4
The next day, Tom got up without the feeling of exhaustion, but he heard the cartilage from his knees crunching as he rose to his feet. It did not hurt, but Tom was surprised by the situation. He went to the window to breathe some clean air. To inhale the soft morning breeze combined with the scent of apple trees. He watched the bumblebees fluttering around the apple blossoms, parsimoniously occupied in their instinctive work before winter came to kill them all. That was life, and he sighed deeply, but it soon became worse.
5
A week later he was struck again by the blow of fatigue but this time his joints complained with a dry creak, and they began to ache. Tom frowned, but he did not care. Yet he had to sit continually on the edge of the bed. A bed with wrinkled sheets and headboard on the floor. And the window was still open to let in the rays of the sun and the scent of apple trees. And suddenly, he also stopped eating. But he still loved his apple trees and waited like May water, its fruits. He would eat them two at a time this year, so that he would eliminate his fatigue, which was driven by a strange rigidity. And the spring left some vague rains and let the days pass in the calendar. And Tom was getting more and more tired, and he dreamt more and more.
6
He dreamed that he was flying around his apple trees and he saw how suddenly thousands of amazingly beautiful flowers bloomed, and then they became apples. Big bright green apples. They were as acidic as he liked, but suddenly everything turned dark and fell to the ground and below the ground, in an infinite well and the apples turned rough red. And then he woke up drenched in sweat and more tired. Still more tired.
7
July came and with it the copious heat and Tom opened all the windows of his house. The flowers had given way to small green balls. Some of the drones were drawing nearer, stepping closer, stabilizing their flight, hanging for a while, and then leaving. And then came the wasps, too late. And the apple trees were still there prepared to swell their fruits. The apples of Uncle Tom, a grandmother would say, telling the story to her grandchildren in the embrace of the warmth of the fireplace.
And Tom was already so tired that he had to lie in bed for hours while the mattress sank into the center. His joints were a little stiffer than last month and hurt even more and he had noticed in a fingernail of his foot how it had grown in a somewhat strange way. It looked as if a sliver of wood had been nailed to a corner of the nail, brown and crooked. Tom yanked it off with his fingers and the blood made a presence. Just an insignificant drop that stained his finger, but screamed, that it was a full-blown wound. Tom was not surprised at all, and he thought he might have stuck the sliver the previous day, or the day before, when he had weakly stepped on the sand of his already neglected piece of land. I was more tired. Even more.
But still lying on his bed, he could see his apple trees grow and grow.
8
And July gave way to August and the heat was more suffocating. Tom, shirtless and sweaty, lay prostrate on the bed, almost stiff. It had been a week since he could barely move, and since he was an old man, he had no woman to call the doctor. Neither neighbors near him. His rarity in personality made him antisocial. So he was alone, he and his apple trees now showing small green apples almost formed, the size of a plum. Despite his fatigue and stiffness, Tom's eyes widened when he saw his apple trees through the open window, which was perfectly aligned to see from his new position. And Tom started to wet himself. She could not get up and the scent of apples invaded the air of her room. And on the toenails grew more twisted splinters, timidly peeking out from beneath their long nails.
9
And it was September when the fruit of the apple trees, large, heavy and green apples could be seen gleaming in the increasingly calm summer sun, but maintaining a relative high humidity in the environment, creating a new microclimate Sticky heat. By mid-September they could start picking apples, but it was the month of October, the ideal month for them. They were sour.
Tom, with a yellowish stain on the wrinkled, stinking sheets, showed the passage of time, in which he had to make his needs over. His body was already heard, showing a quadruple of sharp bones peeking out of the taut, dry skin. His face had lost all expression and his eyes were yellow. Her toenails had grown roots! Tom was breathing heavily, but he strongly inspired the scent of apples, now citrus and acid apples. She was sorry she could not get up and watch them standing from the window. Her knees had stiffened and her thighs had lost all muscle, showing at the same time huge, swollen veins blackened. Like complex creepers to follow. Like endless roots. Another huge yellowish spot covered the entire surface of his underpants, and another of a slightly brownish color appeared from beneath his buttocks embedded in the sunken mattress. He had sores all over his back and something pointed, something that pricked, looked like pieces of nails or worse, roots!
10
In mid-September, the roots appeared on the nails of his hands and on his back. He knew it, but there was nothing he could do except save that he stopped doing his needs. He had simply stopped urinating and defecating, but his bones were now like trunks buried beneath his skin. Teeth also had roots. And there was still the scent of apple trees. He could no longer breathe in the pleasant smell that grew more intense as the days went by. He was not hungry.
11
The first week of October, the roots of the toenails had become entangled in the end of the bed and in the legs of these. Those of the fingers already measure about half a meter. His legs were just apple tree trunks now, and the air in the room smelled like apple trees.
12
By the second week of October, the roots of his fingernails had spread to either side of the bed. And they were fastened to the side bars of the bed. Now the mattress was dry but yellow, it was less sunken. From his legs had come more roots that lay on the wrinkled, dry sheets. And the first heavy rains began. Tom could only move his eyes and watched two or three high intensity storms, while some apples fell from the apple branches. Tom felt sorry for it and no longer thought about the roots and what was happening to him. In fact, he never thought of anything except the apples.
