“Doctor… doctor, come and see this,” Camilo said, his voice breaking, taking two steps back as if the stretcher had just pushed him.
Dr. Esteban Fonseca looked up from the instrument table. He had been working in the central morgue of Puebla for over fifteen years, and almost nothing could raise his pulse. Almost nothing. But that night, the body resting on the cold steel was no ordinary body.
It was a nun’s.
The young woman was still wearing her black habit, which fit snugly over her slender figure. Her face was serene, almost luminous, as if she were not dead but asleep after a long day of prayer. She had been brought from a convent on the outskirts of the city with orders to perform an autopsy, because no one had been able to explain with certainty why she had died so suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” Fonseca asked, approaching.
Camilo swallowed hard.
—There’s an opening in the fabric… on the back. And I think she has a tattoo.
Fonseca frowned.
—It wouldn’t be so strange. Not all of them enter the convent as children. Some had lives before taking their vows.
But even he didn’t sound convinced.
As soon as he approached, he saw the dark mark peeking through a tear in the habit. He exchanged a brief glance with Camilo, and without another word, they both carefully turned away. Fonseca offered a short, reflexive prayer, as he always did when the dead man inspired more respect than usual. Then he asked for scissors and began to cut the fabric.
It only took a few seconds for his breath to freeze.
It wasn’t a tattoo.
It was a message.
An inscription written directly on the girl’s skin, in shaky but perfectly legible handwriting.
Don’t perform an autopsy. Wait two hours. What you need is in my habit pocket.
Camilo immediately crossed himself.
—No… it can’t be.
Fonseca carefully ran his finger over the letters, as if he still doubted his own eyes.
“Check your pocket,” he ordered in a low voice.
The young man reached into one side of the habit. At first, he found nothing. In the second pocket, however, his fingers touched a small, hard object. He slowly pulled it out.
A USB port.
The two looked at each other, unsure what to say. Outside, in the hallways, the morgue continued its usual sounds: metal wheels, distant footsteps, the hum of the refrigerators. But inside that room, the atmosphere had changed.
Fonseca took the device and carried it to the next room, where they had an old computer for reviewing files and laboratory records. Camilo followed him without taking his eyes off the body, as if he feared the nun might get up at any moment.
When they opened the file, she appeared on the screen.
The same pale face. The same habit. The same cross hanging around his neck.
She was sitting on a simple bed in a spartan room, barely lit by a dim lamp. Her eyes were filled with fear.
“If you’re seeing this,” he said, his breath ragged, “it’s because my body has already arrived at the morgue… or because something worse has happened to me.”
Camilo felt his skin prickle.
—I don’t have much time. Please, don’t trust the Mother Superior. She’s not who she says she is. No…
Suddenly, brutal banging was heard on a door. The young woman turned around in terror, and the video cut off.
The silence that remained in the room was so thick it hurt.
“We need to call the police now,” Fonseca murmured.
But before she could get up, something sounded in the hallway. Three sharp knocks. A pause. Three more.
Fonseca walked toward the morgue’s main door, his heart beating faster than normal. When he opened it, he stood motionless.
In front of him stood a woman of about sixty, with an impeccable habit, a crucifix on her chest and a gentle smile that did not bring him peace.
—Good evening, son —she said in a sweet voice—. I’ve come to say goodbye to Sister Inés.
Fonseca felt a chill run from the back of his neck to his waist.
The Mother Superior had arrived.
And something inside him screamed at him, without any explanation, that he shouldn’t let her in.
Part 2
“I’m sorry, Mother, but I can’t let you through,” Fonseca said, trying hard to sound firm. “It’s the rules of the forensic service.”
The woman bowed her head tenderly.
—I just want to say a prayer for her. She spent many years in our convent. She deserves a dignified farewell.
At another time, in another situation, Fonseca might have given in. But the image from the video kept throbbing in his head like an alarm.
Don’t trust the Mother Superior.
“I can’t,” he repeated.
For a moment, the woman’s smile vanished. It was barely a second, but it was enough for Fonseca to see something hard, harsh, dangerous, peeking out from beneath that mask of saintliness. At that very moment, from inside the morgue, Camilo shouted:
—Dr. Fonseca, come quickly!
Fonseca turned reflexively and ran inside without noticing that, before the door closed completely, the woman had put her foot in and was silently sneaking in behind him.
When he entered the autopsy room, Camilo was pale and trembling.
-What happened?
The young man pointed to the stretcher.
Fonseca looked.
And he ran out of air.
The body had disappeared.
The sheet was wrinkled. The stretcher straps were still there. The habit they had cut was there too. But the nun was gone.
“No… it can’t be,” Camilo stammered. “I was just here a little while ago.”
Then, behind them, a voice sounded:
—What does it mean that he disappeared?
She was the Mother Superior.
Or the woman who pretended to be one.
She entered slowly, her eyes fixed on the empty cot. She no longer looked like a grieving nun. She looked like someone who had just lost something precious.
Fonseca turned towards her.
—I told him not to come in.
She didn’t answer. She took another step closer, her face hardening.
—Where is Sister Inés?
Camilo stepped back.
—We don’t know anything.
Then it happened. The woman reached under her habit and pulled out a pistol.
The two doctors were frozen.
“Don’t play with me,” she said in a completely different voice, deeper, drier. “Where is he?”
At that moment, another man appeared in the hallway. He was wearing civilian clothes, but his clerical collar peeked out from under his coat, as if he wanted to appear to be a priest without actually being one. He was also carrying a weapon. His gaze was that of someone who had already done a great deal of harm.
