The Nun of Silence

Chapter 1

Rain trickled in cold streams down the windowpanes, distorting the silhouette of the city lights into a sickly parade of dancing shapes. Outside, the night stretched like a living, pulsating mass, whispering secrets between the wind and the shadows. Inside the bar, The Last Prayer, a group of young people laughed between drinks, their voices drowned out by the music and the murmur of the patrons. The dark wood of the walls, soaked in stale smoke and spilled alcohol, seemed to absorb the conversations, turning them into muffled echoes that never left the place. "Every town has its own urban legend," said Iván, a thin man with a pale face and sharp eyes. "But this isn’t just a story to scare children." The others looked at him curiously, some with a raised eyebrow, others simply waiting for him to continue. The breeze slipping through the slightly open door brought a momentary chill, though no one paid it any attention. "They say there’s someone lurking in the darkness," Iván went on, setting his glass on the table with a sharp tap. "A figure that only appears to those who once believed and then abandoned their faith." Daniel, a young man with dark hair and a strong jaw, let out a mocking laugh. "What kind of nonsense is that? A vengeful spirit for those who stopped praying? "Not a spirit," Iván corrected, leaning slightly forward. "A nun. The Nun of Silence." The flickering flames of the candles on the bar seemed to tilt slightly with an invisible draft. Someone at a nearby table dropped a glass, and the broken shards reflected the dim light like tiny ghostly eyes on the floor. "They say her name was Sister Elena," Iván continued. "She belonged to a convent decades ago, a place of penance and seclusion where sin was eradicated with cruel punishments. Faith wasn’t an option. You either believed… or you suffered." Daniel smirked disdainfully and took another drink. "And let me guess: she killed someone, and her spirit is trapped here, seeking revenge." "Not exactly," said Iván, unfazed. "According to the stories, Sister Elena didn’t tolerate doubt or lukewarm faith. She punished those who dared question the doctrine, but she reserved her fury for those who renounced their faith after embracing it. To her, apostates were more than sinners. They were traitors." The atmosphere at the table had subtly tensed. Despite the bar’s noise, a slight void seemed to open around the group, as if an invisible shadow surrounded them. "When the novices began to disappear, the convent was shut down," Iván went on. "But the nun… she never appeared. They say she still wanders, searching for those who betrayed their faith. And if you ever believed and then rejected God… she’ll come for you." Silence gripped the group for a few seconds. Daniel let out a dry laugh and shook his head. "Nonsense," he declared, setting his glass down with a thud. "I was a believer when I was a kid. My parents made me pray, go to mass, confess… But now I know it’s all a lie." Iván just looked at him with an inscrutable expression. "Then I hope you never see her. Because if she finds you… you’ll pray again." The conversation soon shifted to other topics, and the tension dissipated with the next toast. Daniel drank, laughed, and forgot the matter entirely. But when the early hours found him walking alone on the damp streets, he felt for the first time an insidious unease, like an invisible insect crawling on his skin. The streetlights flickered, casting long, wavering shadows on the asphalt. The night breeze blew with a persistent whisper, like distant, forgotten voices. That’s when he heard it. A murmur. At first, it was a barely distinguishable sound, confused with the wind slipping between the buildings. But then, with every step he took, it became clearer. A prayer. An Ave Maria whispered in broken, repetitive Latin, as if someone were reciting it under their breath from some hidden corner. Daniel stopped. He looked around. No one was there. Just the empty street, the mist spreading like ghostly fingers over the pavement. He quickened his pace, feeling his own breath grow uneven. Then, he saw her. On the corner, under the flickering light of a dying streetlamp, a figure dressed in black stood motionless. A nun. The habit covered her body completely, and the veil hid her face in an impenetrable shadow. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She was just there, standing, her hands hidden under her sleeves. Daniel felt a chill stab his back like an icy scalpel. His mind tried to rationalize what he was seeing: a woman, a shadow, a damn trick of the light. The streetlamp flickered. And in that brief moment of darkness, the nun had moved a few meters closer to him. Daniel stepped back, feeling his heart pound with absurd violence. The lamp flickered again. The nun was even closer. A prayer erupted from nowhere, enveloping the air like an impossible echo. "Dominus illuminatio mea… quid timébo?" The words spilled over him like a cursed litany. The air grew thick, heavy with the rancid smell of burnt incense. His vision blurred for a moment, and when it refocused, she was just a step away. The veil lifted slightly. Daniel felt the world split in a moment of pure terror. And then, the light went out completely. His scream was lost in the darkness.

