The social organization of Cerro Alto was one of the most peculiar and isolated that we had encountered up to that point. Barter predominated in their trade, reserving the national currency for when it was essential to acquire something from the outside. They faced the scarcity of a resource together while accepting individual wealth, knowing that it would eventually be distributed among everyone. There was no such thing as a governor or public offices, although age and ability played a significant role in each person or family's influence on the community. The only position I was able to identify with total clarity was that of Mr. Arnulfo Arriaga, whom I can only describe as the leader of Cerro Alto. He was a man around 60 years old, extremely robust for his advanced age, very reserved with a heavy gaze that commanded respect, but polite and kind as far as I could see. Later, we learned that he was the one who contacted us to help his community. His decision went against the will of most of his people, but they accepted us, or rather tolerated us, out of the respect they had for such a man.
Most of our work in Cerro Alto consisted of closely monitoring the evolution of the disease in children so that we could leave with the assurance that they no longer needed our intervention. Our stay in each town we visited averaged about a week, but it took almost three working in Cerro Alto. It was during that time that people began to get used to us, a change that was mainly achieved thanks to our drivers. Mr. Antonio was a handyman who had worked for many years in the United States, and Mr. José was a former policeman whose retirement did not seem as exciting as others, so he had sought extra income. Both were jack-of-all-trades who occasionally taught us useful things, especially about car mechanics or electricity, so we knew how useful they could be anywhere. It was they who, with their cheerful attitude and vast experience, smoothed out the rough edges between the people of Cerro Alto and us to the point where interactions became enjoyable, and more than one smile crossed theirs with ours throughout the days.
Our subsequent visits followed the usual itinerary, every two or three months approximately. The disease affecting the children—an inflammatory lung condition caused by infection—decreased significantly after we had intervened. I cannot mention anything relevant from a medical perspective, except for the aggressive and selective way the disease attacked the youngest. Days before the first cases, Cerro Alto had faced the torrential residue of a storm originating in the Gulf of Mexico. The drop in temperatures, ambient humidity, and the conditions of poverty in the community were the best causes we could attribute to the disease, although it did not explain why it only affected the children. Our record of clinical cases attributes the epidemic to this reasoning, but the people of Cerro Alto had such an irrational theory that it was challenging for me to maintain a professional stance when it reached my ears. They said the disease was due to a latent curse that had afflicted the community for a long time. I first heard it as whispers among the people, but Mr. Antonio's charisma and open mind allowed us to hear the story from the patriarch's own mouth.
The event they spoke of had happened several decades earlier, at a time when Mr. Lázaro Arriaga, Mr. Arnulfo's great-grandfather, was the leader of Cerro Alto. A powerful noise from the sky had awakened everyone on a New Year's Eve, followed by a light so bright that it turned night into day for a few seconds. By the time the neighbors went out to see what was happening, a sphere enveloped in intense flames drew an arc in the sky before crashing into the great mountain range, which is part of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Many men from the community armed themselves with what they could find, including machetes, shovels, pitchforks, and some contemporary weapons from the Mexican Revolution, then mounted their horses and went to investigate what had fallen on their lands.
As they advanced, a metallic stench descended from the mountain. No one from that time was able to accurately describe the smell that had invaded their noses, although several testimonies coincided in relating it to a kind of nauseating metallic aroma reminiscent of blood. The sensation was so strange that many ended up suffering intense dizziness, as if their minds had collapsed trying to understand what reached their noses. Not a few men who were ascending the mountain swallowed their pride to admit that they could no longer continue with the journey, while the rest gathered enough courage to go to the last consequences of the matter. Nothing is known about the relationship between the aroma and its effect on those who perceived it, but only small children, animals, and a few elderly people were able to resist or even ignore the scent that burned the throats of others.
