Silent Island

by Pablo Poveda

  “You?” he asked. “What do you want? Is it money? Is that what you are after? You are pathetic.”

  I exploded. I simply could not restrain myself and exploded.

  Ortiz flinched, shaky, and cornered like a frightened Siamese. Suddenly, he burst into laughter. He walked to his desk and sat like I was not even there.

  “Poor fool,” — he continued wiping his blood off with a handkerchief — “Now, leave me alone. I have work to do.”

  I took the letter opener from a cup on his desk, grabbed him by the arm — tense and resisting — and pressed it against the table, and before he could realize it, drove the blade through his hand.

  He yelled in pain.

  I pulled the weapon out, stained in blood, and stabbed his hand three more times.

  The noise of the flesh breaking, and bones cracking was chilling.

  Tears rolled down his swollen face.

  “Tell me where the girl is,” I ordered him. “Don’t make me hurt you furthermore.”

  Ortiz would not answer. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and raised him a few inches before dropping him. He began to cry like a child, and then, I saw a tattoo on his chest. I opened his shirt completely. It was a map. The map of an island. He was not the kind of person from whom one could expect something like that.

  “Stop,” he said exhaustedly. “This is too big for you.”

  “Tell me how to get there,” I replied.

  “You’ll have to figure it out yourself.”

  I produced the letter opener and drove it through his hand one more time.

  * * *

  When I got to the headquarters of the Silent Brotherhood, I found a police operation within the facilities. Snoops surrounded the place. The café nearby had turned into a war room for media correspondents and camera crews. Two patrol wagons were parked at the entrance of the building, their doors wide open. Agents came and went all over the place — taking statements, dragging handcuffed detainees to the wagons, breaking furniture, opening boxes, and confiscating documentation.

  “Hey!” a police officer called me out. “You cannot be here.”

  “I’m looking for Officer Rojo,” I said.

  “You’ll have to wait with the rest,” he responded.

  “You won’t find anything in there,” I said at the same time I pretended to walk in. “Let me talk to Rojo.”

  “I said that you have to wait,” — he pointed his baton at me — “Don’t you get on my nerves, understood?”

  “You are wasting your time here,” I replied.

  I tried calling Rojo, but his phone kept directing me to voice mail. Most of the members arrested were men. Relaxed and handcuffed, they walked calmly with their faces covered with jackets to avoid the press. Nobody knew what had happened there, but me. Suddenly, the elderly women of the neighborhood started to chit chat. I head a rumor while I was standing there. The different versions mutated as they spread. They talked about sects and satanic rituals where they spilled innocent blood.

  “Sons of bitches!” a man shouted with impotence, without knowing why he was protesting. “You, bunch of sons of bitches!”

  The operation led to a generalized fuss in the street. More police patrols, news wagons, and an ambulance arrived. The mothers of some of the girls who had been arrested fainted.

  “This is a scandal!” cried a woman from a balcony. “What kind of world is this we live in? Mother of God!”

  Then, Rojo appeared clad in a red shirt and hair slicked back. Upon appearing, all reporters and correspondents charged at him. Some officers tried to calm the news crews while Rojo repeated that there would be a press conference soon. He looked tense because he did not know how to fix the mess he had just created for himself. He may not have realized that that had been just a setup planned by one of the thinking heads of the group. I was leaning against a car when he spotted me among the crowd. We held each other’s gaze. I gestured at him and walked toward an alley. He followed me, visibly angry, grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted. “You knew it, right? Son of a bitch!”

  I pushed him away.

  “Hey!” I said. “Calm down. I tried to tell you.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know where they are,” I replied. “I know everything. And they have Blanca. That’s the last thing Clara said to me.”

  “Shit,” he cursed. “Give me the address.”

  “You’ll have to take a boat.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “They are on an island.”

  “That makes no sense. Why would they do such a thing? They would be trapped.”

  “You have to believe me,” I explained. “I came down to see Ortiz. He’s got a little map of the island tattooed on his chest.”

