“Cover your eyes, don’t look.”
Dad’s order took me by surprise. We’d been stuck in traffic for hours, and I’d become sleepy from the sunlight’s heat roasting our vehicle. I was impatient to get to Margarita island and spend our Easter break at the beach.
But that summer daze ended abruptly as we passed by the site of the car wreck. Other drivers, feeling morbidly curious, slowed down to check out the damages, both mechanical and human, from the collision. This was the cause of the endless bottleneck.
I couldn’t judge them, as I was also keen to steal a quick glance of the tragedy. My eyes sneakily scanned among witnesses, officers and twisted scraps for a body laying on the pavement.
And they quickly found it, displayed with negligence over a puddle of blood.
“I told you to look away Santos!” Dad yelled, at the same time he slammed the steering wheel.
I finally complied, just as our car managed to escape the jam, and leave behind the scene of the accident. Mom gave me a warning that would eventually come true.
“You’ll regret not listening to us.”
I told her to “relax”, that I had not “seen anything”. It was easier to lie than to process outloud what I’d just witnessed.
In the asphalt laid a man, somewhat younger than my father. His white dress shirt barely held in place the mess slipping out of his torn stomach.
He also had a strange grin on his face. His jaw was dislocated, leaving his mouth, blood soaked and with splintered teeth, horribly open. As a result, this poor guy’s expression had become petrified into a smile.
At night we arrived at a house by the beach, which we rented alongside my uncle’s family. I’d share a bunk bed with Juan, my oldest cousin. I was 14 at the time; he was 8. We’ve always gotten along, but I knew who it would fall on to babysit him, and wasn’t particularly thrilled about it.
Fortunately the weather was gorgeous, and somehow the adults managed to find a couple of empty beaches. I can’t recall much from our first couple of days there,besides peaceful quietudes, the soothing contrast of the sun heat against the fresh sea water, and dozens of fish empanadas that I wolfed down while meandering on top of a stone jetty.
My little cousin, on the other hand, was completely lost in his own world. Other than asking me for a sand ball duel (which I let him win, out of compassion), he had a blast on his own, in the company of his imagination. One can only hope to be so lucky.
One afternoon, close to the time where the high tide demands caution, I was swimming underneath the waves, in order to dodge their impact. It’s a good enough way to kill time. I was emerging from the water when I spotted someone, further down into the ocean.
The person was around 100 feet away from me, heading towards the shore slowly, like a walking buoy.
I was now able to make out that it was a man. He waved at me, and even though I couldn’t recognize him. I turned around to see my family. Dad and my uncle were still sitting in their folding chairs.
Something caught my eye about the body and face of that stranger. I assumed, for a brief moment, that the red and pink tint on his chest was a shirt, until I understood the awful sight I was witnessing.
It was the dead man from the road, his dangling jaw making him smile oddly.
He waved at me once again, and I noticed for the first time the bent of his fractured arm. I ran away from the ocean and straight to my family, who were in the midst of laughing at a joke.
“Can you see him, in the water?” I asked. “There, in the distance?”
No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t help them spot the corpse, for the simple reason I could no longer fim him myself. My aunt, thinking someone might be drowning, asked me to describe what happened.
“You won’t believe it,” I prefaced, “but he was walking towards us, from where it’s too deep to even walk… and looked exactly like the dead guy from the car accident we saw on the road.”
Dad slapped me on the back of the head, seasoning his scolding with a slight chuckle.
“That’s what you get for not looking away like we told you to, dumbass. Now leave us alone. Go help your cousin Juan build his sand castle.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about that person. I had undoubtedly seen someone, but had to convince myself that its frightening resemblance to the car wreck’s victim had been my mind’s doing.
For the remainder of the day, the adults kept insisting on not being interrupted by “the children”. We’d be heading back to the city the next morning and our parents, hoping to talk freely while sipping scotch, asked me to take my cousin for a walk around the coastal neighborhood. I had nothing better to do, so I agreed to their request.
The night was quiet, and the streets were almost empty. We crossed paths with some kids from my school, who were accompanied by a couple girls from another institution, and undoubtedly having a better time than me. I pretended to not see them, but couldn’t ignore their giggles, which I still believe were aimed at me.
We reached the jetty where I enjoyed so many empanadas, and which crowned the wavy vastness of the night sea, before turning around and heading back. We were now the only people outside, so we could walk in the middle of the street.
At one point, I turned around to make sure no cars were coming, and saw him again. Also walking on the asphalt.
The corpse followed us, slowly but surely, at a similar distance to when I saw him in the water.
I had to think fast, I didn’t want Juan to see him. So I took his hand and challenged him to a race back to the house. It was the only excuse I could come up with to get away from that place.
That night I waited in bed for all the grown ups to fall asleep, so I could quietly check and secure each and every door and window in the rented house.
But I had yet to see, once more, that ghost, apparition, extraordinary illusion, or whatever it was.
Next morning, we loaded our luggage in the car and were about to begin our drive back home. It would be a long journey, with just as heavy a traffic as before, but I was okay with that. I planned on using the time to recover some of the rest I had deprived myself from the previous evening.
As the car left the property, Dad asked me to give it one final look. We left some stuff behind one time, while on another trip, and ever since that became one of those minuscule traditions which, besides useful, also tightens a family.
I had a bad feeling, but nonetheless turned around, only to glimpse at the dead man one last time, as he clumsily attempted to climb over a wire fence standing on his way to us.
“All good,” I told my father at the same time I ripped my eyes away from the corpse, and the vehicle drove away.
For months, I wondered whether that spectre kept chasing me. Dragging himself away from the beaches, through various cities, reaching our town, and eventually me.
I guess it is true, what they say: there are things no one should see, unless we are willing to let them haunt us for life.
