The House of Bonmati

by Claudio Hernández

  The House of Bonmati

  Claudio Hernández

  Translated by Eva Molina

  “The House of Bonmati”

  Written By Claudio Hernández

  Copyright © 2017 Claudio Hernández

  All rights reserved

  Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

  www.babelcube.com

  Translated by Eva Molina

  Cover Design © 2017 Gaina istockphoto

  “Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The House of Bonmati | Claudio Hernández

  Prologue

  Stephen Kings’ beginnings: | Overview

  The Box by Stephen King: Synopsis

  Author – Biography

  Your Review and Word-of-Mouth Recommendations Will Make a Difference

  Are You Looking For Other Great Reads?

  The House of Bonmati

  Claudio Hernández

  First edition eBook: September, 2017.

  Title: The House of Bonmati.

  © 2017 Claudio Hernández.

  © 2017 Cover Design: Gaina istockphoto

  © 2017 Translated : Eva Molina

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  This book is dedicated to my wife Mary, who puts up with me and with my childish things, like this one, every day. And I hope she never stops doing so. I have written again one of my follies. This book is based on a true story, and it was a time I wish I could forget for good...

  Prologue

  And the cat spat, opening its greenish eyes and showing its sharp fangs. Its claws ripped through the air like sharp knives, scratching Antonia’s chest in the process. Blood started pouring out in two straight lines and she felt the warmth of her blood, livid and slippery.

  Then, its high pitched meow faded into the woods, among the big centenary trees that surrounded the house, with their long branches resting on the roof.

  And the window glass cracked like a spider web, making a disturbing noise that made the new tenants move quickly out of the way and raise their heads to look up with eyes wide open.

  Behind the glass that shined bright like a polished diamond, under the first rays of the morning sun, they caught a glimpse of a motionless, dark figure.

  As if it was watching them.

  After that, the dog started barking, he was hysterical, and he started showing his bad teeth and foaming at the mouth in a very unusual way.

  Their faces were bowed.

  They were not alone.

  1

  The huge rotten key fit into the key hole just fine, but it was necessary to use both hands to turn it, as it squeaked like a banshee inside the old cylinder, a rattling sound like a rotten chain dragging on metal ground.

  Valenti, one of the owners’ brothers, was a tall man who always hid his protuberant belly under a blue suit jacket. He was bald and had sunken dark eyes. His mushy lips seemed to be licking the oil still shining out from them. His chubby palms turned white when he turned the key for the third time. Afterwards, when he removed the key, his knuckles became rosy again. He had no beard or moustache and his voice was deep and he was in his seventies.

  “The house has been closed for a long time” He apologized under the sunlight, looking at the large key, the size of a wrench, which he was holding in the palm of his hand.

  “How long has it been closed?” Pedro, the new tenant, requested, his lips curled up in a rictus that seemed to draw a narrow line.

  “Since 1970” Valenti answered, looking him in the eyes.

  Pedro was barely five-foot seven inches in height, but he was quite corpulent and well-muscled. His arms were as large around as his wife’s thighs, they had a huge size. His eyes were brown and he had no bear, although he had let his beard grow out many times before. But that day he had shaved with a thin blade. He was wearing a tight yellow shirt, blue jeans and moccasins, his favorite footwear, which he only took off when he was going to bed. He was also wearing a wide belt, which encircled his narrow waist to protect his slipped discs.

  “It has been closed for nine years” Pedro said in a low voice, putting his hand to his chin. He was a man of few words and he had an inferiority complex.

  “Time is on your side to make it look good” Said a female voice behind them. She was Angels, Valenti’s sister. She was a stubby woman. Unlike her three brothers, she was a very short lady, actually she looked like a barrel with legs, and she had short silver-grey hair. She was wearing a floral dress and it could be seen a huge beige bra holding her enormous tits through it. They were so big that they almost reached her belly. She walked slowly, complaining about her right leg. Her favorite position was standing with one hand behind her back at waist level.

  “I see” Said Antonia, masking her discontent.

  Juan, Antonia’s eldest son, headed toward the henhouse, which was just to the left of house, looking for his dog Dozer. It was quite a strange name for a dog, but it was even worse the name of the cat, Whisky.

  Of course, he did not find it, so he started whistling, but the whistle faltered because he got tongue-tied and the sound was a bit croaky.

  But he noticed the animal tracks on the ground, uphill, as far as the eye can see, where thousands of branches arranged in odd shapes, like lightning on a stormy night, going into the woods. Most of the trees were oaks, but those on top of the hills were pines. There was also a 60-year-old fig tree at the very door of the house, as big as a whole forest.

  “Mum! Dozer is gone!” Juan, who was nine years old, ranted. He was skinny, with long and slim hands. He was wearing old fashioned bell-bottoms and a wool striped jumper made by his mother. The boy was sweltering with those clothes on.

  Antonia did not answer.

