//------------------------------// // one. he. la llorona. // Story: he. she. we. // by Shinzakura //------------------------------// My name is North. North Shores, to be specific. Yeah, sounds like a fake name, I know, but my parents are Drake and Andria Shores, and they met at the class of a college professor with the last name of North, hence my name. I’m 28, live in a small, isolated community northeast of Los Angeles called Big Bear. I have a degree in journalism and while I have a usual writing gig for Technologix, I mainly freelance for some other magazines here and there; that’s mainly the fault of my mother, who’s a big-time columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Most of the time I love my job, though sometimes I wish I’d inherited my father’s medical skills. Generally, I freelance because I can work from home, and frankly, I like the solitude of living where I do – and yes, there’s a story behind that. I’m sure several of you are probably wondering how I can live where I do, like I do and how I can afford it. Truth is, I wish I didn’t have that capability. You see, I’m also two things in addition to what I mentioned earlier: I’m wealthy…and a widower. The fortune comes courtesy of my late wife, Rachel. She’s been gone for three years now and my heart still feels ripped out to this day. We met when we were both going to college at USC, me via a scholarship, and her on her own dime – result of a trust fund, left to her by her parents. She lived with her uncle up in Redding, right up until she came to LA, met me, got happy together and got married. Well, he didn’t like that; never did, actually – he just assumed that when she got done with her degree, she’d move back to Shasta County and…fuck, I have no clue. I don’t want to know. In any case, I wasn’t home when the murder happened; God, I wish I was. Long story short: I inherited everything from Rachel, a trust fund worth tens of millions…and not a single fucking dime went to that bastard, who’s now sitting up in San Quentin for the rest of his days. As for me, I dumped our place in Garden Grove – it was nothing but memories and blood to me – and beat a retreat to Big Bear. Hell, I would have moved elsewhere – Montana, Virginia, Alaska, Vermont, really, anywhere else but SoCal – if it wasn’t for the fact that my parents asked me to stay in the general area. So, yeah, I’m rich. I’d rather have Rachel back, though. When I close my eyes and see her smile that was always just for me, to smell the jasmine-scented shampoo in her strawberry-blonde hair and to see those bright, loving brown eyes flecked with green…it…it just tears me to shreds inside. I know I’ll never have her back and none of the millions of dollars that I got in return will ever replace it. So instead, I locked myself away in a bungalow, just me and my junk, my memories and keepsakes of Rachel, and that’s it. I only leave the house to shop or do errands. My parents and little sister are concerned for my well-being, to put it mildly. My neighbors probably think I’m a recluse or a freak – I’m not sure they’re wrong. This is my life…and I’m pretty sure I’m in Hell. My footsteps crunch on the snowy ground as I step out of my car. I’m back home after spending New Year’s at my parents. As usual, that sucked – same thing it’s been for the past few years: My parents tell me that they know I still love Rachel but that I need to move on, and various friends and/or family present pretty much just ape the same shit. Then to make matters worse, Carrie brings home a college friend of hers in the hopes that A., she’ll do a good deed by fixing her big brother up with one of her buddies, and B., that she’ll help me get over my sorrow by marrying one of her friends. Don’t get me wrong: I love my little sister dearly for looking out for me, but there’s a sort of gulf of maturity between me and her – and thus, her friends – that I got catapulted over when I came home to see my wife’s bloody and maimed corpse. Tiffany, or Cassie, or this year’s entry, Raven…they’re cute young things, just eager and pleasing enough that I could probably have them in bed before the hour’s up, but…my mind doesn’t go there anymore. My heart can’t connect since there’s nothing left of it. As I enter the house, I flick on the switch in the foyer, expecting to see the fruits of Southern California Edison’s labors: light, heat, warmth. I presume I’ll see the couches and furnishings that Rachel and I chose back then; the shelves bristling with books, both mine and hers; the videogames, CDs, and other relics of a youthful love that never had a chance to mature into a life together. Instead, I’m treated to cold, dark nothingness. For a second, I breathe a sigh of relief at that; the shadows serving as a balm for my soul, even if only for a moment. But obviously