La Bruja Que Transformaba A Personas En Animales Historias De Terror - REDE

WEBVTT

1
00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:11.640
Grandma' s memories. My grandmother
grew up in a village after my grandfather

2
00:00:11.679 --> 00:00:16.760
died. He began to allow himself
to do things he could never do in

3
00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:21.440
his village because he was badly seen
and things he could never do while my

4
00:00:21.559 --> 00:00:23.640
grandfather was alive, because he was
at risk of being beaten by him.

5
00:00:24.239 --> 00:00:28.239
One of those things he started doing
after my grandfather died was that he liked

6
00:00:28.239 --> 00:00:33.359
to drink. He didn' t
get drunk even close, but he was

7
00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:36.479
pleased with a bottle. I didn' t drink beer, just liquor.

8
00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:41.159
And when he was in the mood, because of the liquor, he liked

9
00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:43.920
to tell stories about when he lived
in that town. Before he got married,

10
00:00:44.799 --> 00:00:47.399
he never told us the name of
the place where he was born and

11
00:00:47.399 --> 00:00:52.560
grew up. I just called it
the Rascuache people. And I want to

12
00:00:52.679 --> 00:00:56.200
tell you something my grandmother used to
say. In that town, my grandmother

13
00:00:56.399 --> 00:01:00.359
lived with her parents and brothers.
As she was the oldest, her domestic

14
00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:03.920
chores were more than those of others. He was in charge of shopping,

15
00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:10.040
grinding corn and bringing water in the
afternoons. I had to take care of

16
00:01:10.040 --> 00:01:14.519
my great- grandmother' s animals. All this before dark. In those

17
00:01:14.640 --> 00:01:19.319
days there was no electricity and the
surroundings were covered with pure weeds. The

18
00:01:19.400 --> 00:01:25.640
only light that came from the moon. Besides, my great- grandmother had

19
00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:29.040
one more rule. He asked everyone
to go to sleep from eight o'

20
00:01:29.079 --> 00:01:33.319
clock in the night because, as
the night progressed, evil became present.

21
00:01:34.959 --> 00:01:40.079
My great- grandmother told my grandmother
that when it was near the sunset she

22
00:01:40.120 --> 00:01:44.280
would never approach the house of a
lady who, according to everyone, was

23
00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:49.439
a witch, so obviously my great- grandmother did not want any of her

24
00:01:49.480 --> 00:01:53.519
children to approach that house. It
was said that this woman liked to become

25
00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:57.959
a black monkey at night and walk
in the trees, sneaking into the houses

26
00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:04.400
and stealing food. For that reason, when the morning came, many people

27
00:02:04.439 --> 00:02:08.400
discovered that they no longer had food
or that it was rotten along with traces

28
00:02:08.439 --> 00:02:13.919
of monkey fur. It was also
mentioned that at night people could see many

29
00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:17.680
people coming in from the mountain and
animals much bigger than they should leave this

30
00:02:19.159 --> 00:02:23.680
woman’ s house. His black
magic was said to have turned people into

31
00:02:23.719 --> 00:02:30.919
animals. Shortly afterwards they became known
as the Nahuales of the Mount. In

32
00:02:30.919 --> 00:02:35.639
addition, among the neighbors it was
rumored that they had already seen her practicing

33
00:02:35.639 --> 00:02:40.360
dark arts. These rumors and experiences
of the villagers aroused great curiosity in my

34
00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:46.000
grandmother. One morning, like any
other day, my grandmother went to a

35
00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:51.439
store to buy what she had been
ordered. That day he couldn' t

36
00:02:51.479 --> 00:02:54.280
stop thinking about everything they said about
the so- called witch. Like it

37
00:02:54.319 --> 00:02:59.840
' s a very strange coincidence.
She found herself face to face with that

38
00:03:00.439 --> 00:03:02.840
woman it was as if she had
summoned her. Thinking so much about her,

39
00:03:04.520 --> 00:03:07.000
the woman talked to my grandmother,
told her she needed a favor,

40
00:03:07.439 --> 00:03:10.520
that she had to do something,
but since she was an older woman,

41
00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:15.240
she couldn' t do it,
so she asked my grandmother to help her.

42
00:03:15.879 --> 00:03:20.800
My grandmother told her she had to
leave with the excuse that my great

43
00:03:21.599 --> 00:03:24.719
- grandmother would scold her for taking
so long to bring things in. Then

44
00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:30.159
the woman told her that if I
helped her, I would give her something,

45
00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:34.599
in return, a bag of meat, big enough for the whole family

46
00:03:35.199 --> 00:03:38.400
to eat without knowing where. My
grandmother saw the woman take out a bag

47
00:03:38.439 --> 00:03:43.240
of meat. It was strange,
because my grandmother swears that bag wasn'

48
00:03:43.319 --> 00:03:47.280
t there. A second before,
back then and especially in the village where

49
00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:53.120
my grandmother lived, being able to
eat meat was a luxury that very few

50
00:03:53.199 --> 00:03:58.479
people could afford. My grandmother agreed
to help her. What the woman wanted

51
00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:03.560
was nothing unusual. In fact,
it was something that any older person would

52
00:04:03.560 --> 00:04:08.680
have asked for. The woman needed
a box that she had on top of

53
00:04:08.719 --> 00:04:13.840
a shelf. My grandmother had to
put a bucket on top of a chair

54
00:04:13.879 --> 00:04:17.519
and stand on it to reach that
box. It wasn' t a box

55
00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:23.560
with symbols or made of bones.
It was an ordinary box. As soon

56
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:27.560
as my grandmother put down that box, the woman gave him the bag with

57
00:04:27.639 --> 00:04:30.959
the three kilograms of meat. Upon
returning home, as expected, they asked

58
00:04:30.959 --> 00:04:36.120
him where he got so much meat. He scaredly told them everything that had

59
00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:43.000
happened. My great- grandmother was
very angry, but also worried, so

60
00:04:43.079 --> 00:04:46.439
she asked my grandmother to go to
that woman' s house and return her

61
00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:51.360
meat. My grandmother obeyed. He
went to the house. However, the

62
00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:56.879
more times he knocked on the door, he received no reply, he approached

63
00:04:56.879 --> 00:05:00.879
the window to look inside and that' s when he saw that the woman

64
00:05:00.920 --> 00:05:08.079
had on her table a lot of
herbs and bones, wooden utensils and pumpkins.

65
00:05:08.120 --> 00:05:12.959
In addition, there were some ugly- looking wooden figures and next to

66
00:05:13.160 --> 00:05:16.319
them was a black book. My
grandmother was very frightened what she saw,

67
00:05:16.639 --> 00:05:21.560
she had paralyzed her, she couldn' t stop looking out the window and,

68
00:05:21.839 --> 00:05:26.920
as if she had woken up from
a trance, she managed to control

69
00:05:26.920 --> 00:05:30.000
herself and leave. When he arrived
at my great- grandmother' s house,

70
00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:34.480
he explained that no one had answered
him and could not leave the meat

71
00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:36.399
because he had not dared to enter
because of what he had seen inside.

72
00:05:38.920 --> 00:05:43.519
In the end, it was my
great- grandfather who decided that it would

73
00:05:43.560 --> 00:05:47.399
be best to throw the meat in
the yard, making sure the animals didn

74
00:05:47.399 --> 00:05:49.360
' t eat it for a while. Then, when they finished eating,

75
00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:54.959
my grandmother went for firewood to the
yard to light the fire and start making

76
00:05:55.079 --> 00:05:59.480
tortillas for my great- grandfather.
As he collected the wood, he sensed

77
00:05:59.560 --> 00:06:03.000
a foul smell and as he approached
to see where that smell came from,

78
00:06:03.519 --> 00:06:06.600
he realized that it was the flesh
they had given them. A couple of

79
00:06:06.680 --> 00:06:12.680
hours earlier, he saw with horror
that the meat was infested with worms and

80
00:06:13.199 --> 00:06:16.720
rotten as if it had been there
for days. Days after the incident,

81
00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:21.879
my great- grandmother decided that it
would be better for my grandmother to stay

82
00:06:21.959 --> 00:06:27.360
and take care of her brothers and
that she would now be in charge of

83
00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:30.560
sending them out. It wasn'
t long before one day my great-

84
00:06:30.360 --> 00:06:35.079
grandmother had to go grind the corn. It would take a little longer to

85
00:06:35.160 --> 00:06:41.680
get home, so she asked my
grandmother to take precautions, take care of

86
00:06:41.720 --> 00:06:46.600
the others and not let them play
in the yard while she wasn' t

87
00:06:46.680 --> 00:06:51.519
home. I' d be back
before lunch, but the destination had other

88
00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:55.839
plans and it didn' t come
at the agreed time. My grandmother tried

89
00:06:55.879 --> 00:07:00.959
to distract her brothers and make them
some food. While waiting, my grandmother

90
00:07:00.079 --> 00:07:05.279
preferred to feed all her brothers,
leaving herself without food, as there was

91
00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:12.639
not much more to prepare. So
when her brothers finished eating, she hung

92
00:07:12.680 --> 00:07:17.600
up some hammocks to sleep, she
would stay awake watching over them until her

93
00:07:17.720 --> 00:07:24.480
mom arrived. She had already taken
longer than expected. As the hours passed,

94
00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:30.079
she began to feel very hungry.
That' s when someone knocked on

95
00:07:30.079 --> 00:07:32.879
the door. My grandmother approached and
checked before opening looking through a hole in

96
00:07:32.920 --> 00:07:38.040
the old door, she saw that
she was a woman with a white huipil

97
00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:43.120
and a rebrow carrying a bucket of
freshly cooked corn that to my grandmother'

98
00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:47.360
s eyes and hunger seemed very appetizing. He opened the door to buy something.

99
00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:53.079
The woman gave him three corn cobs
in a bag and told him it

100
00:07:53.199 --> 00:07:57.319
was nothing, that it was a
gift to my great- grandmother. My

101
00:07:57.360 --> 00:08:01.319
grandmother took the corn and thanked him
the woman went on her way. I

102
00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:05.399
had never seen that woman in the
village, but she did not think much

103
00:08:05.519 --> 00:08:11.199
about it because she was very hungry
and could not resist the temptation to eat

104
00:08:11.279 --> 00:08:16.040
a corn cob. He said they
also smelled that they opened his appetite even

105
00:08:16.519 --> 00:08:20.560
more and before he knew it he
had finished them all. Finally, when

106
00:08:20.639 --> 00:08:26.839
my great- grandmother came home,
she found my grandmother feeling bad. He

107
00:08:26.879 --> 00:08:31.039
complained of a very severe pain in
his stomach and head. The days passed

108
00:08:31.200 --> 00:08:37.000
and my grandmother was still not recovering
as expected. She felt a lot of

109
00:08:37.039 --> 00:08:41.600
pressure on her head, she looked
pale and didn' t want to eat

110
00:08:41.720 --> 00:08:43.720
this, along with starting to have
a fever. At night, she approached

111
00:08:43.759 --> 00:08:46.600
my great- grandmother and told her
that she felt her head very strange.

112
00:08:48.159 --> 00:08:52.080
My great- grandmother touched her and, in addition to feeling the fever,

113
00:08:52.639 --> 00:08:56.320
noticed a horrible surprise. There were
worms in my grandmother' s curly hair.

