The young reporter's investigation had begun a while before, on that nightmarish evening of the ninth of February, which had changed her life forever. She was sitting, exhausted, on the cheap sofa in her apartment, somewhere in the centre of the small town. The part of town where kids cover the walls of apartment blocks with graffiti and landlords rub it off with acid, shouting angrily.
She must have fallen asleep, although her dream was so vivid that to the young reporter it felt utterly real. She was in a place that was overwhelmingly, eerily desolate. The darkness was so palpable that she could scarcely breathe.
She was running - someone was chasing her. The huge figure of a man in an old hooded coat. It concealed him completely and made him seem enormous. Although the huge man was moving slowly, every so often he came nearer and made as if to grab her.
As so often happens in these dreams, the young reporter very soon tripped and fell down onto a road that sank be-neath her as if it were made of an elastic skin. She crawled along it, screaming, to get away, but the shadow of the giant hooded man was already beginning to engulf her.
The young reporter looked behind her, trying as best she could to keep her cool, and not to die of fright. But what she saw before her made her panic even more.
The huge hooded man was already standing over her. She could hear his breath, the breath of darkness. The man slowly lifted up his hood, with a hellish certainty. Only if you saw her face, if you managed to enter her nightmare at that moment and share her anguish, would you really understand her fear.
Hell was before her, the beast that each of us hides within us, waiting for the right moment to unveil it, sowing death in anyone who stands in our way.