Perhaps of fear. Maybe the way Alma said it, not as someone who remembers a childhood madness, but as someone who had been running for seven years to get back just in time. My mom was white, her mouth trembling. The boy was still hugging his backpack, looking at the floor. And I felt that the whole house had become narrower, as if the walls also wanted to hear. I opened the back door. The night air hit us damp and cold. The patio was dark except for the yellow light that came out of the kitchen. There was still the cement circle, cracked by the years, with old pots on top and a broken chair leaning against the wall. No one touched it since my dad sealed it. We didn’t even pass very close to sweeping. Alma was the first to approach.
He knelt by the edge and put his palm on the cement as if he were touching a grave. “It’s still beating,” he whispered. “What does that mean?” I asked. Alma turned to me. Her eyes were filled with a desperation that I didn’t know about. “It means that it is still open at the bottom. My dad only covered it upstairs. He didn’t close it. He couldn’t.
My mom let out a groan.“Don’t start with that again, daughter… “I’m not crazy, Mom. I never was. The boy barely raised his head. In the kitchen light he looked even more like my dad: the forehead, the shape of the eyelashes, that way of puckering his nose before speaking. “You heard it,” he said very quietly. “You know we’re back.” I felt something grab me inside. “Who?” I asked. Alma slammed herself to her feet. “Then I’ll explain. Help me break this.
I went in for a shovel and a crowbar that we had stored in the cellar. My mom began to pray again, in such a low voice that it seemed like she was chewing on the words. I wanted answers, I wanted to understand where that child had come from, where Alma had been, what kind of hell could make her come back by asking to dig a well. But the way I looked at the street, the shadows, the sky, told me that if we stopped too long, something would arrive before us.
I hit the cement first.
The dry sound burst throughout the courtyard.
Then another.
And another.
Alma helped me. His hands were shattered, but he was beating as if he felt no pain. My mom was crying as she pushed the pots away. The boy wasn’t moving. He just watched the circle with frightening attention, as if he heard something from the other side.
It took us almost forty minutes to open a serious crack. The cement was broken into irregular plates. Underneath appeared the old iron cover of the well, rusty, with the padlock that my father had put years before. The padlock was broken.
“I didn’t break it,” my mom said immediately, as if someone had accused her.
Alma closed her eyes for a second.
“He’s already gone out once.
A sick silence fell over us.
“What came out?” I asked, already furious. “Stop half-talking, Alma!”
She looked at me. And finally she spoke.
“The night I disappeared, I didn’t leave with anyone. I didn’t run away. I heard someone crying out here. I came alone. I thought it was you.
My skin stood on end completely.
“I was asleep.
“I know now. But at that moment I swore it was you calling me from the yard. When I looked into the well, I heard my name from below. It wasn’t an ugly voice. It was… it was like someone in the family was talking to me fondly. Like Dad. Like Grandma. Like everyone together. And when I leaned over more… they pulled me.
My mom covered her mouth.
I felt nauseated.
“I didn’t fall,” he continued. “I went down. I don’t know how to explain it. The well inside wasn’t the well. It was something else. A bigger hole, with damp earth, tunnels, dug rooms. And there were people. People who were no longer complete. People who kept hearing voices from their homes, from their children, from their dead. I tried to get out many times. I always came back to the same place.
“No,” I said, but my voice sounded small.
“There I had him,” she said, looking at the boy. “No one touched me. No one human. Just… passed by. As if the place wanted to take root inside me. As if I needed blood from this house.
My mom let out a gasp.
The boy, upon hearing that, hugged his backpack tighter, but did not cry.
“Why did you come back until now?” I asked.
Alma swallowed hard.
“Because he found the exit. And because the other one woke up downstairs.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I did.
“The other what?”
The boy looked straight at me. He had a seriousness that didn’t fit in his face.
“My other mom,” he repeated. “The one who lives downstairs with Alma’s face.”
I felt brutally dizzy. Alma looked away, filled with shame and terror.
“When I had it,” she said, “something also wanted to claim it. She began to copy me. First the voice. Then the face. Then everything. I saw her at the end of the tunnels, carrying him, singing to him, combing her hair like me. Every time I tried to escape with him, she appeared first, on another exit, waiting for me. As if the well was rehearsing with me until it learned me completely.
An icy gust crossed the courtyard for us.
It wasn’t wind.
I knew because the tree in the corner didn’t move, but the kitchen lamp did flicker.
The boy took a step back.
“You’ve already gone up,” he whispered.
At that moment something could be heard under the iron lid.
Three blows.
Slow.
Hollows.
