by Stefania Gil
She reached him and kissed him, pushing him back into the kitchen with this action all while closing the basement door.
He looked at her with doubt.
“Are you okay?” Edward asked.
“Of course!” she said euphorically trying to calm her nerves and anxiety that almost gave her a heart attack. “I was looking for some notes that I left.”
Deep breath.
“How is Alicia doing?”
The monitor, Carlota recalled.
“Good, good. She ate and went to sleep early because she did not take a nap today.”
She would not let her take a nap. Oops.
Her cell phone rang.
“I'm going downstairs to find the monitor that I had with me.”
Edward still looked at her strangely.
“Does your behavior have anything to do with what Isabel told me to check in the basement tomorrow?”
Traitor!
Carlota smiled nervously at her husband.
“I'll come back and explain.”
She went into the laundry room before Edward asked her anything else.
She checked her cell phone. It was a message from Isabel.
“I'm still with Roberto, I don’t know how the heck to get away from him, and Alfonso is not making it easy for me. I called you seven times to help me get rid of this man and seeing how you did not answer, I can imagine where you are so I already informed Ed that tomorrow, we all are going down to the basement”
Traitor, Carlota thought again as she turned off her cell phone and picked up the monitor from where she left it on the floor. She thought she left the lanterns lit and at the end of the passage she didn’t see any light.
Carlota's heart throbbed fast as she ran up the stairs and closed all the doors behind her. Just like when you're a kid and you find something you want to get away from in a hurry.
She was hyperventilating. She sneaked into the garden without Ed realizing and took a couple of deep breaths with her head between her knees.
The lanterns were on she remembered just as she heard Edward's voice. Yes, they were on.
She was breathing in puffs of air but it didn’t seem to be enough. She went back into the house.
She looked at the laundry door and asked God, with all her might, for the lanterns to had run out of batteries and that was why there was no light at the end of the passage.
Please. Let that be it, she thought.
She got goose bumps at the thought that, perhaps, the vampire idea was not so far-fetched.
What the hell had she done?
She rushed up the stairs leading to the second floor. She entered their daughter’s room and took her into her arms and carried her to her room.
“What are you doing?” Edward asked as he came out of the bathroom and saw her lying with the girl in his arms.
“She was crying. I'll take her back later. Are you coming?”
“First I need a glass of water, Alfonso made me drink a lot of wine.”
Please God, let the lanterns have run out of batteries. Please! Was the only thing Carlota could think.
***
Isabel came home exhausted and with a full stomach. Catalina was a great cook and the Spanish cuisine was one of her favorites.
She sat on the living room couch and leaned her head back. Yes, she was exhausted. More of mind than of body. Roberto was a handsome man but not one she liked.
Sigh.
That sigh carried a great deal of nostalgia for Luke.
She saw her cell phone. How much alcohol did she need to drink in order to call him?
Well, she'd only had a glass of warm milk for two nights before she went to bed and she felt the terrible need to call the man she still loved.
She sighed again.
“How did the evening end?”
Edward startled her out of her thoughts.
“I'm sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Isabel smiled.
“It's all right, Ed.” She lifted her shoulders, curving her lips a little. “Actually, Roberto would be a perfect man if I were another woman. He would work. I would be a selfless housewife who took care of the five children I want to have.”
Edward laughed.
“Yes, the machismo is still very much alive.”
He poured himself a glass of fresh water.
“Do you want some water?”
“Yes, please, a little.”
Isabel drank the water as if she had been stranded in the desert all day.
“Catalina cooks very well but we are not accustomed to the strong flavors and besides, the amount of wine that is drunk in that house at dinnertime is not normal.”
Isabel nodded, drinking her second glass.
“And Carlota?” she asked her brother-in-law.
“She’s upstairs. When I arrived, she was in the basement looking for some notes. She has listened to you well because she told me she only went for that. Had he known the basement was in such bad condition, he would not have allowed her to work there for so many hours.”
Without much thought Isabel opened the laundry door and then the basement door. She stopped when she realized her brother-in-law intended to follow her. She had to wait until tomorrow to find out what the hell her sister did with the sarcophagus while she was alone.
“We'll see you tomorrow, Ed. I'm tired.”
“Alright! You know what? Carlota was acting very strange when I arrived. I think her muses are coming back in a strange way. She doesn’t know how to control the excitement of having fresh ideas or future scenes. Tomorrow you should take her out. You both could use a day at the beauty salon.”
Isabel smiled at her brother-in-law, but couldn’t help worrying about her sister. She knew her very well and if she was being strange then she had been caught doing something she had no business doing.
She was tempted to tell her brother-in-law all about the find, but seeing the weariness on his face, she decided that it would be best to wait until the next morning.
