Kaidankai: Ghost, Supernatural, and Dark Short Fiction · Linda Gould

The Rodadora by Helen Gallegos Evans

October 29, 2025·33 min·2 clips

Miguel explains the village's blood debt pact: five men must become Rota Dora to spare their families.

1. Kaidankai host Linda Gould presents The Rodadora, a horror short story by Helen Gallegos-Evans, about a boy's witness to his father's ritualized sacrifice to supernatural tumbleweeds. 2. Helen Gallegos-Evans is a Los Angeles teacher of 24 years whose fiction has appeared in Gingerbread House Literary, Accentos Review, The Amaranth Review, Papercuts, and Bards and Sages Quarterly. 3. The story's purpose is to dramatize a generational covenant between a remote village and the Rotadora — monsters that demand blood — through the eyes of a child who does not know the full truth until it is too late. 4. The Rotadora are explained as having originated from a tumbleweed animated by the blood of a half-human son of La Lechuza, the witch-owl, who pricked his finger on a thorn and died, giving the first weed life. 5. Roberto, the young narrator, lives in an adobe home with his parents Marco and Mama, and his younger brother Pedro; the night before the Rotadora's arrival, a fierce storm keeps the family awake. 6. Marco is described as a barrel-chested man with black wavy hair and a droopy left eye that makes him look intimidating; he paces through the night, checking the window for the Rotadora. 7. Mama performs a limpia, rubbing an egg on Marco's arm then cracking it on a plate; the first egg shows a dark yolk with blood flecks, alarming her, but a second egg produces a pale yolk she interprets as good luck. 8. Miguel, the aged lightning reader, summons Marco and four other men at dawn by sending a neighbor named Beto with the message that it is time to dig a ditch at the south end of the village. 9. Roberto follows the men and finds them digging a shallow trench without urgency; Miguel sits apart scanning the clouds, reading the lightning to confirm the Rotadora's arrival time. 10. Miguel tells Roberto that five men are required, chosen by visions induced by drinking the diviner sage on a mountain — Roberto's father Marco and four others each had visions of themselves joining the horde. 11. The story incorporates specific cultural and religious objects: the Silbato de la Muerte (death whistle) carved from jade, the ayuti turtle-shell drum, the Eagle's First Flight ceremony, and the red protective thread tied on a wrist. 12. Roberto earlier encountered the jade death whistle through his grandfather, who told him it had once been used for blood sacrifices and that the priests had ended the practice — a lie he now understands. 13. As the Rotadora approach, Roberto sees them as massive tumbleweeds imprisoning elongated figures with swollen nodules, bleeding tumors, blistered faces, and empty eye sockets, their bodies covered by assassin bug bites. 14. Marco and the four men link arms in a chain; when the wind tears them apart they re-link; Ernesto, a neighbor Roberto had dismissed as a coward, stands straight despite weeping. 15. Marco mouths the words 'Be a man' directly to Roberto before turning to face the Rotadora; Miguel physically holds Roberto back, weeping himself. 16. The slaughter is described through sound — screaming, crushing bones, and slurping — before silence; Roberto opens his eyes to blood puddles and vomits again. 17. Miguel explains the full history: three generations earlier the men fought and every man died except the lightning reader and his two sons, leaving women alone to raise the next generation; the pacto was made so this would never recur. 18. Roberto chooses to lie to his mother, telling her Marco died fighting bravely rather than explaining the covenant; he then takes Marco's red sash and his grandfather's turtle-shell drum and dances the Eagle ceremony alone for himself. 19. Linda Gould follows the story with a personal reflection: the tumbleweeds reminded her of a childhood episode of Outer Limits called Cry of Silence that frightened her at ages 10 or 11, and she compares the Rotadora to the Shrike in Dan Simmons's novel Hyperion. 20. Best suited for listeners who enjoy literary horror fiction drawing on Latin American and indigenous folklore, particularly stories about generational sacrifice and childhood loss of innocence; not for those who prefer supernatural horror without emotional or cultural depth.

As heard by us

A village's inherited fear becomes part of everyday family duty.

The Rota Dora turns a remote village into a place where inherited fear governs ordinary family life. Men talk about digging the ditch and burning the creature, a mother ties red thread on a wrist, and a child watches the adults brace for what feels like a custom no one can quite…

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You want a windswept village tale where one family braces for monsters that want blood.

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