《The witch of Cerro Alto》


 My life as a doctor sent me through this

    I want to start by clarifying that I am a doctor from the city of Tampico. I completed my degree at the Universidad Aut¨®noma de Nuevo Le¨®n and had the fortune to work in the private sector until the plague of 2020 disrupted my life in more than one way. I don''t wish to share anything about that stage of my existence, except for the fact that being a food delivery driver and Uber driver was my salvation for several months. Fortune smiled upon me again when a very special job offer crossed my path, thanks to which I continue to practice my profession today. However, it has also drawn me closer to the story I am about to share with you.


    Do you believe in witchcraft? My professional training and objective education prevented me from thinking beyond what could be perceived with our senses or proven in laboratories. My skepticism survived until after my graduation from college but began to crumble as my proximity to the marginalized villages where I practiced medicine allowed me to fir sthand experience the superstitions of the people.


    I am part of a mobile clinic. My job involves traveling throughout the country offering medical services to the most underserved communities. It is an initiative of the government with private sector funding. I know there are 12 other mobile clinics and at least 30 doctors like me traveling across Mexico. My clinic is the smallest and is reserved for visiting the most remote places in the country. It consists of three adapted caravans¡ªone as a dormitory, another serving as a clinic, and the last one for physical examinations that require more privacy¡ªtwo drivers, a nurse, and another doctor who accompanies me. Communities in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca frequently appear on our itinerary, but none have been as mysterious as Cerro Alto, Veracruz. It does not appear on any map, and only a few men outside that town know how to get there. We learned of its existence in late 2021 thanks to a request from a member of its community, as a strange epidemic was affecting the children. The first time we traveled to Cerro Alto, we met a couple on the outskirts of Llano Medio, Veracruz, where there is a community hospital that we already knew. From there, we followed their van on the national highway until we turned off somewhere beyond Colotl¨¢n, entering rocky terrain more akin to a plain than a road.


    I cannot provide more directions, nor would I even if I could. Not even Google maps mark such a place as the community it is, and only satellite images can offer us a very ambiguous glimpse of what Cerro Alto is, if you know where to look.


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    The road to that place was already quite fantastical. As we advanced, the vegetation took on a brighter green than I thought possible, the sky cleared, and the trees seemed to thicken to unusual sizes. It was like entering a Mexico before the era of conquest, a place that man could not completely dominate and that remained almost untouched since before the Spaniards set foot on the continent. I had the feeling that if I were to explore the surroundings, I would encounter new species of plants, but I refrained from doing so for fear that new creatures might also be lurking.


    The nature offered a very attractive spectacle wherever you looked, but nothing caught our attention as much as a distant scar on the mountain ranges that formed the Sierra Madre Oriental. That mark grew larger, deeper, and darker as we approached. It was a cavern as grand as palace doors, located at a great height and adorned with a rocky relief merging with its interior. We all agreed that it embellished the mountain range, but somehow, we felt intimidated by its presence, as the darkness from its depths sent shivers down our spines, and its size was such that we could see it from any place for many kilometers around. We didn''t speak much of it that day, although I never stopped looking in its direction.


    All communities we visited for the first time tend to be quite suspicious of our intentions, so we were already accustomed to dealing with that. However, the inhabitants of Cerro Alto barely made an effort to hide the repulsion they felt at having us on their land, something I could see in their faces and the uncomfortable silences that occurred while we tried to connect with them. We felt displaced from the first moment, as upon our arrival, they performed a ''cleansing'' on us. We had experienced similar situations in other places. Herbs on your body, smoke on your face, and some shaman''s pressure-spit were the usual procedures, but what they did in Cerro Alto seemed more like a ritual from pre-Hispanic times. A brew with a taste I cannot describe, aromas I cannot relate to any other scent, and strange herbs with leaves like starfish and rough stems, sliding over our joints as if they were going to tie us with them, were the most striking elements of that afternoon. Later, they blindfolded us and burned something that emitted an oily aroma reminding me of both fish and coal. Then they made us press the resulting ashes with the palm of our right hand. The pain from the burn made me open my fist, but the woman who performed the ritual squeezed my hand to prevent me from letting go. They didn''t want to talk much about what we had just done and simply claimed it was protection against what dwelled in their lands. The inhabitants of Cerro Alto seemed more at ease after they saw us with that first-degree burn on the palms of our hands, but they maintained their reserved attitude when interacting directly with us. This continued even when we started investigating the disease affecting the children in their community, and their treatment did not improve until the children positively responded to our treatments.


