I didn't go to the cemetery the next day.
Nor the day after that.
I stayed home with the melted candle in my hands, watching as the wax hardened and formed something that looked like a face.
A wax face.
Like theirs.
But on the third night, I dreamed someone touched my forehead with a cold finger.
I woke up sweating.
And I knew I had to go back.
I returned just before dawn. The sky was gray, as if it hadn't decided whether to be day or night. And the air… the air was still watching me.
I walked in silence, avoiding the tree with the hanging ones. But as I passed, I felt something follow me with its gaze.
Something without eyes.
I went straight to the crypt of the old niches—the ones no one visits anymore.
And there it was: the empty niche.
All the others had names, dates, rusty flowerpots or burned-out candles. All except that one.
An open hollow, its walls damp with mold.
But the worst part wasn't that.
The worst part was what came out of it.
A whisper.
Like someone speaking from inside a bag.
I stepped closer.
And I saw the wax.
Dripping along the edges. As if something had melted and escaped through there.
"You shouldn't be here," someone said.
It was a girl.
She had no face—only a mask carved from wood, with closed eyes and a sad smile. In her hands she carried a bowl filled with damp soil.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"The one who remembers forgotten names."
She sat beside the niche and began to write on the earth with a dirty finger. I didn't recognize the symbols. They weren't letters. They weren't words.
"What does it mean?"
"It's the name that's missing."
"Who's missing?"
The girl didn't answer. She just went very still.
And then, from the niche… a hand emerged.
It didn't crawl out. It didn't knock. It simply appeared, as if the one inside didn't want to come out, but couldn't stay either.
It was a dry hand, covered in hardened wax.
Each finger trembled.
And in the palm… there was an eye.
It looked at me.
"If you stay here," said the girl,
"you'll forget your name too."
I stepped back.
Then again.
But the eye in the hand wouldn't let me go.
And then the soil in the bowl began to move.
The girl threw it against the niche.
A scream came out.
Not human.
Not dead.
Something in between.
I ran. This time without looking back.
Because this time, I felt something following me.
And when I got home…
The candle wax was no longer where I'd left it.
There was a mark on my door.
An eye.
Drawn in soil.