You know how she is. She left without saying anything, but she’ll be back in a couple of days. Rodrigo wanted to go straight to his mother’s house, but Graciela stopped him. “It’s really dark right now, cousin. The road there isn’t lit and there are potholes everywhere. Stay here. You’ll see her early tomorrow.” Rodrigo hesitated. He was exhausted from the trip. He’d been driving for 14 hours. His back ached and his eyes burned. He agreed and stayed, but something didn’t feel right.
His mother never left without telling him, never. And in recent months the calls had changed; the answers were short, the excuses for not video calling were always the same. “I’m busy, son. I ran out of data. I’ll call you later.” Rodrigo had attributed it to her age, to how difficult technology is for a 74-year-old woman. That night he slept at Graciela’s house, but he didn’t sleep well. Something was pressing on his chest, something he still couldn’t name.
The next morning, Rodrigo woke up early. He told Graciela he was going to drop off the gifts at his mother’s house so they would be there when she returned. Graciela acted strangely. “No, wait, I’ll keep them here for you.” Rodrigo looked at her. “Why? It’s my mother’s house.” Graciela stammered something about the lock being half-stuck. “It’s better to wait.” Rodrigo ignored her, grabbed the bags, and walked there. His mother’s house was about 200 meters away.
He knew it by heart. Adobe walls, an old tile roof, a wooden door that was always open because Carmen said a house with a closed door is a house without a soul. Rodrigo walked along the dirt path expecting to see that door open, the chickens pecking outside. Maybe the watering can dripping onto the flowerpots. What he found was something else entirely. The windows were boarded up from the outside. The door had a thick, rusty chain stretched between the handle and an iron post with an old padlock.
There were no chickens, no flowerpots. The yard was empty, dry, as if no one had set foot there in months. And there, lying right in front of the door, was a skinny, tan-colored dog, its ribs showing beneath its dirty fur. Rodrigo recognized him. It was Canelo, the stray dog his mother fed every day. She put a plate of leftovers by the door every morning. “He’s my little buddy,” she’d tell him on the phone. “He even sleeps here in the doorway now.” Canelo was still there, but he wasn’t the dog Rodrigo remembered; he was skeletal.
Her eyes were sunken. When she saw Rodrigo, she slowly raised her head, as if it were a struggle. She wagged her tail once, twice, and then let out a long, deep moan, as if she’d been trying for months to tell someone what was happening. Rodrigo’s blood ran cold. He went to the door. The chain was on from the outside. The padlock couldn’t be opened without a key. He pressed his ear to the wood. At first, nothing, only silence. Then a faint sound, like a dragging, as if someone were moving inside with what little strength they had left.
“Mom,” Rodrigo said, his voice trembling. “Silence, Mom.” And then he heard it. A whisper so faint it was almost carried away by the wind. “My son.” Rodrigo felt the ground open beneath his feet. Rodrigo didn’t think, didn’t measure, didn’t calculate. He ran to the truck, took out an iron bar he had in the bed, and went back to the door. He hit the chain. Twice, three times. The lock wouldn’t budge. He hit it with his whole body, with all the rage that was rising from his stomach.
On the fifth blow, the most rusted link snapped. The chain fell to the floor with a thud. Rodrigo pushed open the door, and the smell hit him first. A thick, acidic odor that filled his nostrils and made his stomach churn. Old urine, rotten food, something else he didn’t want to identify. Rodrigo covered his mouth with his arm and stepped inside. The darkness was almost total. The boarded-up windows didn’t let in a single sliver of light.
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