The Warden of the Castle

by Claudio Hernández

  And the cry of the baby broke the silence of that fateful afternoon.

  23

  Bart barely breathed. Her intensely white skin made her portend the worst. Her lips were white and her eyes were closed. He breathed rhythmically and his heart felt very weak. Papa, however, prepared to look at the broken lukewarm to make an arrangement and for the hemorrhage.

  24

  “I'll sew you a little and remove the placenta. Can you hold on a little longer?”

  She nodded and asked:

  “How is Bart?”

  Dad lowered his head and started crying.

  “I'm afraid very, very bad, my daughter.”

  Meanwhile, the baby was warming up with her skin and dress. Warming him up.

  25

  Bart stopped breathing. A sudden sepsis associated with a great loss of blood ended with his forces. William put his hand on her icy head and cried for a long time, while the snow continued to fall heavily.

  26

  Tommy's grandfather stopped talking and came closer now to the embers of the fireplace. There was a tear rolling down his cheek and Tommy noticed it even though he was in a catatonic state.

  “I want you to tell this to your son someday, my little Tommy.”

  Tommy shook his head unconsciously.

  “The baby was your father,” said the grandfather.

  Time to Say Good-Bye

  The warden was satisfied and began to present his next story in the wind weeping for the cold outside the walls of the castle.

  “In Villaplace everyone has to die someday like everywhere in the world. However in this small town nothing is what it seems. When a sick old man or a young man knows that he is going to die, he says goodbye to his family and they leave the village to a place known as the legendary mountains to die in tranquility and without disturbing their relatives. However later, relatives see some silhouettes moving in the skirt of the mountain. They walk errant and are recognized. Even when they take their pets. This is a tale of the young aspiring writer named Cooper, who keeps his three friends close to the bonfire, the safest place as he casts words.”

  After finishing the tirade, he let out a snort. I was ready again to tell another story in that endless night...

  1

  Cooper, Colton, Tyler, and Ethan were huddled by the bonfire, a few inches from the two tents, spread like mushrooms under the star-filled sky of a beautiful spring day. But in spite of everything, it was cold and the four boys rubbed their hands near the flames that crackled in front of them, flashed reddish on their pink cheekbones.

  “Whose turn is it to tell a tale?” Cooper asked, looking up from the fire. Everyone shrugged. “C’mon, I’ve already done it.”

  Ethan nodded at Colton, who shook his head.

  “I can’t think of anything, man.”

  Ethan's finger pointed at Tyler who shrugged.

  “A panda of brats. A perfect night to tell horror stories and nobody dares to tell one.”

  “You are the one that writes them, you tell them,” said Colton.

  The fire was slowly consuming, as Cooper uttered the following words.

  “I’ll tell you what happened in Villaplace...”

  “Villaplace? Where’s that?” asked Tyler interrupting him.

  “I just made it up, you idiot,” grunted Cooper. “This story is titled ‘It’s Time to Say Good-Bye’.”

  "Yeah, let's go to sleep," Ethan said, rising to his feet. But he did not get up. Cooper's whisper began to tell the story...

  2

  Jacob was in a bad mood. His smoking cigarette was moving back and forth between his dry lips as it was consumed on a cold winter night in Villaplace, where the dead are...

  3

  "It's time to go," Jacob said, spitting to the floor as he tossed the spent cigarette.

  Madelyn lowered her head and tears began to burst from her eyes. She knew what her husband Jacob meant.

  "My hour has come," he insisted, between a fit of coughing. He spat a blood-spattered garb. She pushed herself aside and sobbed a little more. He took her by the shoulders and I insist again that his time had come.

  "I have to say goodbye to the boys," he added in a new fit of coughing.

  She shook her head.

  Half an hour later he crossed the door of his house for the last time. He went to the mountain known as "legend." They never knew why they put such a horrible name on a sacred place. There was a cemetery there. Where they all went. Where they all came from...