114
00:08:56.039 --> 00:09:01.440
This was not possible because the night
before he had given her a bath

115
00:09:01.559 --> 00:09:05.960
to lower the fever and had her
hair combed. My great- grandmother began

116
00:09:05.960 --> 00:09:11.320
questioning my grandmother by asking her if
she hadn' t gone out into the

117
00:09:11.399 --> 00:09:16.399
yard and accidentally crawled between herbs and
trees, looking for a logical explanation for

118
00:09:16.399 --> 00:09:20.279
what was happening. But my grandmother, crying, said no. He said

119
00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:26.600
he felt a lot of pressure and
headache. She asked him if he had

120
00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:30.840
eaten anything outside the house. And
that' s when he told her about

121
00:09:30.879 --> 00:09:35.720
the woman who spent selling corn the
afternoon she had gone to grind. My

122
00:09:35.799 --> 00:09:39.559
great- grandmother was about to scold
her when my grandmother ran into the yard

123
00:09:39.559 --> 00:09:45.080
and threw up there, but what
came out of her throat was like ten

124
00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:48.480
worms, not too long, but
pretty fat. At that moment a hen

125
00:09:48.600 --> 00:09:56.000
approached and began to eat the worms. When the chicken finished eating. The

126
00:09:56.120 --> 00:10:01.440
last worm, for some reason,
ran into the forest and as it disappeared

127
00:10:01.480 --> 00:10:05.360
into the trees, malevolent laughter was
heard. They say there are people who

128
00:10:05.399 --> 00:10:13.759
saw the chicken run by them and
saw the chicken laughing that night. My

129
00:10:13.799 --> 00:10:20.480
grandmother could not sleep yet felt that
strange feeling at the top of her head

130
00:10:20.519 --> 00:10:24.799
and, moreover, that she washed
and brushed her teeth, she could not

131
00:10:24.840 --> 00:10:30.840
get rid of the unpleasant taste in
her mouth. He stayed awake for a

132
00:10:30.919 --> 00:10:35.399
while and that' s when he
heard voices outside the house, as if

133
00:10:35.399 --> 00:10:39.759
someone were passing by. Out of
curiosity, he looked through the same hole

134
00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:45.000
in the door where he had seen
the woman who gave him the corn and

135
00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:48.120
saw that there were three people heading
to the woman' s house of which

136
00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:52.000
they said she was a witch.
My grandmother waited a little longer because she

137
00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:56.639
wanted to confirm what they were saying
about people going with that woman. So,

138
00:10:56.759 --> 00:11:01.039
after an hour, my grandmother p
are throwing something that I would never

139
00:11:01.159 --> 00:11:03.720
forget, and every time my grandmother
came to this part of the story,

140
00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:09.799
we all noticed that I felt a
terrible fear. My grandmother heard sounds of

141
00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:15.960
very strong animals that apparently came from
that woman' s house. He looked

142
00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:20.759
through the door hole again and saw
three unusually large pigs, returning along the

143
00:11:20.799 --> 00:11:28.600
way those three people had passed a
while ago. The pigs were colossal in

144
00:11:28.639 --> 00:11:33.759
size and their eyes shone like fire
in the light of the moon. Immediately,

145
00:11:33.080 --> 00:11:39.600
my grandmother understood that these were not
ordinary animals. With a lot of

146
00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:41.759
fear and trying not to make any
noise, he returned to his hammock.

147
00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:46.480
However, he began to hear noises
outside the house, as if those animals

148
00:11:46.559 --> 00:11:52.279
were approaching and a few seconds later
began scratching the door with their hoofs,

149
00:11:52.519 --> 00:11:58.559
as well as hitting it with their
snouts. He completely covered himself with the

150
00:11:58.519 --> 00:12:03.840
blanket and did try to pray as
best he could. I didn' t

151
00:12:03.840 --> 00:12:07.840
know how to pray. He only
repeated the words our father several times as

152
00:12:07.840 --> 00:12:13.440
he clung to the blanket. When
finally, after a while, those animals

153
00:12:13.559 --> 00:12:18.840
apparently got bored and left. My
grandmother could have fallen asleep. Several minutes

154
00:12:18.879 --> 00:12:24.720
later, when he woke up in
daylight, he rose up quickly to look

155
00:12:24.759 --> 00:12:28.559
outside. It was then that he
found the door, all chipped up by

156
00:12:28.639 --> 00:12:33.159
the blows he had received. There
were pig tracks everywhere. The door was

157
00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:37.799
already old. If someone had wanted
to beat it down, it would easily

158
00:12:37.799 --> 00:12:43.639
have fallen. Maybe. This had
been an intimidation of that woman because somehow

159
00:12:43.679 --> 00:12:50.159
she must have realized that my grandmother
had been snooping through the night. A

160
00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:54.080
little later, my grandmother began to
feel a little better enough to be able

161
00:12:54.120 --> 00:12:58.799
to help with minor chores in the
house. After lunch, my mother either

162
00:12:58.879 --> 00:13:03.879
went out and found that all the
neighbors were complaining. What the neighbors said

163
00:13:03.960 --> 00:13:09.519
was that at night they had noticed
that huge pigs had come in to wreak

164
00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:16.080
havoc on the courtyard of their homes, knocking on the doors scratching them as

165
00:13:16.159 --> 00:13:18.440
if they wanted to come in and
grunt. What caught everyone' s attention

166
00:13:18.559 --> 00:13:22.360
was that the only one who didn' t complain was the so- called

167
00:13:22.360 --> 00:13:26.200
witch. So the days passed and
it was said that the pigs that were

168
00:13:26.279 --> 00:13:31.000
seen at night and in the forest
had also been seen as a group of

169
00:13:31.039 --> 00:13:35.799
owls flying from house to house.
There was talk of a black rooster that

170
00:13:35.840 --> 00:13:41.759
was strangely larger than normal and in
the afternoons on top of the trees,

171
00:13:41.039 --> 00:13:48.120
he watched people pass by never heard
him sing and to finish off there were

172
00:13:48.159 --> 00:13:54.000
sightings of a black monkey entering the
houses at night to steal food. The

173
00:13:54.039 --> 00:13:58.919
neighbor even managed to see him at
the foot of her son' s bed,

174
00:13:58.159 --> 00:14:03.639
the monkey caressing his head while he
slept. The people of the village

175
00:14:03.679 --> 00:14:07.559
were tired of this, so they
decided to act against what they feared so

176
00:14:07.559 --> 00:14:13.399
much. Everyone was absolutely certain that
this woman was behind what was happening,

177
00:14:13.559 --> 00:14:20.360
because she was a witch, so
the plan was to kill her. One

178
00:14:20.440 --> 00:14:24.480
night a trap was set up where
she would be caught. They saw the

179
00:14:24.559 --> 00:14:28.679
black monkey walk into the courtyard of
a house and just as he was about

180
00:14:28.759 --> 00:14:33.279
to eat, they went after her
with rifles and dogs. She quickly climbed

181
00:14:33.360 --> 00:14:39.240
into the trees trying to disappear into
darkness, but they continued to chase her.

182
00:14:39.759 --> 00:14:43.759
At one point, while trying to
hang on a branch, a man

183
00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:48.440
shot him, but failed to impact
the branch. Instead, breaking it.

184
00:14:50.200 --> 00:14:54.879
This caused him to fall abruptly and
by hitting the ground, the monkey became

185
00:14:54.919 --> 00:15:00.360
the woman. The dogs pounced on
her by tearing pieces of meat out of

186
00:15:00.360 --> 00:15:05.879
her. The fall from that height
and the injuries caused by the dogs resulted

187
00:15:05.919 --> 00:15:11.639
in his death. Right at dawn. The news quickly spread that the witch

188
00:15:11.720 --> 00:15:16.600
was dead. Neighbors, people from
other parts of the village and even from

189
00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:22.440
faraway villages came to see her and
among them my great- grandmother wanted to

190
00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:28.159
see for herself there on the ground
lay an old woman with half her face,

191
00:15:28.399 --> 00:15:33.159
with black hair. His arms,
legs, and thighs had bites that

192
00:15:33.279 --> 00:15:39.360
were still dripping blood. My great- grandmother confirmed it was her that night.

193
00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:43.679
After a long time, the appearances
of these strange animals ceased, and

194
00:15:43.840 --> 00:15:48.039
that' s what my grandmother tells
us every time liquor brings back memories of

195
00:15:48.120 --> 00:16:03.600
her childhood. The witch of the
tree. A long time ago something happened

196
00:16:03.639 --> 00:16:08.519
to me that I rarely tell and
I prefer to omit many details about myself,

197
00:16:10.399 --> 00:16:15.519
because if someone recognizes me and listens
to this story, I might feel

198
00:16:15.559 --> 00:16:18.039
ashamed, because sometimes they don'
t believe me without giving a lot of

199
00:16:18.039 --> 00:16:22.600
introduction or context. I' ll
go straight to the moment it all started.

200
00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:26.559
It was around seven in the morning. When I went out to my

201
00:16:26.639 --> 00:16:32.279
car with the keys in my hand, I was opening the car door when

202
00:16:32.360 --> 00:16:37.759
something caught my attention was just a
white flash. I looked up from the

203
00:16:37.759 --> 00:16:41.480
tree, narrowing my eyes to try
to distinguish what it was at that time.

204
00:16:41.879 --> 00:16:45.679
I didn' t worry too much. I was just curious. Leve

205
00:16:47.279 --> 00:16:51.879
checked my watch to make sure I
wasn' t late and I walked down

206
00:16:51.879 --> 00:16:55.879
the street. The tree was across
the street, in front of my house,

207
00:16:56.080 --> 00:17:00.960
in a small dead end. I
crossed the street and stayed on the

208
00:17:00.039 --> 00:17:06.000
sidewalk for a moment protecting my eyes
from the sun through the dense branches and

209
00:17:06.039 --> 00:17:10.319
brown leaves. I couldn' t
see well. As I looked at the

210
00:17:10.319 --> 00:17:15.200
tree, I immediately felt a feeling
of discomfort that I could not explain,

211
00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:19.680
but it was strong enough to decide
to forget the tree and go back to

212
00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:25.079
my car. When I turned my
back on the tree, I felt an

213
00:17:25.119 --> 00:17:29.640
intense desire to run, almost like
when I was a child, convinced that

214
00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:33.160
something followed me I tried to ignore
that feeling just when I got to my

215
00:17:33.160 --> 00:17:37.279
entrance. A sound broke the calm
of dawn sharp and clear, as if

216
00:17:37.359 --> 00:17:41.240
someone were trying to get my attention. I stopped dry without turning. I

217
00:17:41.279 --> 00:17:48.039
knew the sound came from the tree
I ran into my car trying to insert

218
00:17:48.079 --> 00:17:52.160
the key into the lock before I
could lock the door and lock it.

219
00:17:52.640 --> 00:17:59.000
I thought I heard another sound,
like someone was laughing that night I didn

220
00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:02.559
' t sleep well. Mira Mira
looked or continually through my window, imagining

221
00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:07.039
seeing the tree rocking in the breeze
and something that looked pale skin, moving

222
00:18:07.079 --> 00:18:12.400
with it, as if greeting me
at dawn the next day. I dressed

223
00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:18.119
quickly and crossed the street hoping that
none of my neighbors would see me as

224
00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:22.759
part of me. He rebuked himself
for being irrational, but he kept going.

225
00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:26.880
I heard the birds singing and the
slight noise of traffic. In the

226
00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:30.200
distance, I hugged myself with my
jacket as the cold breeze hit me.

