Excerpt:
The Rite of the Bolívar Orphanage
In the old orphanage of Ciudad Zamora, an unspeakable horror had long been brewing—one that sparked a terrifying chapter in the country’s student folklore. Its dreadful secrets still lie buried on the hillside cemetery and in the catacombs beneath the city’s Historic District. The frequent sightings of the dead nun, and the suicidal youths appearing in the bathroom mirrors, foretold an invitation into hidden corners of the mind; and the charred corpses from the Spanish Flu epidemic that once ravaged the city still exhale miasmas that darken the façade of the building that once served as a Catholic school.
The resurgence of an ancient curse—born from the bloody pact forged by the Guayanese founders with an unknown entity—manifested in our modern era as a digital echo of an underworld far beyond earthly concepts. It stirred an extremist uproar among the students and eventually caught the attention of the Church, who appointed the sacristan Salvador García as mediator between these dark forces that had turned the Bolívar Orphanage into their den of terrors, demanding victims to settle their arcane debt.
Before the student incident that shut down the school, there were alarming signs that something strange was unfolding. Yet Director Ramírez chose to ignore it for political convenience… until the worst occurred. Senior boys—and a few strong-willed girls—began exhibiting antisocial, aggressive behavior toward others. Younger students grew intimidated, withdrawn, depressed. The academic dean dismissed it all as “typical teenage nonsense,” unaware of the disastrous consequences of his negligence.
The last day of Rubén García’s life resembled all the others that came before: he sat silently between rows of desks, copied down the math lesson for the upcoming workshop, watched others play soccer on the school court without joining—he wasn’t very good. He visited the bathroom one last time, a habit that unnerved the student body. He bought nothing from the canteen—he had no money. He spoke to no one during recess; instead, he wandered in circles around the courtyard, as if bidding farewell. He left the orphanage, took the bus home, hugged his mother, and told her he was tired and would sleep. The next morning, they found him hanging from the beam in his room… suspended by a slipknot, swaying like a pendulum.
“He was always very quiet and shy,” recalled Moisés Fernández during the police investigation. Moisés had been the closest thing Rubén ever had to a friend, especially since María Victoria’s accident during that awful exam. Moisés always defended him from Jorge Arreaza’s group of bullies. Police interrogated those cocky boys but found nothing beyond rumors about Rubén’s “weird habits” in the bathroom. When no clues surfaced in that cramped room of three blue-painted stalls, a broken sink, and a large stained mirror, the authorities assigned a child psychologist to interview those closest to the deceased.
It was Moisés who revealed how María Victoria had slowly gone mad under the pressure of her parents—driving her to commit that horrific act in the middle of class. “Rubén was in love with the fat girl,” he said, “but she was totally losing it. She kept ripping her hair out because if she didn’t make the honor roll, her parents would beat her. She was smart, yeah, but she was not okay. During the chemistry exam—everyone failed that one—she snapped. Broke her sharpener and slit her wrists with the blade. There was blood everywhere until she fainted.”
María Victoria survived, but never returned to school, pulling Rubén deeper into his shell. They had been close since primary school, playing Nintendo together during breaks. He had other friends once, but after she left, he severed all ties. Psychologist Jessica Fuentes later learned that Rubén’s father—a drunken police officer—beat him and his mother on weekends. María had been his anchor in a world collapsing nightly. After she left, his inner silence grew heavier. He believed—or felt—that he didn’t deserve affection. Yet before leaving this world, he hugged his mother, shattered into pieces, unable to bear watching everything fall apart so quickly… just like his heart.
Jesús Arreaza, meanwhile, was a hot-headed delinquent with burnt, spiky hair and ripped shirts. With Enrique Martínez and Vicente Herrera, he tormented students of his own grade and those below it. Psychologist Jessica noted that Jesús displayed psychopathic traits: he committed cruel acts without remorse, believing he had the right to trample others due to a neglectful upbringing. Enrique and Vicente feared him, yet were drawn to the power he wielded—the way fear opened doors for them.
esús, Enrique, and Vicente found entertainment in tormenting weaker students—isolating them during recess, extorting their snacks or homework submissions, and forcing them to run errands. Their worst act occurred on a dark Monday at 6:30 p.m., when all three snuck into the almost-deserted campus while the cleaning staff mopped the corridors. The excursion to the third-floor bathroom had already become routine. What they found there was not—though, somehow, they remained disturbingly unfazed.
Vicente later claimed to have entered the bathroom alone first. Inside the middle stall, illuminated only by the dim reflection of the mirror lights, he found a noose hanging from the ceiling and, beside it, something even more repulsive: a used glove covered in yellowish grime. “It must’ve belonged to the guy who hanged himself,” he muttered, although no one actually knew how deep the rot went.
The three boys returned on Tuesday morning, planning to intimidate another student they wanted to extort. But when they arrived at the bathroom, they found the space eerily silent. The mirror seemed fogged from the inside, even though no water had been running. The noose, however, was still there—swinging ever so slightly as if stirred by a breath.
Vicente swore that while he washed his hands, the reflection of the stall door shifted on its own. He blinked once, twice—but the movement didn’t stop. Something behind him was breathing.
By Wednesday, the whispers began.
Voices echoed inside the third-floor corridor—childlike, hollow, calling out names that did not belong to the living. Some students said they heard Rubén’s soft, trembling voice. Others insisted the whispers belonged to María Victoria, begging for help, begging someone to stop her parents. No teacher believed the rumors, though many secretly avoided supervising that floor.
Then came the Thursday incident—the moment the orphanage’s curse crossed the line between rumor and reality.
It happened during the last period. The students taking the technical workshop were performing weight measurements while the instructor left to fetch more materials. Jesús and his group began to mock the younger students for their “weak arms.” When one of them—Ángel Rivera—refused to hand over his backpack, Jesús dragged him toward the bathroom.
The hallway lights flickered.
The temperature dropped suddenly, so sharply one girl later said she saw her own breath inside the classroom. Several students heard a metallic groan, like strained wires or rusted hinges twisting under pressure.
Moments later, Ángel stumbled back into the classroom, screaming. His hands were covered in blood. His eyes were wild.
“They pulled him,” he cried. “From the mirror. They pulled him in.”
When the teachers rushed toward the bathroom, they found Jesús alone, trembling on the floor, clawing at his own hair. The mirror had cracked down the middle, like a wound splitting open. On the other side of the glass, one faint, breathy word seemed to linger in the air:
Stay...
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