Abel Fonseca, II, is a lifelong San Benito resident and community advocate who has served local students and families for more than two decades. Through his “Heart of San Benito” series, he shares stories that celebrate the people who make the Resaca City special. He can be reached at abelfonsecaii@hotmail.com. The following is the first of a two-part story.
Our small town is surrounded by water, quiet ponds, and winding resacas. Most people would say nothing strange ever happens here.
But they were wrong.
There was one man in town who kept a secret his entire life.
He had been born with a strange gift. Ever since he was a child, he could see the spirits of the dead. They appeared everywhere: standing beside roads, walking through fields, or watching silently from the edge of the water. Some were harmless. Some were terrifying.
When he was young, no one believed him. His parents thought he had an overactive imagination until something even stranger happened. One day, he grabbed his cousin’s hand, and his cousin suddenly screamed.
“I can see them!” his cousin cried out.
That was when the family discovered the truth. Anyone the man touched could temporarily see the dead.
To protect others, he started wearing leather gloves wherever he went. Over the years, it became a habit. He never took them off around people, and eventually most folks assumed he liked wearing gloves.
For years, the secret remained hidden. Until one terrible night. The man and his best friend had gone out walking near one of the resacas after a rainstorm. In a rush to leave the house, he forgot his gloves on the kitchen table.
He didn’t realize it until it was too late. As they crossed a muddy bank, his friend slipped and fell hard into the mud. “Give me a hand!” his friend laughed.
The man reached down and grabbed his friend’s hand. The moment their skin touched, his friend’s smile vanished. His eyes widened with terror.
“What is that?” he screamed. With a trembling finger, he pointed behind them.
The man slowly turned around. Above the water, the pale figure of a woman floated, staring silently at them. His friend stumbled backward. “You can see her?” the man asked quietly.
His friend nodded so hard he could barely breathe. The man immediately understood. Without his gloves, his power had passed to someone else.
After helping his friend calm down, he hurried home, embarrassed to have forgotten the gloves he always carried.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Later that evening, he met a girl he had been dating. She had long black hair and a small black mark on her cheek.
In his rush to leave again, he forgot his gloves for the second time. The two walked beneath the trees near the town’s edge, laughing and talking as the sun disappeared.
Then the girl slipped on the wet grass. Instinctively, the man grabbed her arms to keep her from falling. The moment he touched her, she froze, and her smile disappeared.
Her eyes locked onto something nearby. “What… is that?” she whispered. The air turned instantly ice-cold. A little boy stood just a few feet away.
His clothes were soaked. Mud coated his bare feet. His pale face looked sad and tired. The boy didn’t speak. He simply stared at them.
Then he turned and ran into the woods’ darkness. “What was that?” the girl asked, her voice trembling. The man took a deep breath.
“I think you can see ghosts now.” The girl looked at him, disbelief in her eyes. “You mean… that was a ghost?” The man nodded.
For the first time, he told someone the secret he had carried his entire life. The two stood in silence for a moment.
They looked toward the woods where the boy had disappeared. Something about him seemed off. He wasn’t trying to scare them. He looked like he needed help. The couple ran after him through the trees.
Branches whipped past them as they followed the boy’s faint figure deeper into the forest. At last, he stopped at the edge of a steep, dark hill. The couple caught up just as the ghost pointed down into the shadows.
Then he vanished. From the darkness came the scent of gasoline. A moment later, they heard twisted metal creak. The couple exchanged nervous glances and looked down the hill. Something terrible was waiting for them below…To be continued next week.