The story
The climb from the suffocating heat of Cúcuta toward the high-altitude moorlands of the Pamplona páramos always held a harsh transition, an implacable shift where the dense air turned into freezing fog clinging to the windshield. Samuel knew every sharp curve of that mountain highway by heart, but that night the route carried an unusual heaviness. The wet asphalt gleamed faintly beneath the car's headlights, and inside, the turned-on radio was his sole company facing the silent abyss of the mountain range.
A strange melody, laden with a constant, static murmur, poured from the speakers. Samuel didn't remember tuning into that frequency, but the repetitive cadence of those notes muffled the monotonous hum of the engine. The cabin felt warm, even though outside the gusts of cold wind began to sway the brush at the edge of the precipice, whistling against the cracks in the windows.
Coming out of a long curve, the high beams managed to outline something in the distance. A little over two hundred meters away, planted right on the edge of the road, lay a shapeless bundle. At first, Samuel thought it was a recent landslide, a piece of rock broken off from the embankment, or perhaps the remains of a tire abandoned by a semi-truck. He lifted his foot from the gas pedal out of pure caution, slowing down carefully.
However, as the vehicle slowly closed the gap, the bundle began to defy all logic. It had no rigid edges and didn't reflect the white glare of the headlights. It was absolute blackness, a compact void that seemed to devour the light trying to illuminate it from the front.
At the exact same time, the audio coming from the radio grew thicker, distorting with a guttural vibration that made Samuel's skin crawl. It wasn't ordinary mountain interference; it was a rhythmic rumor, an oppressive hum that echoed right in the center of his head. With every pulse of that inexplicable sound, the silhouette in front of him began to widen, straightening up as if inflating right from the pavement. The shadow stretched in a grotesque way, doubling its size in a matter of seconds, towering over the road like a monumental figure made of pure soot and silence.
Samuel's heart did a violent flip. He slammed his foot on the brake pedal in desperation, unable to look away from that mass that no longer seemed inert. Just as the vehicle came to a complete stop at a safe distance, the presence lunged forward. It dropped heavily, with a sluggish and dry movement, collapsing onto the asphalt like a funeral curtain that suddenly covered the entire width of the road.
The impact produced no sound at all, but the sight of that massive bulk hurtling toward the earth unleashed an atavistic panic in Samuel. An uncontrollable tremor shook his hands on the steering wheel and his chest tightened, leaving him breathless. In a purely defensive act, guided by the urgent need to become invisible in the middle of nowhere, he turned the key to cut the engine and slapped the radio off with the back of his hand.
Darkness and silence fell over the cabin like a slab of lead. Only the metallic creaking of the car cooling down and the ragged sound of his own breathing remained amid the fog.
