A ghost story

Do you believe in ghosts? I do. To me, they are as perceptible as the candle that allows my tired eyes to see, though I cannot blame anyone who remains utterly skeptical about their existence. Not even those who, having briefly ventured into the other world, chose to banish the memories of the experience as nothing more than a nightmare or a dream. For how could one criticize the comfort offered by the hope of finding rest in death?

I have had many encounters with these beings, but none has marked me as deeply as the first one. I have seen ghosts of every shape, color and kind; tiny ghosts with vaguely human features and enormous ghosts whose mere presence made my teeth chatter; classic ghosts wrapped in sheets and dragging chains, and ghosts that manifested only on the screen of a mobile phone; multicolored ghosts, ghosts with several limbs, ghosts missing arms or heads; ghosts who did not know they were ghosts; ghosts seeking revenge for some offense against themselves or against people they had never even known; ghosts that seemed to have stepped straight out of my worst nightmares; ghosts that had kept me company until I fell asleep on lonely summer nights; revolutionary ghosts seeking to change the order of our world and theirs; ghosts nostalgic for the places they had frequented while alive; ghosts I could not see but could smell; ghosts I perceived only through the trail of sawdust they left behind when they departed from my company. And ghosts of tragic beauty and sorrowful histories.

Normally, the worlds of the living and the dead remain separate, each following its own course. Yet there are places that intertwine the two, places that cannot decide whether they belong to one world or the other, where every corner contains a crossroads. By luck or misfortune, my village happened to contain one of those bridges between realities.

It was a road we avoided, but I had stayed out late. The older people in the village delighted in frightening children, telling them how the meigas came to those hills on nights when the Sabbath coincided with the full moon, singing and dancing as they invoked the demons they served. Nana insisted that they had chosen that particular place because one of the sixty-six gates to Hell could be found somewhere nearby. Milano, meanwhile, used to claim that he had once spied on them and that ever since then, whenever the moon was full, he could feel a presence in his house. He had never dared leave his room to investigate the cause of the creaks and groans that gradually spread through the other rooms, but every morning he would find all his teaspoons scattered across the floor.

“What interest could the Devil possibly have in your teaspoons, Milano?” his friends would ask between laughter and swigs of aguardiente.

“Because he counts them. The Devil has peculiar hobbies.”

His friends would laugh and insist that Milano’s fondness for drink was the cause, rather than the consequence, of those visits.

They stopped laughing, however, on the day they found his corpse locked inside the wardrobe, a rag pressed against his mouth. His teeth had bitten into the filthy cloth with such force that they had to break his jaw in order to pull it out.

It was true that one or two children disappeared every year in the treacherous marshes, although the adults rarely suffered accidents, being accustomed to taking the longer but safer route across the old bridge they called the Frenchmen’s Bridge. Perhaps, once in a while, a shepherd disappeared while venturing after a stray sheep. And rumors claimed that the husband of Marica had actually been the one who drowned her after discovering her affair with a half-lame peddler who visited the village during the festivities.

Even so, those who had crossed the moor at night spoke of the creaking sounds that could be heard among the trees, as though the bare trunks were laughing; of strange lights that seemed to emerge between the branches; or of the constant buzzing in their ears.

All those thoughts crowded into my head as I decided whether or not to set foot on the path.

But by then I was a lad, not a frightened child, and during my second week working at the mill I did not want to give my employer a reason to look for another apprentice. The miller’s widow was a woman who, at nearly forty, still managed to turn the heads of every young man in the village, and childish pride prevented me from admitting that fear had made me choose a longer road. Besides, over the last few days I had begun to feel that her body brushed against mine more often than usual. So I gripped the wooden crucifix hanging around my neck and decided to find out whether the stories were anything more than stories.

The path was broad, and the full moon illuminated my way, dispelling my fears of accidentally wandering into one of the many marshes scattered across the moor. In exchange, the pale light cast faces upon the old trees watching my progress with sinister expressions.

Five minutes into the journey, I had already regretted my decision. The mountain that normally looked upon us with benevolence now seemed to condemn my audacity, and I certainly did not feel at ease when the vegetation began to give way to a species of tree I did not recognize: enormous, desiccated specimens whose branches resembled hands reaching out to seize me.

