La Lechuza

I needed to tell someone about this, mostly to get it off my chest but also because, as screwed up as the situation is, it's one of the best stories I've ever heard.

I attend a large university in Arizona, I won't say which, but my friends and I were sharing a bottle of Jack the other night when we started sharing stories. Somehow we got on the subject of spooky stories, and it appeared that several of us had a strange occurrence to talk about. Gabriel told us about a weird apartment he and his mother had lived in when they lived in West Virginia. Apparently, his mother had woken him up screaming one night after a dark figure had appeared over her bed and woken her up leering. He had come in to find it melting away into nothing, and the two of them had moved out shortly after. John had told us about a weird deer he'd seen on a hunting trip, and I told them about some sounds I had heard outside my parent's house in Montana throughout my childhood.

"One of dad's friends, he was a zoologist or something, said they didn't sound like any animal he was familiar with. Dad jokingly asked him if it was a bigfoot or something, and he never really denied it. He got spooky quiet and just said he wouldn't be caught dead in those woods after dark. We never went camping out there anyway but certainly never went past the property line after that."

I passed the bottle to Samuel, and, for once, he actually took a sip. Samuel, Sam for short, had been living in the dorms since before I arrived at the university. He was in his third year and was studying engineering as he worked towards his bachelor's degree. He had told us several stories about growing up in a small town in Mexico and had his uncle to thank for his current status as a student. His uncle was a professor of Spanish Studies and Antiquities, and he had offered to help his nephew get a student visa so he could do more than "drink shitty beer in the local bar and do manual labor his whole life." I opened by saying that it was weird to see Samuel drink, but I don't think you understand how strange it was.

Samuel was our permanent designated driver because in the two years I had known him, I had never so much as seen him touch a bottle of alcohol unless it was to throw it away or take it from us after we'd had enough.

He took a moment to collect his thoughts before saying in a hollow voice, "I told you all that I grew up in Mexico?"

We all nodded, and he continued.

"Well, I grew up in this rural little town outside of Hermosillo. It wasn't large, maybe eight thousand people in the whole town, and most of our work came from the processing plant or from the farms that operated around the small town. My mother and I lived there with my Abuela

and my Abuelo, my uncle living in America and sending money home when he could. My Abuelo was a horse breeder, something my family has practiced for generations, and he worked as a stockman for one of the ranches in the area. We weren't quite as well off as the rancher, but we were doing okay. It wasn't a bad life. It was hard but not without its pleasures.

When I was in Highschool, my friends and I would often go to parties held at the local farms. The ranchers son, Santiago, and I had been friends since we were young, and we hung around with some of the ranch hands sons, Juan, Christopher, and Mateo. We were good friends, probably the best friends I ever had, but one night, we found something that none of us had ever quite believed in. We had all grown up with the stories about La Lorona and El' Silbon, but my mother always loved to use a certain legend to scare me. La Lechuza was a witch who turned herself into some sort of owl demon after her death. She was said to roam the land, hunting for drunks or just children out late at night. She would make noises in the night to trick you into opening your window so she could steal your eyes. She would pretend to be a baby to lure you into the woods. She could create thunderstorms and other nasty things and would come to get naughty children if they acted out. La Lechuza was used a lot in my home to get us to do things, like chores or homework, that we really didn't want to do. By the time I was a teenager, I was kind of done with my mom's scary stories about owl ladies; I was much more interested in drinking with my friends and meeting girls.

I was sixteen when she caught me on the way out the door.

"I know where you go on these nights. I beg you not to go out drinking with your friends."

I brushed her off, though, saying I was of age, and if I wanted to go hang out with my friends, then I would.

"And if La Lechuza should happen across your group?"

I scoffed, telling her that her stories didn't scare me anymore.

"That story is what killed your father..." she started to say, but I cut off.

Dad had died in a drunk driving accident before I was born. He had driven off the road and hit a tree, his car erupting in a ball of fire. There hadn't been anything left to bury, but mom had insisted that it had been La Lechuza who had driven him off the road. This had made me even scareder of the creature when I was a kid, but now it just made me mad that she would use my father's death like this.

I left without another word, climbing into Santiago's car as it pulled away for the last time.

She was standing in the road, crying, as we drove off.

That image will be scarred into my brain until the day I die.

We were out late. I couldn't tell you much about the party, just that it was in someone's barn. The beer was hot, the woman lukewarm, and the music was subpar at best. I drank too much, trying to get the fight with my mom out of my head, and by the time we called it a night, I was well and truly drunk. We climbed into Santiago's car, all of us laughing and tipsy. We started out, Santiago managing to keep it on the road as we hooped and whooped in the back seat. He was laughing along with us, turning the music up on the radio, but when he swerved suddenly, we all screamed like banshees. He hauled us back on the road, Mateo opening the window to vomit, and I leaned up as I asked him what was wrong.

He looked pale, all the tipsy scared out of him as he stammered, "I thought there was an old lady in the road, but when she turned, her body looked wrong."