something’s gone wrong here. Maybe a tree downed a power line or something like that, or maybe it’s a repeat of when I first moved here and they accidentally shut off my power. Wanting to get it solved, I reach into my pocket for my phone, so I can call SCE’s emergency line. As I bring its face to mine, it’s to my surprise that the phone is as equally blank as the house. Great time for my phone to brick itself, I think. I grumble about marching over to the neighbor’s place to borrow their phone when there’s a sudden, bright flash and a rainbow streak of color, as though someone set off fireworks in my living room. The pyrotechnics are quickly followed up by a sharp scream of pain and fear. My mind immediately races back to my nightmares about Rachel’s death, when the lights flicker back on, my phone returning to normal. As I hear the heat pumps come alive, I exhale a breath I didn’t even know I held, the vapor crystallizing briefly in the house before vanishing. After a few minutes, I get a grip on my overactive emotional state. Once I do, I think about any of the number of reasons this happened: Maybe there was an EMP, and my neighbor’s wife screamed in panic, except that it sounded as though it came from my house – Betty does have a pair of lungs on her, based on the occasional arguments she and Phil have. Or maybe the Prentice kid has his home entertainment system up too loud again; if that’s the case, I really hope his parents kick his ass. Or maybe someone broke in – if that’s the case, I knew I should’ve installed that alarm system. Grabbing an umbrella, I carefully walk into the house, ready to attack whatever’s coming my way. I just hope if that’s the case, he or she doesn’t have a gun. Or maybe it’ll be Russell, that fuck; maybe he broke out of San Quentin and came here to finish the job. If that’s the case, I will happily beat him to death and I don’t care what court convicts me. Ultimately, however, a quick and cursory check of the house reveals that there’s no one here but me. Wondering if I’m just too tired from the drive from Santa Monica and my imagination got the better of me, I check the house one more time just to be on the safe side, then when I’m sure it’s clear, I make a note to have the local alarm company come in and do an install. I then let myself fall into sleep, hoping that for just one night since I lost Rachel four years ago that the nightmares don’t come. But they do, and I wake up screaming my head off at four in the morning, sheets drenched with sweat. Burying my face in my hands, I cry unashamedly for the hell my life has become. If there’s a God out there, I hope He or She or Whatever realizes I can’t take much more of this. It was two days later when she appeared. I was typing up my final draft of an article due that Friday when I heard the soft creak of the wooden boards that make up the floor in the living room. There’s a particular board that squeaked like all hell, but to get that sound out of it, one needed to apply more than a little bit of pressure, the kind made by stepping on it with more than a pound of weight. Wondering if somehow a non-hibernating animal got into the house – last thing I need is a raccoon shitting in my closet – I stepped out of my office to look down the hall at the source of the noise. Standing in the middle of the hallway, with what seemed to be a look of utter bewilderment on its face, was a quadruped of some sort. If I had to guess, I’d say superficially, it looked like some sort of horse – like a pony, specifically. Of course, that was a very rough guess, given that no horse I knew of looked like what I was seeing before me: Its coat was solid black – not black as in dark, as most animals tended to be in order to blend in with the night, but actual sable black, like keytone in ink. Its size was about the same as my parents’ Great Dane, but still smaller than the average pony, if pictures I’d seen over the years were anything to go by. And if that wasn’t weird enough, its billowing, flowing – smoky? – violet mane and tail made it look even more unnatural than it already did, as did the horn sticking out of its forehead. This was made even more amazing a second later as it nervously fluttered black wings. I remembered enough from my sister’s Lisa Frank days to understand the concept of a unicorn or a pegasus, but this one seemed to be both at once. And as if to add a final touch of absurdity on the whole thing, it wore armor of some sort, weathered ebon barding apparently fashioned from some black metal that glistened like obsidian. The creature stared at me – looked at me with a pair of beautiful aqua-hued eyes, orbs that were also, strangely, serpentine in nature. As it finally realized it was gazing right at me, it gasped with a feminine-sounding tone. I say “feminine”, because the sound was not