Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

Blencojo

The Narrator

Mateo Garcia and Matias Sosa had finally reached the place where the owner of the car that had met with the accident lived. It was pretty tough finding the place. The village's name was the same one as another a five-hour drive in the opposite direction. Sosa and Garcia, unfamiliar with that, first went to the wrong village before realizing that no one with the name of the car owner lived there. That was when they recollected the other town with the same name five hours north. So, they drove there and had reached the place that evening, a few hours before sunset.

It was a very isolated area, sparsely populated and virtually walled off by mountains. The sun was quite reluctant to set that day, covering the entire horizon in orange light.

If only the mountains hadn't existed, Garcia observed, it would have been a three-hour drive from the station to the town. There weren't any hill roads connecting the place where the station was to that village: most of the highways went around those mountains and through a pass quite far down south.

A village is a euphemism for what was a well spread out community of farmhouses very far from each other. There were miles and miles of farms and barns and tractors on the road. The only thing that broke the monotony was a small convenience store tucked away in the corner in front of a thick and dense forest.

"That's someone we can ask!" Sosa pointed to a man carrying boxes of supplies into the store visible from Garcia's window.

"Where?" Garcia asked, trying to keep the car on the road; for, the rugged sections of the path threatened to de-road the vehicle.

"Right there! The store," Sosa pointed towards the convenience store that almost went out of sight as they sped past it.

Garcia stole a glance at his side mirror and caught sight of the shop owner who was then kicking his car, cursing vehemently. After glancing at the rearview mirror, Garcia took a U-turn and went down the lane before taking a turn into an unpaved path towards the unkempt shop.

"Hello!" Sosa said as he entered the store and took a look at a rack of cans containing gasoline behind the shopkeeper.

"Hello! How may I help you?"

Garcia and Sosa pulled out their badges and introduced themselves.

"Is there anything...anything you might need my help with?"

"We are looking for the house of a certain Bustamente. Do you know where he lives?" Sosa asked while Garcia pulled out a folded piece of paper from his jacket and flattened it on the table, clear for the store owner to see.

Putting on his glasses, the old bearded shopkeeper looked at the picture of the owner of the vehicle that had met with an accident. "Bustamente," he muttered.

"You know him?" Sosa asked.

"Yes, he lives here. He lives right across the river back here," he answered, pointing to his back with his right thumb. " I'll show you!" The man grabbed a bunch of keys then realized they weren't the ones he was looking for. He then scoured through the drawer and finally pulled out what he longed to find. "Let's go!" He led Sosa and Garcia out of the door through a path among the thickets at the back of the store. The only vehicle that could've gone through that trail was a bike. After more than ten minutes had passed, they had crossed three fields and reached the banks of a vast river.

Pointing to a vast estate on the other side, he said, "That's Bustamente's estate."

"How do we reach there?" Sosa asked.

"There's a small bridge across this river down there." The shopkeeper pointed far upstream

Garcia strained his eyes to look ahead until he found a black thing on the horizon. "Is that the bridge?" he asked, pointing to the object in the distance.