My career was going well but I needed a change.
I was an english teacher living in Brazil. I kind of wanted to see more of latin america and practice my spanish. Anyway a friend came back from Bolivia and gave me a number to call from a small town who were offering to pay good money to a native english teacher. Good accomadation etc included, I couldn´t really deny it. So I went.
Well the town was called Rulates and it seemed to be quite quaint. Arriving in the town and the country itself alot of my assumptions were proven wrong. I thought it would be a tropical paradise alas apart from the surrounding hills the land was semibarren.
I was taken to the language school which was a great domed building said to built by the government many decades ago as a private holiday/indoor bath house. Since then it was converted into a prison for communists. And an asylum for the mentally ill. The second story of the building had classrooms in excellent condition kitted out with new equipment and nice t.v´s. On the first floor there were a whole lot of locked rooms which the maintenance man Alberto explained were off limits. You could still see inside, into what looked like bathing chambers with steps going down to murky watered pools.
Later after a few beers Alberto also mentioned the local priest or self proclaimed saint Mattias gonzales had been doing hydro therapy with the mental patients. What he called a baptism to extract the evil.
I was excited and after a good night´s sleep in the bungalow I rented at half price or atleast that´s what they said. I went back in a car they´d also given me to start my classes.
I got their early as per my usual habit. The place was dead quiet despite being midmorning and there was no sign of the maintenance man Alberto. So I went in and checked out the bathing chambers from the rectangular windows. Each room seemed to be well illuminated by large windows the tiles looked clean on the steps going down to the water which definitely looked dirty. I noticed there was some subtle movement in the water. When i came to the door of the last room, i pressed my face against the window to look in and the door opened. i could immediately hear voices as if there was a meeting being held in there between bosses of a company. two seconds and nothing the voices had stopped. When I looked at the room it was empty the one thing that caught my eye next was the fact that the water in the pool was still moving. I closed the door but it wouldn´t close properly i thought I´m going to get in trouble for this. i also realized that the place was extrodinarily haunted.
Then I heard steps coming from up the hall i thought what´s next this must be phantom now right on time. No it was the humble and very informative Alberto he asked me curiously if i had gone in. i told him ofcourse not but the door had opened. This starteled the fellow. I told him it wasn´t locked. he grabbed his key chain and firmly attempted to lock the door. It was virtually impossible so we both gave it a go for about ten minutes until we finally got it done. Tired and shaken it was time for me to prepare my class.
As I entered the classroom i realized that something very heavy and active was in the air in the room with me
Somekind of invisible animal maybe. i joked to myself that perhaps it had been a horse or cow that had drowned in one of the bathing chambers, except the moment the smile appeared on my face the thing in the room with me spoke to me both into my ears and through me. It said that I would never be free of it. it repeated this a few times each time a choking sensation started to form across my throat. It then stopped and my students arrived, I acted as if nothing had happened and welcomed them introducing myself with really false confidence.
After the students left I felt the hostility and ugliness return and I imagined the water being blessed by Mattias Gonzales it was almost like the presense was putting the images in my head. Remembering the colour of the water how it was so dirty and they had just left it there. I imagined the spirits or demons being absorbed there as the hydro therapy/baptism therapy went on. Somewhere between religion and science aberration something had been created and now it was my problem. i felt it like a curse. That this ghost was some kind of affliction that now belonged to me.
I thought I might aswell go on living as if it was nothing, deep down I knew I was in trouble though. So I went to the local town square which was a like an old style american hotel built as a gallery which contained the town square and gave it a feeling of safety and homeliness. When I approached the square I saw children playing and their mothers talking, the locals all smiled at me and some even gave me kind words of encouragement. Then I saw the children´s playing start to change from their jovial push and shove game to frantic gripping and desperate wrestling. Their mouths had turned from calm smiles the kind camera ads could sell. To teeth bared grins and strained lips full of drool, you could see tension on their faces.
I knew straight away it had something to do with me, so I moved out in a hurry taking a few things I´d bought before the commotion began. It didn´t help much though as i turned around from the carpark and saw one boy tearing another boys ear off.
I stood in shock for a while and looked up at the sky it was brilliant. I got in my car and started driving i looked at the roadside flowers which seemed to grow well even in this high alttitude arid soil and thought to myself In such a peaceful place how could one be so damned.
I started thinking maybe I could see the local witch doctor there was bound to be one. Or some kind of local shamen they could get this great ghost off me. As I was having this thought the weight of the car seemed to grow, it was like I suddenly had a car full of people it literally slowed the car right down. Five minutes later the heaviness subsided but I knew it could return at any time.
When I got back to my place I couldn´t feel any presense at all. So I went on naturally putting things I´d bought from the market away and I prepared my dinner. I managed to sit down and eat my dinner in front of the t.v without any problems. I was about halfway through when "CRACK" there was a crashing sound that exploded into the room. The wooden door was in four pieces and the impact showed it came from the outside. It was just that there was nothing that could have caused it as the cliche went. So I guessed my old friend the ghost had made his entrance. I noticed the room was heavier than ever aswell.
