Disappeared: MANTEQUERO BOOK 2 (8 page)

Epilogue

“Did the mantequero love my Auntie June?”

Alison put down her knitting and gave the matter her full attention. She needed to choose her words carefully.

They were sitting in the living room of June Blacker’s cottage – soon to be Patsy’s cottage. Patsy, who was just learning to knit, was struggling with something lumpy and amorphous in a bilious orange. Alison was knitting something far more complicated and lacy in a delicate white yarn.

“I think he loved her in his own way,” she said at last.

“Then why did he kill her?”
All the trite phrases about killing the one you love ran through Alison’s mind, but she rejected them all.

“I don’t think he meant to kill her,” she said. “I don’t think he even knew he
had
killed her. He thought they’d locked her away from him.” She paused a moment. “I think he loved her to death.”
Patsy gave a little nod. “I like that,” she said. “It’s quite romantic, isn’t it?”

“Mmmm.”

Alison picked up her knitting again and executed a particularly difficult manoeuvre.

On the whole, she felt it had not turned out too badly. They had what the press called ‘closure’.

June Blacker had been an organised soul, much like Alison herself. She had left a will and a substantial trust fund for Patsy. The life assurance on the mortgage had been left directly to Patsy, which meant there would be no hold-up in payment. The fund allowed for monies to be available for the upkeep and maintenance of the house until Patsy was eighteen.

Right now they were in a kind of hiatus until everything was settled, but in the meantime they had decided to spend Saturday afternoons at the house together. Patsy had always spent her Saturdays with her aunt here in this house and Alison had thought it was a good idea to continue the practice. It would give her some stability, sticking as far as possible to familiar routines. She had, after all, just lost the woman who was more like a mother to her than her own mother was.

“Can I move in when all the paperwork is through?”

Alison smiled at the earnest little face under the brown fringe.

“I’m afraid not, darling. You can’t legally live on your own until you’re sixteen.”

“Well, could I live here with you?”
Alison remembered how much she had loved this house when she first saw it and how much she had wanted to be Miss Blacker. Not any longer. She was happy to be a substitute auntie to Patsy, but she did not want to take over Miss Blacker’s life entirely. There was a limit!

“No,” she said, “but we can always come here on Saturday afternoons.”

Patsy was silent for a while, then, “Tell me again about the village and what we’ll do when we go.”

“We shall stay in a nice little house in Orgiva, owned by a friend of mine, and he’ll take us up to the village and you can see the house where your Auntie June lived and we’ll take a photograph of her and some flowers and candles and we’ll make a special place for her at her grave. We could have a plaque made that said what she was like. Maybe ‘June Blacker’ and the dates and ‘she was the best teacher that ever lived’.”
“And the best Auntie.”

“Yes, and the best auntie.”

There was another silence.

“Will we book it at Heather’s travel agency?”

“Of course.”

“And will she come with us?”
Alison thought about the new, transformed Heather. She was now a trim size fourteen. For the first few weeks her skin had hung loosely on her new, slimmer frame, rather like that of a bloodhound puppy. But it had slowly regained its elasticity and now she looked wonderful. The experience had not left her too traumatised. She said herself she had not been in love with the mantequero. It had been purely infatuation. Had, in fact, seemed to be a dream until the last minute when Alison had made her face it. She had not wanted to let the dream go, but when it had all come to an end she had had no major regrets.

“No, I don’t think she will,” Alison said. “I think it will hold bad memories for her.”

And besides,
she thought, holding up the almost completed matinee jacket to check the length,
I don’t think she’ll want to fly in her condition.

THE END

ABOUT THE STORY

I first read about the mantequero in Gerald Brennan’s
South of Granada
, a book about his life in the Alpujarran mountain village of Yegen.

He tells the tale of how a tall, thin and very pale aristocratic friend of his was captured by some peasants when he was walking in the mountains. They were convinced he was a mantequero because he was so pale and thin, and were about to murder him on the spot, but decided, to be on the safe side, to take him to the mayor. Luckily the mayor was not so superstitious and told them he was not a mantequero but an Englishman.

I was very intrigued by this and did some research.

The Mantequero, also known as th
e Sacamantecas (Taker of Fat) and The Man with the Bag, is a creature of Spanish legend who comes in the night and sucks all the fat from your body. This he keeps in a leather bag which he carries with him at all times.

There isn’t a great deal written down about the supernatural being but, as with other kinds of vampire, real live people have been accused of imitating the mantequero, the most notorious being
Juan Díaz de Garayo, who confessed to six murders but was probably responsible for many more. He was, however, only given the title ‘mantequero’ because a child he attacked was so horrified by his ugly face that she thought he was the sacamantecas (another name for the same creature).

A more viable candidate is Manuel Blanco Romasanta, born in 1809, who was a travelling vendor of fats used for greasing wheels. He was accused of using human fat in his products, but escaped justice and went on to murder a further nine people, inflicting horrible wounds and partially eating their corpses.

As recently as the summer of 1910, Francisco Leone, a healer, kidnapped and killed a seven year old boy with the sole purpose of extracting his blood and fat, for use in the cure of a third man suffering from tuberculosis.

But of the legend itself there is very little, so I felt justified in inventing my own mantequero.

