I’m one of those who see darkness as that universe where one is watched, without knowing by who or what. Every night at our apartment in Caracas, I constantly felt stared at by a pair of perpetual eyes.
That’s why my aunt once gave me a reminder, in order to lessen my fears of ghosts and spirits hiding in the shadows:
“You mustn't fear the dead. They're all stuck in heaven, hell or underground.”
But with the arrival of the crisis that broke my country, Venezuela, it seemed like only the deceased remained in place. Our loved ones swiftly moved away, and with that came a wave of darkness, and absences. It got increasingly harder to spot a familiar face in our neighborhoods, and the electricity shortages surrendered the streets to a blackness that, slowly, breached our residences. After all, we couldn’t keep the lights on in rooms that had been deserted by their owners.
That’s how the darkest evenings, hand in hand with the new voids at home, became the new tenants that replaced those who left us behind.
Years ago I came back late from a birthday party, and was welcomed home by a recurrent scene: all the lights were off, and the whole place was possessed by absolute silence.
I never liked that quietude, which arrived right after my brothers left. As soon as they emigrated our house felt deserted, and exposed to the malignant presences I’d always feared.
Forgetting my aunt's wisdom, I scaredly dashed past the living room. As soon as I set foot on our media room, my mother’s drowsy face peeked out to make sure it was me arriving.
Her hearing was never great, but even she could listen to anyone walking through that space. The wooden floor provided a symphony of creaks and squeaks anytime someone stepped on it.
Mom’s greeting consisted of letting me know she would take a sleeping pill. My stepfather, Carlos, wished me goodnight with a piece of advice he gave me almost nightly:
“Remember to lock your bedroom door. You never know if someone will break into our apartment, and you’ll end up needing that additional obstacle.”
I ignored him, of course. As only youth could allow me to.
A while later, with my make up removed, my PJs on and my eyelids feeling heavy, I sent a last text to another one of my friends living abroad. I placed my cellphone on my bedside table, and laid looking towards my window. I always slept this way to avoid facing how dark the apartment became by the time my TV, muted and on a timer, turned off.
Just then, I heard a couple of creaks. Someone was walking inside the TV room.
“Mom and Carlos got up for a glass of water” I thought, before recalling that my mother took pills, and should be sleeping already. I paused for a moment, and turned around.
The television’s gleam softened the details, but I could tell my door was ajar.
As if someone had turned the handle, and barely disjointed the lock from the frame.
I turned back around, trying to convince myself that perhaps I hadn’t closed the door properly. But those steps, wandering around the media room, made me look at it again. I shuddered.
I could see it clearly. The slim black stripe of my cracked door, opened further than before. The glare from my TV could no longer hide it.
I forced myself to face the window. “Breathe Eugenia”, I told myself as I struggled to settle down my beating heart. “You mustn’t fear the dead. This is just a breeze, or perhaps my stepfather.”
I thought maybe Carlos was trying to scare me as a joke, and sent him a string of WhatsApp messages. None arrived. His phone was turned off. I looked back at the threshold, and a scream got stuck in my throat.
The door was wide open.
Behind it, I could only see blackness. That which I always felt staring at me.
I jumped out of bed and ran towards my mother’s bedroom.
“Who’s there?! Who’s there?!” I screamed, pretending to sound brave. As soon as my finger touched my mom’s door handle I turned it.
But it wouldn’t give. I tried again. Nothing.
I was too afraid to remember my stepfather always locked their bedroom door.
Suddenly, I saw a dim light on my side, and turned.
What will remain the longest in my memory of that evening is his stillness. How he stared at me without uttering a single word.
The figure was much taller than me, and something shined from his chest. I never thought a ghost would look this way… yet my eyes quickly corrected my imagination:
This was a real person, made of flesh and bone. The shine belonged to a cellphone screen.
I screamed for help and banged the door mercilessly. The light from that phone concealed the features of that shadow standing next to me, who silently contemplated my panic, as if inspecting it. With a stillness that still disturbs me.
Out of nowhere, a hand grabbed me by the hair and pulled me into the bedroom. My mother threw me aside, and locked her door. I could tell her maternal instincts where wrestling against the effects of the sleeping pills.
“Someone broke in”, I said as soon as I was dragged in.
Mom and Carlos looked at each other.
“Are you sure you aren’t having a bad dream Eugenia?”
“No mom, I’m telling you what I saw: there’s someone in our home.”
Without giving and explanation, Carlos walked to his closet and drew out a handgun, which I never thought he would own. He shot a few rounds out the window to scare the intruder.
Later that evening, the security cameras showed that the man who shined at me with his phone was just one of four who sneaked into our home. The police officers found prints from hands and shoes all over my brothers’ window.
They didn’t take much: an old laptop, a couple backpacks and some movies. Who knows what else they were after.
But the footage revealed something else: the men broke in long before I arrived home from the birthday party, and remained seated side by side on my brothers’ empty beds for a long while. Staring at the wall.
That image haunts me: the four intruders spending hours in that room, right next to us, without moving a single muscle. Waiting for everyone to fall asleep. If darkness is my biggest fear, for them it was their natural habitat. One where they could spy their prey from the shadows, even while facing a wide open door.
I’ll never know what went through their minds while they waited, but I do know now that the most pure terror doesn’t belong to ghosts living in the dark, no matter how much I believe in their existence.
One mustn't fear the dead. We must save that for the living.