Devoid Horror

Reventazón (Pt. 3)

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3 years ago · Mario Esquivel

Diego sat behind the lamps, where darkness and light meet to form a hazy border of growing shadow. This was his spot, had been his spot since his first night-climbing session when he’d stood in the middle of the light and had looked out into the absolute nothingness around him. He’d felt a surge of paranoia immediately, the very real understanding that anything or anyone could be standing behind him, watching from the shadows in silence, that he would never know that there were eyes on him, that he was so easily exposed to anything even slightly curious, that he was so willfully giving away his position to things that didn’t want to do the same.

From that moment he’d preferred to hide in the shadows, to let himself believe that they offered some sort of protection, a blanket of black that clothed him and kept his pupils just dilated enough that he could catch glimpses of the things that moved around in secret. So he sat with the stillness of the night, the white droning noise of the river’s cruising waters, the doppler buzz of an insect fly-by, and the occasional breaking twig, a possible symptom of hidden clumsy creatures or rotting humid wood.

It was then that he noticed another, less natural sound. Faint at first, and no more discernible than the inconsistent bubbling of water against the river rocks, but still distinguishable from the sounds he’d become used to hearing next to rivers. A high pitch in the distance creating dissonant chords, an unmelodic solo that syncopated unattractively with the river’s steady rhythm. The first thing he imagined was a cat. In pain, maybe, or in heat and in search of a mate by the river’s edge, the kind of sound that can ignite both fear and a certain amount of sympathy.

Diego squinted into the distance where only the occasional white foaming of the water and the dark contrast between tree canopy and sky could be seen. A whiteish point, only slightly lighter than its surrounding black was moving in the distance, slowly swinging back and forth. Diego cranked his neck and shielded his eyes from the glare reflecting off the boulder they’d lit up, hoping for a closer look. He could just barely make out a figure, could barely see its movement wasn’t so much the bobbing and swinging he’d originally thought, but really a sort of swaying walk, a human’s movement that was heading right towards him.

“Up?”

Diego looked at Jota who was staring at him.

“Huh?”

“You stupid or something?” Asked Jota. He looked at Caro and rolled his eyes. The three had stopped fighting hours ago, no real apology having been made by any of them, opting instead for a gradual increase in their interactions.

“I asked if you were gonna go again, or if you just gave up.”

“Oh,” said Diego looking back towards the figure he’d seen but finding nothing. “Yeah I’ll go again.”

“What are you looking at?” Asked Caro.

“Nothing. Thought I heard a cat,” said Diego. He looked down at his climbing shoes and tightened their Velcro straps.

“What?”

“Like crying. In heat.”

“Crying?” Asked Caro.

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Jota.

Diego shrugged.

“You get a look at it?” Asked Jota.

Diego looked again. The white figure was still gone. Caro tried to say something but was promptly shushed. Diego stood, moved closer to where he’d seen the figure, insisting on quiet.

The river was frothing, flowing as always, a moth smacked its wings hard against the lights, crickets chirped around them. The crying was gone.

“I can’t hear it anymore,” said Diego.

“Did you see anything?” Asked Caro.

“No. Nothing.”

“Fuck this,” said Caro, taking off her climbing shoes and grabbing her backpack.

“Caro calm down,” said Jota. “It was just a cat.”

“We don’t know that. He said crying.”

“And?”

“And I already stayed her after dark for you even though I didn’t want to. Enough is fucking enough,” she said, throwing her chalk bag in her pack.

“I said cat,” said Diego. “Cat.”

“You ever hear a cat crying? What if it’s La Llorona?”

“Oh come on, if anything it’s those other guys fucking with us,” said Diego.

“That’s even worse!” Caro was sitting now, her back to one of the boulders, the cave they’d been working on to her left and the river, Jota, and Diego in front of her.

And suddenly the noise was back again, the same polyrhythmic yowling Diego had heard before, only louder this time, closer.

“You hear it?” Asked Diego as Jota nodded. Jota looked around the cave boulder, towards the source of the noise off in the darkness, then grabbed one of the lights and pointed it in that direction despite Caro’s quick protests.

“You see anything?” Asked Jota, moving the light around.

“Nothing,” said Diego. “Might be too far for the light.”

“Sounds closer, though.”

Jota looked over at Caro who was now breathing hard and fast, holding her hands over her ears, asking why they hadn’t left yet.

“Caro, hey,” he said, giving Diego the light and walking over. He bent down towards her and put his hands on her shoulders gently.

“Relax, dude, if it’s not a cat, then it’s those guys from before,” he said.

But Caro just shook her head. With terror in her eyes, she looked up at Jota, begging for them to leave immediately.

“Don’t tell me to relax,” she managed. “Please.”

“You’re scared?” said Jota half laughing. “It’s cool!”

Caro nodded.

“We need to go.”

Jota sighed, turned and walked over to Diego who was still trying to find the source of the noise, holding the light over his head and moving it in all directions.

“Hey man, Caro’s really freaking out,” Jota whispered.

“So?”

“So I think maybe we should just go.”

“Why? Try to calm her down,” said Diego.

“I tried.”

“Oh so you want to leave too?” Asked Diego, as he let the light fall to his side, turning to look at his friend who nodded and shrugged.

“This is bullshit,” said Diego. “Fucking perfect boulder, what the fuck?”

“I know it’s not ideal, but we can come back in the morning,” said Jota. But Diego only shook his head and raised the light back above his head.

“It’s just those two guys, that’s it.”

“Yeah probably.”

“Talk to Caro, dude. Please?”

“I’ll see what I can do to calm her down. See if you can find the fuckers.”

Jota grabbed his street shoes and walked over to Caro who was still on the ground, hugging a stuffed backpack full of her gear. He sat next to her, began to change his shoes as he spoke.

“You know cats have like barbed dicks?”

Caro sniffled.

“They get it stuck to each other and they make some really weird noises. Can’t really blame them, right? Fucking sucks. But anyway that’s probably what we’re hearing, you know?” He said. Caro said nothing.

“Listen. It kind of sounds like two animals, right?” He was slipping his last shoe on when he realized, suddenly, that the noise had stopped. Jota looked up to see Diego standing still, head tilted, having clearly noticed the same too.

“I don’t hear anything,” said Diego.

“Me neither.”

“We can still leave, though, right?” Asked Caro.

Then it hit them. A wave of cold, like walking into a building blasting AC in the summer, only without wind. Overwhelming, sharp, humid cold that freezes the marrow in your bones and stings nostrils. Jota breathed through his mouth, upward towards his eyes, watched the warm air from his mouth, a smokey vapor that disappeared into the night, felt his lungs as if they had hands wrapped around them, squeezing his breath as a line of fear ran in hot contrast from the back of his neck down to the soles of his feet.

