Dreadful Places by Aaron Mahnke

Author:Aaron Mahnke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

WARLOCKS GONE WILD

The trials revealed many new details about the Brujos and their beliefs, their practices, and the group’s inner workings. Some almost sound like they were pulled right out of a children’s book, they’re so simple and benign, while others are downright chilling.

For example, one of the men on trial in 1880 revealed that each warlock carried a pet lizard with him. This lizard, according to the man, would be tied to the warlock’s forehead, and because it was magical, it gifted him with powers.

These warlocks were even said to communicate and interact with the ghost sailors aboard the Caleuche, using seahorses as aquatic carrier pigeons to pass messages back and forth. Seahorses.

Other stories spoke of how the warlocks recruited new spies for their sect. According to the legend, these warlocks would kidnap young women, who would be given a special elixir to drink. Once it was ingested, these girls would vomit until their stomachs and intestines lay on the ground at their feet. Then they would transform into birds and do the bidding of their master.

None of this, though, compares to what the Brujos were said to have kept in their cave. One of the men on trial in 1880, an elderly man named Mateo, claimed that in the 1860s he had been asked to visit the cave to feed the creatures kept there. And although his testimony was rejected by the court as fantasy, some have been left wondering.

The cave, it is said, was difficult to locate, and rightly so. It contained multiple magical items, including the book of spells the group had received from the Spaniard Moraleda, as well as a bowl that was said to show the future to those who looked into it. And because these were objects of power for the warlocks, they needed to be carefully guarded.

The entrance was a door hidden beneath the grass and soil in a rocky canyon near the coast, and with it, a metal key. Mateo told the court that he opened the entrance to the cave, only to find two creatures inside that nearly defied description.

One was called a chivato, a humanoid creature that was briefly described as goatlike and walking on four legs. But Mateo had no trouble describing the other thing in the cave. Because at first glance, it seemed to be nothing more than a bearded man.

This man, though, was deformed. Not mildly or by birth, but intentionally and drastically twisted. It was called the Imbunche, and although the one that Mateo witnessed appeared old, he said that they typically begin as infants.

Now, this next part isn’t for the faint of heart. But it’s necessary to understand the level of cruelty and barbarism that this cult practiced. According to writer Bruce Chatwin, who visited the island in 1975, the locals still maintain a good amount of folklore around the creation of the Imbunche.

The warlocks would kidnap a male six-month-old child, Chatwin recorded, and then deliver it to the one known as the Deformer, who lived inside the cave.

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