Echoes of Sorrow

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“Pedrito, please don’t stray too far from the house”, Mamita called after me as I opened the door to the front lawn. 

 “I’ll try, Mamita!”, I playfully answered, closing the door quickly as I sprinted towards the house gate.   

Mama had insisted I don’t stray too far from the yard for the past week and a half, and I had been obedient all those days not understanding why. Every time I asked, her eyes would glaze over and as if in a trance, look over to me and answer, ”She’ll get you if you do”.  

 Mama would then blink and change the topic. I learned to stop asking after that but was still very curious about who ‘She’ was.   

In school, I would ask my friends who lived near me if their parents did the same thing, but I couldn't find any solid answer. The kids would avoid the question, insisting I let it go and stop asking, all except for Marcello.  

 Marcello was the usual troublemaker in school and our little vecindad where we lived. He would often be seen hanging out with the gangs of our town trashing houses, smoking, and bullying people. Once he tried to sell me some weird ‘special oregano’ as he called it. I declined and since then Mamita didn’t want me to be around him, except this time I was desperate.   

Marcello lived right across from me, and he was the only one I hadn’t asked the question to.   

When school was out for the day, I went up to his desk and placed a small bag of Bubu-Lubu candy on top, catching his attention, “Marcello, I need to ask you a question and if you answer me with the truth, I’ll give you some candy. Ok?”  

 He eyed me suspiciously and nodded after a moment. I smiled and moved a chair up to him, “You see, Mamita doesn’t want me to stray from the house for almost two weeks now, and every time I ask why she says ‘She’ll get you if you do’! Do your parents tell you that?”   

 Marcello raised an eyebrow, “Yes. I thought I was the only one”, He answered, “but I doubt It’s ladrones your mom is scared about.”   

I asked what he meant and he sighed but continued, “There was an accident that happened about a month ago. I don’t know all the details, but the point is...a little girl went missing, and your mom was the only witness,” He said, looking at me for a reaction, but I was too stunned to say anything so he kept talking, “your mom was asked about the incident, but all she could answer with was ‘She took her’. Since then, Papá makes sure I don’t go near the wells of the friar.”  

 I frowned, “You mean to tell me, the little girl went missing right beside my house? At the wells of the friar? And Mamita was the only one who saw it happen?”   

Marcello nodded, and was about to leave when I grabbed his arm, asking one last question, “Was the little girl ever found?”  

 He bit his lip, hesitating for a moment but nodded, “Yes, but…” Marcello trailed off, grabbing the candy and biting into one, before finally whispering, “she was dead.”  

 I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I got home, kissing Mamita goodnight after dinner, telling her I wasn’t feeling that well. I came to lay down on my bed.   

I looked out the window that was on the far wall from my bed, seeing the mesmerizing, and unsettling rain shower the streets, with wind and thunder accompanying it relentlessly.   

 As a roar of thunder claimed the skies, I pulled my bedsheets closer to my chin, trying my hardest to refrain from imagining the little girl as she was swept away from her family by a mysterious woman.   

I wondered if the family missed the little girl every single day, probably staying up all night, waiting for her to come back home or even found by the police. I wondered if they missed the way she smiled, or the way she...laughed.  

I sat up on my bed, trying to listen through the violent pitter-patter of the rain for the sound, and it came seconds later.  

 Laughter.  

 Not just any laughter. A little kid’s laughter.   

I looked at the window, wondering if it had only been my mom watching her dramas again late at night, and felt a shiver rack my body as I watched a silhouette of somebody small peeping through my window.   

 Before I had the chance to react further, the silhouette moved away, the same laughter trailing behind it. I shot out of my bed in an instant, leaving my bedroom towards the living room, aiming to the front door, frantically placing my hands on the door handle, twisting it in a hurry and allowing the humidity and the sounds of outside into the house.   

 The cool air and the fresh aroma of rain drilled into my senses, hitting me like a brick! I searched through the rain, but I couldn’t seem to see through the downpour. I started to walk but was stopped by my hand firmly closed on the door handle, making me look back towards the house, staring into the darkness except for the light from my room seeping into the living room. I gulped since it seemed that my hand had a mind of its own, but at the moment it seemed to be thinking clearer than me.  

I took one last look into my house, debating whether or not it was worth the risk of getting lost, and heard the laughter once again ring in my ears.   

 Setting my mind on track, I let go of the door and it closed behind me as I traveled into the storm, my heart set on going to the wells of the friar, where I thought I’d find the answers to my hopeful questions.   

 Unfortunately… I did.  

As I arrived, I could see the silhouette of the wells, sitting tamely while the storm ran wild around them. It made a chill run up my spine, but I could only sanely blame the cold embrace from the rain. There was no way I could fear the wells for sitting ominously during a storm...right? I mean, they were just wells. What could they possibly do?  

 At that thought, I had noticed that I had unconsciously set myself between the wells, the two adjacent from themselves but together.   

