The Last Station

The Andean night swallowed the village of San Idelfonso like a held breath. I had arrived three weeks prior, sent by the university to catalog the colonial church’s archives. The village was a fossil of adobe and stone, its cobblestone streets leading nowhere but to the cliff’s edge, where the lake stretched like a black mirror. I was lodged in the rectory’s spare room, a cell of whitewashed walls and a single crucifix above the bed. The darkness here wasn’t like the city’s; it was thick, tactile, as if the absence of light had weight. I had laughed at my own childhood fears, the nightlight, the blanket fortresses, the rigid certainty that nothing lived in the shadows. I was a rational man now, a scholar. Sleep came easily that first week.

That particular Tuesday, I had been cataloging a set of seventeenth-century baptism registers, their pages filled with names in faded brown ink. The last entry was bizarre: a series of numbers, not names, scribbled in what looked like dried blood. The priest, Father Aurelio, had shrugged, ‘Old scribbles. The devil’s arithmetic, perhaps.’ He was a gaunt man, with eyes that seemed to be looking at something behind me. I dismissed it as the superstition of a rural pastor. That night, I ate a simple meal of corn and cheese, and drank a bitter tea to ward off the altitude sickness that still nagged at my lungs. Exhausted, I lay down on the iron cot, the springs groaning. The last thing I saw was the crucifx’s shadow, stretched long and distorted by the single naked bulb, before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I woke with a snap, like a tendon releasing. The room was silent except for the distant lap of water against the cliff. My heart was pounding, not with fear, but with an urgency I couldn’t place. I glanced at the bedside clock—a small, wind-up affair I had brought from the city. Its face glowed faintly with radium paint, the hands ticked to 2:59. As I stared, the minute hand twitched, and with a soft click, the numerals changed to 3:00. The mechanism itself seemed to sigh. I told myself it was coincidence, that my body had simply trained itself to wake at this hour. I turned away, pulling the thin blanket up to my chin, and shut my eyes. I repeated a mantra that had been my childhood litany: ‘You are safe. Nothing is there. It is all in your head.’ But the mantra felt hollow.

The sound came from the corner of the room, beneath the window where a wardrobe stood. It was a subtle scrape, like a fingernail dragging across the wood. I froze, every sense alert. I did not breathe. The scrape came again, more insistent, then a series of taps, as if something was knocking from the inside of the wardrobe. I tried to laugh it off—rats, the wind. But the wind was still; the curtain didn’t move. I remember that detail vividly. The taps became a pattern: three quick, three slow, three quick. A signal. My mind flashed to the numbers in the register: 333. I forced my eyes open, and in the pale moonlight that filtered through the slats of the window shutter, I saw the wardrobe door slowly swing open. A figure emerged—a child, no older than seven, but with a face that was wrinkled and ancient, and eyes that were black, like pits of obsidian. It wore a white shroud, but the fabric was stained with dark, damp patches. It spoke in a voice that was not a voice, but a resonance that bypassed my ears and vibrated in my skull: ‘You are late. The last station has called.’

I wanted to scream, but my throat was paralyzed. The child-thing raised a pale hand and pointed at me. It did not have fingernails; the fingertips were smooth, like polished bone. ‘The clock has stopped for you,’ it said. ‘You must come now.’ It took a step, and then another. I scrambled backward, falling off the cot, my skin scraping against the cold flagstones. The child-thing tilted its head, and the black eyes seemed to look through me. ‘There is no escape,’ it said. ‘The numbers have been read. You are the final entry.’ I grabbed the only object within reach—the heavy crucifix from the nightstand—and held it out like a ward. The child-thing stopped. A smile split its face, too wide, showing teeth that were too many and too pointed. ‘That is a lie,’ it said. ‘The wood is dead. The carver is dust. You are alone.’ And then it lunged.

I don’t remember what happened after that. I only remember the sound of my own voice, screaming, and the smell of dust and burnt iron. I woke the next morning on the floor, the crucifix clutched in my hands, white-knuckled. The wardrobe was shut, the clock read 3:00, its hands frozen. The sheets were soaked with sweat. I rose, trembling, and looked out the window. The lake was still black, but now it seemed to shimmer with an oily iridescence. Father Aurelio was standing on the shore, staring up at my window. He waved, and I saw that his arm was too long, his fingers bending at unnatural angles. I backed away, and that’s when I noticed the mirror on the wall. In it, my reflection was smiling. My reflection was not me.

I fled the village that day, leaving my notes and my life behind. I walked to the nearest town, and from there I took a bus to the capital. I told no one what I had seen. But the clock in my suitcase, the one I had accidentally packed, still ticks at every hour, and every night, at 2:59, I wake to the sound of tapping. And last night, when I looked at the clock, the numbers read 3:00, but the ticking hadn’t stopped. It had begun to count down.