The same ones at the door.
My mom dropped the rosary and backed up to the wall.
I lifted the bar without knowing why.
A voice came from below.
Alma’s voice.
“Mom… open.”
I felt my arms burn with sheer fright.
My sister froze. Her face emptied of color.
“Don’t listen to her,” she said, very quietly. “No matter what she says, don’t listen to her.
The voice returned.
Perfect.
Equal.
“Mommy… it’s me… I was cold… open it for me.
My mom covered her ears and began to pray louder. The boy closed his eyes. And then the iron lid vibrated only once, as if something had just pushed it from below with both hands.
Alma grabbed my arm.
“The backpack,” he said to the boy. “Give it to me now.”
He obeyed without question.
Alma opened the zipper and took out several things wrapped in a blanket: a rusty knife, a bunch of wet photos, a braid of hair tied with red ribbon and a bag with black dirt mixed with something white that I didn’t want to identify.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What he took from us so he could imitate us,” he replied. “Hair. Photos. Memories. Things he touched. If we put him back in the well and seal him with blood from the house, he won’t be able to come back up.”
The lid rang again.
This time accompanied by nails scraping metal.
My mom stopped praying just to cry.
“Your father knew something,” she said between sobs. “The night before I covered it up, he told me that if one day you came back… I shouldn’t hug you until I heard you pray a complete Our Father.
Alma stood still.
“And why didn’t you ever tell me?” He asked in a thin voice.
“Because he looked for you outside. He always thought you had gone with someone. When he began to understand… it was too late. Then he got sick. And before he died he swore to me that if you really came back, there would be a mark on your back. The bite.
Alma looked at me.
Without saying anything, she lifted her blouse from behind.
There it was.
Right between the shoulder and the spine.
An old, semicircular mark, like human teeth that are too large.
The voice downstairs began to laugh.
It was a laugh just like Alma’s, but hollow, muddy with echo.
“Don’t believe them… I’m the good one… she was the one who came out first…
The lid moved a few inches.
And a hand appeared through the crack.
It wasn’t a dead hand. It was a pale, wet hand, with earthy black nails… and the same silver ring Alma wore when she disappeared.
My mom screamed so loud that it went through my head.
Without thinking, Alma cut her palm with the razor. Blood ran between her fingers.
“Help me,” he said.
I didn’t reason. I put the crowbar under the lid and forced it just enough for Alma to throw the braid, the photos and the dirt inside. The boy approached and, with a courage that I will never forget, he also cut his hand with the same knife and dropped three drops through the crack.
The laughter downstairs turned into a shriek.
The hand tried to go out more, desperate. I could see the wrist, the cracked skin, and under the flesh something dark moving like wet roots.
Alma put her bleeding palm on the iron.
“You’re not my voice. You’re not my home. You’re not my son.
The boy did the same.
“You’re not my mom.
I rested both hands on the lid and pushed with all my strength. My mother, crying, joined in. Between the four of us we closed it just as something hit from the inside with a fury capable of shaking the entire yard.
Then it began.
I don’t know if it was an earthquake or if the whole house was breathing. The broken cement around the well creaked. A rotten, ancient smell began to come out of the crack, like water kept with dead animals. And the voice downstairs changed. It was no longer Alma. It was no longer anyone I knew. There were many voices together, men, women, children, all asking to come in, to leave, to excuse me, to be hungry, to be named.
Alma yelled at me to bring the bag of lime from the cellar.
I ran.
When I returned, she was already mixing the lime with dirt and blood using her hands. We sealed the shore as best we could, smearing that gray paste around the lid. The well continued to pound inside, weaker and weaker, farther and farther away. Until, suddenly, everything stopped.
Like this.
From one second to the next.
Not a scrape.
Not a whimper.
Nothing.
Only the fan in the house, which went back to playing as usual. The dripping sink. A distant dog. The normal night returning on top of something that should never have been opened.
We stood still for a long time.
Then the boy sat on the floor and fell asleep right there, his head resting on Alma’s leg. My mom knelt next to them and finally hugged her daughter as if she was afraid she would fall apart.
I looked at the sealed well, the bloody hands, the shovel thrown away, the scrambled yard.
And I understood two things.
The first: Alma had returned.
The second: she had not returned alone.
Because when I helped pick up the child to bring him into the house, the black backpack opened a little.
And inside, among the dirty clothes and an empty bottle, I saw a wet photograph.
It was a photo of us, taken in that same courtyard, when I was ten years old.
Only someone had scraped my face until it was erased.
And on the back, written in Alma’s handwriting, was a single sentence:
There is still one to go.
