7. The Return of La Muelona #4
I watched from the edge of town as the dead shuffled through the winding lanes, their features twisted with fury and despair. It was as if the history of Santa Elenita had risen from the ashes of its own sins.
Now, Isabel whispered within me. Now is the time.
I stepped forward, my footsteps sure and steady.
The flies trailed after me, crawling through the heat, a smear of motion that never broke apart.
Their sick hum pressed into my ears, like something gnawing at the edges of thought.
I could still hear the distant cries of the townspeople, faint, scattered, just barely rising over the whisper of wings.
Some had seen what was coming and tried to flee.
But there was nowhere left to run. The land was done waiting.
I raised my arms. The dead stopped. One by one, the ruined bodies turned toward me, heads tilting, eyes vacant yet knowing.
Waiting.
And I gave them what they wanted.
They poured ahead of us—twitching wings forming a veil that dimmed the light—slowly at first, but then with increasing speed, their bodies jerking forward in a wave of relentless hunger.
The town continued its screams, but there was no escaping what had been set in motion.
I lifted my hands, and something moved through me, vast and old and final.
The dead moved faster now, their footsteps dragging but purposeful. They reached the first house, Senor Andrews’s estate.
At the gates, they didn’t pause. Blighted hands pulled, twisted, tore. Wood splintered like bone, and the iron gave way.
Then came the infestation: flies spilling through the shattered windows, slipping through doors, burrowing into walls. They filled the house with a sound that wasn’t quite buzzing, more like a low, endless shriek.
The estate writhed, alive with fury. Nothing inside was spared.
The air turned dense and rancid, pressing in from all sides as the dead advanced, drawn not only by rage but by memory.
I moved closer, my steps light, the ground no longer resisting my presence.
The front door burst open before I could even reach it.
Inside, Senor Andrews stood, trembling, his face bleached with terror. Behind him, his wife and sons huddled, their eyes wide with disbelief. They had heard the screams, had felt the ground tremble, but they believed their wealth, their power, would shield them.
They were wrong.
“What is this?” he barked in his mediocre Spanish. “What do you want from us?”
I stepped in. The room tightened around me, every silhouette seeming to lean closer. Isabel’s power surged through me, her voice curling through my thoughts.
Make them feel it, she said. Make them remember.
I opened my mouth, but it wasn’t my voice that spoke, it was hers. Cool and precise. A blade wrapped in silk.
“Do you remember the blood that was spilled on this land, Senor Andrews? The lives broken to build your empire? The hands that bled for your harvests? The lives spent beneath your feet, festering while you dined above them?”
He sneered, but I saw it, a hint of fear in his eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blurted. “I haven’t done anything. You’re just… just mad. I can’t believe your father wanted my son to marry a madwoman like you.” He spat the words, and then he froze as I reached out to him. My hand closed around his wrist, cold and steady as stone.
“Mad?” I echoed, Isabel’s venom coating every syllable. “You call this land yours, but it was never yours to take. You made it a grave.”
He yanked his arm, but I didn’t release him. Instead, I grinned—a slow, splitting smile that stretched too wide, pulling at the corners of my mouth like something unhinged. My cheeks ached, but I didn’t stop.
A cry tore from his throat, a raw, ragged thing, as the dead surged inside. They pulled him from his family; limbs wrapped around him like roots reclaiming stolen ground. The hunger had found him.
His wife screamed, his sons clutched at her skirts. But none of them moved to help. They were part of it, too.
And then, quiet. Just a breath. Just the sound of tearing. And nothing left but what the land remembered.
But even as the dead sank back into the soil, I stayed still.
Not haunted. Not possessed.
Changed.
What Isabel began didn’t end with her. It lodged in me, not as a guest, but as the rage carved into generations.
People would tell the story of Santa Elenita, long after the town was no longer part of a map.
How Santa Elenita was never the same. What had once been a thriving community had become a hollow shell, its streets empty, its buildings crumbling into dust. The flies wouldn’t leave. They’d hover like ghosts, a constant reminder of what had transpired.
Some would even say the dead still walk the town’s streets at night, that they are led by a woman with eyes as bleak as eternal dusk. Others would say that La Muelona still lurks around Santa Elenita’s ruins, hidden in the shadows, waiting for the next souls to claim.
But the truth was darker.
The girl who once longed for freedom was crushed into dust, fed to the roots, swallowed by silence like all others.
Vengeance floods my heart and soul.
I am La Muelona now.
I smile wide, and then I feast.