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Death, baby! Death.

That’s what’s was on my mind here in the unmanly station of second seat on a moped hurtling down a rolling Colombian highway, somewhere in Medellín.

But beyond the mild seating indignity is the discomforting presence of twelve chainlink fence posts sitting in the truck bed to the front left of us.

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The posts in the truck bed are a mere arm’s reach away, as Colombian roads are much narrower than I-95, and the vehicles are smaller than the Ford F-150 by a long shot. The hollow ends of the fence posts are dark as gun barrels; they seem capable of lance-like flight at a sudden stop. This helmet with its scratchy visor simply isn’t enough.

Cars and trucks merge on and off the highway with all the order of popcorn kernels on a red burner rocketing upward to burst and bloom.

Now Colombia’s mountains are a joy to see, a delight to hike, and no doubt a thrill to motorbike through, but second seat gives you no control over your fate, it’s more of an act of surrender to each steep tilt and turn.

Why then, am I here? I was promised a monumental and world-famous piece of Colombian history, something I would never forget seeing. My friend and guide at the hostel, Andy, told me about it, but he didn’t tell me exactly what it was or where we were going. Who can say no to a mystery? Off we went.

We finally shoot off an exit and roll onto commercial streets, followed by a short road with little development on either side of it.

Surprisingly, we then pull into the parking lot of a church and park there. Where are we going? Confession?

We walk around to the back of the church to a cemetery.

“Now you will come face to face with a man who shaped this nation.”

We walk over well-kept grass, then a border of black marble with white patterning, then a bed of white polished stones until we finally come to a black headstone with cursive gold lettering.

“Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria.”

Here they are, six feet below. The bones of a man who drowned Colombia in blood. The wealthiest criminal in history.

Now here I am, an American whose mental image of Escobar is the Netflix actor more often than his historical face. It’s not something I know much about, except a few bullets. It soon becomes clear, our fellow visitor to the grave is going through something much more personal and profound.

The other visitor is a bald, heavier guy in an old collared nightclubbing shirt, jeans, and black dress shoes. He bounces on the balls of his feet, and whips his hands as if to shake water off of them.

He speaks to us abruptly, his story bursting out of him like shaken soda.

“I am Escobar’s blood,” he says. “I am his nephew.”

My friend and I nod, and give him a little space.

“Yo brother, this guy’s trash,” my friend mutters to me. “Every bastard in Colombia calls himself the son of Escobar.”

Maybe the other visitor is Pablo Escobar’s blood or maybe not but as he paces and prowls around the white stones on Pablo’s grave, the so-called nephew is surely hunting for a haunting.

The nephew’s behavior becomes stranger. He wiggles his fingers, and makes gathering-in gestures with his arms. The way he closes his eyes and inhales deeply. Searching for a dark charge up. It’s the kind of behavior that makes perfect sense as long as you don’t try to explain what he is doing.

But I also learn he’s not the only person who visits this the sight with this intent. Consider the night scene.

Later

Same church, same graveyard, bright moonlight shining on those white pebbles, and black marble border. But around midnight, a gathering begins. Do you hear the chainlink fence rattling? Figures in hoodies clamber over it. There’s a low murmur of hoarse voices. Acolytes are assembling for a street seance. Andy is hanging back eagerly yet uneasily, as am I.

The guys in hoodies creep up to Pablo’s grave, and unzip their backpacks. They pull out tubular objects. A flick of a lighter, and orange firelight shows some of the objects to be Virgin Mary and Lazarus candles, and others to be 40 malts. Someone sticks an incense stick in a sandalwood board with a curled end. They touch the lighter to the end of the incense stick, then light a blunt to inhale and pass around their circle.

Now silly with liquor and screwy with weed, they sit in dark communion with this drug dealer’s bones. With enough chemical distortion, perhaps they can believe that Escobar’s ectoplasm will ooze between the pebbles. That he will give one of them a Mercedes and the other a speedboat, and everyone will live in penthouses. He will be our father, he will once more be El Patron. Perhaps they say to themselves, we have nothing and he had everything, and for that magic trick, we will ignore everything he did wrong.

Pablo Escobar may be a hero to these people gatethered in the graveyard after dark, but if you ask most Colombians, under these polished white stones are the white coals of Hell.

Despite the candles and blunts , it doesn’t look like any ghosts will appear tonight. But what does manifest is sidelong looks, and a cold, weighty sense that my friend and I do not belong here.

So quietly, we leave.