One more night, what else could happen? If Carlota had found something out of the ordinary, she would have said so. Her sister was not foolish enough to conceal something that could be dangerous for her family.
“I will try to create a temporary workspace for her to unload all her ideas so she will stop behaving strangely”
She wanted to believe Carlota’s behavior was really the work of her derailed muses.
“Thank you, Isa. That would be fantastic. I'm going to bed. My two princesses are waiting for me upstairs.”
Ah? That was very strange. Carlota only allowed the girl to sleep in her bed if she was sick.
“Is Alicia sick?”
“No.” Ed snorted. “That's why I said that my wife is acting strange. I was taking a shower and when I came out of the bathroom, I found her in bed with our little girl in her arms. Her eyes were alert in case she had to protect the girl from a... monster.” Ed burst out laughing. “God only knows what she was thinking about to instill the need to protect the little girl, but I’ll take advantage of it. I love to sleep holding our little girl.”
“Rest,” Isabel said as Ed climbed the stairs.
Isabel stayed in the kitchen a while longer thinking about her sister's strange behavior. Maybe her sister was foolish enough to hide what she found, all to protect her new wonderful story.
She could already hear her excusing herself under the absurd idea that, if the worldwide association of writers forgave her, the others had nothing to say.
Such nonsense.
What did she find in the basement that forced her to allow the child to sleep in her bed?
Carlota was scared of very few things.
Isabel couldn’t stand the curiosity, and was emboldened to go to the basement. Just to the basement, she wouldn’t go to the other place alone. No. No way.
The door gave a frightful squeak like those you hear only in horror movies a few seconds before something frightening appears on the screen.<
br />
A chill ran down her body.
“Damn humidity.” She said aloud as she descended the stairs.
She thought of replacing them with a stone staircase. She hated the creak of old wood under her feet. The basement was barely lit by a lamp that Carlota left burning on her ramshackle desk, which, by the way, Isabel doubted could be repaired.
She inspected it a little more closely. It had cracks in the wood that would be very difficult to restore. She ran her hand across it. Honestly, it would be a pity if she couldn’t restore it because, it was an old jewel and would look great in a writer’s study.
Well, she’d see it better when they got it out of there tomorrow.
A dry noise startled Isabel.
Her heart began to almost throb out of her chest.
She could swear she heard footsteps coming from the passage that connected the two rooms.
There was another noise and then it sounded like a rat’s scream after it had been captured.
She did not need anything else to run like she was crazy.
She ran as fast as her legs would carry her. She wanted to scream. Oh, she did! But there was something stopping her.
She reached her room in less than two minutes flat. She wasn’t even sure if she had closed the laundry room or the basement doors. Besides, she was sure she left the lights on. Why did she go down there alone? And what made the noise dry? A badly hatched rat?
She remembered the filthy squeal again, and the hairs on the back of her neck bristled.
“Gross!” She exclaimed, thinking how the hell her sister stayed there, knowing that there might be rats.
Of course, because she didn’t want to think that those noises were something else, right?
Rats. Just rats.
She put on her pajamas with shaking hands and climbed into bed, leaving the light on her bedside table lit. Just like when she was a child and scared by something she thought she saw in the dark.
***
Juan Carlos was standing in a corner of the earthen room. Absorbed by the darkness that reigned there. This might surprise his attackers better when they came for him again.
Because surely they would come for him again. He knew what happened when someone discovered the sarcophagus that the damned inquisitor had put him in about... about... he didn’t know how long ago because he lost all sense of time and everything else inside that damn, filthy space. He would never lay down again, he would learn to sleep standing up.
In general, his body no longer trembled as much. He managed to contain the spasms when he felt like he could leave.
At first he heard a few pounding rattles that rumbled through the sarcophagus and then voices. They sounded like women. It was hard to understand what they were saying. The stone that surrounded him was so thick that it was difficult to understand the noises outside.
Like the time he felt the earth move around him. He was able to identify the sound of water running very close to him. He never knew how the hell his "home" was not flooded. When everything was over, he identified voices; men for the most part, and he didn’t need to hear them clearly to understand they were deciding his fate, again.
No one knew where he was buried.
Well, the church did, but it was a secret because the holy church and the accursed inquisitors were not interested in his existence being known.
He just waited to see what would happen. Nothing happened. Now that someone had lent a hand in giving him his freedom again, he surely would not let it pass even though he was terrified. He still harbored memories from torturous times.
He was very afraid.
He thought he had overcome it with the confinement, but when he felt hot liquid sliding down one of his legs he understood that he had not overcome anything.
It seemed that this habit of being scared and pissing himself would stay with him.
He did not wet himself out of fear like an animal, but after all he had lived through and seen others do, this incontinence was justified.