Most of the night I spent tossing and turning and wondering if something ghastly would happen.
The next day I woke sticky from drying sweat and discomfort. I went to the local shop and asked where there would be a witch doctor. The shopkeeper drew a small map and I went straight there.
I met with him and he said he had no qualms with ridding any evil spirit that was accompanying me. He did however ask for fifty U.S dollars. I agreed anyway.
We sat down and I told him about the place where i was teaching and how the ghost had come to haunt me. he took a handful of herbs and seeds and told me to hold them firmly in my hands. He started to describe how it was that unsatisfied spirits sometimes return to bother the living. Then he began to chant, I held the herbs and seeds forming fists and squeezing them. He chanted louder as we sat there together near his hut. He closed his eyes and moaned. then he opened his eyes and told me that when I opened my hands the herbs would have changed from green to yellow and that the haunting would have gone.
I opened my hands and the witchdoctor screamed as it was evident the herbs and seeds were burning in my hands. I slapped my hands until it was all on the ground even though i didn´t feel any burning sensation at all.. The witch doctor desperately kicked up dirt tryiong to get to his feet. he ran into his hut.
I got up and started following him, though he warned me to stay out. I asked him if i had been cured he said he didn´t know. I thought about asking for my money back, but the terror that the witch doctor had displayed could only be compared to a young boys first visit to the principals office for something he had done wrong.
I went back to the school and started working the heaviness would come and go. I gave my first class which was long and drawn out. Toward the end of the class the students were arguing about the verb forms of the word "strike". I explained and explained it seemed that day the students just felt like arguing. The lesson took forever to end and each slow second was annoyed me. I could see the clock and that the lesson would soon be over. This lifted my spirits for another minute. I prepare myself to leave the room when some of the students started talking first I thought it was spanish then I realized they were saying the words backwards the clock on the wall made a dragging sound and I looked up to see that time itself was going backwards.
Then as if nothing had happened i was back at the beginning of the class, the stupid ghost had me time travel just to the most tedious class of my life again. this was incredible obviously there was no limit to the power of this supernatural fiend.
I told myself to start getting used to the fact that i´d probably be stuck with the ghost for life. And it would end up destroying me somehow as I gave the whole class again.
When I got home I destroyed my place I got completely drunk and broke everything in the house not noticing the subtle presense that had never left me. it was wwith rage and disdain that I punched holes in the walls and broke the table and chairs.
Still no sign of the ghost though.
The next day i did feel lighter but my place was completely destroyed. When i grabbed my briefcase and headed for the car I could hear a laughing coming from the house it got louder and louder as I got in and drove to the school. The domed building reminded me of the curse I just couldn´t get it out of my head.
I sat down and talked with Alberto who told me even more about the priest Mattias Gonzales who had taken water from a special spring nearby and filled the baths with it. But instead of blessing the water with a normal church blessing he conducted a ritual related to a local black magic cult.
The priest was excommunicated but after his ritual nine people who had been using the baths for their therapy with the priest died of asphyxia. The center for the mentally ill was shut down and reopened a few years later as the dome language school. The mayor of the town of Rulates had insisted
the building be reused. The bath chambers however were never refurbished either because of superstition or a lack of money or both.
The priest had disappeared, Alberto told me that his house could be found up in the hills by the special creek that was supposed to be a natural wonder or blessed.
I dropped my class material ran out the door and got into my car, this nightmare would end and the priest or his house would show me how. I drove up the road leading up the hill till I reached the priest´s house as I got out the car the heaviness returned and almost pushed me into the ground.
I fought it with all of my strength struggling to make each step to mattias´house. As i neared the house the heaviness disappeared. I looked inside the windows and checked the doors they were all locked.
I went around looking into the house, maybe this place was haunted aswell I said to myself looking at the strange paintings of rituals on the walls through the windows. I got a rock and smashed one of the windows and stuck my hand through to undo the latch, something slpped my hand as I confirmed by looking there was nothing human or animal inside looked like i was facing another ghost unless the one that had been haunting me had bet me there, but i could feel the energy of the other ghost and it was distant as if it didn´t have permission to enter. As I got in I found his study even in the darkness I rummaged around in his books and papers mostly spiritual and religious writings with some strange symbolic pictures attached. Then I came to some pictures and diagrams of a spring, I could only guess it was the spring from the creek, the place where Mattias had gotten the water from. I picked up a book written by Juan Monte the Priest who held the parish before Mattias. he had written that the water had healing power and was a source of natural good. there were pictures of him baptizing people in the water of the spring. i picked up another paper deeming that the spring become an official holy site.
With the idea that maybe the water was something special. I decided to go out for a swim in it or baptize myself in it. I got to the creek and waided up to my knees walking up it, I felt the heavy presense leave my body I could feel a real peace now. i could recognize the spring ahead and dived into the water swimming toward it. I drank the water, splashed it on myself and bathed in it for hours.
From that day the ghost had completely left me, and hair grew back inside the bald spot on my head.
Some places on this earth are impossible to curse.
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