227
00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:36.640
I reached the base of the tree
and looked up. The tree had lost

228
00:18:36.680 --> 00:18:40.559
most of its foliage to the cold, but the many decomposing leaves made it

229
00:18:40.599 --> 00:18:48.279
look more full. Hiding the object
well, I positioned myself just below the

230
00:18:48.359 --> 00:18:52.079
thing and then saw it for the
first time. I' m not sure

231
00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:57.400
I expected to find it, but
it definitely wasn' t that. A

232
00:18:57.480 --> 00:19:03.599
woman was sitting on a thick branch
about fifty feet off the ground. I

233
00:19:03.640 --> 00:19:08.119
stared at her trying to find some
sense in her presence. There he was

234
00:19:08.200 --> 00:19:14.960
looking straight forward, without blinking and
without moving, wearing what seemed to be

235
00:19:15.039 --> 00:19:18.480
a sack, but it could have
been the remains of an old, dirty

236
00:19:18.480 --> 00:19:23.880
dress. His thin legs hung from
the branch. For a moment I thought

237
00:19:23.920 --> 00:19:29.319
she was dead, but I could
see her movements, even if they were

238
00:19:29.319 --> 00:19:33.240
slight. I looked around on the
floor looking for a ladder or some way

239
00:19:33.400 --> 00:19:38.799
the woman might have climbed the tree, but I found nothing. I wasn

240
00:19:38.880 --> 00:19:42.599
' t sure how the woman got
to the tree. It was not a

241
00:19:42.680 --> 00:19:49.279
typical tree to climb was too wide
and the reachable branches were too thin and

242
00:19:49.319 --> 00:19:56.799
very separate. Climbing would be almost
impossible for most people. The more I

243
00:19:56.839 --> 00:20:00.920
thought about it, the more I
began to believe that it must be a

244
00:20:00.079 --> 00:20:03.519
kind of joke, though very strange. I talked to the woman to ask

245
00:20:03.599 --> 00:20:07.200
her if she was okay or needed
help. To get down. If she

246
00:20:07.240 --> 00:20:12.319
listened to me, she showed no
sign and kept looking forward without expression.

247
00:20:12.880 --> 00:20:18.279
I must have been feeling really cold. Given the temperature. The dress I

248
00:20:18.359 --> 00:20:22.119
was wearing couldn' t offer you
any heat. A few seconds passed,

249
00:20:22.359 --> 00:20:26.680
but the woman was still not responding. I was about to call her back,

250
00:20:26.920 --> 00:20:30.920
but before I could, the woman
made a noise, a strange sound,

251
00:20:32.440 --> 00:20:37.319
snoring and gasping. He floated towards
me, increasing in volume with every

252
00:20:37.400 --> 00:20:41.400
second that passed. It took me
a minute to realize what it was and,

253
00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:45.960
for some reason, I felt a
chill. She was laughing I took

254
00:20:45.119 --> 00:20:49.640
a step away from the tree my
instincts, screaming at me to run.

255
00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:56.039
I had no explanation for this instant
sense of terror. All I knew was

256
00:20:56.359 --> 00:21:00.559
that something was terribly wrong with her. Before I could move my feet.

257
00:21:02.160 --> 00:21:06.519
The woman' s head moved,
began to lean over the branch on which

258
00:21:06.519 --> 00:21:12.279
her face was indwelling, leaning down
very slowly. Until he was looking at

259
00:21:12.279 --> 00:21:17.960
me. He bowed so much that
he was sure he would fall. At

260
00:21:18.039 --> 00:21:22.000
first, his face was blank without
any emotion, but that changed in the

261
00:21:22.039 --> 00:21:27.279
blink of an eye. Her lips
stretched in a horrible smile that somehow occupied

262
00:21:27.279 --> 00:21:36.559
most of her face. I was
breathing in those shallow gasps that became almost

263
00:21:36.640 --> 00:21:41.319
deafening. His hands clung to the
branches so hard that he could hear how

264
00:21:41.319 --> 00:21:48.440
the bark broke and see pieces falling
to the ground where I stood. We

265
00:21:48.480 --> 00:21:52.480
both looked at each other for a
long time, before he suddenly opened his

266
00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:57.240
mouth so wide that I thought his
jaw could break. Allowing a very uncomfortable,

267
00:21:57.680 --> 00:22:03.519
deep and snoring noise to escape.
I ran home and ran through the

268
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:08.400
front door in panic, closing it
behind me and putting both locks. Even

269
00:22:08.559 --> 00:22:12.720
that didn' t seem to be
enough. I waited there with both hands

270
00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:18.480
at the door, waiting for the
sound of a body hitting her, but

271
00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:21.960
she didn' t make it.
When I finally got over it, I

272
00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:26.519
risked a look through my front door
window, but fortunately I didn' t

273
00:22:26.519 --> 00:22:30.559
see it. I didn' t
go to work that day as dumb as

274
00:22:30.559 --> 00:22:36.519
it sounds. I was afraid,
afraid to leave my house, afraid to

275
00:22:36.519 --> 00:22:40.880
hear that laughter and watch her look
at me through the branches by mid-

276
00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:45.440
afternoon, that fear began to diminish
and I began to feel angry. Whether

277
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:52.160
this was a weird joke or something
completely different. It didn' t make

278
00:22:52.279 --> 00:22:56.680
any difference to me. I was
angry that I was terrified to leave my

279
00:22:56.759 --> 00:23:00.079
own house, I went to bed
furious with plans to hira i directly there

280
00:23:00.200 --> 00:23:06.160
in the morning to talk to that
lady. If I was still there,

281
00:23:06.640 --> 00:23:08.519
I didn' t sleep well.
That night, my eyes kept going to

282
00:23:08.640 --> 00:23:15.279
the window, looking at the darkness
beyond the glass. I couldn' t

283
00:23:15.279 --> 00:23:18.319
help but imagine the woman in the
tree with her dirty face pressed against him.

284
00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:25.200
I woke up the next morning,
before my alarm sounded and I even

285
00:23:25.319 --> 00:23:30.880
beat the sun. I dressed quickly
and drank my coffee while waiting for the

286
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:36.240
sun to come out completely by the
time I did all my courage the night

287
00:23:36.480 --> 00:23:41.079
before seemed to fade I took a
look through the window of the living room,

288
00:23:41.559 --> 00:23:45.519
but if the lady was still there
I could not see her. I

289
00:23:45.599 --> 00:23:49.400
ignored my trembling hand. As I
opened the door and crossed the street,

290
00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:55.839
the branches rocked in the icy wind
that pricked my face and slipped down my

291
00:23:55.920 --> 00:24:00.680
jacket. I stayed a few meters
from the base of the tree front and

292
00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:04.079
looked up. I didn' t
see her in it, and I let

293
00:24:04.079 --> 00:24:08.160
myself relax a little bit. I
was hoping that cold temperatures would have made

294
00:24:08.240 --> 00:24:14.000
her find a new place I took
a step closer, but that was all

295
00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:18.880
I got to, as the silence
was interrupted by a loud grunt coming right

296
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:23.400
above me. Before I could look
up, I heard something colliding through the

297
00:24:23.480 --> 00:24:29.480
branches and hitting the ground with a
wet noise, landing right in front of

298
00:24:29.559 --> 00:24:34.319
me a dead squirrel lay at my
feet his coat soaked in blood and pieces

299
00:24:34.519 --> 00:24:40.559
of meat. It seemed to be
empty inside, as far as I could

300
00:24:41.039 --> 00:24:47.039
see, except for some bones that
helped maintain its shape. Even the eyes

301
00:24:47.160 --> 00:24:52.200
seemed to be absent. I stared
frozen at the devoured corpse in front of

302
00:24:52.200 --> 00:24:56.720
me. Then I heard the woman' s laugh. I ran home without

303
00:24:56.759 --> 00:25:00.920
looking up, knowing that I would
see his face in bloodied r smiling back

304
00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:07.200
at me. The next day it
was Saturday and I promised to do something

305
00:25:07.240 --> 00:25:14.119
about the lady in the tree I
was clearly suffering from a mental illness and

306
00:25:14.160 --> 00:25:18.000
needed professional help. I did the
only thing I could think of and called

307
00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:22.279
the police and explained the situation to
them. The dispatcher assured me that they

308
00:25:22.319 --> 00:25:26.880
would make sure that the woman received
the help she needed. I stood by

309
00:25:26.920 --> 00:25:33.240
the door looking occasionally through the blinds. The officers arrived about twenty minutes later

310
00:25:33.319 --> 00:25:38.559
and from the small window above my
door, I saw them walking directly towards

311
00:25:38.680 --> 00:25:45.559
the tree. They stood directly below
and looked up. For a long time

312
00:25:45.799 --> 00:25:51.839
they just stared at each other as
if they were confused, so they saw

313
00:25:51.880 --> 00:25:56.160
even from the other side of the
street. I could see how their expressions

314
00:25:56.160 --> 00:26:02.000
changed. Moving from a vague curiosity
to completely in still. They looked briefly

315
00:26:02.079 --> 00:26:06.319
at each other concerned before the officer
began talking to the woman in the tree,

316
00:26:06.720 --> 00:26:11.400
moving uncomfortably while doing so spoke for
a few minutes and then the officers

317
00:26:11.480 --> 00:26:19.519
' uneasy expressions changed again to one
of horror. The cops began to walk

318
00:26:19.559 --> 00:26:23.839
back little by little. Once they
reached the street, they both stopped and

319
00:26:23.880 --> 00:26:30.599
looked up at the tree, without
saying a word. Suddenly there was a

320
00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:36.000
flash of movement from above in the
tree, causing the branches to tremble violently

321
00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:41.480
in the place where I knew the
woman was sitting. The officers turned and

322
00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:48.359
headed to his car across the street, with faces marked by fear. I

323
00:26:48.400 --> 00:26:52.480
unlocked the door and ran out trying
to reach them. They watched me and

324
00:26:52.559 --> 00:26:56.480
for a moment I thought they'
d leave. I noticed they wanted to

325
00:26:56.480 --> 00:26:59.960
do it. Seeing they weren'
t moving, I got close. Running

326
00:27:00.200 --> 00:27:03.200
into his vehicle, I noticed how
pale they were with sweat on their foreheads.

327
00:27:03.279 --> 00:27:08.519
Despite the cold, I claimed that
it was I who had called and

328
00:27:08.599 --> 00:27:12.640
asked if they would help the person
who was in trouble. The officer looked

329
00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:19.359
at me briefly and after trembling his
fear was replaced by Ira. He tried

330
00:27:19.480 --> 00:27:23.240
to tell me that that wasn'
t a police problem and that I should

331
00:27:23.240 --> 00:27:27.640
go back to my house. I
interrupted him by insisting that the problem did

332
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:33.519
need attention, as the person had
been in a difficult situation for a long

333
00:27:33.599 --> 00:27:37.240
time and it was not right the
officer came forward with a threatening tone,

334
00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:41.480
asking me to calm down. He
explained that the person did not seem to

335
00:27:41.519 --> 00:27:45.079
want help and that he was in
his right to be where he decided.