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As they approached the scene, a fire intensified in the distance, as if an explosion had occurred, and a sickly glow spread to invade a large part of the mountain range. Upon getting closer, they realized that the source of such light was a cold fire spreading without burning and without producing any type of gases. Such properties were strange enough, but the compilation of testimonies about that experience agrees that the most striking aspect was the color of the flames. Everyone agreed to have perceived their bluish tone, but they claimed it had a horrifying quality that could not be related to anything in this world. None of the men who climbed the mountain that night believed that the fire really had that hue. They felt as if their eyes were replacing an incomprehensible light with a familiar color, although not entirely succeeding. While natural fire dances and crackles on the surfaces it invades, that of that night only vibrated and emitted a sharp low-frequency scream that lodged in their heads. Mr. Arnulfo tried to complement his descriptions with other examples shared by the elders of his time, but none of them managed to clarify what he was trying to explain to us, nor did it seem that he himself could understand what he was conveying.
Mr. Lázaro, the patriarch of that distant time, managed to reach the scene of the incident with six of the toughest men in his community. The object they were looking for had impacted so deeply in the mountain that it had created an extensive and shadowy cave whose only light was the trail of that abominable pale blue fire. The men armed themselves with a courage worthy of respect but easily confused with recklessness, only to find that the bottom of the cave, as cold as in an intense winter, was empty. They could see that a massive spherical object had hit the earth with force, but upon arrival, they could only notice a small mass, embedded in the ground, glowing with that unrecognizable hue. They barely noticed its existence for a few seconds before it emitted a blinding flash followed by a horrifying scream.
The men woke up hours later on the mountainside, with aching heads and blank minds. Only after several days were they able to remember fragments of what they had experienced, although little could and wanted to reconstruct from that night. It seemed like the end of a horrifying episode, but weeks later, a period of collective hysteria would begin in which, through nightmares, a formless entity warned them, with a thunderous voice, about the evil that had fallen upon their lands and how it would devour whatever was in its path. The most perceptive people revealed that the voice urged them to dig into the mountain with their nails and burn with it, but the intensity of these dreams escalated to the point that these individuals ended up dying of heart attacks with a rigor mortis difficult to explain, burying their nails in the sheets and arching their heads almost to break their necks, as if they had died in that hellish fire they dreamed of. Pilar, the wife of Mr. Lázaro, a deeply religious woman, suffered the most and resisted those episodes the best, being the one who could better explain what she felt. She said that the thunderous voice spoke to her, that she could hear and understand it, but it was not words that reached her ears, but orders that embedded in her mind. The presence wanted the town and the mountain to burn, she said. It was an entity in the service of the Devil—Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, or whatever one wanted to call him—a witch whose power accumulated over centuries allowed her to harass the inhabitants of Cerro Alto in that way. Ms. Pilar took refuge in her faith in God to withstand the siege of that entity on her mind. Whether some divinity really protected her or if the hope that her faith gave her gave her the strength to resist is something I cannot assure. The lady lived for a few more years until a heart attack struck her while she was taking care of her cows, a peaceful death as far as is known.
The most intense collective delusions ended after a few months, but rumors of a curse in Cerro Alto emerged from then on, an evil that seemed to intensify every year due to the silent action of the witch they feared so much. First, the fertility of the land began to decrease, then the well water began to acquire a metallic taste, and then the animals began to go missing more frequently. However, the worst of all were the fireballs that flew over the mountain range on dusky nights, dancing on the slopes near the impact site. The people of Cerro Alto said they heard sharp screams, like laughter or chants in unknown languages that bothered the ears despite their low volume. There were always brave men willing to confront whatever was lurking in the mountains, but in the end, no one dared to take a step in that direction.
That was the story we heard in the patriarch's hall. I noticed that after finishing, Mr. Arnulfo seemed interested in hearing our comments, as if he were expecting us to share some solution or explanation that had not occurred to them, but none of us could do more than express amazement. Upon leaving, Mr. Arnulfo pointed out a distant cave in the mountain, the same one that caught our attention when we arrived in Cerro Alto, already eerie in itself, adding that it was getting larger over the years and that its cave system also seemed to evolve, as if someone were secretly excavating it.