Page 13 of Morena

IX.

I woke with a sharp gasp, lungs straining for air. Something soft supported me, and sunlight pressed hot against my face. I squinted, trying to focus, trying to understand where I was.

A voice reached me through the haze, pulling me upward. A hand shook me gently.

“Matteo, Matteo.”

It was Maria. She sat beside me with a first aid kit open at her side.

“What happened?” My throat was raw, my words unsteady. “Where am I?”

“I found you this morning when I came to unlock the house. The neighbor helped me bring you here,” she said.

I glanced around, and recognition struck. Carlos’s house. I was lying on his sofa.

“You must have fallen,” Maria said, holding a cold compress to my head. “Luckily, it is only a small cut.”

Her hand lifted, two fingers raised. “How many do you see?” She waved them across my eyes and then back toward her face.

“Three,” I said.

She frowned. 1 “Cono. You might have a concussion. I was holding two.”

“I will be fine,” I answered, forcing myself to stand. “Mira, bien.” 2

Maria exhaled sharply. “No work for you today. Carlos already left, and I prepared the bedroom for you.” She slipped her arm under mine and guided me toward the hallway.

Each step made the world tilt further. The dizziness spread like water through my skull, and all I wanted was the bed she promised.

She opened the door. The room was bare except for the bed and a closet. White walls, dark wooden floors, and one small window that looked out over the garden.

“Carlos never brings much with him. He cleared it so you can use the space,” she said as she lowered me onto the mattress. “I changed the sheets as well.”

The scent of clean linen rose around me as I sank into the bed. My eyes closed almost instantly. Before I could thank her, before I even heard her leave, sleep pulled me under.

This time, there were no dreams of her. For once, my sleep was peaceful. When I opened my eyes, the sun had given way to the moon. I must have slept through the entire day because the room was already wrapped in darkness.

On the nightstand beside me stood a bottle of water and a small note tucked against a strip of pills.

“I took Lucia to my place for tonight. Rest and recover. — Maria”

The house was silent. Empty. I was a stranger alone in someone else’s walls.

I pushed myself upright and sat on the mattress before crossing to the window.

Outside, the moonlight spilled silver over the garden, touching the blooms of the oleander.

I turned back toward the bed with a sigh.

My body felt lighter, steadier, as though the long sleep had rinsed me clean.

Rubbing the weariness from my eyes, I glanced around and froze.

The mattress was uneven. The left side sat straight, but the right bulged with a small rise.

Curiosity stirred. I pressed my hand to it, and it felt hard beneath my touch. I lifted the mattress against my knee and steadied it against the bedframe. And tucked inside I found a box.

It was wooden and shallow, the size of a portrait frame, and worn with age. Not the kind for storage, but the kind meant for something like jewelry.

I pulled it free, set the mattress back in place, and sat down with the box in my hands. My pulse ticked hard as I opened it.

Inside was jewelry. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces, all tangled together. But one piece drew me in. A small heart-shaped medallion. I lifted it, pried it open, and the air caught in my throat.

A photograph. A face I had seen before, staring at me from one of the missing posters in the album Lucia showed me on the very first day.

The medallion trembled in my hand as I dropped the box on the bed. I carried it with me into the living room, went straight to the cupboard, and pulled out Lucia’s album. Then, I rushed back to the bedroom.

I laid every piece of jewelry across the bed in a crooked line. Then I opened the album and searched through the pages. Piece by piece, I matched each necklace, each ring, each earring to the women in the posters. One after another, they aligned.

The last belonged to Morena. Two silver hoop earrings.

They were all trophies. Every single one.

As I lifted the box again, something moved at the bottom. A small bottle of black nail polish slid from it and landed on the floor.

My chest rose and fell too fast. My palms pressed hard against my head. The bed was covered in faces, in trinkets, in proof.

Carlos was a murderer. He was El Trece.

I snatched up the album again, rifling through the pages for more. I searched for articles, desperate for details, but there was nothing I did not already know.

Knots at the ankles. Black nail polish. Hung upside down. Rope tied to the left ankle.

The same pattern. Over and over again.

Left. I said it again to myself. Left.

Carlos is left-handed.

I turned, and the phone started to ring.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. He said he would call only twice a day. It was nine at night. It was not him, and still I walked to the phone to answer.

It rang three times and stopped. I waited for one more ring that never came. When I stepped back, it rang three times again. I went to it, and this time I picked it up.

3 “Hola,” a woman’s voice said, then in a whisper, 4 “ella espera.”

