Roads, old roads, roads marked with the slow march of time or the cold crawling of death, offer a dark spectacle to the travelers. A display of shadows and forms, of sounds and grim sensations that not all are ready to witness, or prefer to ignore.
This one happened two weekends ago. It was Saturday night when my husband and I went to hang out in the beach town of La Parguera, Lajas, Puerto Rico. A hub for tourism, known for having a bioluminescent bay and unique ecosystem. But Lajas is famous also for having an extraterrestrial route and sighting camps, an alleged federal scientific subterranean base (or sub aquatic), a floating radar (supposedly to monitor drug trafficking), a herd of wild monkeys that escaped a laboratory and now roam free eating crops and scaring people in the many farms on the fertile valley, and lots, lots of urban legends involving dead pirates and the famous La Llorona.
It was about 2:00 am and I was driving home, hubby had been drinking a few more drinks that he's supposed to, so I grabbed the keys. He was sleeping by my side, his snoring louder than I wished, nonetheless it kept me awake and alert on the road. It's a dark area, not the best illumination, in fact, absent in most of the street.
I was reaching the outer limits of the town, bordering The Valley right where the Guanica Dry Forest displayed its unique thorny vegetation... a hot, very hot and dry area, still in that moment the car chilled inside, feeling like freezing... an unnatural coldness. I turned off the air conditioner as goosebumps rose all over my skin. My eyes focused on the street when a loud screeching sound ringed in my left ear, to the point of deafening. I put my hand over my ear when the noise became unbearable (the radio was off).
Then it was when I saw her. Dressed in a white pristine robe, a female something kneeled on the floor, her long straight gray hair covered partly her white translucent, sad face. She was in the opposite side of the road, staring at me with black empty eyes. I drove by and instinctively looked through the rear mirror (never try this while driving or at home), to see if, like the legend said, she was in the back seat, but she wasn't. The ghost was still kneeling, her face turning 180 degrees, staring at me. My heart pounded arrhythmically, while I kept driving until she disappeared amidst the shadows.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