“The little girl is alive, isn’t she?” he said. “Tell us where you hid her.”
Fonseca suddenly realized that the video was real. The woman wasn’t the Mother Superior. And that supposed priest wasn’t a man of God at all.
—I am here.It could be a picture of a hospital.
The voice sounded from the entrance.
The four of them turned around at the same time.
There was the nun.
Pale, slightly unsteady, but alive. Her habit hung askew, and her eyes, though tired, were steady.
“Let them go,” he said. “It’s me they’re looking for.”
The fake mother raised the weapon with pure hatred.
—You damn brat. You ruined everything.
Before he could fire, the corridor filled with voices.
—Lower your weapons! Police!
Armed agents burst in from both sides. In their midst came another woman in a habit, identical to the one holding the pistol. Same face, same height, same eyes… but a completely different expression: tired, pained, clean.
The real Mother Superior.
Camilo was speechless. Fonseca felt as if reality had just shattered before his eyes.
The living nun took a step back as the officers handcuffed the imposter and the fake priest. The real mother ran to her and hugged her with a desperate sense of relief.
Fonseca barely managed to murmur:
—What the hell happened here?
The young nun took a deep breath, still weak.
“It’s a long story, doctor. But it began several days ago… the night I discovered that the woman who ran our convent wasn’t the mother, but her twin sister.”
And then, as the gun fell to the ground and the handcuffs closed the circle, everyone understood that the real horror had not begun in the morgue.
It had begun inside the convent.
Part 3
It had all started a week earlier, at the Santa Elena convent, on the outskirts of Atlixco.
Sister Inés was one of the youngest. She cooked delicious food, sang softly while mopping the hallways, and possessed the kind of faith that is quiet yet illuminating. That’s why she was the first to notice that something strange was happening with the Mother Superior.
First, there were small details. One night, she found her in the kitchen eating with an uncharacteristic eagerness, devouring cake with her hands. The next morning, the supposed mother had forgotten Inés’s name, smelled of cigarettes, and seemed to have forgotten even the convent’s routine. Then a new priest appeared, Father Mauro, who celebrated Mass awkwardly, as if he barely knew where to stand.
Nobody wanted to listen to Inés when she said something didn’t add up.
Until one early morning he heard noises and decided to follow them.
She saw the Mother Superior leave with the supposed priest toward the chapel. She followed them in the dark and discovered, behind the altar, a door hidden beneath some loose floorboards. She descended through a damp passageway and reached a subterranean room. There, the truth awaited her like a knife in the back.
A woman identical to the Mother Superior was tied to a chair.
—Help me— she begged. —I am the real mother.
The other one, the fake one, smiled cruelly.
Her name was Lucía. She was the twin sister of the real Mother Ángela. While one had dedicated her life to God, the other had sunk into crime, prison, and violence. With the help of her lover, a criminal disguised as a priest, she had kidnapped Ángela and taken her place in the convent to hide from justice.
Inés backed away in terror. She stepped on a piece of plastic. The noise gave her away.
Her heart pounded as she ran, she closed the secret entrance as best she could, and locked herself in her room. She knew she wouldn’t have time to convince anyone. She also knew, with terrifying clarity, that if they caught her awake, she wouldn’t get out alive.
Then he came up with the only thing he could think of.
She woke Sister Teresa, an older novice who trusted her, and asked her to write a message on her back. Then she forced her to make an anonymous call to the police reporting a crime at the convent. She then recorded the video on the computer, hid the USB drive in her habit, and took a dangerous dose of sleeping pills kept for severe cases of insomnia.
She wanted to look dead.
She wanted to leave the convent as a corpse in order to continue living.
Lucía and her accomplice found her lying on the floor. They believed she was truly dead. But everything became complicated when the police arrived before they could dispose of the body. Between the panic and the rush, Lucía was forced to feign pain and allow them to take her to the morgue. Her plan was to get her back before she woke up or before anyone discovered the message.
They hadn’t counted on Teresa, hiding, finding the secret entrance open, discovering the real Mother Ángela, and calling the police again. Nor had they counted on Inés waking up in the morgue, disoriented, while Fonseca and Camilo were examining the USB drive.
That’s why everything ended up colliding in the same place: the icy room where death almost lost against evil.
When Inés finished telling her story, no one spoke for several seconds. Only Lucía’s furious gasps could be heard as the officers led her away in handcuffs alongside the fake priest. The real Mother Ángela, still weak from her days in captivity, kept stroking Inés’s hair like a mother caresses a daughter who has returned from the brink.
Fonseca looked at the young nun with a mixture of admiration and horror.
—You risked your life.
Inés barely smiled, exhausted.
—Yes. But if I didn’t, nobody was going to believe such a crazy story.
Camilo, still pale with fright, let out a nervous laugh.
—Well, I wouldn’t have believed her… if I hadn’t seen her.
It could be a picture of a hospital.Days later, Lucía and her accomplice were sent to prison. The real Mother Ángela returned to the convent. Sister Teresa was recognized for her courage. And Inés, after recovering, also returned to a life of prayer, although she never looked at the chapel in the same way again.
Fonseca and Camilo continued working in the morgue, as always. But from that night on, every time they received a body covered with a white sheet, they looked at each other for a second longer than usual, as if remembering that sometimes death doesn’t come alone.
Sometimes he comes carrying secrets.
And sometimes, to unmask evil, even a nun has to lie down on a stretcher and pretend that she has already left this world.