The Possession of Alba Díaz

Set in colonial Nueva España (present-day Mexico), this gothic novel opens with an unnamed narrator teasing the legend of the Monterrubio mine: a tale of an ancient terror, a blood-soaked wedding gown, and a woman named Alba Díaz de Bolaños who barely survived. The narrator claims to know the truth and warns the listener to lean in.

The story begins in Constantinople, where Elías Monterrubio, a Spanish alchemist, purchases El Libro de San Cipriano, a grimoire written in aljamía (Spanish words rendered in Arabic script). He forgets the book until a letter from his grandfather lures him to Sevilla with the false claim that his father, Victoriano, has returned from the Indies. Elías learns Victoriano died six months earlier, leaving behind a failed mining venture in Nueva España and crushing family debt. As the only son, Elías inherits the obligation. His grandfather proposes a deal: Bring smuggled mercury, essential for silver refinement, to the colony and serve as azoguero (amalgamation foreman) for seventy percent of the profits. Elías agrees and endures a brutal crossing to Veracruz.

In Zacatecas, a silver-rich colonial city, Alba Díaz de Bolaños enters a confessional and admits she has blackmailed her fiancé. Alba, adopted by wealthy merchants Emilio and Lucero Díaz, has endured unwanted sexual attention since childhood. Determined to avoid being married off to a stranger, she searched her father's papers and discovered that Victoriano Monterrubio found an abandoned infant at Mina San Gabriel and gave the baby to the childless Díaz couple. Alba is that foundling. Enraged by her parents' deception, she proposed a calculated arrangement to Carlos Monterrubio, her childhood friend, who does not wish to marry a woman. Their engagement protects them both and prevents her father from calling in the Monterrubio debts.

At a wedding reception, Alba meets Padre Bartolomé Verástegui Robles, a former soldier turned priest and Carlos's childhood friend, and recognizes his voice from her confession. Fleeing to a courtyard, she encounters a stranger who shares her longing for escape. They dance before the bride collapses, igniting a matlazahuatl (typhus) epidemic. Carlos identifies the stranger as his cousin Elías. Both families retreat to Casa Calavera, the hacienda de minas (mining estate) run by Carlos's father, Heraclio, in the mountains. Alba fights to go, hoping to uncover the truth of her origins. Upon arrival, she feels something shift inside her chest: A heavy, liquid cold fills her body, and a voice urges her to leave.

At Mina San Gabriel, Elías is confronted by María Victoriana Monterrubio, Victoriano's illegitimate fifteen-year-old daughter by Carolina Hernández, a local woman, who warns him not to claim her inheritance. He discovers a grotto shrine containing a skeletal effigy with a silver bowl of mercury at its feet before Carolina slaps his hand away. Meanwhile, Alba wanders deep into the mine alone and hears an infant wailing. Something seizes her in the darkness. Elías finds her, sings a lullaby to calm her, and leads her out. Both their hands are covered in blood.

Alba's condition worsens. She wakes from nightmares with gravel on her feet, evidence of sleepwalking, and holy water burns her skin at Mass. Carolina spits at her and declares she has no place here. Carlos warns Alba that Elías was condemned to forced labor in the mercury mines of Almadén for killing a man. Alba befriends María Victoriana and pays her to investigate rumors of a foundling. In Victoriano's workshop, Elías discovers his father's journals describing the shrine, as well as El Libro de San Cipriano. When he reads an invocation aloud, the air shifts and sulfur fills the room.

One night, Elías finds Alba sleepwalking toward the mine, her eye sockets hollow and black. The next morning, Nicandro Romero, the other azoguero, is found drowned in slurry, and Carlos and Heraclio accuse Elías. Alba provides his alibi through Bartolomé, who declares Elías innocent, reveals his ties to the Inquisition, and demands the shrine be destroyed. Alba's possession intensifies: While sleepwalking, she attacks Elías in his room with a knife. The demon speaks through her in derija, the Arabic dialect of Elías's mother, taunting him with knowledge of his dead wife, Fátima. Elías fights it off with prayers and incantations from the grimoire, then tells Alba the truth: She is possessed, and he believes she killed Romero while under the demon's control.

Unable to let her sleep, they talk through the night and share their first kiss. Elías attempts a ritual exorcism using glyphs from the grimoire, drawing on years of proximity to mercury and the deep earth, but the effort nearly kills him. They bring Bartolomé into their confidence. The priest confines Alba to her rooms, enlists Elías as a nighttime watchman, and writes to the Inquisition.

Carolina reveals the demon's history: When the mine was first opened, a foreign evil was found within, one that had arrived with the Spanish colonizers. A brujo (sorcerer) had bound it to stone, guarded by a local entity worshiped at the shrine. When a woman assaulted by the mine owner's son abandoned her newborn in the mine, the dormant demon entered the baby. Victoriano found the infant and gave it to Emilio Díaz, ignoring Carolina's warning. Carolina insists the demon can only be destroyed by killing the host, but Elías refuses. María Victoriana suggests using the grimoire and the goddess of the mountain instead. Carolina leads Elías to the shrine's hidden location, where he plunges his fingers into mercury and receives the goddess's power: "Use quicksilver. Rid my land of the foreign devil."

Bartolomé arranges a formal exorcism in the chapel with Carlos assisting. The demon taunts Carlos with his secret feelings for Bartolomé, then attacks. Elías, channeling the goddess's power through mercury in his blood, shatters a manifestation of the demon. Inquisitors arrive soon after, imprison Elías, and prepare to transport him to the capital. Bound and watched by priests, Alba strikes a deal with the demon: She will release it if it helps her free Elías. During the final exorcism, she surrenders control, and the demon attacks with full force.

Carlos helps them escape with horses, silver, and directions to Acapulco. On the mountain road, the demon seizes Alba again. Elías pulls the demon out of her and into himself, trapping it with quicksilver. Bartolomé catches up and stabs Elías twice in the chest. Alba strikes the priest with a stone. She holds Elías as he appears to die, the demon's smoke rising from his body and plunging back into her.

Alba is returned to Casa Calavera. Everyone believes Elías cursed her, and plans proceed for a wedding to Carlos in Zacatecas. But the mercury in Elías's blood, animated by the mountain goddess, preserved him. Carolina and María Victoriana hid him and arranged for a curandera (healer) to nurse him to health. He leaves El Libro de San Cipriano behind, its incantations now seared into his hands, and rides to Zacatecas with a jar of mercury.

On the wedding day, Alba walks down the cathedral aisle and attacks the priests with clawed hands. Elías fights through the stampeding crowd, pulls her off a priest he believes is Bartolomé, and sings the lullaby. He anoints her with mercury, chants the final incantation, and traps the black smoke in the jar. Alba's eyes return. They embrace at the altar.

Alba then takes over the narration, revealing herself as the storyteller from the opening. She describes the real ending: Elías carrying her from the cathedral, cutting her free of the silver-encrusted gown, and keeping his promise. They sell silver from the dress, buy passage on a galleon departing Acapulco, and sail west, leaving the mine, the demon, and Nueva España behind forever.