A couple of weeks ago, Dead Ink Books published The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca a new collection of short horror stories set in Mexico, translated by James D. Jenkins, that explore its dark, bloody history. To celebrate the release, the publisher has provided us with an excerpt to share: specifically, the story “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”. Here is the collection’s synopsis:

A forensic entomologist tries to solve the inexplicable murder of his wife, who impossibly seems to have been killed in a forest at the same time she was asleep in bed with him. A husband becomes concerned by his wife’s strange behaviour, which includes sleepwalking, muttering strange phrases, and a bizarre erotic fascination with octopi. A woman visits a witch doctor who promises to forge an unbreakable bond between her and the man of her dreams, but things go horribly awry after the man dies. And four high school friends reunite twenty years later at a class reunion and must face the long-buried truth of a demonic experience from their youth.

The history of Mexico is drenched in blood, from the sacrifices of the ancient Aztecs to the bloodthirsty conquest of the Spanish to modern-day violent crime, and that legacy of violence and death pervades these stories. They blend the genres of horror and noir in inventive ways and run the gamut from chilling to weirdly unsettling to darkly funny. It is a volume sure to please not only fans of horror and weird fiction but also anyone interested in contemporary international literature.

This edition also features brilliant full-page illustrations by Spanish artist Luis Pérez Ochando.

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The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife

I’ve been married to my wife for seven years, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I found out about her sleepwalking. I don’t know if it’s an old condition or a new one. What I do know is that it’ll be hard to find out for sure, since my wife and I are hardly talking. We lost trust in each other a long time ago; I sleep in my study, and when we’re home at the same time we avoid each other. This new development is the latest in a series of strange behaviors on my wife’s part in recent weeks, although I suppose she could say the same thing about me. We’re such strangers to each other that even something as simple as watching her chew – on the rare occasions I go in the kitchen and find her having a bite to eat – seems somehow out of place. One day I saw her bent over a plate of watermelon wedges; hearing me come in, Estela sat up and shot me a glance that reminded me of how a predator looks when surprised with its prey. A thread of red juice ran down the corner of her mouth, adding a sinister touch to the scene.

Last night I got thirsty in the middle of the night and left my studio to get a glass of water. As I crossed the living room I saw my wife standing in front of the sliding glass door that leads to the balcony. It was open halfway and the night breeze was moving the curtains, making them ripple over Estela’s face. She stood with her back to me, totally still. The movement of the curtains, plus the light of the streetlamp filtering through them, caused a curious effect: it looked like my wife was passing through a curtain of water. I could tell something strange was going on, so I walked up beside her. Her eyes were open, lost in nothingness; she gave me the impression that she was looking at something beyond the waking world. She ignored my presence, so I spoke to her gently. She didn’t respond. I stood there waiting for several minutes, until suddenly she said:

‘You are the Creator.’

Then she turned around and walked slowly back to her room. I followed her, stopping at the threshold. From there I saw her get between the sheets.

I was stunned at the discovery of her sleepwalking. However, something else disturbed me too, something to do with the phrase she uttered in her sleep.

Estela is an atheist.

I’ve decided to keep this journal to put my thoughts in order. I want to understand how Estela and I got to this point. At what moment do two people in love lose their way and wind up adrift like the ghosts of their own relationship? I’ve wondered many times why we didn’t split up. I don’t have an explanation. Instead of answers, what comes to me are questions: what spell keeps couples together when they no longer have anything in common? Maybe there’s an invisible bond, a final stronghold which, in their despair and despondency, crumbling marriages are unable to take advantage of. Married life has many mysteries, but maybe the biggest is when relationships keep going even after they’re over. I think what we see in many married couples – my case, of course – is like the light from dead stars: merely the reflection of something extinct.

I’m writing this entry after finding Estela standing facing the balcony for the second night in a row. The same image: the half-open door, the rippling curtains. It didn’t go any further, and that reassures me. We live on the first floor; there’s barely two meters between us and the street. But it’s not a fall I’m worried about; I’m afraid she’ll go out in the street in that condition. Yesterday I locked the door to the balcony, but she still found a way to open it: I guess sleepwalkers are able to perform certain actions.

She stood there motionless for long minutes before finally uttering the same sentence:

‘You are the Creator.’

She was looking towards the horizon. When she turned around and walked back to her room, I stepped out onto the balcony. I thought maybe there was something outside that was arousing my wife’s strange reveries.

All I saw were the neighbors’ darkened windows, like blind eyes unable to return my gaze.

We wanted to have a child.

In all honesty, she much more than me. (I have to be as precise as possible, if I want to make sense of these strange events.) We tried to get pregnant for two years without success. Then we went to the doctor. After a series of tests, the doctor explained that the problem was me. I needed an operation. I refused, arguing to my wife that the doctor was just trying to get more money out of us. The truth is that I was scared: of the operation, of fatherhood. So I clung to the pretext of the money-grubbing doctor to put the subject off as long as possible. Then Estela suggested we get a second opinion. I agreed. There were more tests and the same result: the operating room. My income had dropped around that time, so I used lack of funds as an excuse. We had to be patient and wait for a better time to incur that expense. While we argued about it, another year went by. The worst year of our marriage, which culminated in my sleeping in the study and Estela talking in her sleep.

Now I know what I have to do. We’ve ignored each other so long that the idea of spying on her hadn’t even occurred to me. I don’t mean following her in the car or showing up to work, I’ll rummage through her drawers. I’ll search her closet. I’ll even switch on her computer. I know her password; I doubt she’s changed it in years. I need to find something that explains her behavior.

Maybe, deep down, what I’m looking for is a reason to leave her for good.

