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I’d wager you haven’t heard the legend of the Monterrubio mine. Most haven’t, especially if they’re not from around Mina San Gabriel. It’s a rumor, really, whispered from ear to ear, passed from palm to palm like so much silver.

It was an ancient terror, I’ve heard people say.

Or a pagan devil, rising from the dark maw of the mine to devour all in its path.

Some say it was a haunting. If you ask me, that’s too straightforward.

Can you imagine if this were nothing but a ghost story, full of cold drafts and shadows where they oughtn’t be, clammy palms and sweaty napes? That’s too clean a tale. Too simple.

And this one gets messy.

For they say that Alba Díaz de Bolanos barely survived.

They say that when she stumbled down the cathedral steps, she was alive, yes—she was screaming, and all of Zacatecas heard it, their breasts chilled by how shredded and raw her voice was—but her wedding gown and all its silver was slick with blood.

Gleaming with it, profane and red as cinnabar, wet as afterbirth.

Some say no one has seen her since.

I have.

And, unlike the storytellers who have mangled these events over the years, I know what happened.

The truth is worse than the stories would have you believe.

I once heard it said that the words themselves are cursed. That the tale, once told, will evaporate like mercury.

I can’t know that for certain. Perhaps it will.

So lean in. Listen closely. I won’t be repeating myself.