  “Mum, Whisky is gone,” Said Pili, the younger child, who was four years old. She had dark hair, unlike her brother, who was brown-haired. Her hair had no shape, it was quite long, sleek, and a blunt fringe. She was slim and she was wearing a red dress.

  Antonia did not answer either this time.

  “Here you have the key.” Valenti left the key on the palm of Pedro’s trembling hand. He noticed the key was pretty heavy. “Now you are the new tenant of our most cherished house. It has belonged to the family for generations. It was our grandparents’, our parents’, and now it’s ours. We are the only ones left.” He had a serious look on his face, and his eyes betrayed him, he was hiding something.

  “I will tell you the story of our house one of these days” Angels explained with a big smile on her wrinkled face. She was the eldest of the three siblings. “I will spend a few days here to explain this place story to you.”

  Antonia’s lips curled into a snarl and she closed her eyes.

  How gross, Antonia thought averting her eyes; we will be forced to have her home to watch over us.

  The blood from her chest was already dry, but it had left a red stain on her white blouse.

  Valenti shoved the big double door open and its rusted hinges squeaked like an old woman before dying on her painful hospital bed.

  Sunlight entered the inside of the house as two big lit lanterns piercing the dark hallway, but there was a musty, pungent smell. As the door was opening, the blinding light started showing a stale hall with peeling paint of the walls and spider webs in every corner inhabited by gloomy big dark spiders, with its small red eyes scanning the light.

  “This is the entrance hall” said Valenti
shaking the dust out of his hands. “As you can see, the size of the hall or entrance, whatever you want to call it, is huge. Like the rest of the house.”

  Pedro nodded, but stepped aside. Antonia made a wry face. Too much to clean, she thought.

  The floor was made of stone, like London’s streets in times of Jack the Ripper, and many of those stones were broken and shabby, covered by a thick layer of dust.

  “This was the horses’ doorway” Angels explained behind them, with that unwavering smile still on her face.

  There were two enormous stairways that faded into the dark heights. Every step was broken and worn-out. A bright-eyed rat, with the longest tail Antonia had ever seen, slid up towards a door, and then it disappeared from sight. There were papers and litter all over the floor. There were some cobwebs around too, which is quite unusual, as spiders usually nest in high places. Two cockroaches were chasing one another, exposing their brown shells.

  There were two high doors on the left. They were made of old wood, and each door had its own lock. Both were closed.

  To the right, a smaller double door with frosted glass. The door hid a huge woodstove and a stone sink.

  “Please come in,” Said Valenti stretching his arm towards the entrance. There was a foul smell; the air was stale and stuffy as if they were in a cemetery. “Let’s show you the house. Let me remind you, once again, that it has been closed for a long time and it isn’t exactly at its best, but it will be as good as new with a fresh coat of paint and a face lift. What really matters is that it is very resistant.” He touched the wall on his right with his hand. “Look at the wall thickness...”

  “Forty centimeters of stone wall” Angels interrupted.

  Suddenly Pili pointed up to the top of the stairs and her quivering lips let out a whisper.

  “There is something up there, dad, I’ve seen it.”

  Pedro patted her straight hair.

  “They are just animals, babe, just animals.”

  Valenti’s eyes were distant and cold, maybe spooky. He remained silent.

  There was a long and ominous silence, where only Dozer’s distant barks were heard.

  Finally they resumed their visit to the house, as if they were walking through a museum filled with antiques.

  Valenti opened the kitchen double door. One of the glasses was missing. Broken window glass crunched under his shoe. He put his head down to find the missing glass. The door squeaked strongly, but not as hard as the main door. The sound of the glass could be distinctly heard while being dragged along the ground.

  The sunlight was vaguely reflected on the kitchen floor and walls, like the beam of a laser pointer. Dragging his feet, Valenti approached the small window above the stone sink and opened it, and another creaking could be heard.

  The sun entered through the window, lighting up a big table in the center of the kitchen, which was really big, about 40 square meters.

  The tenants had stayed outside the kitchen door with their children, who, surprised as they were, watched every corner of the house with their innocent look. Valenti invited them in with his hand.

  “Come in. I want you to see your new kitchen. I am sure you will love it.” And he wasn’t wrong. The kitchen was the only place where nothing strange ever happened. It was a cozy kitchen.

  Pedro was still holding the key in his hand, but this time he was squeezing it with his clenched fist.

  Antonia was the most determined and took the first step on the concrete floor. There were no paving slabs on the floor. The soles of her shoes made a strange noise scratching the hard rough surface.

  “Wow, it’s lovely!” Antonia said, raising her hands to her face, her mouth hung open in awe. She had seen the big fireplace, which made her really happy because she had valued that sort of things since she was a child.

  Valenti showed a broad grin and said: “There is also a bread oven.”

  The fireplace was on the right side of the kitchen and was two meters wide, and the oven, which was closed at the moment, was at the end of the kitchen, next to a ruinous wall.

