Marta is a blue-skinned, demon-possessed woman chained in a tomb of Antiterra, where she swings back and forth. The diagnosis spoken there: «¡Está poseída por el demonio!» (“She is possessed by the demon!”).
| Type | Character |
| Spanish entry | Marta |
Description
She is alone, one Marta in one tomb, never recorded leaving it. She is chained because she is possessed, yet the chains are also her weapon.
Possession shows first in habits, uncontrollable coprophagia and blasphemy, then in the flesh: “the arms swell, the fingers sort of come together, and the tip comes out like the tip of a serpent’s tongue”. A black liquid “called bleed” runs continuously over her body.
Powers and abilities
- Anerving Gaze: her dilating eye affects whoever holds its look too long.
- Bleed: the black liquid keeps harming whoever touches it.
- Dancing Chains: the chains dance and strike on their own while she does something else.
She regenerates naturally, but continuing damage prevents it; to kill her she must be kept bleeding.
Conflicting accounts
Other Martas, not merged with the chained one:
- A blue woman who does not speak, communicating “in a sort of telepathic picnic”.
- A blue-skinned priestess named Marta; whether she was possessed or is another Marta is unclear.
- A childhood sister or companion of Magda (“Marta, Marta, wait for me”), later married (the travelers knew her husband), who signs a letter the travelers identify. In another version, the companion of Lope de Vega’s old age: she met him at thirteen, joined him at twenty-five, and died at forty-one, blind and insane. Whether she is the woman of the tomb is not stated.
Open questions
- Which demon possesses her, and whether a rite can expel it.
- Who chained her, how many chains, how far they reach.
- Which tomb, in what region.