“Light,” was all Jota heard, a whisper from Diego who had turned off the lamp in his hand and who was moving towards one of the two that were still on, the farthest from Jota and most exposed of the three. Jota scrambled forwards, straight toward the cave where the third lamp lay, crawling hard and bruising his knees on the rocky ground. They reached the lanterns almost at the same time, a blanket of dark descending on them fast.

They stayed still, barely wanting to breathe. Diego could see Jota kneeling in front of him, just under the cave’s roof, and Caro to his left, still pushing her back into the wall behind her. He waited as his pupils dilated slowly, his vision improving, a panoramic view of the river only blocked by the cave boulder. Slowly, the sound came back. Closer, even closer than before, Diego could hear it coming just from behind the cave boulder, from behind Jota, a sharp, painful screaming that ripped icy canyons in his soul. For a minute it continued with its source still unseen, pure sonic pain personified.

Then he saw her.

From what little light he had, Diego could see her move sporadically, with sudden spastic shakes that would overcome her, cause her to dash here and there, the excited near-cusp of an infinite search for the unattainable. Shin length black hair moved behind her, a schizophrenic Rapunzel, unkempt and greasy, lagging after her head’s wild veering. She wore a dress that may have been white but waw now badly torn, tattered, and discolored to an ugly deep grey that shook at the shoulders as she moaned and begged in broken language. She was barefoot, lunging in and out of the water without a splash, any shoes having been worn down and fallen long ago, the skin up to her ankles permanently stained darker, what seemed like dried blood from perpetual pacing in the dimness.

She was on their side of the river, just far enough that it should have been impossible to hear her, the noises coming from her body drowned out by the water. But somehow, that was not the case. Her crying, whimpers of pain at the moment, was clear and dampened the noise around her. It was a quiet, resigned sort of moaning, a polyrhythmic and painful agonized jazz that danced with the occasional ounce of hope as she jumped at rocks that most resembled the shape of a child’s head.

Diego stared in horror, frozen by the cold air around him and holding his fists tight so as to not let out a whimper of fear. This was without any doubt, the same thing he’d seen earlier, the same thing that had turned to look right at him, the same thing that had sent shivers down his soul.

“Diego,” a barely perceptible whisper came from behind him. Caro. Diego turned to look at her as she huddled wide eyed and trembling. Tears flowed from her eyes, slow and constant like the river around them and her finger, held close to her body was pointing to his left. Diego’s eye’s widened as he turned quickly in sudden realization.

It wasn’t Caro who had whispered his name.

But there was nothing around him, Nothing had been standing behind him, nothing that he could see at least. La Llorona was completely gone. Diego turned a few more times, then looked at Caro again, confused. She was still, frozen in the same position, pointing behind him. Diego turned again to look towards the river, towards where he was sure La Llorona would be, but again he found nothing. She was gone, and suddenly Diego realized her crying had stopped.

He looked to his left. He’d seen Jota’s kneeling there as he’d been moving his head around in a panicked search, had just barely noticed him out of the corner of his eye, an unconscious mental note. But his eyes only landed on shadow, the full darkness of the open cave he’d hoped to climb. There was no lightness of skin anywhere to be found. Jota was gone.

“Jota?” He let himself whisper, barely, terrified of being heard, desperate to find his friend. There was no answer. He turned again, another half circle, dizzying, in a search for Caro, to maybe lock eyes with her and ask her somehow in silence if she had any idea where Jota had disappeared to. His eyes landed on Caro’s spot on the ground and found nothing.

Diego was alone.

Darkness fell hard on him. Alone, he panicked, breathing heavily and still searching, searching for the friends who had somehow disappeared without a sound, without any sort of warning. Caro who had been sitting, Jota who had been kneeling. He turned in circles between each, hoping desperately that they’d somehow reappear where he knew they were supposed to be. The shadows around him grew, darkened the already dim light, erased the stars, killed the sound of the river.

Alone.

Then the crying started again. It broke through his ears and zapped down his spine, sending flashes of heat that rattled his bones and shook his skin until the hairs on his body stood magnetized and itching to leave him. The crying came from behind him, from the river.

With a cold dead breath, Diego managed to turn his body one last time to look directly into the eyes of La Llorona.

Leaking dead eyes. That was all that Diego saw before he ran, before his legs burnt with exertion and he fell on the riverbed rocks he’d so easily hopped over before and twisted his ankle. Leaking dead eyes, black pain and the hopelessness of a fruitless hunt were welded in his mind, a vision impossible to forget or even ignore.

Diego ran and ran as the air pierced his ears with the high pitched sounds of complete anguish, terrified to face those eyes again, to look at grief personified. He ran, heart exploding, ears ringing through the sand and rocks, limping and screaming at his ankle’s sharp protests at every footfall. He ran without looking back until he reached the small opening in the foliage where he and Jota and Caro had come through from the road. He ran and jumped between banana leaves, smashing his way through green with machete arms that chopped through everything and bruised themselves in his desperation.

In his mind he could see the car on top of the hill they’d slid down. That was all he needed to get to. After that he could figure out some way to find Caro and Jota. But first would be safety, the black metal box above the mud. Diego chopped through one final branch of leafy green and screamed.

The river was in front of him. The same beach he’d come from. The same bend to his left that hid the boulders where he and his friends had been all afternoon and night. He was back. Somehow in the same place despite not having turned around at any point.

And again, the darkness around him descended from the sky and the air turned even colder than before. And Diego felt a hand, cold and thin and wet, that pulled him steadily toward the river.

Devoid Horror

Reventazón (Pt. 2)

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3 years ago · Mario Esquivel

Three

The river was wide and deep, its quiet current an inveterate whisper that pushed like wind on the large rocks that domed over the surface. Pools collected here and there where stone limited and slowed water, hosting small fish, guppies mostly, that fed on the insects that darted through the humid air. These were not small banks, but large collections of varying sizes of rock, many small enough to be considered sand, that spread out on either side of the river, a giant wasteland left by defeated dammed water not yet conquered by the towering vegetation behind it.

It had taken the three climbers a little over thirty minutes to get to this bank from the car, having traveled along a muddy road, under thick bush of dark tropical green littered with multicolored unidentifiable flora, and over a multitude of leaf-cutter ant trails as thick as the river itself and flowing just as quickly in dark flashes of pulsing red. There was not a single large boulder in sight, only a bend in the river that turned left under a canopy of trees and dirt, the beginning of a steep canyon that had been carved by millions of years of rushing water.