  4

  And he walked slowly toward the sacred mountain. Towards the cemetery of the ancient Indians known as "legend." The place was called "Legend", but no one understood how an Indian cemetery had that kind of name which was not related to anything. Jacob shuffled forward in the midst of a new fit of coughing blood. His bony body moved steadily toward the end. I was close to it. It was two kilometers from the cemetery and Jacob knew he was going to die. That's why he had said goodbye to his family. But he also knew he was coming back...

  5

  Two days later Madelyn saw the silhouette of her husband walking around in the distance, but he recognized it by his peculiar way of walking, but there was something else. It seemed as if he had been put an oak over his shoulders that made him walk wearily and limping. Madelyn smiled a little, from the window, from where she saw him from a distance. Jacob was back.

  6

  He also recognized Andrew's dog.

  7

  "And you're done?" Colton asked, his eyes wide. Now the fire was a luminous ember in the middle of the night.

  “Yes!” Exclaimed Cooper. Tyler and Ethan grunted and backed away. Their bodies bent over the icy ground. Colton threw a stone at the ember and it raised a small dust of ashes that faded in the air.

  "You look bad," Tylen said. Even my little brother has more imagination than you, writer Cooper-firmly emphasized this last word.

  Cooper opened his arms showing his tiny hands-that's what there is, "he said.

  And they all stared at him stupidly as the embers faded slowly.

  8

  “It's okay. The story does not end," Cooper said as he played with the embers of the fire with a twisted tree branch. It burned quickly. “Madelyn saw Jacob, her husband, wandering around with the dog of who knows where. I've made it up...”

  Suddenly they all turned their attention back to Cooper's glittering eyes, which never stopped playing with the burning branch.

  9

  Then Jacob disappeared at night with the dog. But he was not the only one who came back from that sacred mountain that night. There were many more, almost all old, but there were some children. It had been a bad year for the people of Villaplace. An unknown flu had infected dozens of them and was dangerous. They all had their farewell hour and they walked tiredly toward the mountain, and then returned with no more activity, but alive. Or maybe not.

  10

  Colton smiled as he said, "I like that better."

  Ethan waved his hand and ordered silence.

  Cooper stared at the stick in his hand. He was almost consumed and continued with the narration.

  11

  In Villaplace one thing was the most important. There were no cemeteries, no crosses at the edge of a dusty road or with snow. Not a flower. It was just time to say goodbye and everything went according to plan. There was nothing like that in Maine, of course Villaplace did not appear on a fucking map of Maine, at least for now. It was also a secret, and what was happening in Villaplace did not come from there. Even pets and animals knew when their time came. Everything was extraordinarily complex and impossible to believe. It was Villaplace and had access to a sacred mountain and an ancient Indian cemetery. Why are noses always Indian cemeteries? Who cared. It just happened.

  The next night Jacob came to his house and saw the light coming from one of the windows. It was the faint light of several candles burning in the kitchen and she saw Madelyn standing on her back by a wood-burning stove. And the two boys
were sitting at the table. Andrew's dog barked in the night void and he wagged his tail. Then he ducked his head.

  12

  The four boys were around the fire that had already languished. Their faces could hardly be distinguished that night and Cooper took a break before continuing with his story "it's time to say goodbye." Then he took another stick and removed the embers that were hidden under the ashes. A faint reddish light shone on her cheekbones.

  13

  The next week and without seeing that nothing changed in his body, that was not broken and did not start to smell bad, Jacob returned to be near his house. This time there was the dog, who had leaned against a girl named Cloe who had also returned from the abode. This time Jacob came to the door of his house under the thick darkness. He knocked on the door for the first time and there was no answer. He waited for a moment, as impatiently as ever, and knocked again on the door. This time two strokes. There was an answer. Who? I. The door opened and Madelyn's face appeared.

