Paula thought it was a blessing to see her friend Daiana at that moment, for some reason she believed that her friend gave her some peace of mind. On the other hand, Daiana was surprised by Paula's attitude that she kept repeating over and over again «The nun» «The nun» Daiana did not understand what was happening to Paula, so she took her house. Daiana's house was not far from there.

"No! No! Nowhere is safe. They will follow me," said the girl among sobs.

"I don't know what are you talking about Paula. Come on! You have to calm down. Do an effort," said her friend.

When they got home, Daiana gave her a concentrated and very sugary coffee.

"What is happening, Paula? Is it about your relatives?"

Paula shook her head. What could she say to her? Surely she would look at her with pity, as Mrs. Parker did.

"What nun are you talking about? There are only two nuns in the church: Sister Lucia and Sister Marta. Although Sister Marta does not leave much of the church because she can hardly walk."

"You would not believe me if I told you."

"Oh my God! Did the Parkers do something bad to you?"

"No, No."

"So?"

"It's about ..." Paula fell silent.

"Trust me!" Daiana said with a decisive tone. Then she took her by the shoulders and said in a kinder voice: "You have to trust me."

"It is not that I don't trust you, but this might seem crazy to you. I did not believe it at first. I always tried to be reasonable but now..."

There was a silence. Paula took a breath trying to calm down and then she continued:

"There is something wrong with that house," she concluded shuddering from a chill.

Her friend didn't understand her.

"Something like what?"

"Something bad... An evil spirit. At first I saw the child and I thought it was real but then, I discovered everything and I came to the conclusion that I was imagining everything, but now weird things are happening around me and I saw someone else... Another «thing» was with the boy, and I listen to them... I listen to them, Daiana. They whisper all the time, I hear them walking around the house. I'm scared!"

"They attacked me! And I ran away," she said between sobs. "And in the church, that nun... I know they follow me! I don't know what to do!"

"Paula concluded desperately."

There was a long silence, broken only by Paula's uncontrollable sobs.

Daiana was trying to assimilate and understand what her friend had just said. But there was no comfort for her, not that day. She was paralyzed with fear.

"But, you have to be rational, Paula. That's impossible. Sometimes fear makes us listen and see things that are not there. You must have noticed."

Of course she had noticed, Daiana didn't believe anything. For Paula, that was a catastrophe because she desperately needed her friend's support at the time. She had been wrong to blindly trust her and regretted it. Daiana was more rational than she had always thought.

"You may be right," the girl conceded without being very convinced of it. "But then how can you explain this?"

Paula lifted her blouse and then Daiana looked at the three scratches she had on her back. The wound was still there as a mark of terror.

"Oh my holly God!" exclaimed her friend.

Daiana touched the wound and Paula shuddered to feel a stabbing pain.

"How did you do that to yourself?" Daiana exclaimed in horror.

"I didn't do that to myself."

Paula decided to tell her what happened on the stairs of the house. She told her friend that someone or something had pushed her and then tried to suffocate her. But Daiana's gaze was strange as Paula narrated the episode, even said: «maybe you slipped and then you got tangled up with the sheets»

Paula wished with all her soul that Daiana believed her, then she told her what happened next: the appearance of those scratches, the strange voices, the two figures watching her from the window, the nun of the church...

"And you say you didn't feel pain when they made you those scratches?"

"No, I felt nothing."

"So, think about it for a moment, maybe you did it while you slept, and that's why you don't remember it. You didn't notice it because you didn't see it when you woke up."

Paula just looked at her.

"Don't you be angry with me! Everything can be explained! I know that before I gave too much credit to the rumors of the people."

"I really didn't take those rumors seriously and if I gave them a bit of importance it was because I found the theory that they had a child locked up there, but you told me already: There is no one in that basement."

"But the nun?"

"You probably saw Sister Lucia or Sister Marta. She is half deaf and invalid but she always prays there."

"I do not believe it," Paula said, although she was not sure if she had seen a ghostly apparition or one of the real nuns of the church. Daiana realized that and took the opportunity to calm her friend because she thought she was suffering a panic attack.

