In the town of Santa Elena lived a fifteen-year-old girl named Yanci. She was quiet and observant, the type who strolled home from school with her thoughts drifting behind her like a shadow.
One afternoon, as she passed by the church, she noticed something strange. A soft light hovered above the old woman who sold food on the corner, an odd glow, still and silent, like a lantern hanging in midair. Yanci blinked. The light remained for a second longer, then vanished. She told herself it was nothing. Maybe she was tired. Maybe the heat was playing tricks on her.
The next day, the woman’s table was gone. Yanci heard murmurs at the market. Someone said the old woman had died of a heart attack the night before.
A week later, as Yanci walked through the school courtyard, she saw the light again, this time above Mr. Rodríguez, the principal. The same glow. Unmoving. Chilling. But now she was sure she wasn’t imagining it. She asked her friend Juan if he had seen anything. He squinted toward the man, then laughed.
“You’re probably just hungry.”
The next morning, word spread through town that Mr. Rodríguez had passed away in his sleep.
Yanci couldn’t shake the feeling. Two lights. Two deaths. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The fear burrowed into her. She stopped walking alone. She stopped looking up. Eventually, she stopped going out at all.
Her mother pushed her to return to school. “You can’t stay inside forever,” she said.
Reluctantly, Yanci went.
That’s when she saw it, the light, pale and still, hovering above her mother’s head.
She froze. Her eyes welled up with tears, and she begged her mom to go to the hospital.
Her mother laughed it off. “You’re being dramatic,” she said, sending her off to school.
Yanci couldn’t focus all day. She dreaded what she might come home to. When she stepped through the door that afternoon, she found her mother sitting at the table, crying.
Yanci panicked. “What happened?”
Her mother rushed over and hugged her tightly. “I don’t know why,” she said through tears, “but I went to the hospital today. They found a nearly blocked artery. The doctor said if I hadn’t come in when I did, it could’ve killed me.”
Yanci didn’t say a word.
But from that day on, she never ignored the light.