336
00:27:45.519 --> 00:27:51.599
Although it seemed strange, they got
in the car without saying another word and

337
00:27:51.720 --> 00:27:56.720
left at full speed. I watched
the car disappear down the street. Completely

338
00:27:56.839 --> 00:28:02.119
puzzled, I didn' t look
up at the tree I didn' t

339
00:28:02.119 --> 00:28:06.680
want to see it, but somehow
I knew I was there watching and maybe

340
00:28:06.680 --> 00:28:10.160
even laughing. I spent the rest
of the day thinking about what I could

341
00:28:10.160 --> 00:28:15.079
do. If the police weren'
t going to do their job, then

342
00:28:15.119 --> 00:28:18.880
they would find someone who did.
I decided to call the local news station

343
00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:25.160
and tell her about the woman and
how terrible her condition seemed, just as

344
00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:30.039
the police came and left doing nothing. The woman I spoke to sounded dismayed

345
00:28:30.119 --> 00:28:36.519
by the situation and promised to send
someone to talk to me. The next

346
00:28:36.599 --> 00:28:41.599
day, a reporter arrived at my
house. After talking to me. For

347
00:28:41.759 --> 00:28:47.119
a few minutes, the cameraman and
the reporter approached the tree. From my

348
00:28:47.200 --> 00:28:51.599
house I watched them talk to the
woman, but I couldn' t hear

349
00:28:51.599 --> 00:28:55.359
what they said. I could see
how the smiles disappeared from their faces the

350
00:28:55.440 --> 00:29:00.799
moment they looked up. In the
branches they seemed restless while talking trying to

351
00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:03.880
convince the woman to come down from
the tree. But, like the police

352
00:29:03.920 --> 00:29:10.759
officers, they didn' t last
long. Three minutes later I saw them

353
00:29:10.799 --> 00:29:15.839
rushing across the street with expressions of
pure panic. They didn' t even

354
00:29:15.880 --> 00:29:19.119
stop to talk to me. I
tried to talk to them, but the

355
00:29:19.200 --> 00:29:25.160
cameraman almost knocked me down and all
my calls to the news station went unanswered.

356
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:30.559
No one wanted to be near the
woman, so they just left her

357
00:29:30.599 --> 00:29:36.480
up there with no options. I
did the only thing I could and tried

358
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:40.519
to ignore it definitely. It wasn' t as easy as you might think.

359
00:29:41.160 --> 00:29:45.000
He avoided going outside as much as
possible and never looked towards the tree

360
00:29:45.119 --> 00:29:52.119
when he had to leave the house. The next few days were horrible,

361
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:56.400
but the nights were the worst.
I was afraid to close my eyes while

362
00:29:56.440 --> 00:30:00.599
I was in bed, always looking
at that window. I pictured her up

363
00:30:00.839 --> 00:30:07.640
there on that branch her barefoot feet
and her exposed skin slowly turning blue,

364
00:30:07.079 --> 00:30:11.799
and that didn' t make me
feel a little better. I was hoping

365
00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:17.039
you' d have an uncomfortable night
out there and finally leave the tree.

366
00:30:17.559 --> 00:30:21.440
I told myself that I did my
part to try to help her and if

367
00:30:21.519 --> 00:30:26.759
I finally succumbed to the elements,
I wouldn' t be, in my

368
00:30:26.759 --> 00:30:32.200
consciousness, strange and disturbing as it
was the woman was still just a person

369
00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:34.839
with a mental illness. Obviously,
I had a feeling it wouldn' t

370
00:30:34.920 --> 00:30:40.759
be long before there was only one
corpse left in that tree. I hate

371
00:30:40.759 --> 00:30:45.079
to admit it, but part of
me was expecting it I could avoid the

372
00:30:45.079 --> 00:30:48.480
tree. The rest of the week, taking a few days off from work,

373
00:30:48.519 --> 00:30:52.839
I was just going out to the
store. I know my fear may

374
00:30:52.920 --> 00:30:59.039
seem irrational. It' s not
like the woman did something violent. He

375
00:30:59.079 --> 00:31:03.519
didn' t even come out of
the tree. Technically, the only person

376
00:31:03.519 --> 00:31:08.279
she was hurting was herself. I
tried to tell myself that my fear was

377
00:31:08.960 --> 00:31:15.640
irrational, but on Monday things took
a turn for the worse. It was

378
00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:19.599
around noon. When I heard a
hit. For a moment I just looked

379
00:31:19.640 --> 00:31:23.400
at the door imagining the woman from
the tree standing on the other side.

380
00:31:25.240 --> 00:31:29.920
I doubted, but as the beating
became stronger, more insistent, I finally

381
00:31:29.920 --> 00:31:36.920
forced myself to open up was the
neighbor. He was there to ask me

382
00:31:37.039 --> 00:31:40.599
if I' d seen the woman
who was climbing in the tree. I

383
00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:44.279
said yes and told her what happened
to the cops and with the reporter the

384
00:31:44.319 --> 00:31:49.720
neighbor sighed upset and told me that
she herself was going to go and with

385
00:31:49.759 --> 00:31:53.119
her own hands she was going to
go down to the crazy old woman in

386
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:59.359
the tree. Those were his words
textually. I didn' t know what

387
00:31:59.359 --> 00:32:04.079
to tell her if she wanted to
go do something stupid, because for me

388
00:32:04.119 --> 00:32:07.200
she was going to do her stupid
thing. I closed the door and from

389
00:32:07.240 --> 00:32:13.680
the window I saw that, in
fact, it went straight to the tree

390
00:32:13.680 --> 00:32:15.720
and climbed I stopped seeing it.
When it was lost between the leaves.

391
00:32:15.519 --> 00:32:21.880
I waited for her to appear again, but the minutes passed and there was

392
00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:24.799
no sign of her. I was
about to open the door, when I

393
00:32:24.920 --> 00:32:30.079
finally saw her coming down the back
of the tree. When she got down,

394
00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:36.519
she was paralyzed. Looking at me, I walked away from my window

395
00:32:36.599 --> 00:32:42.440
thinking of calling the police again,
even if that meant being arrested, something

396
00:32:42.519 --> 00:32:45.640
was very wrong. I risked taking
another look out the window and, to

397
00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:52.519
my horror, the neighbor was smiling
a smile so twisted and different from her

398
00:32:52.559 --> 00:32:57.400
usual expression. Whatever the woman in
the tree had, now she had the

399
00:32:57.519 --> 00:33:01.279
neighbor too. She stood up and
began to move slowly across the street with

400
00:33:01.559 --> 00:33:07.839
her eyes fixed in my house.
I had no idea what you' d

401
00:33:07.839 --> 00:33:13.559
do trying to get in, but
he never got across the street, because

402
00:33:13.720 --> 00:33:16.279
he drove a car fast and ran
it over. The neighbor' s body

403
00:33:16.400 --> 00:33:22.400
flew out and when it fell to
the ground, her head hit heavily against

404
00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:27.640
the asphalt and the sound of the
car, impacting on a pole, made

405
00:33:27.680 --> 00:33:32.400
the whole place shudder quickly called the
police to report the accident. Both the

406
00:33:32.440 --> 00:33:38.160
person in the car and the neighbor
died for a few hours due to the

407
00:33:38.160 --> 00:33:43.200
accident. I forgot about the woman
in the tree. However, at night,

408
00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:46.319
when I went out to throw away
the garbage, I saw it up

409
00:33:46.440 --> 00:33:52.000
in the tree, almost reaching the
highest part, a face looked through the

410
00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:58.599
branches. That same dirty, smiling
face. But the worst thing was that

411
00:33:58.680 --> 00:34:01.400
I knew he was smiling at me. I turned on all the lights in

412
00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:06.720
the house and left them on all
night. The next day, I was

413
00:34:06.799 --> 00:34:10.079
tired of being like this in my
work. Of course, I was already

414
00:34:10.079 --> 00:34:15.559
being brought down. Besides, since
I almost didn’ t sleep, I

415
00:34:15.559 --> 00:34:20.440
felt tired. That had to be
over and I only thought of one thing

416
00:34:20.519 --> 00:34:27.199
to throw at him a Molotov bomb
made of a bottle of muratic acid plastic

417
00:34:27.239 --> 00:34:30.599
and aluminum balls. So when I
refreshed my memory, I knew that,

418
00:34:30.639 --> 00:34:37.360
although it was a very dangerous idea
and possibly a pretty stupid idea, that

419
00:34:37.440 --> 00:34:39.239
was what I had to do with
that woman who was in the tree.

420
00:34:39.760 --> 00:34:45.800
Some of the ingredients I had in
my house. Nor was it very complicated

421
00:34:45.960 --> 00:34:52.199
to get already ready, I walked
to a prudent distance and then dropped the

422
00:34:52.239 --> 00:34:58.559
bomb against the obvious tree. The
bomb was not too strong, it did

423
00:34:58.639 --> 00:35:01.480
not damage the trunk of the tree, but it did cause a strong burst.

424
00:35:02.119 --> 00:35:06.599
The woman had to get off,
yes or yes, because if she

425
00:35:06.920 --> 00:35:10.960
didn' t throw another one and
this time it would be closer. Obviously,

426
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:15.360
I didn' t mean to hurt
you. What I wanted was for

427
00:35:15.400 --> 00:35:20.800
him to leave. However, it
did not happen, neither the first nor

428
00:35:20.840 --> 00:35:24.280
the second. Something else happened that
I didn' t have in mind and

429
00:35:24.360 --> 00:35:29.360
that I would never have imagined.
From the tree. A huge black bird

430
00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:34.559
flew out. It looked like a
very big crow. That bird gave a

431
00:35:34.599 --> 00:35:38.679
kind of squawk, very loud and
squeaky before getting away and getting lost.

432
00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:44.480
What was there riding on the tree
was not a woman, it was a

433
00:35:44.599 --> 00:35:58.400
witch, the Witch Valley. This
happened to me many years ago. Back

434
00:35:58.440 --> 00:36:04.440
then I had a note called Susana. We lived together in Victoria City,

435
00:36:05.039 --> 00:36:07.599
but then I got a better job, so we moved to the border,

436
00:36:09.239 --> 00:36:15.000
specifically to Reinosa. We both had
a visa and as my Bride liked to

437
00:36:15.039 --> 00:36:20.280
do outdoor activities, we used to
cross through Macalen to go to natural parks

438
00:36:20.360 --> 00:36:25.599
for hiking. Depending on the money
there was, we could sometimes go to

439
00:36:25.679 --> 00:36:30.760
faraway places and sometimes to nearby places. On one occasion we planned to go

440
00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:35.800
to a park in Kentucky, which
we had already gone to three times,

441
00:36:36.559 --> 00:36:40.440
so we packed and left. The
trip lasted about twenty hours, but I

442
00:36:40.519 --> 00:36:45.440
didn' t drive all the way, so it took us two days to

443
00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:50.760
get there. Already exploring the park, we decided to take a different route

444
00:36:50.760 --> 00:36:54.280
than we had done before. We
didn' t notice anything unusual until we

445
00:36:54.400 --> 00:37:00.159
saw a sign that said Witch Valley
circuit four kilometers in a certain direction.

446
00:37:00.719 --> 00:37:06.480
The sign was written in English,
but translated, as well as the circuit

447
00:37:06.599 --> 00:37:10.840
of the Witch Valley. We had
never heard of the Witch Valley circuit,

448
00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:16.760
but as the park was large and
many grounds still had no trails, we

449
00:37:16.760 --> 00:37:24.239
thought they might have opened a new
route. Susana was excited. This meant

450
00:37:24.599 --> 00:37:30.320
a new adventure. It was a
place we hadn' t gone before.

451
00:37:30.360 --> 00:37:35.000
Anyway, we planned to take a
different circuit, which was also four kilometers

452
00:37:35.119 --> 00:37:38.920
away, but in another direction.
So we decided to try the new route.

453
00:37:39.679 --> 00:37:45.880
But finding the word" witch"
naming a route was weird. The

454
00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:51.760
trail abruptly descended leading us to a
valley as promised. I started feeling restless

455
00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:55.960
right away. Everything about the path
made me feel like I was going into

456
00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:00.920
a strange place and I wasn'
t sure where I was anymore. I

457
00:38:00.079 --> 00:38:04.960
felt like we got lost in the
woods. With each step were the trees.