They moved quickly, but stepped cautiously, judging the stability of the rocks below their feet, careful not to twist ankles, and in silence for the time being, the expectation of what they would find around the bend pushing hard on Jota who had long ago taken the lead. He’d felt his heart drop, mortar rounds of disappointment falling over these sandy trenches, once he’d peaked past the green of the jungle and had seen nothing of potential around him. He had looked over at Diego with a smile on his face, doing what he could to hide the bitterness he could feel spreading inside him.

It was all so damn ironic, given the fertility of the tropics, the fruits that grew ad infinitum on the trees around them, the unlimited wildlife that sprouted from every corner. Jota was exhausted by the constant disappointment of coming up empty handed when countries not far off had entire areas with so much readily available rock that it would be impossible for one single person to climb it all during their lifetime. It wasn’t something he knew how to bring up to his friend, that he was, and had been for some time, considering just giving up on the entire endeavor. It was a hesitance that he’d felt earlier at the bar when he’d found himself preferring to stay and drink beers, the probability of yet another disillusionment looming. Were they really wasting their time with all this searching given how much good rock had already been found elsewhere?

But this was his baby, the Costa Rican bouldering community, and as much as he felt right now like it was just about time to let go and let it grow on its own without him, his heart was still deeply in love with its development. So he walked fast, nearly running, ahead of the other two in a conflicted sort of desperation to find some kind of answer that might be provided by whatever it was that hid behind the riverbend.

What he found was more than anything he could have possibly hoped for, a group of house sized granite boulders, draped from top to bottom with a thick green curtain of moss. Jagged overhangs that formed natural head height caves stood over rocky landings where the occasional rusty beer can glinted in the sunlight.

Diego and Caro were right behind Jota, yelling premature victorious and benevolent blasphemies as they all rand towards the rocks to touch them with outstretched fingertips. At the very least they had found potential, maybe one or two routes that were actually climbable if they were unlucky and the boulders had nothing to hold on to or were entirely too difficult for them to do.

Diego yelled out in gleeful celebration as he walked around the rock, touching dimples of stone that could at some point be used as hand or footholds, kneeling down to look at water smoothed edges of rock perfect and just beg enough to hold your body.

“We got one, boys!” Yelled Caro, ducking under the main roof of one of the boulders to see what else was around.

The grouping of stone contained three giant boulders that formed an almost perfect semicircle facing away from the water in the middle. Outside the circle, the central boulder held the perfect cave-like feature the three had been so excited about, while the other side included a couple of overhanging faces and a rather tall slab that could become a fun warm-up climb.

The other two boulders held the same potential, a couple of hard looking compression lines on an arete for the left side boulder, and a large sloping seam that traversed the entire face on the other. Far more potential, and far more quality than any of them could have ever imagined.

“Caro can you and Diego run back to the car and grab the rest of the gear?”

“Pads too?”

“Nah, just the harnesses and ropes and shit. There’s so much moss, this is gonna take a year!” Said Jota as he tossed Diego the keys to his truck.

Caro and Diego both nodded, turning around to run as fast as they could despite the uneven terrain back towards the car.

When the two of them returned they found Jota sitting at the base of the boulder, nothing yet cleaned. He’d spent the past half hour touching every centimeter of the rock’s surface, looking for holds, imagining the sequence of movements that he would perform once the route was fully clean.

“Was waiting for you to come back before I started,” said Jota as Diego walked up to him, touching the rock with his own hands as Jota showed him where all the holds were.

“How are we looking?” Asked Caro from behind them, throwing a heavy backpack full of gear on the ground.

Diego looked back and froze. There was a figure, a body behind Caro in the distance at the river’s bend kneeling down towards the river’s water on the other side of the bank. A woman, it seemed, with incredibly long black hair that suddenly looked up and stared directly at them. Diego blinked as Jota took a few steps back to get a good look at the rest of the boulder, blocking his view. He moved his head slightly only to find the figure gone.

“Good,” said Jota, looking at Caro. “Good rock. Good friction.”

“Any idea how hard it could be?”

Jota shrugged as Diego snuck a peak behind the two at the spot where he thought he’d seen someone standing. There was nothing. Vegetation swayed slightly in the breeze and still rocks sat next to a lazy water current. He turned again towards the boulder, touching all the holds he could, trying to come out of his little trance and back into the conversation at hand.

“The bottom moves look really hard, don’t they? Easily harder than anything else in Costa Rica at the moment,” he said. “The top stuff, I mean I don’t know. Jota did you look at them?”

“There’s a few crimps up there that could make a pretty good stand start,” said Jota pointing up to a couple of edges at head height.

“True.”

“Definitely something you could do, Caro.”

“The stand?” She asked.

“Yeah,” said Diego, looking over his friend’s shoulders again and seeing nothing, no woman.

“You can probably hold this sloper and just jump up to that crimp, then climb up from there. That’s at least the first thing I’m trying as soon as we’re done,” said Jota, miming the moves as he talked.

“You look at the other boulders yet?” Asked Diego.

“Yeah, there’s a couple other things, but this one’s the jewel for sure,” Jota said as he grabbed a rope from the bag and some gear. He went around the back of the large boulder to see if he could find an easy way to the top where he might be able to build an anchor. The three of them would use this anchor to hang the rope from in order to rappel down and clean the rock they couldn’t reach from the ground. Arduous work, no doubt, but nevertheless absolutely worth it for a climb like the one they’d just discovered.

Noticing that the boys more or less had the main cave route taken care of, Caro walked around to the other side to take a look at a shorter but steep overhang on the same boulder, another completely moss covered wall that faced the river. Caro looked closely at the grooves in the rock, searching for potential handholds that hid behind the green.

Scrubbing was Caro’s least favorite part, especially for someone who vehemently adhered to leave no trace outdoor ethics, destroying years of moss growth was a somewhat painful and often hushed over inevitable part of outdoor rock climbing. It was an unfortunate necessity that most developers tried keeping to a minimum, but destructive nonetheless.

She spent the next few minutes allowing that pendulous movement to become a meditative experiment, almost hypnotic. Her mind was blank. She stopped every once in a while to blow the dirt that clung to the jagged granite in front of her. It was a sate of mind not unlike the one she experienced when she climbed, just without any real physical championing.

Actual climbing is what she looked forward to, what she most obsessed about in her own private little world. There was nothing in her life quite as challenging as a boulder. Mentally and physically, each climb she’d successfully completed was, for her, an act of defiance. Her logged ascents, visible to anyone who might care to look up her social media, beacons and evidence that screamed “look here, this is what I can do with my mind, this is what I can do with my body.” It was ultimate freedom, ultimate autonomy.

This was ultimately a privilege. One that she wasn’t, or couldn’t, be sure that her two companions here were truly aware of. They’d encouraged her for years, yelling and laughing and having fun as she made her way up faces of rock without truly understanding the significance of their hobby, the significance of all of this to her, at least. Caro had talked about this with other girls at the gym, with Marta  especially. It was a talk that they had had in depth the few times they’d found themselves out in the wilderness on their own too, searching for new boulders. In their mutual understanding of the importance of this sport Caro had found a certain level of comfort and strength, one that she suddenly felt lacking at this very moment.

