The Kingdom of the Damned

by Mario Garrido Espinosa

  “And they were related, sister?” Irene asked more for winding the nun than for interest.

  “Well, the truth is that it is not known. Of course, all the people believed it without exceptions, but they did not talk about it, out of fear. Fifteen days were enough for the virgin to emigrate from the church again. A Franciscan monk who was passing through the place lent himself to go and look for it, because no one from Hard-course seemed to want to expose themselves to the strange diseases of their two neighbors.”

  “And something happened to the Franciscan?”

  “At the beginning not, but then...“ The religious closed and opened her eyelids in another gesture without meaning. “The monk left the morning after the image disappearance and returned in the afternoon as healthy as he had left. He said to leave the Virgin in peace, because his desire was to be in that place, that is, in the baldness of the Black Pine forest. Then they accused him of being a blasphemer, a Jew, a heretic and a liar, and they drove him out of the village, receiving the same treatment as a plague victim. After this, they sent a dispatch to the Grand Inquisitor, so he would know that a Franciscan monk had gone astray in the fields of Gurracam.

  “The image remained in the bald then?”

  “It doesn’t. Four bullies and atheists volunteered to return the Virgin to her place of origin, now that the curse of the disease had passed; because remember, daughter, that the monk was still alive when he returned from seeing the Virgin.”

  “Did something happen to the men?”

  "The four died of colossal astonishment the night after doing the work," Sister Marie the Second said, moving her arm up and down. "«It's the end of the world», many locals said, and almost all the neighbors ended up thinking that this was as true as the ground they walked on. The Grand Inquisitor sent one of his ministers and in the square town read to all the inhabitants a statement that said, more or less: Lucifer has awakened from his sleep and prepares a thousand and one misfortunes. Something terrible must charge on your conscience for this unquestionable fact to occur. The Blessed One knows it and for that reason she does not allow her image to reside in this condemned town. The fault is yours. Only yours. What have you done, sinners! Repent or provoke the end of the world. Repent or you will pay by burning your soul in Hell...”

  "Of course, they were not right," Irene interrupted.

  “Sure daughter, the proof is that the world continues to exist and here it is not remembered that the devil never visited us.”

  "Then that minister of the Grand Inquisitor was a liar," she said smiling.

  Sister Marie the Second slapped Irene in the mouth, and her smile broke. Sir Higinio’s daughter did not respond to the attack by very little.

  “What are you saying! No man of the Church is a liar, much less the parents of the Holy Office that God keeps forever.” The sister crossed herself quickly and mechanically. “Simply many people misinterpret their discourses and teachings. They transform them into their own convenience. Do you understand?”

  "Excuse me sister," Irene apologized, surprisingly controlling the urge to slap her interlocutor. “Follow with the story please”.

  "The Virgin, of course, escaped again," Sister María Second said, resuming her legend again, "and this time nobody wanted to know anything, whether they were an atheist or the best of Christians.”

  "So, he stayed on the bald patch of the forest," Irene pointed out, feigning interest.

  “That's right, daughter. A month later this story came to Lady Anna Margaret Leoni Coello of Austria’s ears, the second Archduchess of Squill River Hard-course. The woman, with a clear mind and great religiosity, as it must be, soon saw clearly that what she had to do, as a good Christian, was to build a convent in that bald forest, where the Virgin had indicated that she wanted to be. She spent much of her fortune in this action that will honor her forever.”

  Irene Lopezosa silently weighed the possibility that the existence of such a foolish person, in her view, was true. The sister kept talking without stopping:

  "Everyone admired the Archduchess' courage when she went to look for the image in the forest glade, without fear of superstitious diseases or witch curses. Lady Anna Margaret, of course, absolutely nothing happened to her, and Our Lord saw fit to take her to heaven forty years later. The convent inaugurated it herself in the year 1570.”

  Sister Marie the Second had nothing more to tell, so she sent her pupil to continue the previous day reading.

  “Sister, I do not remember to have seen the Virgin image, here, in the convent. Which one is it?” Irene asked with some curiosity, as she went to her usual lectern.

  “My daughter! The image disappeared more than fifty years ago...," it was the unclear answer. “Go on, read aloud.”

  Irene began the persecutions that occurred in the time of Antiochus reading, told in a magnificent volume of the Maccabees’ second book that the convent had among its most precious, since it was illuminated with beautiful drawings of impossible vegetables that were intertwined so geometric with each other, showing in what pages some little animals, which were not always easy to identify.

  It did not take long for Sister Marie the Second to fall asleep, and Irene went back to meditating on loose pieces of her revenge. Neither of them knew that the image, or to be more exact, the pieces that were left of it, was not far from there; specifically, in a corner forgotten in the basement of the enclosure.

  Half a century before the mother superior, Sister Marciana de Jesus, discovered a manuscript scroll between the pages of a Vincent Espinel’s work copy "The Esquire Marcus Obregon’s life and adventures " that in the library remained raising dust and years. The file indicated that the figure was hollow and inside it housed a treasure. On St. John’s night, the superior ordered her nuns to pray until dawn locked in their cells and that they would not come out under any pretext, whatever they heard; the reason for this decision was that the Evil One was going to haunt the area and he was going to tempt them.

