Taken by the Devil

The Devil takes bad children — taken from the book “Taboga, más que una isla” by Mr. Álvaro Sebastián González (the artwork is mine, Jorge A. Arauz, done for dramatic effect).

I heard this other legend from my grandmother Nana as well as from my aunt Fina Vásquez: the story of the man taken by the devil. He was a badly behaved young man, rude and boorish toward his mother; she, tired of the situation, asked the devil to take him away. He, mockingly, would go around shouting through the town, “The devil’s taking me, the devil’s taking me,” and people would rush out to help him, and he would start mocking and laughing at them. Tired of this, one day the young man was shouting and shouting, and the shouts kept moving further away from town; those who saw it say the devil was dragging him toward the hills by the ear.