Page 1 of Sinister Hearts
Prologue
Abright light cast upon me in the abyss of darkness. Somehow, tranquility and peace overcame me. The depth of nothingness surrounded me, but my faint heartbeat rang in my ears.Bump, bump, bump, bump. Darkness took me. Enthralled me into the breath of death. Then there was you—so bright my eyes couldn’t bear the sight, yet so magnificent I couldn’t stand to look away, as my tears stung from the source of exuberant light. No fear, no sadness, just pure acceptance. Before I could walk among you, you spoke to me. It was the most melodic tune I’d ever heard. Then there I was, in my mother’s hands. Cradled in her shaky arms, I woke to the smell of urine surrounding me gasping for air. My mother’s face was in shock. As I lay there looking for any signs that it was real. Any signs it was real and not a fragment of my imagination. But it was just a dream, Mama said. It was just a dream. And I let sleep take me once more.
The core memory and the potent scent of Ma’s cinnamon maple pancakes hung heavy in the air. The aroma of overcooked bacon and black coffee embraced me with a warm sense of familiarity. It was the smell that used to bring me comfort every morning. Being back in my childhood home made me ache in places I couldn’t place. The chipped paper walls were decorated with our ancestors, the walls covered in historic memories, dated all the way back to the 1600’s, in Mexico.My mother’s favorite portraits were of me dressed up in my Halloween costumes. I chuckled slightly gazing at them. I was a witch about four times, and I was convinced I really was. Ma was lost in her garden outside somewhere, and I was lost inside myself, looking for her with a solid flamed lantern.
The question was, how did I get back here…
I felt foreign in my own skin from all the prior years of abuse, and the mental torment. I became a cracked shell of a person hiding beneath my faltered, once thick skin.
For years I couldn’t stop the demonizing dreams from recurring. The same paralyzing dream over and over. To be honest, I think I was just a lonely girl who had to put her belief in something. If I couldn’t believe in myself, there was always magic. It didn’t help that the Robles family was notoriously known around town for having ancestral ties to the occult that were rooted deep in Mexico, going back centuries.
Ma would comfort me back to sleep, after waking from my own screams. She would run in with a wool blanket and warm tea, before rocking me in front of the crackling fire, singing to me, her nana’s lullaby. The tea is made from chamomile and lavender, from her herb garden, and the local farm’s honey. It was our sacred ritual every night the terrors came sinking their teeth into my peaceful slumber.
“Tell me again, Ma. Tell me the story about Mictlan.” I sipped my warm tea, letting the warmth melt my festered soul. Ma tucked me snugly back into my bed.
“I tell it every time, amor (love). Don’t you want to hear a different story? What about a story about a princess?” Ma insisted.
“No, I want to hear about Mictlan. Please, please, with a cherry on top.” I put my little hands in a prayer motion with an over dramatic cheesy smile.
Ma brought her brown overworked manos (hands) on top of mine. “Okay just once and then we’re off to bed.”
I nodded my head excitingly, ready to hear my favorite tale.
“Once upon a time, there was a dark and magical place, called Mictlan. Where the lord, Mictlantecuhtli, ruled the underworld. Mictlan consisted of nine terrorizing levels, where souls would get lost for four years. They had to survive and endure some of the most dangerous of challenges. The hound spirit guide, Xolotl, aided them on their journey to the underground god, Mictlantecuhlti, who controlled even the most evil of spirits, making sure they never harmed his people above on Earth.”
My eyes became heavy as Ma’s voice started to drift, as if it was floating in the air like soft silky petals drifting in the wind.
My dreams took me under again as fire and the screams of death plagued my little body. Cries and laughter echoed through the fire.
“Mi linda. (My beautiful girl)” The whispers escaped me and entered my senses again. I could hear hounds barking in the distance and the sound of burning embers. It was suffocating my lungs. But there was something else… the tinge of raw flesh and decay. Then there was that majestic scent of rose petals again. The petals danced around me, putting me back to sleep as the darkness engulfed me. A sweet dark slumber became me, peaceful in the night as I slept once more.
I tried my mightiest to remember the resilient girl in the photos that decorated these worn-out walls. The samefarmhouse walls that built me. I couldn’t sense that brazen girl within me any longer. I glanced at my witchy pointed black hat, with my oversize broom. I could hear the fall leaves making their way across the wood stained barn. It sat right next to Ma’s brick-red shed, still untouched. I watched from the open curtain-laced window, the autumn leaves rolling into the barn, and I closed my eyes, wishing I could go back to simpler times, where feeling alive most days didn’t feel like an omen. I missed even the tiniest of things, about a place I forsake for so long. Things I wish I didn’t take for granted. Like when herbal teas and fictional tales made everything better. I listened to the wind make the leaves dance in the air, as they bestowed me into another distant memory.
“Ma, look! I’m a witch!” I vroomed past her with my broom.
“Faye, don’t you think we should try something new this year?” she sighed at me.
“Por qué (why), Mama?” I asked, spinning around the small kitchen.
“It’s just, you’ve been a witch four times in a row and there are so many other things you could be,” Ma said, braiding her long, dark curly hair.
“Nothing is cooler than being a witch.” I waved my sassy little finger ‘no’ at her. “Why do you hate them so much?”
I watched as Ma’s face went blank. “What, me? No, it’s not that, Faye. I love brujas (witches), I do.” Her expression was performative.
I straightened my pointy black hat. “Is it because you don’t want to be yelled at again?” I asked, confused.
I noticed my mother’s eyes glossed over as she blew her bangs out of the way. “Listen, Faye, you can’t let a few words bring you down. Especially if they aren’t true. It’s just a bunch of ‘Hocus Pocus’.” Ma smirked, and winked at me as she grabbed her purse and put on her witchy hat, placing it on herlong dark hair. “Time to trick or treat, your primas (cousins) are waiting for us!”
I smiled at the picture of me and my cousins in our witch costumes. Halloween was always our favorite. What wasn’t my favorite, was being harassed by some of the townspeople who would throw candy at us and scream:
“BRUJA!”
“They’re all witches!”
Eventually, as Raquel, Penny, and I got older we started giving in to the role just to freak them out even more.
I remember us being at high school parties and acting like we were hexing people, pointing at them while laughing our asses off. Raquel on the other hand, never grew out of the phase and committed her life to the occult and learning everything about the craft that rang true in our veins. She owned who we were with a sense of pride that I had yet to discover myself.