And the days continued passing leaves in the calendar of October, in the beginning of the Fall.
13
And autumn came and Tom's neck was stiff as a log, he could not open his mouth, but he did not need it either, it had remained stony as a trunk forming an O stretched from the upper and lower ends. The roots that had been born in his own teeth had extended to the headrest of the bed. Tom's eyes were no longer moving. He did not feel pain. He was neither hungry nor thirsty. And the fragrance of the apples remained suspended in the air. He did not breathe. He had leaves.
14
By early November Tom was no longer Tom, but a tree rooted on the bed, covering it with its long roots and twisted trunks. Without going through the previous phase of flowers and wasps, drones and bumblebees. Tom or what was of him, had formed small apples. The sun was falling ever earlier, but the roots and apples grew faster. Tom or what was left of him, he did not think. It was just there, inert, but growing and filling the room with a strong smell of sour apples. His eyes were open and perhaps it was the only human left of him.
15
By mid-November the apples had grown up and out of that room, Tom's apple trees in his garden showed a different image. The apple trees no longer had leaves or green apples and juicy. Nobody had collected them and they lay dead, decrepit and wrinkled, on the ground, covered with mud. Some of them were rotten, and the huge rats of small gnats gnawed at them as they ate them relentlessly. The window was still open.
And Tom or the new apple tree with fresh and aromatic fruit was there inside. But no one picked up the apples.
16
By December the apples of Tom's tree had fallen from its branches. The most widespread roots along the floor of the room and the narrow walls hurried to look for nutrients. But he did not find them, not this time, since Tom was not Tom and could no longer feed on his body. The apple
s began to rot on the ground and in the air still followed the fragrance of the apple trees. From Tom that one day was someone happy with their crops, with their apple trees. Now, he had died and soon the roots, the branches, the apples, would be the grass of rot and dryness. This was so throughout the winter, but spring came and something happened.
17
The sun shone like a gigantic torch of fire suspended in a blue sky. The rays of the sun streamed through the window and licked the remains of Tom. A few days later, a dry, cracked sound began a new stage. The roots had trapped a handful of rats like cats, who swarmed about in the winter and were held by something, by someone, in their fight against death.
In the middle of spring a bumblebee came through the window buzzing like a small helicopter and approached one of the flowers. This was situated on the upper surface of the eye, which remained glassy and white, but still. The bumblebee pulled out its sting and did its work.
A few weeks later Tom wanted to eat more apples
In the Mouth of the Worm
“Now, wasn’t that creative?”. The Warden was again in his seat. “A lonely man that transforms into a tree, reminds me of a man who grew grass throughout all his body.
The guests hid cynical smiles in the shadows. They seemed to be satisfied with this story or maybe not. So the warden became serious again and showing his incipient baldness on the front of his head, began to explain in broad strokes the following story.
“This one is for you, Mr. Lovecraft.” He pointed again at Lovecraft, who was serious and silent with a pale hue on his face that was not appreciated at that distance, let alone under the gloomy torchlight and chimney.
One of the guests shifted in his chair, and their legs squeaked slightly, while the warden with his grave voice began to speak.
“Un usurero del año 1920 recuenta cada fin de mes su dinero. Es el recaudador del pueblo porque tiene arrendadas una calle entera de casas que son de su propiedad. Cada tres meses les sube el alquiler a los inquilinos que ya están hartos de esta costumbre de Charles. Cada mes, al lado de una vela o un candil, Charles cuenta todas sus monedas tras sacarlas de una caja fuerte que tiene empotrada en la pared de su casa que da a una montaña. Pero descubre que cada mes le faltan unas cuantas monedas. Recuenta y recuenta ahora cada noche, pero siguen faltándole monedas a pesar de recaudar más y más. Un día descubre que le faltan monedas y una especie de moco. Y más adelante una mancha grisácea dentro de la caja fuerte. Es un flujo gelatinoso y huele bastante mal. Pero pasan los días, hasta que esta especie de baba crece y una de las noches Charles decide limpiar la caja fuerte. Pero en el fondo de ella hay algo que respira acompasadamente.”
Outside the wind began to howl as they brushed the eaves of the castle, and the warden's voice was mute again. He looked briefly at the faces of his guests and began with the story...
1
Charles Brown owned the main street of Boad Hill in New England. It was the year 1920 and the rent of their houses amounted to a few cents a month (three or four). Each tenant charged a different price for the location and number of rooms that the house had wet and cracked and every end of the month, he stayed up all night, counting the coins in the light of a lamp. Then he stored them in a sock and this one in a safe built into one of the walls of his house on the side facing the mountain. Charles Brown lived in a house quite withdrawn from his empire, the main street of the early Boad Hill, now a small town that was by the sea whose main activity was to fix old transport ships. Fortunately, the work was not lacking and the first to inhabit what would later be Boad Hill worked, except Mr. Charles Brown who lived off the rents and took advantage of it. Every three months the rent went up to their tenants and they were already getting fed up with the situation. But things do not come alone and something very special is taken justice by his hand.