The meager wages of a mill apprentice, together with the promise of working side by side with the miller’s widow, were certainly not enough to compensate for the pressure beginning to tighten around my chest. I was also beginning to understand the reason for the buzzing that seemed to accompany anyone who ventured into those places. None of the characteristic sounds of nocturnal animals could be heard: no chirping of crickets, no hooting of owls, no chatter of nightjars. There was only the wind moving through the dry branches and the muffled clapping it coaxed from the leaves, along with the monotonous chant of the river flowing parallel to the path. The buzzing in my ears was nothing more than the sound of my own blood.

Then the noises began.

At first it was merely a murmur, a whisper that could easily have been mistaken for the river’s gentle sound. Yet as it grew louder, it became increasingly obvious that something unknown was lurking nearby. My already-alert mind began to distinguish threatening signs: branches snapping, dry leaves crunching beneath the weight of some large presence stalking me, and words of hatred spoken in hushed voices.

I quickened my pace in an attempt to leave all those sounds behind, but it was already too late. My own fear conjured anguished faces among the shadows and surrounded me with the same chilling crackles I was trying to escape. I stopped dead when I realized that it was my own feet snapping the dry branches beneath them, and that the whispers and voices were nothing more than the echo of my footsteps in the nighttime silence of the forest. Superstition had taken possession of my senses and made the demons supposedly gathering there seem real. I felt like laughing at my own ignorance. Nevertheless, I stopped myself in time: I was afraid that my laughter might awaken another cacophony and restart the nightmare.

It was when I rounded a bend that a splash caught my attention. That was when I saw her.

At the riverbank, a figure was working intently over a bed of clothing, standing knee-deep in the water. Moonlight bathed her skin, giving it an otherworldly radiance, a pale image standing out against the darkness that engulfed everything around it. Seeing another human being, despite the dreamlike quality of the light surrounding her, encouraged me to approach.

She was a young woman, not much older than I was, although I could not make out her face beneath the cascade of black hair covering it. She wore only a nightgown, insufficient protection despite this being one of the warmest nights of the year, and a red scarf wound around her neck. All her attention seemed focused on the garment she was washing, a sheet as white as her clothes, which she repeatedly plunged into the water. When I was a few yards away, I decided to speak to her.

“Are you one of those meigas people around here keep talking about?”

She paused her work for a moment and brushed her hair aside. The beauty of her features left me breathless for several seconds. "Could she be one of those demons who seek to seduce young men who have not yet found their way in life?", I wondered. But she smiled at me, and her smile gave me the courage I needed to approach the riverbank.

“If you’re looking for meigas, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. It’s only me tonight.”

She turned her attention back to the garment she was washing, continuing to speak as she did so.

“And you? Isn’t it rather late to be wandering around these parts?”

“I wouldn’t have reached the mill in time if I’d taken the bridge.”

“I see.”

After plunging the clothes into the water once more, she held out one of the corners of the sheet to me.

“Would you have enough time to help me dry my sheet?”

Caught in a strange fascination, I took the cloth she offered without taking my eyes off her. She might have been my older sister, if only Laila had ever dared venture into such a place. There was something noble in her gestures, despite the mundane task she was performing, and her simple clothes could not conceal the elegance of her bearing.

Determined to do my best, I twisted the garment vigorously, sending several small cascades of water pouring from it. She held the other end firmly, twisting in the opposite direction, and the muscles in her arms stood out with the strain of the movement. We loosened our grip and twisted again. As I helped her wring out the sheet, she watched me with curiosity.

“Aren’t you frightened?”

“Truthfully, no,” I replied.

And that was true. I had imagined so many gruesome details that the beautiful sight before me seemed like a considerable improvement.

“You’re a ghost, aren’t you? Nana used to tell me about them. They can’t go to Heaven or Hell because of some terrible crime they committed.”

She merely smiled sadly and continued wringing the sheet without answering me. I did not quite understand it. The cloth felt solid to the touch, no different from the clothes I kept at home. How could I hold something that was supposedly not made of matter? And besides, weren’t ghosts supposed to be wrapped in shrouds and weighed down with chains? Not dressed like her: the sheerness of her clothing revealed that she was wearing nothing underneath, and I couldn’t help but notice the dark triangle faintly visible between her legs. In the moonlight, her erect nipples pressed sharply against the fabric, even though that light was not reflected in her gaze.