The line cut out. I looked up. The mirror behind me had changed. The plaster on the wall wept dark, slow streaks. Someone had written Morena three times, the letters smeared in blood.

Something lodged in my throat, and I couldn’t move.

I managed to run to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.

All these photos, girls between eighteen and twenty-five, skin and hair similar to hers, hair black as coal, eyes green or blue.

Backgrounds changed but not the faces. Each one a daughter, each one with a life that someone stole.

They were all morenas. All of them were dead, just one had been taken and turned into a curse.

Killers think they can take lives and walk away.

And El Trece had walked away. He had never been caught.

A monster, I thought. He was a monster.

Then the thought turned inward. I am a monster. I killed someone, too.

A scream tore out of me.

Two choices stood in front of me. One, go to the police now and tell them everything I know and risk deportation, because of my immigration status. Two, go to Morena, let her take me, let me pay for my sins, let someone else find out the rest.

Maybe Maria would tell.

I ran down the hall, into the living room, searching for paper and a pen. There was a scrap on the dining table. Back in the bedroom, I took Maria’s note, folded on the same kind of paper, and I wrote quickly.

“Take all of this to the police. Carlos es El Trece.”

I left the jewelry and the album on the bed, then pushed through the hallway toward the front door. Children still played outside. Their voices rose and fell, little songs, the slap of feet on the ground. Their noise didn’t touch the thudding in my skull.

Everything pulled me back to Gabrielle and I.

A single tear slipped down my cheek.

I was a terrible person.

Guilt sat heavy in my chest. I deserved whatever end Morena wanted for me.

She deserved to know. It was time to tell her I knew. This had to end for both of us.

I stumbled into the street like I was drunk.

I went behind the haunted house first. I knelt where I had buried the mirror and dug with my bare hands.

Dirt packed under my nails, but I kept going until my palms hit glass.

I wrapped the mirror in the cloth I had brought and hauled it with me.

I clambered up the dumpster, hoisted my body to the window, and eased myself back inside.

“Morena,” I shouted.

Silence swallowed the name. The house breathed empty around me. I ran down the hallway, the mirror wrapped in cloth digging into my palms, and called again.

“Morena.”

No answer. I went into the kitchen, found the loose floorboard, and lifted it. I took the clothes she had worn, and I set them on the floor beside the mirror and shouted one more time.

“Morena.”

Cold slid through the room. The air smelled like old smoke. My skin prickled, but nothing moved. But then a shadow twitched. A hand appeared, a finger moved. She was calling me.

I followed it without thinking. My feet carried me past a staircase I hadn’t noticed before.

Doors that had been closed now hung open.

The steps creaked as I went down. A basement opened beneath the house, the same one I had fallen into before, but different.

Chains hung from the ceiling. Shelves stood empty.

On the right wall, a tall mirror stretched from floor to ceiling.

Its black frame twisted and hunched around the glass.

In places, the frame pushed so hard that the glass had spiderweb cracks.

I stopped in the center of the room, and the lights snapped on.

She crouched in the corner. The fabric she wore was torn and dark, barely covering her breasts and slipping at the hips.

She moved like an animal, shoulders dipping, then rising.

Her arms were streaked with dried blood that darkened into black near the elbows, the color like old cherries.

She crawled toward me. Her hands left wet prints on the floor. Her head tilted, and her eyes rolled back until the whites showed, then snapped forward. She smiled, a sound spilling from her.

I couldn’t move. My legs refused.

But then I could. Each time I stepped back, she matched it. Each space I gained left as she crept closer and closer.

My back slammed against the cold wall. The chains around me shifted and rattled. A hook above my head slipped loose and plunged at my shoulder.

I screamed.

Warm blood spilled down my chest and soaked the white of my shirt. A fire burned through my shoulder, then a numbness stole it away. The pain was unlike anything I had known. It felt as if my arm were ripping off from my body. But she did nothing.

She just stood on her feet and sang.

5 “Oscura, oscura, estrella cruel, ?qué secretos guardas en tu piel?

Desde las sombras me miras brillar, un ojo muerto en el negro mar.

Oscura, oscura, estrella cruel, guía mi alma directo al infierno.”

Her voice was soft, making the words sound like a lullaby. The last line echoed in the room and then in my head, and I heard nothing else. Her song was the last thing I heard before everything went black.

1. Fuck

2. Look, good.

3. Hello

4. She's waiting

5. Dark, dark, cruel star, what secrets hide beneath your skin? From the shadows you watch me burn, one dead eye in the blackened sea. Dark, dark, cruel star, lead my soul, send me down to hell.