When evil comes from the blood

At 14 years old, I lived in a massive three-story house with my family. It belonged to my grandmother, whom we lovingly called Tita. The second floor was our home: my mother, my Aunt Carla, and me. On the third floor lived my Uncle Mario with his wife Renata, her stepson, and the twins Nicolás and Sofía.

Sofía, my cousin, was two years younger than me and had health problems since birth. Renata, insisting on being attended by her trusted doctor, had endangered the twins, as she... had waited too long to give birth. Sofía, being born second, suffered from slightly prolonged hypoxia (lack of oxygen), which led to epilepsy. She was on medication, and up until then, her life had been relatively stable.

One morning, like so many others, I went with my mother to tell Nico and Sofía that the school bus had arrived. On the third floor, Nicolás was having breakfast while Renata was showering, and my uncle was in the kitchen. Sofía was still in her room. Suddenly, a loud noise shattered the air: glass breaking. My mother ran to Sofía’s room, thinking she was having a seizure. But before she could enter, my cousin came running out, holding a bloody shard of glass in her hand. A red liquid dripped behind her, forming a trail with every step she took.

Renata, the twins’ mother, screamed. The adults caught up with her in the bathroom. I didn’t see what happened; I only heard the screams and chaos. My mother told me to take Nicolás down to the bus and leave, and I obeyed her without question. At that moment, I was the “older” or “protective” figure for Nico. When I returned that afternoon, my Aunt Carla told me the truth: Sofía had broken a mirror and taken a shard to attack her mother. She... had gripped the shard so tightly that she had cut herself—all just to... attack her mother. To this day, I don’t know how the adults—our parents, aunts, and uncles—had the courage to tell us, only the older children, what was happening. How do you explain that to a child?

In the following days, Renata began to be absent more often. According to my Tita, she was seeking help, convinced that what was happening to Sofía wasn’t just physical or mental. She was blaming something beyond our understanding. Meanwhile, my mother and I took care of Sofi. Soon, we noticed that Sofía would lose herself in her gaze, fixing on some invisible point. If she managed to drift into that place... it would happen. One night, my mother was in Renata’s kitchen, making dinner. Since she was busy, she asked me to watch Sofi, to... distract her. I’m not sure you can imagine the weight of what my mother was asking me. It’s true that I was older, but that didn’t mean what was happening to my cousin didn’t chill me to the bone. I agreed—after all, I loved Sofi, and my mother couldn’t handle everything on her own.

I found her in the living room trying to do her schoolwork. While we talked, her expression started to change. She went from being a happy girl telling me about her day to an absent, neutral girl—like a mannequin. Then she turned her face and her gaze toward the end of the hallway, where only darkness awaited—the same place she had run to attack her mother with the glass shard the first time.

“Sofi?” I called nervously.

She didn’t respond. She impulsively stood up and started running toward the hallway. I could only yell for my mom’s help and chase after her, grabbing her. My mother arrived as I managed to stop her, holding her with all my strength. But Sofía, small and thin, had superhuman strength. I managed to restrain her until my mother helped calm her down and put her to bed.

From then on, the episodes became more violent. Sofía frequently attacked Renata. One afternoon, my mother ended up with a sprained finger while trying to restrain her. It was unthinkable that an 11 or 12-year-old girl could exert that kind of force and injure an adult woman. At home, the tension was unbearable. Nicolás slept in fear—or didn’t sleep at all—saying that Sofía would watch him at night. They shared a room, and apparently, Sofi, at some point during the night, would sit up suddenly and stare fixedly at her brother. At first, he thought it was a prank: “Oh, come on, sis, stop it... go to sleep.” But nothing worked. He even started throwing pillows at her from a distance, hoping to snap her out of it, make her stop staring, stop scaring him. In the end, all he could do was wait—nervously wait for that moment. When it came, he would cover himself completely and pray, begging for the night to pass quickly. Sofi didn’t remember anything the next day. She was the one who thought Nico was trying to prank her. Renata asked him not to mention anything to his sister to avoid worsening her... condition.

The situation reached its breaking point one night. I heard a noise near the entrance to our floor. Remember, I lived with my Tita, my mom, and my Aunt Carla on the second floor, while Renata and her family lived on the third. My room was the one closest to the front door, so I guess that’s why I was the one who noticed the noise. I left my room and silently approached the door. Maybe I had misheard.