a whinny, nor a neigh nor any of the sounds you’d expect to come from the muzzle of a horse. No, the sound was that of a woman, suddenly caught off-guard and placed in a moment of pure and utter terror, as though she came face-to-face with a monster, an odd thought if there ever was one. I rub my eyes and blinking to make sure I’m not hallucinating because I can’t believe what I’m seeing – and in that time, whatever it was I saw vanished, as though it had never been…save for a few black feathers that had been left behind. Walking over, I pick one up just as the others start turning into motes of black light and then nothingness. The one I’m holding, however, remains behind as though it proved the creature’s reality, but then that too disappears into nonexistence. By now, I’m wondering if I had too much to drink, or considering that I’d only had one beer today, maybe not enough, when a sad, sorrowful sobbing starts to echo within the house. The sound’s everywhere and nowhere at once, sourceless, as if within the walls of the house itself. Perhaps the house is haunted, and I never noticed it before. An outside observer would probably say it’s haunted anyway, since I practically never leave home. At this point, the most animal part of me, the fight-or-flee portion of my mind, is just telling me that I need to run far and fast; whatever I just saw was clearly not of this world and I’ve no idea if I’m safe. But the more logical part of my brain counters with the fact that no monster would cry as this creature was doing. In truth, hearing her soul-rending wailing made me wonder if the creature felt as though it was in Hell, a sensation I’m all too familiar with. A smarter man would probably run and find the nearest priest or rabbi or whatever in order to exorcise the house. But I’m not really religious and considering I’m not sure what I saw, I probably wouldn’t be believed anyway. And if my panic instinct isn’t going to kick in, then maybe it’s time to do something phenomenally stupid instead. Calling out, “Excuse me, but…are you okay? You’re not harmed, are you?” I make my move. I have no idea if the beast can understand me, but I try to make my voice as calm and reassuring as possible. But as I stand there, offering succor and assistance, I hear nothing but silence. Finally, unable to do anything else, I tread back to my office as the crying begins once more. After a quick email to my editor that my article was going to be late due to personal circumstances, I immediately start applying my Google-Fu for all its worth. The first part brings me to an article on Wikipedia detailing something called a winged unicorn, that was rarer in heraldry and mythology than its counterparts the unicorn and pegasus, but that it was far more common nowadays in fantasy works. From that point, I jumped around the various domains and divisions of the internet, but while I saw plenty of imagery of winged unicorns, there was nothing at all like the strange creature I saw the other day. But it was the second part that chilled me: while searching regarding myths about crying, while I came across nothing about crypto-equines, I came across a website page that brought back old memories, an old Mexican legend I grew up with. The Weeping Woman by Joe Hayes This is a story that the old ones have been telling to children for hundreds of years. It is a sad tale, but it lives strong in the memories of the people, and there are many who swear that it is true. My maternal grandparents were from the old country, having come here to bring their children a better life. Hell, I remember my grandfather telling me and my cousins horror stories with gusto, frightening us until my grandmother would come out to the porch to chew him out. But me and my cousins loved it and the story we loved the most was that of La Llorona. Like many dark myths, it had been co-opted into modern horror, but the story I was reading on the net was not of that dark version, but instead a melancholy tale of loss and tragedy, of a great error committed and a price paid that was both apt and yet far outstripped the original crime. Like the ghostly woman in the story before me, the sobbing through my house was not one of horror, but one of sorrow and regret – and if there was a fear to be had, it was of me. It was a fear of someone – not something, someone – being terrified beyond reason and suffering to the point of near-insanity, to where there was nothing left. I looked at the screen, then to the sound of the sobbing, and then my eyes drifted to a picture on my desk, of me and Rachel. We were both 21 then, two years before marriage…and four before her death. I look at the smiling, happy face and my heart wells again, but it’s the words on her T-shirt that catch my attention: In long, tall letters, it reads, WHAT WILL YOU DO TO