It was raining. During the night on the road time does not seem to pass, especially when you’re alone. Antunes was traveling to another city, far from his home for a meeting with a client of his company. According to his map, the direction he would have to take was towards the high mountains and beyond. The roads in this place were surrounded by trees, on a very narrow two-way road with no shoulders.
The rain was heavy and hardly visible under the water, and Antunes was already impatient, driving faster than he should.
During one of the turns, the tape on his cassette player curled, and he bent down to see what had happened, when suddenly…. the music came back, in its best style. Now the B side was playing Black Sabbath. When he finally decided to relax a little, he braked harshly, as there was a fallen tree on the road. His car skidded to a stop at the edge of a cliff by the side of the road. The car stopped and Antunes, still a little dizzy, tried to focus on understanding what had happened. When he came to reason, looking out the window, he realized that his car was about to fall off the cliff. Slowly, without any sudden movements, he took off his seat belt, opened the door and jumped down, throwing himself against the floor. At that very moment, his car plunged into the abyss.
He was now alone, in the dark, with a very heavy rain falling on his head, without any lead or direction. All he could do was walk in the same way his car was going on the road, hoping to find someone who could help him.
It seemed like hours had passed, but then looking at his gold rolex, which now had a beautiful crack on the display protecting the hands, he saw that it had not been more than 27 minutes. While looking at his watch, Antunes tripped over something that was on the edge of the track and fell. Without looking at what it was, he spotted a trail towards the center of the forest that surrounded the entire roadside. Far away he could see a spot of light. Little did he know what awaited him, for the head wrapped in black hair on which he stumbled was part of a collection from a very sinister person. But he didn't even notice it.
It was another 26 minutes walking along the path, when something passed in front of him, a few meters away, crossing the two sides of the trail and disappearing through the forest. But with that rain, Antunes thought he might not be seeing things correctly, and moved on without paying attention.
The light was close, and when he finally got to where he thought of perhaps finding a hut or someone who could help him, he found a wide deforested spot with a huge fire burning, covered by large banana leaves protecting the fire from the rain. Now the rain was already ceasing and he kept going on the same trail that continued behind the fire.
The path took him to a cave, with an entrance the size of a simple door, and there he could hear many types of noise, such as hammering, pounding, things being dragged, branches breaking, so he decided to go in, looking for help.
The entrance was narrow, like a long corridor, lit by a few torches hanging on the wall. He was not enjoying this atmosphere because he was already feeling chills. He thought of going back, but in the very first steps Antunes heard the screams of a woman coming from inside. He didn't think twice. He ran fiercely towards the center of the cave, looking for that woman who was probably in danger. As he ran, he smelled something that made him feel nauseous.
Finally he reached the end of the corridor, and there he found a ladder made of wood, on which he descended like a ramp, almost tripping over his own feet.
He was paralyzed by the shock he suffered from the scene in front of him. A huge chamber, probably about 20 meters below ground, with a large collection of mummified heads arranged on improvised bamboo shelves. Some hung on ropes by the hair and others were still fresh, nailed to vertical poles that sprouted from the floor. The smell of rot was suffocating Antunes, who no longer knew what to do.
During the seconds he was standing, Antunes didn’t notice a presence in the door through which he had just entered, and with a quick creaking of the hinges the door had now closed. He ran desperately towards the door, but didn’t succeed when he tried to open it. As he knocked and pounded on the door screaming and shouting, a green gas began to leak into the chamber causing Antunes to go out in a few moments.
Without knowing how much time had passed, he woke up attached to a kind of stone altar, like those places where rituals are performed to the gods. But he soon realized that it would not be a ritual, but just another item for the collection that just needed to be removed.
He was awake when, tied by his hands and feet, immobilized, that who have captured him appeared. It was a woman. Her wrinkled face, brown hair that lightly covered her cheeks, messy and unhygienic, gray, old and torn clothes, with a deep gaze staring at him with great pleasure. She walked toward him, starting to laugh, bending down to pick up something. They were stones carved in the shape of a knife, or some similar instrument. She began to strike his neck, taking from Antunes a deep cry of pain and agony, which would have echoed through many kilometers if he wasn’t inside that dark chamber underground. His cry began to be drowned out by the blood that now ran down his throat, and shortly after his arteries spurted blood on that woman's head, Antunes dies.
Far from there in his hometown, no one is aware of his disappearance. Antunes was a lonely person, obsessed with his job, without any friends and goals, so maybe his head is now worth something under a mummified bamboo bookcase as a horrible memory.
END
Audio Tale (Only Portuguese)
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