The door shattered with more hammer blows and Pedro’s sweaty face could be seen through the holes. He was looking at her with hatred. Antonia tried to raise the board again.
“Dammit; damned board. Who would ever think of using a bar to close the door?” She mumbled to herself.
Then Pedro stuck his head in one of the gaps and he looked at her with a hysterical grimace. The first thing Antonia saw was his white teeth, perfectly aligned, and his eyes. They were whitish and almost upside down. Then he reached through the gap and opened the latch. He slammed the door open and the cows jumped, while trying to break free at the same time. One of them succeeded and the cow ran away, dragging the chain like a big crucifix.
Pedro lifted the hammer, looking at the cow’s head, who was staring at him, restless with wide open eyes.
Antonia averted her gaze, and then, suddenly, her terror increased, even though she never thought that it would be possible after the intense fighting they had just gone through. But it was possible.
Horror was the word; horror in its purest sense.
The cow lashed out at him and it threw him backwards. Then the animal kicked him with its full weight, and everybody could hear his screams. But it lasted only for a few seconds, as the animal ran off to the other side of the barn. The rest of the cows were really nervous, throwing themselves against the chains as they fought to get free of their captivity.
Pedro tried to get up but he realized he couldn’t.
Juan and Pili still were embracing in the attic, but they were freezing under the blizzard, making them look like a snowman.
“What if we go and help mom, Pili?” Juan asked suddenly, as if he had suddenly come up with the best idea in the world.
His sister looked at him with sad eyes. Case closed.
“Can’t you see how bad dad is?”
“Why do you keep calling him dad?”
“I don’t know. It just slipped out.”
“He is the mad man. Now he is the mad murderer.”
“Why do you say murderer?”
“He is a potential murderer. What do you think he plans to do with the hammer? Do you think he wants to kiss us?”
Pili nodded.
The wind kept howling through the snowy tree tops.
However, they decided to go to the barn, from where the blows came from. They went down the stairs in awe, exposing themselves to danger and terror.
Despite the terrible pain in her arms, Antonia could move the board. There was a trick to lift it easily. Once she got the hang of it she learned she just had to move it inside the two grooves in the wall. She could hear the noise of wood brushing against the wall. The cows were hysterical now and Pedro started crawling on the ground, filling his body with shit and straw. His sweaty face acted as a suction cup. But he never dropped the big hammer.
He was feeling an unbearable pain but they were whispering to him all the time; Pedro, get up, kill them. They want to kill you. Your family hates you. They loathe you.
The wooden board lifted up finally. It was funny. Pedro had always felt proud of his strength when lifting the heavy board, but strength was not really necessary. Even her son would have been able to do it. It was just a question of getting the hang of it. She was thinking about it, instead of looking at the mad man who was crawling on the floor, when she felt a terrible back spasm. She uttered a cry of pain when the shooting pain reached the back of her neck.
“Did you really think you would get away with this?” Pedro asked her with a hoarse voice while glaring at her.
“I’m still in time to do it.” Antonia stopped for a moment to look into his eyes. “I’ll kill you if you come closer to me.”
“That’s what I’ve been told. They are right. You are not only a bitch, but also a cruel killer.”
“You are crazy.” She said it with such an emphasis that she spat while talking.
Then she pulled the door, but it did not open. It was closed.
Suddenly a dreadful laughter could be heard. It was the laugh of a lunatic, someone who had totally lost his mind. Pedro was laughing like a killer clown. He was roaring with laughter with his mouth open from ear to ear and a gruesome look on his face.
“I got you.” He had stopped laughing, but he broke into laughter again while turning around on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, towards the wooden beams that were full of unsettling eyes, the eyes of the rats.
Juan and Pili, holding hands, reached the sitting room and kept following the trail of blood on the floor. But it was obvious they were in the barn, because they could hear the cows bellowing desperately. They were not mooing, it was more than that.
They entered the room where the animal feed was and they watched the broken door astonished. However, they were expecting something like that, as he had done it before with the other door. They had seen it while going downstairs.
“Mom!” Juan shouted from a distance.
“Oops, your little bastards are here” Pedro snapped at her.
“Help me opening this door, my boy!” His mother exclaimed, covered in sweat.
Juan ran right past his father, without taking his eyes off of him. The cows stood still while he was walking past them. Pili just followed her brother without looking at her father. She didn’t want to.
“I’ll kill you both later.” He said.
“Mum, it is locked. The key is right there.” He pointed at the key hanging on the left side of the wall. His mother’s eyes averted and she saw it.
They key was as big as a pair of scissors, and it was hanging from a crooked nail. She hastened to get it but she was so nervous that she dropped it. She snorted. The sheep kept bawling on her right, alienated from reality.
“Did you hear me? I will kill you all, the three of you!” Pedro was trying to stand up with strong efforts, as he was overwhelmed by an excruciating pain running through his body like electric shocks. A jet of blood came out of his mouth, and it spilled to his neck and chest. He was kneeling down now, supporting himself on his hands. He had set aside the hammer momentarily.