Jota’s comment about her only being able to do the easier part of the boulder he was cleaning had stung more than she’d allow herself to admit, and now as she brushed away at the moss she wondered yet again, despite her efforts to clear her mind, if coming here had been a mistake. She could hear him and Diego talking to each other, so excited and sharing in something she knew she was not a part of, might never be a part of. It was again that feeling of complete loneliness, one that refused to go away. A part of her was gone, its growth killed by uncertainty and negligence, an unnatural disconnect that had left her falling with nothing to hold on to, and a Jota deliberately unaware. Would he ever understand the severity?  

Caro brushed harder and thought of Marta, how similar she was to Diego in her own obsessive sort of way, how the biologist in her would have protested quietly about the destruction their hobby so often wreaked on the moss that covered the boulders they climbed. It was strange for her to have refused to come, strange for her to not have wanted to spend her day running up and down this river looking for all the rock she could find. Marta was just as excited by the prospect of development herself, but her reticence to join, her apparent fear of this place was worrying.

That’s when she felt them. Eyes burrowing at her scalp, coming from the river behind her. That loneliness she’d felt only seconds ago disappeared, replaced by the exact opposite feeling, a claustrophobic and unwanted companion standing behind her somewhere. Caro stopped brushing, listening hard for any crying. This was what Marta had been so scared of. What was watching her from the river?

There was nothing. No crying. Only flowing water and the occasional laugh from Jota and Diego. Were they not being watched? Had they not noticed it? For a moment she thought she heard a faint whimper, a quiet noise that raised that pulled hard on her neck hair. Caro breathed slowly, forcing herself to brush again, to ignore the empty space behind her, the exposure, the inability to hide, the nakedness she felt. It was all in her head. She’d started to think about Marta freaking out and now she was freaking out too. It’s all in my head, she repeated over and over. But that feeling, the eyes behind her that stared and watched her movements, did not go away, did not subside.

Caro turned, immediately leaning back into the wall and accidentally bumping her head slightly on the rock. She looked around. There was nothing but tranquility in front of her, the river flowing lazily, the same bugs darting here and there over the water, vegetation swaying lightly in a breezy push and pull. The paranoia was gone immediately. Nothing was watching. No Llorona staring at her from the river looking to drown her, only the sounds of Jota and Diego’s brushes a syncopating rhythm to the water’s steady drone.

She walked over to them.

“How long are we staying here?” She asked.

“Why?” Said Diego, barely looking up. Caro glanced around the river again.

“No reason, just wondering,” she said.

“You gotta poopoo?” Asked Jota who was hanging from a harness half way up the boulder, brush in hand.

 Caro blinked.

“No?” She laughed.

Jota nodded, was about to go back to brushing when he stopped to stare at something behind Caro, frowning. Caro turned as quickly as she could, a flash of adrenaline heating up her forehead and legs.

A pair of older men were crossing the river. Shirtless, skinny, baggy jeans rolled halfway up their shins soaking anyway, and holding dirty old sneakers in their hands, they stepped with precision, having clearly made this same crossing a few times. The three watched as the men came closer, one man wearing a ripped up baseball cap, the other sporting a slightly greasy beard and both with confused looks on their faces, clearly trying to understand why anyone would be wasting their time cleaning rocks by the river.

“What are you doing?” The bearded man asked.  

Jota and Diego gave quick explanations as Caro caught her breath.

“You going to be here long?” The other asked. Jota shrugged as Diego answered.

“Yeah, this stuff takes a while, you know?”

“Makes sense.”

“What are you guys doing out here, anyway,” said Caro.

“Why?” Asked the man in the cap. Caro managed to mumble an apology as the bearded man laughed, showing a near toothless mouth.

“Just taking a walk,” he said.

“Those lights?” Asked the man in the cap almost immediately after. Jota began to lower himself to the ground as the three of them looked over at their gear.

“Yeah,” said Diego, slowly.

“Why do you have them? Asked the man in the cap, resting his arm on his friend’s shoulder, relaxed.

“Best to climb when it’s cold,” said Jota.

The two men nodded quietly, then gave each other a look. They were frowning.

“Not thinking of staying here after dark, are you?”  

“That’s the idea,” said Jota. The bearded man nodded while the other took off his cap, grunted, and spit on the ground to his right.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

“Why?” Asked Diego.

“Bad things happen out here at night.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they do,” said Jota dismissively. “We’ll be fine, we’ve been doing this for a while.”

“Not what I meant.”

“Then what?” Asked Caro, feeling concern and adrenaline hit her body.

“Just not a good idea,” said the bearded man. He turned, motioning for his friend to follow who shook his head and gave a final word.

“Get out before the sun sets.”

“Sure, whatever man,” said Jota. “Have a good night.”

The two men went on their way,  wading through a small pool in the distance and disappearing down river just as quickly as they’d arrived. Caro and Diego watched them go as Jota jumared his way back up the rope.

“That was kind of creepy,” said Diego, his mind back to what he’d seen behind Jota and Caro.

“More like annoying. They probably grow weed down the river and wanted to make sure we wouldn’t walk in on them or something. Or they’re secretly gay and, you know, same reason.”

Diego laughed, allowing himself to be convinced by what Jota was saying.

“So what, an entire town doesn’t want us going down to the river because they have a secret gay society where they bone each other all day?” Asked Caro.

“Probably. Towns people are religious as hell. What they think is stupid, but you gotta keep secrets from someone if not from God, or whatever.”

“You’re saying this is a big deal?” Asked Caro.

“I’m not saying anything about a big deal or not. None of this is.”

“You don’t need to be crazy religious to think something is a big deal,” said Caro shaking her head.

“Yeah, you would know.”

“At least I fucking care about something.”

"A little too much, maybe.

“Can you two stop fighting?” Asked Diego. Caro turned to look at him as Jota spoke from above.

“I don’t even know what we’re fighting about.”

“Yes you do.”

“Gay people?”

“What?”

“Because you know I don’t care, I’m not a bigot like these people.”

“No, Christ, it’s about you not giving a shit about anything. Again!” Caro was yelling suddenly, breathing hard and nearly shaking. Jota raised an eyebrow and went back to brushing.

“See what the fuck I’m talking about? Nothing is a big deal to you, is it?”

Jota was silent, brush moving from side to side haphazardly.

“We should fucking leave. Three different people have told us not to be here at night, are we seriously this stupid?”

“Leave?” Asked Diego.

“Yes!”

Diego shook his head.