  At twelve o'clock at night, Sor Marciana pushed the image against the ground and, as it did not break, an iron cross was found, which is not less than one meter. Although it weighed, it turned out to be a perfect tool that undid the wood and split the Virgin around the waist in such a way that if it had been human the show would have been monstrous.

  Indeed, from the entrails of the Most Holy Virgin of All Faithful Dead came two gold chalices inlaid with diamonds and pearls, as well as more than one hundred heavy gold coins from the time when Gurracam was a Roman province.

  Sister Marciana de Jesus, the most devout and faultless of all the Augustinian Recollects that had hitherto been given, disappeared from the convent without anyone ever seeing her again.

  4

  “Sisters!” Sister Lorenza Justiniana called at one of the lunches. “Seven months ago, Sister Irene arrived with the Evil One in her body, but God has worked the miracle of exorcism in her. I have decided that we should dedicate this afternoon and those of the next three months to pray, to thank the Almighty for the portent with which he has honored our beloved sister Irene. When we finish praying the Rosary, we will rest for ten minutes and begin with the new prayer, until it is time to pray Vespers. I'm sure Sister Irene came to this convent to stop serving the Evil One and start praising the greatness of God. My heart is happy for it.”

  “Mother Reverend, may I speak?” Sister Micaela asked, asking permission to break the vow of voluntary silence that they imposed on themselves at meals.

  “You may, Sister.”

  “I propose that we add a vigil every week.”

  Half of the nuns looked somewhat dissatisfied to Sister Micaela, but the abbess mother said:

  “Very well. So, it will be done.”

  Irene Lopezosa pretended to be happy with everything, but she did not break the vow of silence. Inside, she was furious at the number of hours that the new prayers and vigils were going to steal from her, but she hid it very well. In order to carry out her plan, all those hours
were precious and the less she had the less quickly she could execute it. Despite this new setback, she hoped to have good luck.

  "Sister Irene, listen to me," the sister superior continued. “The entire congregation is very happy that it finally understands that based on austerity and a well-worn religious life, you will gradually find your lost virtue. In this retreat, defended from all the infamous distractions of the outside world, you will dedicate yourself for life, as you have done so far, to the maximum liberations that this world can give you, which as you know is work and prayer.”

  "Forgive me Your Motherhood, but you forget about obedience," added Sister Micaela, who by far was the one with the greatest devotion, and of the few who really took her job seriously all the time, without asking questions. In fact, she was the only one who had voluntarily chosen to be a nun as a young woman.

  “It is true. A well-understood obedience, it means, as the Holy Mother Church teaches us, may well represent a liberation. Keep this in mind from now on.” The Superior looked away from Sister Micaela. “And you, sister, will do well to keep quiet from now on, as do the rest of the people here during lunch.”

  Sister Micaela looked at her plate somewhat embarrassed and did not open her mouth again.

  Irene Lopezosa shook her head indicating that she would follow the advice of Sister Lorenza Justiniana. Then she faked the expression of joy that would put a child who is given a reward for good behavior.

  “Speaking of another matter, your father told us that your skills included drawing and painting. Sister Prudencia Ferdinalda, who in the glory of God is, also had the divine gift of expressing images on a canvas. She painted that painting," Sister Lorenza Justiniana said, pointing with her index finger to a painting that reflected an almost real Christ, carrying the cross on its back. “The poor sister died a few years ago, leaving one of her works half finished. She wanted to paint Jesus preaching on the Mount of Olives, but God wanted to take her away first. Maybe you, sister, want to finish this painting.”

  Irene was silent.

  "You can talk sister," the superior ordered, allowing her to break the vow of silence.

  "I do not know if I'll be capable," Sister Irene admitted, not knowing what in the hell her father had said to the nun.

  “With trying, it will already honor Sister Prudencia Ferdinalda’s memory and to us too.”

  “Your Reverend Mother puts me in a bind. I have not painted for years, and Sister Prudencia Ferdinalda, from what I see, was a teacher..." Irene invented.

  “I think it's good that you show humility and modesty, but think that paintings, besides being one more way of worshiping our Lord, are also a source of income for the convent. We must subsist, sister, using the skills that God has given us. The Marquis of Sotherton asked us to please finish the painting, and still, evidently, we could not comply. The Marquis, who was always an exemplar Christian, and he shows off by giving good donations, does not deserve this, don’t you think?”

  “May be. That is why God took Sister Prudencia Ferdinalda...”

  All the nuns looked at Irene Lopezosa with the corresponding astonishment. She was wrong! She said directly what she thought, as she did when she was outside the convent. At that moment she realized how much the vow of silence helped her hide her true thoughts.

  She tried to fix it:

  “I mean that The Maker, perhaps, took her away so I could follow her work on my path to virtue. Maybe this is the good intention of the Almighty.” The nuns calmed down a bit, although Sister Cornelia and Sister Cipriana kept watching with little disguised suspicion. “But unfortunately, in my sad previous life of sin, I have lost all my practice.”