  “And that table is for pig slaughter, isn’t it?” Antonia asked, suddenly noticing the darkness of the fireplace opening, which was so big it was difficult to see the bottom.

  “Exactly! We used to make cold cuts” Valenti explained, running his finger through the splintered surface of the table. He didn’t step on any splinter.

  Pedro, who had dared to set foot in the house avoiding the glass on the floor, was more excited than his wife, because his big passion was the country houses.

  There was a deep hole on the left wall, but inside the wall, as if something had been left there for a long time.

  “Was there a closet here?” Antonia asked pointing towards the hole.

  Valenti shook his head and said: “No, there was a Madonna.”

  “Which one was it?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember it now.” Valenti was lying.

  “And why would they have a Madonna here?”

  Valenti did not answer, while the silly smile at her sister’s face faded.

  Juan was on his knees in front of the fireplace, watching a few blackened trunks on a mound of ashes. And he looked through the fireplace pipe. It was dark.

  Pili grabbed her father’s trousers.

  The sour smell was still suspended in the air, like a dense and sticky mist.

  “Let me keep on showing you around” Angels burst out with a sassy smile. She turned around and she got out of the kitchen, walking slowly with one hand on her back, as always.

  Pedro had not even touched the surface of the table or opened the oven door; he would do it later, in private.

  They left the kitchen quickly and they headed towards one of the doors on the left of the entrance. Valenti took a clinking bunch of keys out of his pocket. Even though they were quite big too, they were not as big as the main door keys, although they had the same rustic shape.

  There were many cobwebs covering the cracked door. The sun rays filtered down through the wood, and a lot of small particles could be seen flowing around it.

  When they walked past the stairway, Pili pointed up again.

  “I have seen something up there” She said. But nobody answered.

  He opened the door with a cracking sound of the key and the hinges, and then they found a large array of antiques related to horse riding and transportation, including a carriage. Only the horse was missing.

  “This is one of the rooms where our parents and grandparents kept their carriages, carts, spared wheels and tools. They were kept here to be repaired. Carriages in good condition were kept out of the house, somewhere else. I will show you the place later.” Valenti explained amid the gloom. There were no lamps suspended from the ceiling like a giant booger, so there was no light in that room.

  Pedro got closer to the threshold and watched every item in the room as if they were relics. His eyes lit up for a moment and he puckered his lips. He could see a thresher and a scythe among the tools. There were picks, shovels, and cartwheels leaning against the wall. The carriage was in the middle of the room, like a giant cranium with empty eye sockets and long bended sticks suffering from erosion.

  Juan wanted to enter the room, but Valenti’s stubby hand grabbed his arm.

  “Son, you might hurt yourself in there” He said cynically. “There are many sharp things. This is one of the rooms where you are not allowed to touch anything.”

  Valenti shook his head, looking at Pedro and Antonia, frowning.

  Holy crap, you can’t come in here, he thought, almost letting it out loud.

  “So, do you mean there are some rooms where we shouldn’t walk in or clean? Is that what you mean?”

  Valenti nodded.

  Antonia touched her short blonde hair, pleased.

  It sounds good to me, less shit to clean up, she thought while turning her gaze to Valenti, who was already closing the door.

  In fact, he was locking it.

  Ange
ls limped off, heading toward the other door. When she reached it, after complaining about her back, she placed her hand on the splintered door. Then she hurt her finger.

  “Oh, dear! A chip” She said with plaintive voice. A chip was a small splinter.

  “Be careful, sister. These doors need sanding and a coat of pain.” Valenti suddenly stopped talking and started thinking. “You better don’t touch the doors. You can paint them if you want, but don’t sand them. They are part of our lives.” He looked at Pedro.

  Juan was now sitting on the first step of the stairway, feeling cold in his ass, even though it was summer.

  “Juan, get up from there!” His mother yelled, frowning. “Can’t you see it is full of rat poops?”

  Full of shit, the boy thought.

  And he got up. His ass was frozen.

  Valenti got closer to his sister and asked her to show him the little wound. There was a little black dot in her stubby finger, where the splinter was. There was no blood.

  Antonia glanced at them frowning.

  What a bunch of jerks these two, she thought.

  “It’s nothing. I’ll pull the chip out when we get home. I have pulled many splinters out.” He said with a broad smile.

  Now he was running fingers over the keys, and he chose a rusty key. The key was solid and clover shaped.

  He inserted the key with a peculiar sound, and it turned softly just once. A metallic noise was heard, and the door creaked open for several seconds, as if a spring behind was forcing it to close again, because the door jamb tended to go down.

  There was electricity in this room. The light switch looked like a cross. Valenti’s thumb and forefinger turned the rotary switch to the right and the yellowish light illuminated vaguely the empty space of the room.

  “This door must be always open, because it leads to the barn and the bathroom. Therefore, you can forget about the key.” Valenti explained while the key jingled next to the others, looking like dungeon keys.

  Valenti invited them in with his everlasting smile and his hand outstretched.