It is making noise behind the wall that faces the mountain.
2
“This month rent is going up another cent,” said Charles Brown with a stupid smile painted on his face.
“But...”
“One cent, take it or pack your things and get the hell out of here.”
“Okay, a cent more.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Charles Brown's character was not exactly sympathetic to the people, he was not cordial or humble, but rather he approached a rude scammer to a stupid runaway gambler, a villain. And people began to get tired of the affair. If the revolt was organized, what could Charles Brown do to two dozen or so pissed-off neighbors?
Nothing.
But they did not try, at least for now.
3
Charles Brown lit the firewood, and it began to burn painfully and with a rather habitual slowness in the bonfires. Half an hour later, the long reddish shadows produced by the dance of the flames threw themselves against the wall forming intrinsic animated cartoons. The heat rose in the kitchen and in the rooms closest to it. Charles also lit a lamp to open the safe that was in the immediate room to the kitchen, where they could still reach the drawings of the fireplace. The key was iron and it was large. His weight was considerable in the palm of Charles's hand. He straightened the key with his thin fingers and slipped it into the lock. After that the key creaked like a rat as it turned around. The iron door, scrupulously painted in gray, also creaked as it opened and revealed its secret.
There were a few socks full of coins. He set the candle aside and took all his socks off. The coins seemed to speak and scream inside them as he dropped them on the wooden table. By the light of the fireplace.
And then he began another sleepless night, counting all the coins until the fire in the hearth had turned into a fiery red ember and then into the smoking ashes
.
4
For the next three months of winter Charles Brown continued to collect his tenants house by house and counting once a month the coins he had collected so far. And then he noticed that the socks were wet and he lacked a coin. A painful coin that could have fallen on the street or get stuck in some of her pockets or simply would have counted them wrong. So, the next night, he counted them again on the wooden table to the side of the fire and its dancing flames.
One coin was missing
5
There was no person more mischievous and miserable than Charles Brown in all of Maine. He ate the right amount of food, he warmed up with the right thing and even used many less old socks, to keep his coins. And he still wanted more. His clothes, torn and dirty did not indicate a man wealthy or without problems of it. When you saw him walking down the street you often confused him with anyone else. He did not stand out in any novelty. No tailor suit or miserable ring, even though he was not married and had no children either. And everything, so you do not have to weigh an inheritance on the day you screw up. His epitaph would be “my coins with me!”
6
This time the rent went up after two months. The tenants looked at him with angry eyes and clenched their fists. But nothing else happened, except that they cursed him over and over again. "I hope the fire eats your money!" But something more inexplicable was about to happen.
7
And the night came, like every month, punctual like a nail nailed to a board. He turned the key and it squeaked again. He took off his socks and emptied them on the tables by the light of the burning candle. He spent all night counting and pointing numbers on a yellow paper.
This time it was missing four coins.
“Goddamn it!” He furiously hit the table with his fist closed. Immediately afterwards he felt a strong pain in the hand that ascended to the forearm and then he saw it. A mucus, gray, damp and stuck to one of the socks that had a small hole, but large enough to pass a coin through the hole.
He took the sock. It was wet.
“Shit,” he said and stood up beside the table. Then he went to the warmth of the fireplace and returned to the table again. Always rubbing his chin.
He found no explanation.
8
&nb
sp; From now on I would count the coins every night. And he discovered more snot in his socks. It was a gelatinous, opaque, and extremely moldable flow. Almost like dried snot. And there was also the stain inside the safe. The same she found in her socks. He cleaned it and found a coin inside the box, but it lacked a part of it and was bent.
And they still lacked coins.
9
Hopefully the money will rot you or a monster swallows them so you have to go after them inside your stomach and you rot in there.
Sometimes desires became reality, but this did not always have to happen this way. Or maybe it had to.
10
He lit the lamp and walked slowly toward the safe and put the key in the lock. He took off his socks and noticed that they were wetter and had more snot. He carried his socks on the table and returned to the safe to wipe it inside with a filthy rag. And he found three bent coins.
11
The tenants agreed to demonstrate in front of their house if they rented the rent again and even carry torches if the thing was twisted. But nothing happened. The words were eaten by the wind as they passed the main street of Boad Hill that winter of 1920.
12
The stains were getting bigger and bigger, and for his account there were thirty missing coins and three of the old socks, already broken at all. With enough grief, he took off his own filthy socks and filled them with coins. And he kept them in the safe. And as he removed the key from the lock he noticed mucus in it. He wiped it and grunted. Nothing else. And then the noises started. Ras, ras. They came from behind the wall.
13
At the side of the chimney, with a pitiful face, he saw that he now lacked forty three coins. And four of the socks were holes.
“Rats. Damn rats!” he whispered in the dim light of the candle.
But they were not rats.
14
With a ragged, grimy rag and in the candlelight, he cleaned the inside of the safe that was already rusting from the front and even more inside. He took out five folded coins that were wrapped in drool and some of them had disappeared. They were no longer circular, but as bites or simply melted at the edges.
The Warden of the Castle Page 4