it is in the 80’s when John Landis, with Thriller, makes a movement in which the zombie becomes popular, and makes a series of films in which the zombie becomes a pop culture.

I start to have a lot of affection to those movies. But on the other hand a new generation is growing, as it happened to us, to the ones who watched movies in secrete, now there´s a new generation which are those who playe secretly: video game players in the late 90’s were the ones to rescued the zombies.

The zombie genre resurfaces with a game from Japan called Resident Evilre. After this, it’s in 2002 when Danny Boyle does 28 Days Later, that I join this trend without knowing what is going to happen.

I begin to pay tribute to this forgotten subgenre and it is when

”

I do Another Brick in the Wall that, without realizing it, is the first filmic approach of zombies in Mexico after El Santo contra los zombies. Nothing about zombies had been made in that period until I did it in 2003. It took me two

years to finish because I did it with my own resources, with support from Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, but with my own resources and friends, and we filmed it at night. It was a tribute and a story completely mexican

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with characters typical of our mexican society, bricklayers who face a paranormal phenomenon, ordinary people who face phenomena outside their understanding can become heroes. Beyond being a film exclusively about zombies, is a film of people who, with the desires and carrying their illusions to be fulfilled, can become from anonymous to heroes, that is a bit of the history in Another Brick in the Wall.

Have you ever had paranormal experience? Do you believe in the existence of ghosts, demons, witches?

I believe that the majority of people have had experiences that we can not explain. It is very easy to say that there is a scientific explanation for each event, but I prefer to believe that it doesn´t. I like to think that everything exists and, if it has a fantastic or magical connotation, it makes me happier. I think what happens to people is that: a desire of no believing; and I do like to believe in everything, also in the sense of having a capacity to amaze me. I think what has been lost is that,

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that magic or supernatural events exist. I have lived some, yes, and to look for explanations I prefer not to have them and rather to invent a story with them.

They say Mexican cinema is increasingly agonizing, what do you think of this, what is happening with the film industry in Mexico?

We are living in an period where only 10% of the population has access to cinema. We are talking about 12 to 15 million people who can go to the movies and not all of them go to watch mexican cinema.

Back in the 80s, it was much more accessible; an entry is now the basic wage, so there is a problem which has marginalized a part of the population and has made it kind of elitist. Even being one of the most economic entertainment shows is not yet for everyone.

That is also the problem of why there is much consumption of piracy in our country. Because it is shown that Mexico is one of the countries that most cinema consumes, either in theaters or getting the materials as possible.

The Mexicans wants to watch movies, but access is difficult. That is why piracy is a way for people to watch it, it is illegal but they have to satisfy that desire. With the price of five to ten pesos a whole family can watch a movie.

“ Mexico is one of the countries that most cinema consumes, either in theaters or getting the materials as possible.

”

people are no easily astonished, people are not scared so easy. And I think the scares or the fears are thermometers that prove we are alive, that things happen to us, that they generate some kind of alertness to survive in some better way or the search for a better life. I think that’s what I like.

Yes I’ve had experiences in which someone can say you slept badly or that it was part of a dream; they can offer me explanations, but I prefer to think

Producers may need to find and make betterdesigned films that will satisfy the viewer. It is difficult because there is a very strong competition.

Because if they [people or families] have a budget to go and watch one movie a month, they have to choose between the north american blockbusters and

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the mexican film that is being exhibited. Then many people think about what they invest their money: to see a mexican product or foreign product. That is the responsibility of the filmmakers, to re-establish a new marriage between filmmaker and spectator.

What elements should a good horror story lead?

Los elementos para hacer una buena historia: LThe events have to be very clear. Know from A to Z what happens and understand the rules of the game. Horror stories are a struggle between good and evil; then, understand evil.

If there is a monster: who it is, where it comes from and how is it destroyed. In the end, if it’s a physical monster and has been destroyed, the idea of evil returns is latent. If they are paranormal presences, we generally do not win, only agreements are reached with them.

The most important thing is a good character, it is to whom things happen, how it is constructed, where it comes from and his response to this phenomenon.

A good character in any situation will make way for

“ may need

Producers to find and make better-designed films that will satisfy the viewer. It is difficult because [...] many people think about what they invest their money: to see a mexican product or foreign product

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himself and will cause the viewer to identify with him.

Are there any contemporary artists you admire? I understand that you have mentioned the classics but, is there any of this era that attracts your attention?

A film that also marked me, when people ask me from which year I am, I say I´m from the year of Jaws, by Steven Spielberg. It is interesting because it is not just about a creature, a monster, is a movie of confinement. I think it fulfills many genres, and that’s why it’s so wonderful and it still has millions of followers.

Nowadays, it is difficult to find new people to admire, because people you admire from the past are still active, but there is a filmmaker who calls my attention, Alfonso Gomez Rejón, who made several episodes and is now co-producer of American Horror Story. And he has already made a couple of full-length films, one which won a public award for Best Picture at the Sundance Festival. Me & Earl & the Dying Girl. He also did the remake of a classic of the 70’s, an Slasher [The Town That Dreaded Sundown]. And it is very interesting his Mise-en-scène, his lenses, the optics, the precision with which he works. I think that soon we will hear more of him as one of the best exponents of fantastic horror movies.