El espinazo del diablo

Carlos is a young boy whose Republican father has died in the Civil War. His tutor leaves him at the Santa Lucía orphanage, a remote institution in arid Spanish countryside run by the one-legged Carmen and the elderly Dr. Casares. In the center of the courtyard, an unexploded Republican bomb sits embedded in the earth — a mute monument to the war outside. That night, Carlos sees Santi: a pale, bloodied boy drifting through the corridor, blood rising upward from his wounds, whispering a warning. Santi disappeared before Carlos arrived. No one will say what happened to him.

Jacinto is a handsome, volatile young man who was raised at the orphanage and stayed on as a laborer. He is sleeping with Carmen and knows about gold hidden in the institution — Republican funds kept by Dr. Casares. Jacinto has been waiting for his chance to take it. Carlos begins to piece together the truth about Santi: Santi saw Jacinto attempting to steal the gold. Jacinto threw him into the cistern. Santi drowned in the dark water, alone and unwitnessed, and has remained ever since — not to terrorize, but to be known.

Jacinto's patience runs out. He triggers a gas explosion to seize the gold and force his exit, killing Carmen and mortally wounding Dr. Casares. The orphanage burns. Dr. Casares, dying, injects himself with a distillate he has spent years preparing from preserved fetuses — children born with spinal deformities, the "devil's backbone," considered cursed. He dies. Something of him lingers.

The surviving children arm themselves and go after Jacinto. They stab him until he falls, then drag him to the cistern and push him in. He sinks into the same black water where Santi drowned. Santi is waiting for him.

The children walk out of the burning orphanage into the desert dawn. Carlos narrates: the dead remain, suspended in the instant of their death, repeating it endlessly until it is finally answered. Santi has his answer. The children walk on into a war that is almost over, into a future that belongs to them now.