In the Realm of Santa Muerte

Abstract

In the Realm of Santa Muerte is a magical-realist horror novella. Written in a modern gothic style, it is inspired by regional mythologies and folklore of Mexico and the American Southwest. This story follows Alma, a young woman struggling to process her grief in the wake of her grandmother’s death. Along with her sister, Marisol, they have taken over the family business working as folk healers for their secluded valley town. While previously fertile, the valley has been in a slow state of decay; crops suffer and animals have failed to reproduce for unknown reasons. A blanket of fear covers the valley as people become more desperate for answers. Despite having turned her back on the old ways and traditions of her family long ago, after overhearing that the blight was caused by supernatural interference, Alma puts aside her denial of the supernatural and summons Santa Muerte, a folk saint who is said to be a protector of her followers as well as a safe guide to the afterlife. Receiving little substantial answers from this enigmatic figure, Alma must dig into the past to decipher the mysterious events and reckon with a world where the supernatural has shown itself without a doubt to be real. Memory plays a huge role in this story. In the end, I wanted to be able to transport the reader from past to present and allow them to come to the same conclusions throughout the story alongside Alma, similar to the way that Cristina Riveria Garza does in her novella, The Taiga Syndrome, which has been a model to me through the last several months of this thesis process. At its core, In the Realm of Santa Muerte is about exploring the ties between past and present, and the horror that might lie in the spaces of memory between.