    It was a strong infection affecting the children from early in the year. Some had already died, but most of the sick could be controlled with a tea whose main ingredient they never clarified. Observing the severity of the infections surprised me that not all had died, and I wondered how effective their home remedy had been. This epidemic constitutes a very interesting clinical case for any doctor, but it is not what inspired me to share this story; it is what happened later.

 The evil which came from the sky

    The social organization of Cerro Alto was one of the most peculiar and isolated that we had encountered up to that point. Barter predominated in their trade, reserving the national currency for when it was essential to acquire something from the outside. They faced the scarcity of a resource together while accepting individual wealth, knowing that it would eventually be distributed among everyone. There was no such thing as a governor or public offices, although age and ability played a significant role in each person or family''s influence on the community. The only position I was able to identify with total clarity was that of Mr. Arnulfo Arriaga, whom I can only describe as the leader of Cerro Alto. He was a man around 60 years old, extremely robust for his advanced age, very reserved with a heavy gaze that commanded respect, but polite and kind as far as I could see. Later, we learned that he was the one who contacted us to help his community. His decision went against the will of most of his people, but they accepted us, or rather tolerated us, out of the respect they had for such a man.


    Most of our work in Cerro Alto consisted of closely monitoring the evolution of the disease in children so that we could leave with the assurance that they no longer needed our intervention. Our stay in each town we visited averaged about a week, but it took almost three working in Cerro Alto. It was during that time that people began to get used to us, a change that was mainly achieved thanks to our drivers. Mr. Antonio was a handyman who had worked for many years in the United States, and Mr. Jos¨¦ was a former policeman whose retirement did not seem as exciting as others, so he had sought extra income. Both were jack-of-all-trades who occasionally taught us useful things, especially about car mechanics or electricity, so we knew how useful they could be anywhere. It was they who, with their cheerful attitude and vast experience, smoothed out the rough edges between the people of Cerro Alto and us to the point where interactions became enjoyable, and more than one smile crossed theirs with ours throughout the days.


    Our subsequent visits followed the usual itinerary, every two or three months approximately. The disease affecting the children¡ªan inflammatory lung condition caused by infection¡ªdecreased significantly after we had intervened. I cannot mention anything relevant from a medical perspective, except for the aggressive and selective way the disease attacked the youngest. Days before the first cases, Cerro Alto had faced the torrential residue of a storm originating in the Gulf of Mexico. The drop in temperatures, ambient humidity, and the conditions of poverty in the community were the best causes we could attribute to the disease, although it did not explain why it only affected the children. Our record of clinical cases attributes the epidemic to this reasoning, but the people of Cerro Alto had such an irrational theory that it was challenging for me to maintain a professional stance when it reached my ears. They said the disease was due to a latent curse that had afflicted the community for a long time. I first heard it as whispers among the people, but Mr. Antonio''s charisma and open mind allowed us to hear the story from the patriarch''s own mouth.


    The event they spoke of had happened several decades earlier, at a time when Mr. L¨¢zaro Arriaga, Mr. Arnulfo''s great-grandfather, was the leader of Cerro Alto. A powerful noise from the sky had awakened everyone on a New Year''s Eve, followed by a light so bright that it turned night into day for a few seconds. By the time the neighbors went out to see what was happening, a sphere enveloped in intense flames drew an arc in the sky before crashing into the great mountain range, which is part of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Many men from the community armed themselves with what they could find, including machetes, shovels, pitchforks, and some contemporary weapons from the Mexican Revolution, then mounted their horses and went to investigate what had fallen on their lands.


