“GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME! IT’S NOT OUR BABY—THROW IT OUT!”
The words ripped through the house louder than the thunder, slicing clean through the wail of the newborn and the shriek of the wind clawing at the mountainside.
María recoiled against the headboard as if the child had burst into flames in Tomás’s arms. Her face was ashen, her eyes too wide, fixed on the bundle he held. The oil lamp on the nightstand flickered violently, throwing warped shadows across the adobe walls—shadows that seemed to stretch and bend toward the baby, reaching.
But María did know.
She knew because from the moment the thing had slipped free of her body, the air in the room had changed. The storm outside—howling through the Sierra de Guerrero like an animal with broken ribs—had gone suddenly quiet, as if listening.
And the baby had not cried right away.
Tomás had noticed that first. A newborn was supposed to scream, to announce itself to the world with lungs full of fury. But this child had been silent for three long, unbearable seconds. Long enough for dread to creep into his chest.
Then it had cried—but the sound was wrong. Thin. Warbling. Almost… layered.
“Throw it out!” María screamed again, clawing at the blankets, trying to shrink away. “I felt it inside me. That was not a child. That was watching me.”
The midwife crossed herself so fast her fingers blurred. Doña Eulalia had delivered half the children in the valley, and buried almost as many. Her hands, usually so steady, trembled as she backed away from the bed.
“This storm,” she whispered. “I told you not to let her give birth during the storm.”
“I said the mountain was restless,” Eulalia replied. “I said the old paths were open.”
Another thunderclap shook the house, rattling the clay tiles on the roof. Dust drifted down from the rafters like falling ash.
The baby cried again.
Tomás looked down at the bundle in his arms.
At first glance, the child looked normal enough—small, slick with blood and vernix, fists clenched tight against its chest. But something in Tomás’s stomach twisted as he studied its face.
Its eyes were open.
Too open.
“Tomás,” María whispered now, her voice breaking. “Please. It knows me.”
The wind surged back to life outside, screaming through the pines, slamming rain against the walls as if trying to get in.
Eulalia swallowed hard. “There are stories,” she said. “Old ones. About what happens when a child is born during a mountain storm, when the veil is thin.”
Tomás shook his head violently. “No. No stories. This is my son.”
The baby’s cry faltered, then stopped.
Silence fell—thick, suffocating.
And then the child smiled.
It was small. Almost imperceptible. But unmistakable.
María let out a sound that wasn’t quite a scream and collapsed sideways, fainting dead away.
Continue reading…
