The story
December nights around Villavicencio always hold a warm heaviness, thick with moisture and the dense smell of pastures baked by the afternoon heat. At that finca, a small country farm with wide corridors and clay tile roofs, fifteen-year-old Mateo had managed to escape the monotonous murmur of the adults. Along with his cousins, Camila and Andrés, they set up a canvas tent in the lower pasture of the property, looking for their own refuge to challenge the darkness with ghost stories.
In the center of the makeshift camp, they lit a candle stub placed on a pewter plate. The trembling flame drew long shadows against the fabric walls while the three teenagers spoke in whispers so as not to break the quiet of the countryside. However, before the first tale could even finish, the candle went out instantly. Not a single breath of llanero wind was blowing; the air remained as still as well water. Mateo pulled a match from his pocket, lit the wick again, and the flame burned for a second before dying out cold. On the third try, the match sparked and the wick went out again right away. Nervous laughter died instantly in the boys' throats.
In the absolute darkness that enveloped them, a subtle sound began to float among them. It wasn't the routine chirping of crickets or the cracking of branches, but a very low moan, a muffled cry that seemed to seep from the earth itself or right from the back of each one's neck. Mateo felt Camila's icy fingers grip his arm in desperation; she was hearing it too. When he looked up toward the back of the tent, the gloom took shape. A white, opaque silhouette, devoid of a face and clear edges, hung suspended in the farthest corner, motionless yet loaded with a silent hostility that froze their blood.
Panic exploded without words. Andrés jerked the zipper open and all three bolted across the wet grass, feeling behind them a biting cold that didn't belong to that warm land. They strode across the garden and burst wildly through the back door of the main house.
Panting in the hallway, Mateo instinctively looked toward the main living room. The bluish light of the turned-on television illuminated the dim room, casting the outline of his uncle Hernando, sitting straight up on the sofa, with his back to the boys and his gaze fixed on the muted screen. The boy breathed a sigh of relief seeing an adult awake; he assumed the commotion of their stampede had alerted him. Without daring to interrupt him, he led his cousins to the bedrooms to wait for dawn.
With the first light of dawn and the aroma of freshly brewed tinto, strong black coffee, along the corridor, Mateo walked over to his uncle to apologize for the night's mess and tell him about the terror they had experienced in the yard. But the man, while holding his steaming mug, looked at him with absolute bewilderment. He insisted that he had gone to sleep early, that the living room had been locked since ten o'clock, and that no one in that house had ever gotten up in the middle of the night to turn on the television.