He would have to learn to control all this if he wanted to survive out of that goddamn stone space. He would never come back there if he had to kill someone.
His breath was coming fast and his heart pounding like a race horse.
Who had freed him?
And why? Something told him that he had to wait a little while before he fled.
When the sarcophagus lid opened slightly, he could only see a thin arm. A piece of metal fell on his leg. Miraculously, it was the key to his chains and shackles.
He didn’t quite know where he got the agility to pull off the chains and slide the coffin lid a little further so that it could escape.
For Juan Carlos, in those eternal minutes were eternal. He was panic-stricken at the very thought of instantly being and taken to a torture chamber for punishment.
When he got out of the sarcophagus, he heard noises that were very close. On the ground were strangely drawn cylinders that lit the space. He could not afford to be captured again so he would surprise the attackers in the dark. He took the two black cylinders in both hands and smashed them against the ground causing the glass to shatter.
He was still in the best corner in the room. He could think clearer and made quick decisions about what to do when someone entered the hole in one of the walls.
No one came even though he could hear voices.
He waited there, squatting. Nothing. Then he dared to explore beyond the horrid place he was in.
He crossed the gap and there was a dim light at the end of the corridor he was passing through. He entered a room, it was not better than the first, although at least it had walls. Juan Carlos could feel the moisture drenching his bones. He was already accustomed.
He became a damn moisture meter after having spent so much time underground.
There was more.
A table in poor condition, but with very good wood. Someone had left a diary on top which contained a somewhat strange handwriting and drawings of what appeared to be the same space, but in good condition.
Juan Carlos asked himself again: How long had he been buried? Nothing resembled what he remembered. Nothing.
They did not use torches or candles for light, not even lamps. There were strange metal objects that lit almost the entire room.
As he studied these strange devices, he heard movement over his head.
Tap .Tap. Tap.
Someone was knocking on the floor, or maybe, walking.
At the same time, he heard a rat running around his coffin. For the first time in a long time, his stomach roared at the thought of being filled with food.
He was grateful for his instinct to want to feed as he went down the dark corridor in search for food. At that moment he heard the door from the room he left behind, open.
He ran back to his old hiding place.
He only heard a couple of voices, a man and a woman. The door closed again.
It seemed that, at last, luck was on his side.
He heard the rat run again.
Juan Carlos noticed his senses were very sensitive since he had come out of the coffin.
He stood up, skirting his old residence, trying to follow the rat's footsteps in order to hunt it down when he heard the door to the other room open.
He leapt back into his dark corner, the earth vibrated with the sudden shock of his weight, and look, how lucky, the rat’s tail was trapped under one of his heels.
He smiled.
He gripped the rat with all his might as it let out a shriek.
He settled down to eat.
It seemed luck was finally on his side.
VIII
Spain, 1609
Winter was approaching.
It could be felt in the wind as the temperature dropped day by day.
Juan Carlos was taking care of Rocio, his mother, who was sick with cold while his brother was recovering from the strange mixture of herbs that his own mother had given them a couple of days before.
All because
of the plague.
His father was the first to die.
Juan Carlos squeezed the tanned cloth he had in a tub of water. He folded it several times and placed it on her forehead.
He used all the blankets he had in the house, but it didn’t seem to be enough. From time to time, he lifted his head to check on his brother who slept like a bear in hibernation.
He tried to wake Francis to help him with their mother. Not even slapping him managed to wake him up.
Sigh.
He felt a strong pressure in his chest. He knew it was the pain of losing his father recently and now he would have to suffer a second loss, his mother's.
He felt his eyes sting.
How could all this happen? It had been a little over a year since his beloved Cecilia had died. He didn’t want to think about her. It hurt like hell every time he did. Now, it would be his parents. Life was being cruel.
They were good people. They had lived for some time on the outskirts of Valencia. They sowed and harvested their own food. From very young, Juan Carlos and his brother, helped their father with everything. Even when they took fresh food to the nearest village to sell. They did not earn very much money, but it was enough to pay for what they needed. His father wanted to buy more land and expand his fields. He was convinced he could earn a lot of money with oranges, but it was not going to be possible.
He returned home with the disease in his body.
Rocio was so devastated by his death, she began making strange decisions.
She did not want to lose her children too.
So without thinking about the consequences, she prepared an herbal tea. It was a family legend, like those stories your grandmother tells you before going to bed.
No one knew if the herbal tea worked.
No one dared to try and prove its effectiveness because Rocío and all her female ancestry were very powerful healers. They were not witches. They did not know about spells, but they did know about herbs.
Rocío tried to save her husband with herbs but it was too late for him. That was when she began to panic about losing her children also.
She didn’t think. She didn’t waste time.
She prepared the herbal tea according to the legend her mother told her and gave it to her children.