Intruding Dinner Guests

In the quiet evening, a bunch of loud screams erupt. “¿Qué diablos está pasando ahí arriba?!” (“What the hell is going on up there?!”) is screamed from downstairs to reach the rambunctious kids upstairs. Following these screams is a rumble of footsteps coming down the stairs and kids laughingly or scaredly yelling “BRUJA! BRUJA!!” 3 kids run down the stairs: Diego, Marciela, and Romel. The kids run downstairs to their Uncle Javier and Mother Vanessa. 

Looking over at the commotion while cooking, Javier notices that his son Danny isn’t among them. He sees that his niece and nephews are all hysterical and tugging on his sister to come upstairs and check on Danny. Worry blankets over Javier’s eyes and he puts down everything and rushes past the kids. He yells “Watch the food!” to his sister who is still trying to figure out what her kids are yelling about. Javier rushes up the stairs, but he’s not hearing Danny’s voice or anything. “Danny!” he yells while scanning all of the rooms. 

When he reaches the bathroom he sees that Danny is sitting on the floor scared, teary eyed, and holding his hand on his neck. Javier looks at Danny with worry, but for a second his eyes focus on something else in the bathroom. Javier gets on a knee to console Danny, “What happened? You ok?” he asked. Danny tries to talk past his fear but it feels like he has a lump in his throat. “Take your time,” Javier says. Finally able to utter some words, Danny begins to speak. “We-we were just playing a game in the mirror … then this scary lady came out the mirror and did something to my neck.” Danny shows his dad the spot on his neck where the mirror lady did something. Javier analyzes his neck and tells him it’s nothing. Javier stands up with some of his worries about Danny’s condition alleviated. Danny follows him and stands up on his own. “You sure you don’t want me to carry you downstairs?” Javier mockingly asks his son. Danny throws a slight punch to the thigh of his dad yelling “NO!” and wiping away his tears. Javier laughs and Danny begins walking out the door. *Smack* “Ow!” yells Danny, who was walking out the door. “What was that for?” He asked. “You just had something on your head, I got it off now,” Javier tells him. “Dang, but did you have to slap me that hard?” Javier laughs at what his son said and rubs his head as they head back downstairs. 

When they get back downstairs they see that the food for dinner is finished and Danny’s cousins and Auntie are all waiting at the table. “Siéntate!” Vanessa tells her kids before they all sit their butts in their seats. It’s dinner time for the Vergara family and everyone is at the table. The kids start devouring their food like they are possessed. “What was up with Danny?” Vanessa asks Javier. “Danny said they were playing a game in the bathroom. Hey Marciela, what were y’all playing in the bathroom?” Javier asks Marciela because she’s the youngest and the least likely to lie. He sees Diego and Romels eyebrows rise in worry after asking her. “Bloody Larry!” Marciela says. “Larry?” Javier questions her. Javier turns his head back toward Vanessa and asks her “What the hell is she talking about?” But his words fall on deaf ears as he sees his sister mouthing some type of threat to Diego who’s sitting across from her. “We played Bloody Mary in the bathroom!” Diego yells aloud at the table. Romel punches Diego’s leg under the table for snitching on them. With their eyebrows frowned down, Vanessa and Javier glare at Romel. “¿Por qué carajo harías eso?! (“Why the fuck would you do that?”) she asks Romel with some anger in her voice. Superstitions aren’t treated lightly in the Vergara family. “Don’t ever do that again!” yells Vanessa.

Both Javier and Vanessa get up from the table. Javier grabs a bowl, pours salt in it, sprinkles a pinch of salt in the corners of the house, then places the bowl right by the front door. While Javier was doing that, Vanessa had burned some White sage and was walking all around the house with it. The kids were watching the two the entire time. Romel whispers to Diego, “I didn’t think it was that serious.” Diego nods his head with his mouth full of food and mumbles in agreement. “What are they doing?” Danny asks his 2 older cousins. They both shrug their shoulders, then Marciela jumps out her seat and begins to nag her mom to tell her what she’s doing. “We’re cleansing the house of bad energy,” Vanessa tells them. “Let me hold it, let me hold it!” Marciela begs her mom. “Momento!” says Vanessa who is finishing up with the cleansing of the house. Once she finishes up, she blows out the candle and gives it to Marciela, who is now mad that she couldn’t hold the candle while it was lit. Vanessa notices her daughter's pouty face and tells her “you’re not about to play with fire, now go back to the table and finish eating.” Marciela tells her mom, “I did finish my food” - “No she didn’t, she barely touched it!” Danny yells. Marciela turns around, pouts, then screams at Danny for telling on her. “Go finish your food.” Vanessa tells her. Javier also heads back to the table, but right as he’s about to sit down he remembers something. 