In the first story, simply called Mantequero, I didn’t attempt to add much to the legend, merely suggesting that the creature appears at dusk. But of all the short stories I have written, this has evoked more requests for a sequel than any other.
At first I couldn’t see how I could write a sequel, since I had written myself into a corner with the first story. Then a dear friend suggested a possible way out and I was inspired to write it.

My problem was that this sequel got out of hand. It just kept growing and growing and instead of a short story it has become a novella. I wasn’t going to get away without fleshing out the legend a bit more.

I do not approve of making stuff like this up. If you write about a legend you should jolly well stick to the sources. But there aren’t any. This is, I think, an example of oral myth which has never been properly documented.
I’ve spoken to my friends in the villages here and they know very little about it (or they’re not telling). It could be that the mantequero belongs exclusively to the Alpujarran region of Spain. Or even that he has been forgotten now that modern technology has put all those other lovely stories in reach of the Spanish peasant farming communities.

So I have cheated. Where I have felt something must be explained, I have drawn on existing vampire myth.

If I have veered too far away from the real mantequero myth I apologise in advance.

But I think it works as a story and I really hope it will satisfy those readers who wanted more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jenny Twist was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family. 

She left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working in various jobs, including bacon-packer and escapologist’s assistant (she was The Lovely Tanya), she returned to full-time education and did a BA in history at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford.

She stayed in Oxford working as a recruitment consultant for many years and it was there that she met and married her husband, Vic.

In 2001 they retired and moved to Southern Spain where they live with their rather eccentric dog and cat. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, knitting and attempting to do fiendishly difficult logic puzzles.

She has written two novels -
Domingo’s Angel
– a love story set in Franco’s Spain and harking back to the Spanish Civil War and beyond - and
All in the Mind
– a contemporary novel about an old woman who mysteriously begins to get younger

She has also written an anthology of short stories -
Take One At Bedtime –
and co-written the anthology Bedtime
Shadows –
with the inimitable Tara Fox Hall.

She has contributed short stories to many other anthologies, of which two –
Doppelganger
and
Uncle Vernon
have recently been released as short ebooks.

Her first self-published ebook,
Away With the Fairies
was released in September 2012. Her second,

Mantequero
was originally published in
Winter Wonders
by Whimsical Publishing and was released as an independent publication in January 2014 as a short ebook.

Visit Jenny on her Facebook page. She loves talking to her readers.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jenny-Twist-Author/291166404240446

Or you can follow her on her website:

https://sites.google.com/site/jennytwistauthor/home

Goodreads Author Page

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4848320.Jenny_Twist

Amazon Author Page

US: amazon.com/author/jennytwist

UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jenny-Twist/e/B005CI80ZC/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Coming soon . . .

Mantequero 3
~The Sins of the Father

The Geek was staring at her –
again
! Samantha could feel his eyes boring into the back of her neck. That’s all he ever did – just stare.
All the time
. Whenever she was in Mrs Winton’s class she knew that if she turned round in her seat she would catch his eye. He’d been doing it ever since this term started which, as it happened, was when he had joined the class.
Why her?
She couldn’t decide when she looked at him whether his expression was one of hate or desire. It was intense, she could certainly say that.

She couldn’t believe it was because he fancied her. There were two things about her which were guaranteed to make any boy run a mile; she was clever, and she was fat. Boys didn’t like clever girls. They were afraid of being shown up. And
nobody
liked fat girls. She had no girlfriends either. Who wanted to be friends with someone who was top of the class (very uncool) and complete rubbish at sport (mega-uncool)?

She tried to concentrate on the book in front of her but she couldn’t take her mind off the Geek.
Maybe he was planning to murder her!

****

Rupert was gazing at the girl with long blonde hair. He knew he was staring but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Every time he was in the Spanish class he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had the most beautiful hair. It was dark blonde and shiny with loose waves curling down to her shoulders. Even in artificial light you could tell the colour was natural. There were too many different shades in it for it to be the result of a hairdresser’s skill. In sunshine, as it was now, it shone red-gold with a myriad of shifting colours. He wanted to touch it, run his fingers through it, bury his face in it. He wondered what it smelt like.

She was only two desks away. He could reach over and touch her.

Terrified he might actually find himself doing it, he sat on his hands.

****

Mrs Winton was saying something about Cervantes but Samantha was completely unable to follow it. He was very tall, the Geek, a lot taller than the rest of the class, including Mrs Winton, and he was good-looking in a brooding sort of way, but the problem was he was really weird. Everybody thought so.

She had thought about telling a teacher about the staring but it was hardly a crime was it? You couldn’t say, “There’s this boy and he keeps staring at me,” and expect them to do anything about it, no matter how uncomfortable it made you. It was a free country after all.

She’d considered tackling him herself. Asking him why he kept staring at her all the time. He must know he was doing it. But she hated confrontation and anyway she couldn’t think how on earth she could bring the subject up. You couldn’t introduce it casually into a conversation – “By the way, why do you keep staring at me all the time?” You’d look like a right prat.

Her name was Samantha, but the other kids called her ‘Piggy Parkin’ or ‘Miss Piggy’ or just ‘Piggy’, referring to her being fat, obviously. But Rupert had never thought fat was unattractive.

As a matter of fact he rather liked pigs too. Intelligent animals and very clean if you allowed them the space.

He shook his head as if he could clear out all these intrusive thoughts in the same way that a dog shakes water out of its fur.

Perhaps he was losing his mind.