Echoes of a Lost Sister – Suspense, Drama and Horror Stories – A Journey Through Grief, Shadows, and the Power of Connection
My name is Ximena, I am ten years old, and I live in a house that, while it looks perfect from the outside, hides shadows that not everyone would notice. My family… well, they’re a bit strange. My mother, while affectionate with me, has always been distant. I’ve never lacked her love, but it feels cold, detached. My father… I barely see him. He’s always working, absent, but thanks to him, we live comfortably. The truth is, I don’t feel his absence as much as I do that of my older sister.
She, Sofía, is different. She’s seventeen, but she seems to have lived an eternity of torment that no one can understand. She’s always angry, doesn’t smile, and locks herself in her room to draw for hours, sometimes whole days. I watch her from a distance, and although I can’t understand why she’s like this, I know something inside her is consuming her. Mom never pays much attention to her. In fact, it’s always been that way.
One day I overheard Mom talking to Grandma on the phone. She said that Sofía had always been a bit strange, repressed. She told me that when she was my age, she began to change, that something broke in her when she turned twelve. Mom attributed it to adolescence, but something in her voice made me doubt. It was as if she knew something she wasn’t saying, as if there was a dark truth she refused to accept.
It was no surprise that Mom simply stopped paying attention to Sofía. I, on the other hand, was always watching out for her. Despite her anger and coldness, I loved her. One day, she surprised me. She opened the door to her room and, for the first time in a long time, came out. She walked towards me and hugged me. Her arms were strong, but what surprised me most were her eyes. She looked at me in a way I had never seen, with a tenderness and sadness so deep that it made me feel strangely comforted and scared at the same time.
“I will always be here, watching over you,” she whispered in my ear. Then she pulled away and locked herself back in her room.
That was the last contact I had with her.
Things continued in their strange way at home. Mom would brush my hair and dress me in nice clothes, but she had never done that with Sofía. Never. It was as if something had broken in her when Sofía was little, and since then, Mom didn’t know how to love her. With me, it was different, but that difference hurt. It hurt because I knew Sofía felt it.
Days passed, and Sofía remained locked in her room. Sometimes, Mom didn’t even notice her absence. My father came home late, as always, and didn’t ask about us. One night, Grandma came to visit. She always treated me sweetly, bringing me sweets and hugging me with love. She asked about Sofía, but Mom, with a voice that sounded so cruel, replied:
“She must be in her room… as always.”
I remember Grandma going to her door, knocking two or three times, but there was no response. She stood there for a while, in silence. Then she shouted through the door:
“I love you, daughter. I’ll come soon. I hope to see you. Take care.”
She waited a few more minutes, as if somehow her love could cross that door and reach Sofía. But nothing happened. Eventually, she left.
The next day passed without any news. However, I began to notice something strange. Sofía hadn’t come out to get food or water, as she usually did at dawn. I knocked on her door, but there was no response. “She must be very focused on drawing,” I thought. But the days kept passing, and that door remained closed, unchanging. My mother didn’t even notice.
Until suddenly, something changed in the atmosphere of the house. A nauseating smell began to fill the hallways. At first, it was a faint hint, but soon it became unbearable, putrid, disgusting. I didn’t know how to describe it, but I felt it in my chest, a pressure that crushed my soul. I approached Sofía’s room, the place that had been her refuge for so long, and suddenly I knew deep down what had happened to my sister.
That day was Sunday, the only day my father was home. Together with my mother, they broke down the door to my sister’s room. She was there, hanging, her body rigid, her tongue out, her red eyes seemed to be flooded with blood, her body looked purple but white at the same time, and the smell in that room was so terrible that we all vomited.
I couldn’t believe what I saw. My mother was left speechless, unmoving, with no facial expression that showed she was truly sad. My father seemed not to care much, and I wondered why they behaved that way after seeing my sister’s body like this, after seeing her sad face. They didn’t seem to care much; what was wrong with them? Why didn’t they love her? I could only run to my grandmother’s house, which was a few blocks from mine. I ran as fast as I could, crying and screaming in the street. When I reached my grandmother’s house, I was banging on the door, uncontrollably. She opened it, startled, and tried to calm me down. I tried to tell her what had happened, but I couldn’t; my tongue wouldn’t work. I couldn’t calm down. All I could say was “sister, my sister.” There, my grandmother had a premonition. She put me in the car and drove to my house, but she broke down upon seeing that atrocity. My grandmother fell to her knees and began to cry. She tried to cover my eyes, but it was too late. My mother was calling the police, my father was talking on his cell phone with a cigarette in his hand; I had never seen him smoke, and my sister was still hanging. My mother closed the door to the room.
