The story
Andrés had left his sister María's house to buy coffee at the small stand that stood at the edge of the bamboo-stalk road. The night had turned into one of those where the air seems laden with stardust and the distant chirping of crickets mixes with the distant roar of engines returning to the city. After paying, he left his motorcycle propped against an old wooden canopy, the same one that had watched hundreds of travelers pass by through rain and shine.
He walked about ten meters away, crossed the sugarcane field bordering the road, and upon returning, noticed that the streetlight flickered like a tired eye. Roughly half an hour later, when the shadows of the trees had lengthened and the humidity had turned into a light mist, Andrés approached his motorcycle. There, he found it lying on its side, as if an invisible hand had pushed it violently.
The metal creaked beneath his feet, and before he could bend down to pick it up, a harrowing scream tore through the stillness of the night. It wasn't the howl of some animal; it was a human lament, high-pitched and full of despair, that seemed to come from all directions at once. The dry leaves covering the asphalt began to dance without any wind, spinning in whirlpools that swirled like ghosts in a macabre dance.
Andrés's heart pounded against his chest like a drum. He felt cold sweat slide down his forehead, while his hands shook as he tried to grab the handlebar. "Help!" he cried out with a cracking voice, but the echo got lost among the trees and nothingness. In that instant, a figure emerged from the gloom, so suddenly that the air seemed to freeze around her.
A woman with a pale face, wrapped in a black robe that moved as if the wind were caressing it, stood there, motionless. Her eyes, two dead coals, stared directly at Andrés. In town, people talked about Doña Lucía, the old woman who, according to legends, had sold her soul to learn the secrets of the jungle and had remained trapped between the two worlds. Andrés felt the name echo in his mind and, without knowing why, identified her as a bruja, a witch.
Doña Lucía raised a slender hand, and instantly the leaves stopped spinning, as if the invisible storm had dissipated. A whisper, lower than the creaking of the wood, glided through the air: "You shouldn't have touched again what isn't yours." Andrés, paralyzed by terror, could barely stammer a reply. The witch said nothing more, but her presence was enough to make the night feel denser, like a blanket of shadows crushing his chest.
With one final tremor, Andrés grabbed the motorcycle, righted it, and without looking back, started the engine. The roar of the engine mixed with the fading whisper, and the woman's figure vanished into the fog, as if she had never existed. Upon arriving at María's house, he was still shaking, and his eyes searched the darkness for any sign that the witch had followed him.
María greeted him with a steaming cup of coffee, but the warmth of the drink couldn't dispel the cold that had settled deep inside him. Andrés, unable to explain what had happened, could only whisper to his sister that the road guarded more than just dust and rubber; it guarded voices crying out from the beyond and shadows that, on any given night, might decide to show themselves.
Ever since then, whenever the road grows silent and the leaves lift for no reason, Andrés remembers the scream that made him tremble and the empty gaze of the woman who, even though she vanished, left an indelible mark on the memory of the rural night.