Our eyes met, and hers missed nothing. She seemed to be studying my reactions carefully. Her eyebrows rose in a subtle expression of polite surprise when she realized that I really was going to stay.

“The few I’ve encountered ran away as soon as they saw me. Some of them ended up in the marsh.” She made a vague gesture toward the shadows surrounding us. “It is nice to talk to someone, even if only because it’s something new.”

“Perhaps because I’m not afraid.” I raised a hand to my collar and pulled out the wooden crucifix hanging around my neck. “And what about you? Are you afraid of this?”

She looked at the amulet without flinching. She made no attempt to reach for it, nor did she step away from it.

“No. I’m not afraid of it. That’s an Abrahamic cross, isn’t it? It’s supposed to keep demons who prey on children at bay.”

My mother had given it to me when I turned ten, promising that it would protect me once she was no longer with me.

“I have the feeling that if you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it already. Or perhaps the cross works. Who knows? Besides, I’m not a child anymore.”

She laughed softly.

“I have visited this river every night for more than three hundred years. I’ve watched trees die that I myself once gave names to. Of course you’re a child.” She paused. “And I’ll warn you: if I were a demon and I were interested in you, that cross would be just as useful as any of the stones you see along the riverbank.”

I lowered my eyes, embarrassed, toward the puddles the dripping water had left on the sand. Under the moonlight, dark stains could be seen. Then I looked at the sheet in my hands and noticed a brownish splash in its center. I had assisted at a couple of births, enough to know what it was. Blood. The stains I had been helping her remove were bloodstains.

The spirit had followed the direction of my gaze, but she said nothing. So it was my turn to speak.

“My Nana used to tell me about women who were condemned to come to the stream every night to wash away their sins, and that anyone who happened to cross their path would be wise to disappear if they knew what was good for them.”

She remained silent for several seconds. Before I could think of anything else to say, she replied:

“Then you don’t know what’s good for you, because you’re still here.”

In truth, I didn’t. Nor did I particularly want to know. I was fascinated by her, and youthful curiosity made me want to learn more.

“Yes, I’m still here,” I repeated. “What sin did you commit to be trapped in this place?”

The girl blushed and, folding the sheet, held out her end for me to take. As I did so, my fingers briefly brushed against hers. I felt no physical contact, only a pleasant, icy sensation running across my skin. As she moved to pick up the garment, one of her nightgown straps slipped off her shoulder, and I could clearly make out the firm curve of her pale breasts. My penis began to go erect, and then it was my turn to blush; fearing she might notice, I turned onto my side.

“There are three sins for which we women must go to the river to wash away our mark.” She had lowered her eyes and was not looking at me, ignoring my agitation, her nakedness, or my erection. “Adulteresses must cleanse white stains; murderesses must cleanse black stains; and those who kill their own children must cleanse red stains. Stains of blood.”

I spread the sheet over a rock without missing any detail. There, in the middle of the river, she did not look frightening at all: a pale, slender figure who suddenly seemed terribly small. From somewhere she had produced another piece of bedding and was once again busy washing it. I wanted to ask her how it had happened, how long her punishment would last, and whether there was anything I could do to help her, but I did not know how to question her about something so intimate. Besides, absorbed in cleaning the second sheet, she seemed to have forgotten about me. I didn’t want to stop looking at her—at the intimate details of her body revealed as she bent down to submerge the clothes—when she spoke again.

“Although my episode of madness lasted only a short while, the damage had already been done. When I opened my eyes, I wanted to die, but I knew what punishment awaited me, and I thought that a knife would at least guarantee me a form of oblivion. After all, suicides have the gates of Hell opened to them.”

As she spoke, cuts opened along her forearms, spilling blood, a thick and dark blood, flowing slowly, staining her nightgown red as well. She turned to look at me, her cheeks flushed, and set her laundry aside. Then she loosened her scarf and showed me her neck. On one side, a wound crossed her jugular, and blood burst from it in spasms, following the rhythm of a heart that could no longer beat. She let her arms fall at her sides, and the scarf dangled from her left hand like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Thin streams of blood dripped between her trembling fingers onto the fabric.

