The Bone in the Cistern

The August heat in the Andean foothills was relentless, pressing down on the tin roof of my grandmother’s house like a physical weight. I had been visiting for two weeks, escaping the city’s noise for the quiet of the village, but the quiet was deceptive. On the third night, everything changed.

My cousin Lucia, a bright-eyed girl of nine, woke up with a fever. My aunt Rosa felt her forehead and said it was just the heat, but Lucia’s skin was cold and clammy, and her eyes were glassy. We gave her water, but she wouldn’t drink. She just stared at the wall, her lips moving without sound. My grandmother, a woman who had seen too much in her life, started to murmur prayers in a language I didn’t recognize.

The doctor came, a young man from the nearby town, and he said it was a simple cold. But as he left, he glanced back at the house with a strange look in his eyes. That night, at around eleven, I was reading in my room when I heard my aunt’s voice, high-pitched and desperate: ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ I rushed to the bedroom.

What I saw made my blood run cold. Aunt Rosa was pinned against the wall, her arms stretched out as if held by invisible hands. Her eyes were wide with terror, and she was struggling against nothing. On the bed, Lucia was convulsing, her skin turning a sickly shade of purple-green, blotchy and unnatural. My grandmother held a cross, chanting, but the room felt cold, and the air was thick with the smell of damp earth and decay.

Then, the bathroom door creaked open. A man stepped out. He was tall, gaunt, with skin the color of old parchment, and his eyes were black, like empty sockets. He walked to the center of the room and said in a voice that sounded like rattling bones: ‘It will be over soon.’ I thought I was dreaming.

My grandmother’s face hardened. She whispered to me, ‘The bones.’ She moved towards the bathroom, and I followed, terrified. Inside, the bathtub was full of murky water, and floating in it were bones – a skeleton, or most of one, stained brown with age. My grandmother reached in without hesitation, pulled out a long femur, and then a skull, and then she started carrying them out of the house, armful after armful, her face a mask of grim determination. I helped, my hands shaking as I touched the cold, slick bones.

We carried them to the back garden, to the old cistern that had been sealed for years. My grandmother opened the wooden lid, and the smell that rose from it was like a tomb. She threw the bones in, and one by one, they disappeared into the black water below. As the last bone splashed, a sound like a sigh escaped from the house. The oppressive feeling lifted, and the man was gone.

Back inside, Lucia was breathing normally, her color returning. Aunt Rosa was freed from her invisible bind, collapsing into a chair. Everyone relaxed, laughing nervously, saying it was over. But I wasn’t so sure. I went to the bathroom and looked into the empty tub. There was a dark stain at the bottom, like a shadow that wouldn’t wash away. And on the wall, I noticed a mark – a handprint, but not a normal one. It was too large, with finger bones that were too long.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay in bed, listening to the wind. Just before dawn, I heard a sound from the garden. A drip – drip – drip – coming from the cistern. I went to the window and looked out. The lid was slightly ajar, and a thin tendril of mist rose from it, twisting like a finger pointing at me. The cistern was empty, I had seen the bones go in. But the water was rising, overflowing the edges, and I saw something floating in it. A pale hand, reaching up.