“It’s better to close it until the police arrive,” she told me.
The police arrived and took my sister’s rigid body away. My mom told me I should go sleep at my grandmother’s for a few days while the house was cleaned and while the forensics worked on the case. Of course, I agreed; I didn’t want to be with them. They didn’t care at all about my sister’s death; in fact, they seemed as if they had lifted a weight off their shoulders.
The hug, her look, that promise of “I will always be here”… she had said it because she knew that would be the last moment we would share. Sofía was gone, and she had left long before we noticed. Perhaps she had left much earlier than that hug, when everyone, little by little, forgot about her.
Years passed, but the weight of that terrible event never dissipated from my life. It was as if a dark cloud had settled over my heart, preventing me from moving forward. The death of my sister, Sofía, marked me forever, a wound that never healed. Although I tried to move on, something inside me remained broken, incomplete.
I was fifteen when something happened, something that awakened in me a mix of fear, confusion, and hope. That day, while walking through the fruit market, amidst the noise and shouts of the vendors, I saw her. Standing by a stall of apples was a girl who made me stop dead in my tracks. It was as if I had seen a ghost. Her hair, her posture, her gestures… they were identical to Sofía’s. Time seemed to stop as I watched her, unable to look away. My heart was pounding so hard I felt it would explode at any moment.
Without thinking, with trembling hands, I took out my phone and took a picture of her. I needed to capture that moment; I needed to understand if what I saw was real or a product of my tormented mind. But as soon as I clicked, the girl noticed. She looked up and began to walk slowly towards me, her eyes fixed on mine. I felt a chill run down my spine. I couldn’t move, as if my feet were glued to the ground. The mix of embarrassment and fear paralyzed me, and with every step she took, my throat closed tighter.
She stopped in front of me, so close I could feel the warmth of her presence. She didn’t say a word. She just looked at me with a loving expression, a calm and enigmatic smile that disarmed me completely. Her face was a perfect copy of my sister’s, but… it couldn’t be her, could it?
Finally, I managed to gather the courage to speak, although my voice came out barely as a whisper:
“I’m sorry… it’s just that you look so much like my sister. She passed away a few years ago… but I’ll delete your photo right now. Sorry, really.”
My hands trembled as I tried to delete the image from my phone, but then she did something that took my breath away. With a softness that almost broke me, she placed her hands on mine, stopping me. Her fingers were cold, yet somehow warm in a strange, comforting way. She looked directly into my eyes, and with a calm that completely disarmed me, she said:
“Don’t worry. I told you I would always be with you, watching over you… remember?”
My entire body froze. Those words… were exactly the same as Sofía had told me days before she took her life. My heart began to race uncontrollably as an intense cold washed over me. The girl didn’t take her gaze. Her smile lingered, almost as if she were waiting for something from me.
I wanted to say something, anything, but my tongue was tied, unable to react. Then, I heard someone calling me from a distance. Instinctively, I turned my head towards the sound, and when I looked back at the girl… she was gone. She had vanished into the crowd as if she had never been there.
The air grew thick, heavy. I felt a presence around me, as if Sofía were there, watching me. And in that moment, something within me changed. The fear that had consumed me for years faded away, leaving room for a strange calm. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel alone.
Since that day, I felt eyes on me, and I sensed that she was there, watching over me wherever I went. The fear was gone, and I felt protected for the first time in my life.
As I got home, I thought that I should get more involved in my sister’s death, and so I did.
After investigating for months, I realized that my sister was not my sister, I mean she was my stepsister, she was not my father’s daughter, my mother had been raped while she was married to my father, they thought that my sister was their daughter, until they did DNA tests and confirmed that it was not like that, that my sister had been born from rape, now I know why my father and mother never loved her, only my grandmother, she was the one who took care of her and believed her, that’s why what had happened to my sister hurt her so much, it hurt her so much that my grandmother died a few weeks after my sister’s death.
One night, the air was thick and heavy with tension at home. The sound of keys unlocking the door echoed in the silence, and the heavy footsteps alerted me to my father’s arrival. That night, he came home drunk and furious, his voice resonating like thunder in the atmosphere.