MAKE THE WORLD SMILE? Getting out of my chair, I walk to the kitchen, where I quickly grab my lunch, two reheated slices of pizza that was left over from last night’s order. As the crying continues, a thought came to me: has she eaten? WHAT WILL YOU DO TO MAKE THE WORLD SMILE? my memory asks. Reaching back into the fridge, I pull out the salad that came free with the pizza – untouched, of course; Rachel always said I needed to eat more greens – and put it on the table. A second later, I put out a bowl of water, if only because I have no idea what else to put out in the way of drink. Setting it on the ground, I call out, “Look, I don’t know when the last time you ate was, but I hope this will be of help.” I have no idea what she eats, if she does at all. For all I know what I laid out is nothing but poison for the poor creature. But better to help than nothing at all, I convince myself as I head back to the office. Not long after, I heard sounds coming from the kitchen. I opted not to get up; for some reason, it seemed as though it would be better to give what I’d labeled as “La Llorona” some space. But one thing was for sure: the crying had stopped, and for a blessed moment, silence filled the house once more. I take the opportunity to throw on headphones and Jose Gonzales – because I always work better when listening to music – and get some work done, satisfied that I can at least look my wife in the eyes next time I gaze at her image in the picture. About an hour later, I take my dish and empty beer back to the kitchen. Surprisingly, the plastic salad container is in the sink – no way could she have known it was disposable – as well as the bowl. And on the table, there’s a piece of parchment – where did that come from? – on which something was written in far better penmanship than I’ll ever have: So her name is “Moon”, I thought to myself. Well, it’s less of a tongue-twister than La Llorona. Hours later, and after a long day of catching up on the article – managed to actually get it submitted on-time, yay for small miracles! – and a quick dinner of Fettuccini Alfredo, I sit down to unwind. Leaving some dinner out for Moon – microwaved a frozen eggplant Parmesan TV dinner that I bought by accident last month – I went into the living room to try to find something on Netflix or Steam to goof off with. Ultimately, however, nothing really catches my attention, so I decide to finish up reading one of the books that Rachel had always insisted that I read: Paradise Lost, a modern transliteration, as I hated wading through Ye Olde Englishe ande Whatevere Hade Tooe Manye E’s at the end. Deciding to play some music, I opted for classical, as I had no idea what, if any, music Moon was familiar with; besides, hopefully the old saying about music soothing the savage beast – or at least in this case, a wailing one. Of course, this turned out to be a bad, bad, bad idea, as it started her crying again. Damning myself for being a fool even though I didn’t know it would set her off, I spoke into the air once more, “Moon, I’m sorry if that hurt you. That was not my intention.” As a peace offering, I went back to the kitchen and broke out the Oreos and milk, noticing that she liked the eggplant Parm – guess I’ll have to buy more of that. Leaving the cookies and milk in bowls, I grab a glass and a few dunkers for myself, making sure that I got my chocolate milk ready for prime Oreo slammin’. I go back to the living room, turn off the Beethoven and switch to Junip – nothing like Jose to break the edge off things – but I find I can’t relax now. I’m feeling guilty about something I shouldn’t, and thinking that I’ve done more than enough damage, I just call it a night and head to bed. And as always, at four in the morning – the time of day the coroner’s report say that Rachel had been murdered – my nightmares begin again. —In my mind there’s blood so much blood the screaming the knife I have to stop the knife why did you kill her you bastard why did you take her away from me oh God I’m in He— And for the first time since it all began, there’s a flare of deep blue, pushing everything away as if it were just detritus to be swept away, and it’s replaced by the sounds of Beethoven’s 6th, the Pastoral, what I’d been playing earlier that evening. And then, within my mind, a soft, gentle and very feminine voice: We thank thee for the treats, though we imbibed the remainder of thine chocolate milk – wouldst thou be so kind as to replace it? And we hope to relieve thee of thine night terrors. We know much of Nightmares; we shan’t have our host afflicted with such as well. I wake up with a start. The room is empty, but I somehow get the feeling that Moon was just in here. I thought about looking throughout the house, but then deep blue fills my vision and suddenly I’m feeling extremely