The Devil Hides in Beautiful Places

I watched as a young woman stood up with all her friends at the deli shop. She walked right over to the trash can with the half-eaten sandwich. They were talking and joking about something, gathering their stuff, getting ready to leave. Before I could do anything about it, she opened up the flap of the pink box where the trash can was and threw her food away. Without even thinking about it, they dumped everything, their chips, bread, even the ketchup packets to the trash. I sat there, my heart beating faster at the thought, incapable of saying anything to anyone about it. My breath hadn't left my lungs yet when the glass doors closed behind them and I sat there in silence. No one else had noticed. We all walked around, zombified by all that was around us. Sure, we will never need food in our lives, guaranteed, we have everything. But I knew different. I knew of a time when it wasn't like that. And it's a story I rarely tell, just how horrifying things can get. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. The summers back then were hot. Not quite like how they are now, but I'll tell you, nobody was thinking of where to go for vacation or what movies were coming out. It was right at that point where we balanced what we had. with what we would have in the upcoming fall when the leaves and the plants die. A dire warning before there was nothing over the land but white snow. Nights weren't any better. We had to make good use of the dead branches that we had collected, staying awake on those long, dark nights to think if we would make it or not. Cascadas de San Portero, the town was called. Funny because we almost never went to the Cascades, the waterfalls half an hour into the forest. If anything, Dad would take us to the rivers by the next town where the fish were. No trip was for fun, although, of course, as kids, we always found a way to make it so. And Dad liked taking us, my. Cousins and I, on his boss's tractor down to the rivers and to the odd jobs that he would get, the ones after the farm work was done. He would sit us up at the top, my older brothers would get to sit at the back by themselves, while us, the younger ones, would end up right by his seat. We got the best stories, you know. The ones from where he was a kid and lived in that same town. The times he saw the Diablo, the devil, crawling along the road. Or the time that they all waited in line and left at the last second because apparently the woman was feeding human meat. It was a small town, Cascadas. But few people stayed, even out of dad's friends. Everyone wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. That was even before the incident in 1974. The one that I remember the most. The one that has kept me silent when I see people throw away food. Dad had just come back from work and we were all waiting for him. A huge pot of rice and beans was on the wooden stove. I don't know how mom never burned it. The smell was filling up the air. I can still smell it, mixed with the wooden logs that we had picked up by the orange trees. Mom came rushing out from behind the brick wall where the well was. She wiped her hands and grabbed some of the clay plates. Dad sat down at the table, pinching the side of my face as he smiled with those stained teeth. The plate clanged on the heavy wooden table as Mom asked him about his day and caught him up with what happened around the house, which one of my brothers misbehaved and all that. Dad kept smiling and looking at me as a big scoop of beans and a mountain of rice got piled on his plate. Dad ate fast. but always made sure that everyone had eaten before he even thought about getting second. He would then sit out by the front door. Mom would come out. They would talk for a little bit while the coffee started bubbling in another one of the pots. One of those days, I was out playing with my little sister. She had just started to walk and grab things, so Dad had brought along some of the toys from the crates he kept in the back of the house. Some of them were mine. Old cars, wooden houses. and wooden tennis rackets that was missing the net part of it. But my sister didn't care. She would grab everything and wanted to put it into her mouth. It was my job to keep her from doing that. Dad's voice would normally boom across the yard, but to me it was just noise after being so distracted. But not this time. He got real quiet and started whispering. I looked over right away and saw Mom look at me, hushing my dad with her large brown eyes. Los Gutierrez, the. Family that lived two roads over, was moving. All of them. All at once. I kind of heard them talk about it, but I pretended not to listen. I knew why they were trying to hide it. Word around town was that Jose had made a deal with the devil. I know how that sounds like nowadays, but back then, people did things and talked about things that no one would even consider possible. But for us, back then, it was real. For several nights in a row that winter, people would hear the hooves of a horse riding. In the middle of the night. It would circle the town. Now here people knew everybody, and it shouldn't have been a big deal given that horses were common, even more than cars sometimes. The thing was, other animals, the noisy chickens that we used to have to sell. And for eggs, would get real quiet. Even the neighbor's dog wouldn't bark at the thing, and he barked at anything. For several nights, my mom would stay up, not bothering my dad or waking him up because he always had to be up early in the morning to go to work in the field. But one time I caught her. She had a cup of warm milk held tightly with both of her hands and she was standing by the window, peeking through the wooden shutters. I could see her silhouette through the candlelight in the darkness of the room. It was then when we heard it. The hoofs of this animal. The deep, rumbling groan that it did as it came up the road. Mom blew out the candle and suddenly it was pitch black in there. I held my breath as Mom reached out with her fingers to hold the shutters open. It was very still inside the house as a rumble got louder from the outside. Only the sounds of my brother sleeping could be heard from those corners of the house. But something else interrupted the silence. Mom gasped and put down the metal cup on the wooden table. She covered her mouth with both hands. Ave Maria Purissima, she said. Hail Mary Most Pure. She did the sign of the cross on herself and backed away. She got on her knees as the hooves of this horse passed right. By the house. Mom was on the floor, both of her hands clasped together. She