The Night the Door Should Have Stayed Closed
Don Alberto studied María in silence for so long that the air between them seemed to tighten. The man everyone in town feared—the one whose name shut mouths and lowered eyes—looked suddenly… tired. Not weak. Wounded.
Finally, he lifted a hand and dismissed the guards.
“Come inside,” he said quietly.
María felt her knees weaken. Her two children pressed against her legs, fingers digging into her skirt as they crossed the threshold of the mansion people only whispered about.
The wealth was suffocating—crystal chandeliers, polished floors, furniture that looked untouchable. But beneath the splendor was something unsettling.
The house felt hollow.
Like a place holding its breath.
“Are the children hungry?” Don Alberto asked.
The question startled her. His voice—soft, almost fragile—didn’t match the stories.
As he helped prepare food, he began to speak, as if the words had been waiting years to escape.
“Five years ago, everything I loved disappeared,” he said. “My wife. My children.” His hands trembled. “An accident, they said. Since then… this house has been my sentence.”
María listened, skin prickling. Her children ate quietly, unaware that their lives were drifting toward a turning point.
“I wake up every day asking why I’m still here,” he continued, tears streaking down his face. “And tonight… when I saw you… I thought maybe God finally answered.”
There was desperation in his eyes. And something else—something she couldn’t name.
“Stay,” he pleaded. “Just for the night. There are rooms upstairs. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Exhausted and grateful, María agreed—though unease curled in her stomach.
As they climbed the stairs, she noticed something strange.
Don Alberto deliberately avoided one corridor.
It lay in complete darkness, like a wound the house refused to heal.
Sleep never came.
Long after the children drifted off, María lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence. It wasn’t peaceful. It was watchful.
Then she heard it.
Soft footsteps.
Small. Careful.
Moving toward the dark hallway.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
And then—a sound that made her blood run cold.
A child’s sob.
“Mom… Mommy…”
The voice cracked with fear.
María slid from the bed, hands shaking, and stepped into the corridor. Her phone’s weak light barely pierced the darkness. The crying led her to a door at the far end.
Locked.
“Hello?” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
The crying stopped instantly.
Silence swallowed the hall.
Then a voice spoke behind her.
“You were told not to come here.”
María turned slowly.
Don Alberto stood in the shadows, but the broken man from earlier was gone. His face was rigid. Controlled. Wrong.
“Who’s in that room?” she asked, forcing the words out.
“No one,” he replied too quickly. “Go back. Now.”
Her instincts screamed.
“I heard a child,” María said. “That wasn’t my imagination.”
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