The Warden of the Castle

by Claudio Hernández

  The cigarette man heard the phone ring on the driver's side of the car. He looked around and saw very dim lights far enough to think he would have time to pick up the cell phone. So he took a chance, turning the vehicle around on the driver's side, but Mack was going at such an excessive speed that it hit him.

  He only had time to see something disappear beneath his wheels, first the front ones and then the back ones, taking a small boat and felt something crushing in the air as he hit the brake. Gale and Jim were fired to the front of the car when the car slowed down and, very abruptly, going from one hundred twenty to zero kilometers an hour along the black traces of the tires that squeaked at once. In the back, smoky smoke gleamed between the signaling lights and, further down the road, in the middle of the road, there was a still body on the discontinuous line.

  "I killed him!" Cried Mack terribly frightened.

  “You've done it? What was it?” Jim asked.

  "A fucking person!"

  Gale was stunned by the blow that hit the driver's side seat. When he finally came to himself, drunkenness gave way to lucidity as if by magic.

  "We have to notify the police," Gale added in an act of full kindness and obligation.

  “No! You're crazy, I do not have a driving license,” Mack was very nervous, still not letting go of the steering wheel and the engine was on, roaring like a demon under the moon. Someone is going to come and get me, maybe even the police.

  Suddenly, he accelerated and continued the march to find the next exit and make a change of direction. In search of a shortcut that will take him to another town without having to go through the highway.

  “Are you crazy! Do not you see that it's worse now? Shouted Jim. "You just complicated our lives," he warned, dropping into the backseat. Do you really think you did not leave the license plate right there or even the whole bumper?

  “I don `t believe. I have not registered for three days or bumpers. My brother will be fixing it...”

  “Oh my God!” Exclaimed Gale. Great. Solved.

  Two miles down he took to the right, there was a detour in which you could make a change of direction, but Mack decided to take the shortcut under the bridge to the goat's slope. From there he would go to the highest part of the mountain, where the television repeaters were and from there he would go down another road to another town, about thirty kilometers from the current one. For a few minutes the uncertainty and silence reigned inside.

  2

  Mack was now more focused on the road, which became narrow and difficult because of the numerous curves he had. Behind, Gale and Jim were silent, wanting to vomit from the constant wiggling of the car. In a "zas" things had changed. Of being back from a party to be accomplices of involuntary homicide with omission of relief, at least. If the police located them, they would be cannon fodder. And that did not like Mack. But I could not decide on the lives of others either. So he stopped the car. In the middle of the night.

  "You're not to blame. "I want you to get out of the car now," Mack ordered, his engine roaring.

  "No Mack, we'll go with you." Do not fuck with me. Are you going to leave us here in the middle of the night on the longest road or shortcut in the world?

  "Stop arguing, guys.

  "I told you that you have a chance." Nobody has to know that you are in the car. You leave and you will be acquitted of various crimes. I take responsibility for everything.

  “Ha! And why did not you stop before?” Gale was now quizzed. That poor man or woman is dead back there. He paused to inhale air and continued. The police would only have blamed you for not having a driving license, but at least you might have saved the life of that man or whatever...

  "Do you want to go down now or continue with the march...?”

  “Do what you want! We do not plan on moving from here now," Jim said, folding his arms.

  And then the vehicle's engine roared in the dark and Mack took another turn in the second.

  3

  Suddenly, a car came from the front. Two large lights that grew in size and luminosity as they approached. Mack called for calm in the backseat, lest it be a police car. But, in fact, he already had the feeling that that would not happen. He moved aside to the side of the road, as both vehicles could not pass together along the width of the road and, at very slow speed, saw the vehicle pass. It was a hearse.

  "What was missing," Jim growled back, "a hearse. I know where they need one right now...

  “Shut up!” Mack interrupted. The jokes are just.

  “What?!”

