The story
Esteban’s journey into the mysteries of the final threshold began six years ago at a clinic in the department of Atlántico, in Barranquilla. He entered the healthcare field driven by a mix of calling and a deep, quiet curiosity about the exact instant life leaves the flesh. He got that answer in the most tangible way possible when he witnessed the passing of his first patient. Upon touching their chest and arm seconds after the last breath, he felt with total clarity how the body completely emptied out, turning into a simple shell stripped of every spark and vital energy.
That first contact with death opened a door that could no longer be closed. As the years went by and the weight of long night shifts piled up, the witness began to perceive that hospitals didn't just harbor pain, but also an intense accumulation of emotions and residual energy. He learned to recognize these invisible presences not through clear visions at first, but through a dense, low vibration in the air, a dull and heavy hum felt in the chest, identical to the sound of a deep bass vibrating through a gigantic amplifier system.
The manifestations soon stopped being subtle. One early morning, after finishing his shift and showering in a small resting room at the medical center, he sat on the edge of the cot while finishing getting dressed. The air suddenly turned thick. As he raised his gaze toward the dimness, an icy sensation ran down his spine: from the ajar bathroom door, a completely unknown human face, belonging to no patient or coworker, peeked out rigidly, staring at him fixedly in silence before vanishing into the shadows.
However, the worst happened outside the clinic's walls. One night, in the quiet of his residence, the weather suddenly shifted, becoming stifling and freezing at the same time. A vibration identical to the one in the hospital hallways settled heavily behind his back. A visceral instinct forced him to turn his head. Through the window glass, he beheld a dark, solid silhouette well over two meters tall, dwarfing his own height of one meter seventy. That entity lacked defined human features, but what froze Esteban's blood were its eyes: enormous, disproportionate, and fixed, locked onto him with unfathomable intentions.
The terror left him in absolute shock, paralyzed from head to toe for endless seconds. Believing it was a dirty trick played by exhaustion and accumulated fear, he blinked hard and refocused his gaze on the glass. The shadow was still there, motionless, watching him from the blackness of the night. Overrun by unbearable panic and fearing he would faint or collapse onto the floor, Esteban turned around and fled the place in terror, seeking the refuge of the light and knowing he would never look at the dark the same way again.
