Heaven’s Haven
The red dirt road seemed never-ending. I had been driving for over an hour since the asphalt ran out, and the car was rattling so violently over the potholes that I almost considered turning back before I even arrived. The only reason I didn’t was that I had nowhere else to go.
The GPS had lost signal twenty minutes ago. I was following written instructions the lawyer had given me on a folded sheet of paper I’d already read about ten times: after the wooden bridge, turn right, follow it to the end, the gate is made of dark, warped wood—you can’t miss it.
He was right. I couldn’t miss it.
The giant cattle gate appeared suddenly between two rows of trees so tall they seemed to have grown there without asking anyone’s permission. “Warped” wasn’t quite the right word—it looked more like it had been swallowed by time.
“Come on! Open, you piece of junk!”
The padlock was stubborn, only yielding after I forced the key about five times. My patience had been pushed to its limit since sunrise.
Heaven’s Haven.
The name was still painted on a wooden sign hanging crookedly from an arch above the gate, the letters almost completely faded. I stood there for a moment, staring inside, before finding the courage to drive the car through.
The house emerged at the end of a path overgrown with weeds. It was larger than I had expected—you could tell that once upon a time it had been beautiful, built in that old farmhouse style with a wide porch and a gabled roof. Now, part of the roof had caved in, the plaster was crumbling to pieces, and the weeds had climbed so high up the walls it looked as though the earth was trying to pull the house back into itself.
I turned off the engine and sat there for a second, just staring.
This is mine now.
The phrase didn’t feel real. My life had been a sequence of disasters; my father had died three weeks ago, and in those three weeks, I had gone from my thirty-square-meter apartment in Belo Horizonte to owning an entire farm I didn’t even know existed until the lawyer called me. He had inherited it from my great-grandfather, who had inherited it from someone else before him—a lineage of people I never knew, guarding a patch of land in the middle of nowhere.
Along with the farm came a sum of money that, if I were smart, was enough to renovate the whole place and still have some left over. If I were stupid, it was enough to burn through in a year trying to conquer something far too big for me to handle alone.
I was twenty-three years old, and honestly, I didn’t know which of the two I was.
Before I could even get my bags out of the car, I heard a truck engine coming down the road. I froze, suitcase in hand, watching the dust rise before the vehicle even came into view.
It was a man in his sixties, wearing a straw hat, his face weathered by the sun. He pulled up at the entrance without getting out, merely rolling down his window.
“You the new owner?” he asked, in that tone of someone who already knew the answer but wanted to hear it anyway.
“I am. Diego, nice to meet you,” I said, stepping closer. “I inherited it from my father. His great-grandfather, actually.”
He nodded slowly, looking at the house behind me as if he were calculating something.
“Mister Osvaldo told me someone would be coming. Brought a few supplies, in case you needed them,” he said, pointing to a box in the back seat. “No grocery stores nearby. The closest one is almost a forty-minute walk, but since you’ve got a car, you can get there faster.”
I accepted, thanking him, and he stepped out just long enough to hand me the box. That was when I noticed he avoided looking directly at the property behind me, as if doing so would be terribly rude.
“Do you know the farm?” I asked, more out of politeness than curiosity.
He shrugged—a gesture far too quick to be natural.
“Everyone around here knows the name. Nobody comes down this way much.”
“Why?”
He looked at me, and for a second, it seemed like he was actually going to say something real. But he just shook his head and got back into the truck.
“It’s old land, kid. You know how it is—old land has history. You’ll get used to the silence,” he said, starting the engine. “If you need anything, the village is that way. Ask for Zé do Mantimento, everyone knows me. By the way, here’s my number. I haul stuff, so if you ever need a hand, just give me a call. And consider that box a welcome ‘gift.’”
“Wow, thank you so much.”
And he drove off before I could ask anything else.
I stood at the entrance with the box of supplies in my arms, watching the dust settle again. Old land has history. I didn’t like the way that sounded—not because of the mystery, but because of how he said it: too fast, eager to leave before committing to any more words.
I decided not to dwell on it. I had a leaky roof, weeds up to my knees—probably crawling with snakes, spiders, and scorpions—and an entire house to assess before it got dark. I’d deal with country folk superstitions later.
The rest of the day was pure work.
I opened the windows to air out the smell of mold that had accumulated over who knows how many years of standing empty. I pushed aside furniture covered in white sheets, found stored crockery that still looked usable, and ran the kitchen tap until the water came out less brown. I discovered the well still worked, which was more than I had bargained for.
“Alright, time to check the barn.”
I headed out to the barn late in the afternoon, more out of curiosity than necessity. The wooden door was hanging loose, held by a single hinge. Inside were a few rusted tools, a tractor covered in cobwebs that probably hadn’t turned over in decades, and an entire dismantled fence, as if someone had started repairing it and given up halfway through.
I noticed the fence line led toward the back of the property—where the ground dipped slightly and the brush grew denser, forming an almost solid wall of green hiding whatever lay behind it. You could hear running water from somewhere in there. A creek, perhaps, or the beginning of the marshland the lawyer had mentioned in passing, like someone trying to make it sound unimportant.
I didn’t go down there. It was already getting dark, and I didn’t have a good enough flashlight to risk stepping into dense brush alone.
I went back inside with my back aching in a way I had never felt before. Desk jobs don’t prepare you for this kind of labor.
I ate dinner—if it could even be called that: some bread I had brought from Belo Horizonte, already a bit stale, along with a piece of cheese Zé had left in the box. He’d packed several basic items: cheese, coffee, rice, beans, pasta, a few cuts of meat, cooking oil, and for some reason, a set of cutlery and a huge, heavy machete that looked more like a sword. I didn’t even bother lighting the stove properly; I just wanted something in my stomach before crashing.
I picked the bedroom that looked the most intact, dusted off the mattress as best I could, and collapsed fully clothed—no shower, no change of clothes. I remember thinking, right on the verge of sleep, that I ought to be more careful with a house I barely knew—lock the doors, check the windows—but I did none of it. Exhaustion won before I could pull myself up again.
I passed out like a stone.
I don’t know what time it was when I woke up.
The room was pitch-black, devoid of any light from outside—no moon, no stars, just that thick, heavy darkness that only exists far away from the city. And it was a sound that pulled me out of sleep, not a nightmare, not the rumble of thunder.
It was water.
The sound of moving water, but not like rain, and not like wind through the leaves. It was more like the way water moves when something large passes through it—a displacement, a rhythm that almost sounded like breathing.
I lay there, my heart beating faster than I cared to admit, trying to figure out if it was real or just the lingering remains of a dream stuck in my head.
The sound stopped.
I listened to the silence for a time that felt entirely too long, then got up, barefoot, and walked over to the window. I pushed the old curtain aside and looked outside.
There was nothing.
Just the dark yard, the silhouette of the barn against the moonless sky, and further beyond, the dense line of brush concealing the creek—or whatever it was back there at the edge of the property.
I stood there for a full minute, waiting to catch a glimpse of movement, some shadow that would explain the sound—maybe a dog, a horse, or even a wild cat—but nothing. Nothing moved. Not even a breath of wind rustled the trees, which only made having heard the water move like that all the stranger.
It was just my imagination, I thought, feeling the fatigue drag my legs back toward the bed. An old house, overgrown land, a mind exhausted after a day like today. I’ll check it tomorrow.
I lay back down, pulled the thin blanket up to my neck, and closed my eyes.
But before I fell asleep again, for a second—just a second, fast enough that I almost missed it—I had the distinct impression that something out there had been staring up at my window until I went back to bed.