I squinted around, my arms embracing my body and attempting to hold some heat from the cold, wet downpour. I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing except the wells and for a while, I began to question my motives...except...I swear I could hear something...echoing…  

 I approached one of the wells, where I thought I heard the sound coming from. It was low, like a man’s voice, but I couldn’t understand it. It was rushed murmuring, but as I approached it, the voice would become louder and louder. So I crept closer, step by step, a wet sloshing as I got closer and closer. I stepped towards the brim, and gulping one last time, breathing heavily I peeked over.   

 Only to see my reflection in the murky water. The voice had increased in volume, and now I knew what it was saying. My heart beat faster with fear.  

 It was praying.  

 The friar was praying.  

 I was terrified, my breath accelerating and catching in my throat. I was incredulous. The wells of the friar were named like that because it was believed that a friar had died there a long time ago having taken his own life due to insanity.  

 Now I knew that it was true. I was hearing him… and it seemed he had heard me too.   

Just as I had arrived and heard him praying, he had stopped, only the deafening noise of the rain to comfort me with my fearful thoughts crowding in my frail heart.   

  

“RUN AWAY!”, the voice suddenly bellowed as if beside my ear, the sudden volume and guttural sound jolting me from my thoughts where I slipped and fell on my behind, turning and stopping in my tracks as I saw what looked like a pair of silhouettes beginning to disappear near the other well.   

 I didn’t think, I just reacted. I ran towards them because it seemed to appear as though it was a little girl in a dress walking with a woman, and It put me far away from the haunted well.  

I ran. Heck, I was sprinting, but I still could not catch up to the silhouettes. They always seemed to be a step ahead of me, no matter how hard my legs and lungs allowed me to go, it was never enough. I thought I’d never catch up with them.  

 Except, I did.  

 I ran and ran, speeding up and slowing down to catch my breath, but still running. I couldn’t catch them. My vision was becoming distorted, my lungs ached and bile was forming on my throat. It was beginning to look like I would not make it, so I halted in my step and finally took a good look around me.  

I was at the outskirts of the city. There was a narrow bridge made out of concrete that connected the city to the woods beyond. The bridge had a small river flowing under it, slowly growing in size with the rain.   

Confusion was an understatement to what I was feeling. I was bewildered since I couldn’t understand how I had made it to the city limits by simply running. Normally, it would take a bus to get as far as I had in the short period I had been running.  

 The worst part was the silhouettes were gone. I turned and turned to look around me, but the silhouettes were gone. The rain started clearing up too, which confused me further. I could see the rain still falling in the city, but almost none could be felt here.   

Suddenly, I heard something that made me turn my head. A sort of...splashing sound. It sounded violent. Like somebody was…  

 I never got to finish my train of thought. Just as I was peeking over the edge of the bridge, I saw them. A woman wearing what used to be a white wedding dress, and a little girl, forced under the water by the woman. All I could do was watch as I saw the little girl trying her best to get out, clawing at the water, but failing. She continued to thrash around until suddenly, she stopped.   

  

I stared, mouth open in shock, legs refusing to move. I couldn’t move at the sudden realization of who the woman was. I had only heard tales, refusing to believe she was real. Yet here she was. Kneeling over the body of the deceased girl. The little girl who had disappeared. The woman sobbed and sobbed, again and again, muttering words that I already knew were a curse to hear. The sounds of her cries only made things worse for me, because It was said that If you heard her cries...you were next.   

 The sound of thunder snapped me out of thoughts, and I flinched, when I focused on where the woman had been, she was gone.  

 “MIS HIJOS!”  a loud shriek yelled from behind me, and in an attempt to turn, I slipped, falling into the now raging waters of the river.   

I resurfaced quickly, but cold hands pushed me under before I could catch my breath, water filling my burning lungs and my eyes stinging from the dirty water. I now felt like the little girl, clawing at the water as if I could find something to hold on to, but I could not. I was losing consciousness, my battle with the woman proving to be one-sided. As I felt my heart give out, I took one last look at the woman and whispered her name into the waters to be carried as a warning.  

 “La Llorona.”  

 3 weeks later  

 “Marcello, please be on your best behavior. We are at your friend’s funeral after all.” My mom chastised me, so I stopped messing around with my tie and focused on the funeral. I didn't get it, though. Pedrito wasn’t even my friend, and I didn’t even understand why I was here. Funerals were so depressing. Everybody was crying, and for what? It wouldn’t bring him back.  

Everybody cried for Pedrito, and I even offered my condolences to the family, which they took full-heartedly, crying and sobbing, but I felt annoyed.  

For some strange reason, there was a lady just sitting in the back of the church, who wouldn’t stop weeping, but I felt a kind of empathy for her.   

After all, why wouldn’t I feel bad for a lady in a white gown screeching with a mournful bellow, “My children!”