458
00:38:05.599 --> 00:38:10.400
The trees changed at first, the
path seemed normal, surrounded by oaks

459
00:38:10.519 --> 00:38:16.280
and leafy oaks gently rocking with the
wind. However, as we progressed,

460
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:22.119
I began to notice something strange.
The oaks and oaks decreased in number,

461
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:28.280
giving way to a vegetation that did
not correspond to the known one of that

462
00:38:28.280 --> 00:38:31.480
forest. Instead, crooked old pines
that seemed to be centuries old began to

463
00:38:31.519 --> 00:38:39.199
flank the path. As we continued, the change became more evident. The

464
00:38:39.320 --> 00:38:44.639
old pine trees rose impressively on both
sides of the road. The sunlight barely

465
00:38:44.760 --> 00:38:49.280
filtered through the dense crown of the
trees, submerging the path into a disquieting

466
00:38:49.559 --> 00:38:55.760
shadow. As we progressed, other
elements of the environment began to subtly alter.

467
00:38:58.159 --> 00:39:01.000
Apart from the trees, one of
the first things we noticed was that

468
00:39:01.039 --> 00:39:07.119
the noise slowed down until everything was
quiet. At first, the change was

469
00:39:07.199 --> 00:39:12.519
so subtle that we barely noticed it, but soon it became impossible to ignore

470
00:39:12.519 --> 00:39:15.679
the silence that enveloped us. Squirrels
that used to jump from branch to branch

471
00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:21.400
were no longer seen. We looked
for some sign of animal life, but

472
00:39:21.960 --> 00:39:27.239
everything we found was empty. We
also began to notice a lack of wind.

473
00:39:27.960 --> 00:39:31.920
Before small breezes shook the leaves,
but at some point the air remained

474
00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:39.760
completely static in the midst of that
increasingly disconcerting environment. My nervousness increased every

475
00:39:39.800 --> 00:39:45.519
part of me telling me that something
wasn' t right, that we had

476
00:39:45.599 --> 00:39:50.880
to back off while we could still
find our way back. Her healthy decision

477
00:39:50.920 --> 00:39:55.000
to go on contrary to my instinct
made me wonder what was really driving us

478
00:39:55.079 --> 00:40:02.800
to continue to delve into that light. We found a sign that seemed completely

479
00:40:02.840 --> 00:40:08.960
out of place at first glance.
It was a worn tablet with letters that

480
00:40:09.039 --> 00:40:15.119
seemed to have been painted in haste, indicating that the area beyond was exclusive

481
00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:21.440
to children. Seeing this as an
opportunity to persuade your sane to back off.

482
00:40:22.840 --> 00:40:28.400
However, she kept walking and I
could only follow her. After a

483
00:40:28.440 --> 00:40:31.800
time that seemed too long for the
stretch that we had traveled from the sign,

484
00:40:32.320 --> 00:40:37.119
I suggested to her that it was
time to return. I didn'

485
00:40:37.239 --> 00:40:43.559
t expect her to listen, but
apparently she saw something she didn' t

486
00:40:43.599 --> 00:40:46.559
mention to me and agreed to turn
around and walk back down the path.

487
00:40:47.920 --> 00:40:52.280
I want to emphasize that it was
the only possible path. There were no

488
00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:58.920
other roads just that, but even
though we walked back for twice as long

489
00:40:58.960 --> 00:41:05.079
as we did going into the forest, the sign did not appear. That

490
00:41:05.239 --> 00:41:09.360
made no sense in a forest,
on a unique and clearly defined path,

491
00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:15.400
it should not be possible to get
lost in that way. If there was

492
00:41:15.480 --> 00:41:21.159
only one path simply following it in
the opposite direction. We should have been

493
00:41:21.199 --> 00:41:24.440
able to find the sign again.
And yet it was not. It was

494
00:41:24.480 --> 00:41:30.880
in the midst of this growing despair
that we both remembered almost at the same

495
00:41:30.960 --> 00:41:35.679
time that we were carrying our cell
phones, which relaxed us a little,

496
00:41:36.119 --> 00:41:43.400
because now we just had to call
the ranger and he would surely know how

497
00:41:43.400 --> 00:41:44.920
to find us when trying to use
our devices. We realized that neither one

498
00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:50.559
of us had a signal. Susana
and I had no choice but to keep

499
00:41:50.599 --> 00:41:54.960
moving forward. The frustration and annoyance
were intermingled with the fear and uncertainty that

500
00:41:55.000 --> 00:42:00.760
had already taken hold of us.
As much as we walked. It seemed

501
00:42:00.800 --> 00:42:06.679
like we were trapped in some kind
of endless loop. I' m saying

502
00:42:06.719 --> 00:42:10.960
that because all the old pines were
the same, so we had the feeling

503
00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:16.199
that we weren' t moving,
because every pine in front of each other

504
00:42:16.239 --> 00:42:19.719
looked like an exact copy of the
previous one. In the midst of this

505
00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:23.400
hopeless situation, the tension between us, which had until then been contained,

506
00:42:24.639 --> 00:42:29.719
finally burst out of its health in
an outburst of frustration. He reproached me

507
00:42:29.719 --> 00:42:36.159
by blaming us for losing us.
However, the reality was different and I

508
00:42:36.199 --> 00:42:40.400
couldn' t help but remind her
that she was the one to blame for

509
00:42:40.400 --> 00:42:45.360
keeping walking. Her. Of course, he was not willing to accept guilt

510
00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:51.679
so easily and found a way to
change the subject quickly by avoiding responsibility and

511
00:42:51.719 --> 00:42:58.079
thus avoiding his error. As the
sun began to hide, we realized that

512
00:42:58.159 --> 00:43:02.360
we did not have enough water and
food and not a place to shelter ourselves

513
00:43:02.519 --> 00:43:09.000
during the night. We didn'
t have a tent and our supplies were

514
00:43:09.079 --> 00:43:14.039
limited to what one would take for
a few hours walk, not for a

515
00:43:14.159 --> 00:43:17.760
prolonged stay in the forest. Also, being aware that, at best,

516
00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:22.920
someone could start looking for us until
Monday and being that moment on a Saturday,

517
00:43:23.679 --> 00:43:29.239
the prospect of having to survive on
our own for at least two nights

518
00:43:29.360 --> 00:43:35.039
was very distressing. In the face
of this reality. The first decision I

519
00:43:35.159 --> 00:43:39.159
made was to stay as close as
possible to the path. It was logical

520
00:43:39.199 --> 00:43:44.079
to think that if someone came looking
for us they would follow the path.

521
00:43:44.719 --> 00:43:49.519
With this in mind I chose to
lie on the trunk of one of the

522
00:43:49.519 --> 00:43:52.599
old pine trees, which was less
than two meters from the trail. The

523
00:43:52.639 --> 00:43:58.840
night came as he tried to set
up an improvised shelter with branches of nearby

524
00:43:58.840 --> 00:44:02.760
pine trees. With the half-
armed refuse I got in to rest The

525
00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:07.039
fatigue of the day. In addition
to the emotional stress of our situation,

526
00:44:07.880 --> 00:44:13.039
it caused her healthy to quickly fall
into a deep sleep given to tiredness.

527
00:44:13.800 --> 00:44:19.639
For my part, the restlessness and
a persistent sense of vulnerability kept me in

528
00:44:19.679 --> 00:44:24.039
a state of alert, preventing me
from sleeping the shelter, although not stable,

529
00:44:25.039 --> 00:44:29.920
offered a barrier between us and the
vast and dark forest around us.

530
00:44:30.400 --> 00:44:37.159
However, that barrier seemed insufficient to
calm my mind that kept going over our

531
00:44:37.199 --> 00:44:45.000
options and the possible consequences of our
situation. For hours I stayed awake listening

532
00:44:45.079 --> 00:44:49.800
to the sounds of the night,
every creaking and whispering of the forest,

533
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.400
amplifying my anxiety. Finally, exhaustion
began to overcome my resistance and I began

534
00:44:54.400 --> 00:45:00.199
to nod and fell asleep, but
only for a few minutes, because I

535
00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:06.400
suddenly woke up an inexplicable sense of
alertness. I had taken over a feeling

536
00:45:06.480 --> 00:45:14.039
of being watched. The shelter did
not seem to offer any protection against that

537
00:45:14.039 --> 00:45:17.639
disturbing feeling. I tried to convince
myself that it was just the product of

538
00:45:17.679 --> 00:45:22.719
the stressful situation. My heart accelerated
when I realized something big was standing outside

539
00:45:22.800 --> 00:45:30.079
our shelter. At first, panic
took over me. However, as I

540
00:45:30.159 --> 00:45:35.079
focused my eyes and calmed my breath, I noticed that it was a deer,

541
00:45:35.679 --> 00:45:38.840
so I decided to look out to
see the best. For a moment

542
00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:44.679
I was about to let go of
a sigh of relief, but as I

543
00:45:44.880 --> 00:45:46.760
lit the deer with the lamp on
my cell phone, he turned to look

544
00:45:46.760 --> 00:45:51.119
at me. I realized that the
deer had a person' s eyes.

545
00:45:52.719 --> 00:45:58.440
That disturbing look held mine for what
seemed to be hours, but it was

546
00:45:58.519 --> 00:46:04.559
actually just a few seconds before the
deer decided to walk away and disappear among

547
00:46:04.639 --> 00:46:09.559
the trees. The encounter left me
paralyzed, not only by fear, but

548
00:46:09.760 --> 00:46:15.519
by confusion. I went back inside
our shelter trying to prosecute. What I

549
00:46:15.559 --> 00:46:22.159
had just experienced. Not even fifteen
minutes passed, when once again, the

550
00:46:22.199 --> 00:46:28.119
disturbing feeling of being watched took hold
of me. This time I wasn'

551
00:46:28.199 --> 00:46:31.800
t alone in my restlessness. Susana
woke up because she also felt something was

552
00:46:31.920 --> 00:46:38.880
happening, something had disturbed her rest
and I soon realized it was. We

553
00:46:38.920 --> 00:46:45.440
heard the sound of something moving around
the pine where we had supported our refuge.

554
00:46:45.760 --> 00:46:51.639
Then that stopped right in a place
where both her healthy and I could

555
00:46:52.079 --> 00:46:58.880
see that what was outside were barefoot
human feet with pale ankles. For a

556
00:46:58.920 --> 00:47:02.480
moment, the glare shone in his
eyes when he thought that someone had come

557
00:47:02.519 --> 00:47:07.840
to meet us. That hope faded
as quickly as it appeared when I made

558
00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:14.800
him see the improbability that someone was
looking for us in the woods in the

559
00:47:14.840 --> 00:47:20.239
middle of the morning and much less
barefoot before we could fully process the situation.

560
00:47:21.039 --> 00:47:25.719
A strong air current hit our shelter. The branches that we had entwined

561
00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:30.800
with so much effort could not withstand
the force of the wind and fell upon

562
00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:36.000
us. We' re exposed to
vulnerability. Under the look of what was

563
00:47:36.079 --> 00:47:39.719
hidden in the dark and then we
saw it in front of us. A

564
00:47:39.880 --> 00:47:46.039
thin figure of too white, completely
naked skin stood up, but that was

565
00:47:46.159 --> 00:47:51.280
the least. The woman' s
head was that of a deer, the

566
00:47:51.519 --> 00:47:58.360
same deer as before. The figure
remained motionless as a statue. His breathing

567
00:47:58.679 --> 00:48:04.239
was barely perceptible. His healing and
me without words, we could only stare

568
00:48:04.320 --> 00:48:09.559
at the creature, unable to understand
how such a thing could exist. The

569
00:48:09.679 --> 00:48:15.039
drop that spilled the glass was when
that thing opened its snout, revealing a

570
00:48:15.119 --> 00:48:21.119
row of yellowish, sharp teeth,
as well as a tongue that looked double

571
00:48:21.719 --> 00:48:24.599
or perhaps two tongues. Without thinking
about it. His Sana and I stood

572
00:48:24.639 --> 00:48:30.199
up driven by fear and began to
run away as quickly as possible from that

573
00:48:30.360 --> 00:48:37.039
abomination. The creature didn' t
chase us. Instead, he uttered a

574
00:48:37.239 --> 00:48:42.400
macabre cry, a sound that seemed
to come from the deepest corner of hell.

