The Weeping Woman

The night was a pitch dark around them. Angel struggled for breath on the ground by her side, crumpled in the sodden grass. Marisela could no longer see through her tears as she pressed her hand to his wound, oozing hot blood through her fingers. Her whole body shook and she sucked in a breath when a tall specter burned white at the corner of her eye. She turned quickly and the wailing woman was like a shaft of fallen moonlight, her toes pointed as she floated above the ground. She watched the couple with large, limpid eyes, her mouth closed and flat.

Marisela no longer cared about anything at all. With her hand still covering the spreading pool of sticky blood, she raised her other hand to the ghostly figure of La Llorona. Her shifting body shimmered in and out of existence, flickering like an old movie. She seemed to ignore Marisela, turning and opening her mouth wide to begin searching the forest for her dead children, no matter what she had done- but Marisela screamed. Her breath heaved in and out of her chest and she twisted, catching sight of the pale spirit as she whipped around, her dark brow creased. No one had ever wanted her presence. No one had ever called out for her.

“You won’t take him from me,” Marisela cried. “You- You have to save him. Please, save him.”

La Llorona stared at her with those moonlit, forever-damp eyes. Marisela heard Angel’s wet cough. He took one more breath, one more precious sigh of life, and then he was still.

“No!” Marisela let out a sob that ached through her, burning her from the inside out. She stood with her tears blinding her vision, and then all at once fell to her knees at the ghostly woman’s feet. “You have to know what it was like to love. You have to remember how it felt to have someone and to belong to someone. You were betrayed, but I know- I know there’s still good in you. I know.” Marisela could no longer speak. Angel’s body cooled on the ground beside her and she was shouting empty nothings to the ghost that had killed him.

She crawled back to Angel’s still form, touching her forehead to his in one last act of love. She hoped fervently that he could feel it from wherever he was now. She turned and vomited into the wet grass, curled into herself as she cried. Suddenly, a surge of cold shot through her. A pale fog surrounded her from where she still had a hand pressed to Angel’s body. She looked up, bleary-eyed, at where La Llorona was bent over them, her eyes wide. Marisela wanted to jump back, she wanted to put her body over Angel’s and take whatever punishment the ghost was about to inflict upon them, but she was so tired. She just stared at his face, growing pale in the dim starlight. The planes of his cheeks and the soft line of his nose, the curve of his mouth, downturned and going blue around the edges. She wanted so very badly to breathe her own life into him, to watch him wake as if from a deep slumber, and to fall into death herself while he lived on.

A chill like she had never felt before curved over her hand where she touched Angel, and she looked up quickly. La Llorona held her hand and guided her palm over the gaping wound in his side. Marisela let out a sob. La Llorona made a shushing sound, as if she were comforting a crying child, warm in the cradle of her arms. Marisela breathed slowly and the wailing woman closed her eyes, pressing down the snowy cold of her hand. Marisela could barely breathe as pale light burned like frost bite beneath her hand, crawling over Angel’s skin and crisscrossing like spiderwebs across his wound. La Llorona fell back after a moment. Angel took a deep breath, sitting up as if someone had woken him too early from a nap. Marisela coughed out a sobbing laugh, wrapping her arms around him and relishing in the warmth of his healed body.

“I thought..” began the glorious sound of his voice. It was something Marisela thought she would never hear again. “What the hell happened?”

Behind him, La Llorona looked on sadly. She gave Marisela a little nod and Marisela returned the gesture. Before the crying woman disappeared into the darkness of the forest, Marisela could have sworn that the smallest of smiles curved the edges of her mouth.