“Ignore her, dude. She’s being way too dramatic.”

Caro stopped for a moment.

“Dramatic?”

“No, I just mea—”

“Yeah that’s your favorite fucking catchphrase isn’t,” said Caro.

“Look, all I was saying is that you, you know,” Jota looked for the right word.

“I what? Care too much?”

“Is this about the thing?”

Caro shook her head again, did her best to keep the tears she could feel swelling in her eyes from breaking out.

“Just say it,” she said.

“What?”

“If it wasn’t a big fucking deal, say it. The what, Jota?”

“I don’t,” mumbled Jota.

“The what!” Screamed Caro.

“The fucking abortion, okay?”

Caro watched him, nodding her head.

“I’m fucking leaving,” she said, turning away.

“We’re not doing this,” said Diego suddenly, standing in front of Caro.

“Doing what?” Asked Caro.

“This. Fighting. Here!”

There was a pause as Diego threw his brush at the rock as hard as he could. Caro winced. Diego continued, angry.

“I don’t give a fuck about your stupid fight. Abortion or not, leave or not. We’re fucking staying.”

“You knew?”

“Yeah, Jota told me. But you know what? It doesn’t fucking matter. We’re here to develop fucking boulders. We’re here because I wanted to be here, because it might be the last fucking time we do this and I’m not about to let it be ruined by a fucking non-issue. So you know, what? Both of you get your shit together and finish brushing this rock so we can fucking climb it!”

“I just think,” started Caro, but Diego interrupted immediately.

“I know you don’t care about this, but seriously. Fucking stop. Jota and I aren’t going to leave. Wait for us in the car if you’re scared.”

Caro shook her head and breathed hard, trying to calm herself down. She decided not to retaliate further and turned around, walking back towards the boulder she’d been brushing knowing fully well she could do nothing at this point but wait out the night.

Devoid Horror

Reventazón (Pt. 4)

Diego sat behind the lamps, where darkness and light meet to form a hazy border of growing shadow. This was his spot, had been his spot since his first night-climbing session when he’d stood in the middle of the light and had looked out into the absolute nothingness around him. He’d felt a surge of paranoia immediately, the very real understanding that …

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3 years ago

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Devoid Horror

Reventazón (Pt. 1)

At some point, someone had built a dam. Power. Strength. Reventazón. Giant burst, a name translated from Spanish. A river with currents so strong it could toss and break you, drag you away, drown you in seconds. Reventazón. A name that meant intensity, that signaled danger, that had carved itself into the mountains with spirit and could be h…

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3 years ago · Mario Esquivel

Two

It was unbearably hot that day. Humidity stuck to the skin, wetting hair and encouraging sweat, thickening any air that was sucked up by nostrils. Jota had parked his truck, a large black metal 4x4 box, under a tree whose shadow had dodged the vehicle completely in the few hours it had been left sitting there. Caro and Diego reeled back immediately when they opened the doors making puffing noises as the extra temperature rushed over them, a preheated oven opened by a too eager face. Jota had made the right call running off to the bathroom and giving Diego the keys. At least the car would be a little more tolerable by the time he got back.

Diego rushed to get the keys in the ignition, turned them and sighed in relief as the AC began blasting him in the face. Caro sat in the front, taking an opportunity alone with Diego to speak.

“Are you and Jota good?” She asked.

“Keep the windows down, it cools down faster than you think,” said Diego.

“I know,” she said.

“Just making sure.”

Diego leaned back but moved away from the seat immediately, burned by the back rest. Caro kept her eyes on him, raising her eyebrows as he tried his best to take out his phone without scalding himself further on the leather, waiting for him to speak.

“What do you mean?” Diego asked finally.

“You both seemed tense.”

Diego shrugged, checked the time on his phone, and got out of the car, walking around to sit behind Caro.

“Nah, just regular friendly conversation.”

“Right.”  

“What?”

“Have you guys talked about the van?”

“Not really.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

Caro nodded and looked out the window towards the restaurant’s entrance. Jota was nowhere to be seen. She turned to look at Diego.

“Has he said anything about me?”

“What about you?” Asked Diego.

“Nothing, just like in general.”

“Like about you going together?”

“No I mean in general,” she said again.

“He doesn’t really talk to me about much.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you know, guys. I think we need to go check out this spot here,” said Diego. He leaned forward to show a pin he had marked on his phone. Caro took a look and nodded.

“Jota asked the guy where the pool was,” said Diego. “He said it was there.”

Caro shook her head and smirked, not necessarily surprised that her attempts at getting a conversation started with Diego had been completely ignored. So singularly obsessive, his attention was sharp as a needle and spanned an area equally microscopic. The second the old man had mentioned a pool surrounded by large rocks, Diego had been lost, captivated in his entirety by the only ting that man had said that had peaked his interest. There were large rocks somewhere on the riverbanks, they were close to each other, meaning a small area could be built that might attract more climbers, and it was in a spot they had yet to explore. Everything else the man had said had been ignored, everything Caro had just asked had made mosquito bite welts in his mind, the kind that maybe would itch days later, that might get scratched, if at all, once all the rock that needed to be found had been found and all its moss properly scrubbed. Then again, it might just go completely unnoticed, a bubble on the surface that does nothing but turn red before it fades out and is lost.

It was exactly the thing that had made Diego so well known in this small climbing world, but also the thing that made him somewhat difficult to keep around for long enough periods of time. All he seemingly really knew to talk about anymore was climbing. But Caro had long ago resolved to break through that singularity, especially now that Jota’s decision to leave had clearly formed a severe schism in their relationship.

Caro looked out across the street at the bar as its door flew open and Jota walked out with a confident sort of strut and a dumb tipsy smile on his face. That grin was to most an outward expression of pure contentment, a triumph of soul, absolute bliss in perpetuity. He was pantomiming intentionally cringey finger guns at her and Diego as he walked. Caro looked away, fixing her eyes on the space in front of her, on anything other than Jota or his smile. That smile, those apathetic flaps of puffy skin that laughed at her, that bragged about their ability to not give a shit, was all she could think about. How long had she spent explaining self-consciously, misplaced guilt at her own perceived nagging, the seriousness of their situation, the importance and implications of her decision. Would he ever really understand what had been lost, what had been sacrificed? Here he was, the optimistic jester on the streets of Turrialba ignoring Diego’s suppressed abandonment angst, poking fun at a spirit, a woman who had lost a child, completely oblivious or uncaring to the pain being suffered. He’d said nothing to Diego about them. Diego who only knew how to talk about one thing, who had done nothing to reciprocate her attempts at a serious conversation. She’d only hinted she wanted to talk about something, scared to cross some sort of boundary between two best friends. It was a lack of engagement that had left her feeling deeply alone, suddenly gripped with a desire to not be where she was, to be home in her room under a blanket binge-watching some crappy comedy show. Caro breathed in deep and forced a smile as Jota rounded the car. She was not here for them, she told herself, but because of her own thirst for development.

