The Moonlight Shuffle

In the high-altitude town of San Cristobal, perched on a ridge overlooking a mist-choked valley, the old military road known as Kilometer 14 was a local legend. It was a stretch of crumbling asphalt where the Japanese had executed prisoners during the war, and where a decade ago a landslide had swallowed a bus full of tourists. Locals swore the road was cursed, that the dead still marched its bends. My friends and I, bored college students with a taste for the macabre, had made it our playground. Every Friday, we’d drive up there with a flashlight and a tape recorder, hoping to catch a whisper or a shadow. But that night, in the autumn of 2001, we got more than we bargained for.

It was a moonless night, the kind where the darkness felt heavy. My name is Elena, and I was driving my beat-up Corolla, with my friends Marco, Luisa, and Diego in the car. We’d just finished a round of cheap coffee at a roadside stall, and our spirits were high. As we turned onto Kilometer 14, the headlights cut through the gloom, revealing the cracked pavement and the skeletal trees that lined the road. We had the windows down, listening for anything unusual.

We’d driven about half a mile when Marco, who was in the passenger seat, pointed ahead. ‘Look, there’s a guard post,’ he said. ‘But who’s guarding a dead road at this hour?’ Indeed, there was a small, dilapidated wooden booth, its roof sagging, and beside it stood a figure. In the glow of our headlights, we could see it was a man in a dark uniform, but something was off. He was swaying, not walking, but stepping left and right in a jerky, rhythmless dance. It was like he was doing a grotesque shuffle, his arms dangling loosely at his sides.

‘That’s weird,’ Luisa whispered from the back. ‘Maybe he’s drunk?’ Diego, ever the skeptic, laughed nervously. ‘Or maybe he’s just guarding his post, having a little jig to keep warm.’ But as we got closer, the figure didn’t look like he was dancing. His movements were too fluid, too unnatural, as if he was being moved by invisible strings. His head was tilted at an odd angle, and his face, when it caught the light, was pale and slack, with eyes that seemed to be open but unseeing.

We slowed the car to a crawl, and I rolled down my window fully. The air was cold and carried a faint smell of decay, like wet earth and old rot. ‘Hello?’ I called out, my voice trembling. The figure stopped moving, turning its head slowly toward us. Its mouth opened, but instead of a voice, a low, crackling sound emanated, like static, or the dry rustle of leaves. Then it took a step toward the car, and its legs moved in that same jerky, left-right rhythm, as if it was walking on broken glass.

‘Go, go, go!’ Marco shouted, and I floored the accelerator. The tires screeched, and the car lurched forward. As we passed the booth, I caught a last glimpse of the figure in the side mirror. It had stopped, but it was now standing perfectly still, facing us. And then, just as we were about to round a bend, I saw it do something that made my blood run cold. It raised its hand, and in the moonlight streaming through the clouds, I saw that its fingers were long, impossibly long, and pointed

We didn’t stop until we reached the town square. We were all shaking, trying to convince ourselves it was a prank, a drifter, anything. But the image of that guard stuck with us. The next day, we went back to the spot in daylight. The booth was still there, but it was abandoned, covered in grime. We asked around town about a guard at Kilometer 14, and an old man told us that during the war, a Filipino soldier had been executed at that exact spot for sabotaging the Japanese supply line. They’d hung him from a tree, and his body had swayed left and right in the breeze as it rotted. Afterward, people claimed to see his ghost, marching back and forth, guarding a post that no longer existed.

The old man also told us that the ghost only showed himself to those who were ‘sensitive’ to the supernatural, and that those who saw him were marked. ‘He points a finger,’ the old man said, ‘and you’ll feel a coldness that never leaves.’ Since that night, I’ve never been the same. I feel a constant chill, especially around my left shoulder. And sometimes, in the darkest hours, I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye, a slight sway, as if the world itself is doing a terrible dance. I haven’t gone back to Kilometer 14, and I never will. But I know that the old guard is still there, waiting. Waiting to shuffle back and forth, motionless, in the moonlight.