I said how weird it was to see someone so old out that late when I suddenly yelled for him to look. Something was in the road, and if it was what he had seen before, he had been absolutely right. It was hunched over, a long cloak over its shoulders, and it looked deformed. It turned to look at the car as it barreled forward, and I could see piercing red eyes that bore into my soul. I saw it all in the space of five seconds, maybe, but I'll see those eyes till the day I die.

Santiago never had a chance to do anything, and we plowed into her doing about fifty-five.

The car suddenly stopped dead, and I came to about a minute later.

I had boffed my head pretty good on the seat, but one look at Santiago told me I had gotten off lucky. He had slammed into the windshield, breaking his neck and turning his skull into a rotten gourd. The others seemed to be okay, but the car was smoking, and we climbed out as we assessed the damage. The whole front end was smashed in like we had struck a tree or a big rock, but nothing was in the road to be hit. I remembered the old lady and moved off to check the ditches, thinking maybe we had knocked her off the road. The others just milled around, not sure what to do, and that's when it happened.

The moon was full that night, or I may very well have missed it.

A shadow passed over me, a thing with a wingspan like a condor, and I looked up just in time to see it drop onto my friends as they huddled around the car. It had landed on Juan, breaking his back and riding him to the ground. He screamed, his screams watery and miserable. He wouldn't scream for long, though. The bird dropped its head and began to feed on him, its beak plunging and diving as the other two backed away in horror.

When it looked up, face dripping blood and owl eyes glaring at me, I ran.

I didn't know if the other two ran at that time, but I felt like a mouse who's seen an owl.

I ran, still drunk and weaving, and the houses swam up in my peripherals. I could still hear that wet, crunching sound as the creature fed, and I stumbled as my feet hit a root. I kept running, kept moving, kept showing my heels as the houses wobbled like an oil painting. I just kept running, knowing that my house couldn't be far, not noticing the lack of night sounds around me as I ran.

When that unearthly screech split the night, I panicked and turned a corner at random.

When my foot hit the pothole, I fell, thinking that I was never going to get back up. My world suddenly exploded with light, and I stumbled back on my hands and butt as a bright something nearly blinded me. I turned, putting my back to those blinding lights, and saw a horror in descent. The headlights spotlighted the Owl thing, and as it swooped down on me, I figured this was the end. I closed my eyes, put a hand up to my face, and prepared to die.

That's when I heard my mom yelling at the thing. She came out of the car shouting curses and brandishing a cross on a long silver chain. The owl monster flapped its wings, changing its course and taking off. It screeched loudly, flapping its wings angrily as it took flight again. My mother helped me into the car, and I must have passed out because I woke up in my bed the next morning.

I would have believed it was a dream if my mother hadn't told me as she sat at the breakfast table with a plate of food and a pot of coffee.

She told me all of it. How the creature had killed my dad one night as he drove home drunk. How Santiago and Juan had been found dead that morning. How my other friends had never arrived home. She spelled it all out for me and told me how lucky I was to be alive. She said I had been given a chance and that it was up to me to figure out how to use it. She wasn't happy with my answer after I'd thought about it for a few days, but she understood.

I still went to those parties, but I never drank again. Instead, I helped people get home safely. I never saw that creature again, but there were nights that I imagined I could feel its hateful stare. I was taking its prey from it, stealing its food, and it never quite forgave me for that. Not a day goes by that I don't think about that night and my friends who died."

We sat around, drinking as we listened to his story, a cold chill flowing through us as he told his tale.

I'd say this was the end, but it wouldn't do him or the story justice if I did.

Three weeks ago, Samuel came to me in tears and told me that his mother was going to die. I sat him down; he was shaking like a leaf and asked him how he could possibly know this? Before that, I hadn't seen him in class for a few days, and he looked tired and rattled.

"I dreamed I was in my mother's house, the one she has on my grandparent's property, and I heard her crying. I walked into the living room, and there she was, sitting at the kitchen table. I walked up behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder and asking what was wrong? She grabbed my arm then, and her hand had become clawed. Her head turned around she screeched at me through the owl beak. Her face had become that of the owl witch, and just before I woke up, she screamed my mother's name."

I asked him what that meant, and he said, "Some people say that seeing her in a dream means that someone you love will die. She screamed my mother's name. I can't ignore that."

Three days later, he told me he was returning to his hometown for her funeral.

"They...they found her in her room. She'd had a heart attack. I need to go home and say goodbye. Will you watch my plants while I'm away?"

I told him I would, but I think he knew he wasn't coming back.

A week ago, I asked his Uncle if there was news.

He only sighed and told me his nephew was missing.

"My mother tells me that he went to the house he and his mother had shared, and no one has seen him since. We don't know where he is, but if you're still watering his plants, I'll go pick them up this afternoon. Hopefully, I can give them back to him when he comes back."

I don't know what became of Sam, but I pray that the Owl Witch, La Lechuza, didn't get him.