HORROR DIARY: CreepyPasta

CreepyPasta #1: HE WHO WANDERS (part 1)

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Simon Simonian (01/24/17)

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I missed the scorching wind of Andalusia. The way it pours sunlight onto your face, toying with eyelashes, flattening dry sand against cheeks and milling around hair. I missed the smell of the valley and that ripening softness of Muscat fluff glistening in the afternoon breeze.

From up here I can see the house where I grew up, the grape orchards with white chapel and the old town spreading on canvas behind it. I can see patches of asphalts on El Jardinito Road hailing from the Southern edge of the town through dappled rocks, then waning behind the horizon with erratic headlights of beat up trucks cruising along. One of the pit stops along El Jardinito, where truckers or drunk students stop to relieve themselves, marks the beginning of this narrow wavy path. All covered in blotches of yellow grass and dusty sands, like an old forgotten wrinkle, the path is first barely noticeable. Truth is, no one even cares to notice it. Why would truckers taking a blitz-leak care to check some old path leading to God knows where? But to me this path is how I got up here, to the top of this hill. This is the path that will end it all... all the years of running away, of vagrancy and hiding in fear. All of that will soon be over.

Soon.  

But for now, I am enjoying the view of the valley unfolding below. I am sipping the air of what could be my final memories. I am waiting. Waiting for him.

There he is.

His limping figure just appeared behind the bend. I can see him slowly making his way up towards me, holding the cane with his trembling hands. He looks like a crooked tree stump drifting on water, barely able to walk.

All these years of endless chase took a toll on his body. No wonder. How long has been chasing me? Ten, twenty, thirty, hundred years? How long have I been evading him?

He is slow. But I am patient. I will wait.

Right here, behind this boulder. Soon I will finally come face to face with my chaser. I will look in his eyes. I will not run away like I always have.

Right hand in pocket is caressing the edge of the Swiss knife that will soon spear through his neck bone. Yes, that's what I am going to do. This ends now.

This ends here, at the dead end of this sandy path atop the hill overlooking the valley with its white chapel and Muscat orchards... In fifteen minutes, it will be over. For one of us.

Funny. After all these years, I still don't know the real name of my chaser. I always called him what master Borges called him... "He who wanders".

He who wanders – I will kill him  

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Borges. The Borges. I idolized him when I was in college. Many did, but I was different. It was 1961. I was an average lazy learner at the Universidad Laboral de Córdoba, floating around from one semester to another with barely passable grades. I had very few friends and almost no interests. One can say that I had an early form of identity crisis.

Besides chugging Anisado, my only other passion was Literature. Latin American Literature. Borges and Neruda were at the forefront. One could only imagine my excitement, when I saw a pamphlet hanging on the wall of the Literature faculty.