Spooked - The Curse

Episode Date: September 21, 2017

Stories : "La Bruja" Your family is cursed--who you gonna call? La Bruja. Nestor Gomez is a storyteller based in Chicago. You can find him on Twitter @soloyochapin and at his website. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Riddle me this. What's completely invisible can cause untold harm but can only be removed by someone who knows a secret. I'll tell you, the answer is a curse. And if you don't believe in curses, stick around. You will. From the Snap Judgment Underground Layer, you're listening to Spoot. Stay. I used to see the people in the morning.

Pitiful, shuffling, hands clasped together like in praise. They come, eyes blazing and mumbled, begging, please for my grandmother. I'd show them in through the living room, past the bedroom, through the kitchen, and out the back door. My grandmother either pointed them toward a lawn chair or made him stand waiting. Please, man, please, they said. And sometimes Granny would just remove their curse. No fuss. pull it out like she was picking a turnip,

throw it in the trash. Go on now. Get up. Go on home now. The person would emerge from the chair like they were newly waking up, resurrected. Lord! And always, 100% of the time,

instead of thanking my grandmother, they would thank Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Praise him. Praise him. For other people, but Granny would just shake her head. Nothing I can do, baby.

Got to get them that's put it on to cast it off. And these people, they didn't want to leave. They'd say, please again. Please, man, please, sister, please. Press folded bills in the dark hands, please. My job was to lead them out. Please. Pass the kitchen, past the living room,

back out to our front porch, and almost every time before they left, these people would thank me. Thank you. They said, the cursed, the doomed, the broken ones would always thank the child before stepping away. From Snap Judgment's Underground Layer,

my name is Clem Washington. Please, and thank you, because spook starts now. I told you once that My own grandmother could see things, shadows, smell curses. Now, my grandmother loves me sometimes. She did, but instinctively, protectively, at a very early age, I understood that I have certain gifts. So I'm about 12 years old, and I'm playing with my two sisters.

We were playing intact, and we were playing on the yard. To Nestor and his sisters, this yard was everything. It was their oasis away from the adults. We had a little dirt patio. It was a small patio. But the thing about our patio is that there were always so many things. There was an old motorcycle that my father had that was trying to fix. There were two dogs.

We had chickens that we raised on the patio. We had bannies. So playing tag became a different adventure of its own because you had to run around all these obstacles in order to tag the other person. So it's like you're running in the middle of a jungle and a real tiny jungle and you had to be careful not to hurt yourself, but at the same time it's so much fun. But Nestor and his sisters didn't know what would be underneath their feet. You see, this is grandma's house.

My grandma's house was like a little Mercado, like a little market. There was always a multitude of people, my ankles, my aunts, who were always coming in and out of the house. house with their own kids. So there was always a commotion. There was always a lot of noise in this house. But this day that we were playing in tag, suddenly everything went quiet. There were not any more people talking or more kids playing. There were only two loud voices coming from the house. Those two voices got louder and louder. They turned into screams. So my sisters and I, we went inside the house to see what was going on.

and my mother and my aunt are having a big argument. My aunt gets screaming at my mom. Bitch, you're not better than me. And then my aunt slapped my mom across the face. Soon enough, they were changing punches, they were pulling each other's hair, they were kicking each other, there was a fight going on.

I haven't seen my aunt in about five years. And the reason why I haven't seen her is because the last time that we saw her was a sad moment for all. all of us. It was a sad moment for my aunt because she didn't have a way to make a living and she had a baby, my cousin. She came to the house and asked Nestor's mother if she could raise her daughter instead. Nestor's mother happily took the child in and raised her alongside Nestor and his sister.

So my cousin became my sister. But now his aunt has returned without any warning. She's still in financial trouble, but she wants her daughter back. Nestor's mom is having none of it. We knew this is a big fight. We don't want to get in trouble. We need to get away from here. So we ran away and we went to hide under the bed.

