The Nighttime Stride of the Devil’s Flute

The summer of 1998 was when my grandfather, Mateo, finally let go. He had been a stubborn old man, but diabetes and kidney failure had worn him down to a wisp of his former self. We had driven from Los Angeles to the dusty village of San Ignacio in the Mexican highlands because the news was grave. When we arrived at his small adobe house, he was propped up on the bed, his left leg ending in a bandaged stump. Yet his face lit up with a smile as warm as the desert sun, and he joked about the priest having already given him last rites twice. That night, he passed away in his sleep, with my mother and grandmother holding his hands.

We stayed for a month to help my grandmother, Rosa, pack up the house and settle his affairs. Finally, she decided to return with us to San Jose, leaving the empty house to the dust and the silence. But as soon as we unpacked in our suburban home, strange things began to happen. Our house had all tile floors, a choice my parents had made for easy cleaning. Now those tiles seemed to amplify every sound, especially at night.

First, it was the rhythmic thump and dragging. Every night, around two in the morning, we would hear a heavy, alternating pattern: thud, drag, thud, drag. It was unmistakable—the sound of someone walking with a walker, the rubber tips squeaking slightly against the tile, the prosthetic leg hitting the floor with a wooden click. It would start in the hallway and circle the living room, pause by the kitchen, then make its way to my grandmother’s bedroom. We all heard it, my parents, my sister, and I. Terrified, we would lock our doors and lie awake, listening until the sounds faded at dawn.

My grandmother, Rosa, refused to acknowledge it at first. But one night, I heard her crying through the thin walls, and then a voice, low and rumbling, as if in conversation. The next morning, she looked weary, but she said nothing. I decided to stay up one night, hiding behind the couch in the dark living room. The sounds started as usual, but this time I peeked. There was no one there, yet the walker was moving across the room on its own, its wheels turning slightly, leaving faint impressions on the tile as if a heavy man leaned on it. I saw the indentations in the grout, as if a phantom weight pressed down.

Soon, other sounds joined. The soft strains of a flute, playing a melancholy melody I recognized as my grandfather’s favorite song, ‘La Llorona.’ It started softly, as if from a distant room, then grew louder, filling the house. Then the rhythm of a guitar would follow, the chords matching the flute perfectly, though no one was playing. The music would stop abruptly, and the walking would resume. This went on for weeks, fraying our nerves. My mother consulted a priest, who performed a blessing, but nothing changed.

One night, I was alone in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, when I heard the flute directly behind me. I spun around, and there, in the dim light, stood the ghost of my grandfather. He was as I remembered him: strong, with a weathered face, but he was not using the walker. He stood upright, his missing leg somehow whole, and he looked sad. He raised a bony hand and pointed at the knife block on the counter, then at the wall behind it. He mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear. Then he vanished, and the flute resumed, but this time it was a different tune, an eerie dirge.

I told my parents, and we finally decided to check the wall. Behind the knife block, there was a loose tile. We pried it open and found a small compartment. Inside was an old photograph of my grandfather as a young man, holding a baby, and a folded letter. The letter was addressed to my grandmother, but it had never been sent. In it, he confessed to a terrible secret: he had been a grave robber in his youth, and he had stolen a silver cross from a dead infant to pay for his mother’s medicine. The guilt had haunted him, and he begged for forgiveness. He also wrote about a hidden box in the San Ignacio house, containing the cross.

We called my aunt who still lived in Mexico, and she found the box. Inside was the tarnished cross. We returned it to the church cemetery, placing it on the grave of the infant, and my grandmother finally broke her silence. She told us that my grandfather had always felt the child’s spirit following him, and he feared it would never let him rest. After we returned the cross, the sounds stopped. But every year on the anniversary of his death, at exactly two in the morning, I hear the faint flute play ‘La Llorona’ from my grandparents’ empty room. And I know that some debts are never fully paid, only forgotten for a time.