A Bit of Personal History
Hello, World! Welcome back!
I feel like this particular story I’d like to tell you today needs a little bit of personal set up. So, here we go…
I’m an only child, but I grew up with the family down the street. Both of my parents worked, and the short of it is basically that Grandma took me in and raised me as part of her family—we’re not blood related, but, as most people in her family, I have a nickname: Sukie. My “sister”—her granddaughter who is about a year older than me, added “Spooky” to the front of Sukie one day for giggles—well, that, and I kept shivering when she’d call me Spooky Sukie. She must have started calling me “Spooks” and “Spooky” right around the time that I started my horror movie phase (when I was 11 going on 12). I refuse to grow out of my horror movie phase. Even now, when I’m teleworking from home, all alone, listening to podcasts like Bridgewater, NoSleep, Deadtime Stories, and Scared to Death while I work, or even an audiobook by the King of Horror Himself (Stephen King), I just want all the horror…as long as I can have my back against something and the lights are on in the back of the house. I swear, I’m certain something’s going to contort-crawl its way out of one of the back bedrooms one of these days, right at the climax of one of these shows or books, and the cat and I are going to have a really rough time with it. We scare each other about once a week, and she’s still a great little coworker. More on that later, probably. Right now, let’s get back to my adoptive family for this set up.
My “sister” is older than me, as I mentioned—I think she’s my Dean Winchester, if I’m being entirely honest. She didn’t psychologically scar me with clowns, and I actually profusely thank her for any and all psychological scarring, if I’m being honest—we wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t been like “hey, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Drop Dead Fred, The Hand that Rocked the Cradle, and, last but definitely not least Pet Sematary 2. Let’s watch the hell out of those back in the glory days of VHS.” And when the internet came around…I still remember my cousin, my “sister” and I crowding around a computer where they looked up a clip from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Not to mention at a house party, the adults were watching one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. And then there was Blockbuster and Hastings, where movies could be rented. I remember promising my “sister” up and down that I wouldn’t tell anyone we’d watched the scary movie she rented. I got so scared, I couldn’t finish, and I asked much later how it ended, and she graciously gave me an abbreviated version. Of course, I’m a loudmouth, and had nightmares, and told my parents that my “sister” had shown me Scream. Yes, I’d been terrified of Scream, and the movies listed above.
I think what really did me in, though, was the rainy days.
It rained here in Santa Fe, New Mexico the day I did my first post. As I drove through the rain, singing along now and again with various hard rock and metal bands on a playlist I’d made, I couldn’t help but smile, and wonder if I should watch a scary movie or not when I got home, or listen to a scary podcast, or read something scary. I have some incredibly fond memories of rainy days and winter days with my adoptive family.
If it was raining, Grandma wouldn’t let us go outside to play, because we’d bring in mud, and what we could play inside was limited. Yes, we could build forts, but we’d have to put it away when we finished playing. Sister had a better idea anyway, and as far as I know and remember, it became the thing we’d always do on rainy days: we’d tell each other scary stories.
I don’t know that other kids got into it the way Sister and I did. I can only remember it being me and her, or her cousin who was younger than us—he and I would always get confused as brother and sister, but again, I’m an only child. I remember it being very one-on-one, and I remember Sister had a way of telling stories that scared the crap out of me, and not just because she was reading to me from the famous Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. She had to get warmed up, though. One of the stories she’d always start with was basically a version of “Blue Beard,” but instead of dead wives in a room, he had an elephant or something benign in the room. Once, I interrupted Sister while she was setting the story up, and I told her to make it scary instead of random…but I was about eight or nine, maybe ten at the oldest, and wasn’t so articulate. She did switch up the ending, as she always did, then hesitated and asked: “You really want a scary story?”
“Yes!” I told her.
She hesitated again. “Well…I have one, but…it’s real. I don’t think I should tell you. You get scared too easy.”
“Oh, come on!” I begged: “Please? I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
She hesitated again, but after a lot of begging, she finally told me the real-life scary story.
She told me all about La Llorona.
I can’t honestly remember the version of the story Sister told me. I have no idea if it’s close to the legend, let alone if it was close to the book written by Joe Hayes, (“Storyteller,”) but I know she told me La Llorona (see previous blog for pronunciation) had drowned her children. I don’t remember her build-up, I don’t remember a lot of the story-telling Sister did for this story in particular. I can tell you how Joe Hayes told it when my cousin took her kids to see Joe Hayes with her mom and me a few years back when he was here in August on Museum Hill. I can tell you how the book goes, as I have an unsigned and a signed copy of his book. For the life of me, I can’t recall Sister’s telling of the story.
I remember asking how it was a real story, as she hadn’t gotten into that part of it. She hesitated again, but finally (after more begging) told me that La Llorona had drowned her kids in the arroyo near our house. (Apparently arroyo is Spanish for “brook”—I don’t profess to know it all, but hey, I learned something new! Anyway, supposedly, the arroyo’s in Santa Fe somehow connect to the Rio Grande River, which my mom and I always found to be kind of funny, as most of the time the arroyo’s are incredibly dry, unless we get one hell of a rainstorm, and I mean, it has to pour!) Sister hinted that there was more to the story, and I begged and begged her to tell me more, to finish telling me the story. Finally, she told me about her personal encounter with La Llorona, sealing the deal on how real she was. (I can’t recall much about Sister’s personal encounter, either, not entirely, anyway; it’s not my story to tell, and I’m not going to ask Sister to tell it. Some things are private and sacred. We’re all allowed our secrets. Besides, I’m sharing some of mine with you here. Enjoy!)
I made sure to ask Sister the logical question after that: “About what time does La Llorona come looking for kids?”
“Late at night.”
“Okay, but what time? Like, ten o’clock?”
“Probably closer to eleven.”
And that, World, is how I got into staying up as late at night as possible. I don’t understand my logic with that one either, and we’ll talk more about La Llorona in the next post! That’s right, you’re getting a second post today!
Keep it spooky!
