“¿Qué es un fantasma? Un evento terrible condenado a repetirse una y otra vez, un instante de dolor, quizás algo muerte que parece por momentos vivo aún, un sentimiento suspendido en el tiempo, como una fotografía borrosa, como un insecto atrapado en ámbar.” – Guillermo del Toro

A terrible, damned thing doomed to repeat itself again and again. In San Miguel, Apozol Zacatecas, the house stands as it did 100 or 200 or 1,000 years prior. The house weaves itself around the patio where avocado trees, planted by my great-grandparents, provide cover from the sun’s rays during the day and conceal the midnight sky littered with stars in the evening. My grandmother sweeps the patio. My grandfather talks to his neighbor. I am four years old. No damned things have happened yet.

“Hay que tener cuidado, mija. No salgas a jugar de noche,” my grandfather said. He has witnessed more than just childhood laughter and family reunions, more damned things than I have.

During la Guerra Cristera in the 1920s, soldiers marched through the town. My grandma claims they still do. The wretched sound of their boots, the scraping of their weapons along the walls of the house: These damned sounds still keep Apozol awake into the early hours of the morning. The war left many dead and the town in shambles, but it froze pain. It breathed new life into a moment that could have been lost in time. Now, many often see the soldiers wander the streets at night.

It’s been 17 years since I last entered that house, but I could still walk through it blindfolded. At night, I could hear the woman wailing out for her children and the rustle of the tree branches knocking on my window. But what I remember most was walking to the mercadito, holding my father’s hand on the way to the town pool, eating sopes with my grandmother from the vendor with the bright green hat. Those memories haunt me as much as anything else that still roams that damned house.

My grandmother tells me stories of the woman in white that would walk around the patio at night and the legend of the gold that sits buried underneath the house but would disintegrate if not held by the rightful owner. My mother describes the dreams that still haunt her: A child peering past the hallway to catch the shadow she saw walk right past her after everyone else had gone to bed. Dreams of finding the gold with the bodies of the soldiers buried next to it that she has to this day.

In that house lives many stories intertwined. There is the young boy my grandfather once was, forced to drop out of middle school to farm and make money for his family. There are soldiers. There are weeping women.

In that house the air is dense. It feels too heavy and becomes difficult to breathe. If I walked in, I would suffocate. Perhaps, like the gold, the door handle would disintegrate before I could walk through the front door. It has become a living portrait of everything that has died: war heroes, corrupt officials, neighbors, friends, the avocado trees, my memories of my grandmother sweeping the patio, the sound of the vendors dragging their carts.

The house is haunted, but it also haunts me. I am not the four-year-old I was then. In my dreams, I crawl back to her. I grab her. I become her. But no matter how much I yell and fight and beg, I cannot go back.

¿Qué es un fantasma? Es la nostalgia. Recuerdos que ya no puedo alcanzar. Mi infancia vive en una casa a la que ya no puedo, o no quiero, entrar. Porque ahí vive más que unos duendes pero ahí están las memorias más bonitas de mi vida. Y eso es algo terrible, condenado porque yo no las puedo tocar.