Antonia stooped down to get the key from the floor. Her hands were shaking and her heart was racing. Juan came closer to her from behind, near the cow that had horned Pedro. Pili kept on following his brother, without looking at her father, in spite of her sense of danger.
Antonia put the rusty old key in the lock. Pedro was standing already, like a serial killer in one of those old films, those films where the bad guys never die and they always get right back up to for one final scare.
Juan pushed the door with his little arms, and it opened in two. Their faces were struck by the cold air. The cow ran away and it went into the drifting snow next to the door.
Suddenly Antonia felt a burning pain on her left arm that made her scream in pain. Her blood started dripping on the floor and her eyes bulged. Juan and Pili watched her with wide open eyes and they froze with fear.
Antonia said: “Run as fast as you can. Save yourselves...” and then she fainted.
Pedro raised the hammer again over his head. Now the snowflakes were covering his sweaty face and his wet hair. He dropped the hammer. Juan averted his eyes and tried to start walking in the middle of the snow storm, but then he could see that his sister was really scared, still holding his hand. She was paralyzed, as stiff as a board. She was nailed to the floor.
The blow sounded like a thunder in the middle of the dark storm. It was like a clap of thunder without lightning. The blow of metal against the floor led to the sparks to fly out, and they reached the straw that was on the floor. The fire started like a candle flame but soon it turned into a tongue of fire that devoured everything.
“Goddammit! It’s all your fault; you stupid bitch!” He yelled at her, while she was on the floor with her eyes closed. His back started aching, and he stood up straight.
Finally, Juan pulled her sister’s hand, completely horrified, and started walking through the dense snow with a great effort, because the snow was up to
his knee.
“Let’s go, sister. Let’s go to the castle” He said, feeling that his words were gone with the wind.
Pili knew what the castle was.
His father forgot about them for a moment, because the wall was crumbling. The cows had been kicking against the wall to break free when the flames were already reaching their hooves.
The sheep started crying like humans as soon as they saw fire, jumping over the remains of the wall. They were bumping into each other like rubber dolls and bouncing onto the ground. Many of them managed to escape, running into the snow and the intense cold. The road was seen as a white sheet instead of the winding dark line it should be. The cows had run away removing the board and some of them were still linked by the chains they were still dragging and the damn board. Then the flames reached the straw bales which were stacked at the end of the barn, and even the rats hiding on the roof beams fled in search of the cold.
Juan was moving forward the entrance way towards the house esplanade. He had intended to go to the place where he had built a sort of castle with some straw bales. The castle had labyrinths inside. It had been built on the other side of the kitchen’s fireplace, so the place would be as hot as a bread oven.
But they would be safe there.
Pedro was standing still, with a good grip on the hammer. But when the cows started running towards him, he had to stray. They passed over Antonia’s body, which was lying on her side, as if she had been crawling, but none of them stomped on her, as if something or somebody was protecting her.
The flames reached the wooden beams and the crackle of the fire could be heard over the cry of the wind. And then the two bulbs exploded like squibs. The heat of the fire could not be reduced, not even by the wind and snow that were pouring in.
And then Pedro saw them for the first time. He could see all of them.
67
They were standing there, looking at him with cloudy eyes. They were almost human silhouettes, standing behind the fire which was devouring everything disdainfully. Some of those forms were grey, and they neither had well-defined eyes or mouth. Others, however, looked like the dead people that had been buried in the cemetery in front of their bedroom, the cemetery he could see every day when he opened their bedroom window. Pedro’s heart seemed to stop under his chest, but he still had that crazy gaze in his eyes. Those bodies were clearly defined, they were purple and they were moving behind the flames, shuffling along. Pedro could feel the floor being rubbed with cow shit. They had eyes, but they were whitish, like a zombie’s eyes. He thought, for a moment, that he had seen Valenti among them, but swollen, smelly and purple. But it wasn’t him, his weird common sense told him. But he could not understand why he was seeing them for the first time. He could see all of them. He was able to see all the people that had lived and died in that house. He could see all of them, and they were whispering in his ear.
Kill them.
At last he had put a face on them, although now everything was getting fuzzy. He was terrified because everything was getting disturbingly absurd. But he could see them the same way he was seeing the flames devouring the whole barn. The fire would be probably moving throughout the house like a torrent of lava.
Then, suddenly, Antonia started moving again on the floor. She was moving slowly because she was still stunned. She regained consciousness a bit later, and then she felt again the sharp pain and the horror.
And her children were also living that horror.
Pedro was possessed by hatred, and he let out a shriek.
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They came together into the straw castle, after closing the small frozen door. They went into the small labyrinth made with straw bales and finally they found a place to hide where they used to play. They used to go there to chat with no one to hear them. This time they had to talk again, although their hearts were beating hard and it was quite hot there because of the fire and the chimney behind.