“I really did try,” she said, “but apparently, in Heaven’s hierarchy, the sins of suicides occupy an insignificant position.”

The scene shocked me, although I remained where I was. The blood kept flowing until her nightgown was completely red. Under the moonlight, she seemed almost naked, as though she had submerged herself up to her neck in a pool of blood. From where I stood, the river itself appeared to be turning red, the stain spreading in every direction. She approached me again and gave me an apologetic smile.

“Tell me. Do you think I’m beautiful?”

My experience with women had been limited to the occasional encounters with one of my mother’s friends, but even so, I knew that from that moment on I would have to choose my answers carefully. Without losing her smile—though she imbued it with a certain mischievousness—she took off her nightgown and let the current sweep it away from us. I gazed, spellbound, at the nakedness she unabashedly revealed to me.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had a sexual encounter that I’ve forgotten what it feels like, and I’d like to take advantage of the fact that I’m finally talking to someone.” She tossed her hair back, freeing a few strands that had been stuck to her throat. “Strip, too,” she added in an authoritative voice.

Despite the summer heat of the night, I froze in my tracks. I felt I had reached a dangerous crossroads and that none of the paths before me could possibly end well. After all, it was unwise to offend a tormented soul, yet I did not believe that indulging the whims of a damned creature would bring me any farther to my own damnation. She seemed to realize how extraordinary her request was and opened her hands in a gesture meant to reassure me.

“I am incorporeal, and I can only hurt myself. Besides, I can't help but perceive that you have perked up. I told you: you’re the only person in decades who hasn’t run away the moment he saw me. Please, strip.”

Without taking my eyes off her, I stripped off my shirt and trousers, flustered that my reaction hadn’t gone unnoticed by her. After a brief moment of hesitation when I asked her with a look and she nodded—a smile still hovering on her lips—, I took off my underwear as well. My hands nervously crossed in front of my waist, but they failed to hide my erection.

“Put your arms at your sides,” she kept ordering me, and then, in a gentler tone: “Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat it.”

She looked at me with fascination, and now that she was standing beside me, I could examine her more closely.

She was tall, taller than me, with long legs and a body as slender as her nightgown had suggested. Although blood covered much of her body, I could still make out the small freckles scattered across her skin. The wounds on her neck and arms unsettled me, of course, but the natural ease with which she conducted herself had given me enough confidence to make my hardness remain there.

Meanwhile, she kept her eyes fixed on my member, so I, too, could brazenly study her intimate contours. Her breasts were small and firm, with dark, coin-sized areolas, and her hips were beautifully rounded. Her flat belly profiled a line down to her navel, and below that, her vulva was concealed beneath a thick patch of curly black hair.

She sighed with satisfaction as he knelt down to bring his face level with my waist.

“You don’t lose energy,” she said, delighted. “Would you do me the favor of masturbating?”

I assumed it was the next logical step and that, by that point, all I could do was let myself be carried along by what was happening. As I held the phallus between my fingers, I saw a special light illuminate her eyes, and for a second, it seemed as though she had come back to life. Then I saw the streams of blood that kept pouring from the wounds on her arms and jugular, and I was reminded of her tragic reality. Yet the fact that we were both naked stirred new sensations in me—a unique kind of arousal—and as I slowly slid my hand along my erection, I convinced myself that there was nothing outlandish about my actions, and that I was merely alleviating the loneliness of a tragic creature.

Without further ado, she had opened her mouth and enveloped my penis with her lips. I felt nothing—neither her touch nor her breath, only a supernatural coldness radiating from her form—yet she began moving her head back and forth, following the rhythm of my strokes, and in my mind, it was as if she were truly performing fellatio on me. And when she closed her eyes and made a motion as if positioning her hand around my member, I saw that the wounds had stopped bleeding.

I was on the verge of coming, and I knew that, above all, I had to behave like a gentleman.

“I’m about to ejaculate,” I warned her.

When I spoke, the ghost stopped and looked at me again.

“Then stop.”