"Let's see them! This way you will realize that it was one of them that you saw. Everything will be fine," she said optimistically and got up to leave the house.

"I..."

"Come on! What can we lose? They are very good people. You can tell them what you want. They helped me a lot when my husband died."

Paula followed her and they went outside. She knew what was happening and was sure that the nuns could not help her, if they believed her story.

The street seemed to her more strange than usual. Paula looked everywhere, she was afraid that some dark figure would suddenly appear. Suddenly, a dog barked from the garden of a house. Paula was startled and Daiana looked surprised.

"It is just a dog."

Paula did not answer, she was ashamed of herself.

When they both arrived at the church, Paula was already calmer and could even resist the urge to run away. She followed Daiana who entered through the front door. It was hard for her to accustom her eyes to semi-darkness and when she did, she realized that there was no one there, not a single living or dead soul.

"Come, follow me, let's see Mrs. Gonzales."

Daiana walked through a corridor and stopped in front of a door. Paula followed her; she thought that maybe that would be Mrs. Gonzales; bedroom door, but she didn't ask why she thought the sound of her voice would break the silence and break the peace of that place.

The church air felt different this time... it was very different from the first time Paula entered there. They went through the door and walked down a corridor until they reached a small office that had the door open. There was a middle-aged woman shuffling papers on the desk.

She was short and wore glasses. Her shirt was very white. That woman seemed to be a mature secretary.

"Excuse me. My friend and I want to see Sister Lucia."

"She is not here," the woman interrupted.

Paula got the feeling that she was a very strict woman.

"Ah!"

"She went to «San Geronimo» but she will be back in a few days," explained the woman referring to a parish near the town.

"And where is Sister Marta?" Daiana said without losing optimism and neither the courtesy smile.

"She is in her room. She doesn't receive anyone. You should know that", the woman said looking at them through the lenses of her glasses. Then she added curiously: "Why? Does your mother need anything?"

It was obvious that Daiana didn't go there much. At that moment a woman's voice was heard.

"Greta! Greta!" she was screaming.

"Wait for me here! I'll be right back," said the woman and she left the office. Both girls listened to her steps and then a door that opened and closed in the distance.

The office had shelves full of papers, but there were more of them on the small dark wooden desk.

"It's Sister Marta. I had forgotten that she no longer talks to anyone."

"Is she very old?" Paula asked.

"Yes, she is and is also invalid. I heard that when she was young she was as a missionary in Brazil and when she returned she was different. If we can see her then you will know what I mean. People say that she is crazy, that the Indians made her witchcraft or something... but I do not think so. I never saw anyone as sane as she."

A few minutes later Mrs. Gonzales returned with an expression of disbelief on her face.

"Sister Marta wants to talk to you. She says that she was waiting for you," the woman said looking at them both carefully.

The girls exchanged a look of surprise. How did she know it?

The women followed Mrs. Gonzales through a door that led to a small inner courtyard and from there through a gallery to a spacious room. It was the old woman's home but her eyes radiated incredible vitality. In front of her presence anyone felt fuller of vitality and energy.

The old woman received the girls with a sweet smile, as if she had known them for many years. Paula then understood why she was reputed to be eccentric; it was because anyone would feel uncomfortable under her gaze. Anyway, she wasn't the nun she had seen in the church earlier ... and if Sister Lucia wasn't in the church either, then, who would be that nun that Paula saw?

The nun interrupted her thoughts and made Paula forget them completely.

"I knew you would come to see me, Paula."

Paula was very surprised to hear her. She knew her name even though she had never seen her before!

"How did you know?" Paula asked as surprised as Daiana, but the old woman interrupted her.

"Oh! He told me. Sometimes he visits me," said the woman with a countenance of mystery.

Paula felt her neck hairs bristle...

"He?" she asked.

"Yes, the boy of course."

In the room suddenly there was a silence so intense that it was as if time stopped at that moment. However, Daiana suddenly interrupted it, moving annoyed throughout the room. It supposed that she have taken her friend there for that woman to reassure her, but she was doing the opposite.