She had joined Jota and Diego on one of their many first ascent quests some months before and had very quickly fallen in love with the idea of discovering, climbing, and especially naming, virgin rock on a trip they’d all done together to El Cerro de la Muerte.

On a mountainside, three thousand meters above sea level, Caro had rounded a corner between two thorny bushes and had discovered a perfect overhung slab of granite, the kind of rock Diego and Jota could only dream of finding. She’d spent an entire day learning from her two mentors, being taught how to brush moss, how to find and remove loose rock, how to properly clean and prepare her first boulder. It took her another two days, days she spent camping in the bitter cold of high elevation, pelted by a persistent gale strong enough to break the mast of a ship, to figure out how to climb the tilted monolith. She would never forget that feeling, that final breath she contributed to the wind around her right as she pulled on the starting holds of her boulder problem. That sense of quiet execution, mind blank with exertion, total physical meditation moving her upwards. She couldn’t hear Diego and Jota cheering her on, couldn’t remember them doing so. But suddenly, and with another breath, she was on top of this rock she had found and prepared, on top of this thing that had challenged her so bitterly with edges so small and sharp they’d made her fingers bleed. And now to name the conquered, The Mark, her first contribution, now forever, to the Costa Rican climbing scene.

She was taken by it, ridden the current of potential permanence, the adventure of discovery. Immediately following that firs trip, Caro had taken to spending countless hours searching the Costa Rican countryside on Google Maps, hunting for boulders and sending every bit of potential she found to Diego and Jota for vetoing. Their lack of sensitivity was not about to take any of that away from her, the feeling she felt, that gut wrenching sense of anxiety that permeated the air around her, a reminder of Llorona, an entity that kept barging into her thoughts, was not about to scare her away. The driver’s door opened and Jota hopped in, making some joke about how disgustingly hot it was that day. The other two agreed as he pulled out of the parking space.

They’d been driving in silence for a few minutes when Jota finally spoke.

“You guys know if McDonald’s is making vegan chicken nuggets yet?” He asked.

Diego looked up at the rearview mirror, making eye contact with his friend.

“What the fuck?” He asked, laughing.

“You know, like tofu McNuggets or whatever.”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” said Caro.

“Cool, yeah, I didn’t think so.”

There was a pause. Then, Caro, unable to contain her curiosity.

“Why?”

“I was just wondering.”

“You’re not vegan, though.”

“Yeah but Marta is.”

“Tofu McNuggets would be disgusting,” said Caro.

“Agreed,” said Diego.

“She hasn’t asked you guys to go vegan? I sure as shit don’t want to be,” said Jota.

“Right.”

“So I said to her, you know, like, I’ll go vegan the day McDonald’s makes vegan nuggets.”

Diego and Caro laughed.

“Mart wants everyone to go vegan,” said Caro.

“Wait who the hell is Marta?” Asked Diego.

“She’s one of Caro’s friends, goes to the gym a bunch, ripped out of her mind, has one of those bull piercings.”

“Bull piercing?” Asked Caro.

“You know what I mean,” said Jota. “Brown hair, lots of freckles.”

“Oh shit yeah, I’ve seen her around.”

“So I realized just now I didn’t actually know if McDonald’s made them.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“So for a second I was like oh shit, what if, you know?”

“Yeah, no, dude. You’re good.”

“You guys are sure, right?”

Caro nodded, looked back at Diego, laughing quietly. 

“Is it cool if I roll down the window?” She asked.

Jota nodded as he turned off the AC and lowered his too.

“Yeah, I’m pretty positive that shit doesn’t exist,” she said louder, leaning her head back and letting the warm wind hit her face. Behind her, Diego nodded and looked down at his phone, typed something and leaned against the car door.

“Speaking of things that don’t exist,” Jota said. “What was up with that Llorona story?”

“I don’t know, but thanks to it we’ve got a lead,” said Diego.

“You think it was all bullshit?” Asked Jota, giving Caro’s shoulder a playful little nudge.

“I’m not freaked,” she said. “Marta was.”

“Honestly, though, kind of a pussy move, right?”

Diego raised an eyebrow.

“The fuck you guys talking about?”

“Oh right, we never said shit,” said Jota.

Caro looked back at Diego.

“We invited Marta, but she didn’t want to come,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah she grew up around here,” said Jota. “We thought she could come in handy.”

“That and I took her with me on my last few trips and she’s pretty cool,” said Caro.  

“She’s the one that FA’d that new climb in in Provi?” Asked Diego.

Caro nodded.

“She didn’t show because she was scared,” said Jota. “Said there was no way she’d come out here at night, that we were crazy to do that because we’d see La Llorona and she’d drown us.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah man, she got all creepy when we said we’d be looking for shit down the river.”

“You think if you grew up with those stories you wouldn’t be scared?” Caro asked.

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“If I was twelve, maybe. But come on, she’s old enough to know they’re bullshit stories.”

“And the guy at the bar?”

“Small town ignorant guy. Nice enough, but you know how people out here are with their religion and shit.”

Caro rolled her eyes and turned back to watch the road right as Jota slowed the car down and turned left off the pavement and on to a dirt road.

“This it?” She asked.

“Looks like it according to Google,” said Diego.

“And all hail the Google machine and its infinite wisdom,” said Jota. “Plus also, like, it’s not like she’s never been near a river at night, you know?”

“The man has a point,” said Diego. The truck swerved steadily, narrowly avoiding the porous dirt left so by years of neglect and near-constant mid-afternoon rainfall. It was the kind of backwoods road you’d expect from a country with no real transportation infrastructure, a patch of land pressed down by some property owner years ago and surrounded on all sides by trees and vegetation so thick the dirt on the ground was a pale skin sunless white. Jota stopped the car, a massive sloping and horrifically muddy downhill section giving him pause.

“Well, fuck,” said Diego. “This wasn’t on the map.”

“It never is,” said Jota. “Guess we’ve got a long approach on our hands.”

Caro grabbed Jota’s phone from the dash, scrolling around to look for the pin they were being guided to.

It wasn’t that far, just down the hill from where they’d stopped to the river, and from there maybe a couple of kilometers along the river’s edge to what seemed like a large grouping of boulders, right between the water and the blooming green of the jungle.

Jota reversed the car, leaving it leaning sideways off the side of the road half way inside a ditch where it wouldn’t bother any other potential passing cars, and the three climbers got out.