    As they advanced, a metallic stench descended from the mountain. No one from that time was able to accurately describe the smell that had invaded their noses, although several testimonies coincided in relating it to a kind of nauseating metallic aroma reminiscent of blood. The sensation was so strange that many ended up suffering intense dizziness, as if their minds had collapsed trying to understand what reached their noses. Not a few men who were ascending the mountain swallowed their pride to admit that they could no longer continue with the journey, while the rest gathered enough courage to go to the last consequences of the matter. Nothing is known about the relationship between the aroma and its effect on those who perceived it, but only small children, animals, and a few elderly people were able to resist or even ignore the scent that burned the throats of others.


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    As they approached the scene, a fire intensified in the distance, as if an explosion had occurred, and a sickly glow spread to invade a large part of the mountain range. Upon getting closer, they realized that the source of such light was a cold fire spreading without burning and without producing any type of gases. Such properties were strange enough, but the compilation of testimonies about that experience agrees that the most striking aspect was the color of the flames. Everyone agreed to have perceived their bluish tone, but they claimed it had a horrifying quality that could not be related to anything in this world. None of the men who climbed the mountain that night believed that the fire really had that hue. They felt as if their eyes were replacing an incomprehensible light with a familiar color, although not entirely succeeding. While natural fire dances and crackles on the surfaces it invades, that of that night only vibrated and emitted a sharp low-frequency scream that lodged in their heads. Mr. Arnulfo tried to complement his descriptions with other examples shared by the elders of his time, but none of them managed to clarify what he was trying to explain to us, nor did it seem that he himself could understand what he was conveying.


    Mr. L¨¢zaro, the patriarch of that distant time, managed to reach the scene of the incident with six of the toughest men in his community. The object they were looking for had impacted so deeply in the mountain that it had created an extensive and shadowy cave whose only light was the trail of that abominable pale blue fire. The men armed themselves with a courage worthy of respect but easily confused with recklessness, only to find that the bottom of the cave, as cold as in an intense winter, was empty. They could see that a massive spherical object had hit the earth with force, but upon arrival, they could only notice a small mass, embedded in the ground, glowing with that unrecognizable hue. They barely noticed its existence for a few seconds before it emitted a blinding flash followed by a horrifying scream.


    The men woke up hours later on the mountainside, with aching heads and blank minds. Only after several days were they able to remember fragments of what they had experienced, although little could and wanted to reconstruct from that night. It seemed like the end of a horrifying episode, but weeks later, a period of collective hysteria would begin in which, through nightmares, a formless entity warned them, with a thunderous voice, about the evil that had fallen upon their lands and how it would devour whatever was in its path. The most perceptive people revealed that the voice urged them to dig into the mountain with their nails and burn with it, but the intensity of these dreams escalated to the point that these individuals ended up dying of heart attacks with a rigor mortis difficult to explain, burying their nails in the sheets and arching their heads almost to break their necks, as if they had died in that hellish fire they dreamed of. Pilar, the wife of Mr. L¨¢zaro, a deeply religious woman, suffered the most and resisted those episodes the best, being the one who could better explain what she felt. She said that the thunderous voice spoke to her, that she could hear and understand it, but it was not words that reached her ears, but orders that embedded in her mind. The presence wanted the town and the mountain to burn, she said. It was an entity in the service of the Devil¡ªLucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, or whatever one wanted to call him¡ªa witch whose power accumulated over centuries allowed her to harass the inhabitants of Cerro Alto in that way. Ms. Pilar took refuge in her faith in God to withstand the siege of that entity on her mind. Whether some divinity really protected her or if the hope that her faith gave her gave her the strength to resist is something I cannot assure. The lady lived for a few more years until a heart attack struck her while she was taking care of her cows, a peaceful death as far as is known.


    The most intense collective delusions ended after a few months, but rumors of a curse in Cerro Alto emerged from then on, an evil that seemed to intensify every year due to the silent action of the witch they feared so much. First, the fertility of the land began to decrease, then the well water began to acquire a metallic taste, and then the animals began to go missing more frequently. However, the worst of all were the fireballs that flew over the mountain range on dusky nights, dancing on the slopes near the impact site. The people of Cerro Alto said they heard sharp screams, like laughter or chants in unknown languages that bothered the ears despite their low volume. There were always brave men willing to confront whatever was lurking in the mountains, but in the end, no one dared to take a step in that direction.


