1908: Alba and the Heart-Eater

The story begins in Mexico in 1908 with Alba Quiroga, whose family is struggling to keep their farm, Piedras Quebradas, running after the death of her father. Alba lives there with her mother, Luisa, her older brother Tadeo, and their younger siblings. Their situation changes when Luisa’s brother, Arturo Velarde, arrives and offers to help manage the property.

Arturo is educated, sophisticated, and charming, but Tadeo dislikes him immediately. He sees his uncle as a useless outsider who has attached himself to the family now that Alba’s father is dead. His suspicions become much more frightening when strange things begin happening around the farm. Animals die, and then Tadeo himself disappears, leaving behind a bloodstained room.

Desperate to find her brother, Alba turns to Valentín Pimentel, a local farmhand with whom she is falling in love. Her search also brings her into contact with the women of Los Pinos whom others dismiss as witches, particularly Jovita and Perpetua.

Perpetua understands what Alba is dealing with because she has encountered Arturo before. Years earlier, he killed Perpetua’s daughter, Elena. Arturo is a teyolloquani, a heart-eater who uses dark magic and feeds upon others. Tadeo has not simply disappeared: Arturo has transformed him into a monstrous creature.

The creature attacks and kills Valentín, and Alba is forced to shoot it. Only afterward does she realize she has killed her own brother.

Arturo finally drops the pretense of being the helpful uncle. He wants control of the family’s wealth, but his obsession extends to Alba herself. He believes that she possesses the same supernatural potential he does and tells her they are “made of the same substance.”

Rather than surrender to him, Alba follows Perpetua’s instructions for creating a poison capable of killing a witch. She burns a family portrait and combines its ashes with salt and a moth’s wing, then consumes the mixture so that her own blood becomes poisonous to Arturo.

She allows him to feed from her.

The poison weakens him, giving Alba the chance she needs. She takes an axe and beheads Arturo, finally ending the threat he poses to her family.

Alba survives, but she carries the knowledge of what happened with her for the rest of her life. Decades later, the story of the heart-eater becomes one of the frightening tales she passes down through her family—including to the great-granddaughter who will eventually need it.

1934: Ginny Somerset Vanishes

More than twenty-five years later, something equally disturbing is happening at Stoneridge College.

In 1934, Beatrice “Betty” Tremblay arrives at Stoneridge as a working-class scholarship student and becomes roommates with Virginia “Ginny” Somerset. Ginny is eccentric, deeply interested in Spiritualism, astrology, ghosts, and the occult. She claims she can communicate with spirits and draws natal charts, making her stand out among the college’s more conventional students.

One of those students is Carolyn Wingrave, a wealthy young woman who initially has little affection for either roommate. Tensions are especially high because Carolyn is interested in Edgar Yates, a wealthy law student. When Edgar instead becomes engaged to Ginny, Carolyn’s attitude shifts, and she begins spending more time around Betty and Ginny.

Soon, Ginny becomes frightened.

She believes a mysterious man wearing a blue coat is following her. A dead rat appears in her bed. She begins obsessively researching black magic and drawing strange symbols she calls “witch marks,” apparently believing they can protect her from whatever is pursuing her.

Then, on December 19, 1934, Ginny disappears.

The convenient explanation is that she ran away with Santiago Ferreira, a Portuguese handyman who worked around the college. With both of them gone, people assume the two left together.

But the story does not hold up.

Journalist Benjamin Hoffman investigates and discovers that Santiago actually disappeared five days before Ginny did. He therefore could not have simply whisked her away on December 19 as everyone assumed.

No definitive explanation for Ginny’s disappearance is ever found, and Betty never gets over losing her friend. The mystery follows her for decades and influences the horror fiction she eventually writes. She and Edgar—who later marries Carolyn—also compile a “Black List” documenting strange disappearances that appear to have something uncanny connecting them.

Ginny’s fate remains unresolved for more than sixty years.

