Aurelio’s escape from the Satanic cult is both a physical flight across the Florida Straits and a break with a life he comes to understand as spiritual enslavement. The change begins not with a new revelation about the cult’s beliefs, but with a sudden recognition of what he had already heard and accepted. His escape carries him from the cult’s installations near Miami to a deserted shore near Varadero, where survival becomes the first step toward seeking Rodrigo Lerbier and asking forgiveness.

Recognition and decision

Weeks before the crossing, Aurelio overhears a conversation between a leader of the Satanist sect and a high-ranking Freemason. The discussion tells him nothing he has not known in some form: for years, he has accepted and embraced the ideas being expressed. What changes is his understanding. This time, he hears them fully, as if a light has switched on in his mind. The recognition turns complicity into a crisis of conscience.

He responds almost instinctively by invoking Jesus Christ. The prayer marks the beginning of what he experiences as an inward revolution: he must get away, whatever the cost, and, with God’s help, escape as far as possible. In his later account, Aurelio sees his will as having been taken over, as though the devil had put it on like a glove and used it to make him serve the sect. He believes that he had delivered Satan to the cult, not literally on a silver platter, but through an onyx cameo. His decision to flee is therefore bound up with guilt over his own participation, not simply fear of those who might pursue him.

Flight to Key West

Aurelio uses subterfuge to get out of the sect’s installations near Miami one night, then flees on foot. For days and nights he keeps away from major roads, open places, and contact with other people. Disguised beneath a hooded jacket and dark sunglasses, he hides by day and travels by night, believing that the sect’s leaders or the police may be searching for him. His limited English and his need to beg for money leave him moving through the United States as an apparently wandering Latino, trying to pass without attracting attention.

After a hard journey, Aurelio reaches Key West, at the southern tip of Florida. There, after searching and exploring, he finds an old boat apparently stranded on the beach and inadequately fastened to a tree. Its condition offers no assurance of safety, but he has reached the point where remaining in the United States feels less tolerable than risking the crossing. The escape plot narrows to a choice between the danger of the sea and the prospect of returning to the life he has fled.

Crossing the Florida Straits

In the deep night, Aurelio quietly pushes the boat into the dark water so as not to alert anyone. Cuba, his birthplace, lies roughly 150 kilometres away across the straits. A light wind blows toward the island, giving him a chance he cannot afford to waste. He rows as best he can with a rotten piece of board he has found. The boat is poorly equipped, and his destination is uncertain; he sets out without knowing whether he will arrive.

The crossing makes his physical vulnerability parallel the condition of his conscience. In the darkness, he imagines the boat tossed about like his battered soul, and memories return of the cult’s rituals: knives, the blood of unnamed children and babies, and participants stained by sacrifices made on Satan’s altars. These are presented as Aurelio’s recollections and perceptions during the crossing, and as the source of nausea and remorse that haunt him. He thinks of the people involved as having served evil, and of himself as having obeyed them and acted against what he now understands as divine creation.

His thoughts turn to Cuba as a maternal home and to his mother, whose prayers to the Virgin and the saints he believes helped draw him out of what he calls hell. The narrative recalls the earlier moment when the appeal to Christ compelled him to stop, fall to his knees, and ask for help. At sea, that memory gives his flight a religious meaning: he is trying to save his soul, while placing his physical survival in Providence’s hands.

Rescue and return to Cuba

After struggling through the night, Aurelio greets the first light of dawn but finds himself seemingly stranded in the middle of the sea. The wind has died, the water is calm, and no land is visible in any direction. The sudden stillness leaves him feeling abandoned in an immense emptiness. Then a point grows on the horizon: a boat. He cannot tell whether it is a pleasure craft, a fishing boat, or a coast guard vessel, nor whether it is American or Cuban. He waves his makeshift oar frantically, hoping he can be seen from his small craft.

In the later account of the escape, recreational sailors spot Aurelio adrift and tow his boat to the boundary between the United States and Cuba. He reaches a deserted beach near Varadero, exhausted but alive. The rescue resolves the immediate danger of the crossing, but it does not undo the guilt that propelled him into the sea or settle what his return will mean. The arrival is a reprieve and a beginning, not a return to the life he had before the cult.

The testimony’s effect

Aurelio’s next intention is to find Rodrigo Lerbier in Havana and ask his forgiveness. Rodrigo had introduced him to Santería, and Aurelio holds him responsible enough, in part, to want to seek him out; yet Rodrigo is also the person he trusts to approach after escaping. The account later reaches Loïc and Laurence through Rodrigo, who explains that he has met Aurelio often and spoken with him at length. Aurelio’s experience becomes more than a report of flight: it gives Rodrigo a way to reconsider his own religious commitments.

Rodrigo says that Aurelio acted as a revelation and, in a sense, a guide. Through Aurelio’s suffering, return to faith, and love of Christ, Rodrigo begins to question his long-standing adherence to Santería and the authority attached to his position as a babalao. Aurelio’s escape thus has a consequence beyond his own survival: the man who once introduced him to the tradition is forced to confront the possibility that he has been serving the devil without knowing it. Framed as Rodrigo’s account, the crossing joins an individual escape from a cult to a second, unresolved struggle over belief, identity, and the cost of leaving a respected place in Cuban religious life.