The Gate In The Bleeding Sky

I

"Whispers are bathed in tears from the bleeding firmament, tinged with secrets mankind should never know."

I write this to make clear the reasons that led me to do what I did, my motivations for which I will soon be no more.

I was about 14 years old, I lived in the countryside, in a very rustic town abandoned by the state called "San José Praga y Balboa" in the Andes, it was the eve of the feast of St. Joseph, a typical celebration of the town that was held every year in honor of the name of the town and the person on whom the name was based.

At that time, everyone was shocked by the disappearance of some children who went to the mountains to graze their sheep, because being a village of farmers where we all knew each other, no one was afraid to let their youngest children go out with their sheep, they always came back, we had a communal culture.... Be that as it may, after the incidents, all that was lost.... I mean... Sorry, I started to get sidetracked, this is very difficult.

A girl of about 9 years old and a boy of 10, did not return as usual at lunchtime. While the parents were a bit concerned, the way that little culture worked meant that a search was not immediately launched.... But things changed when it was already 10 p.m. and they did not arrive.

The worried parents went to the leader of the community, an older man named Juan Manuel Quispiyú, who organized a party with the villagers, some neighbors and the priest of the village, Father Miguel Aguilera Maraino, we called him Father Miguel.

The party left immediately in search of the children, even my friends and I went.... I admit it was more out of morbid curiosity than because we truly believed that something was happening. We thought those kids had fallen asleep, were kissing, I don't know, we were an average of 14 years old and we were too stupid to understand what was about to happen, added to the fact that we were used to nothing happening in a place so far away from everything.

When we arrived there were only the two flocks of sheep, not the slightest trace of the children, no blood, no bruises on the sheep, not their clothes, nothing....

The search went on all night, two of my friends and I preferred to go back to town and sleep, by that time we were a little nervous, nothing like this had ever happened before. Some of the adults talked about drug traffickers, kidnappers or people coming from the nearest town, Rimbamarca, who took them. Be that as it may, we went to sleep, and I, personally, seemed to be the most worried of all my friends.

The whole night was cold, something normal in my town, but this time, it was not normal, I was used to the humidity of the Andean night, but I felt that something was not right, I would swear even that night to see a crimson light entering very slightly under the door of my room. To this day I don't know whether to attribute it to some fire they lit, my imagination from nerves or a nightmare, whatever it was, that night was strange, something I felt was made worse by, as I recall, a dream.

I was alone, in the village, no sheep, no chickens, no people? Nothing, when suddenly, the dense gray fog of the night began to get thicker and thicker until I couldn't even see my own body. Moisture began to soak my clothes and, at that moment, a sound of horrible, rapid footsteps through the dirt and grass began to echo very close to me. Something, something that seemed to be running at great speed on all fours, that from a moment, about to be within a few meters of me, was silenced, when all at once.... I woke up.

When I woke up, at about 9 o'clock in the morning, somewhat late for the usual in my land, and more than by my will caused by the loud bustle outside, I went out in the sunny but humid morning as usual. That hustle and bustle was because the search party had just returned, they had failed in their mission, leaving the children's mother grief-stricken, screaming and throwing herself to the ground while the others tried to calm her down.

My friends who had stayed all night together with the party approached me and after a simple "nothing", they went home to get all the sleep they hadn't had. While the people of the village, among them my mother, tried to take the children's mother home to relax, because she was scaring the other children in the village.

Two days passed since then, Don Juan had gone to Rimbamarca, it is said that there were fights between Don Juan's men and the Rimbamarqueños, due to the accusations that Don Juan did not have the sense to avoid. Later, the only thing that was done was to pray with Father Miguel, faith seemed to be something logical, a glimmer or source of hope in the face of this unthinkable event in our small isolated community.

Don Juan thought it would be best to call the police authorities, although some were skeptical, as they had never shown interest in our communities. Likewise, Don Juan began his trip to "Cusquino", a town more urbanized than Rimbamarca or San José Praga. And, for his part, Father Miguel decided not to accompany them and to initiate a solitary search towards the last area where the children were known to have been. Some people refused to allow it, since it had begun to be conjectured that it was some wild animal, like a fox, a wolf, or something, the truth is that nobody knew what to think and they only managed to be afraid and to look for possibilities, although all this was not enough to convince Father Miguel.