Raul, big bellied and covered in thick hair singing a cappella and frying eggs on Sunday morning. Spinning around the kitchen, performing for the dog: twirls and spatula-turned-microphone, booming voice hitting each note and waking the neighbors. Greeting the day. Now, gaunt, and always coughing. Each hint of light turning his skin bright rash-red. As he sleeps the disease works its way through his veins. Pimples burst to the surface, purple blisters and boils explode like nebulae, dotting his arm with forbidden constellations.
The disease is cruel and slow and full of spite, but it is not absolute. Three percent of people survive this stage, ten percent the stage before it. Not everyone dies in the same way. Some hold on for months; others for decades. Death could happen at any moment. It rarely makes a sound.
We are already far behind. The beginning of the rainy months broth a landslide which uprooted trees and blocked the roads out west for weeks as they fixed the damage—limiting our exploration. Now, tiny cones of white plastic mark the fallen trees, gleaming white against the headlights of our car like gravestones guiding us to Raul’s final home.
I turn up the stereo to keep me awake, loud enough to hear it but not wake Raul who, for the first time in weeks, has slept longer than an hour. Around me, everything becomes a blur of green and brown: dense patches of forest appearing and disappearing again. We are making good time, but not enough to matter. We are hoping to reach the coast before sunrise.
“In the light of the day,” Raul told me. “It’s harder for us ghosts to move around. We are, unfortunately, confined to the soft cloak of night.” He smiled and continues. “Which is okay anyway, I’ve always been a night owl.”