  “He might come from a family of fishermen,” he speculated.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I uttered. “Tell me, did you find anything?”

  “I hope you’re not wrong,” he said and called an agent. They had not found anything. He turned to the officer and ordered Ortiz’s detention. Then he looked at me and ordered squarely, “Let’s go.”

  I could not refuse, for I was the only one who had been there before. I knew I was going to board a boat toward that island again, but no one would guarantee that would be the last time. This time though, I was in a completely different mind state, one in which I took no pleasure in getting carried away by the unknown. I was terrified. I felt a stinging in my chest, but I told Rojo nothing. One wimp was more than enough. Something was going to happen on the island. I had that feeling. Something horrible was about to happen. But what exactly?

  There was only one way to know.

  * * *

  A patrol car dropped us at the docks. We entered a police office, accompanied by two agents, one of which was who kept me from seeing Rojo a few hours before. The other was a tall, slim young man with strong arms and a beard of several days. His face looked familiar — I recalled having seen him wandering about at the headquarters on various occasions.

  Rojo was on the phone all the time while I smoked a cigarette and waited for the preparations to finish. The other two spoke with each other. They looked nervous, overwhelmed by the ongoing events. I decided not to intervene. I learned from my mistakes and did not want to come across as some know-it-all smartass.

  Rojo came out; we headed to the dock and prepared to board a police boat.

  “Ortiz has been arrested,” he said, upset. “He was at the hospital. You and I will have a word.”

  We boarded the vessel. The deafening sound of the motor shut us up. Alicante’s harbor looked reddish under the sunlight. The sky was mostly clear, and barely a few clouds here and there stretched until the horizon. It would have made a very romantic image were it not for the scenario in which I found myself. I promised myself to bring a girl to that place one day.

  My strength began to waver, and I sat down.

  The three policemen looked ahead.

  The small island was visible in the distance. We all wondered what was happening there. Tabarca was once a lair of Barbary pirates, later repopulated by Italian and Spanish fishermen, and then became an extension of the province of Santa Pola. No one cared much who lived or what happened on the island until wealthy businessmen began investing in housing. Tabarca had gone from being a beautiful and savage location to a touristic discount pigsty full of vulgar hostels and disrespectful visitors.

  The island was no more than a rock in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by boats and seagulls. However, walking among the rusted fences and the lackluster streets, I was intrigued by the appeal the island held for the wealthy who owned property there.

  It was possible to land on the island from anywhere in its perimeter despite having only one harbor. There were two parts to it — the town and the countryside. The lighthouse and the cemetery were found on the latter. There was a police station to preserve law and order, a hostel, and a few houses. Hu
man presence reduced during the cold season when fishermen marooned their boats in Santa Pola or Alicante, yachts did not weigh anchors.

  For this reason, in the winter, the island became a horrific, cold, and windy scenario where hungry animals roamed wild, and waves of the chopped ocean broke against the rocks. When the sun set in the evening, the darkness of the night created a sensation of claustrophobia. Electric light encircled the city sprawl, leaving whatever happened on the other side of the island to the imagination. Someone could die or get killed, and their bodies would not be found until the next day. Or perhaps never. There was no certainty in it.

  The economic boom brought drinking water to the town and extended the fences as far as the beach. It was common knowledge that one could walk in the shadows, and many times, the only things one could find were couples fornicating on the beaches. As one got closer to the cemetery, human presence dwindled. Some people walked by in the morning, but in the afternoon, those were rare, and none by night.

  Religion, superstition, zombie culture, or God knows what, was deeply instilled in the minds of the inhabitants and became evident by nighttime, flooding their thoughts with fears and legends. In other countries, walking by a cemetery at night could mean different things, but in Spain, it had always been like this.

  It was getting dark already, so, by the time we arrived, the sun would have greeted farewell, awaiting a new dawn. Rojo approached me.

  “Here.” He handed me a gun. “Do you know how to use it?”

  The gun was in its holster.

  “I am a virgin when it comes to guns.”

  Grabbing it made me feel powerful and invincible.

