The car stopped just when he had begun to ascend the slight three-kilometer

slope that led to the hamlet. He could barely believe it, but the fuel gauge did
not lie: the gas tank was empty. In his ten years as a driver, he had never had
a lapse like that; so far, he had always been used to refueling long before
seeing the gauge pointer in the red zone. But in those days his mind had
become so absent from mundane material needs, busy as it was in revolving
around the same axis of preoccupation. Given the circumstances, that neglect
was, if not justifiable, easily understandable. Anyway, nothing could be done on
that score until the gas stations opened the next morning and now he had no
other option but leaving the car in the ditch and walking up to the house. By
doing it briskly, he would be there in less than half an hour, and he did not
think it too risky to leave the old Ford Orion spending the night on the edge of a
such a little busy road; so he got out and commenced his ascent on foot
following it.

He had just covered a few meters on his way uphill when that fear that had
lodged in his thoughts since he had made the announcement of the definitive
break-up to Lupe came back to his consciousness to disturb it. Was she the
kind of woman capable of fulfilling a threat of suicide? Martin tried to calm
down by telling himself that was the sort of typical emotional blackmail of an
infatuated and spiteful young girl. However, the seriousness of her face when
she had sprung her "if you leave me, I'll cut my veins and you'll rue it for the
rest of your life" on him had made his soul uneasy that her words might be
more than just words. That had not been the first time he had taken the step of
announcing to her that he wanted to put an end to their relationship, but all her
crying, begging and threatening to terminate with her own life always pushed
him to prolong it by a little more and, against his will, put off the final break-up.
The chance of being the cause of the suicide of an English language studies
junior in her prime terrified him; he had always thought the only person
responsible for a suicide was the person who committed it, but he very well
knew his conscience could never forgive him if Lupe, the student he had
seduced, committed the folly of putting an end to her existence if he left her
and she killed herself, the rest of his days would be hell with such a terrible
weight on his shoulders. On the other hand, he did not want to give up Luisa,
his new lover, and the possibility of a new life with her. Lupe was an obstacle
and the moment had come to make a decision. He could not go on giving in to
her emotional blackmail, even if it had come to a threat of suicide. No, in no
way was he going to forgo his happiness under such a sort of pressure: he
resolved that he would run the risk and keep his decision. Lupe had to become
a part of his past. It was necessary to trust the girl's good sense; after all,
suicide was something too serious and he did not deem it probable that she
came to such lengths of madness.

His mind was busy with such deep thoughts, trying to calm his qualms when
he looked at his watch. It was twenty to midnight. The day had been sultry and
the temperature still kept hot at that hour in spite of the fact that the sun had
already been absent from the sky for some time. As a result of it and of her
brisk pace up the road, he felt how sweat started to spill through his pores. The
monotonous chirping of the crickets and the barking of the dogs from the
houses near that local road were the only sounds that pervaded his
consciousness, harried by uneasiness. The night would have looked nice for a
walk to him, with that rounded and yellow moon lighting the summer sky, but
for that shady business he was trapped in and he had to ponder over while
walking back home. He went on, so lost in his own reflections that he did not
realize the fact that the stretch of the road he was going along then was
covered by a thicker cloak of darkness; the moon had hidden behind some
cloud; the road lights on the sides were off -out of order, most likely- and no
cars had passed by for some minutes. Only when his right foot stumbled on
something, making him stagger and almost fall face-down to the asphalt, was
he aware of how gloomy the road had become and he decided to pay more
attention to his steps.

He was not far from the hamlet, a ten-minute walk at the most, when he felt
himself hit by a surge of intense cold, difficult to explain keeping in mind how
warm the night had been so far. At the same time he became aware that all the
sounds that had been accompanying him on his way up the road had ceased:
the dogs were not barking anymore and the omnipresent murmur of the
crickets was not perceived. He felt upset, uneasy, taken by the sensation that
something was going wrong -inside or outside him, he could not be sure-. That
change of temperature and that utter silence were completely abnormal and
disquieting, just like the smell and the sounds he started to perceive right away
a smell like wax burning and a murmur like voices reciting something in a tone
of psalmody that came from beyond the blind bend the road formed some
yards ahead. He felt the fear before his brain could give itself the time to
analyze its perceptions: a fear that sank its roots in the stories he, as a child,
had heard his mother, grandmother and some neighbors tell about the "Santa
Compaa", the procession of lost souls that walked around the roads of the
parish announcing the imminent death of one of the locals or a relative or
acquaintance of the person who witnessed the passing of the spectral train.