Chapter 2

Daniel’s disappearance didn’t cause an immediate uproar. Like so many other cases, his absence was recorded with the bureaucratic indifference of police files. A young adult, with no close family in the city, an occasional drinker, and an active social life. The officers in charge of the case wrote it off as another statistic in the endless list of people who simply "vanish." But Mariana, a journalist for the local newspaper, wasn’t convinced. There was something about the story that unsettled her, a sticky, persistent feeling she couldn’t ignore. Maybe it was the way his friends, when interviewed, averted their gaze when mentioning the last night they saw him. Or perhaps it was the insignificant but disturbing detail one of them let slip in nervous words: "Before he left, he said that if ghost nuns were real, he’d already be dead." Mariana had heard many urban legends in her career, but something about the story of the Nun of Silence gnawed at her like a thorn buried in her flesh. She began to investigate, following a trail of rumors and dusty archives, and soon discovered something unsettling. Daniel wasn’t the only one. Over the past decade, several people had disappeared under similar circumstances. No apparent connection between them, except for one singular and chilling detail: they had all been religious at some point in their lives but later abandoned their faith. Some had been altar boys in their childhood, others grew up in strict Catholic families and later drifted away from religion. A man who had been a seminarian and quit. A woman who was a novice and decided not to take her vows. None of these disappearances were thoroughly investigated. But they all shared another strange trait: before disappearing, each of them had mentioned, in one way or another, the story of Sister Elena. The name led her to an old abandoned convent on the outskirts of the city. A forgotten place, overgrown with weeds and silence. Mariana spent days digging through diocesan records, scouring libraries where dust layered over pages eaten away by time. And little by little, the truth revealed itself to her like a cracked fresco still holding its terrifying image. Sister Elena wasn’t just a myth. She had existed. And her story was darker than anyone imagined. She was a nun from the Order of the Sisters of Punishment, a religious group that, in the last century, practiced a radical form of faith where penance and suffering were considered the only path to redemption. Physical punishments, extreme fasting, cruel mortifications. But the worst came when the novices began to disappear. The convent had been abruptly closed in 1956, after the escape of one of the young women. The girl, terrified and in shock, claimed that Sister Elena took away those who doubted their faith and that, after several nights of prayers and penances, no one ever saw them again. Mariana’s investigation led her to find the only document containing a testimony from that time: the personal diary of a novice named Clara, the last to disappear. In its pages, written in increasingly erratic handwriting, was the growing desperation of a young woman trapped in a place where faith was imposed with iron and blood. "Mother Elena watches us at night. Her shadow moves through the halls even when there’s no light. She doesn’t walk… she floats. She doesn’t speak… she whispers. She tells us we must be strong in our faith or face the Silence." "Yesterday, Marta started crying during night prayers. She said she didn’t want to be here, that she missed her home. Mother Elena took her away. No one has seen her since." "There are noises in the chapel when everyone is asleep. They’re not voices… they’re prayers. But they’re not human. I don’t know if they come from Mother Elena or something else." "Today, I was called to the Mother Superior’s cell. They asked me if I doubted. I said no. But I think they know I’m lying. I KNOW they know." "I feel this will be my last entry. If anyone finds this diary, please, pray for my soul. I no longer know if God can hear me here." The last line was written with such pressure that it tore the paper. Mariana closed the diary, her heart pounding in her chest like a war drum. There was something more. She could feel it. That night, in her apartment, she dreamed of the nun. Not a ghostly figure or a blurry specter, but a presence. The black habit like a void, the veil covering an invisible face. In her dream, the nun stood at the foot of her bed, motionless. And though Mariana couldn’t see her face, she felt herself being watched with a deranged intensity. In the nightmare, she tried to move. But she couldn’t. Then, the nun leaned slightly toward her. And at that moment, Mariana woke up, drenched in sweat, her chest tight and her breathing ragged. The air in her room was thick. The silence absolute. Until her phone vibrated on the nightstand. An audio message. No sender. With trembling hands, she opened it. And listened. At first, just a murmur. Then, a prayer. "Dominus illuminatio mea… quid timébo?" Her blood ran cold. The audio ended with a deep breath… And a whisper that froze her soul: "I’m still here."