There was no discussion on what gear to unload from the car, that conversation was completely unnecessary, even for Caro’s slightly inexperienced person. They walked away from the car with only a backpack each, loaded with a little bit of food, water, a few wire brushes, climbing shoes, and chalk. Travelling light and fast, at least for now, was the idea. This first pass wasn’t about actually climbing anything. It was just a scouting mission, a preliminary in person search for potential stone to come back to. If they found anything they’d eventually head back to the truck for the heavy stuff, the large flood lights, the big wire brushes, the harnesses, ropes, cams and nuts that might be necessary to build anchors at the top of tall boulders in order to rappel from and give any moss a good cleaning. It would probably be hours, days even, before they’d even consider bringing out the crash pads, large mats to throw on the ground and fall on top of.

Caro lead the way, stopping for a second at the top of the hill to look at a pair of drawn out footprints in the mud, an anonymous slide not unlike the black rubber scars you often see pointing towards the edges of highways and roads, the occasional shining metal debris left over from an accident whose true consequences will likely never be known by any subsequent driver that passes through at speed. In a moment she was hit with a premonitory realization, that these same marks on a road always come with a certainty of direction that could not be replicated here in the mud, that the coming or going of this slide was impossible to really identify as an up or downhill. Had this mystery person been trying to stop themselves from being sucked down toward the river? Had they been trying to get back up to the top only to find their feet giving way beneath them to land right back where they had started? It was clear that there was only one possible conclusion to all of this, a realization that jumped at Caro the way a deer jumps into headlights and causes a swerving surge of adrenaline in any driver unlucky enough to encounter one. Whoever it was that had been here before them, whoever it was that had fallen down this hill, had not wanted to be there.

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Devoid Horror

Reventazón (Pt. 3)

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3 years ago · Mario Esquivel

But near Turrialba, just south of the town where the river opened up to form the Angostura Lagoon, someone had built a dam. Someone had narrowed the great river’s water, had turned its frothing foaming rabid white into a stream of muddy blue that now slithered lazily, broken, through the bottom of its own canyon wake. They had revealed rocks. Rocks that had spent their entire lives tormented by the water around them, that had been sanded down into smooth figures that littered the riverbanks.

That was what Diego hoped to find, huge eroded boulders with unlimited potential. That was what he, Caro, and Jota had driven hours to look for, and what they had spent the entire morning searching for. They’d run up and down the river banks, had waded cautiously into the water crossing from side to side bouldering hunting. Their morning had mostly ended in disappointment.

So they sat in a restaurant in the town on old sun-faded plastic chairs that made snapping and cracking noises under their weight. They drank beer. Diego watched the drops of condensation on his bottle glide and land on a stack of flimsy little paper napkins that by now had formed a grey mush. He was trying to not feel like his time had been wasted. So far they’d only found a single boulder that had any semblance of potential, a very normal thing to happen to anyone that spends time searching for climbable rock. But still, the potential he'd seen in his head for this place, the hours he’d spent staring at his computer monitor combing digitally rendered satellite landscapes and the bitter realization of how wrong he’d been about them, had left him feeling a little more defeated than usual.

And there was Jota, ever the optimist, waving his beer around as he spoke and spilling drops of foam here and there on the uneven cement floor.

“And plus I still need to figure out the electricity. And the toilet,” he was saying.

“You’re going for a toilet?” Asked Diego, looking up from the napkins.

“Maybe even a shower.”

“That’ll fit?” Asked Caro as she took a swig of her beer, surprised, eager. Jota nodded.  

“How?” Diego asked.

“It should. I mean, oh man, people do a double thing. Like a shower slash toilet.”

The two stared at Jota for a moment, confused.

“What?” Said Caro.

“Like you have a shower and then a toilet that you know, like, folds.”

“Inside?” Asked Diego.

“Yeah, like foldable.”

“A foldable toilet?”

“In the shower?” Asked Caro.

“Not exactly foldable, what’s the word?”

Another pause as Diego and Caro shared a look and a quick smile, a hint of puzzled laughter on their lips.

“Wouldn’t that be crazy expensive?” Asked Diego.

Jota shrugged and nodded. He took a big swig of foam and immediately slammed the beer down on the dusty white plastic table between them, excited. “Retractable!”

“Retractable toilet in the shower,” said Diego, nodding slowly and looking at the beer that had spilled from Jota’s bottle that had formed a large puddle in the middle of the table.

“I’d no idea that was a thing,” he said, looking up at his friend. “And this goes where?”

“Well in theory I’d put it right behind the driver’s seat.”

“That really the best spot?” Asked Diego.

“It’s the only spot.”

“Not exactly cheap.”

“You said that.”

“I think it all sounds sick,” said Caro.

“Yeah, no, I’m all for van conversions it’s just the toilet seems like a little much.”

“Well what else am I gonna do?”

“Shit in a bucket?” Asked Caro.

Diego and Jota laughed and nodded each taking another sip of their beer and shaking their heads at the idea. The two had met years earlier at one of the only climbing gyms in San José. It was a small warehouse with simple hand-crafted wooden walls and old pre-owned plastic holds bought from gyms in the US that would have otherwise been thrown out. But Diego fell in love with the grungy old training wall and, as a man who had made his living photographing the Costa Rican surfing scene, soon found himself doing the same for climbing. In a matter of months he was the gym’s official photographer and social media manager, completely abandoned all previous surf related pursuits, and began following Jota and a few other prominent Costa Rican climbers on various trips across the country.

It didn’t take long for him to transition from a purely passive entity, documenting the process that makes a boulder in the woods go from anonymous, to named, to climbed, to published in guidebooks and social media for others to climb too, into one of Costa Rica’s most well respected developers. The search for the new was addicting, the excitement of discovery impossible to ignore. It was an obsession he shared at a level that was only really matched by Jota, and which inevitably lead to the growth of a very close friendship.

But Costa Rican climbing is difficult to find and even harder to develop. Thick tropical jungle makes most satellite imaging, and even in-person searches almost impossible. That climbers use wire brushes to remove moss so as to reveal holds underneath is a terrifying prospect to local conservation efforts. That chalk leaves unsightly and unnatural marks on everything that’s touched threatens Costa Rica’s tourism economy. Entire areas of the country with world class potential are outlawed by most entities without prejudice, and climbers are left little but what scraps they can find here and there, usually along the banks of rivers.

Things were frustrating.

In fact the last few areas that had had any semblance of potential that Diego and Jota had explored had proven to be total busts, leaving Diego with a profoundly worrying sense that Jota had begun to believe that the entire country had somehow been climbed out, that all the rock that there was to be found had been found. This, coupled with the fact that his best friend was constantly talking about, and now actively planning on moving into a van and driving up to the USA on a perpetual climbing trip with Caro, had left him with a radical sense of urgency that was, as he had sat listening to Jota talk about the vehicle that would eventually be used to abandon him, being challenged by an equally radical sense of defeat.