“Lala, can you open the door?”

It was Sofía—of course, I recognized her voice. But something stopped me. In any other circumstance, I would have opened the door, but now... I felt I shouldn’t.

“Sofi, what are you doing there?” I asked.

She didn’t respond. She just repeated, “Lala, can you open the door?”

“Sofi, go to sleep. We have school tomorrow.”

“Lala, can you open the door?” she said again, but this time in a more monotone, emotionless tone.

I thought something was wrong with Sofi, so I decided to get my mother; she would know what to do. Upon returning, my mother opened the door with me behind her, peering over her shoulder. I was so scared… more than scared, I felt… distrust.

There was no one there. The hallway that connected our front door to the staircase leading to the third floor was dark, but you could make something out… my mother didn’t notice it. She told me to go to sleep and left. At that moment, I thought maybe I was imagining things… but there was something in the darkness. I could see something at the end of the hallway and right next to the staircase. I squinted my eyes and stepped closer to the… thing. Suddenly, Sofi stood up and ran towards me. I reacted immediately, spun on my heels, went inside, and slammed the door shut. It was a big door made of some metallic material, so the slam woke up my family. But it wasn’t just the door’s sound; the slam had mixed with the sound of something hitting the door… Sofi.

My mother came running, asking what had happened. As best I could, I told her what I had seen. My mother asked my Aunt Carla to call Renata or Mario to tell them what had happened with Sofi. My mother wanted to open the door, but I was so scared… I didn’t want her to open that door; it wasn’t good to do so. I clung to my mother in fear as she approached the door. When she opened it… when she opened it, there was nothing. How was that possible? With that thud, the least I expected was to see Sofi lying on the floor… unconscious. Then my Aunt Carla arrived; Renata and my Uncle Mario had spoken to her… Sofi… Sofi was asleep in her bed. According to them, she hadn’t left the room since she had “fallen asleep.” My aunt looked at me disapprovingly, but my mother knew… she knew I wasn’t lying. Maybe I was a little confused, but I wasn’t lying; something was happening.

The next day, while my mother was telling Renata what had happened, Renata confessed something that had been happening to her, even a little before Sofi’s first incident. She, Renata, would wake up with bruises and scratches that she couldn’t explain… that, plus Sofi’s violent episodes, led her to decide to go to the neighborhood church. That was the place she had been going to every day, almost every afternoon until late at night. At that moment, I thought it couldn’t be true; if it were, Sofi should already be fine, shouldn’t she?

I don’t know what compelled me to follow Renata one of those afternoons. My mother had sent me to buy some things for dinner, and I… strayed a little. We arrived at the church; I kept a prudent distance, but I managed to see Renata being received by the priest. They greeted each other, and she handed him something wrapped in cloth. I remember Renata took it out of her bag, untied a sort of red cord, like red threads that were binding and holding whatever the cloth was covering. It was the priest who moved one side of the cloth. I was a little far from the two of them, hidden behind one of the wooden chairs in the temple. However, I managed to see a… something that looked like a lock of hair, right in the center of the cloth, there was a lock of hair. I looked around; there wasn’t a single person in the church besides Renata and the priest… and, well, me, who was hiding. When I looked back, I saw the priest leading Renata into something. There was a door where things from the church were supposedly stored, right? Well, I assumed they were going into that place. I decided to wait a little, but they didn’t come out in the next 10 minutes, and I had to get home with the groceries for dinner. I didn’t tell my mother anything about what I had seen; I didn’t think it was appropriate. What if she scolded me for spying on the priest?

I guess all the adults in the family decided to bring the priest to our house. They gathered around him and told him what had been happening in our family. Meanwhile, I had to watch all my little cousins; some were playing, and Alex was talking to Sofi about I don’t know what. My mind was divided between my “duties” and my curiosity about the conversation the adults were having with the priest in the living room of our floor, the second floor. I don’t know when Sofi walked next to me and headed to the living room where the meeting was taking place. I just know that when I turned my gaze to where Alex and Sofi were… she was gone. Alex just pointed to the door where Sofi had left, and I ran after her. Sofi appeared in the living room while the priest was performing a blessing. I only saw the terror and surprise on most of the adults’ faces when they saw Sofi’s face. I was behind her, so I wasn’t a witness, but apparently, her eyes were white, as if her iris were positioned on the inside of her eye, as if they had turned inward. Then, she fell to the ground, convulsing like never before. What came out of her mouth wasn’t her voice but something guttural, inhuman.

