The story
That large wooden house perched high up in the mountain looked suspended outside of time. Outside, the cold of the mountain range blew hard, sneaking through the cracks in the big windows and bringing the endless whispering of the eucalyptus trees. Santiago, barely seventeen years old, had been left in charge of the place. The hours dragged slowly while the screen of the old television dimly lit the living room with bluish flashes. His companion that night, a young man of his same age, lay fast asleep in the bed situated in the center of the room, oblivious to the heavy silence that ruled the outside.
The atmosphere had grown heavy hours before with reckless talk about dark presences and mountain legends, a boys' game that soon stopped seeming fun. Close to eleven at night, with a thick tiredness in his eyelids, Santiago finally turned off the appliance. The gloom took over the space, barely broken by the silver light of the moon filtering through the open door toward the balcony, casting long and whimsical shadows over the rustic plank floor.
That was when he heard it. A dry, rhythmic, and subtle sound, as if long fingernails or invisible claws were persistently scraping the wooden floor, moving slowly closer from one of the corners. Santiago's heart skipped a beat. He held his breath, trying to convince himself it was the wind or the simple natural creaking of the old structure, but the noise continued, moving with a deliberate slowness toward the very base of the bed.
An icy breeze, unbefitting the closed room, gave him goosebumps on his arms. A dense, compact shadow devoid of a face began to materialize at the edges of his peripheral vision. It wasn't a simple projection of the night; it emanated a tangible malevolence, a pressure in the air that made breathing difficult and announced a fateful closeness. Terrifyingly motionless, Santiago felt that any movement would attract the attack of that entity.
Desperate, he tried to hold onto faith. In his mind he began to repeat the Our Father, but the words tangled in his dry throat. The rhythmic scratching on the floor continued, closer and closer, as if the shadow were about to climb onto the bed. With a supreme effort of will, he managed to finish the complete prayer in his mind and, immediately, he forcefully shook his companion's shoulder, calling out to him loudly.
The echo of his voice broke the spell. The noise stopped abruptly, the pressure in the environment vanished, and the shadow seemed to dissolve into the darkest corner. With trembling hands, Santiago turned on the lamp. His friend sat up rubbing his eyes, visibly annoyed by the interruption, and attributed everything to a simple nightmare resulting from insomnia and horror movies. However, while the tremor in his hands persisted, Santiago knew with absolute certainty that that had not been a dream: the mountain cold still kept the trace of what had been there.