started praying. I always felt a little scared hearing her whisper like that. And it got the most of me that night. I said, Ma. And without a single reason in the world, I started crying. She came up to me and covered me up with blankets. She told me to go to sleep, that everything was going to be okay. The hooves of this animal started fading away, and the last thing I remember was Mom praying again. Before I knew it, it was morning. It was like that for several nights. Whispers around the town kept talking about the devil on horseback, while Mom would always look at us and tell us to ignore everything, that it wasn't true. At least, we got to hear about it by accident. But it was no use. Of course, our friends from around town started talking. About it too. That the devil was roaming around cascadas at night. That if you go out there, even if it's just to go to the bathroom, they will grab you by your feet and hang you by the trees at the start of the forest. My parents barely even finished the lessons that you take after elementary school. They had enough to get by with reading and math. Sadly, they had to start working at. An early age. But even they were lucky for that. People like Jose from two streets over, the one that was moving out, had his parents die when he was very young and was taken care of by his sister, who was not much older than him. He used to get invited over to our get-togethers and whenever we had extra meat because we had gotten our cut of the cow. That we had been saving up for. But he was a little bit strange. He had no fault of his own, though. He liked collecting matchbox toy cars and old comic books. He was easy to talk to. Some say because he still acted like a kid He knew a lot about nothing important, and one of those things was ghosts and demons. One time, he said that when he was younger, he was caught in a storm with his sister on his way back from town, and an old lady crossed her path. She asked them if they would help her out by carrying her basket, and she was almost home. Of course, unwilling to let the woman. Carry a basket by herself, they agreed and left the road as they walked over the forest. There, They saw a house they had never noticed before. The old woman rushed in as they left the basket by the front opening that she had for a door. The old woman came out with a gold coin and gave it to his sister. We ate a lot that month, he would say, plashing the gaps in his mouth from the missing teeth, whenever he would tell us that story. They said that they had gone back to the old lady's house to ask if she needed more help around the house, maybe even offer a job for her sister. But when they got there, They couldn't find the house anymore. They searched and they searched, but never found it again. I think she was a witch, he would whisper. We helped the witch, he would say. and then let out his airy laughter, waiting for us to laugh along with him. Mom always found a way to make him be quiet because he was going to scare us, which he would, but I could tell that he genuinely believed what he was saying. There was something different about the way his eyes shined when he told us those stories. His wife and kids would come over too and bring along cheese and corn whenever they had it to share with us. He was a good guy, but just not all there. He was different than us. I was around 10 when I heard him cry as I sat around the front. Entrance one night. It was a story of how his sister died. One that he wouldn't share too often. Too painful, they would say. But it helped explain a lot about how he saw the world. And I'll tell you about it if you want to hear it. Jose's sister's name was Susana. She was beautiful, still young actually when she passed. They had a small birthday party planned out and had made plans to head down to the river to grab some fish since they didn't get the money together for the pig that. They had planned for. Jose said that they had been untangling the fishing net when they both saw a man in a suit right across the river. He smiled at them and they smiled back, getting back to untangling everything for their first cast. but as they were looking toward the river, they noticed something else along with the man, a rope behind him. Jose thought that it was a dog at first, but then it peeked out, a chubby pig snorting loud enough for them to hear even over the sound of the river. Susana stood up straight and looked at the man as he raised the hand with the rope on it and pointed at her. He pointed at the. Pig and then at her again, extending his hands as if handing it to her. Maybe he knew that it was her birthday. They both looked at the man for a while, noticing his gold watch and necklace. His shoes were like black mirrors against the grass. Along the river. They looked at each other for a little bit. Then they watched as the man pointed at a series of stones on the water. He wanted them to go grab the pig. Jose said that they thought about it for a while, and for a little bit, Jose considered crossing over to get it, since he was a better swimmer. But in the protective role that was assigned to Susana, she extended her arm and held him back, saying that she was going to go get it. Jose watched as his sister smiled, his hero, thinking that the party would be saved and that they would have food for the guests. She got on the first stone, looked at Jose, and smiled back. Jose was really happy. But as she was about to hop on the fourth stone, she slipped and fell into the current. The braids of her hair were moving along until they vanished in the water. The man in the suit laughed. He laughed so much that he fell to the ground, squirming and smiling as Jose rushed to see if he could see any trace. Of his sister. The pig took off running into the trees, squealing. Jose was too young to. See what he saw that day. There was a search for Susana, which they eventually found downstream and gave her a proper burial. Nothing was ever the same after that. Jose was forced to work, with bosses and others taking advantage of this little kid with no future. It was him. Jose, the one who was said to have made a deal with the devil because he did a couple. Of business deals. He was finally going to be able to move his family out of Cascadas. Even how he got his wife was questioned. By the town. But there were other things to think about. Things were about to get really, really tough. That winter hit us hard. You and my family had sold more than we should have to repay some loans dad had taken out to get some material to fix up the house, maybe some equipment for the animals. We started eating avena, oats, for most meals. One