tired…. For the first night in years I think I managed to get a full night’s sleep. I’m having lunch with my brother down in Whittier. It’s his birthday and I promised; besides, with all the travel he does for his job, I really don’t get to see Don as much as I’d like. Unfortunately, someone already beat me to the punch. “So, what’s with you turning down the date that Carrie said she hooked up for you on Valentine’s Day?” Don says, mirth in his eyes. He was always a ladies’ man in school and kept that attitude, right up until he married some girl in Seoul while he was an exchange student there. Tae-Hee has worn him down over the years, and they’ve got a great pair of kids. And best of all, my sister-in-law doesn’t have a penchant for playing cupid. Now if Carrie would learn from that. In any case, Don’s looking at me for an answer. Well, may as well tell him the truth. “Destiny and I…we, uh, just didn’t, well, ‘click.’” He raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t…click?” I give him a lidded look. “Forward? Dude, five minutes into our date and she wants to know if I like it gentle or rough. Then when I looked at her slightly, she then says that she doesn’t go down on the first date. She would on the second, though.” Don blanched. “Seriously?” When I nod, he facepalmed. “Sad. I remember when you had to work for that sort of thing.” “I’ll take your word for that. In any case, I didn’t want to bring her home; I’d hate to see what happened if she ran into Moon—” Don then looks at me oddly. “Moon?” he repeats. Oh, shit did I say that out loud? The sudden catty look on my brother’s face is an indicator that yes, I did. He then looks at me and says, “Look, North, if you’re dating someone now, you can just admit it. I don’t think Carrie will be offended and frankly, sooner or later she’s going to run out of friends at her school – and knowing her, she’ll start throwing high school students at you.” “Moon’s just a friend,” I tell her. If that, I tell myself. He then gives me a serious look. “North…I know how much you loved Rachel. I thought of her like she was a kid sister, and she and Tae were really close. So I know how hard it is letting go. But all I’m going to say is that if you really care about this Moon girl, just…take it easy. Hell, I won’t even tell anyone we’re talking about this; I’ll let you tell the fams.” “Thanks,” I tell him. After all, what can I say? I’m not even sure why Moon is in my house or what purpose she serves, and until she talks to me or goes away, she’s a big, big question mark in my life, whether I like her there or not. “Moon? It’s North. Can we talk?” I feel dumb saying this as I walk into my house, expecting to be greeted by silence, as normal. While the tears have gone away, she still hasn’t officially appeared before me, leaving us in a strange sort of limbo. She’s gotten used to living here, if the blanket and pillow on the couch are any indication. Furthermore, in the process, I’ve learned a few things about her, indirectly: she’s educated, not too surprisingly – she’s gone through about half the library, and by the dog-eared condition of Rachel’s Old English version of Paradise Lost, Moon seems to take a huge interest in that book. She also likes videogames and plays them regularly – though she’s vanished a couple of times while I’ve tried to take a peek – and finally, after she kept driving my Steam numbers up, I just created a dedicated account for her. I also found that she had a massive sweet tooth, as evidenced by the nearly-instantaneous disappearance of a brand-new pint of chocolate-peanut butter ice cream in less than an hour after I’d purchased it. However, it hadn’t been entirely one-sided. She left me notes and explanations – apparently her species is not called a “winged unicorn”, but an alicorn, something that I thought technically was the term for the unicorn’s horn. She’s also, strangely, done some chores around the house – the place is cleaner, and I have no idea where the trash keeps going to. She also gave me a gift from afar: one time, when I couldn’t find a pen around the house because I needed to scribble up a note for her, five seconds later, an inkbottle and quills appear on the table just after I take my eyes off it. The quills are made from black feathers and I don’t need to guess where they came from. Most importantly – and I have no doubt that she’s somehow responsible – since the day she “moved in”, my nightmares ceased to be. Yet one thing I couldn’t seem to do was to get her to see me in-person (in-alicorn?). It was almost always notes or email, as if she was still somehow frightened of me. I continued to try to calm her down – where could she go that I knew of? – and assured her she was welcome to stay as long as she needed. Now, if I could only do something about getting her to talk to me.