    That was the story we heard in the patriarch''s hall. I noticed that after finishing, Mr. Arnulfo seemed interested in hearing our comments, as if he were expecting us to share some solution or explanation that had not occurred to them, but none of us could do more than express amazement. Upon leaving, Mr. Arnulfo pointed out a distant cave in the mountain, the same one that caught our attention when we arrived in Cerro Alto, already eerie in itself, adding that it was getting larger over the years and that its cave system also seemed to evolve, as if someone were secretly excavating it.

 Wild ones

    When our work concluded in those remote lands, our mobile clinic returned to the busy itinerary we were accustomed to, but for the following weeks, we could hardly talk about anything other than Cerro Alto. Mr. Antonio and Mr. Jos¨¦, as adults from a different era than ours, were immediately drawn to the belief that a Witch had fallen upon the Sierra Madre Oriental. The locals were sure of it, although they were unaware of the kind of power possessed by that fallen being, nor could they guess its true intentions. Fear had them dominated, but love for their lands prevented them from fleeing. We, the young ones¡ªDaniel, the other doctor, Mateo, the nurse, and myself¡ªremained skeptical of such a theory. Mateo jokingly acknowledged the existence of evil women in the service of malicious purposes, but we all agreed that selling your soul to the Devil, flying through the skies engulfed in flames, and accumulating mystical powers that defied physical laws were beyond any human capability. Our best guess was about the impact of a stellar object, a hypothesis that explained some of the most striking elements of that story they had shared with us. The roar they heard could have been a sonic boom caused by an impressive acceleration of the object, while the subsequent glow could have been the same object catching fire upon entering our atmosphere. The fire could have originated from a residual chemical element from space, something whose reaction with high temperatures invoked the bluish hue that everyone perceived. The low temperature of the fire was difficult to explain, although we were inclined to think that both the locals'' ignorance and the impact of the moment made them relate the cold mountain night breezes to the fire. The low fertility of the lands, on the other hand, could have been due to soil contamination, which in turn gave a bad taste to well water. The rest we attributed to collective hysteria whose effects could have extended thanks to the fear that one generation instilled in the subsequent ones.


    Such a conclusion killed any fantastic trait of the story, although we couldn''t help but be fascinated by what had happened, and we couldn''t hide our desire to explore the impact cave to see if we could rescue some residual piece from distant worlds.


    The next time we visited Cerro Alto was in August 2022, almost a year after our first contact. We returned having agreed to sneak away one day to explore the mountain range. Fate would drag me to do exactly that, but what dwelled in the bowels of the earth was far from the astronomical discovery I hoped it would be and raised questions that still haunt my nights.


    As soon as we arrived in Cerro Alto, just before dawn, we knew something was terribly wrong. A heavy silence was the only thing to greet us on that occasion. It seemed so strange to us that we didn''t hesitate to go knocking on doors that no one answered. Mateo was the first to dare to disturb people''s privacy by peering through the windows. Thanks to him, we confirmed that the houses were completely empty. We advanced increasingly impatiently to find signs of life, but all the houses had been abandoned. The town seemed deserted. Some windows were broken, and there were signs of violence on some walls. When pushing a poorly closed door, Daniel came face to face with a huge rat that lunged at him. His reflexes were enough to contain the bites on the sole of his sneakers, but I had to help him shake off the furious animal with my kicks. The first one I landed made the rat fall to the ground, and that''s when I noticed swollen veins on its body that had grown to resemble tumors. Their color was a bluish-green. A timely glance also allowed me to see that its eyes were injected with the same color. The rat reacted quickly, so I had no choice but to throw it into the bushes with a second kick, at which point it disappeared from our sight.


    As we advanced, thanks to the whispering behind a window, we discovered that people were taking refuge in the town''s warehouse, a large building where they stored the reserves of their crops, which were diminishing every year. The place was filled with distressed families, with parents calming their children and a few individuals moving among the crowd to bring water, food, or sheets to those in need. The patriarch hurried to greet us as soon as he noticed our presence, concerned about whatever we might have seen in the town. The people around us became agitated as soon as they heard us mention the rat we had discovered. Mr. Arnulfo expressed regret for what had happened to us but thanked God that there were no other beasts around when we arrived. We asked for the reason behind all the strange behavior of the town. It was surely something they would have preferred to keep secret out of pride, but given the circumstances, the patriarch had no choice but to reveal to us the terrible events that had led to the destruction of the town and the creation of that improvised refuge.


