The family trip started late in the morning. It was going to be a long drive before arriving at a waterfall that promised to be just spectacular.
Excitement was in the air; the whole family was singing, playing games while sharing snacks. Landscape after landscape—it seemed that mother nature had just more and more to give to them.
When the sunset came the parents were quietly disappointed. The high spirits were dying slowly. Soon after, there was nothing else to see, but darkness.
‘When are we going to be there?’ asked the youngest child. The question had been the elephant in the room for a while now.
‘We must be very close according to the map, my darling’, Dad replied.
Silence again.
The wife seemed annoyed, she clearly had told her husband she didn’t want to get there at night and here they were… on a dirt road, dark and narrow, on their last leg to the waterfall.
When they arrived at the campsite, they could only hear the waterfall, but not see it. Both parents were trying to set up a tent while the lights of the car were slowly dying on them.
They both wished they had left home earlier.
They were in a remote location with no phone reception and now also, with no useful vehicle.
‘We must sleep in the car, doors locked, I guess,’ she said finally after several failed attempts to finish setting up the tent.
‘I am sure we will be fine, don’t be afraid. No one else is here. Nothing can harm us’.
They got in the car and after looking at their three children sleeping, leaning on one another with twisted necks in the back seat, the father decided to go for a walk.
‘A walk?, Are you for real? and leave us here, in the middle of bloody nowhere!?’
‘I need to look for options, look at them. Don’t be superstitious, all will be fine,’ and he was gone.
After a good 20 minutes, she spotted him coming back to the car. She felt relieved.
‘There is a shack, there is a shack, we can sleep there!’ he yelled.
‘A shack? What shack? Whose shack? I don’t like this!’ She was clearly frustrated.
‘Com’on love, just grab a child and let’s go. I already checked it out. It is perfect’
It was perfect indeed. It had the basics, and they could even bolt the door with a long piece of timber.
They crashed.
After a while, she half-opened her eyes, sleepy and disoriented, she could hear the waterfall, the wind and… whispers?
With her eyes closed, she listened intently and when she couldn’t recognise her children’s voices in the whispering, she shivered.
Someone else was there.
Fully awake now, she tried to sit up but couldn’t move. She tried again, same result. She panicked even more and felt her heart racing. She screamed loudly but no noise came out of her mouth. She was immobilised, she could only move her eyes.
She heard the voices coming closer and closer and becoming clearer. She closed her eyes tightly, frightened. ‘A nightmare, this must be a nightmare, I must fucking wake up!’ Wake up you stupid!’ a scream in her head.
It didn’t work. She remained unable to move. She opened her eyes again, this time for several seconds, moving them quickly in all directions. Slowly, things became visible. Shapes and forms could be seen now. She saw the shack’s door, the small windows, the husband next to her, the children shapes. It was then when she saw those things. They were called duendes, small legendary creatures known to be evil. She felt an electric shock going down her spine, her skin bristled. How she was to protect her children if she couldn’t even move?
As if in a movie, she saw it all. The duendes made a circle around her sleeping children and lifted them from their bed, carrying them outside the shack while chanting diabolic tunes. At the same time, all other noises faded away, the big roar of the waterfall wasn’t there anymore, nor was there any more cracking of the wood. But the silence was so powerfully loud it hurt, banging in her ears and head.
She felt her heart torn; her children taken. Her tears freely flowing down her temples, a lump in her throat, still, unable to move.
Burnside Writers Group 