The woman woke up, blinking a few times, noticing the boy watching her from the door.

"You know I don't like it when you stare at me while I sleep."

The boy didn't answer.

She sat up—there was no way she could go back to sleep knowing she was being watched. She reached for a slipper, then, without looking, searched the floor with her toes for the soft texture of the other one. Once she found it, she slipped it on, stretched her arms high above her head, clenched her fists, and stretched as much as she could until her whole body shivered and her bones cracked—a sound that usually made the boy laugh, but not this time.

"No?" she asked, just to say something, not realizing something was wrong with the boy. "Not funny anymore?" she said while lowering her arms and standing up to grab her robe. As she put it on, the boy walked out of the room toward the kitchen.

As she descended the stairs, she heard a faint shuffling sound coming from the closed room and groaned softly. Her steps made a dragging noise against the floor with each contact of her slippers as she went down.

The boy was already at the kitchen counter when she entered.

"And you couldn't start the coffee maker?" she teased.

Now he laughed, even pretending to be embarrassed, like a normal child ashamed of not helping his mother with something any other kid would have done instinctively, an automatic response ingrained in basic universal education.

"Alright, alright, I'll do it."

She scooped the ground coffee into the container, poured water into the reservoir, and turned on the machine. The bubbling sound filled the quiet house, soon followed by the delicious aroma of roasted coffee, momentarily breaking the stillness of a gray and silent home.

But the pause didn't last.

Just as she poured herself a cup, right before taking the first sip, with her lips pressed against the rim of the mug, she caught sight of the boy's terrified face staring at the glass doors leading to the garden. Instead of drinking, she turned, still holding the cup.

A cat.

And the cat was staring at her, motionless.

Then another arrived and sat before the window.

It stared at her too, completely still.

Then a third one, licking its lips the moment it stopped in front of the kitchen, sat back on its haunches, eyes locked onto hers.

Then another.

And another.

Then two more.

Three more.

Five at once.

Seven together.

Many.

More and more and more and more. The cats only stared at her.

"What the hell..."

"Mom!" the boy pleaded, and she turned, dropping the mug onto the table, shattering it. But instead of coffee, worms spilled out.

The boy was no longer at the table. She looked around wildly. Searching with her eyes in every direction, from where she sat. She couldn't see him.

She tried to speak, but no sound came out. She tried to stand, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move.

"Mom!" he pleaded again, but this time, his voice came from outside. She saw him there, in the middle of the yard, surrounded by all those cats—hundreds of them, still arriving, filling her home—and he, terrified, looked at her with a face shattered by fear. And then, just as she seemed to overcome the force restraining her, all the cats, in unison, meowed once and fell silent.

"MEOW."

The terrified boy raised his right hand, his index finger extending to point toward her. But he wasn't pointing at her—he was pointing at the curtain acting as a door.

The woman tried to turn her head, but she couldn't.

On the stairs, heavy, deliberate footsteps descended, one at a time.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

She needed to turn.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the curtain shift. She looked at the boy, who wouldn't stop pointing, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

She hadn't seen him cry since she found him.

THUD.

THUD.

THUD.

The footsteps echoed on the ground floor now. And she, unable to move, caught sight of a silhouette behind the curtain. A sinister laughter rang through her mind. She tried to make out the figure—it was the shadow of a man, taller than usual, bald, smiling at her.

The boy screamed as he pointed at him. And in the yard, all at once, the hundreds of cats, stacked on top of each other, sitting still or encircling the boy, meowed again in unison.

"MEOW."

And then, silence.

The shadow crossed the threshold between the dining room and the kitchen, slipping through the curtain that brushed against it as it moved, detaching from the ceiling until it landed on the floor.

That figure entered.

With each step, the thing grew larger and larger, grotesque, fierce, and just as it reached her side, it exhaled onto her face, whispering in her ear:

"Do-not-help-them."

And then, that spectral voice, with echoes reverberating, pulsed through her thoughts like an expanding wave, possessing her little by little, but with absolute determination.

The boy screamed again, as if triggering the activation of that entity, which took a step toward the glass doors, then another, slow but powerful, its legs drawing it closer to the window. Its size increased, and it shattered the glass under the force of its push, stepping into the patio and grabbing the boy by the head, while the woman cried out in a desperate plea:

"No! No! No!"

And that entity, with the boy's crying head in one hand, grasped his small body with the other, its long, grotesque arms pulling him apart, while it turned to look at her from where it stood.

She recognized that entity, that terrifying bald being that devoured children and, like a scene from a Goya painting, with spectral force, tore the boy apart, ripping his head from his body as it screamed at her with its ghostly voice:

"DO NOT HELP THEM."

At that moment, the woman, weeping, broke free from the force that held her, rushing forward to grab her little one.

With a heartbreaking scream, she woke up drenched in sweat, finding the boy staring at her worriedly from the doorway of her bedroom.

How she wished she could ask him for a hug...

The boy watched her inquisitively, and the woman, still breathless, greeted him:

"You know I don't like it when you stare at me while I sleep."

A nervous tic twitched in her bad eye, and she fumbled for her slippers as the boy ran down the stairs while she put on her robe.

"And you didn't make me coffee?"

The boy laughed, relieved that the woman was in a joking mood.

"Meow."

A cat meowed from the patio as another one approached.

Both stared at the woman; then a third and a fourth arrived, and she burst into tears.

The phone rang, snapping her back to reality.

"What's wrong?" the boy asked.

The woman didn't answer. A dozen cats meowed and darted out of the patio in a frenzy.

"Do-not-help-them," she recalled that spectral voice whispering in her mind.

"Hello...?"

"Magos, you won't believe this," Otilio said on the other end of the line.

The Commissioner briefed her on the recovery of the eighth victim's body. For the first time, they had retrieved the child before the brutal dissection the killer typically performed. He recounted what she already knew but needed to hear because Otilio needed to unload it. He spoke of the basement where at least five victims had been kept. The horrific conditions in which they were held, how they were tortured, violated, and dismantled—physically, mentally, emotionally. How they were executed and, in the end, dismembered alive before being stuffed into a trunk, placed in a stolen car, and abandoned on some distant highway.

The woman let him exorcise that terrible information without interruption; it was relevant, it was the first time their pattern had been disrupted, and they had come so close to catching him.

They found the body, but fresh.

Surely, the killer had gone to steal the car he planned to use for transporting the child's corpse just as the police raided his house. It was likely that he had watched as they extracted the dismembered body, placing it on a stretcher, loading it into the coroner's ambulance.

And only when Otilio fell silent, exhausted, defeated, did the woman ask:

"And how can I help you, Commissioner?"

"We had a series of events suggesting a new abduction. A stolen car, likely meant for transporting the latest victim's body, was seen by multiple witnesses at the exact moment a girl was taken—under different circumstances this time."

"God..."

"That's right, Magos. We need God, but we also need your help. The next few hours are crucial. Can you assist us?"

"DO-NOT-HELP-THEM," she thought.

"Yes, of course."

The boy watched her anxiously; he didn't understand, but he sensed that another ending was approaching.