  That feeling was the one that could turn humans into savages.

  “Shoot only if you need to,” he said.

  The bearded police looked at us and smiled. He did not say anything. The other one steered the boat. We were getting closer. We spotted the first sailboats around the island.

  “Officer,” shouted the bearded police. “Can you give me a hand here?”

  Rojo turned around and headed to the engine.

  I stayed in my seat, caressing the new toy.

  “What is it?” Rojo asked behind me.

  Suddenly, the police who steered the boat was standing in front of me.

  “Can I help you?” I asked. He did not answer. Everything happened in the blink of an eye. He hit me in the temple. I was not able to dodge his fist. A strong blow, I cannot recall well enough. I felt a strong tingling and heard a noise. Next thing I heard was the sound of struggle.

  “What are you doing?” Rojo said. I was lying on the floor. I heard a blow, maybe two, a detonation, and something fall to the floor of the boat. Stunned by the hit, it was impossible to focus. A completed sequence, the music played by the engines, a summer song in fade out. Then, everything went dark.

  16

  A smell. That smell. It gave me nausea and chills. I could not open my eyes; they hurt as though I had never used them before. They had drugged me; I do not know what I had been administered but was definitely under the influence of a drug. I felt out of myself, or perhaps inside, very deep inside. The effects felt different from those of marijuana or cocaine. It was no hallucinogen either. Otherwise, I would have witnessed colors and shapes.

  I was lying on some rough hard material. My limbs felt so flaccid that I feared not being able to move them ever again. It was as though I had been run over by a train, breaking my bones, and yet, I felt calm and at peace. I wiggled my fingers and then my toes. It was real, very real. I felt an irritating tingling in the head, accompanied by a sharp pain. The worst hangover in my teens could not compare to what I was experiencing. It must have been the blow to the head that that bastard had given me. Again, that smell. I could not get used to it.

  My ears caught a brief melody. It was the impact of some fluid against the wall. It was the sound that waves make when breaking against the rocks. Then, an echo warned me that I was indoors. I opened one eye, then the other one; everything remained pitch dark. I thought I should be afraid but felt so relaxed that I found it impossible. I moved an arm, slowly, and moved it a few centimeters when I suddenly felt something dense and liquid on my fingertips. A rope creaked.

  “Gabriel?” a disoriented voice uttered.

  “Rojo?”

  I heard more creaking. Shit. I felt gravity pulling me down.

  “Where are you?” he said again. “What the hell happened?”

  “Argh!” I fell to the floor. Despite lying on some surface, I slipped like a dead fish.

  A cold sensation surrounded me, impregnating every pore of my skin. A thick and rancid liquid covered me as high as the neck. I lost my footing and sank. Despite not being able to see anything, I knew that I should not panic either. I closed my eyes and let myself sink. When I reached the bottom, I propped myself to the surface and swam slowly to the edge. I found a metal pool ladder — so we were in a pool. I placed one foot on the lower step, and then the other one. I climbed up until I could not find more steps above. I must have been on the ground level; it would not make any sense otherwise. I was soaked in that sticky dark substance.

  “Are you alright?” Rojo asked again. “Where are you?

  Then I knew what it was.

  I felt sick.

  I stuck out my tongue a few centimeters and slightly licked the corner of my mouth. The substance thinned down with my saliva and touched my tongue and taste buds. It had a familiar metallic taste.

  No, it could not be. It was not possible. My strength faltered, I felt the tingling in the head and nearly lost my balance. That sufficed to wake me up entirely, I opened my eyes, and an inner strength awakened within me and rose like foam. I vomited, coughed, and vomited some more.

  The substance was blood. It was blood that filled the swimming pool. I was covered in blood — my body and face. That liquid was blood.

  “No!” I shouted for several seconds. “No! No! No!”

  “Gabriel!” Rojo shouted, worried. “What’s going on?”

  I had no idea where Rojo was. All my clothes were drenched in blood, and I had nothing to clean my face with.

  “Don’t move,” I told him. “Stay where you are and don’t move. I’ll look for a light switch.”

