Page 11 of Morena

VII.

That morning, before I went to Carlos, I kept my hands busy. Paintbrush dragging over cracked walls, hinges squealing as I swapped old doors with new ones, glass splintering under my grip as I replaced the broken window from last night.

While I worked, I found a loose board tucked into the floor.

I opened it and slid her clothes inside with the polaroids and a note.

If something happened, if anything happened, I would know where to look.

But I had been careless, stupid even. I had left her journal somewhere in the house, and I didn’t remember where. And that mistake haunted me.

Later, back at Carlos’ place, I sat in silence at the kitchen table, staring at the exact spot his mother would stare. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. My mind circled itself. Did she drown in her thoughts like this, too? Or was it just me, trapped inside the noise of my own head?

Carlos broke the silence with a loud drop of papers, medical reports, and prescriptions at the table. He explained his mother’s diagnosis, how Maria took care of her, how sometimes his mother refused her pills, and he had to hold her down just to make her swallow.

I felt something twist in my chest. I had always pitied the old.

They had watched the world move past them.

They saw love, pain, and sacrifice, yet were left stranded, waiting for an ending that might mean nothing.

Maybe there was heaven for the pure, or hell for the rotten.

But if all souls fell into the same nothingness, then what was the point of being good? In the end, everyone is afraid.

Still, choice was important. If kindness gave your heart a pulse, then you were good. If cruelty hollowed you out, then you were bad. No one forced your hand. It was always you, your body, your mind, standing alone on judgment day.

1 “?Todo bien?” Carlos asked softly.

I nodded.

“Tomorrow I’ll be leaving early. Maria will prepare the bedroom for you. After you finish work, you can sleep here,” he said. “I’ll be away for a month. I must reach you when I call.”

“I don’t have a phone,” I admitted.

He pointed to the black rotary telephone on a side table beside a golden lamp with a glass shade.

“I’ll call every day. Noon and five. Answer at least once.”

“I will.” My eyes flicked back to him. “Anything else I should do for the house?”

“You have already done more than I expected.” His shoulders fell with a breath. “Finish the doors. When I return, we will see what is next.”

I nodded.

“Any questions?” His gaze pressed into me.

“No.”

“Good.” He stood, motioning for me to follow.

As we walked, he said, “ 2 Mi mamá se llama Lucía. Thought you should know. You have seen the living room and kitchen. Down this hall are the bedrooms, mine, my mother’s, and one for Maria’s son.”

“Her son?”

“Yes. Sebastian. He is out of the country, but keeps the room locked. Paco and Maria were together once. She was seventeen when she had him. He is around your age now, born in 1985.”

“Oh, I didn’t know Paco had a son.”

“He pretends he doesn’t.” Carlos’s mouth tightened. “My mother and I raised him. That is why Maria helps. She feels she owes us.”

“Not every family is normal.” A chuckle escaped me. “I had none.”

I lied.

Carlos pressed his lips thin, then placed a hand on my shoulder. “There is still time to build one.”

I laughed. “Not me.”

“You never know,” he said with a smile, laughing too. He showed me the bathroom, then a door leading outside.

The garden was bare except for a single oleander tree with pink blooms moving gently, out of place in Barcelona.

“Isn’t that poisonous?” I asked.

“More than one flower,” he said. “My mother brought the seed from Italy. She named the tree Rosa 3 , maybe because of the blossoms.”

I stared at it.

“Paco knows you are here,” Carlos added. “He may visit, but he won’t try anything. I told him you are looking after Lucía now.”

I nodded. Paco was the least of my concerns.

“Good.” He clapped his hands. “Back to work then.”

I left through the hallway and stepped onto the street. A cluster of thirty tourists blocked the path near the balcony. Their guide’s voice rose above the chatter.

“This is where El Trece hung their victims, every thirteenth of the month.”

The balcony was just two minutes from Carlos’s house and from the one I worked in. It could have been him.

As I moved past the crowd, Maria sat on the porch of the house, smoke still lingering around her from her cigarette.

“Can I have one?” I asked.

“If you answer me something,” she said, her eyes drilling into mine.

I nodded.

“What did Lucía tell you about the lost girl?” She blinked, lids twitching like she hadn’t slept in years.

I raised a brow. “Not much. She only showed me a photo and said she disappeared in 1984.” I took a cigarette from the box she held out. “She was killed by El Trece?” I squinted. “I believe that’s his name.”