  "I was expecting you," he said, and ran his hand down her neck to hold her head and kiss him. Her skin was not as soft as before, and she did not have it all. Jacob's eyes widened. Madelyn lacked much of the skin on her face and showed yellowish teeth. One eye turned in the emptiness of the basin without eyelid. It stunk of dead dogs.

  "Papa, we were waiting for you!" Cried the boys as they rose from the chairs. Their faces were gnawed and showed a cold smile full of teeth with skin scraps. His eyes do not shine either.

  "I want you all," Jacob said, entering the house.

  14

  “Fuuuuuuck!” Ethan shouted. The fucking dead were all of the people and not those who went to the sacred mountain!

  Colton and Tyler began clapping, interrupting the silence of the night and Cooper's whisper.

  "Someday I'll write it. I've come up with everything right now. I really like it, "Cooper explained. And began to tell a new story.

  There was a lot of night ahead.

  The Girl I Love

  "This is for you. He gestured at Bram Stoker as he smiled, and he looked at him with a haggard, serious look. No. I have not forgotten you, friend of fear. So change that serious face and start enjoying the next story.

  Bram Stoker changed the look on his face.

  The others stretched out their necks and looked at him as if he were looking at a rare thing.

  "This time it's a serial killer who gets his due. The guy is killing right and wrong all the girls on campus or whatever. He is a lunatic and has no waste. He hates beautiful girls but attracts them with nice words. He knows how to captivate them before cutting them with his knife. Justin Curtis, the protagonist or not, of my next story dedicated to my friend Bram. He looked at Bram Stoker with a smile on his face and continued. He is a mentally disturbed person who one day meets the last of his shoe. And the story begins like this...

  1

  He took his time to take his life, but at the same time, he was anxious to finish the job. Justin Curtis was a mentally disturbed man who, at the moment, had become a real killer, and the time before, and the first time. But they never found out. He knew how to do things well. Justin Curtis, stay with that name.

  The girl was hanging from the ceiling by one foot, a thick rope around her bloodied ankle. The other ankle was almost twisted by the weight of loose, rigid leg. There were numerous cuts on her legs and on her chest, but in her face they were not cuts but a fury that was drained over her with anxiety. Blood had splashed the back wall and left a large puddle on the floor on the cutting blade, a razor blade that had no blood group gold more than that of the poor girl. A brutal murder that even the most observant would stop him from looking.

  It was December, specifically the 31st of the month. End of the year. Everywhere in the world was celebrated the arrival of the new year, while blood flowed thick body down. Justin Curtis loved the girl, who was now like a hung pig. They discovered the body the next morning.

  2

  "Hello, it's Justin Curtis," he said, staring at her.

  She looked up and saw a scruffy-looking boy with bone-rimmed glasses, dark and at the same time really ugly, or perhaps difficult to see. All wrapped in a blue anorak, as if it were a disguise.

  “You won’t say anything?” Justin asked, smiling a little, almost lightly.

  "It's... I'm busy," she said.

  "You see?" Everyone studying and why? Not to approve and, in the best of cases, if you approve salts of the institute without work. To go with dad and mom.

  She smiled. In fact, Sheryl, that was her name, thought the same. It is as if that boy difficult to see had read the thoughts. The first impression had been good.

  "Yes, you're right," said Sheryl.

  "Of course I do,” Justin spread his arms on the cold January morning.

  Sheryl was not particularly pretty, but she had beautiful blue eyes, but her hair, straight and straight, took shape behind the ears forcing them forward, creating a good red bulge on both sides of the head. She was white-skinned, too white, thin, and her body was slightly bent. I had no friends or friends. He had never been with a boy and his hobby was self-harm. Her whole body was the map of the United States by the scars that were obviously hidden behind her always thin dress and gray anorak.

  "Would you like something to eat?" Justin asked, grinning from ear to ear.

  “It's okay.”

  And on that cold January morning Justin Curtis had already chosen his next victim as she got up from the bench where she sat, picking up the books in her backpack.

