The Itching Veil

When I was nine, my great-aunt Marisol came to live with us in our cramped apartment complex in North Miami. She was ancient, with skin like crumpled parchment, and dark, liver-spotted patches covered her hands and face. I was terrified of those spots. Whenever she reached out to pinch my cheek, I would flinch and hide behind my mother’s legs. My cousins whispered that she was a bruja, but my parents said she was just a lonely old woman. After she passed away, I felt a strange relief, as if a weight had been lifted from our home.

Years later, I moved into a new apartment in a converted warehouse near the Miami River. The loft was chic, with exposed brick and floor-to-ceiling windows, but the price was too good to be true. The landlord, a nervous man named Mr. Reyes, only said the previous tenant left abruptly. I didn’t ask questions. I was just happy to have my own space.

The first few weeks were blissful. I loved the way the morning light spilled across the concrete floor. But soon, a heaviness settled over me. I would wake up crying, my pillow soaked with tears, though I had no memory of any sad dream. My head would spin, and I’d have to brace myself against the wall to keep from falling. I started calling my grandmother, who lived far away, and she suggested it was just stress. She told me to take a nap, maybe take a walk by the water, and I would feel better.

But I didn’t feel better. At night, I heard scratching noises in the walls, like fingernails dragging across plaster. I told myself it was rats, but the sounds always seemed to follow me from room to room. One evening, I noticed a faint, brownish stain on the ceiling above my bed, shaped roughly like a hand. I tried to scrub it off, but it wouldn’t budge. It almost looked like the spot was growing, day by day.

Then the itching began. It started on my arm, a maddening itch that wouldn’t go away no matter how much I scratched. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a small, dark spot forming on my skin, right where the itch was. Panic seized me. I Googled my symptoms and landed on a medical site that described the spots as a common sign of aging. But I was only thirty. I called my grandmother again, and this time she grew quiet.

‘Those spots,’ she said slowly. ‘They look like Marisol’s, don’t they?’ I hadn’t mentioned it, but she knew. She told me to look at the old family albums, the ones we had digitized. I opened the folder on my laptop and clicked through the pictures. There was Marisol, her face covered in those same dark blotches. My heart raced. I zoomed in on her skin, and I saw that the spots were not random. They formed a pattern, almost like a map or a code.

I couldn’t sleep that night. The scratching grew louder. I pulled back the covers and saw that a new spot had appeared on my leg. I tried to scrub it away in the shower, but the water only made it darker. When I stepped out, I caught my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were rimmed with red, and my skin looked sallow. For a split second, I thought I saw Marisol’s face overlaid on mine, her lips moving like she was whispering something.

I finally went to see a dermatologist, a cold woman who took one look at my spots and said, ‘This is the itching veil. I’ve seen it before. It’s not a disease, it’s a curse.’ She gave me a salve that smelled of mothballs and told me to apply it at dawn for seven days. I followed her instructions, but each morning I found a new spot, and the salve would dry up instantly.

On the last night, I woke to find a figure standing at the foot of my bed. It was Marisol, her skin crawling with those same spots, which now seemed to be moving, shifting like a living thing. She pointed at me, and the spots on her hands began to flake off and drift toward me like ash. I tried to scream, but my throat was raw, and no sound came. She opened her mouth, and a swarm of dark specks flew out, straight at my face.

I woke up on the floor, drenched in sweat. The spots had multiplied, covering both my arms and my neck. I rushed to the window and looked at my reflection in the glass. My face was a mosaic of dark patches. I could feel something buzzing under my skin, like a thousand tiny insects. I knew then that Marisol’s curse was not a punishment for what she did in life, but a way to continue her work from beyond the grave. And I was the new canvas.

I tried to burn the pictures, but the flames only made the spots grow. I tried to move out, but every time I packed a bag, I would find myself standing in front of the sink, watching the spots spread. The final straw came when I noticed the stain on the ceiling was now the exact size and shape of a woman’s body, as if someone had been pressed into the plaster. I called my grandmother one last time, sobbing. She told me the truth: Marisol was not a witch; she was a vessel. The spots were a doorway, and the doorway was me.

Now I sit in this apartment, the windows sealed shut, the mirrors covered. The scratching has turned into a low hum, a song that I almost recognize. I look at my hands, and they are covered in the spots, just like hers. I know that soon I will not be me anymore. I will be the new veil, the one that passes the curse along. And I have already picked out my next victim: the landlord’s daughter, who laughs at me when she brings the mail. She will pay no attention to the spots, until it is too late. So I smile, and I wait. My skin itches, but I let it. It is the only thing that still feels close to being alive.