At six o’clock in the morning an earthquake shook the entire town from top to bottom. We ran out into the streets fearing that the houses were going to topple down on top of us. And once we were outside, we were afraid the ground would open up under our feet.

The quake was over, but the women continued to pray. A few alarmists said that there would soon be another one of greater intensity. The general anxiety was so great, we thought they would not send us off to school. Classes began an hour late. In class, we all spoke about our experiences during the cataclysm, until the professor said that at our age, fourth-graders that we were, we should not be superstitious like the rest of the people in the town, nor should we ascribe the cause of natural phenomena to divine judgments or omens or the unleashing of evil forces. And in any case, the quake had caused no catastrophes: the only buildings that sustained any real damage were the colonial churches and houses.

We were convinced by his arguments and repeated them, more or less faithfully, to our parents. By the afternoon, everything had returned to normal. Sergio and Guillermo stopped by the house to get me. We went out into the lush field between the river and the cemetery. The setting sun reflected off the marble crosses and the granite monuments.

Guillermo suggested we go have a look at what had happened to the ruins of the convent that stood near town. We were usually afraid to go there after dark; but that afternoon everything seemed fascinating and explainable.

We walked past the cemetery and, choosing the most difficult path, we climbed up the hill until it became so steep we almost had to crawl along on our bellies. We felt dizzy when we looked down but, without uttering a word, each of us was trying to prove that the other two were the cowards.

We finally reached the ruins of the convent that rose up at the top of the hill. We walked through the portico. We stopped in front of the wall that surrounded the terrace and the first cells. We found some dead bees on the floor tiles. Guillermo went over and picked one up. Silently, he came back and joined us. We walked through a hallway where the humidity and the nitrate had corroded the ancient frescoes.

Without confessing to each other our growing fears, we found our way to the cloister, which was even more ravaged than the other parts of the building. The central patio was covered with thistles and weeds. Two rotten beams leaned against a cracked wall.

We climbed a broken staircase to the second floor. Darkness had set in, and it was beginning to rain. The first sounds of the night rose all around us. The rain resounded on the porous stones. The wind sighed in the darkness.

As he approached the window, Sergio saw, or thought he saw, in what had been the cemetery, balls of fire zigzagging through the broken crosses. We heard a thunderclap. A bat flew off the ceiling. The flapping of its wings echoed dully against the dome.

We ran down the hallway and were nearing the door to the staircase when we heard Sergio scream: his whole body was shaking, and he just barely managed to point to one of the cells. We grabbed him by his arms and, without hiding our fears any longer, went toward the cell. As we were about to enter, Sergio pried himself loose, ran through the hallway, and left us there alone.

We soon realized that a wall had fallen and, full of terror, we looked into what had been a crypt or perhaps an ossarium: pieces of coffins, disintegrated bones, skulls.

Suddenly, in the semidarkness, we saw the white tunic of a woman who was seated on an iron chair. A mummified body: intact in its infinite calm and perpetual immobility.

I felt the cold rush of fear through every vein and joint. I summoned up all my strength and approached the cadaver. With three fingers I touched the forehead’s wrinkled skin: under the slightest pressure the body disintegrated, turning to dust on the metal chair. It seemed as if the entire world was falling to pieces along with the captive in the convent. Everything swam before my eyes; the night was filled with a clamor and uproar, and the walls crumbled and were laid to waste as their secret was revealed.

Guillermo then dragged me out of the cell and, heedless of danger, we dashed down the hill at full speed. At the entrance to town, we met up with the men Sergio had called to help us. They went up to the convent. When they returned, they ascertained that indeed it was a crypt from around 1800 with some pulverized remains from that period. There was no cadaver. That had been an hallucination, a product of our fear, the storm and the darkness that caught us unawares in the ruins, a delayed reaction to the shock the earthquake had produced in the whole town.

I could not sleep. My parents stayed near me. During the following days, the only person among all of those who questioned us who gave any credence to our story was the priest. He told of a legendary crime recorded in the annals of our town, a monstrous revenge that was carried out at the end of the eighteenth century but which nobody could prove had occurred until then. The cadaver that had dissolved under my touch was that of a woman who had been given a paralyzing potion and who, when she came to her senses, found herself walled into a tenebrous crypt accompanied only by cadavers and unable to get up from the chair in which we found her nearly two hundred years later.

Time passed. I have not returned to the town, nor have I seen Sergio and Guillermo again, but each earthquake fills me with panic, for I feel as if the earth will spew up its bodies and only my hand will let them rest: the other death.