As we are hiding under the bed, my cousin starts to cry. And we're trying to tell her that everything's going to be okay, that we are not going to let anybody take her away. Someone called the police. I don't know if it's one of the neighbors that heard the screaming because the screaming were so loud. And the police came and separated my aunt and my mother. When we come out of the bed, we see my mother and my aunt been driven away on the police cars. Suddenly, we start blaming our little cousin for everything.

This is all your fault. We are so afraid that we're not going to see our mother anymore. I'm afraid for my own self. I'm afraid for my sister. I'm afraid for my family. They go to bed angry with their cousin. And the next morning, Nestro wakes up to the sound of people talking outside. I heard a noise that wakes me up.

It's my aunt. She's with a police officer. She's come back to take her daughter away. But I'm too ashamed to say anything. Only hours prior, I was screaming at my cousin to go away. But now I don't want her to go. And my cousin is in too much pain. to say anything. We just see each other for one last time without saying goodbye.

So Nestor watched as his cousin and his aunt drove away in the police car. The police kept the two women separate so that Nestor's aunt could pick up her daughter without any trouble. Meanwhile, Nestor's mom was still locked up for one day, then two. And on the third day, my mother is finally released from jail. And when Nestor's father brings her back home. She always has a clean set of clothes on. She always calms her hurt. She always has a little bit of makeup, just enough.

But this time, she hasn't come her hair in days. She hasn't gotten any sleep. I can barely recognize her. She doesn't even say hi to us. She just starts running from room to room. Where is she? Where is she? Where is my daughter?

My father comes to her and says that she has been taken away. My mother just goes pale. Her niece started to tremble and she just faints. And my father just picks my mother up and takes her to the bed. At first, Nestor hopes it's grief. Maybe she needs some rest. But then she stops responding. My mother just stays there like in a coma.

And she keeps having these dreams. She keeps talking on her. sleep about monsters and about things and about calling out people's name that I don't even know who they are, people's names that I had never heard of my life before. And I'm trying to talk to her and I'm trying to tell her that everything's going to be okay and she's not getting any better. So I asked around, what can I do? We don't have money to take her to the doctor.

When I get sick, my mother is there for me, giving me medicine, making me feel better, asking me if I want to drink something. So I had to be there for my mother. People from the neighborhood told me that the best thing to do in this situation is to take some limes. Fresh limes, and then cut them in half. And add ground coffee to them.

Then take those limes and put them on the temples of my mother. They say that this is an all-wise remedy that is supposed to bring my mother back to her senses. And I do this every day after I come from school, but nothing seems to work. I was afraid that my mother was going to die. My mother is the center of the universe. Without my mother, there's nothing.

One week passes, then another. Nestor's mom is still in bed, and everyone at this point is desperate. And then a strange woman shows up at the house. She says she's a relative, but Nestor has never seen her before. And suddenly there's a commotion in the house. I started asking, who's that person?

Who's that person? And immediately everybody just shows me. Shh. Don't talk about her. Right away, the adult said Nestor out of the room and tells his sister to bring the woman a glass of water. When his sister comes back, Nestor asks, Who is she? Who is she?

She's a brouja. You don't want to make her man. Don't say anything bad about her. A brouca? I kind of knew that there was somebody in the family that practiced black magic that did brouheria. But I want to know more. What does this person look like? What does she sound like?

I want to see her. But I'm also afraid. What if I make her mad? Nestor tries to go back into his mother's room. But his father immediately orders him to leave. So I hide behind a door. And he peeks through the space. where the door meets the wall.

I try to look into the room and I see the outline of the bed. And I see this shadow of somebody I don't know. She's getting close to my mother. And as she comes close to my mother, I almost see her. And I'm afraid again. And I hide a little bit more. I'm wondering what she's doing to my mother. Is she praying over my mother?

Is she passing an egg all over my mother's body? I heard people say that that's what they do. Is she hitting my mother with special herbs? Is she doing some chanting? I'm trying to listen. I'm trying to see. But it's so hard to do it from my hiding space. And then she tells my father.

Mm-hmm. She's been cursed. Nestor and his father are hanging on every one of her words. The brouha pauses and says, There's a black chicken. that's buried on the jar with an upside-down cross on it. You had to take the chicken out of the jar, wash it on holy water, and burn it.