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    It turned out that Cerro Alto had been besieged by unprecedented animal attacks. The first assaults had occurred around 3 in the morning when insistent scratches on windows and doors woke up the most vigilant members of each family. Rats, squirrels, and other creatures of similar sizes were the ones roaming around the houses. The locals could barely see their shadows moving in the darkness, but everyone managed to perceive a nauseating aroma whose description varied between things like stagnant water, rust, and rotten fruit. Later on, the problem evolved with larger animals such as foxes and wolves, which ended up waking most people with their insistent knocks on the windows. What followed was a horror that each one experienced in their own way. The onslaught of the creatures was so severe that they soon began to invade the first houses, causing panic and spreading cries for help that soon flooded the entire town. Looking around, we realized the consequences of such an attack, as scratches and bites overflowed wherever we looked. Despite that, the locals were fortunate to have faced unusually weak creatures, as not even the wolves had managed to cause bleeding that raised much concern. The families managed to get rid of their attackers and instinctively moved towards the center of the town, where they thought of turning the warehouse into their shelter. A huge jaguar appeared among the crowd of frenzied beasts by the time they were taking refuge in the place. It seemed more interested in growling than attacking, as it chased a young mother and her son through several streets, only showing its teeth, but its imposing presence disturbed almost all the locals regardless of how safe the warehouse seemed. This continued for hours while the siege of the beasts continued, even when the sounds stopped and everything outside seemed quieter.


    We attended to the wounded as best as we could. We cleaned wounds and controlled some minor bleeding. We also suggested that everyone be vaccinated against rabies, as that was the only disease that would explain what happened, but no one wanted to believe us, and we couldn''t see any signs supporting our hypothesis.


    While I was doing my duties, an eight-year-old boy talked to me. It had been him and his mother who were harassed by the jaguar. He insisted a lot on having seen blue eyes and things "like ticks" clinging to its back. The mother assured that it was some kind of misunderstanding, as that was the best way to calm her son''s concerns, but the truth was that she had been too worried about their well-being to pay attention to the appearance of the animal.


    Such anecdote reminded me of the blue and sickly eyes of the rat that had attacked us, as well as the tumors surrounding its back, but I had been the only one to notice, and I couldn''t talk to anyone about it. By dawn, everything had calmed down. The patriarch and some men cautiously went out to explore the area. We waited impatiently for their return until they confirmed that everything was fine. The livestock was stressed, and the fact that some fences were broken had caused a third of them to disappear, but the rest were okay.


    During the following days, we greeted the night cautiously, fearing that the nightly siege would return with greater force. In the first few days, some locals managed to spot animal activity around the town, although no attacks occurred since then. I can''t say that things normalized in Cerro Alto because in the subsequent weeks, we received some cases of feverish delusions in adults who had suffered the worst of that night. These delusions mostly occurred in the middle of sleep and were related to panic attacks where muscle contractions, moans of pain, and incoherent phrases dominated individuals for several minutes before regaining consciousness. We couldn''t relate such a state to an ailment other than mental, so when these cases occurred, little or nothing could be done. That''s where the older members of the community came in, who with teas, broths of strange herbs, prayers, and ash marks on the skin managed to appease the intensity of the delusions.


    At the end of our stay, we left Cerro Alto hoping that the situation would improve by the time we returned, but fate would push us to discover that the horrors lurking in such a peaceful community were more real than we had imagined.

 The witch of Cerro Alto

    By the time we returned to Cerro Alto in December 2022, the curse of those lands had escalated to apocalyptic proportions. The town was in utter chaos as we spotted it in the distance. Adults roamed the streets with blank minds. We tried talking to some, but they only reacted violently when we interrupted their wandering. We walked through the entire town until we found someone sane. The warehouse, the first place we wanted to check, was empty. Most houses were uninhabited, and almost all the adults we encountered behaved as if they had lost their minds, crawling on the ground, trying to break down walls with their chests, or even burning their eyes by staring directly at the sun. We had tried to help everyone in our path, but we stopped intervening when they began greeting us with aggression. We limited ourselves to preventing them from harming themselves and then continued on our way.