  3

  In about two and a half weeks Justin Curtis already had Sheryl in his pockets. She always knew what to expect from him. It was like a perfect friendship in which everything works well and nothing is twisted, until it does so suddenly. But at the moment it was his fourth victim and he had to prelude before. The two went to the same class in high school, and so far Sheryl had gone unnoticed by him. More than anything because her first three murders were girls from another "caste". Another personal style, he said continuously. But now that he had picked up on it, they were all worth it. Even Sheryl, with her bamboo ears tossed forward.

  But Sheryl also had her oddities. Something Justin had not yet figured out. The cuts, scars on all parts of the body. But since it was winter now I could not see her arms like that. But for the moment, during these two and a half weeks, Sheryl could have recovered something lost for her and she was happy and, simply, she had no reason to self-injure herself, she said. A breath. Perhaps he had given himself a break, sometimes that happened.

  Just a breather.

  4

  At four weeks, in theory, one knows enough to go to the kiss or the date with something else. She trusted him fully, so she accepted the proposal. They were going to spend the evening in a rented motel room. There is always a beginning, she told herself. And what could be an evening with eternal conversation included could end in the fourth murder of Justin. So he had rented the room with a false name, and in his little backpack he wore woolen gloves and a razor blade; In fact, it took two, in case something failed. He was anxious and his heart beat until he wanted to get out of his chest. In all this time, everything had been a maneuver and I felt nothing for her. Sheryl, however, did begin to feel something for Justin. Something that, perhaps, was going to prove to him tonight.

  "I think something's going to happen tonight," she said with another drink, as she stared into Justin's eyes, which was right in front of her inches apart, leaning against her thin body and dirty hair.

  “Oh yeah! Of course something's going to happen tonight," Justin said with an unusual gleam in his eyes.

  He was moving his hand to his backpack when she realized it and told him.

  "Are you looking for the condom?" Justin frowned.

  "Well, not exactly. "I'm going to get some gum, do you want some?" I have strawberries and mint.

  Sheryl shook her head and then it was when he took the knife from her backpack without her seeing it. At that moment, she
reached out to pick up a gum, but what she received was a stabbing pain in the palm of the hand in the gloom. After a while he noticed something hot coming from her after almost instantaneous removal.

  "I'm going to give you what you deserve," Justin said as he lunged at her. And it was precisely the moment when Sheryl's eyes shone in the dim light and, opening her mouth, showed her sharp fangs, which, a second later, sank into his neck.

  And that's why they never found the killer of the three girls. Sheryl disappeared from the place and was never heard of. In truth, no one had ever known anything about her or her family. Justin appeared dead, bled, the next morning at the shabby motel. The ruthless murderer died at the hands of a vampire woman. Only two precise holes in the neck, in the jugular, but large enough to bleed in a few seconds.

  5

  Somewhere in the state of Maine, in the hardest winter known since the last twenty-five years, Sheryl was hitchhiking on a main road. A car slowed and stopped a few meters ahead. After a while, she reached the car. The window went down.

  "What does a girl as young as you do on this cold winter night hitchhiking?" The driver asked, an old man with a cigar walking past his lips.

  "I'm cold, will you take me to Bangor?"

  "Of course, come up."

  "Thank you, sir, you are very kind."

  And after pulling out the car Sheryl took one of her hands to her mouth to make sure that the fang, either one of them, had returned to normal, and it was. They followed the route slowly.

  Just as killers exist, so do vampires. Justin this time you got the wrong prey.

  The Curious Case of Mr. Carl Farmer

  "What? Were you surprised by the end, Mr. Bram Stoker?" The warden stood with one hand resting on his prominent belly.

  Bram Stoker from his seat on the left side of the table, nodded delicately. The caretaker was satisfied with it. He turned to the fireplace and picked up a burning log at one end to revive the fire of the two torches on the mantelpiece. He picked up a bowl of flammable liquid and added a few drops to the steaming torch that flashed again with flaming flames waving in the air of the room.