  And then they went on. Slowly, Mack was climbing the goat's slope. Until a few months ago it was a dirt road and now it was paved, although not painted. But that did not matter now. He drove quite well, because of the bumps and that. He drove up and then down, now unpaved, for over an hour. Something strange, he must have made a mistake on the way, because he suddenly found that he was at the beginning of the game. Under the bridge. It could not be. Now they would have to be thirty kilometers to the north.

  “Fuck! Mack muttered, put the first and the roar of the engine occupied the silence of the night, except for the loons that inhabited there. He stood on the goat's slope again, and this time he stopped about three kilometers away from an abandoned house on the right, in the middle of the field. He entered by a dirt road and hid among the trees.

  "Guys, it's time to urinate," Mack said, turning off the engine.

  It was the place where every year spent a picnic. A safe place, hidden. So they knew the area perfectly. It was difficult to get lost, and less so when the moonlight bathed in silver the sinister place. Jim and Gale got out of the car.

  4

  The cry broke the silence of the night and it was Gale who found Jim's body stamped against one of the doors of the house with a gallows pierced in the head. Mack came to the scene to calm Gale. Now they knew what the fear of the unknown was. Now they knew what death was. Such a safe place and this would have happened... What had happened? Why this death so brutal in the middle of nowhere?

  "Maybe someone is chasing you to avenge his death."

  It was a vague idea.

  Hysterical, Gale did not want to get into the car again. But suddenly, gleaming headlights shone in the distance. It was a car. Mack tightened his grip on Gale's mouth. In the distance, they saw the hearse again. Lowering impassively the slope of the goat.

  “God!” muttered Mack.

  In five minutes they got into the car and left the place. Gale was still whining in the back.

  5

  After a prudent time driving in silence, Mack noticed that he returned to the same place at the beginning. That was practically impossible! They were circling; But it was impossible, because the slope of the goat had only one entrance and one exit, at the other end of the mountains.

  "Oh, shit, shit!" Mack shouted as he struck the wheel. What the fuck is going on tonight? He shifted, put the first, and the front wheels scraped the ground, skidding back to the goat's slope.

  6

  Out of curiosity, out of curiosity, Mack went to the same house as before. And he discovered that Jim was no longer there. The surprise was fair for both of us.

  "He's gone," Gale murmured, which was about to whine again.

  “Fuck! What's going on tonight? Did someone put drugs in our drinks as a practical joke?”

  "No," Gale said, shaking his head.

  "Nothing!" We continue with the game!

  They got into the car again and continued driving another ten minutes uphill until the engine started jumping and jostling, they ran out of gas. It was made to one side and the engine stopped.

  “Fuck!” Mack shouted, punching him again at the wheel. On this occasion he struck several blows to release his contained anger. Gale was scared and quiet in the backseat, almost huddled.

  Then they saw two lighthouses in the distance. This time he would go down and ask for help. When the vehicle lived up to them, they observed with horror that it was the same hearse as before. Al
ways the same damn hearse. It would be four o'clock in the morning and they had seen him several times. And the moon was still up there with the luck of not being covered by any cloud.

  Mack was out of the car when he saw the hearse pass by. Gale was still inside. When, suddenly, an instant after the vehicle passed unmoved by them without stopping at Mack's request, a river of drops of blood spattered the windshield of the car. Something in the middle of nowhere had skewed Mack's neck at Gale's watchful eye. He fell to the ground and that was the image that Gale recorded in the retinas. He started screaming hysterically right there, inside the car, which remained with the lights on, lighting up Mack's body and the big blood stain on the floor.

  7

  After a long and intense time, Gale got out of the car and ran as far as the light of the car reached, but suddenly he realized that Mack's body was not lying there on the inert ground, there was nobody or nothing. It was all like a dream. She stopped in panic, and with tears in her eyes returned to the car. This time the hearse headed in the direction of the previous occasions. Gale was so frightened that he did not go out, someone shouted down his throat. She was choking on a panic attack. The hearse stopped at its height, with the engine idling and the lights on. Suddenly, the back door opened and a strong arm pulled her into it. The door closed and the hearse took off. Gale's cry of hysteria could not be heard because of the sound of the vehicle, and his face in terror disappeared in the darkness of the halos of the moon.