I’m picking up this journal again after three days of investigation. Days in which, by the way, my wife hasn’t given up her ritual of the balcony and uttering the sentence which at this point sends chills up my spine. The search yielded results. Or at least I think so. Because what I’ve found out doesn’t really lead me anywhere. It’s something that makes no sense, no matter how hard I try to understand it. Maybe Estela and I are going crazy together, in a final and desperate act of love.

My wife has been obsessed for some time with an image. It’s a woodcut from the early 19th century, the work of the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. I know because I found a file about it in one of her desk drawers. And on her computer I was able to find a series of searches about it, dating back months. She even tried buying a reproduction being sold by a gallery in New York, but apparently the deal fell through. Although I’m not sure. Is it possible she has that picture somewhere in the house? I’ve looked all over but haven’t found it. Just the thought of that repulsive art being hidden in my own home infuriates me.

The picture is disgusting. Worthy of a twisted, vulgar mind.

The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife depicts a naked woman lying down while a gigantic octopus performs cunnilingus on her. The animal’s black, bulging eyes as it opens its mouth are frightening, but the most disturbing part of the picture is the woman’s expression. However grotesque the scene may appear, she feels an intense pleasure, as if no human could equal the octopus as a lover, for the creature also caresses her entire body with its tentacles.

What does all this have to do with my wife’s sleepwalking? That picture Estela seems to adore is bona fide proof that I’ve been living with a woman I don’t know. However much I thought I knew about her private life, now she reveals herself to me as a creature with voracious, inhuman eyes.

Just like the octopus in the picture.

Finding the picture became an obsession.

I was convinced that Estela was keeping it in some nook or cranny of the house. I checked her closet again. I opened the boxes she stores in the garage. I even searched her car. Nothing. It didn’t surprise me: if a woman could conceal her true personality from her husband, she was capable of hiding anything. These sorts of paranoid thoughts have sprouted in my head the past few days and reinforced my determination to find the picture. If I managed to locate it, it would be a small victory in the midst of so much deception.

Later I thought about it and decided I was being too hard on Estela, the woman I had loved for many years. And I let a new idea take root in my mind: my wife was talking to me in her sleep; the way she was acting, getting up every night – and uttering those words, meaningless to someone who doesn’t believe in God – was a prayer directed to me, an attempt from the deepest part of her consciousness to raise my spirits and reassure me that I was capable of getting her pregnant. I was almost convinced that the ‘Creator’ she referred to in her nocturnal mantra was me, when something happened that brought me back to reality.

I found the picture. She was hiding it in a place so obvious that it escaped my suspicions for that very reason.

It was morning. Estela had just left for work, and you could still catch a trace of her perfume in the house. It smelled as though she had changed scents, and I went into her room to look for the bottle. Any little detail might mean a clue amid all that absurdity. Suddenly something caught my attention. I had seen it out of the corner of my eye, something black and pointy somewhere on the bed. I turned towards the bed with a knot in my stomach. The corner of a frame was sticking out from under the pillow. I went closer and with a trembling hand pulled out the woodcut.

There it was, the abominable image, lying underneath where she rested her head every night, whispering who knew what things into her ear, into the mind she’d already lost. The revelation of such an act was dreadful, unacceptable.

What kind of person lets a monster lull her to sleep?

Despite the events of the past few days, I wasn’t ready for what happened in the middle of the night. I haven’t slept much lately. The routine of keeping an eye on what Estela is doing at night, and following her tracks during the day, has left little room for sleep. However, last night I fell asleep reading in my study. The built-up fatigue finally overtook me. It was a deep sleep, which kept me knocked out until dawn. I awoke as the sky was starting to get light. I got up immediately, seized with panic: I hadn’t been awake to monitor my wife’s sleepwalking. I looked for her all over the house but couldn’t find her. The balcony door was wide open, making me fear the worst. I ran to the front door, ready to search for her in the streets. When I opened it, I got a surprise: Estela was there, her eyes open, lost somewhere in dreamland. I hugged her, relieved, and then noticed something I’d missed: her dress was soaked, as if she’d just gotten out of a pool. I pulled it aside to look at her.

What I saw has brought my insomnia back.

Estela had a series of slimy green residues in her hair and on her shoulders. I took a piece of it between my fingers.

It was seaweed.

This city isn’t by the sea. I’m clarifying that so you can understand, in some way, what I have left to tell. I’ll admit it was an act of desperation, but what other choice is left when your reality comes to seem like a nightmare? The only place where Estela could swim through seaweed was the Aquarium. After thinking it over a long time, I decided to visit it in the late afternoon, when there are fewer people there.

I bought a ticket and walked like a robot through the blue passageways. I realized I was copying my wife. I hardly looked at the enormous glass cases, as if my steps knew where to lead me. I remember how the reflection of the water created the sensation of movement on the floor and the walls; how the creatures I saw swimming out of the corner of my eye seemed to be approaching the glass to watch me.

It was like I was really walking on the ocean floor, through a passage separating me from an even deeper abyss.

Then I was there, in front of him. Clearly he was waiting for me. In the final display case, occupying a tank all by himself, floating, majestic . . .

His tentacles unfolded in the water as if they wanted to embrace me.

I haven’t left the study in days. My appetite is gone, along with any desire to clean myself up. I’m afraid to face my wife. To look at her and discover the arrogant look of victory on her face. I can tell she has stopped sleepwalking. From here I hear her coming and going confidently through the house, the cadence of steps that have recovered their rhythm.

I wonder if that means the end of the nightmare . . . or only the beginning.

Estela leaves no room for speculation and slips something under the door. I stand up, falteringly. I hesitate, then finally bend over to pick the object up with a trembling hand.

It’s a pregnancy test.

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Bernardo Esquinca’s The Secret Life of Insects is due to be published by Dead Ink Books in the UK, on March 28th.

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