  Rojo seemed terrorized like they had drugged him with something different.

  I walked on the tiles, trying not to slip until I found a small platform that stood above the floor, climbed the steps that led to its surface, and found a door and a switch next to it. When I flipped it, tubes of halogen light illuminated the room. It was a warehouse with two open tanks where the islanders possibly used to store water before there were pipelines.

  “Fuck!” Rojo shouted, covering his eyes with his hands. The lamp lit his face directly. He was on a hammock tied to a pair of pillars.

  The place was repulsive. From the top, I was able to see Rojo suspended in the middle of one of the tanks. Then I observed my own trail of footsteps. I looked at myself covered in a crimson sticky fluid — my skin and my clothes. My body was like blotting paper. My stomach burned, I felt sickly, and my strength came and went, especially when I recalled the smell. My head was spinning, and I held myself up with one hand on the metal drawer next to the switch. I coughed out bile and a yellowish fluid and saw Rocamora’s face in my mind. I pictured him jumping into the grinder at the factory. The next thing that came to mind was his body, crushed and ground. It occurred to me that his blood and other people’s and animals’ was the very same blood that covered my body. I could not stand it anymore... and that smell, that damn fucking smell.

  “I can’t see,” Rojo said, deranged. “Fuck! My limbs don’t move!”

  He shook nervously, and the rope broke because of the tension his stirring exerted. That was a proper trap. There was no way Rojo could get out of the tank without taking a dip into the fluid. Like a coin tossed into a fountain, his body submerged in the viscous substance. A splash echoed in the room, then he came back to the surface
, gasping for air at the time he spat the blood out of his mouth. As he swam to the edge, I ran to the tank and helped him out.

  “Are you alright?” I said as I approached him.

  Rojo kept spitting the blood he had swallowed.

  “It’s blood!” he said. “Get me out of here! This is sickening!”

  I help him out, and we walked to the cement stairs of the platform. There were antique glass bottles and an open toolbox. Despite having spent some time in that room, we could not get used to the smell that reigned in the place.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said to him.

  “Where are we? What have they done to us?” he asked confused. “I think I’m under the influence.”

  “So am I,” I replied. “I don’t remember much. We were on a boat, and that’s it.”

  “My head’s killing me,” he continued. “I’m hallucinating.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. Rojo started laughing while pointing at something behind me. “What are you laughing at?”

  “There’s... ha ha ha! — he pointed with the finger — “there’s... ha ha ha... a fucking three-head monkey!”

  I turned around and looked at the door. There was no monkey. Rojo was hallucinating; we had visitors, though. The three monkey heads belonged to the two officers who were on the boat. They were still wearing the same clothes and two identical monkey masks. They wielded taser guns and were ready to have some fun at our expenses. The third head, in the middle and calmer-looking, was an average-sized man, a little older than the other two, and who wore the same kind of mask.

  “What is this fuss?” he asked. That voice. That was Violeta’s chauffeur, the same man who brought me to the island. “Mister Caballero. Look at yourself! Your clothes are a mess. Anyway, come with us. We are running out of time and still have to light the fire.”

  A magpie cawing outside resonated in our ears.

  He could not have known it, but those were his last words.

  * * *

  A heavy blow was heard, shards of glass fell to the floor. The bird landed stunned and covered in blood like a deflected projectile. It had hit the window of the storehouse. The chauffeur bled like a hurt animal. In the blink of an eye, a screwdriver appeared sticking out of his trachea. A gush of blood spurted from his throat. The other monkey head fell to the floor like a sack of garbage. His neck was broken. Before me, the young police aimed his taser gun at me and was ready to fire. Rojo surprised him from behind, but he reacted by tasing him. Rojo fell to the floor in pain, covering his belly. Without giving it a second thought, I took advantage of the diversion, grabbed one of the bottles by the neck, and hit him in the head. He fell stunned to the floor. Rojo was still there. I fetched a crowbar from the toolbox and smashed the young policeman in the face. He spat blood. His teeth swam in a puddle of ketchup.