LX
Senor Delavega didn't waste time with pleasantries.
Once the siesta meal was cleared and the village ladies retreated inside, he reached into his satchel and pulled out four thin files. The manila folders were worn at the edges, sun‑bleached, handled too many times. Then a fifth, smaller one, newer, with a child's name written in careful handwriting.
He spread them out in front of me on the chief's porch table.
The warm Mallorcan breeze rustled the papers, lifting the corners like the files themselves wanted to speak. He translated to English for me.
The Missing, four young women, and one nine‑year‑old girl.
All gone within the last few months.
Their faces stared up at me from the photographs. Women in the prime of life, smiling, awake, unaware of the darkness waiting for them on the snake road.
Delavega tapped each file with long, elegant fingers.
"Todas mujeres jóvenes," he said softly. "And one niña. All vanished near the same stretch of mountain road. Found in the same system, Drach caves""Every disappearance left traces of soul magic. And death magic."
My stomach tightened. Soul magic was rare.
Death magic was forbidden.
Both together meant something old, maybe monstrous, was hunting.
Delavega's voice dropped, almost reverent.
"I can feel them," he said. "Their lingering souls. Untethered. Lost."
He closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply through his nose, as if scenting something in the air.
"Their spirits cling to the road. To the rocks. To the cave."
The chief crossed himself again, fingers trembling.
Paulo muttered, "Dios nos proteja," under his breath.
I felt the mirror warm against my hip.The hat man whispered, faint and uneasy:
"My darling… untethered souls do not linger without cause."
Delavega opened the child's file last.
A little girl with bright eyes and braids, red ribbons in her hair.
Nine years old. Missing for three weeks.
We were going to this little one's last resting place.
His jaw tightened.
"She is still close," he said. "I can feel her. But she is fading."
The breeze shifted. The mountains loomed.
The village seemed to hold its breath.
I looked at the files again. Five lives interrupted, their families broken, souls trapped somewhere between this world and whatever waited in that cave. We needed to be in that same cave before sunset. We were delivering ourselves into the mouth of that beast.
Before the mountain swallowed another.
Paulo leaned back in his chair, wiping olive oil from his fingers with a napkin, and once the village ladies were out of earshot, he began to talk, quietly at first, then with the animated urgency of someone who had grown up with these stories.
The chief listened with a stiff jaw.
Señor Delavega listened with half‑closed eyes, sensing every ripple of magic in the air.
I listened because every word mattered.
Paulo gestured toward the Serra de Tramuntana, the mountains rising like a jagged spine behind the village as he drove his little orange truck, giving us a tour.
"You must understand," he said, "these mountains are old. Older than the churches. Older than the roads. Older than the people who came here."
He leaned forward.
"There are monsters in the mountains."
The chief muttered something under his breath.
Delavega didn't interrupt.
Paulo continued, voice low.
"My abuela told me stories. Of wailing women who wander the cliffs at night, crying for their lost children. If you follow the sound, you fall. You die. They say the wind carries their voices."
He pointed toward the snake road.
"And witches. Brujas de la sombra. Shadow witches. They lived in caves long before Mallorca had villages. They made pacts with spirits from the sea. They took what they wanted."
He swallowed. "People say they still do."
The breeze shifted, carrying the scent of citrus and salt. The porch felt suddenly smaller, the mountains larger.
Paulo's voice dropped even further.
"When the cave was found, three years ago, everything changed. The wailing started again. The shadows moved differently. And then… the disappearances."
He tapped the files Delavega had laid out.
"Women. Children. Always on the snake road. Always near the cave."Señor Delavega nodded once, solemn.
"These are not just stories," he said. "The mountains remember. The spirits remember. And something inside that cave is waking."
He looked at me. "You will feel it when we arrive."
The hat man whispered from the mirror at my hip, uneasy:
"My darling… mountains that remember are dangerous."
I felt the cat shift in his carrier, the shard pulsing faintly beneath his fur.
The chief crossed himself again.
Paulo stared at the mountains like they were watching us back.
Señor Delavega led us deep into the Drach cave system, farther than I expected any human to willingly go. The air grew colder with every step, the sunlight fading behind us until our camping lanterns were the only points of warmth in the dark. The stone walls narrowed, then widened again, forming natural corridors that felt too deliberate, like something had shaped them long ago.
The cat's carrier bumped lightly against my leg as I walked. The shard pulsed faintly beneath his fur.
The hat man whispered from the mirror at my hip, uneasy. "This place remembers death."
We reached a chamber where the darkness felt alive. Not just the absence of light. Something thicker, heavier, like a presence pressed against our skin. Even the lanterns seemed to dim, their glow swallowed by the black.
Paulo stopped short, crossing himself, muttering a prayer. Delavega stepped forward, unafraid, his lantern held high. "Aquí," he said softly. "This is where it happened."
The beam of his lantern cut through the dark and revealed an altar.
Not a modern one. Not a religious one.
Something older, stone carved by nature, worn smooth by centuries, stained with something that wasn't blood but felt like memory.
There were no bones, no scraps of remains.
Only the air, thick with sorrow.
And then I saw her, Gloria.
A small figure stood beside the altar, barely visible at first, like a shimmer, a distortion in the lantern light. Then she came into focus, piece by piece, like a photograph developing. An untethered soul, a little girl. The file said she was nine years old. Two long braids tied with red ribbons.
Her eyes were wide, hollow, filled with the kind of fear no child should ever know. Her form flickered, translucent, her edges dissolving into the cave's darkness.
Paulo gasped, "Santa María…"
Delavega bowed his head. "Gloria," he said softly. "She was the last to disappear."
I felt my throat tighten.
Her body had been consumed to nothing.Only her soul remained, her spirit untethered, lingering, clinging to the altar like a child holding onto the last thing she remembered.
She looked at me.
Her voice was a whisper carried on cold air.
"Ayuda… me…"
The hat man stirred violently inside the mirror.
"My darling… that is not a child. That is a trap."
Whatever she was, she was a child. Her name was Gloria, and she was fading.
Her braids fluttered as if in a wind that didn't exist.
Her ribbons glowed faintly, the last pieces of her that still held color.
Delavega stepped beside me, his voice low.
"She is the reason we came. Her soul is the strongest. The others… are almost gone."
The cave pulsed. The darkness shifted.
Something deeper inside the mountain stirred.
Gloria whispered again, her voice trembling like a candle flame.
"Don't let it take me back… una devoradora de hombres."
"An eater of men," whispered Delavega. "A monster that consumes both flesh and bone. All it leaves behind is the spirit. We are not going to find any bodies."
Delavega described an eater of man, an ancient beast made of unclean spirits and those that died of hunger or malice. It was like an accumulation of hungry ghosts in the form of a giant beast.