Chapter 4 – Lucas’s Nightmares and the Enigmatic House

The weeks that followed Dona Aurora’s visit were calm. The buzz about Estrella, the cat’s intense gazes, and that uncomfortable feeling of something invisible lurking, all were methodically pushed into the corners of Clara’s mind, replaced by the comforting routine of her home office and motherhood.

The Cat Estrella’s Flourishing

Estrella, in turn, grew and became more vibrant. Her black and white coat, once somewhat dull, was now densely brilliant, and her jade eyes became even more profound, an almost hypnotic green. However, Estrella’s behavior, on the surface, remained the same: silent, graceful, always near Lucas, but, to Clara’s relief, without the obvious anomalies that had so intrigued her months ago. Her eyes occasionally seemed to fixate on empty spots in the house, a detail that Clara, in her search for normalcy, preferred to ignore.

Clara, a woman of logic and reason, allowed herself to forget the past incidents. She attributed the shine in the cat’s eyes to the lighting and her own tired mind. The cat was special, yes, but just a particularly serene and attentive pet. Life followed its course, and time flew until the end of the year.

The Shadow of December

December was approaching, and with the festive bustle, a heavy shadow of apprehension also came for Clara and Lucas. The school holidays would arrive, and with them, Lucas’s inevitable trip to pass the end of the year with his father in another city, about two hours away.

Clara knelt down, hugging him tightly.

The truth was that Clara’s heart was also heavy. As a single mother with no close relatives, the year-end holidays always meant long days of a sharp loneliness after her son’s departure. A year’s end with an empty house, but now Estrella’s presence promised to fill, even minimally, a bit of that void that was swallowing her.

Lucas’s Nightmares

Normalcy was fragile and began to unravel in the weeks leading up to the trip. Tension hung in the air. Lucas, already naturally anxious about the farewell, started having nightmares. They weren’t the usual night terrors of young children. They were recurrent, strangely vivid dreams that left him pale, sweaty, and with wide eyes upon waking, as if he were still trapped in the images that dissolved in the darkness of the room.

Clara hugged him, mumbling words of comfort. Her practical mind desperately sought logical explanations—the stress of the trip, the inevitable separation, living with a father who, in fact, barely participated in his life. It was an attempt at control, a fragile barricade against the inexplicable. But even as she tried to convince herself, what most intrigued her was that Estrella was always present in these dreams, like a dark beacon.

Lucas’s Drawings

By the end of that week, Lucas no longer seemed like himself. During the day, he was quieter, more distant, and his usual superhero energy seemed drained. Then, he began to compulsively draw the elements of his nightmares.

Scenes of an old, dark house, indistinct figures in the gloom, and always, in the center, the shape of Estrella, with her intensely green eyes and an aura that Lucas tried to translate with crayon scribbles. There was a well in the backyard of the enigmatic house, and a twisted tree, figures that were repeated. And Estrella, always present, emitting rays of light, like a soldier protecting Lucas.

Clara’s Rationalism Falters

Clara, upon seeing the drawings, felt a cold shiver down her spine. She couldn’t identify where it came from, but those lines, that old architecture, and the elements described by Lucas evoked a sensation of déjà vu so vivid that it deeply disturbed her, like a suppressed memory trying to emerge.

Suddenly she had an intuition: the old house… the well… the twisted tree… she ran to her mother’s old chest, at the back of the closet. With trembling hands, she took out an old photo album and, on one of its pages, found the image that haunted her thoughts. It was a photo of her grandmother, and the enigmatic house in the background. In the image, her grandmother was sitting with a cat in her lap. Terror took hold of Clara when she realized that the cat was Estrella.

Clara’s rationalism, once her fortress, was dangerously faltering. Was the calm of the last few months, after all, just a convenient illusion? And why, of all the inexplicable things, would Estrella be so intimately linked to her son’s deepest nightmares, like a link between the known and the terrifying unknown? And why did her grandmother have a cat that was exactly like Estrella?