  "Then, rehearse first on other blank canvases," said the superior full of enthusiasm. “The one that was, can be again. Remember sister, that painting well is not learned, it is given to us or denied by the Lord when we are born. Therefore, neither forget nor remember; only hides... Just make an intention to find it.”

  “It will take time.”

  “You have all the time in the world here...”

  Irene Lopezosa remained pensive, but as sooner or later she would have no choice but to accept the absurd commission, she said:

  “All right, I'll try.”

  “That's very good. It will be something very beautiful that will do well to your spirit and keep you away from impure thoughts. Tomorrow I will give you all the material used by Sister Prudencia Ferdinalda and the painting that will end.”

  Irene Lopezosa received without fail the next day the pictorial belongings of the dead nun. There were four things. It was admirable that with so few utensils and so primitive, Sister Prudencia Ferdinalda had managed to finish such beautiful, realistic and well-cared pictures, with only credible details in the great masters of this art.

  On the posthumous canvas of the sister painter, Jesus could be seen half drawn. Only the upper part of the character and the landscape on the right were finished. In the rest of the image there was only the white, a little yellowish, of the unpainted canvas, where some strokes could be distinguished.

  Irene Lopezosa cornered the entire lot in her cell and did not touch it by mistake. She had never drawn anything well. She had not even considered it. She did not know any pictorial technique, and, in addition, she had not taken a brush in her whole life. She almost did not know what that was. The most she came to do was obscene drawings to Laura with a pen on a parchment. They represented most of the time human and animal genitals, without excitement and in full swing. Only with a lot of imagination and thanks to the easy verb of Irene, her sister did imagine, a little and from a distance, what she meant by those strange graphics.

  Sir Higinio must have lied to the nuns when they asked him what his daughter knew to do well. Surely the first thing that occurred to him was the painting, which he knew on good authority that was well appreciated in an enclosure where half of the day was spent, and the other half too, praising images hanging on the wall.

  CHAPTER 14

  Night skin

  1

  M

  ario Toulon Middle-Voice Rabid separated the eyelids from his eyes very slowly. When he managed to half-open them enough to see something, he felt as fatigued as he was after doing superhuman work; so, he closed them again.

  A while later, making an effort to control his eyelids —which seemed heavy as if they were slabs— he tried again to open them and then he experienced the unpleasant sensation that the sunlight rays pointed directly at his eyes, which were too long time in the most complete darkness. But now he did not close his eyelids, fearing he could not muster the strength to open them again.

  Minutes later, the blurred forms that he saw became more or less defined objects.

  He turned his neck a little and scanned everything that surrounded him but gave up quickly for causing himself a terrible damage. He did not recognize anything that surrounded him. He never seemed to have been there. He did not remember anything of what had happened to him and the only thing that came to mind was a couple of diffuse, big and smiling men, who could not recognize either. They beat him mercilessly, in the not too distant past. More like it happened yesterday or a few hours ago. He also saw himself digging on the ground. Digging a grave!

  He tried to move, but quickly understood that he could not. There were parts of his body that he did not feel, and he knew it for the simple fact that they did not hurt him.

  Mario Toulon was inside a shack almost in ruins. He was surrounded by four fat walls half demolished, composed of stone and adobe in decomposition. He was lying on a pressed earth floor, on an old threadbare blanket, full of holes, and that once must have been of many bright colors. On the floor, several casseroles could be seen deposited, blankets in poor condition and four or five odds and ends Mario Toulon could not distinguish what they were. From the ceiling hung two barracuda loins curing in the sun, which, according to what time of day, entered through one of the holes in the wall. That was all. No tables, no chairs, no lamps, no fu
rniture...

  That place had a concentrated smell of marsh and seaweed. So dense it was that almost seemed to chew the salinity of the environment. Outside we could hear the harsh squawks of the seagulls, mixed with the language of cormorants, gannets and skuas. Above all this scandal, the explosions of a sea raging, too close, were noted with all their strength and power.

  He was alone. He tried to scream but his voice did not reach the necessary volume. Soon he realized that he was at the mercy of any animal that could enter through a hole in the wall. The images of the two guys hitting him came back to mind. Sometimes he saw the punches and the kicks come to him so clearly that his body tried to emit, almost automatically, a spasmodic movement that never came to a climax. Would they still be close to him? If they showed up, he could not defend himself. His body was immobilized, although there was no rope that caught him. He seemed to have an unbreakable shell that enveloped him. He was in a desperate situation. He started to get very nervous.

  The noise of the sea did not stop. The sea. The damn sea. He had never liked that mass of unpredictable water. As soon as he was calm, he unleashed all his murderous fury. He did not know how to swim or had never tried it. Once he was on one of the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and just seeing the waves became sick and fell to the floor passed out. And he did not fail to perceive sensations of the proximity of the sea!

  Suddenly he heard footsteps.

  2