Chapter 3

The convent loomed like a forgotten tomb on the hillside. The ancient stones, covered in mold and moss, cracked under the weight of time, while dead ivy climbed the walls like dry veins. The moon, hidden behind a veil of clouds, cast a sickly glow over the structure, giving it the appearance of a corpse decomposing under the spectral light of night. Mariana turned off her car’s engine and sat still for a moment, staring at the ruined building with a sense of vertigo that rose from her stomach to her throat. She felt that crossing those doors wouldn’t just take her into an abandoned convent but into something deeper, older… and hungrier. She grabbed her flashlight and moved forward. The air was heavy with an unnatural cold, as if the temperature plummeted around the convent. The wind moaned through the crumbling corridors, and in its murmur, she could swear there were voices whispering words she couldn’t understand. The wooden doors were slightly ajar, and with just a push, they slid open with a muffled creak. Inside, the darkness was dense and oppressive, a void so absolute it seemed to absorb the flashlight’s beam. The smell of stale incense, rotten wood, and something else… something like dried blood, permeated the air like a funeral perfume. She moved cautiously down the main hallway, where the remains of old prayer benches lay scattered like broken bones. On the walls, faded and cracked, were Latin inscriptions, some half-erased, others carved with such force they seemed etched in desperation. "Ego sum lux mundi." "Ad tenebras redeunt qui fidem negant." "Silencium est poena, et etiam salus." ("I am the light of the world." "Those who deny the faith return to the darkness." "Silence is punishment, and also salvation.") The echo of her footsteps reverberated as if the stones were breathing in the gloom. There was something in the air, a presence she couldn’t see but that surrounded her like invisible hands closing around her neck. Then she saw the chapel. Unlike the rest of the convent, that room was almost intact. The altar, though covered in dust, still held its blackened candles and worn crucifix. The floor was covered in ash and something that, in the dim light, looked like melted wax… or burnt skin. But the worst was what she found in the center of the room. On the stone floor, arranged with ritual precision, were photographs. Photographs of all the missing people. And among them… a photograph of herself. Her own image, taken at some moment she didn’t remember, perhaps on the street, perhaps in her apartment. Her face frozen in an instant that shouldn’t exist there. Her pulse hammered furiously. Her breathing grew erratic. The murmuring began again. "Dominus illuminatio mea… quid timébo?" The voice didn’t come from a single throat. It was many. Dozens. Hundreds. Female voices whispering in unison, crawling through the air like a sickly prayer. The candle on the altar lit itself. Mariana felt an icy knot in her spine. Her instincts screamed at her to run, to flee that place, but something stronger—maybe fascination, maybe absolute terror—kept her rooted to the spot. Then, she saw her. In the chapel’s doorway, standing like a statue of shadows, was her. The Nun of Silence. She was tall. Her habit was a black that seemed to absorb light, her veil falling like a shroud of death over her face. But in the gloom, something glimmered beneath the veil… two empty eyes, lifeless, sunk in an impossible darkness. Mariana felt the air grow solid around her. The nun moved forward. She didn’t walk. She glided over the stone floor without a sound, as if gravity didn’t touch her. With each step, the murmuring grew. "Dominus illuminatio mea… quid timébo?" Mariana wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t respond. The nun slowly raised a hand covered in a black cloth glove and extended it toward her, as if waiting for her to take it. Then, the veil began to lift. The candlelight flickered. Mariana felt reality itself tear apart in that moment. There was no human face beneath the veil. No skin, no flesh, no bone. Only an abyss. A black hole where a face should be. A devouring void, an absolute silence, a place where light and sound went to die. The voices stopped abruptly. Mariana felt a pull in her mind, an unbearable vertigo. Something was trying to rip her from her own body. In an act of pure instinct, she closed her eyes and screamed with all her might. The sound exploded in the chapel. And suddenly… everything went dark. When she opened her eyes, she was in her bed. Dawn was timidly creeping through the window. Her breathing was still erratic, her body drenched in sweat. She tried to rationalize it. A dream. A damn dream. But then she saw her phone on the nightstand. Vibrating with a new audio message. With a lump in her throat, she opened it. At first, just silence. Then, a deep breath. And finally, a whisper: "Stray sheep must return to the flock… or be sacrificed." Mariana felt her body go cold. She got out of bed, staggering, and saw something on her pillow. A black veil. Her reflection in the bedroom mirror fogged up with vapor, as if someone had exhaled on the glass. And in the mist, a silhouette appeared behind her. Tall. Dressed in black. Watching her.