“Plus there has to be more stuff down river,” Caro was saying. The conversation had shifted away from Jota’s van and back to the boulders they had yet to find. Caro’s excited words infectious, slowly eased Diego’s quiet protests and prolonged lack of enthusiasm into a glimmer of hope. But this was not a smile without a second edge, as Diego found himself equally frustrated by that same enthusiasm, a somewhat irrational duality compounded by his inability to understand why Caro herself was not doing anything to stop Jota’s apparent decision to leave.

“We should get down to the banks before it gets dark, more chance of seeing boulders,” said Diego.

“You have the pins, right?” Jota asked.

Diego nodded, tapping his phone screen and unlocking it. He showed the other two a dirt road he’d found that would lead them to a marker he’d left on Google Maps, a small grouping of rocks on the Reventazón banks that seemed tall enough to be climbable. It was difficult to tell if these boulders would be any good from a single two dimensional image. All they had to go off on were the small contours of shadow the pixels showed, but of course shadows could mean anything. They could mean a large rock without any discernible holds, could mean simply that the time of day the photo was taken was just so that the shadows were larger than normal, or could mean success and something worthy of a boulderer’s time.

“Oh yeah, I saw these,” said Caro. “They look like they might be something.” 

Jota nodded, finished up his beer, looked at the others’ nearly empty bottles and got up to get a third round, firmly ignoring Diego’s protests. They sat in silence for a moment as Caro looked through his phone, zooming in and out on the various markers Diego had left for himself.

“There’s a chance we find something. One of the girls at the gym is from here and she mentioned seeing tall rocks.”

Diego nodded, breathed out nervously, crossed his fingers, and reached for his phone back.

“I still think we need to leave soon.”

“You’re right, I don’t want to be out there after dark too much.”

“No?”

“I mean, if we have to, fine, but I don’t know, creepy night,” said Caro, taking a final swig of her beer and grimacing slightly at the still lukewarm bitterness of a beer that’s been opened too long.  

“You’ve never had a problem with that before,” said Diego.

Caro nodded.

“I know, I’m just nervous, I guess.”

“Nervous about what?” Asked Jota as he sat back down.

“Beer?” Asked Diego.

“Oh the guy said he’d bring them over,” Jota said. He turned to look at Caro and nodded for her to continue.

“Just the river.”

“Okay.”

“It’s creepy. You guys didn’t feel, like, watched earlier today?”

“I mean yeah, but that’s normal,” said Jota. “Like evolution, you know?”

“What?” Asked Diego.

“Like it’s a river, its where predators drink water,” he said leaning back in his chair as if having proven a point.  

“So?” Asked Caro.

“So we all evolved to get anxious and nervous around one. High alert. The ones that didn’t had the shit kicked out of them by like a saber toothed tiger or whatever.” 

“I guess that makes sense,” said Caro.

“Is this about something else?” Asked Jota.

“No, I just haven’t ever felt so paranoid before,” she said. “it’s stupid.”

“It’s the Llorona thing, right?”

“No,” said Caro.

“That’s a thing?” Asked Diego.

“It’s not,” said Jota.

An older man in shorts and a friendly beer belly peaking from a tattered polo shirt walked over to their table, three opened beers balanced on a tray.            

“It so is,” said Caro.

“She’s just freaked because some chick at the gym told her to be careful about this stupid—”

“Fucking stop, dude,” said Caro.

“Alright, fine, it’s a thing in like,” Jota paused as the waiter placed his beer in front of him. “Thanks. In like the sense that it’s a legend. No one’s ever seen it. It doesn’t exist.”

“Then why all the stories?”

“Everyone’s read the Bible, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“I’ve seen her.”

The three looked up. The old man was standing, arms crossed low over his stomach, a serious look on his face.

“You three out here looking for her?” He asked.

“No,” said Diego. “We’re here for vacation and we think one of our friends decided not to come because she was scared she’d see her.”

The old man nodded.

“You saw her?” Asked Jota, but the old man only raised an eyebrow and looked down at the floor. “Was she crying?”

Jota immediately caught a glance from Caro, who gave him a “no shit” sort of look that made him snicker and nod.

“She was,” said the old man. “I was younger. Maybe about your age. It doesn’t exist anymore because of the dam, but there was a place down the Reventazón, maybe a couple of kilometers down the river from here, where the water was blocked by these giant rocks. It’d form a perfect little pool with just enough current that the water wouldn’t go bad.”

“Rocks?” Asked Diego.

“Yes. Four or five of them, so big they stopped the water. Used to be the water was fast, you know? Formed a perfect pool.”

Diego nodded. The old man continued speaking.

“We’d go party there at night.”

“Bet you got a lot of ladies there, huh,” said Jota. The old man laughed. Caro shook her head and sighed.

“What happened when you saw her?” She asked.

The old man’s expression changed suddenly, and he got close to the three, speaking softly.

“You know how the story goes, she killed her child, regretted immediately. Cursed to look for the soul she murdered forever on the banks of all the rivers of the world. She’ll never find a thing, and she will always cry. That’s what we heard. It was a small group of us. We’d taken some beers down to that pool and had almost finished them. Dead at night, too. Back then you didn’t need lights because there weren’t any. Not in this town, at least. We’d made a small fire so we could dry ourselves up when we got out of the water. I was sitting next to it, talking to a girl I’d been dating when the fire went out. Big fire, too big to just blow out with any wind. But it turned off like that,” he said and snapped.

“Then what?”

“It got cold. This place doesn’t get cold like that. Not so suddenly. You could feel the heat getting sucked out of the air by the water. Then we heard her. My friend Tomás heard her first. It was quiet, coming from around the bend. Crying. It got louder and louder. The worst sort of crying you could imagine. I’d never felt that sort of pain before, haven’t felt anything like that since. Don’t think I ever will. We sat there near our pool, saw a woman come around the bend, on the other side of the river. We held our breath as she passed us crying. Then she was gone.”

The three of them were quiet for a moment, taking in the story as the old man stood straight again. Jota took a swig of his beer, then looked at the old man.

“How’d you hear her?” He asked. The old man looked at him, confused. Jota looked at Diego with a smile, triumphant.

“It’s the Reventazón at full strength, right?”

“Yeah,” the old man said.

“It’s loud.”

Caro shook her head. The old man agreed.

“Very loud.”

“Yes.”

“So how’d you hear her over the sound of the water? Especially if she was on the other side of the river?”

The old man paused and nodded, then sighed.    

“Tomás and I have been asking ourselves that exact same question for over fifty years, kid,” he said and walked away.

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Devoid Horror

Reventazón (Pt. 2)

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3 years ago · Mario Esquivel