The Wet Nurse of Hollow Cove

The town of Hollow Cove had a peculiar relationship with the sea. It wasn’t the salt that clung to every surface or the endless gray of the sky that made it strange; it was the way the tide seemed to breathe. My grandmother, Lola Marisol, had been the last true Espiritista in our family, though she’d retired from the craft long before I was born. Her sister, Lola Amara, had passed away when I was a child under circumstances no one would discuss. Our family’s tradition was to bind a guardian to each newborn, a spirit meant to protect, test, and strengthen. My mother, a scientist who believed only in what she could measure, dismissed it all as superstition. But to honor her grandmother’s wish, she allowed the ritual on my baptismal day.

I was the seventh child in my generation, and by then, the guardians had become something of a family joke. My cousin Elara’s guardian was said to be a laughing breeze that knocked over flowerpots. My cousin Marco’s was a shadow that rearranged his shoes. But mine, they say, was different. The spirit that latched onto me was old, older than the town itself, and it had a hunger that went beyond the living.

The first sign came when I was barely a year old. My mother would put me in my crib, and within minutes, she’d find me missing. The first time, she panicked, searching every corner of our small house. She found me in the bathroom, sitting under the sink, cooing at something she couldn’t see. The second time, it was the roof, in the middle of a storm, my clothes soaked and my tiny hands reaching for the sky. She’d grab me, shivering, and I’d babble in a language that sounded like water and stone. When I was three, my mother started finding me at the edge of the cliffs, staring at the ocean, my lips moving in conversation with the waves.

I have vague memories of those times, not as images but as sensations. The feeling of being held by something vast and cold, a presence that wrapped around me like a wet blanket. I remember the taste of salt, the sound of a heartbeat underwater, and a voice that sang to me in a language that preceded human speech. As I grew older, the presence grew quieter, but I knew it was always there, a shift in the temperature of a room, a ripple in a glass of water.

When I turned twelve, I began to dream of a lighthouse that didn’t exist. In the dream, I would climb its spiral staircase, my bare feet slipping on damp stone, and at the top, I’d find a woman made of seaweed and barnacles. She would open her mouth, and instead of words, a flood of black water would spill out, filling the room until I couldn’t breathe. I’d wake gasping, my sheets drenched, and my mother would find me crying, unable to explain why.

It was my cousin Rafaela who finally told me the truth. The guardians, she said, were not just protectors. They were tests, chains that bound both spirit and human together, each shaping the other. My guardian, she said, was a drowned priest, a man who had tried to exorcise a demon from the sea and instead became part of it. He was bound to my family’s bloodline for generations, and he was growing impatient. ‘He wants to be free,’ Rafaela said, her eyes wide. ‘He’s chosen you to be his doorway.’

I dismissed it. I was a rational teenager, skeptical like my mother. But then strange things began to happen. I’d be walking down the street, and a wave of nausea would hit me, followed by an overwhelming urge to enter the ocean. I’d find myself at the harbor without remembering how I got there, my feet wet and my shoes filled with sand. My friends said I’d stare at the water for hours, mumbling in a voice that wasn’t mine.

One night, during a lunar eclipse, I woke up in the middle of the tide pools, my hands covered in silt and a dead fish in my lap. I was fifteen, and I knew then that whatever was inside me was not just a guardian. It was a predator.

My mother, despite her skepticism, finally sought help. She brought in an old friend, a man named Father Ignacio, who was known for his work with the supernatural. He performed a ritual to communicate with the spirit, and what he saw made him pale. ‘This is not a guardian,’ he said. ‘This is a curse. A binding gone wrong. The spirit is not protecting her; it’s using her to regain its own life.’ He warned that if we didn’t unbind it, I would be consumed by the time I reached adulthood.

The unbinding ritual required three things: a piece of the spirit’s original body, a living vessel to transfer it to, and the blood of the bloodline. We had the blood, of course, but the piece of the body meant we had to find the priest’s remains. According to Father Ignacio, he was buried in a forgotten cemetery at the edge of Hollow Cove, near a chapel that had collapsed a century ago.

We went there on a foggy morning. The cemetery was overgrown with bramble, the headstones weathered to almost nothing. We dug for hours, the smell of damp earth filling our nostrils. Finally, my shovel hit bone. We unearthed a skull, its jaw still intact, with a strange growth of coral on the cranium. I felt a pull, a violent tug in my chest, as if the spirit recognized its own remains.

We took the skull to the shore, where Father Ignacio set up a circle of salt and candles. He placed the skull in the center, then drew a dagger across my palm, letting my blood drip onto the bone. The moment the blood touched, the wind died. The ocean went silent. And then the water on the shore began to rise, not with the tide, but as if something was pushing it.

The spirit manifested as a column of water, swirling and forming into a shape that was half-man, half-fish, its eyes like black holes. It spoke in a voice that scraped against reality, ‘You seek to unbind me? I have waited centuries for a host with your strength. I will not be denied.’

But we had a trick. Father Ignacio had prepared a living vessel—a pigeon, caged nearby. He grabbed the bird and, in a swift motion, placed it on the skull, which began to glow. The spirit let out a shriek, a sound that cracked the salt circle, and was sucked into the pigeon. The bird convulsed, then lay still. For a moment, we thought it had worked.

But the pigeon rose, its head twisting to look at me with an intelligence that was not animal. It opened its beak and spoke in that same waterlogged voice, ‘You think a bird can hold me? It will serve as a temporary cage, nothing more. In a week, I will be free, and I will come for you.’

Father Ignacio grabbed the bird and placed it in a special container he’d prepared, but we all knew it was a temporary solution. He said he would need to find a way to destroy the spirit permanently, but that it might take time. He took the pigeon and left, promising to return.

That was six months ago. I’ve continued my life, but I feel changes. I can hear the ocean’s whispers more clearly now. Sometimes, I find myself talking to salt water in my sleep, and my dreams are filled with the lighthouse of the dead. I’m afraid that the priest’s spirit is not just a guardian anymore. It’s a part of me, and if he ever gets free, he’ll drag me down with him.

I’ve started to prepare. I’ve taken up the family’s old volumes on Espiritista lore, trying to understand what binds us together. I’ve learned that the binding was not just to protect me, but to feed him. Every time I resisted, every time I tried to be normal, I gave him strength to overcome my will.

Tonight, the moon is new, and the tide is at its lowest. I’m sitting on the beach, the cold sand beneath me, a small knife in my hand. I’ve decided that I’d rather die than let him use me to harm anyone else. I’m going to cut the binding myself, even if it kills me.

But as I raise the blade, the water at my feet begins to stir. A hand, made of seaweed and foam, reaches up from the dark, and a voice whispers from the surf, ‘You cannot cut what is already drowned.’ And I realize, with a chilling certainty, that I have never been the one holding the knife in this story. It was always him.