    In the church, we found a small group of normal adults, though very disturbed by the situation, along with all the children and teenagers in the community. It was Mrs. Dolores, a peasant, who revealed what had happened. Days earlier, Mr. Arnulfo began to experience visions where it was revealed to him what he must do to save his people. At first, he shared this fearfully, afraid they would take him for crazy, but he forgot his reservations when worries began to consume him, and his gaze constantly wandered into some corner of the horizon. Later on, many people began to have similar delusions, although their condition worsened terribly as the days went by. They first whispered things about the mountain range, then screamed in terror about an entity being born from the bowels of the earth. Later, their minds degenerated until they could barely murmur incoherencies, and rarely remembered to eat, drink, or sleep. Some people had walked until they got lost in the depths of the surrounding forest, and others had taken their lives by plunging their heads into buckets of water in the middle of the night. The patriarch had regained enough of his sanity to help a little in that situation, but that morning, the day we arrived, he woke up shouting about his duty on the mountain, then sneaked away while a bunch of townspeople suffered a sudden attack of hysteria.


    We helped Dolores and Juan, her husband, control the situation. We took people to the church, where with prayers and infusions whose aroma hit us like adrenaline, we managed to restore some clarity to some individuals. That''s when we heard firsthand about the delusions afflicting the inhabitants of Cerro Alto, where humanoid figures shrouded in shadows and black threads devouring distant worlds were constantly repeating.


    When we asked about the visions of the patriarch, Dolores and Juan refrained from clarifying the details. I suppose they already sensed our skepticism, finding it offensive to their beliefs, but after our insistence, they confessed some of what the patriarch had shared with them when he still retained some of his sanity. At first, they spoke of random fragments of distant memories where voices, landscapes, and familiar scents abounded. Later, when they were sure of our willingness to listen, they proceeded to reveal the most incredible of all those delusions, one in which Mr. Lazaro Arriaga¡ªancestor of Mr. Arnulfo and the former patriarch of Cerro Alto¡ªrepeatedly emphasized to his great-grandson about the importance of stopping the witch. The fragments of the delusions in which Mr. Lazaro appeared were full of overwhelming sensations and a sidereal landscape very different from what could be seen from Earth. He spoke an unknown language, but the thunderous voice that resonated in the patriarch''s head somehow made him understand his message, as if his words traveled through pure vibrations.


    The mere idea of being trapped for hours in that imaginary space already seemed unsettling to me, but the explanation of what was happening in Cerro Alto surpassed the impact of any delusion. The witch was feeding on everything within her reach, according to Mr. Lazaro. She wanted to drain the elemental energy that composed matter until its structure collapsed, turning everything into dust. It was clear that these words and concepts were alien to the understanding of people as humble as those of Cerro Alto, but they repeated them with such certainty that I could no longer doubt the message of the ancient patriarch.


    After confessing the vision he had had, the state of Mr. Arnulfo improved almost to the point of regaining his complete sanity. However, that morning, he woke up with a heartbreaking scream, grabbed a machete, and ran towards the mountain. They wanted to go after him, but the chaotic situation of the town forced them to focus on providing as much help as possible to their crazed neighbors.


    Our team continued to help control the situation, but soon we agreed that someone should take advantage of one of our caravans to look for Mr. Arnulfo. It was Mr. Antonio, the peasant Juan, and I who followed the trail of the patriarch, whose location we could only guess was near the mysterious cave that had started it all.


    Mr. Juan''s guidance helped us advance as fast as possible in our caravan. We saw Mr. Arnulfo climbing the mountain in desperation, severely hindered by some motor condition I had never seen before, as if he had forgotten how to control each of his limbs coordinately and was struggling to remember. We jumped to help him as soon as possible, thinking he was suffering from a stroke, but he surprised us with a lucidity that contrasted with his motor skills. He denied being unwell and even pushed us when we tried to lift him, showing that characteristic pride of a ranch man who does not allow his weaknesses to be recognized. He continued to refuse help while taking full responsibility for helping his people until another vision made him fix his eyes on the sky.