“And that is all?” Her hand shook so hard the ashes fell to her legs. “She has been obsessed with that case for thirty-three years. She even dragged my son into it.”

My lips parted. “Oh.”

“He’s blind, 4 ?sabes?” Her voice cracked. “He said Morena took his eyes.” She let out a choked sound, half laugh, half sob. “But when they found him, the only blood was on his hands.”

She trembled violently now, every word shaking her body. “We had to send him away, to Italy. Lucía had friends who locked him in an asylum. He never came back. He was never the same.”

Her next words dropped to a whisper, wet with tears. “She drove him insane. And she will do the same to you if you let her voice crawl into your ears.”

I pressed my palm to her shoulder, feeling the bones beneath her skin. “ 5 Tranquila, María. She made no sense to me.”

She flicked the cigarette to the dirt, crushing it hard beneath her heel. “Barcelona has many ghosts. But the thing that haunts Lucía is not a ghost. It is a demon.”

I studied her face. The wild in her eyes told me she wasn’t lying, but what I saw wasn’t just haunting. It was a disease.

6 Locos, I thought. 7 Están todos completamente locos.

I smiled. “Could be.” I shook my head and started toward the steps. “Can I have a lighter?”

She threw the entire pack at me, her hands moving as if the cigarettes burned her. “The lighter is inside. Keep it. You will need it. That house is cursed. That is where it all happened.”

And then she turned and walked away, shoulders hunched. She knew more than she would say. They all did. It was only a matter of time before I found out.

Inside, the air of the house was heavier. I climbed the stairs, trying to gather what little I owned, telling myself tomorrow I would finally have a bed to sleep in. At the last step on top of the stairs, a sound stopped me.

Scratching. Long, frantic scratches against wood. My breath stalled. It was faint, but beneath it came a desperate voice.

8 “Ayúdame… por favor…”

I froze, palm hovering over the doorknob. The closer I leaned, the heavier the pressure on the other side, like something pulling, dragging me inside. My shoulder slammed against the wood. Again. Again. With a final violent slam, the door burst open.

The stench hit me first. Burnt flesh, sour smoke, coppery blood gone stale. If hell had a smell, this was it. My throat closed around it.

The room was completely black. Coal walls stretched up. Every surface was scarred with claw marks from the floor to the ceiling. In the center was a patch of wood still raw, like it had been left for me to see.

“What happened here?” I whispered, but I already knew.

My chest split open, heavy with a thought of it. This room wasn’t empty. It was haunted. My heart cracked into pieces as the truth sank in: someone had died here, and it hadn’t been quick. Someone was burned here.

A tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it. I turned, ready to leave, but she was there. She pressed against the wall, pale, her outline soft as smoke, but her eyes wet with tears.

“I don’t remember,” she whispered. “What was before?”

I turned back to face her.

“Somehow,” she said, “we connected when you broke that urn.” She circled the room and then stopped. “It was as if you brought humanity back to me.”

A hard lump caught in my throat. What if the dreams I kept having were not mine at all, but her memories bleeding into me?

“I had a dream last night,” she tilted her head, eyes glinting in the half-dark. “It was about the one you left behind.” She whispered the words, then broke into a soft giggle.

“Stop,” I said. “You have no right.”

“To bring it up?” She laughed, the sound sharp enough to cut. “Did I touch your poor little heart?”

I stepped outside and reached for the door. I was about to slam it when her hand pressed against it, holding it open.

“I know what you did,” she said. “You are no better than the men you despise.”

I turned, but couldn’t look her in the eye. “I never claimed I was better than anyone else.”

She didn’t reply. Maybe she felt it, the same feeling that pressed on me whenever she was near.

It was as if we were already bound together, two broken pieces of a puzzle that no one could solve.

We were past and present colliding, yet somehow searching for an ending that would quiet the noise inside.

If María had been right, if she had taken her son’s eyes, then mine were next. The truth was that I had been blind for a long time. I saw things, but like I had no sight at all.

I walked into the room with the broken window. On the other side of the glass, the neighbor’s shadow stood watching the house. She stayed only a second before leaving further into the room.

The thought clung to me. Maybe the haunting wasn’t just in the house. Maybe the entire town was cursed. Some people stayed because they had no choice. Others stayed because they were foolish enough to keep chasing ghosts, just as I was.

1. Everything good?

2. My mother's name is Lucia.

3. Pink in Spanish

4. You know?

5. Calm down, Maria

6. Crazy

7. They were all completely crazy.

8. Help me… please…