My mother and Renata tried to contain Sofi’s convulsions. My Aunt Carla had the phone in hand, calling emergency services, while my Uncle Mario, Sofi’s father, just stood there, like he was made of stone, watching all the chaos unfold. I ran to my grandmother to help her back to her room, and from there, I went to contain my little cousins. I didn’t know what the hell was happening. The priest continued praying. “As if that would help,” I thought, worried and angry at the priest’s behavior. Exhausted, the priest—the same one who had received the lock of hair—declared that the evil tormenting Sofi had a “blood origin.” Then, he looked at Renata. She just lowered her gaze and broke into tears.

I don’t know if everyone understood what I did, but to me, Renata had done something, something involving Sofi, something that had to do with what I had witnessed that afternoon in the church… but I didn’t say anything. From that day on, everything changed in our family. Sofía was taken to specialists and continued with spiritual visits, but she was never the same again. Although she no longer suffered violent episodes, something in her had dimmed, was lost. They decided to move to an apartment far from the family house, and over time, we all did.

Years later, the memory of those episodes was buried but never completely disappeared. Recently, talking with my mother and Aunt Carla, I decided to bring up the topic again. Something inside me told me I didn’t know the whole truth. They exchanged a nervous look before nodding, as if they had been waiting for this moment for a long time. “It’s time for you to know,” my mother said solemnly. What followed left me breathless.

Renata had not always been my Uncle Mario’s wife. Before him, she had been married to a police officer named Jorge, with whom she had a son, William. According to my mother, Jorge was a violent man, someone who controlled every aspect of Renata’s life. It was during those years that Renata began doing things that no one in the family fully understood. One day, Renata told them she had attended a “fire ritual.” The ceremony involved a circle of flames being drawn around her while a healer murmured words in an unknown language. Although she never explained its purpose, she hinted that it was to “protect herself.” My mother and aunt assumed it was something related to her ex-husband and that she had resorted to that limit during her marriage to Jorge. Renata’s behavior became even stranger after her father’s death. During the funeral, she and her sister walked three times over their father’s grave… exactly three times, an act she didn’t explain but that left everyone unsettled.

Then came the advice she gave to a family acquaintance, whose son was trapped in drug addiction. Renata suggested something disturbing: to prepare a meal with baby sewer rats, assuring him that “the dirtier they were, the better.” According to the acquaintance, the ritual was meant to “appease the boy’s rebellious spirit.” The family acquaintance told my Tita this with a tone of concern, insisting that the woman “did very strange things, that one should not mess with her.” By then, my uncle Mario had already married Renata in a civil ceremony, and my Tita—well, she couldn’t interfere in her son’s life… even if she tried and warned him.

My mother and my aunt told me about William, Renata’s eldest son, who also had unsettling behaviors. From a young age, he showed an inclination toward violence, especially against defenseless animals. The family discovered several times the skins of rabbits, cats, and dogs stretched out and drying in the sun—William’s work. The horror reached a climax when Sofía was 8 years old. Katy, Sofía’s pet, had given birth to a litter of puppies. But one morning, they found all the puppies dead. Tita said it had been William who killed them. Apparently, some of them got stuck behind a tank full of water, and instead of helping them… William pushed the tank until it hit the wall. The most terrifying thing was what happened with a kitten William had. The cat became pregnant and gave birth to four kittens. Days later, they found her covered in blood, with traces on her mouth and paws. Apparently, she had devoured her own kittens. My aunt Carla ended with a warning:

“Animals behaved strangely around William… and, years later, around Sofía too.”

Hearing all of this, I realized that what I experienced with Sofía wasn’t an isolated case, but part of something deeper, darker, and twisted that had been festering for years… then, I remembered what the priest said: “the evil that tormented Sofi had a blood origin.” To this day, I keep asking myself if everything I lived was real, if what Sofía experienced was an illness or something else. And, until today, I had kept silent about what I saw, about what Renata had done to Sofi; until today, I had hidden like an “observer.” But in reality, I have always felt guilty, complicit. Maybe, if I had spoken up, if… Sofi would still be with us.