The Gorgeous, Luxurious Hell

“The sea dreams that it is the sky.” Isabell runs to Spain from Latin America, fleeing a dictatorial regime. In her new place, she meets another immigrant—a poet and translator named Avendano. But the past continues to haunt them, and for an unknown reason Avendano returns to his homeland, where he disappears without a trace. In Isabell’s apartment, she finds two texts the poet was working on: memories of being held captive during a revolution and a translation of an ancient occult treatise. On the pages soaked in blood and suffering, a monstrous picture gradually unfolds of what really happened in the country Isabell has so hard fought to escape. And the more she reads them, the stronger grows within her an inexplicable desire to go back home—at her own risk—there where something terrible lies hidden, shrouded in mist and prejudice, yet undeniably alive.

“Time struck the hour of grief”: a librarian who catalogs folklore recordings from the southern United States unexpectedly comes across a song, which—according to legends—was composed by the devil himself. And this melody has a chilling, sinister effect on the reality around it. Trying to break the spell, the main character wants to find the place where the recording was made. And that path will lead him to a secret better left unopened to ordinary mortals.