575
00:48:43.800 --> 00:48:46.840
And then, as if that scream
had been a sign, the forest

576
00:48:47.159 --> 00:48:52.719
took life from among the pines began
to leave animals crossing from one side to

577
00:48:52.840 --> 00:49:00.119
another at great speed, deer,
raccoons, squirrels, etc. We were

578
00:49:00.199 --> 00:49:05.079
bumping into the animals. While we
were trying not to fall. We received

579
00:49:05.159 --> 00:49:10.079
many scratches in the midst of the
chaos caused by animals that were frantically emerging

580
00:49:10.079 --> 00:49:15.519
around us. I made an impulsive
decision that at that time seemed the only

581
00:49:15.639 --> 00:49:21.159
viable option. By grasping the hand
of his healthy, we deviated from the

582
00:49:21.159 --> 00:49:25.000
main path, determined to find a
way out through the thickness of the old

583
00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:30.320
pines. Moving through the dry branches
of the pines was difficult. Some thick,

584
00:49:30.920 --> 00:49:36.400
razor- sharp branches hurt our skin
as if they were thorns, but

585
00:49:36.840 --> 00:49:44.920
we continued to run almost as suddenly
as our nightmare had begun. In front

586
00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.960
of me was a path and on
the other side the normal trees of the

587
00:49:50.039 --> 00:49:54.199
forest, when turning the old pine
trees had disappeared as if they had never

588
00:49:54.199 --> 00:50:00.599
been there. The relief of having
found known ground disappeared as quickly as it

589
00:50:00.719 --> 00:50:05.639
had arrived. When I realized a
chilling detail, Susana was no longer by

590
00:50:05.679 --> 00:50:10.400
my side. My heart stopped for
a moment unable to understand why it wasn

591
00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:15.280
' t there with me. I
started calling her by her name, but

592
00:50:15.320 --> 00:50:20.239
it was in vain. During the
flight, I didn' t notice the

593
00:50:20.320 --> 00:50:23.559
exact moment when our hands separated.
I thought I' d come back for

594
00:50:23.599 --> 00:50:29.559
her, but the fear of getting
lost again in that cursed place and the

595
00:50:29.639 --> 00:50:36.880
doubt of whether I could find her
paralyzed me torn by the decision, I

596
00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:38.239
decided to run down the path to
the direction, where I knew there were

597
00:50:38.239 --> 00:50:43.039
people. I thought asking for help
was the best option at the time.

598
00:50:43.719 --> 00:50:49.239
After a few minutes that seemed eternal, I found a large group of breathless

599
00:50:49.320 --> 00:50:53.280
and desperate people. I begged them
to help me find her healthy and quickly

600
00:50:53.400 --> 00:51:00.920
some offered to accompany me in the
search, while others called the ranger and

601
00:51:00.079 --> 00:51:06.599
at nine hundred eleven, an hour
later, the official search began with the

602
00:51:06.679 --> 00:51:12.800
help of the police, but by
nightfall, Susana had not appeared. The

603
00:51:12.880 --> 00:51:19.079
most disconcerting thing was when I tried
to show the police the sign that had

604
00:51:19.159 --> 00:51:22.840
initially diverted us, but there was
no trace of him or the area of

605
00:51:22.960 --> 00:51:28.559
the old pine trees. This lack
of physical evidence caused the police to start

606
00:51:28.599 --> 00:51:34.920
suspecting me, believing that the whole
story could be an elaborate fourth. When

607
00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:38.800
the situation seemed to turn against me
and the police were about to arrest me,

608
00:51:39.360 --> 00:51:45.039
a scream cut the tension. Someone
had found the sign, not in

609
00:51:45.079 --> 00:51:51.559
its original place, but buried and
hidden under stones, as if someone had

610
00:51:51.639 --> 00:51:55.760
wanted to hide it. By the
way. This finding dismissed the suspicion about

611
00:51:55.840 --> 00:52:00.199
me and although what I told the
police sounded as much as possible the existence

612
00:52:00.199 --> 00:52:05.800
of that sign, at least it
made the police believe that there was some

613
00:52:05.880 --> 00:52:12.400
truth in my story. Temporarily removing
suspicions about me. The search for her

614
00:52:12.559 --> 00:52:27.519
healthy continued for a while, but
no whispering forest ever appeared. I bought

615
00:52:27.599 --> 00:52:30.679
a one- story house on the
edge of a mountain, in a city

616
00:52:30.760 --> 00:52:36.039
I' d rather not mention.
The house was made of rugged stone and

617
00:52:36.079 --> 00:52:40.119
dark wood. The place was slightly
damaged by the weather, covered in some

618
00:52:40.119 --> 00:52:45.320
places by thick moss with a roof
that was tilted at a pronounced angle.

619
00:52:46.800 --> 00:52:52.280
Most of my stuff was still in
cardboard boxes in my living room three days

620
00:52:52.360 --> 00:52:57.679
after I moved, but I had
unpacked the mountable bed and liquor cabinet,

621
00:52:57.880 --> 00:53:01.519
and that seemed to me to be
a good progress. I spent those first

622
00:53:01.639 --> 00:53:07.920
few days drinking and talking to the
dog Mushu. Honestly, I couldn'

623
00:53:07.960 --> 00:53:12.480
t tell you the breed It was
a big dog about a foot tall.

624
00:53:12.960 --> 00:53:16.880
It weighed more than 50 kilos of
sand- colored fur. His skull was

625
00:53:16.960 --> 00:53:22.480
long and flat, with small,
dark eyes. Her ears were small,

626
00:53:22.039 --> 00:53:28.639
too. His tail was pretty long. Mushu was a dog of good character

627
00:53:28.840 --> 00:53:34.920
who only became aggressive if provoked.
He was always friendly with children. Mushu

628
00:53:35.159 --> 00:53:38.760
had already become my best friend.
The move was good for both of us.

629
00:53:39.440 --> 00:53:45.920
He provided Mushu with the space he
needed to stretch his long legs.

630
00:53:45.960 --> 00:53:51.920
Most of the mornings started with me
making a breakfast attempt while I was drinking

631
00:53:52.000 --> 00:53:54.639
drinks that I hadn' t finished
the night before. I would crawl in

632
00:53:54.760 --> 00:54:00.639
my robe until I saw my reflection
on something and notice how worn out it

633
00:54:00.639 --> 00:54:04.840
was starting to appear. I'
d lost weight. I needed a haircut

634
00:54:04.880 --> 00:54:09.719
and I hadn' t been able
to sleep every night. The only productive

635
00:54:09.800 --> 00:54:14.519
activity I did every day was to
go out for a walk with the dog.

636
00:54:15.159 --> 00:54:19.760
The view of the mountain was spectacular, although my terrible state of mind

637
00:54:19.800 --> 00:54:24.960
did not allow me to appreciate it. Those first weeks a lot and I

638
00:54:25.039 --> 00:54:32.320
spent hours outside finding new cliffs,
rocky roads or quiet ponds. The mountain

639
00:54:32.639 --> 00:54:37.519
was huge and little by little I
discovered that while I was there I felt

640
00:54:37.519 --> 00:54:42.679
at peace. That feeling disappeared as
soon as he returned to the house.

641
00:54:43.280 --> 00:54:47.679
My nights were made of alcohol and
TV shows. When I was finally sleeping.

642
00:54:49.239 --> 00:54:52.480
I often spent my time looking at
the roof and thinking about my ex

643
00:54:52.599 --> 00:54:57.400
if I fell asleep I would dream
about her. Dreams were the worst because

644
00:54:57.519 --> 00:55:04.079
these stayed with me. I could
spend weeks without thinking about her and then

645
00:55:04.159 --> 00:55:07.920
I had a dream that affected me
deeply. So I tried to drink until

646
00:55:08.039 --> 00:55:14.199
I fainted every night a lot and
I had been living on the edge of

647
00:55:14.199 --> 00:55:16.239
the mountain for many months. When
one autumn day, without a cloud in

648
00:55:16.280 --> 00:55:22.400
the sky, we walked about ten
kilometers into the mountain, the trees became

649
00:55:22.440 --> 00:55:27.559
thinner and we saw what was left
of a hut much older and worn out

650
00:55:27.599 --> 00:55:31.360
than the house where he lived.
I went to investigate inside, but a

651
00:55:31.400 --> 00:55:37.000
lot of acting weird. He stayed
close to the tree line as he grunted.

652
00:55:37.719 --> 00:55:42.280
The roof of the cabin was half
collapsed and the floor was covered with

653
00:55:42.320 --> 00:55:46.880
dry leaves. I turned them aside
to reveal a wood floor that was almost

654
00:55:47.000 --> 00:55:53.079
completely rotten. Some pieces of furniture
were scattered. I found a strange carved

655
00:55:53.320 --> 00:55:58.639
symbol just above the door. When
I turned out, it looked like an

656
00:55:58.719 --> 00:56:04.000
inverted trident. I thought it was
very strange. He was still sitting in

657
00:56:04.079 --> 00:56:07.679
the same place outside a lot,
but now he had his hair pointed and

658
00:56:07.719 --> 00:56:12.239
he was licking his fangs and I
thought it would be best if we left.

659
00:56:13.119 --> 00:56:15.719
As I walked away, I noticed
something strange in the trees. I

660
00:56:15.800 --> 00:56:21.480
couldn' t explain what it was, but there was something disturbing. On

661
00:56:21.519 --> 00:56:25.079
my way home, I started drinking
whiskey. The wind was blowing loudly and

662
00:56:25.159 --> 00:56:29.719
it seemed like a storm would break
out. As I looked out of a

663
00:56:29.800 --> 00:56:34.119
window, I distinguished a tree I
had not seen before. I didn'

664
00:56:34.159 --> 00:56:37.719
t dare say the tree wasn'
t there before. I' ve always

665
00:56:37.880 --> 00:56:43.320
chosen to think I just hadn'
t noticed. At that moment I decided

666
00:56:43.400 --> 00:56:49.760
not to pay too much attention to
that tree because I was puzzled to notice

667
00:56:49.880 --> 00:56:54.559
it for the first time So as
not to get paranoid, I stopped looking

668
00:56:54.559 --> 00:56:55.840
at it and watched the sky that
was clear. The full moon and the

669
00:56:55.880 --> 00:57:02.159
stars were shining. The morning followed
I went to town for supplies. I

670
00:57:02.239 --> 00:57:08.079
was a few miles away by car. I wasn' t far, but

671
00:57:08.119 --> 00:57:12.320
as I was walking, it took
me about two hours to get to a

672
00:57:12.320 --> 00:57:15.920
lot. He liked to go to
town already back in the bush. The

673
00:57:15.960 --> 00:57:21.840
curiosity about that tree I hadn'
t noticed invaded me, so I went

674
00:57:21.840 --> 00:57:25.039
to the back of the house,
to the area I could see from the

675
00:57:25.639 --> 00:57:30.280
window and there was the tree,
but not exactly this may sound weird.