  The fact is that everyone had died in the accident.

  Children That Disappear

  The sun began to rise and the storm did not subside, nor did the wolf cry.

  The watchman with a broken voice and the half-smoked torches, rose from his comfortable armchair accompanied by the hoarse clatter of feet on the ground, which forced to mark a rictus on his lips to those present, was dedicated to take a small trunk that was burning inside the shrouded fireplace and with the flame that looked like a torch, lit the torches again. The flames were born weak at their ends, which drew strange shadows on the ceiling and on the surface of the table. Some of those present, who were still standing straight on their comfortable chairs and elbows resting on the table, might have played with those strange shadows, but they did not.

  Meanwhile, the watchman, he had taken a vessel with a flammable liquid that overturned the faint flames of the two torches and suddenly the light became, dismal, but gave that magical luster again to sit down to tell more terrifying tales. The caretaker left the vessel on the surface of a sixteenth-century piece of furniture, in which a candelabrum full of cobwebs rested.

  "I have little voice tonight. "I've lost count of the stories I've told tonight to those here," but still, although the voice is hoarse, I have the strength to tell a story more . That will arouse your curiosity from the beginning.

  The guests shook their heads in unison, but quietly. Now the shadows on the table formed strange, clearer forms, like the silhouettes of an enchanted forest full of trees and wolves howling. One of them, his gaze was lost on the table, but he returned to reality when the watchman moved the noisy chair again.

  “Sorry! It was a bit uncomfortable," he explained, buttoning the last button on his green jacket. The story that comes now is boys and girls. Come on, teenagers. In Boad Hill very rare things happen, but this one takes the palm. It lasted for a month, until there were no brats left, although there were three of them behind the track of the strange events that happened in August 1983. It begins with the presence of a tall man with entrances in the forehead. And then an inexplicable and dense fog, like a great pompous cloud, hid a mystery and the three boys were advancing in their investigation until the others and I do not say who scratched the windows of the windows with their broken nails and the noise was simply unbearable.

  The watchman was silent for a moment in which only the crackling of the burning logs and the flames dancing on them were heard. Then he continued.

  “The story that follows is called, the children who disappear. And this is the last story I will tell you this time...”

  1

  Edward, Charles, Patrick, Norton, Linda, Betty or Susan were some of the names that from early August 1983 were part of the hundreds of ads displaying the message "Missing" and Sherman Coleman or Bannerman for some, found collapsed calls and supplications of mothers and parents whining in his office.

  From the time that tall man in black came in with deep entrances in his white hair, long in the back and dark eyes, things began to happen in the small town of Boad Hill.

  Bobby, Tom, and Danny were witnesses as the tall man took with his own hands and without anyone's help, Mrs. Rosenbaurt's coffin, as if it were a painted cork block and put it in the hearse that had never been there, Since this one, was very different to the two hearses that were known in the city in those eighties years.

  And with him came the thick fog that every night after appearing from the forest, took the streets of the city in a sudden silence and bitter taste in the throat.

  Something was happening there, and the three thirteen-year-old researchers had to solve the riddle.

  2

  "Did you see how he took the coffin alone?" Bobby was sitting on the floor of the cottage, which he had built on top of three trees, between him and his two inseparable friends Tom and Danny. To tell the truth, Tom's father, who was a carpenter and only he, had helped them lay the foundation of the strong hut that each day held the almost one hundred kilos that the three boys weighed.

  "Yes, it looked as if he had taken a huge cotton candy," Tom explained as he lifted his mouth to the sandwich his mother had prepared for him.

  "I do not know how you can eat so much," Danny said, adjusting his black glasses over his long nose.

  "Why do you mess with me?" Tom grunted.

