The story
The aroma of damp coffee and the heavy dawn breeze accompanied the silence of the finca, a small country farm located on the outskirts of Quimbaya. Esteban, a man weathered by long days of labor under the sun of Quindío, had retired to rest early. The night was passing with an apparent calm, broken only by the distant chirp of some cricket and the creaking of the old wood of the rural big house.
However, right around midnight, a strange heaviness invaded the atmosphere. The air in the room turned freezing, almost unbreathable. Esteban opened his eyes wide, startled by an imminent sense of danger, but discovered with terror that his body would not respond to him. He was trapped in an absolute paralysis, a prisoner of his own flesh.
That was when the torment began. An invisible, cold, and stubborn force took hold of his limbs. Esteban’s right arm was violently yanked toward his left side, while an overwhelming pressure, like an iron tourniquet, viciously crushed his left arm in the opposite direction. The tension in his muscles was unbearable, right on the verge of tearing. He tried to turn, to look for a way out, to scream for help, but not a single sound managed to escape his throat.
In the middle of the anguish, floating just above the rustle of the wind, he heard a high-pitched laugh. It was a mocking, feminine, and chilling sound, mixed with a metallic buzzing that pierced the ears. The invisible presence hovered over the bed, enjoying the torment. Remembering the warnings of the locals about a woman of dark reputation who prowled the region, related to witchcraft practices and ancient shadows, Esteban understood that this was not a simple nightmare.
Unable to move and with his heart pounding furiously against his chest, the farm worker squeezed his eyes shut and began to pray in a mental whisper, holding fast to the prayers learned in his childhood. He repeated the sacred words over and over again, invoking protection against whatever was oppressing him.
The torment did not end that night. For three consecutive dawns, at the exact same time, the ritual of terror repeated itself: the paralysis, the brutal stretching of his arms, and the high-pitched laugh echoing in the darkness, putting the laborer's faith and sanity to the test in the middle of the loneliness of the countryside.