676
00:57:30.559 --> 00:57:35.000
The tree was there, but it
wasn' t the same tree. The

677
00:57:35.079 --> 00:57:39.679
branches looked very different. It was
weird. I walked to the tree out

678
00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:45.960
of curiosity and noticed that the grass
under the shade of the tree seemed burned

679
00:57:45.079 --> 00:57:50.920
and fired an unpleasant smell. Like
a dirty diaper, I was very focused

680
00:57:51.039 --> 00:57:55.239
on that tree, so much so
that I was startled when I heard Mushu

681
00:57:55.239 --> 00:58:00.480
barking frantically. I turned towards the
house and saw Mushu barking at something in

682
00:58:00.519 --> 00:58:04.920
the direction of the mountain. I
looked where he was barking and that'

683
00:58:04.960 --> 00:58:08.039
s when I saw her about nine
meters from Mushu, there was a woman.

684
00:58:08.719 --> 00:58:13.920
The first thing I noticed was that
she was completely naked. His skin

685
00:58:13.960 --> 00:58:19.199
was pale and his hair was long
and black. His eyes were too pale

686
00:58:19.239 --> 00:58:24.159
and outstanding. His mouth wide and
red. At first glance it seemed normal,

687
00:58:25.079 --> 00:58:30.880
but after looking at it for a
few seconds, it became clear that

688
00:58:30.000 --> 00:58:35.599
something was not right, not only
in its appearance, but the atmosphere changed.

689
00:58:36.559 --> 00:58:42.480
The woman turned her head to the
left and then disappeared into the trees.

690
00:58:42.519 --> 00:58:47.639
That was definitely not normal. I
needed to make a call, but

691
00:58:47.719 --> 00:58:51.639
for that I had to go back
to town and I didn' t have

692
00:58:51.639 --> 00:58:54.840
time to go. It was already
too late, so I' d have

693
00:58:54.880 --> 00:59:00.880
to wait until the next day.
Neither Mushu nor I were able to sleep

694
00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:05.000
well the next day. Very early. In the morning I went out into

695
00:59:05.079 --> 00:59:07.639
town and called the person I bought
the house from. I' ve never

696
00:59:07.679 --> 00:59:14.119
been one to evade things, so
I asked him directly why he' d

697
00:59:14.239 --> 00:59:19.360
decided to sell the house. His
response was evasive and ambiguous, so I

698
00:59:19.679 --> 00:59:23.880
asked him if he had ever seen
a naked woman near the property. The

699
00:59:23.960 --> 00:59:29.800
man was silent for a few seconds. Then he said he didn' t

700
00:59:29.920 --> 00:59:34.960
know what he saw in that house
and that if it was me, I

701
00:59:35.079 --> 00:59:37.400
' d pack up my things and
leave before something worse happened. I couldn

702
00:59:37.480 --> 00:59:45.000
' t get any more words out
of him after that, so he finished

703
00:59:45.039 --> 00:59:47.360
the call as the weeks passed.
Mushu became more and more nervous, no

704
00:59:49.039 --> 00:59:52.280
longer wanted to enter the mountain with
me, so I walked him through the

705
00:59:52.360 --> 00:59:58.559
large open fields in front of my
house, which made Mushu nervous. It

706
00:59:58.559 --> 01:00:05.599
also affected me, though differently.
In those weeks I began to have more

707
01:00:05.639 --> 01:00:10.880
intense and suffocating nightmares. During that
time, my health got worse, I

708
01:00:10.960 --> 01:00:16.360
had lost more weight and it looked
almost skeletal going out to walk the mountain

709
01:00:16.599 --> 01:00:21.960
every day seemed to be of no
use to me. I guess the damage

710
01:00:22.000 --> 01:00:25.599
I had to drink too much didn' t make up for the walks on

711
01:00:25.599 --> 01:00:31.199
the mountain. There came a point
where it was hard for me to get

712
01:00:31.400 --> 01:00:36.360
out of the cot where I slept
a night of rain, but without thunder.

713
01:00:36.920 --> 01:00:40.920
Mushu was crazy. I was barking
at the door. That night I

714
01:00:42.000 --> 01:00:46.119
hadn' t had anything to drink, because the alcohol had run out a

715
01:00:46.119 --> 01:00:50.280
day earlier. So, as I
wanted to drink, I was in a

716
01:00:50.280 --> 01:00:53.400
bad mood. That added to how
much I kept barking, as I was

717
01:00:53.480 --> 01:00:59.360
so upset that I opened the door
abruptly and went out to see what was

718
01:00:59.400 --> 01:01:04.880
barking at them. Mushu was raining
very hard and Mushu never liked getting wet

719
01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:08.599
in the rain. I went with
him and stood next to him a lot

720
01:01:08.800 --> 01:01:14.239
seemed to be barking at the tree
that had caught my attention the other day.

721
01:01:14.920 --> 01:01:19.119
So, assuming someone was there,
maybe a person with the intention of

722
01:01:19.159 --> 01:01:23.840
stealing me started screaming and letting go
of insults, challenging whoever was there to

723
01:01:23.880 --> 01:01:30.400
approach. The moment the sky lit
up by lightning, I saw a woman

724
01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:37.039
standing who was not wearing clothes.
I really think it was the same woman

725
01:01:37.039 --> 01:01:44.320
last time. Mushu began barking with
more courage. Then the lightnings began to

726
01:01:44.400 --> 01:01:49.159
illuminate the sky one after another.
Every two or three seconds, every time

727
01:01:49.159 --> 01:01:52.440
there was lightning, I saw that
the woman was closer. I didn'

728
01:01:52.559 --> 01:01:58.039
t see her walking just from one
lightning bolt to the other was getting closer.

729
01:01:58.719 --> 01:02:01.360
At one point, a lot stopped
barking and stuck to my leg screaming

730
01:02:01.480 --> 01:02:07.880
like I was afraid. Suddenly,
the woman jumped and into the air she

731
01:02:07.920 --> 01:02:12.599
turned into a bird that flew away
as she let go of horrible laughter.

732
01:02:13.920 --> 01:02:17.480
A lot and I ran and locked
ourselves in the house. I went back

733
01:02:17.559 --> 01:02:31.679
to live in the city. The
next day ring my name is Zacharias and

734
01:02:31.760 --> 01:02:35.840
I am a taxi driver in Santo
Domingo. My life isn' t easy.

735
01:02:36.079 --> 01:02:39.320
After the death of my wife three
years ago because of a disease that

736
01:02:39.400 --> 01:02:45.119
slowly consumed her, I was left
alone with the responsibility of raising our two

737
01:02:45.119 --> 01:02:50.360
children, Camila and I kill to
see her leave. It was a blow

738
01:02:50.519 --> 01:02:54.559
I' m still trying to recover
from. From dawn until the sun falls,

739
01:02:54.800 --> 01:03:00.760
I become a full- time father, taking them to school, helping

740
01:03:00.760 --> 01:03:06.679
them with their homework, preparing their
food. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, tired,

741
01:03:07.480 --> 01:03:10.800
but looking at their faces, I
find the strength to move on.

742
01:03:12.360 --> 01:03:15.599
Despite the difficulties. I' m
trying to make sure they don' t

743
01:03:15.599 --> 01:03:20.039
miss anything. Already during the night
I spend driving my taxi from eight o

744
01:03:20.159 --> 01:03:22.599
' clock in the evening to five
o' clock in the morning. One

745
01:03:22.639 --> 01:03:28.159
of the advantages of working at night
is that there is not so much traffic

746
01:03:28.159 --> 01:03:32.639
and when there is it is mild. That night was a particularly quiet night,

747
01:03:34.239 --> 01:03:37.440
or at least it was until it
was time to finish my day,

748
01:03:37.639 --> 01:03:43.079
just when I was thinking of heading
home. A signal from my radio alerted

749
01:03:43.119 --> 01:03:47.639
me to one last passenger. Upon
arriving at the right place I saw a

750
01:03:47.679 --> 01:03:53.320
woman of unusual appearance, with a
lost but intense look, who seemed to

751
01:03:53.960 --> 01:03:58.880
be waiting for me without saying a
word, climbed into my taxi and gave

752
01:03:58.920 --> 01:04:02.519
me an address on the other side
of the city, an area that even

753
01:04:02.760 --> 01:04:08.320
in the darkness of the night emanated
an atmosphere of mystery and desolation. The

754
01:04:08.400 --> 01:04:14.159
journey took place in silence, a
tomb broken only by the occasional murmur of

755
01:04:14.199 --> 01:04:17.840
the woman who seemed to pray something
strange that the truth I did not understand.

756
01:04:19.159 --> 01:04:24.519
Upon arriving at his destination, he
got out of the taxi without looking

757
01:04:24.519 --> 01:04:27.559
at me disappearing into the shadows of
the old structures of the place. Something

758
01:04:27.599 --> 01:04:31.480
in the air felt different, as
if its presence had altered the very essence

759
01:04:31.639 --> 01:04:36.079
of the night. When I got
home, I got ready to finish the

760
01:04:36.119 --> 01:04:42.480
night and rest. However, when
I checked the back seat to make sure

761
01:04:42.559 --> 01:04:46.480
everything was in order, I found
a wooden ring. It was not an

762
01:04:46.599 --> 01:04:53.840
ordinary ring, it had strange engravings, symbols that it could not recognize and

763
01:04:53.880 --> 01:04:57.960
its texture was different from any wood
that it had touched before. It was

764
01:04:58.159 --> 01:05:02.159
light and its wood had a dark
tone. Something in him captured my curiosity,

765
01:05:02.519 --> 01:05:06.840
perhaps the way it seemed to subtly
vibrate to touch, as if it

766
01:05:06.960 --> 01:05:12.679
contained an energy of its own carried
by an impulse that I could not explain.

767
01:05:12.840 --> 01:05:15.079
I decided not to get rid of
him. As I entered the house,

768
01:05:15.360 --> 01:05:20.400
I placed the ring in a living
room furniture from the next day and

769
01:05:20.679 --> 01:05:26.679
days later, when I returned from
work to wake my children and take them

770
01:05:26.719 --> 01:05:31.320
to school, they began to tell
me strange stories about nighttime events in the

771
01:05:31.440 --> 01:05:36.239
room, objects that changed places without
explanation the focus of the lamp that lit

772
01:05:36.519 --> 01:05:42.800
and went out. Only at first
did I take their stories as the product

773
01:05:42.880 --> 01:05:46.800
of the imagination of two children,
but their stories became more and more frequent

774
01:05:46.840 --> 01:05:53.519
and the seriousness with which they told
me about those events made me question my

775
01:05:53.519 --> 01:05:59.039
initial skepticism. Although I personally never
witnessed these phenomena. The concern reflected in

776
01:05:59.079 --> 01:06:02.800
my children' s eyes. It
was impossible to ignore the atmosphere in our

777
01:06:02.800 --> 01:06:08.880
house. It began to change once. I had five very good days in

778
01:06:08.920 --> 01:06:13.159
a row and decided not to work
the next weekend and spend time with my

779
01:06:13.239 --> 01:06:16.840
kids at home playing video games and
watching movies. Already in the night,

780
01:06:17.000 --> 01:06:21.880
when the pizzas we ordered for dinner
arrived, when we were already sitting down

781
01:06:21.920 --> 01:06:27.360
putting the movie we were going to
see, the chair in front of me

782
01:06:27.400 --> 01:06:31.920
crawled back on its own, as
if someone invisible were going to sit paralyzed.