  "Halt guys! We're talking about the tall man and not what Tom eats. "He pointed to Tom's sandwich, which was already grazing on his white teeth, which turned brown as the chocolate cream spilled over his lips. Bobby stopped pointing when he saw that.

  "Where did the man come from?" Danny wondered aloud.

  Tom shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich. He was the fat guy in the group, with a prominent belly, round face and plump hands, with blond curly hair.

  Bobby was the normal boy in quotation marks, who wore dark shorts and a white T-shirt that always had some stain. Danny was the one with the thick glasses with nearsightedness and the typical nerd, too, thin, perhaps, too thin. His legs now, in the month of August they looked like two sticks with a label on the knees that looked like bumps. His big black shoes always had a loose drawstring.

  But all three were friends and got along very well and called themselves "The Crazy Heads" for their adventures in the woods and their strange tales around the fire or inside the cottage that would be at a height of three stories. From the door like a big open eye to the floor hung a stairway made of two ropes and dozens of tables that served as steps. Sometimes they swayed in it like Tarzan did in the lianas in his films, except that none of the boys imitated Tarzan's cry.

  "I do not know," Tom said, his mouth smeared with chocolate.

  "That's not normal," Bobby insisted, being the most active of the three. "We have to find out who it's about and where it comes from and what a hearse it is." "He paused, his eyes squinting, and he added. It is longer than normal. Had you noticed?

  Danny shook his head.

  "For me, all the funeral cars are the same. They give me reprisal all equally.

  "Shut up Danny!" Cried Tom, as the hairs on the back of her neck came up like pillows.

  "There's a burial tomorrow," Bobby said, looking at them with his big eyes now shining.

  "Who smacked today?" Tom asked.

  "Mrs. Palmer," Bobby said with a serious face.

  "Ah! It was all Danny moaned from a corner of the cabin, his legs crossed.

  "Tomorrow after the funeral we will return to the cemetery..."

  "Ah! Tom said, still concentratin
g on his sandwich.

  And that's how it all started.

  Well, it had already begun with the tall man, but the fog and the sudden disappearances of the children of Boad Hill were still missing.

  3

  After the burial ceremony, the priest lowered his eternal hands lifted throughout the funeral process, praising Christ and his goodness to take into account from now on, once you were buried beneath the earth. No one answered his last word. There was no pronounced "Amen," but a few isolated cries and someone who sounded the snot loudly.

  Now Mrs. Palmer was entrusted to God, and though no one has been able to return from beyond, to explain what the hell happens when you stretch your leg, all the world's religions went their way with their Gods.

  Joe's little digger, the undertaker began to move and grunting once the relatives of the deceased and the widower had retired, he looked for the last time, the ditch he had dug for her. Her eyes were not watery or bloody. In fact, he cared for a cucumber Palmer. Hands with a black glove embroidered with strong thread, gripped the thrust handles, and the wheels of the invalid chair marked two curved lines in the sand of the ground and later, it squashed part of the newly watered turf.

  Bobby was hidden behind the trees that led to the cemetery, hiding like a wolf, sure that his next prey would appear there, thanks to his nose.

  “So, what can we do now?” Tom asked, his face swollen.

  “Shut up! It was Bobby's hissing voice that stared wide-eyed that August morning. And the little yellow bulldozer.”

  "Joe's deaf," Danny explained, blinking under the thick glasses of his glasses.

  Tom nudged him. It was his uncle.

  Meanwhile, the little digger, which had become a reflective mirror under the copious sun with a T-shirtless Joe sitting in his seat and sweating copiously, began to fill the pit with dirt. Then, under the purr of the engine, Bobby decided it was time to wait, crouched, until the tall man came back, if he came back.

  But the hands of the clock began to spin very slowly in his wrists, the heat to succumb in their small bodies and Tom did not stop to say that he was hungry and when at last, being about to throw the towel, when the sun had already reached Three quarters of the sky, the tall man appeared at last in his hearse.