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.”
He stepped closer.
That’s when she saw the key in his hand—old, darkened, stained with something time had not erased.
“My children didn’t die,” he said softly. “I couldn’t let them go.”
Her breath caught.
“They’re still here,” he continued. “And now… you will be too.”
He slid the key into the lock.
The door opened with a groan that echoed through the house.
A smell rushed out—stale, heavy, unnatural.
The light flicked on.
And María understood, too late, that the cries she’d heard were not coming from living children at all.
They were echoes.
Memories trapped in the dark.
And the truth waiting in that room was far worse than death.
The Truth Nobody Expected
The room was full of dolls. Dozens and dozens of dolls the size of real children, sitting in small chairs, wearing real children’s clothes.
But these were not ordinary dolls.
Maria covered her mouth to stifle a scream. The “dolls” had real hair, real teeth, and their eyes… their eyes were glass, but they had been placed with terrifying precision.
“Do you like them?” Don Alberto asked with chilling calm. “I made them myself. Each one represents a child who has stayed in this house.”
In the center of the room, two more elaborate dolls occupied a special place. They wore finer clothes and had golden nameplates: “Alberto Jr.” and “Elena.”
Maria realized with horror that she was seeing the remains of Don Alberto’s true children.
“The first family arrived three years ago,” he continued, stroking the head of one of the dolls. “Just like you. Desperate, penniless. I offered them a place to stay and… well, they never left.”
“He’s crazy,” Maria murmured, desperately searching for a way out.
“I’m not crazy,” Don Alberto replied. “I’m whole. Since my children died, this house needed to be filled again with children’s laughter. And it has been.”
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