That night, the key — that skull that throbbed and whispered — wouldn't let me sleep.
I took it home, wrapped it in a shawl, and placed it on the altar, among the candles and copal.
But its whispers followed me wherever I went:
"Open me."
"Open me."
When I finally returned to the cemetery, the candles no longer burned and the tombstones seemed even more crooked, as if the earth was trying to swallow them.
The air was colder than ever, and the moon hung huge and yellow, barely lighting the gravel path.
That night, it wasn't the dead who called me.
Nor the twins.
Nor the shadows of Ixcoatl.
It was her.
—
At first, I thought it was a thick fog swirling among the oldest graves.
But soon I realized the "fog" had a human shape.
It was a woman covered from head to toe in white veils, so long and thin they floated with the wind.
And every time one of the veils shifted slightly, underneath was another… and another… and another.
A hundred, maybe a thousand veils, moving as if they were alive.
I couldn't see her face.
Nor her hands.
Nor her feet.
But I could hear her breathing.
It was a rough, uneven sound, like she was inhaling earth with every breath.
"Citlali…" she whispered from the shadows. "At last."
Her voice was soft, but behind that softness was something cold and cruel, like a knife wrapped in silk.
"Who are you?" I asked, clutching the skull against my chest.
She moved forward slowly, her veils brushing against the tombstones, leaving a trail of frost over the withered flowers.
"I am the one who covers what you don't want to see," she said. "I am the veil between you and the truth."
A few of her veils parted on their own, like petals falling from a rotting flower.
Beneath, I glimpsed a fragment of her skin.
It was gray and dry, like bark.
But the worst were her eyes: they shone with such intense light that I had to look away.
"You have the key," she continued, and for the first time, all the veils trembled at once, as if they were hungry. "But you don't know what it opens."
"Tell me," I demanded.
She laughed, a soft laugh that multiplied in the air, bouncing among the graves until it sounded like a choir of drowned voices.
"It's not something that can be said," she answered. "It's something that… shows itself."
The veils lifted slightly, revealing a thin, bony hand with long, black nails.
She came closer and brushed my cheek with impossible gentleness.
In that moment, my skin froze.
My vision blurred.
And the entire cemetery vanished.
—
I found myself in a dark place where the ground was crushed bones and the air smelled of rancid blood.
The graves had opened, and instead of bodies, there were doors.
Old wooden doors, rusty iron, cracked stone.
Each marked with symbols I didn't understand.
All trembled, as if something on the other side was pushing to get out.
And in the middle, a single door… covered by a thousand veils.
The veils moved slowly aside, and a giant eye peeked through the crack, looking at me with a hatred that chilled the soul.
"Open me," said the eye, in the same voice as the skull in my hands.
—
When I blinked, I was back in the cemetery.
She was still in front of me, motionless, covered in veils.
"Did you see it?" she asked.
I nodded, feeling an ice knot in my throat.
"That is the truth," she said. "That is the crack through which everything will come back out."
"What's behind it?" I murmured.
"Everything the earth tried to forget."
For a moment, the veils trembled stronger.
A few lifted violently, revealing beneath them mouths full of teeth, bulging eyes, clenched hands.
Hundreds of faces trapped in the layers of fabric, screaming silently.
"I contain them," she whispered. "But every night… they grow stronger."
She leaned toward me, so close I could smell her cold breath.
"When the key and the crack meet, no veils will be enough.
And then, Citlali… then you will have to choose:
Either you feed them… or you join them."
Before I could answer, a violent wind tore all her veils off at once, scattering them like ash.
And when the ash settled, she was gone.
—
That night I returned home with the shawl over my head and the skull clutched in my hands.
The veils still seemed to float around me, brushing against my skin.
Now I know there is something more, trapped deep inside.
Something that beats and waits.
Something that calls me.
And every night, the whispers grow clearer:
"Open me."
—But I still don't know… if I can bear what comes out.