    "He mumbled words that none of us could recognize. Mr. Juan suggested that maybe he was having a conversation, but both Mr. Antonio and I agreed that his phrases¡ªbrief and composed of short words¡ªresembled more the responses of an interrogation than a chat. "Yes, it''s okay," were the last and clearest words we heard him say before his eyes refocused on reality. What he told us next is hard for me to accept even today, after having seen what I saw, as the content of his words challenges our understanding of the world and raises questions that I Mr.''t want to think about, much less discover their answers. Mr. Arnulfo''s lucidity, moreover, was so indisputable that none of the three witnesses dared to question him, and we followed his instructions as if they had been orders. His speech faded at the end, before a sudden stiffness and a face of agony completely invaded him, paralyzing him. Both Mr. Juan and Antonio headed towards the cave of disaster with some wood they collected on the way with a machete and the lighter that Mr. Antonio always carried in his back pocket to light his cigarettes.


    I stayed behind to try to save Mr. Arnulfo, but my efforts were in vain, as the ailment that plagued him was beyond any medical solution. His mind and body seemed to sink further as time passed, but during his last breath, he gathered enough strength to say his final words.


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    "Intense fire... purify... from the mountain." That was all I was able to hear initially with pure auditory sense. Mr. Arnulfo was so weak that he could barely make any sound, but seeing his lips and remembering that his delirious speech circled around certain key words allowed me to recognize what he meant. By then, shouts of alarm outside marked Mr. Arnulfo''s last heartbeat and completely stole my attention. Upon going out to see what it was, I saw Mr. Juan and Antonio running towards the caravan. They told me, worried, that the fire had not worked. The cave had dry vegetation whose nature none dared to describe to me, but the fire did not spread through it, even though it seemed highly flammable both to the touch and sight. Moreover, they were horrified by whatever dwelled in that deep corner of the earth, that abominable creature referred to by the people of Cerro Alto as the witch.


    I then recalled Mr. Arnulfo''s last words, or the best reconstruction I could make of them:


    "Only the fury of an intense fire can purify the evil from the mountain."


    I regretted that we lacked the essential combustible metals to invoke the most intense fires known to man, but a fleeting moment of adrenaline made me think of the best possible solution for our limited situation. My companions agreed with my idea when I shared it with them. We brought the caravan as close as possible to the cave and began to empty its key elements needed to carry out our plan, including isopropyl alcohol and the gasoline from the tank, as well as any other substance that could serve as fuel.


    My initial determination upon entering the cave was motivated by my ignorance of what dwelled there. The mere sight of the bulbs and roots of the place was enough to shatter my will, as their appearance, color, and aroma deviated from anything earthly with which they could be compared. My best description of them is that they resembled twisted snakes with a horrifying texture that triggered trypophobia in anyone who saw them, composed of pulsating clusters of a phosphorescent blue color whose metallic essence embedded itself in the back of one''s nose. But those horrible sensations were overshadowed by the discovery of what was at the bottom of that infernal cave, whose sight would have broken my spirit had I been alone.


    It was at that moment that Mr. Arnulfo''s words, which initially seemed like nonsense, finally penetrated my head because of the magnitude of what they hinted at. Mr. Lazaro Arriaga and Mr.a Pilar, the former leaders of Cerro Alto, were the ones who had been appearing in visions to the current patriarch, surely sent by God to prevent a disaster in which he could not intervene directly. They had told him the truth about the evil that had befallen not only his community, Cerro Alto but the entire planet. That creature, the witch, was nothing more than the corporeal manifestation of an entity whose dealings with evil had stripped it of any resemblance to the human it once was. This, they said, went beyond tales of flying witches stealing children to rejuvenate with their blood and empower themselves with their innocent souls. The creature buried in the mountain was going to branch out across the world until it consumed the life force of all living beings, devouring everything in its path until it gained enough power to return to life. The mental instability of the creatures in the vicinity, human or not, was only a consequence of its resurgence. That any of us, or any army, could face a semi-deity with such power seemed impossible, but there was hope to put an end to that threat. While the entity materialized in our world, it was weaker than ever, as it would completely lack the power it would have in another plane, and its corporeal form would be almost as weak as any of us.