I put a halt to my strokes as she asked, and she stood up. The difference in height between the riverbank and the water made our eyes level, allowing me to see the unusual vividness of her gaze more clearly.

“Lie down,” she said.

I did so, and she straddled me, aligning her hips with mine and guiding my erect cock toward her vagina. It was a strange sensation—seeing my cock through her translucent pussy—but not an unpleasant one.

“Do you feel anything?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s been too long since I knew what I was supposed to feel.”

Even so, her voice sounded agitated, her breathing uneven, sighs escaping between her words. She closed her eyes, arched her back, and for a moment the entire world seemed to shrink to the rhythm of her movements.

“Keep masturbating. Slowly. In time with my movements.”

Her waist pressed into my body, yet I felt nothing but cold. She had thrown her head back and closed her eyes, and the rhythm of her swaying set the pace for me.

“Stay with me tonight, love. Love me. Remind me what I was like.”

Her thrusts quickened, more abrupt and erratic, and then she began to moan —not with the soft, sensual whisper I had always imagined a woman would make to express her pleasure, but with a sorrowful sound, a wail that reminded me of the wind howling through the shutters on winter nights. My skin prickled, and I was about to ask her to stop when I saw the glistering tears escaping from her closed eyes, so I said nothing.

“Ah! Oh! Ahhhhh...”

The moans seemed to come from everywhere, although the voices were hers, and she herself seemed to change before my eyes while remaining exactly the same, bathed in a dim, dying light that emanated from her and surrounded us. I saw her completely naked, yet she was also dressed as a bride, with a white veil and an empire-waist gown, and at the same time, she wore mourning clothes, a black mantilla and lace, and her wounds began bleeding again, and she had became an adolescent who had not yet fully developed, and then she was once again the girl I had found in the river.

Suddenly, she stopped and the moor returned to normal. The light illuminating the landscape had vanished as the Moon had disappeared behind the clouds, and silence settled over everything once more, broken only by her ragged breathing. She looked toward the east as she rose and assumed an alert posture that I did not like at all. I stood as well.

“Are you all right?”

She silenced me with a quick gesture.

“It’s coming. My God, I’ve run out of time. I didn’t realize we were this close to dawn.”

Indeed, the mountain range was beginning to take on a blue outline. I could not understand what threat could possibly arrive with the new day. Sunlight was supposed to drive demons away. The night is darkest just before the dawn. The sentence suddenly appeared in my mind, and I realized how absurd it was that dawn could already be so close.

She had recovered her nightgown and was hurriedly putting it back on.

“Run,” she urged me. “Get dressed and continue to the mill. Forget that you ever saw me.”

“Wait!” I began to protest. “You still haven’t told me your name!”

But I was speaking to empty air, alone in the middle of the moor. To my right, the river continued its slow journey, witness to the history of the village, while above my head the Hunter still watched me. “The Hunter is still there”, I realized . How was that possible? Had only a few minutes really passed? I gathered my clothes from where they lay scattered around me and began getting dressed, wondering whether the entire thing had been a dream. That would certainly explain the surreal events that had unfolded and my distorted perception of time. But dream or not, one thing was clear. My hallucination is right. I still have to get to the mill.

So I set off along the path. The wind moved through the leaves, but the whispers it awakened no longer frightened me. The branches swayed, yet their gestures no longer seemed threatening. There were no grotesque faces in the trunks of the trees anymore, no figures lurking behind the dense edge of the forest. I was wondered of what imagination could do.

“How could I have been so frightened before?”, I said aloud.

It must have been some kind of influence the legends had awakened in my subconscious, and that could cost me a job with very good prospects. Hadn’t she told me only a little while ago that I was no longer a boy?

He’s here.

I stopped and looked behind me. Had I heard something, or had it been another hallucination? Nothing moved on the path. Only the trees stared back at me with solemn, ancient expressions. Perhaps playful goblins were hiding behind those masks of coldness, hoping to give me one final scare. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. But I quickened my pace.

He’s arrived.

It was her, it was her voice, but I could not locate it. It seemed again to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Focus,” I told myself. “Focus and keep walking.”

He can smell you, I heard. He’s looking for you.