"We have not come to talk about any boy. Paula feels uncomfortable in her new home and thinks she has seen something..."

"You have always been very incredulous, since you were a child," the nun interrupted her.

"Although I have noticed that you like to appear otherwise. For that reason you have turned away from us, from God. But he will forgive you because God is merciful."

Daiana felt sensuous and said nothing more.

"Did you tell me that... the boy comes to see you?" Paula was anxious to answer.

"Yes. In dreams."

"But who is he?"

"I think you already know that," the woman replied enigmatically.

Paula felt chills. Would it be her child?

"And what does he want?" the woman asked in a very low voice.

There was a brief silence.

"He wants you to remember something. Something you forgot... or so I think," the nun said with a very particular shoulder movement.

Paula looked surprised. She had forgotten many things, she had gaps in her mind and there were many memories submerged in them.

"But he has come for something else. He has attacked me," Paula said after a few minutes of silence.

The old woman remained silent, thinking but then spoke...

"Spirits are like humans. Sometimes they get angry but they don't want to cause harm. They just want us to know they are here with us."

"I don't know," Paula walked for all over the room. She was restless. "He has hurt me, he tried to suffocate me. There is also someone else."

"What?" said the surprised woman.

"Yes, I saw a figure as a dark shadow. That seemed evil, or at least that was the feeling I had when I saw it," Paula said.

Sister Marta got scared.

"A demon!" she said.

"Oh my God! What nonsense!" Daiana interrupted. She was alarmed by the direction the conversation was taking.

She walked towards Paula, took her arm and led her to the door. The girl was shocked by what she had just heard.

"It is not the child who attacks! Take care of the devil! He wants to confuse you."

"He will try to get you away from your loved ones. Always try to hold on to your instincts and remember... Remember! There is something very important to remember!" the nun shouted as the girls left the room.

Soon they stopped hearing her and entered the church along the path they had previously followed. They didn't see Mrs. Gonzales, so they went out the front door without being seen. They couldn't talk inside the church because there were people there and both girls preferred it that way, they needed to calm down.

"I am sorry, Paula! I did not know she was so bad. She must be crazy or senile."

"I don't believe it because how did she get to know about the boy?"

"She only saw him in dreams. That is a coincidence nothing more."

Paula almost refuted her idea, but just then both girls stumbled upon

Mrs. Parker.

"Aunt!"

"Thank God I find you, honey! You ran out of the house and I was so worried that something bad would happen to you."

"Are you ok?" the woman asked. She was relieved.

For a moment Paula didn't know what to do. Would her aunt believe her if she told her the truth? But it was Daiana who answered Mrs. Parker's question.

"She has had a collapse. You already know! Stress and nerves," she explained and Mrs. Park understood.

"Do you want to go see Dr. Marti? He is the best in town. He can give you a painkiller or something", the woman proposed.

"No, thanks, Aunt, I'm already better," Paula lied. She didn't want to see any doctor. She was afraid of them. The last one she had seen, Dr. Rush, had been the one who admitted her to the psychiatric hospital.

"Are you sure? Well, then we'd better go home together. Dr. Rush said he would go home tomorrow," said Mrs. Parker.

"Has he called?" Paula asked scared, unable to contain herself.

"No, I called him to ask him when he came to see you and he told me," the woman explained, looking away.

Paula understood that there was something else behind her words. Surely her aunt had called him because she was alarmed by her behavior, and now what was she going to do? Would her doctor think she was crazy and return her to the hospital? If he believed the story that surely Mr. Parker had prepared, surely he would return her to the psychiatric hospital back. A chill ran through her body.

Daiana on the other hand didn't understand anything and was a little confused. She didn't understand why a doctor would visit her friend.

"Why?" she asked but her friend interrupted her.

"I think I should go rest now, Daiana, I need sleep," she told her and then she spoke to her aunt: "will we go?"

"Yes, of course see you later," Daiana said and then added as she watched her friend walk away: "And don't believe in everything the nun gave! She is a bit senile!"

Paula smiled forcefully and waved. Then, aunt and niece returned home.