    That day we encountered the incarnation of evil, or one of them at least, materialized as a horrifying humanoid figure lying on the ground, face up, without a face or developed limbs, spasming as the life force of the earth ascended through what I suppose were its veins until it gradually materialized into fleshy tissues. It lacked eyes, ears, a mouth, or even a face, so it was easy to think that no sense connected it to our world, but that mass writhed violently as soon as we found ourselves in its dwelling, as if some supernatural sense had signaled our presence. If the veins giving it life had not been chaining it, who knows what that entity would have been capable of, even without its complete transformation, as it was evident in the sheer movement of its limbs that it possessed superhuman strength.


    We proceeded to finish what we had set out to do, trying to ignore as best we could what lurked among us, writhing desperately as we spread all kinds of fuels over its demonic roots. I was sure that we would unleash a true hell in that place, but we had the fortunate intuition that we had to do everything possible against that beast. We returned to the truck to get clothes, blankets, rugs, and absolutely anything else that could serve as fuel to keep the flames alive for as long as possible. We even took off the tires to place them under that humanoid, a moment when I could firsthand experience its strength, as with a push from what was its hip, it induced such intense pain that I almost thought I had broken an arm. That contact terrified me, but at the same time, it infuriated me so much that I gathered the courage to wrap its limbs with fabric and cover its head with the coat I was wearing.


    We left the cave. We kept a tire that Mr. Antonio set on fire and pushed it to roll towards the lair of that monster. The accumulation of gases from the chemicals we poured caused a blaze that we could see from the entrance, followed by the intense crackling of the subsequent flames. We would have felt relieved after that if it weren''t for the horrifying scream we heard in the depths, born from vocal cords that had not managed to develop. We were able to relate it to agonizing pain, but we also noticed a trace of demonic fury with which it seemed to be casting a curse upon us. Although I have no reason to think that it was really a curse, the idea of some looming danger has kept me awake for the past few months.


    That agonizing scream of the entity brought about the last evils upon Cerro Alto, as many of its inhabitants fell victim to a mental degeneration that had neurological consequences such as memory loss or lack of motor coordination. The most severe case was that of an elderly woman who was almost entirely reduced to a vegetative state for several weeks before reacting for the first time to stimuli such as light or sound. Most of the locals, however, managed to recover both physically and mentally from that episode, and together they were able to rebuild their beloved home.


    Upon revisiting the cave in that mountain range, we only found charred matter, confirming that the evil at the earth''s core had been completely eradicated. Needless to say, the droughts ended, and the renewed fertility of the lands allowed the locals to recover easily.


    I didn''t plan to share this story with anyone, as I know how difficult it is to believe. In fact, I would have liked to ignore it for the rest of my days. I had already begun to resume my life as happily as it was when ignorance allowed me, but I jumped on my laptop to write this testimony as soon as I heard some rumors that chilled my blood. Cerro Alto had never experienced such happy and prosperous times as it does now, as I mentioned earlier, but our contact with neighboring towns has allowed us to hear terrifying whispers. People have started talking about crazed creatures that roam the fields at night, fireballs crossing the horizon frequently, and lands whose fertility decreases at an unprecedented rate. But what terrified me the most of all was the testimony of a couple of farmers from a town east of Cerro Alto, somewhere near the state of Hidalgo, who claimed to have seen roots of a strange color sprouting from cracks in the ground and winding around plant stems that woke up dry. I haven''t wanted to inquire about it, as I would be terrified to verify the truth of their words; but if anything of that mountain entity remained alive in the bowels of the earth, it is only a matter of time before it begins to devour our planet. I write this with the hope of having gone mad and that my concerns are only paranoid delusions, but if I am right, and the witch ever reincarnates in our lands in the decades to come, I hope this warning serves so that the next one to face it can invoke fires more intense than the ones we could achieve, because otherwise, all of humanity could be doomed.