I thought I was still dreaming, but what had begun as a dream had become a nightmare. Somehow, that reassured me. I repeited myself that nightmares disappeared by ignoring them. Even so, I did not slow down.

He knows you’ve been with me, and he’s angry.

I didn’t like what I was hearing, but it was the tone of her voice that frightened me most. There was an urgency and anguish in it that seemed to sink all the way into my bones, and I could not ignore it for long. Was this a dream within a dream? As though she wanted to give me one final push, I felt her breath against my ear as she urged me:

Run.

My heart lurched and I broke into a sprint. There was no room left for dignity, nor did I care whether anyone saw me running like a madman. Running was the only thing that mattered. A race against death. The Moon struggled against the clouds to illuminate the path, but whenever it disappeared, I ran blind. Twice I nearly veered off the path, and only when branches scratched my face did I manage to correct my course. In the darkness, a root caught my legs and sent me sprawling face-first onto the ground. Get up. Get up, the voice urged me. You have to keep going. I tried, but my lungs were beginning to burn, and the clouds closed in, plunging the path deeper and deeper into darkness.

She seemed to sense my difficulty. Follow my voice. And then I could feel her in front of me. Here, she whispered. Here, here. I let myself be guided blindly, turning right or left according to which side I heard her voice coming from, until finally her voice broke as she whispered: He sees you.

My strides came to a halt in absolute darkness. The shadows of the trees had vanished, and I could not even see the Moon’s reflection through the clouds, assuming there were clouds at all. I reached out with my arms and felt around with my feet, but my fingers found none of the branches that had tried to grab me before, and my feet no longer encountered the roots that had hindered my progress.

Then I heard a rhythmic clicking behind me: a distant tsi-tsi-li, almost imperceptible, like the echo of a drop of water falling into a deep pool. I turned around. Slowly, as though afraid of what I might find.

In the distance, a white humanoid figure radiated a faint light, too far away for me to make out its features. Yet it was clearly coming toward me. And I did not want to remain where I was when it arrived. I began walking backward without taking my eyes off whatever it was. Although it did not move any visible part of its body, it did not seem to be getting farther away. The thing was not growing smaller. I tried to retreat faster, but it seemed to advance faster and faster. Finally, I could make out some details. It was thin, incredibly thin, thinner than a skeleton. Its features were distorted by the light emanating from its eyes. Every time I blinked, a fleeting flash warned me that I was better off not seeing its face clearly. There was no obvious movement to explain the tsi-tsi-li sound. And yet, suddenly, it was only a few yards away from me.

Without thinking any further, I turned and ran as though the Devil himself were biting at my heels. Every now and then I looked back, only to see that the horror was getting closer and closer. My legs, however, were no longer obeying me. It did not matter how hard I tried to lift them, and before I knew it, I was splashing through the river. And then the inevitable happened: the water tangled around my legs and I plunged beneath the surface. And, as the creature lunged at me, I felt unable to tear my eyes away from its nightmarish face.

Its skull did not even seem human. It was more like a cross between a monkey and a dog. Its eyes were mismatched: one was a yellowish lantern without pupils, while the other was half-closed amid an amorphous mass of muscles and tendons tangled across the left side of its face. Sharp teeth protruded from its long, half-open mouth, ready to tear through flesh and bone. Unable to bear it any longer, I closed my eyes with a single thought, This is the end, and with the certainty that it would not be quick.

At that moment, I heard a splash to my left. I did not want to look, did not want to see what that creature had devised to torture me before granting me a terrible death. But the fangs never came. I opened one eye. The creature was only a couple of yards away from me, but it was not looking at me, it was looking at the figure standing beside me. It was her.

Dressed in that simple nightgown, her hands were no longer busy scrubbing stains that would never come out. Instead, she was holding me protectively. I could not feel her touch, but somehow I could feel what it meant. Then the creature spoke.

“Not very wise, love, starting a little rebellion when I’m standing right in front of the target of my anger.”

Its voice sounded like a machete grinding against splintering bone, and I covered my ears.

“No, it isn’t.” She had released me and now stood between me and the horror. Despite the fear trembling in her voice, she maintained a defiant stance. “And yet I have no choice but to do it.”

“In that case, my beloved, should I remind you what happened the last time you raised your voice to me?”