Their faces were sweaty and the snow was melting within their wet hair. They could not see their breath any longer, not inside that place. Juan supported the idea that his father could follow their footprints and then they would hear again those terrifying hammer blows at their door, even though it was open.
Meanwhile, somewhere else Pedro was preaching with his arms open wide and an infinite desire to have a bible in his hand while the fire had already devoured the upper floor of the house and his mother had started to crawl over the snow like a big and heavy caterpillar.
Her lips moved to pray that could not be heard because the wind ripped his words away. His body was engulfed in flames and the handle of the hammer started to burn. His hand was still gripping the handle. He would do it until it was consumed by the flames.
Antonia drew a thin furrow over the road while she was going to the death curve. She was gasping and she was resisting the urge to cry every time pain spread through her back. Her forehead was sweaty but cold at the same time, and she kept on crawling down the road. She was just a few meters away from where the straw castle was, from where her children were taking a hard decision.
They were taking the hardest decision of their lives.
“Pili, mom is in grave danger. She is worse than us now, because she is badly hurt and dad has gone crazy. I don’t know if he has seen them or not, but he has lost his mind for good. He is holding a huge hammer and he is will go soon after us too. I think we should confront him.”
“How are we going to do that?” Pili answered, still shocked. Her heart was pulsing in her mouth.
“I don’t know.” Juan said, frowning.
“Do you think mom is already dead now?”
“I have told you already that she is badly hurt. I hope she is still alive.” Juan touched his head and passed a hand over his wet hair. “But I don’t know it for sure.”
“Should we go? Or should we stay?”
“He will find us sooner or later. Besides, there is a fire.” He pointed towards the straw and he added: “All this will start burning shortly. All the house roofs are wooden. I have seen films where even the walls burn.”
“They are just films.” Pili answered.
“This is real life, little sister. We are facing a very difficult situation. And it is a real situation. What shall we do?”
Pili shrugged her shoulders.
They could hardly see each other face there, in the darkness that filled that straw castle.
Antonia was right on the edge of the deep ravine which was known as the death curve. She was holding onto the edge as if it was a door jamb. It was snowing heavily and the wind was noisy, which made the flames on Pedro’s body douse. He had followed her there, yelling and reciting bible verses. But he kept saying all the time a sentence: I have seen them.
He raised the hammer above his blackened head for the last time.
“Your time has come, dear bitch.” He said.
But suddenly he felt an appalling pain in his back. He saw his red blood dropping and turning in red the white snow under his feet. He dropped the hammer like a wilted rose with its petals blown away by the wind. He opened his hands and jutted out his chin towards the sky. His eyes full of madness were showing a strange look of happiness while tearing up.
He stayed there, kneeling before his wife, silently, without uttering a single moan or word; there were no sounds coming out of his throat. Blood started spurting from his mouth. Antonia strained her eyes and then she saw them behind him. There was a smell of burnt flesh in the air that could not be carried away by the wind. There they were.
Her kids were there.
Juan was on the other side of the pitchfork that had gone through his own father’s back; the mad man. And Juan had been strong enough to make the sharp prongs penetrate his flesh with the help of his sister.
Now they looked gloomy, but any trace of fear had vanished from their faces. They were covered by snow and their hair was flying in the wind.
Then Antonia’s hand grabbed Pedro’s shirt, which was partially
burned, and said:
“You are done. Game over.”
She pushed him so hard that she tore the shirt, but she kept on doing it until Pedro’s body rolled down the embankment. She kept looking until she saw it falling into the farthest depths of the ravine. She was standing there with a piece of his yellow shirt in her hand while Pedro fell into the void screaming for the last time.
The wind muffled the sound of the body bumping into the tree branches and the rocks until she could hear a final thud.
Then Juan and Pili embraced their mother and they all cried for a short time that it felt like an eternity.
The barn was next to them, so they walked there to spend the night. They stayed up all night, surrounded by sawdust and straw, as fire was reducing the house of Bonmati to cinder.
Pili thought she had seen his father’s face in the window, smiling with tears in his eyes.
“I have just seen dad inside the house” She said.
And they embraced again.
END
Stephen Kings’ beginnings:
Overview
The writer from Maine, as he has been called, was meant to be the greatest horror writer of all times, as testified by his literary career. Although his first short stories and novels were rejected many times, his fate was sealed: Rejection letters stopped being a nail in his heart.
Stephen King started writing when he was just eight years old. He started publishing his first story while in school. It was not easy for him to publish “Carrie”, his first novel. He had subsisted with many and varied jobs, including some paychecks from his short stories, which he wrote in his spare time. Death and terror had been always close to him since he had started digging graves in the local cemetery, being a teenager. That was his first paid work. Due to his tenacity and his persistence, he has been recognized as “The king”, a tribute to his surname that comes in so handy.
The House of Bonmati Page 14