‘You’re a damn useless!’ I heard my mother scream, her voice filled with anguish. ‘What have you done this time?’ The argument escalated, and my heart raced as I moved closer to my bedroom door to listen. It was then that the truth hit me like a fist: my father had a serious gambling problem. He had risked something very valuable and lost it. Was it the house? The car? I couldn’t imagine the magnitude of the disaster.
My mother’s voice broke into desperate sobs, and the words escaping my father’s lips were like daggers. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find a solution,’ he promised, though his tone made it clear he was far from reality. ‘The people I got involved with are dangerous. They don’t know what they’re capable of.’ My hands trembled at his implicit threat, and a feeling of fear overtook me.
Days after that argument, the atmosphere at home became oppressive, as if a dark omen floated in the air. That morning, while I was in my room, I heard the door creak. My father entered, his face a puzzle of anger and regret. He sat on the edge of my bed and, with a tone I hadn’t heard in years, told me he wanted to go for a walk. ‘I know I haven’t paid much attention to you,’ he admitted, but something in his eyes made me doubt.
A spark of hope ignited in my heart. ‘Okay, Dad,’ I replied, feeling it was an opportunity to connect. I got out of bed, showered, and quickly got dressed. As we were about to leave, he offered me a glass of orange juice. At that moment, a small voice in my head warned me not to trust him, but I ignored it. ‘Why not? It’s just juice,’ I thought as I took it, unaware that I was sealing my fate.
When we got in the car, the initial euphoria quickly faded. The engine roared to life, and suddenly, reality became blurry. I felt as if the world was spinning around me. ‘Dad, I don’t feel well…’ I managed to murmur, but my words were swept away by the darkness enveloping me. Unable to fight against the tide, I fell into a deep sleep, and the last image I held was of his face, distorted with worry.
I woke up in a luxurious room, with red sheets and champagne; I didn’t understand what had happened. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I screamed and screamed, but no one came to my aid.
Hours later a man entered that strange room, I was huddled in a corner crying, that man laughed, he sat on the bed and between laughs and shamelessness he told me what had really happened, my father had bet me, he knew I was a virgin, my mother knew it too, but money was always the priority for them both.
I couldn’t believe what my own parents had done to me, the same thing happened to your sister, that horrible man told me, what do you mean by that, I asked with a broken voice.
your sister, she was here with many men since she was little, she laughed sinisterly. It was at that moment that I discovered that they had been prostituting my sister since she was 12.
A dark-skinned, fat, bald, sweaty man entered my room, and the other man proceeded to leave. That fat man looked drunk and drugged. I was scared. He approached me, grabbed me by the arms, and threw me onto the bed in an aggressive manner.
The door burst open, and a whirlwind of chaos erupted into the room. A woman, accompanied by several police officers, entered with determination. Their faces, marked by urgency and purpose, were an overwhelming contrast to the darkness that had filled the place. ‘We’re here to help you!’ shouted the woman, and in that instant, I felt a wave of relief wash over me, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders.
The officers’ shouts echoed in my ears as they dragged me toward the exit. The light from the hallway temporarily blinded me, but as my eyes adjusted, an intense feeling of freedom flooded me. However, before I could process what was happening, a familiar presence surrounded me. It was as if a gentle breeze caressed my skin, and in a corner of my mind, I knew I wasn’t alone. ‘Sister…’ I murmured in a whisper, the truth tightening in my chest. It was her, my sister, always by my side, even in the darkest moments.
In that instant, I understood that she had been my guardian angel, watching over me even from beyond. Her promise to protect me was not just an echo in my memory; it was a palpable reality. ‘Thank you for coming,’ I thought, feeling her love wrap around me like a warm blanket in the midst of horror. I knew that in her sacrifice, there was something deeper, a truth I needed to understand. She wanted me to know why she had taken her own life, and somehow, that would give me the strength I needed to move forward.
With my parents arrested and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, justice had finally spoken. However, the feeling of unease still lingered. I decided to move far away from that city that had witnessed so much pain. The night I left that place behind, a sense of liberation enveloped me, but not without a touch of sadness. I knew that, although the echoes of my past tried to trap me, my sister’s love would always be present.
Day after day, as I adapted to my new life, her essence continued to be by my side. I felt her presence in moments of solitude, in the laughter of the people around me, and in the small things I used to appreciate. Despite the distance and time, her spirit remained with me, reminding me that although I had faced darkness, I had also found light. The story of our connection intertwined with the whisper of the wind and the warmth of the sun, a constant reminder that I would never be alone.
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