each doll. Then she put them away. She took the remaining remedy and made my uncle drink it. It must have been very strong medicine because he screamed as she forced it down. The strong smell filled the room, and even I felt the searing liquid.
After that I could rest. My eyelids closed. My stiff muscles relaxed and I slid from my sitting position and snuggled down into my blankets. I felt Ultima’s gentle hands covering me and that is all I remember. I slept, and no dreams came.
When I awoke I was very weak and hungry. “Ultima,” I called. She came to my side and helped me sit up.
“Ay mi Antonito,” she teased, “what a sleepy head you are. How do you feel?”
“Hungry,” I said weakly.
“I have a bowl of fresh atole waiting for you,” she grinned. She washed my hands and face with a damp cloth and then she brought the basin for me to pee in while she finished preparing the hot cereal. The acrid smell of the dark-yellow pee blended into the fragrance of the cereal. I felt better after I sat down again.
“How is my uncle Lucas?” I asked. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Before he did not seem to breathe, but now his chest heaved with the breath of life and the pallor was gone from his face.
“He will be well,” Ultima said. She handed me the bowl of blue atole. I ate but I could not hold the food down at first. I gagged and Ultima held a cloth before me into which I vomited a poisonous green bile. My nose and eyes burned when I threw up but I felt better.
“Will I be all right?” I asked as she cleaned away the mess.
“Yes,” she smiled. She threw the dirty rags in a gunnysack at the far end of the room. “Try again,” she said. I did and this time I did not vomit. The atole and the bread were good. I ate and felt renewed.
“Is there anything you want me to do?” I asked after I had eaten.
“Just rest,” she said, “our work here is almost done—”
It was at that moment that my uncle sat up in bed. It was a fearful sight and one I never want to see again. It was like seeing a dead person rise, for the white sheet was wet with sweat and it clung to his thin body. He screamed the tortured cry of an animal in pain.
“Ai-eeeeeeeeeee!” The cry tore through contorted lips that dripped with frothy saliva. His eyes opened wide in their dark pits, and his thin, skeletal arms flailed the air before him as if he were striking at the furies of hell.
“Au-ggggggggh! Ai-eeee!” He cried in pain. Ultima was immediately at his side, holding him so that he would not tumble from the bed. His body convulsed with the spasms of a madman, and his face contorted with pain.
“Let the evil come out!” Ultima cried in his ear.
“¡Dios mío!” were his first words, and with those words the evil was wrenched from his interior. Green bile poured from his mouth, and finally he vomited a huge ball of hair. It fell to the floor, hot and steaming and wiggling like live snakes.
It was his hair with which they had worked the evil!
“Ay!” Ultima cried triumphantly and with clean linen she swept up the evil, living ball of hair. “This will be burned, by the tree where the witches dance—” she sang and swiftly put the evil load into the sack. She tied the sack securely and then came back to my uncle. He was holding the side of the bed, his thin fingers clutching the wood tightly as if he were afraid to slip back into the evil spell. He was very weak and sweating, but he was well. I could see in his eyes that he knew he was a man again, a man returned from a living hell.
Ultima helped him lie down. She washed him and then fed him his first meal in weeks. He ate like a starved animal. He vomited once, but that was only because his stomach had been so empty and so sick. I could only watch from where I sat.
After that my uncle slept, and Ultima readied her things for departure. Our work was done. When she was ready she went to the door and called my grandfather.
“Your son lives, old man,” she said. She undid her rolled sleeves and buttoned them.
My grandfather