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I was raised catholic, like the majority of children in Venezuela. I still consider myself a catholic, and even teach religion at a Jesuit high school.
Likewise, I’ve always believed in the undead: “espantos y aparecidos” (hauntings and apparitions), a belief I preserve from my childhood alongside my religious devotion. In Venezuela, both convictions compliment each other: if God and his angels exist in heaven, us and all the damned souls exist on Earth, far away from his embrace.
Some years ago, I was driving at night. I had planned to spend the weekend with a group of friends at the beach, where they already waited for me. I had been stuck at work until around 10 o’clock, when I was finally able to head there in my little 1995 Volkswagen Golf.
The road, which connects the capital with the beach town of La Guaira, lies between the dense vegetation of a mountain and the sea shore. It’s also one of countless streets filled with broken down light posts, engulfing it in total darkness during the evenings, and turning it into a high risk drive for even the most seasoned drivers.
I’ve always had terrible eyesight, which made it a constant strain trying to distinguish what little could be lit by my old headlights. In the midst of that arduous effort, I became invaded by an unpleasant feeling. A suspicion that something terrible awaited me, hiding in the shadows.
Not a half hour had passed from that thought when in the middle of the darkness, a hundred feet or so ahead, the dim lights of my vehicle reached a human figure standing on the side of the road, next to a steep mountain drop. My stomach tightened as I got closer and managed to detail it: it belonged to a woman who was very pale, had dark hair, wore blue jeans, a t-shirt and a pair of white converse. She moved her arms up and down, frenetically signaling me to stop.
Those few seconds felt like an eternity. I didn’t know whether to succumb to my childish fears and hit the gas, or behave in a civilized manner and find out what was wrong. I kept telling myself that this is Venezuela; it is dangerous to stop at night, regardless of what you did or didn’t see. But when I was only a few feet away from the woman, and saw the copious amount of blood running down her forehead and into her dark hair, I made up my mind. I parked, and smelled burnt tires as soon as I stepped out of the car.
“What happened?”
She didn’t reply. She didn’t even turn to see me. She only kept looking at the sea, stunned, muttering incomprehensible words.
“Señorita, what happened to you?”
I got closer but she backed away from me as if we were opposite magnets, never stripping away her eyes from the dark ocean, or ceasing to mutter. I would have thought she was high, but I knew this was different. Her glassy, tear-filled stare didn’t seem lost, but rather devoted to the horizon. As if in her catatonic state something far away called to her with urgency.
As I thought all of this, the woman collapsed to the floor crying. I tried to help her up, but once again she backed away. She only pointed to the drop coming off our side of the road.
“There… down there…” was all I could make out of her mumbling.
I looked down the steep hill. The burnt smell came from a car that laid below, wrecked and only visible because of how intensely it smoked. When I turned around to ask the woman how it ended up there she was once again standing, staring at the horizon, her back facing me. I now confess this vision petrified me. It seemed impossible that, only mere seconds before, she had been sobbing into the asphalt.
She wanted me to go down there, that much was evident, and I quickly understood why: there was someone inside the destroyed vehicle. Unmoving, covered by shadows and all that pungent smoke.
So I began to descend with urgency. I staggered from one side to the other, holding myself with branches and bushes. Halfway there, I saw that the outline of that motionless person occupying the driver's seat belonged to a woman.
I paused for a long time; I remember the beating of my heart on top of the distant sound of crashing waves. I didn’t want confirmation that I already knew who occupied that seat, but I had to carry on. I continued to climb down, but this time as slowly as I could, trying to delay an inevitably prompt arrival to the wreckage.
The smoking car was a tangle of scraps. I tried keeping my eyes looking down at muddy ground as I forced open the driver’s door. Yet as soon as it gave way they immediately stumbled upon the tip of a very still and very small foot. Wearing a white Converse shoe.
I slowly raised my head, only to have the air escape me and give way to a horrible nausea.
All of my childhood nightmares trampled me, like the arrival of news one can never be truly prepared for: the woman from the road sat there. Very pale, wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, of dark hair, with blood running down her forehead.
And dead, her gaze lost in the distance.
I wanted to turn around and flee, rush my climb up that hill with the hope of not encountering her ghost back in the road, waiting for me. That the glimpse at this unfortunate corpse would be the last time I saw her face. But something restrained me. I felt imprisoned inside that car.
And then I heard it, coming from behind the corpse: gentle yet perfectly distinct against the rumbles of the mountain and the ocean, a baby’s soft yawning.
I peeked through the hole left by the window’s shattered glass. There, still in his special car seat, slept a child yet to reach the first year of age. At peace, safe and sound.
The most acute terror I ever experienced was dispelled by a profound serenity. I carefully picked up the seat with the baby and slowly made my way back to the desolate road, where I didn’t find his mother’s spirit.
Later on, at the emergency clinic where the child’s condition was thoroughly assessed, I was informed that his name was Gustavo, and his mother’s Carla. I waited for their family to arrive, in order to introduce myself and tell them what happened, but chose to leave out my encounter with Carla. I didn't know how they would take it.
Once I returned to the car, I gave my rearview mirror a quick glance. Perhaps the fatigue was making me see things, since the reflection lasted less than a camera flash, but I could have sworn I saw her in the back seat. I think she was smiling at me.
It is common in Venezuela to stumble upon the ghost of the recently deceased. It’s how they sometimes let their loved ones know of their departure, while other times it’s their way of leaving behind one last message. Venezuelans live with their dead, carrying them from within as they permeate their day to day, and every single one of their nights.
