The path into the Palmital ravine narrowed until a man had to turn sideways between the black rock walls. The water at the bottom moved slow and dark, the color of old blood left in a basin overnight. Tomás carried the lantern low so the light would not bounce off the wet stone and give him away. He had come because the goats were gone again, and because his brother had not returned from the same path two nights earlier. The brother had taken a rope and a short knife, and said he would only look. Tomás had found the rope later, floating in a slow circle near the edge of the pool the old men still called Charco de la Anguila.
He heard the water shift before he saw anything. A long sound, like wet cloth being dragged across stone. The lantern flame leaned. Tomás stopped and set his back against the wall. The pool opened in front of him, wider than the path that fed it, the surface unbroken except for a single line of small waves that moved against the current. Something under the water was turning. He raised the lantern. The light caught a curve of black that was not rock. It moved. Hair floated up with it. Long and dark and stuck flat against the thing’s head by the water. The head broke the surface, the eyes were open, they did not blink, they fixed on the lantern and the hand that held it.
Tomás did not run, the walls were too close. He set the lantern on a ledge and drew the short knife he had brought. The blade was no longer than his hand. The thing in the water rose higher. The body behind the head was thick, thicker than a man’s thigh, and the skin shone where the light touched it. The hair on the head clung and then lifted when the creature moved, strands catching on the stone at the edge of the pool. It opened its mouth, there were no teeth that Tomás could see, only a dark O that widened. Water ran from it, the sound that came out was low and wet and continuous, the same sound the old priest had made when he tried to speak after the stroke took half his face.
The creature lunged. Tomás drove the knife forward. The blade entered just below the jaw and stopped against something hard. The thing did not pull back. It pushed. The force drove Tomás’s shoulders into the rock. The knife stayed in. He felt the handle turn in his grip as the body behind it twisted. The hair brushed his face. It smelled of the pool and of something that had been dead longer than the water could wash away. He let go of the knife and brought both hands up, his fingers sank into the wet hair, it came away in clumps. Underneath, the skin was smooth and cold. He pushed. The head turned.
One eye stayed on him. The other rolled white. The mouth closed on his forearm. There was no bite. The pressure was even and slow. He felt the bones shift. He heard it. The sound was small inside his own ear. He kicked. His boot struck the body under the water and the pressure eased. He pulled his arm free. Blood ran down his wrist and into the pool. The creature sank until only the top of the head and the floating hair remained. Tomás climbed the near wall with his good hand and his knees. The rock tore his trousers. He reached the ledge where the lantern still burned, and took it, below him the water moved again.
The hair drifted. He saw the knife still standing in the side of the neck, the handle turning slowly with the current the creature made when it moved. He did not go back down. He climbed until the walls opened and the night air touched his face. His arm hung useless. The blood had soaked the sleeve to the elbow. He walked until the path met the wider track that led toward the houses. No one met him. The dogs did not bark.
In the morning two men went down with ropes and a longer blade. They found the knife on the stone at the edge of the pool. The handle was clean. The blade was bent. They found Tomás’s boot farther up the path, the sole still wet. They did not find Tomás. They lowered a weighted line into the pool and pulled it up three times. The third time the line came up heavy. They hauled until the head broke the surface. The hair was longer than either man had expected. It clung to their hands when they tried to turn the face. One eye was open, the other was gone, the mouth was closed.
They cut the hair free with the long blade and let it sink again. The water closed over it. They left the hair on the rock. By the time they reached the top of the ravine the strands had already begun to dry and stiffen in the wind.
That night the priest came with salt and a short prayer. He stood at the edge of the track and spoke the words toward the dark opening of the ravine. The men who had gone down stood behind him with the rope still coiled. No one went closer.
In the morning the hair was gone from the rock. The knife was gone. The pool looked the same. The men who lived nearest the mouth of the ravine kept their goats higher on the slope. They did not speak of the pool by its old name. When the wind moved through the narrow walls at night, it sometimes carried a low wet sound that did not match the water. They closed their shutters and waited for it to stop. It always stopped before morning. The men who had seen the hair on the rock did not sleep well. They woke with the taste of the pool in their mouths and the memory of how easily the strands had come away in their hands.
