When the helper opens the door, she stares at me like she witnessed a dead rose from the grave. She is a woman in her late 80s. My grandmother's friend.
Mara could have looked exactly like you.
I do not know how she can see that, when she looked like she is already half-blind because of old age.
Who is Mara?
She is your Aunt, Stephanie. She went missing when she was five years old after she and your Dad had a fight. She must be really upset having been punished severely by your Grandpa.
Grandpa. He had this reputation. He and my Dad never looked eye to eye. Even on Grandpa's deathbed. Dad did not care. I am surprised to know that I have an Aunt. Nobody mentioned that to me. I wonder why. Did Grandpa do something very bad to her?
I am speaking to myself. Rosario leads me to the room upstairs. The staircase creeks behind my heels.
The room opens to me. A gentle breeze lifts my hair.
I must have left the windows open. Rosario says as she puts her hand behind the old white curtains.
The sun is setting from a distance.
I will call you when supper is ready. Rosario says.
It was a long flight from San Francisco to this little town. Where my Dad was born and inherited this Villa on the top of the hill.
I am exhausted. My eyes close as I lie down the bed.
Stephanie, supper is ready. I hear Rosario. I volt upright and suddenly feel hungry.
I open the door. It does not look like the hallway where I had been before going to my bedroom. I am inside the closet. I hear sobbing. A young girl. She was looking down on her lap where her bloody hands are resting. I notice that her fingers are missing. All of them.
Who are you? Who did this to you? I ask.
The girl looks at me.
You!
She screams.
YOU ARE READING
The Unburied
HorrorA young girl was locked in a wooden closet as a punishment for fighting with her little brother and died of suffocation.