Once again, I saw blood begin to pour from the wounds on her forearms and seep through the folds of her scarf. Only this time she began bleeding from everywhere, her shoulders, her back, her hips, her legs... Crimson marks appeared across her nightgown, spreading through the fabric. I heard her choke back a cry of anguish and, when she turned toward me, I saw terror shining in her eyes. Blood streamed from her eyes as tears, blood ran from her mouth, blood spread across her nipples like milk escaping a nursing mother’s breasts. And blood seeped into the silk between her thighs, just like a teenage girl getting her period for the first time.

Her legs gave way, and she collapsed with a cry that contained both pain and fear. Her torturer seemed to grow larger with every passing second of torment and opened its arms in a gesture that could signify either domination or mercy.

“I allowed you to remain here, despite the fact that your despicable acts have sullied us both, because of the love I once had for you. All I ask is for the smallest measure of fidelity, and you cannot even grant me that.”

It had grown so enormous that I had to tilt my head all the way back, and then bend my body, simply to take in its full size. Before I realized what was happening, its face had merged with the landscape. The outlines of the trees became its broken smile, the mountain watching over the moor became its cadaverous nose and its hateful, glowing eye stared down at us from the place where, only moments before, the Moon had been.

“Is that really too much to ask?”

The words came with the thunderous rumble of thousands of skeletons. The pressure of its presence made me shrink down into the water. I felt that, no matter how deeply I submerged myself, that eye would reach me and carry me somewhere of endless agony. But she, despite being as broken as she appeared, managed to pull herself together. With a gesture of utter contempt, she made the surface of the river tremble. The image before me shattered like glass, and the trees became trees again, the mountain became a mountain and high above us, the Moon—and only the Moon—watched us.

The horror was once again above us. On her knees, she raised her head and, staring into its eyes, breathed through clenched teeth:

“Sometimes you forget, husband, that I’ve had time to introduce a few rules of my own into this world.”

In response, the skull gave a little laugh and seized her jaw with fingers that scratched her skin like hooks. When I saw the wounds on her cheeks, I momentarily forgot my fear and rose with a defiant cry, but the warning look she gave me brought me to an immediate halt. The creature turned toward me as well.

“Who would have thought, love, that all these years later I would have a rival?”

In the blink of an eye, it manifested above me again and I had to shove my fist into my mouth to keep from screaming, this time, it was pure terror. Although I could not stop my bladder from emptying.

“A knight upon his white horse, coming to save you. Shall I begin your punishment with him, tying his arms and legs together with his still-pulsing entrails?”

It extended a hand toward my torso. I was paralyzed with terror. I felt the heat in my face as the claw came within inches of me. Hell, I remember thinking. But when I began to feel the abrasion against my chest, my guardian angel came to my rescue once more. With a cry of “No!”, she threw herself at the creature and once again placed her body between it and me. An angel completely covered in red. She looked at me, and I saw the warning in her eyes.

“I don’t know how much longer I can hold it back, so I advise you to make this escape count.” Then, with a sad smile, she added: “My name is Leonor.”

She raised her hand and an instant later, I was alone on the path again.

The river continued its course, as though it were somehow interested in my sanity. And sanity was precisely what I lacked: although only seconds earlier I had been under the river, my clothes were dry, except for the dampness clinging to my trousers around the crotch. Pissing myself had been real.

Hallucination or not, I wanted to leave the moor as quickly as possible, so I began to run. Little by little, those strange and threatening trees gave way to species I knew better: oak, redwood, chestnut. At last I caught sight of the stone bridge connecting with the French Way, the road I should have taken in the first place. I breathed deeply and felt the horrors that had embraced me throughout the journey begin to fall away. There are still several hours until dawn, I thought, but it wasn’t daylight that drove away my fears. Beneath my feet, the old bridge did more than connect two worlds. It served as a stern guardian, ensuring that the ghosts remained in their own world. Time to return to mine, to the simple happiness of a bowl of hot soup. And yet, even with that thought, my heart skipped a beat when the wind suddenly awakened an unpleasant shriek as it swept through the last of the bare trees disappearing into the eyes of the bridge. As though a girl were screaming from very far away.