Los Hermanos

A Story by Alexzandria R.

A newlywed couple in Mexico were warned of La Llorona as children but never took it seriously. Until, one night, her lost children appear on their doorstep with devastating news and an unspoken curse.

It was mid-April and the sun beat down on the streets of Mexico. Juan and Rosa had just bought their first house near the edge of the Santa Fe River. They were newlyweds and very excited to be in their first home together. They spent an entire viernes moving into the little house and unpacking their things, sweating in the spring heat. They didn’t even have time to eat or rest for the entire day and by nightfall, they were exhausted.
Once they were finally unpacked, Rosa made a quick dinner for them and they ate together at their kitchen table. Afterward, they went to sleep. The entire area they lived in was silent through the night. Not a single sound aside from the river. No wind in the trees, no crickets chirping, no people. Not a single sound aside from the soothing river current. Juan and Rosa slept peacefully through the night in their new home.
The couple spent many weeks in that house and they were very happy with their choice of residence. They enjoyed being so close to the river. Until one day, Rosa returned from the market looking very concerned. She didn’t speak as she brought the colorful fruits and vegetables into the house and Juan worried about her. After she’d put away their food, he asked her what was troubling her. At first she wouldn’t answer him out of hear of worrying her new husband. But he asked and asked and eventually, she told him.
An old man at the fruit stand had stopped her. He said that he’d noticed her walking to market from the direction of the river and he wanted to know what she was doing so close to the water. She had explained that she’d recently bought a home there with her new husband and was very happy with the area especially since the river sounds so peaceful at night. She told Juan that when she said this to the old man, his dark aged eyes grew large. The old man then replied, “so you haven’t come across La Llorona?”
Rosa was confused. The weeping woman? Why would she have come across a weeping woman? Then, she remembered the story that her mother told her as a child to keep her inside by curfew. Rosa’s mother told her that a long time ago, there was a very beautiful woman named Maria. Maria was poor, but every day, she’d walk to market and all the men would stare and call to her. She liked the attention because no one ever payed that much attention to her in her poor village. However, Maria had some children that she needed to take to market with her every day. She felt like her children were taking the attention away from her and her beauty. So, one night, she took she children to a river and tossed them in, letting the current carry them away. Afterward, Maria regretted it and ran down the river, chasing her children as the current carried them away and drowned them. She even waded into the water in attempts to save her children, but it was too late and the current dragged her down just like her children.
Rosa’s mother had told her that at night, you could her Maria wailing and weeping while she searches for her children. Rosa’s mother had told her that if she stayed out late at night, Maria would snatch her up, thinking that she’s her own child. Rosa had paid no attention to these stories as a child, but now that this old man was asking her if she’d encountered a weeping woman, she was intrigued. She asked the old man if he was referring to the story that her mother had told her as a girl and he told her that he knew Maria. Every day, he watched her walk to market with her children. He claimed that the river in which she and her children had drowned was the same river that Rosa had taken up residence near. He even claimed that he’d seen Maria on several occasions searching for her children. When he approached her, she stopped crying and she grew aggressive and lunged at him. He ran all the way back to his house to tell his brothers what he had seen.
When Rosa told Juan what the old man had told her, he told her that she was being silly. Juan said that he also recalled is mother telling him the same story, but it was just something mothers told their children to keep them inside after dark. He told his wife that the old man was most likely trying to scare her or maybe he was delusional and thought that he’d seen the weeping woman. He told her that it was silly to worry and that they had been living there for weeks and heard nothing but the river. Rosa believed her husband. She was being foolish to be worrying about some myth that her mother used to tell her. She never thought of it or brought it up again.
After living in the house for several years, Juan had a job that paid a lot and Rosa had made friends in the area and they were both doing very well. They were ecstatic when they found out that Rosa was pregnant. She gave birth to a healthy girl. Rosa and Juan were so happy to be parents but there was a problem. Their baby cried all through the night, every night. The couple no longer slept peacefully in the silence, listening to the river. Rosa and Juan took turns every night waking up several times every hour to comfort their daughter.
Eventually, they couldn’t do it anymore. They were both so exhausted and were having trouble performing every day tasks because they could not stay awake. They decided that it may be best to just let the baby cry. At night, they both stuffed cornsilk into their ears and slept soundly while their baby cried through the night.
One night, Rosa got out of bed to use the bathroom. When she unplugged her ears. The house was silent. Finally, the baby had stopped crying. She assumed that her daughter was finally asleep since no one had come to comfort her. On the way to she bathroom, Rosa heard a sharp knock at the door. It was the middle of the night. She certainly wasn’t expecting visitors. She woke Juan and had him come to the door with her incase it was dangerous.
Juan opened the door to find two young boys standing on the front porch. They looked to be very ill. Their skin was pale, their lips cracked, and their eyes were completely black. Without introducing themselves, they spoke simultaneously.
“Do you not care for your child, Rosa? Juan?” They spoke in monotone and their eyes were giving Rosa an uneasy feeling. And how did they know their names? Or that they had a child? “Your daughter calls to you and you shut her out?” They spoke without emotion but said plenty about their feelings regarding the couple’s choice to let their baby cry it out instead of comforting her every few minutes. “Your daughter has stopped breathing. She’s vomited and drowned in it. Drowning is such a horrible death, don’t you think? It hurts to stop breathing.”
Rosa didn’t know who these children were or where they had come from or how they knew so much, but when they said this, she needed to check on her baby. She bolted into the nursery as fast as she could, leaving Juan at the door with the boys, and lifted her baby, listening for breath. Nothing. She heard nothing. No breath, no heartbeat. Her baby had died while she and Juan had slept through it. Rosa fell to her knees holding her tiny daughter and wailed. The sound told Juan exactly what she had found in the nursery.
Then, as if it were an echo of Rosa’s own cries, Juan heard loud shrill weeping and wailing in the distance and it sounded like it was getting closer.
“Mother is looking for us,” the boys said, “We must be going.” And they disappeared right there on the front porch. They were never seen again, Juan never heard the weeping again...and Rosa could never again have a child.