The story
Every eight days, as part of a sacred rite deep in the thicket, Eliécer and his compadre Marcos gathered their gear to venture into the forested hollows of Tolima, near Gaitán. That hunting day promised to be just like the countless ones they’d shared since they were boys: two double‑barrel shotguns slung over their shoulders, cartridges kept dry from the dew, and three criollo hounds sniffing the fresh leaf litter. To them, the mountains were an old acquaintance, a maze of trails where they could read every snap of a twig. Still, the range hides folds where human memory never takes root, abysses where nature seems to obey laws that belong to another world.
They descended along a steep pasture that bordered the virgin mountain, walking on the edge of a knife‑like ridge that split two deep ravines. There the dogs began to bark in a bewildering way. It wasn’t the clean, sustained howl that signals a prey’s trail; it was a frantic, erratic chorus that first bounced off the right side of the hill. The hunters stopped, eyes fixed on the brush, but as soon as they turned to that side, the barking fell silent, only to erupt with the same fury on the left side of the path.
Confused by the mocking echo of the terrain, the two men quickened their pace, following the pack’s clamor. When they went toward the right edge, the forest fell into a tomb‑like silence; when they crossed to the left, the animal uproar rang out on the opposite rim, as if the beasts crossed the void in an impossible blink. The disorienting scene repeated itself several times, forcing them to climb up and down until they were exhausted. Finally the barking fixed on a single spot on the left slope, not on the crest of the trail but several meters down, lost in the gloom of a cramped cliff.
Eliécer decided to descend and see what was cornering the pack. Gripping vines and fern stalks, he carefully slipped down the steep slope while Marcos stayed posted above, hammer‑ready with his gun. As Eliécer made his way through the wet mud, the furious barks suddenly faded, turning into panicked whines. The dogs retreated, tails tucked, trembling at something his master still couldn’t discern in the shadows below.
When he stepped onto a stone ledge at the base of the ravine, Eliécer saw an odd figure. Hunched against a wall of black rock, sitting on its heels, was a creature that looked like a small child. It faced away from him, head bowed, both hands covering its face completely, motionless like a petrified root. In that gorge, miles from any peasant house, the sight defied all reason.
“Hey, kid… what are you doing out here alone? Who brought you?” Eliécer asked, lowering his voice cautiously so as not to scare it.
The tiny silhouette didn’t answer or move a millimeter. No crying, no whimper, no breath could be heard. That absolute silence settled on the hunter with the chill of a bad omen. From the high cliff, Marcos sensed danger and shouted, a strange heaviness in his chest:
“Eliécer, leave it alone! Get out of that hole, brother, that’s no good thing! Don’t touch it!”
Ignoring his companion’s warning, moved by compassion for what he thought was an abandoned infant, Eliécer leaned down to lift the child from the rocky ground.
“Come on, kid, get on my shoulder and I’ll pull you out of this precipice,” he said, extending his hands.
Suddenly, without turning its body or removing its hands from its hidden face, a hoarse, cavernous voice rose from the figure, freezing the men’s blood:
“I am the escarabajo… and wherever I climb, I never come down.”
In that instant a horrible, suffocating presence slammed onto Eliécer’s shoulders. It wasn’t the frail body of a child but a monstrous, invisible weight that bent his knees into the mud and threatened to snap his spine. Terrified, the hunter grabbed some lianas hanging from the rock and tried to secure the presence to lift it and climb to solid ground, but the supernatural load grew heavier by the second, crushing him as if he were bearing a leaden tombstone.
Marcos, seeing his compadre choking in agony under that inexplicable force, moved to descend and help him up. Before he could reach him, an icy roar rose from the depths of the abyss. A sudden, fierce squall surged up like a vortex from the bottom of the cliff. The gale snapped tender branches, raised dust and leaf litter, and with a violent jerk ripped the dreadful presence from Eliécer’s back, hurling it through the air into the darkness of the ravine until it dissolved into nothing.
Eliécer lay in the mud, panting and bruised, unable to rise because his shoulders ached. Marcos helped him to his feet and the two climbed the cliff without looking back, driving the dogs, which were fleeing in terror, toward the pasture. They fled the mountain, leaving the hunt behind, their souls torn by the horror. From that gloomy afternoon on, neither of them ever lifted a shotgun again nor set foot in the thickets of that range.