His heart was beating frantically in his chest and he could feel the sound of
his pulse in his ears. An animal urgency for hiding and not being seen grabbed
hold of him and led him to penetrate the grove that lined the road and seek
shelter behind the trunk which seemed the thickest to him in that darkness.
The wax smell became more intense and the voices more audible. He was able
to make out that the language of the psalmody was Latin and the words, part
of the rosary litanies.

Agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi,

parce nos, domine.
Agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi,
exaudi nos, domine...,.

As he was so terrified, it is hard to account for what led Martn to turn around,
facing the trunk that hid him, poke out his head and peep at the road from
which he had just moved away; perhaps for just a few seconds his curiosity
turned stronger than his fear. Be that as it may, the truth is that his eyes looked
to the road again, even as a hooded figure, in white habits and carrying a
wooden cross, became visible through the trees; Martn could make it out
clearly in that darkness due to the morbid and spectral luminescence
emanating from a group of other figures that followed the first one down the
road in two rows. The retinue was perfectly visible in the dark in spite of the
dim light of their candles because their garb gave off an inexplicable
phosphorescence that illuminated them and the one going ahead, whose habit,
on the contrary, did not emit it. Before Martn's astounded and frightened eyes
crossed that spectral retinue chorusing the litanies in Latin. Nineteen of those
specters passed by down the road altogether, including the figure heading the
hellish procession, which looked different from the others. Martin could only
have described it by saying it felt worldlier than the rest of the company, since
it did not give off that odd luminosity, so obvious in the rest. he saw them go
away in two parallel lines, each figure flanked by another to its left or right,
except for the one at the end of the end of the retinue, which walked with no
other by its side, which brought an idea of incompleteness in the scene he was
witnessing to Martn's mind. While he watched that ghostly train, which -luckily
for him- had passed by before him without giving signs of having paid him any
mind, his fear did not dwindle a bit; as if something inside him knew he was yet
to witness that night's eeriest and most terrifying vision.

And it had to be so. Before the last figure of the spectral retinue, the one
which was not flanked by any other, disappeared down the road, Martn saw
another one, left behind, walking hurriedly as if wanting to catch up with the
group which it belonged to and had straggled after. However, on passing in
front of the tree behind which Martn was hidden, that straggler halted, as if not
caring about falling some more meters behind the group, as though something
more important demanded its attention at that moment. The figure moved
away from the road, entering the wood and making for Martn's hiding place.

His blood froze in his veins when that human shape, with a voice of unearthly
quality, but which he was able to recognize as Luisa's, uttered these words:

"Martn, are you there? Help me!"

At that instant the being that had called him by his name pulled back its
hood, uncovering its head; it was the head of a woman with long black head,
just like Lupe's; her face was unrecognizable, since it was a bloody mass of
flesh that was beginning to come off the skull at some points. The vision was
simply too terrifying to bear, and Martn turned around leaning his back on the
trunk of the tree that hid him and shut his eyes trying to turn away from his
mind that hideous image, which, however stuck vividly to his conscience. He
started to feel his body spinning and his legs weakening and he fell to the
ground as his consciousness abandoned him. Before losing all contact with his
frightening situation, he could clearly hear the begging of that voice from
beyond the grave:

"Please...help me!"

He woke not knowing how long he had been lying unconscious at the foot of
that tree, but it was still night. he checked his watch: it was one o'clock. Fear
was still gripping him and he did not know whether it would be better to keep
lying there or to rise and and try to go away from the place way back to the
village and his house. The terror of a new supernatural encounter made this
last idea seem like a feat not within the reach of such a little resolute heart as
his; on the other hand, he felt vulnerable there too, lying defenseless in that
grove beside the road. After some moments of terrifying doubt he realized that
the road lighting was working again and the bark of the dogs and the music of
the crickets had returned, giving the night an appearance of ordinary normalcy,
completely alien to the horror she had witnessed less than an hour ago. This
sensation of commonness let Martn's heart recover some courage; enough to
resolve to get on his feet and, ascend to the road and commence to walk at a
swift pace, almost running, toward the house, with a single idea tormenting
him: that what he had seen was just on the threshold of the true horror. Before
he reached the door of his house, it struck him as evident that his worst fears
were inexorably going to be
fulfilled; Lupe was going to slash the veins of her wrists and let her life escape
through them, ruining his forever on her way.

He knew then that "The Santa Compaa" had appeared to him warn him that
Lupe had not lied: he had decided to leave her and h