He runs back to the door and grabs another pinch of salt. He walks up to Danny and tells him to show him the spot on his neck that he was worried about. Danny turns his neck to the side that the mirror lady, Bloody Mary, touched. Vanessa noticed Javier hesitate for a split second before he rubbed some of the salt on Danny’s neck. “Alright, that should be good,” Javier says. Then he finally sits back down. Vanessa whispers to him, “What was that about?” “It was just a flyhead earlier, nothing to worry about.” he responds. “No it wasn’t, I’m talking about what was on his neck that made you so worried. What was it?” Vanessa demands. “mierda, no lo sé. (Shit, I don’t know.) Some kind of mark on his neck. There was a flyhead on the top of his head when I checked on him in the bathroom but I exorcised it already. Nothing to worry about. Relax!'' Javier tells her. “The hell do you mean? ‘Just a flyhead’! A curse was in the house and you’re not worried? It came right after they played Bloody Mary in the mirror, and you’re telling me you’re not worried? Come on Javi, get serious!” Javier responds, “It was just a small cursed spirit V, maldición! I can get rid of those things any day of the week!” 

Tempers begin to rise and the tension in the room begins to thicken. The kids in the room have noticed that Vanessa and Javier’s tones have risen and they feel an argument brewing. Javier also notices the tension and the growing looks of worry on the kids’ stunned faces. Javier steps up out of his seat and tells Vanessa to follow him outside to the front door. Because of their childhood, Vanessa clearly understood Javier’s intentions to not drag the kids into a debate about something neither one of them was in control of. The tension/fear that cursed spirits can bring inside of a home is as great as the damage that they can actually cause. Vanessa stands up and looks at everyone's plate and notices that Marciela hadn’t eaten all her vegetables. “Get Marciela to finish her vegetables and I’ll let you play the Xbox until it’s time for us to go,” she tells Danny, Diego, and Romel. She then follows Javier outside to the front door, and once they get outside they leave the door cracked so that they can hear what the kids are doing.

Now outside, Javier takes a seat on the stairs, puts his hands over his face, and lets out an exhausting sigh. “I’m sorry V, I know how serious this is. I’m just not trying to get too worked up over a little curse like a flyhead that I can easily exorcise,” says Javier. Vanessa stands on the stairs beside Javier and tells him, “Javi you know it’s not about being able to exorcise it that worries me. It’s the fact that it even got into the house to fucking begin with. You cleanse the house regularly like papi taught us?” - “Yes” - “So why would a spirit be able to get inside the house? It’s got to be that game they played Javi. Games like that have real bad energy in them. Summoning a witch in the mirror?! Really?! Papi would’ve tore us a new one if he caught wind of us playing a game like that.” After her last statement, Vanessa and Javier just sit in silence for a while. Thinking over everything that’s been said and what’s going on. 

Javier lets out a chuckle, one that Vanessa hasn’t heard in a while. This makes her chuckle as well and ask, “What’s so funny?” Javier turns to look at V, “You remember when Danny was born and Papi almost got kicked out for burning incense around the hospital room? He was sneaking to do it when the nurses were gone, and Mardelly kept on using that Nurse Call button on the remote cause the smell was killing her. I knew I couldn’t tell him any better but Mardelly wasn’t having it with him. Just imagine if papi was to see a flyhead in the house. The house would look like a hotbox after he was done.” Vanessa chuckles at his story, but a somber feeling envelopes her. “You really miss them don’t you?” says Vanessa. “Yeah,” says Javier, with almost no air in his voice. Vanessa comes over and gives Javier a hug. They both are still grieving from the loss of their loved ones, and embrace each other, as to say that they will always be there for each other. 

Their moment is interrupted by the fluttering of feathers, some sort of bird just flew on top of the house. “Well looks like we should head inside huh?” says Vanessa. Javier agrees, gets up, and wipes his so-called “sweat” from his eyes. When they get inside they see that the kids had been playing the Xbox the whole time. Assuming by the looks of the plates, Vanessa believes that the boys had eaten some of the vegetables for Marciela so that they could get on the game. She chuckles as she can’t be mad at them for doing what kids do. Vanessa and Javier stand at the door and watch as the kids enjoy themselves. “Well I guess it's time we get out of here,” Vanessa says. “Yeah we’ll see you next weekend,” responds Javier who gives her another hug. Vanessa helps Javi clean up the kitchen, get her kids ready to go, and they all leave shortly after. The Vergara family still hangs out a lot so their goodbyes aren’t very dramatic like one might expect, because they may see each other in the morning. You can’t tell with these two. 

