The story
In the family home in Palmira, fear had worn down over the years until it became just another daily habit. For Camila, growing up in that corner of Valle del Cauca meant learning to live with presences that didn't pay rent or ask for permission. If at midnight a locked door in front of her room started vibrating with sharp knocks, she would just adjust her pillow and keep talking as if nothing were happening.
Her mother, already resigned, frequently heard the dry thud of a rubber ball bouncing down the hallway around three in the morning. Her younger sister, Laura, swore that the heavy solid wood wardrobes would shake as if a mountain of old junk were collapsing inside them. There was one night when Laura's curiosity won out over caution and she left a tape recorder running under the bed frame to capture the invisible.
The next day, sitting at the dining table, they listened to the tape. The static hiss was swallowed by the furious creaking of the mattress springs, as if an invisible body were jumping on the bed with childish frenzy. Then came the methodical rhythm of the ball: a rhythmic snap that increased in speed and force, ending with a massive crash, the violent slamming of the closet doors echoing against the microphone. Not even then were there screams of terror in the house; the family simply turned off the device and went on with their routine. The phenomenon was a household nuisance, nothing more.
The real break happened years later, when Camila packed her belongings and moved to another city to start college. Upon settling into an apartment shared with friends, she naively believed that the noises, the rubber echoes, and the complaining wood would be buried under the quiet of her hometown. She thought the presences, if that's what they were, belonged to the old bricks of Palmira.
The illusion lasted barely a couple of weeks.
One cold morning, while making coffee in the kitchen, her roommate confronted her with eyes red from staying up late and a tone of obvious reproach. She chewed her out for her lack of consideration, accusing her of getting up at three in the morning to open and slam the sliding closet doors in her room, pacing endlessly from one end to the other.
"I saw you, Camila," the young woman snapped at her, rubbing her forehead with annoyance. "I looked out into the hallway to ask you to stop and I saw your shadow walking toward the window in the gloom. Stop keeping all of us awake."
Camila held the warm mug between her hands, feeling how the indifference that had protected her all her life was shattering into a thousand pieces. She had slept straight through the night, exhausted from exams. She understood then, with a chill that froze the back of her neck, that the thing had never been tied to the walls of her childhood, but had instead traveled patiently inside her own suitcases.