time when a skinny horse came running up to the house and grabbed some of the dry hay we had, dad shot it. Some of the caldo, the stew, that was made for several days after that tasted kind of funny, but nobody questioned it more than we had to Dad would still go out for work during winter, and when he would get back, the mountain of food on his plate would get a little bit smaller, and the way he grabbed my face would get a little bit softer. The conversations between my parents were now inside the house, and they were much quieter. But one time, right around the time when the horse was roaming in the middle of the night, Mom brought it up. You see, there was a man with wooden cases, she said, circling town. That guy on the horse? El Diablo, Dad said, in a serious tone. The devil. No, no, Mom replied. I think a salesman. He probably has stuff from Margarin. That was one of the larger towns in the area, where everyone would go do their shopping before winter. El Diablo, Dad would repeat, not moving much of his body after that. Mom stayed quiet, knowing not to argue with Dad with such matters. He would often ride and be out late at night, and he had several encounters out there. Things about women showing up in the middle of the road, women with the legs of a goat, flying creatures that would scare the living out of anyone else that wasn't used to it. But things got tougher around the house in the coming days, and I would often see Mom looking through the wooden shutters when the sound would come around. There was no more warm milk in her cup. The bag of oats had gotten so small that it would actually fit in that same cup. Dad did what he could, but for two days, all we could do was wait for one of the animals to die of lack of food. Even the neighbors would sometimes be caught sneaking into our yard sometimes. Dad would warn them about doing it again, signaling the shape of a shotgun with both of his hands. The neighbors would nervous laugh their way out of there, not knowing if they were enemies now. That night, the candle was burning low as we heard the horse coming around the road. Everyone else was asleep, snoring throughout the house. How they didn't wake up through the sounds of those hooves is still beyond me, but I was able to open up my eyes and watch as Mom ran back toward her bed and bringing out a small handkerchief with a few coins that she had left. I felt the breeze fill the room as she opened the front door and heard it shut almost immediately after Again, I held my breath for a while until I heard the heavy breathing coming from my mom as she walked up to the door. She opened it quickly, and the breeze was. Rushing in and actually blew out the candle in one single instant. I heard the heavy sounds of something being dragged into the house, deeper into the kitchen, by the table where mom would sit alone at night. I watched as a match lit up the room and then a candle. Mom was standing over a small wooden crate. The handkerchief in her hand was still jingling with the coins that she had in there. Desperately, she opened up the box and looked inside. I saw her smile and then looked over the rest of the sleeping bodies in the house, since the beds were all spread across different areas. I could hear the paper, the same one where they wrapped tortillas in bread and made the paper cones for the rice and beans that they would bring from town. I couldn't wait to get up and share some of the joy we'd be able to eat again. Then I saw her smile through the candlelight. It was growing bigger, and then even more than that. It was covering her whole face with what seemed like a hundred teeth across it. Her face, now full of wrinkles, I kept looking down at the box as drool started to fall down the side of her face and then to the floor. I could see her hair turn darker against the light from the tiny flame. A shadow was covering her face completely now, and yet I could see her eyes. She was raising her head toward the room, toward the bed where I was supposed to be sleeping. Her face twitched as her eyes shot directly at me. Her back twisted to the left, her neck to the right. She started twitching, stumbling toward me with. That wide smile. Her eyes were wide open, but without pupil's. Nothing but that white I could still see in my mind. The wrinkles multiplied and her hair started turning white right in front of me. I was frozen. I was just about to reach for my blankets when she rushed toward me. I could smell that smell of rotten. Meat coming from her teeth. Spit was starting to fall on the blanket I slept on. She stopped smiling. Her eyes looking directly at one of mine and then the other. Comida, she said. food. She smiled that wide smile again and she rushed over the door, opened it, and with one big slam she disappeared into the night. Dad got up, grunting over to the candle and calling my mother's name. He held the dying candle in one hand as he nearly tripped over the wooden crate in the middle of the kitchen area. He looked at it and then looked over the door. He rushed over to it, opened the door and started yelling for my mom. It was then when we heard the cries. The only time I ever heard my father cry as it blended with the cold winds outside. My brothers and younger sister had woken up by that point. All of them gathered around my bed and looking out the front door for dad The sun was almost coming out when he finally heard him coming toward us. Alone and with no one else to help but Jose, he had ran over to his house. They both had come over to go out looking for mom. Later that morning, they found her. She was up in the trees by the start of the forest. Another gift that had gone bad. When spring came around The trees got green again. They got their flowers, and colors came back to Cascadas. But Dad couldn't take it. He started hanging out more with Jose, and eventually he learned some of the ways of doing business. He bought a plot of land, he made some deals, and one day he came up to tell us that we were leaving. It was a bright early summer afternoon when we had everything ready and that last load of the back of the trailer attached to the tractor when we left. We went past the river and the trees, past the flowers along those long dirt roads, where now. As they say, the devil hides. Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me, Edwin Covarrubias. Let me know what you thought of the longer story. And a huge shout out to our Scary Plus members that helped make this show possible. If you want to get in touch, you can find me on social media as Edwin Cove. That's E-D-W-I-N-C-O-V. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.