Javier helps get the kids settled in the car, says bye to them all, and watches as they drive out of his sight. He heads back inside and sees Danny sleeping on the couch with the Xbox controller in his hands. Javier takes the controller out of his hand, turns off the system, then heads to the closet to get a blanket. He’s not going to take Danny up to his room so that they can both sleep beside each other on the couch. As Javier goes to get the blanket, he hears a knock at the door. This knock is loud enough to wake Danny out of his sleep. Danny wasn’t sleeping long enough to be dazed when he woke up and assumed the person at the door was his Aunt Vanessa. Unlike he’s supposed to, Danny runs to the door and opens it without checking. To his surprise, Danny sees no one at the door when he opens it. “DANNY!!” Javier yells at the top of his lungs. Javier darts over to Danny and tackles him. Danny hits the floor after being knocked down by his father and gets extremely scared. Then something splashes on Danny’s face, blood. Blood is oozing from his father’s back. 

While bleeding profusely, Javier picks Danny up and rushes him to the kitchen behind the counter. After putting Danny down, Javier grabs a knife and rushes at the door. But something is weird about the knife that Javier is holding. Danny’s eyes begin to see a glow emitting from the knife. At this time Danny doesn’t know, but what he is seeing is cursed energy in his Dad’s knife. The fear in Danny had awakened his sixth sense, allowing him to see cursed energy and cursed spirits. Danny looks at the front door where his dad is charging to with his knife and sees a ghoulish monster at the front door with razor sharp hands. This is the curse that knocked at the door when Danny opened it, but he couldn’t see it then. With cursed energy infused in his knife, Javier slashes at the spirit and chops off a piece of its arm. Javier assumes that this spirit is slightly stronger than the flyhead that he had to kill earlier. The spirit winces over in pain, and in this moment Javier thinks that he can handle it himself. “Danny! Run up stairs and lock your door,” Javier commands. Danny is frozen in fear at the sight of the spirit. “NOW!” yells Javier. Danny gets shaken out of his fear by his dad’s yell. He runs up the stairs but not into his room. He only goes to the top of the stairs to keep his eyes on his dad. Javier assumes that's what Danny would do and goes to the stairs and looks him dead in the eyes and tells him sternly, “Go. In. Your. -'' Javier gets cut off by a claw piercing his chest. He had his back turned to the spirit for too long and suffered the consequences. The spirit rips its hand out of Javier’s chest and turns its eyes to Danny. Even though its face was hardly humanoid, Danny could tell that the cursed spirit was smiling when it looked at him. 

After witnessing his dad get stabbed by a monster, he was once again frozen in fear. Javier is now lying atop a pool of his own blood, motionless. The spirit is now walking up the stairs to kill a paralyzed Danny. Once it gets to the top of the stairs where Danny is, it winds up its arm to deal the killing blow. Danny braces and closes his eyes. Next thing Danny notices is a violent gust of wind. A few seconds go by, Danny opens his eyes to see that he is not yet dead. In front of him is the curse but it is now halfway inside the wall. A random man in half of a Janitor's outfit is at the bottom of the stairs with a broom in his hand. This man’s broom is glowing with the same energy that was in Javier’s knife. Still at the bottom of the stairs and not in reach of the spirit, the Janitor raises his broom up and fans it down. This movement led to Danny being pushed by a gust of wind that sent him flying backwards. Danny flies backward all the way to his Dad’s door at the end of the hallway. Danny can still see a bit of the spirits form from where he is at, and notices it going downstairs to attack the Janitor. In the next instance, a firework of purple blood erupts from the stairs. 

A minute later, footsteps can be heard coming up the stairs, it's the janitor. He walks over slowly to Danny as he’s wiping the purple blood off his face. He notices the distraught look on this child’s face. He kneels down to him, puts his hand on his head, and tells Danny, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t have been here sooner.” The janitor pulls out his phone and calls someone. As he’s doing that, Danny gets up and goes down the stairs. He sees his dad in the upright position, struggling to breath, eyes almost lifeless. Danny is too shocked to speak but Javier notices his son looking over him. So many memories run through Javier’s head as he looks up at his only son. Memories of Javier’s wife, who died at childbirth, run through his mind. Guilt begins to loom over Javier. Immense sadness fills his dying body as he won’t be around to protect his son any longer. Sweat pours down Javier’s face and his last words to his son are, “I want to stay to protect you .. but I can’t. I’ll be watching over you .. *sniffle* I love you so much Danny!” The last bit of energy has now left Javier’s body. Danny runs down the stairs, yelling for his father, his words now falling on deafening ears. Javier can’t hear or feel but he sees his son at his side. The Janitor is now at the top of the stairs and Javier looks at him. A tearful but silent plea is let out by Javier. A silent “please” comes out of his mouth and the Janitor nods his head. With his hand in the grasp of his sons. Javier gives Danny one last smile before passing away.