That would take the curse away. And my father jumps up. I could hear on his voice, and I could see by the sudden movement of the shadow that he goes. What? How do you know that? Because I put it there. I got paid to put a curse on your wife.

but I don't want any dead family members because of what I did. My father never took crap from anybody, but I'm guessing that he knows better than to upset a brouja. So he doesn't say anything as he just does as he saw. Doesn't scream, doesn't argue, doesn't try to start a fight. He just gets get up, walks out to the patio. And she goes to the corner of a yard where he has been instructed that he has to dig there.

And he has his chabble by him, and he starts to make a little hole in the ground. It starts to get bigger and bigger and bigger. My father is a strong man, and I see his hands are shaking, and he's grabbing something from the ground. Chicken. I have never seen a chicken like this.

It has an ugly smell of something forbidden. We have no idea. if this happened when my mother was in jail. We have no idea if this happened when my mother was starting to get sick. We had no idea when it happened. We just know, obviously, that it happened. He takes this strange-looking chicken

that he's grabbing in his hands, and he takes it to the sink, the sink that's on the patio. He asks one of his brothers to go to the church and get some holy water. Meanwhile, Nestor's still hiding behind. the door and thinking, This is so crazy,

but hey, hopefully now my monkey get better. My uncle comes back with a little bucket with holy water on it. My father takes the holy water and starts to wash

the chicken. He scoop out the water with one hand and splashes on the chicken. He's trying not to touch the chicken, but he wants to wash the chicken

so the curse can go away. He goes back inside the house and he gets as many newspapers as he can and he starts to roll the chicken on newspaper to try it out. He makes a pile of newspapers, place the chicken on top of it. He does the whole thing with gas and sets the whole thing on fire. There's so much black smoke coming up. 20 minutes later, the chicken is still burning. But I heard some noise.

So I go back to my hiding spot, and I see my mother is moving. My mother is waking up. My mother is sitting on the side of her bed. I'm so dirty, she says. And I want to run to the kitchen, and I want to get her a glass of water, and I want to run to her side, and I want to hug her, and I want to tell her that I'm so glad that she's okay. The brouca is there, and I'm so afraid of her.

And La Brouja comes and she's next to her. Well, you know, I'm sorry, she said, I got paid to do this job and, you know, money's tight. The brouha said that her sister's anger was so strong that it made the curse ten times worse. And that's why she ended up in a coma. Then, she offered to reverse the curse. If you want, she says, I could put the curse on your sister. And I hear this and I get excited. Because I see my mother suffer.

I see my mother in pain. And I want the same thing for my aunt. I want my mother to put a curse on her. I want her to become a zombie. I want her to go crazy. I want her in pain. My mother just looked at La Brouja. And after a moment, she says, no.

I don't want to do anything like that to my sister. For a moment, I think La Brouca is going to get upset. It's going to get angry at my mother. mother, but then she just gets up from the bed, walks to the door, takes a final look at my mother and leaves. And I run into the room, straight into my mother's arms. We'd like to thank Nestor Gomez and its family for sharing their story, and we're pleased to report that Nestor never had to call on La Bruho again. Nestor's a storyteller based out of Chicago and you can find all of details on our website, spookpodcast.org.

And we've got big news because soon, very, very soon, we're going to start dropping two episodes of spook every week, a total of 13 supernatural blurters as we make our way to Halloween. Just that day, you know, when the other side walks amongst us, let someone know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, SpookPod. And if you can't wait to get your spook fix, we understand. Get spooked three days early simply by downloading the tune-in app. More information, spookpodcast.org.

Spook was produced by the Ghostbusters at Snap Judgment, Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, Adisa Egan, Teo DeCat, Jodi, Jodi, and Liza Smith. The theme song for Spook was by Pat Massini Miller, original music by Pat McMessie Miller and Leon Monimoto. Now check it on the next spook. A TV ghost production about ghosts is visited by ghosts. Don't miss it. And know this.

There are three previous episodes of Spook available right now, wherever you got this one. So, even if you see your Uncle Joe howling at a full moon, always remember, never forget. Don't turn out.