783
01:06:32.159 --> 01:06:38.360
I could hardly believe what my eyes
saw my children, although they did

784
01:06:38.360 --> 01:06:41.960
react, it did not impact them
so much. That' s when I

785
01:06:42.000 --> 01:06:45.400
realized that everything they' d been
telling me was real. Since that night

786
01:06:45.719 --> 01:06:50.480
the idea of leaving my children alone
while I was working became intolerable. The

787
01:06:50.559 --> 01:06:57.000
concern for his safety and well-
being became a constant, a shadow that

788
01:06:57.039 --> 01:07:02.519
accompanied me during my night shifts.
The following nights were loaded with a tension

789
01:07:02.719 --> 01:07:10.119
I had never experienced. The phenomena
my children had described began to manifest with

790
01:07:10.199 --> 01:07:17.320
an alarming, ever more intense frequency. They were not violent, but intimidating,

791
01:07:17.920 --> 01:07:23.679
as if the presence that had invaded
our house sought to make us aware

792
01:07:23.719 --> 01:07:28.880
of their existence. One afternoon,
while the children were playing in their rooms,

793
01:07:29.480 --> 01:07:32.800
I set out to do a deep
cleaning of the house. That'

794
01:07:32.960 --> 01:07:39.840
s when I witnessed the most disturbing
incident of all. I was reorganizing some

795
01:07:39.880 --> 01:07:44.000
books and photo frames on the living
room furniture, the one where I had

796
01:07:44.079 --> 01:07:49.119
placed the ring that night. Suddenly, without warning, the furniture shook violently

797
01:07:49.239 --> 01:07:55.000
and collapsed in front of my eyes, as if an invisible force had pushed

798
01:07:55.119 --> 01:08:00.880
him in anger. The objects he
housed crashed into the ground. Books and

799
01:08:00.920 --> 01:08:08.360
photographs spread in chaos mixing with broken
glass. However, in the midst of

800
01:08:08.480 --> 01:08:13.920
the disorder, the wooden ring remained
intact, resting on the carpet without the

801
01:08:14.000 --> 01:08:17.279
slightest damage. It wasn' t
carved, it wasn' t stained with

802
01:08:17.359 --> 01:08:21.119
the ink from a boat that stained
the carpet. The pieces of glass were

803
01:08:21.199 --> 01:08:26.880
nowhere near the ring. In addition
to the fact that the ring, instead

804
01:08:26.920 --> 01:08:32.600
of falling down lying down, fell
on its feet that peculiar moment, I

805
01:08:32.680 --> 01:08:35.399
realized that it had all started after
the ring brought it into the house.

806
01:08:36.079 --> 01:08:41.199
Therefore, considering the peculiar appearance of
the woman to whom the ring belonged,

807
01:08:41.359 --> 01:08:45.640
the place where I picked it up, the place to which I took it

808
01:08:45.720 --> 01:08:50.199
and the strange behavior that she had
inside the taxi, it seemed logical to

809
01:08:50.479 --> 01:08:55.439
me to assume that that woman was
a witch and that, therefore, the

810
01:08:55.479 --> 01:08:59.720
ring of the witch, being charged
with such negative energies, was what had

811
01:08:59.720 --> 01:09:06.079
been causing all the disturbing things that
were happening in the house. So what

812
01:09:06.119 --> 01:09:12.479
I did was just take the ring, walk seven blocks to a vacant lot.

813
01:09:13.039 --> 01:09:15.960
I threw it in there on the
ground, put on a cigarette and

814
01:09:16.039 --> 01:09:21.119
then burned that wooden ring. After
that, nothing unusual happened again in the

815
01:09:21.159 --> 01:09:36.399
Gypsy Witch House. What I'
m going to tell you happened too many

816
01:09:36.399 --> 01:09:41.000
years ago, when I went to
the center of the city where I'

817
01:09:41.000 --> 01:09:44.000
ve lived my whole life. One
afternoon I passed by the center, I

818
01:09:44.039 --> 01:09:49.399
noticed several women trying to attract people. At first I thought they were women

819
01:09:49.439 --> 01:09:54.159
working on something doubtful, but as
I approached I saw that they were gypsies.

820
01:09:54.600 --> 01:09:59.560
The gypsies were scattered along the avenue
trying to convince me to let them

821
01:10:00.119 --> 01:10:04.720
read my hand. I didn'
t believe in gypsy predictions. To me

822
01:10:05.000 --> 01:10:10.319
it was all a hoax to get
money. For a month I continued passing

823
01:10:10.399 --> 01:10:15.520
the avenue of the Roma until one
day, at their insistence, I agreed

824
01:10:15.600 --> 01:10:18.880
to be read my hand. The
person who was going to read my hand

825
01:10:18.920 --> 01:10:24.279
was a very beautiful woman of about
twenty- five. But suddenly he told

826
01:10:24.319 --> 01:10:28.520
me that his mother would be the
one who would really read my hand,

827
01:10:28.960 --> 01:10:32.279
as he had more experience. I
had no choice but to accept. As

828
01:10:32.319 --> 01:10:36.560
usual, the gypsy predicted success at
work, good health, a close encounter

829
01:10:36.880 --> 01:10:43.119
with a beautiful woman, great trips
and other general things that they often say.

830
01:10:45.079 --> 01:10:48.000
At the end of the reading,
it was time to pay. Usually

831
01:10:48.359 --> 01:10:54.399
the hand reading cost between twenty and
thirty pesos, but when offering thirty,

832
01:10:54.880 --> 01:10:59.239
the gypsy told me that there were
a hundred. Surprised. I asked him

833
01:10:59.239 --> 01:11:03.039
how he could charge more than the
others. The gypsy explained to me that

834
01:11:03.159 --> 01:11:09.520
the others were apprentices and therefore they
paid little, but she, being a

835
01:11:09.520 --> 01:11:13.800
professional, charged at least a hundred. At that time I discussed with the

836
01:11:14.000 --> 01:11:17.520
gypsy about the high cost for just
a few minutes of reading. I finally

837
01:11:17.600 --> 01:11:23.880
paid him fifty and left before I
left. The gypsy is visibly annoying.

838
01:11:24.399 --> 01:11:28.760
He muttered a few words in a
language I didn' t understand. Days

839
01:11:28.760 --> 01:11:32.880
after that meeting, my luck changed
dramatically. At my job, where I

840
01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:39.399
had been for five years, I
was suddenly fired claiming financial problems at the

841
01:11:39.399 --> 01:11:43.960
company. A few days later,
someone crashed into my car and ran away.

842
01:11:44.960 --> 01:11:48.680
The next day they stole my car. My bad luck continued, so,

843
01:11:48.760 --> 01:11:53.479
a few days after the robbery,
I was almost run over by another

844
01:11:53.479 --> 01:11:57.880
car. I jumped just in time
to avoid impact and the car walked away

845
01:11:57.920 --> 01:12:01.359
without stopping to help me. The
next day, when I went to a

846
01:12:01.439 --> 01:12:06.079
job interview, some people stole me
and I was unpresentable, so I couldn

847
01:12:06.159 --> 01:12:11.399
' t attend the interview. At
that moment. I didn' t understand

848
01:12:11.479 --> 01:12:15.479
why those things happened to me,
since I hadn' t hurt anyone.

849
01:12:15.199 --> 01:12:20.000
Reflecting on it, I realized that
everything started after the gypsy incident, I

850
01:12:20.640 --> 01:12:26.840
thought the strange words he had said
to me were a curse for everything to

851
01:12:26.920 --> 01:12:31.520
go wrong. It barely dawned.
I went to the place where the gypsies

852
01:12:31.600 --> 01:12:35.840
used to be to take away the
curse, but for my bad luck,

853
01:12:36.000 --> 01:12:42.279
they were no longer there. A
few days earlier, the municipality had removed

854
01:12:42.399 --> 01:12:47.800
all gypsy women from the site arguing
that some used hand reading as an excuse

855
01:12:48.079 --> 01:12:53.840
to commit improper acts. I thought
I' d have bad luck for the

856
01:12:53.960 --> 01:12:59.279
rest of my life. It took
a few months before I got a job

857
01:12:59.279 --> 01:13:02.520
as a delivery boy. One day, while making a delivery, the lady

858
01:13:02.560 --> 01:13:08.640
who received me was surprised to see
me and mentioned that she seemed to have

859
01:13:08.680 --> 01:13:12.279
a curse and that she could feel
it. He proposed to help me get

860
01:13:12.319 --> 01:13:15.279
rid of the curse. If I
visited your house on a Saturday or Sunday

861
01:13:15.359 --> 01:13:21.760
afternoon. I didn' t know
how to react, but I felt immense

862
01:13:23.119 --> 01:13:27.359
happiness when I thought my luck might
change. I could only thank him with

863
01:13:27.399 --> 01:13:32.000
tears in my eyes. Saturday came
and that day my bad luck was worse

864
01:13:32.039 --> 01:13:36.960
than other days. First, my
boss called me to tell me that I

865
01:13:38.079 --> 01:13:42.239
needed to work on the afternoon shift
that day and that if I didn'

866
01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:45.079
t attend, I would consider saying
goodbye. Second, the bike I had

867
01:13:45.159 --> 01:13:49.760
didn' t start, despite my
efforts. Third, my family told me

868
01:13:49.800 --> 01:13:55.000
they were coming to visit me that
afternoon. Fourth, I lost the key

869
01:13:55.039 --> 01:13:58.600
to my house and didn' t
know where I was. I decided to

870
01:13:58.720 --> 01:14:01.039
put everything aside and come to light, even if I had to walk.

871
01:14:02.560 --> 01:14:08.000
When I arrived I could not believe
what I saw was the same gypsy who

872
01:14:08.079 --> 01:14:13.359
had cast the curse on me at
the time, although I was very angry,

873
01:14:14.119 --> 01:14:16.479
I refrained from confronting her. The
gypsy when she saw me did not

874
01:14:16.520 --> 01:14:20.079
recognize me and commented that she felt
something bad about me. He told me

875
01:14:20.159 --> 01:14:25.039
where the bathroom was. When he
touched my hand, I didn' t

876
01:14:25.119 --> 01:14:28.880
understand the words he was saying,
but I felt something was free inside me.

877
01:14:30.159 --> 01:14:33.560
When it was over, I felt
an intense urge to throw up,

878
01:14:33.760 --> 01:14:36.760
so I ran to the bathroom.
Now I understand why he told me where

879
01:14:36.800 --> 01:14:43.119
the bathroom was when I threw up, I expelled all the evil that had

880
01:14:43.199 --> 01:14:47.199
affected me, feeling a deep relief. After I recovered I returned to the

881
01:14:47.439 --> 01:14:51.880
gypsy and gave her two hundred as
a precaution. The gypsy with a big

882
01:14:53.000 --> 01:14:58.039
smile. He warned me to take
care of the people around you because they

883
01:14:58.119 --> 01:15:00.720
can throw a curse at you.
But if something like that happens to you,

884
01:15:00.960 --> 01:15:03.840
don' t hesitate to visit us, we can help you. When

885
01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:10.039
I left, I was afraid to
shake his hand, so I just said

886
01:15:10.319 --> 01:15:15.359
goodbye, thanking for everything. After
that, everything started to get better at

887
01:15:15.399 --> 01:15:19.359
work, where it had been for
about five years. They called me back

888
01:15:19.880 --> 01:15:25.000
saying that they needed me urgently and
that I opened up a raise in my

889
01:15:25.000 --> 01:15:30.279
salary. My family said they'
d better come next week because of an

890
01:15:30.039 --> 01:15:38.560
unforeseen and so everything bad that had
happened to me. He began to improve

891
01:15:38.640 --> 01:15:41.039
stories written and adapted by Ramiro contreras