strange Chiloe and the feeling of being watched

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I open my eyes and already know that something awoke me. A lot of darkness and shadows. A slit of blue light from between the blue curtains to my left.

A few clicks of static before they come into focus beyond the end of my bed: the watery glisten of two eyes, still and watching, above the points of my toes. The moment seems to drag forever. Another static crinkle of silence, and like the release of a dark balloon, the eyes float upward, attached to a head trailing hair like a fine gray smoke. A shine of black teeth locked in a violent grin. The ceiling does not catch it; it floats right into the wood and disappears.

My chest has a little explosion. I’m too scared to move. Then I’m on my feet, striding towards the light switch. I wince at the bulb burning to life, the walls and their sickly, wax-like shine. I’m standing there poised in my long johns, surveying the air of my room as though gazing up into a gymnasium. There’s too much space. I want to be wrapped up and blindfolded in a house brimming with cotton balls.

In the hallway it’s worse. A thing I have not seen during the previous several nights. The owner’s have switched the yellow bulb; it now glows red like some kind of devilish, all seeing eye.

Darkness seems to reach from beyond an open door of a nearby room. I remember a young Chilean couple that stayed in that room two nights ago. They arrived late, parked a motorcycle out back, and left early the next morning. My ears gorged on every thump and hum of their voices that night, any hint of their presence. Sometimes I believe I thrive on loneliness, and most times I’m sure I’m a fool.

I wait at the window until proof of morning oozes through the overcast, alighting the Pacific in gooey ripples of silver. I tiptoe downstairs and shower, carefully keeping my attention on that same funnel of spider web. I don’t smile at it this morning. Those glistening eyes are on my mind. They’re still watching me. Even as I write this, I can feel them. They’re in everything, and every night I want to take hold of a rope and heave that sun into view and tie it off.

The outside wraps me in a sweat-drawing humidity. My forehead glistens. I only wear a coat to keep myself from the random dribble of few low hanging clouds, a pair of sunglasses to keep debris from being swept into my pupils by a constant wind.

The busses aren’t running yet. My last day in Dalcahue, my only plan is to go to Castro’s annual Festival Costumbrista (regional customs festival), eat a lot of cheap meat and drink a lot of cheap wine - get super drunk in giant puddle of mud and green hills and see if I can find my way back.

I wander aimlessly along the edge of water, past pudgy fishing boats sadly tipping sideways on their keels in a low tide, along the dock, and up a random dirt road, taking pictures. The town appears spookily, dreamily in hues of blue and gray, the sunlight a flash of gold beneath the edge of a far-reaching overcast. The town seems to fall asleep in this pose, and I think it’s perfect, a threshold to misery, a long step back in time. I throw on my hood and give plenty of stoop to my walk. I don’t want my presence to wake it.

The festival costs a few hundred pesos to enter, which adds up to about two American dollars. I linger just outside the entrance, with a growing crowd of gawking Chilotes. We’re watching the police chase down several delinquents trying to sneak in. It’s like a one-sided game: the delinquents run and disappear in a vast field of shoulder-high shrubs. The green and white-helmeted heads of the police make a line straight for them and start kicking at something on the ground. I see a backpack go sailing through the air, then the nappy head of frowning delinquent being forced to his feet. I smile, pay a little girl one hundred pesos for a single cigarette, then head inside, smoking.

Long rows of merchants sell locally crafted goods with Chiloe, or the name of its nearby towns, spelled out on the side. Dolls of wool and straw, tiny wooden boats and bright clothing and tiny balls of chocolate. I visit each booth, buy a little rowboat, a turtle made of wool, a mermaid made of straw. In a patch of forest at the far end they’ve set up effigies of every Mythological creature from my pamphlet. This is where I take the most pictures, trying to capture each creature as though I wandered into them alone and unexpected.

Two fist-sized chunks of beef are served cold, along with two lumps of potato, a handful of salad and a tiny bottle of red wine. Plenty remains after thirty minutes of nonstop gorging, and I find myself stuffing the last of it down my throat to the joy of a family of locals at my table. They smile and say something I don’t understand. There’s meat coming out of my ears.

That night I sleep well after emptying a dozen or so tiny bottle of cheap wine I crammed in my pockets and carried back on the bus. Another early morning, I shower, wink at the spider, pack my bag, give Dalcahue a silent goodbye, and travel to the town of Ancud on the Northern point of the island. My throat is dry from the drinking. A headache pulses, numbing my thoughts. I quickly check into a nice hostel, drop my bag on the floor and begin wandering aimlessly around the town, chugging on big plastic bottle of “coca lite.”

The streets of Ancud are windy and numerous. Floppy hills of shabby restaurants and shops, colorful red and yellow fishing boats on the shore of the port like stranded fish, a wavering smell of rot and decay. I like this town. Its locals smile at me and each other. I think they’re happy because the rain has finally dried up.

In the central plaza they’re having some kind of mad marathon of haircutting, the proceeds going to a family whose house recently burned down. The music the barbers choose to blare as a background is a lot of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake kind of pop. I sit on a bench, close off me ears and read a novel, MIDDLESEX. A conflicted hermaphrodite narrates several generations of her Greek family’s struggle to make it America, finally settling amongst the grease and nuts and bolts of Detroit.

I stop at a chapter detailing the 1922 massacre of Armenians and Greeks at Smyrna. I look up, see a few beaming children having their hair lopped off to the beat of “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga. I think, what a crazy crazy world this is.

I begin feeling better, a certain validating sense of culture and ambiguity on this foreign chunk of land. The skies show a lot of blue between cotton puffs of white cloud, the first blue I’ve seen in ten days. A grayness rises, evaporates from my head, allows a lively flame to reignite in the back of my skull.

After an hour of walking and taking pictures, I’m burning all over. This times it comes from the houses and buildings. They look down upon me through glass-paned eyes and square-mouthed doorways. They blink and yawn and moan with some kind of silent hatred. It’s funny to me, how nobody else seems to notice these massive creatures sitting back on their haunches, breathing, looming, watching us pass, letting us step right on their tongues and into their bellies.

Some of the buildings are sadder than others; some seem totally dead, their bodies left to petrify and dissolve. I almost expect a reaction when I get too close, stare for too long or take a photo. Then I realize I’ve discovered this little secret to existence, to life, a little bit of magic and miracle. My unspoken, puny acknowledgment of its presence passes through the air; it’s all the world needed, just enough to reveal the monster.

I sense the houses floating me gratitude from behind their wooden and concrete faces. I almost feel a link: they’re lonely like me. But then I feel the anger again; it’s what that burning has been all along. There’s an invisible force attached to my body like an odor, and just like the creature I discovered in the National Park, these houses know who I am, they know I’m escaping, going home. They have no intent except to draw pleasure through creating fear, and I made the mistake of deviated a little too far from the others. Now I sense I'm doomed. This force will always know how to find me; it will follow me back to Santiago.

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