Anabel had 7 children, her husband was always traveling to fight in wars, and in the weeks he was at home, he would get her pregnant and leave again. The family lived on an isolated farm, where they were practically autonomous. But after a pest destroyed the crops and a disease affected the animals, the food became sparse. Desperate because the farm's production was no longer enough to feed everyone and the money was running out, she went to the city to look for a job.
As soon as Anabel left, a wanderer, fleeing the war, entered her house, looking for food. Seeing that there were only children and teenagers, he thought it would be easy to get what little food was left for himself. The two eldest children tried to stop him, they knew that the lack of food could be fatal at a time like this. They grabbed a machete and fought the hiker. But the fight was not fair, the two young men without fully developed muscles were easily subdued and fatally struck.
He couldn't leave witnesses or seeds of revenge, "too dangerous", he reckoned, so the fugitive soldier killed the remaining 5 children, and stole everything he could carry.
Arriving home, Anabel saw the bodies of her 7 children on the floor. She hugged each one of them tightly, catatonic with the unimaginable tragedy, still hoping that it was all just a nightmare, a bad joke of fate. When she realized she was alone, she tried to seek help from divine forces; she prayed and fasted for a week. As there was no response, she looked for an answer on the other side.
She had an old book in her basement, an heirloom from her ancestors, a family treasure. In it, a ritual to revive the dead. For it to work, there was a price. For each life, a part of the body. Anabel chose the eye as the most viable part. You can still see with just one eye, right? With a sterilized knife, she plucked out her own eyeball and performed the ritual.
It worked.
Her eldest son returned, a 14-year-old teenager. Personality identical to when he was alive. But there was a catch. There's always a catch for this kind of thing. The soul returned, but the body remained the same. A corpse walking. She hugged her son, they talked and lived as before. She planned to repeat the ritual for the other 6 children, as soon as the mutilation of her eye healed a little.
A day later, she tried something suggested by her son: taking out his eye. The eyeball came out easily, it didn't even bleed with the rigor mortis and clotted blood of that teenage body. But the ritual didn't work. The body part needed to come from a living body. She decided that she would cut off her own hand the next day, and slept hugging her resurrected son.
In the morning, Anabel woke up with a scream. Her husband had returned and saw her hugging that stinking and decomposed body. The teenager reasoned with the father with the same voice that he always had. I mean, his voice sometimes stuttered because of the rotten vocal cords, but it was him. Clearly it was him, not some evil entity. It was his son.
Anabel hugged her husband, tears of happiness flowed at the return of her love. But he showed no joy. He understood the tragedy of the death of his kids, but the resurrection ritual was furiously rejected. He said they had to kill that freak who imitated his son. Fury dominated Anabel. How could he suggest taking her son away from her again?
The knife in her hands found the man's belly, which gave way to the floor with the loss of abdominal strength. She then tied him to a chair, with the help of her son. Before he bled to death from the wound, she had the idea to use him for the ritual. The man who had created those lives would give them one more chance. It would be poetic, one life for six.
Initially Anabel cut his fingers and ears, which didn't work. She already knew that, the book clarified that it needed to be a more important part of the body. But she had to try.