1998: Minerva Begins Digging Into the Past

In 1998, Minerva Contreras arrives at Stoneridge as a graduate student studying Betty Tremblay’s horror fiction. What begins as academic research gradually turns into an investigation of the real events that inspired Betty’s work.

Minerva is also Alba Quiroga’s great-granddaughter. Growing up, she heard Nana Alba’s frightening stories, including the tale of the teyolloquani. They seemed like family folklore when Minerva was younger, but Stoneridge is about to make those stories much harder to dismiss.

With help from her friend Hideo Ogawa, Minerva begins investigating Ginny’s disappearance and trying to gain access to Betty’s private papers. That brings her into the orbit of the elderly Carolyn Yates, formerly Carolyn Wingrave, who is still alive more than six decades after Ginny vanished.

Minerva also meets Carolyn’s grandson, Noah Yates, an aimless young man whose life remains heavily controlled by his grandmother.

As Minerva digs deeper, she learns about another disappearance. A Stoneridge student named Thomas Murphy, who had been tutoring Noah, recently vanished under mysterious circumstances.

Thomas left behind notebooks filled with disturbing material. Most importantly, Minerva discovers drawings that match the witch marks Ginny was making shortly before her disappearance in 1934.

The similarities are too specific to ignore.

What happened to Ginny was not an isolated tragedy. The same supernatural forces operating at Stoneridge decades ago are still there.

The Truth About Carolyn Wingrave

Minerva eventually discovers that the Wingrave family has its own history of witchcraft. Members of the family preserve their lives and power by sacrificing people who are “witchborn”—individuals possessing supernatural potential.

And Carolyn is one of them.

The elegant elderly woman Minerva knows is partly an illusion. Beneath a magical glamour, Carolyn is physically decrepit and nearly bald, her unnaturally prolonged life dependent on the magic she has been practicing for decades.

She is also responsible for the disappearances Minerva has been investigating.

Carolyn killed Santiago Ferreira in 1934 and then murdered Ginny Somerset, who had begun to understand what was happening and tried to protect herself with the witch marks. Decades later, Carolyn killed Thomas Murphy for the same reason: he was another potential sacrifice.

Now she wants Minerva.

Minerva has inherited the same supernatural potential that once made Arturo interested in Alba, making her exactly the kind of victim Carolyn needs.

Carolyn kidnaps Minerva and brings her to the abandoned ruins of the old Wingrave factory. She intends to sacrifice her there and makes it clear that resisting will endanger both Hideo and Noah.

But Carolyn does not know that Minerva has something her previous victims did not: Alba’s story.

Minerva Turns Alba’s Weapon Against Carolyn

Trapped inside the factory, Minerva remembers how her great-grandmother defeated Arturo almost ninety years earlier. Alba did not overpower the heart-eater directly. She made herself poisonous to him.

Minerva realizes she can do the same thing.

Using a photograph of Alba as part of the preparation, Minerva drinks a potion designed to turn her blood into poison. She then uses a box cutter to slash her own wrist, deliberately giving Carolyn what she thinks she wants.

Carolyn drinks Minerva’s blood.

Almost immediately, she begins choking.

The same trick that killed Arturo has worked again.

As Carolyn weakens, Minerva receives unexpected help from Santiago’s ghost, which has remained trapped around the factory since his murder in 1934. His presence helps Minerva reach an axe.

She uses it to behead Carolyn.

Afterward, Carolyn’s unnaturally preserved body crumbles into dust, finally ending the life she maintained through decades of murder and sacrifice.

Her death also breaks the control she maintained over Noah. Free from his grandmother’s influence, Noah leaves Stoneridge and moves to Boston, finally able to begin a life of his own.

Minerva survives and continues her academic work, but she no longer treats her family’s stories as superstition. She understands that Alba’s tales were warnings and instructions passed down through generations.

And she takes precautions.

Minerva begins surrounding herself with the same kind of elaborate witch marks that Ginny once desperately drew for protection. This time, however, the woman drawing them knows exactly what she is protecting herself from.