THE INTRUDER

My afternoons after school were very enjoyable in the company of my cousins. The summer heat had gone, and autumn had barely made its appearance on cloudy afternoons, and sometimes the drizzle caught us on the street playing until late at night. We were six children and the streets were ours, sometimes other children joined the neighboring streets and we made great quilombo in the streets taking advantage of the calichines that suddenly arrived to make jokes and send them to make mischief for us.

We used to play in an abandoned area of houses damaged by the 2007 earthquakes in Peru. Most of the houses had been abandoned for being a risk to live. One afternoon in particular we used the appropriate blizzards from the north to fly kites, we ran and made them rise up to cross the skies among the laughter of happy children. As my comet had little tail, it swayed from side to side and finally the wind drove it to fall on the roof of an abandoned house. In spite of having the thread in my hands I did not want to pull it too much so as not to break it or to get stuck on some protrusion or rod.

Without thinking I climbed the roof of the building, climbing some fences and cornices, I walked carefully through the ruinous house. As I took steps with caution, the roof of sheet and debris crunched under my feet. I leaned against the roof gutters that seemed to be cane and they buckled to not support my weight. I reached for my kite and almost had it in my hands as the roof collapsed. Everything was very fast, when I fell on the earthy floor of the house, a cloud of dust invaded me causing it to lose its visibility. However, I feared that I had broken a bone and thought of the horn that they would put me if that was true. When I checked myself I saw with relief that I had only undergone scrapes and while coughing from the swallowed dust, my cousins screamed outside wondering if I was okay.

I peered through one of the broken windows and told them everything was fine. When the dust settled, I looked where it was and I was surprised that the interior of the house was not a disaster, everything seemed relatively clean. On the floor were only the debris of the roof that I broke and the room was in complete order, for a moment I thought that someone was still living there. The adobe walls did not look cracked or damp due to the humidity, they were clean. There was not much inside just some furniture that also appeared to have been used. After reviewing I realized that in reality if the house was abandoned, nobody lived in it or at least not for a long time; The strange thing was the tidy and clean.

The first thing I thought was to explore it to see if I could find something of interest like toys or some furniture that we could use in our games and so I went through the rooms looking for something. I did not see anything of interest, what I noticed were the strange drawings on the walls and ceiling of the house. Strange things he had seen in esoteric places and witchcraft; But I did not care. There were many boxes of unimportant objects, piles of newspapers, and old books that were filled with dust. Disappointed I got to the last room before leaving and was very surprised to see a doll in the middle of the room.
It was a perfectly painted clay handicraft of the face, it had the typical clothes with a colorful red poncho, woven trousers that showed small feet of mud and on the head had a chullo of blue that gave a very striking aspect to the doll. The expressionless face seemed to see me with a pair of eyes so well painted that they gave a feeling of being alive. I was standing as if waiting. I was barely going into the room and I saw on the wall behind her figure, which was printed a hand, as if muddy on purpose. The liquid with which they had painted it was brown and red, thinking that it might be blood, it disturbed me a little. Without thinking I went into the room and quickly grab the doll.

I was watching his dress, when I felt a change in the atmosphere. It was as if the heat were rising and a gust of wind flooded my face with a stinking stench. The reality collapsed before my eyes and my child's mind blinded in the presence of something that was taking shape in the hallway outside the room where I had taken the doll. The nightmares, the fears and stories told by the old to frighten the children took shape when I saw the figure of a demon standing before me, his red skin glowing with greasy texture and his face was crazy; Yellowish bulging eyes and a morbid smile that showed an equally obscene tongue that oscillated from one side to the other, he laughed at me and the horns he carried on his forehead made my heart beat hard as he wanted to get out of my chest. Seeing that he took a step, my paralyzed body reacted to run to the opposite side, away from the only exit.

I screamed like crazy, scared and I got into one of the back rooms, I just curled up and started to cry trying to remember some prayer learned in the catechism; But it was impossible, I had my mind and heart in absolute terror. My screams and my despair were heard by my cousins who screamed frantically on the outside trying to know what had happened to me. Between the cries of panic, I closed my eyes tightly and covered my face with my hands when I heard something walking on the outside of the room, was slowly approaching. The footsteps seemed to be heard like heels striking the floor as they advanced. When my cries mixed with babbling grew. That seemed to stand in front of the door and I only heard murmurs of many voices talking at the same time, from those voices I could distinguish one that was clearly said in my mind.
"I'll go get you ..."

I was about to break my fear when a strong blow followed by something broke broke into the house, then I felt hands clinging to me, that made me feel even more panic and maneotee to release me; But a familiar voice made him open his eyes and the soul returned to me when he saw that he was a teacher of the school. I had entered the house by force when I noticed that my cousins were crying out for help. Being outside I only began to sob trying not to see anyone, since there were several people gathered and curious alerted by the cries and by the tumult that my relatives armed.

The teacher led me to my house, my mother, when I asked her what had happened, told her that I had been locked in one of the ruinous houses and she severely rebuked me. As the days went by I could not sleep or eat thinking about that horrible apparition. My mind tried to figure out if what I had seen was real or my imagination. I never knew, my limited childish mind had no idea what had happened to me; But every one who thought about it could feel the horror in that room.

Since it happened that strange things have been happening to me, not frequently. They are dreams in which I am surrounded by obscurity, being in my house, my relatives cry and they are wrong. Suddenly that damned devil appears repeating the same phrase: "I will go for you ..." I wake up suddenly from sleep, sweating and with heart beating strongly. The last time was so real that dream that the atmosphere in my room changed dramatically and that scared me so much that I ended up sleeping in my brother's room. My psychosis came to such a degree that I even saw shadows and heard whispering voices. The worst was at dawn that I woke up and I was harassed by something, my pets all dogs eventually died for strange causes, asphyxiated or struck by invisible forces. My parents do not take me very seriously, they say they are my stories and I have to go to church to pray. I fear for my life, because despite the years I still dream the same; But the sensations of horror are becoming more frequent now in adolescence. I leave this testimony that is entirely real and I leave it to your consideration. Thank you for listening to me