The Sanatorium of Murcia

by Claudio Hernández

  - "She's here. All of you are in danger."

  And Kevin, disconcerted, did not know what was really going on and thought for a moment, that those, whoever they were, tried to drive them crazy before killing them.

  His fists clenched in despair.

  The footsteps echoed like stones in the hollowed-out corridor. It was even heard how the rope of the crossbow tensed. You could even smell sweat, and something acid, pestilent had pissed. Carlos stunk of urine, but now he did not feel like urinating. His mouth was dry and his guts twisted under his belly producing a lacerating pain, like an electric shock that struggled to come out through the very navel itself.

  Kevin and the others were crammed into a dark room, listening to voices and the approach of the man with the crossbow.

  They were like hissed cats locked in a dark box. They had no weapons, except the small knife. Kevin thought that knife would be used to remove the remains of the sausage from between his teeth. He counted on that with a little luck; he could choose to poke him an eye. But that was an almost impossible task. The crossbow would be between the two of them, and the arrow would pass through him with all certainty, the intestines that would shoot out from behind.

  - "He's close," -Kevin announced quietly, but it seemed absurd to speak when they knew they were there, hidden calmly.

  But Carlos did not know.

  It was them.

  The Forgotten.

  - "Guys get out from where you are now that you have a chance!" -Carlos shouted, spitting phlegm on the floor. His lip sores were white and seemed to glow under the elongated shape of the moonlight that seeped through the broken windows. The wind howled and maybe, cried as it brushed the corners of the building. - "They are the real danger," he insisted.

  - "And shit," -Riley murmured.

  Kevin's back was scratched on the brick wall. He had Leah's hand clenched tightly. And he had the knife in the other hand.

  - "He wants to finish me off," -Chase said, his hand still on his shoulder. Sadie was by his side. They were all made a pineapple and could smell their breath. Fear and stupidity.

  Jackson began to tap the floor with the fingers of his right hand. It seemed like the sound of rats scratching the wall. A hand caught his arm in the darkness and invited him to stop fooling around.

  - "I'm impatient," he grumbled.

  And then an ominous silence reigned. So long as desperate.

  The steps had stopped, but the smell of urine was unbearable. They knew he was close. Very close. And they did not have a plan. Any. Everything that happened next was the result of improvisation.

  26

  The door squeaked when opening slowly, and the low pale light drew a tongue on the floor. The light did not reach their faces, however, now they could see perfectly the silhouette of the man in the gloom. He was as convulsed clinging to the crossbow that rested on his shoulder. His head was cocked and his finger on the trigger.

  - "I see you all," -he said in a whisper. He saw the forgotten. He was referring to the souls in pain of the forgotten, who were there inside, together with the young people with a rigid face.

  Kevin was watching his head. The place where the eye could be. Or at least the mouth. There, too, he would hurt him or maybe his neck. He could cut the jugular if he gets enough strength. He would cut off some of his fingers, and the blood of both would mix, but that did not matter. It was not a vampire or a werewolf.

  Everyone's eyes shone like glassy marbles, and their lips were contracted by uncertainty, fear of the unknown, what could happen if something went wrong. They had Gianna in mind. That guy was not kidding. The blood was real. And the arrow too.

  Suddenly everyone got up and ran into horde towards the man. The arrow shot out in the direction of the wall. He had them so close, and he had missed, or maybe he had pointed elsewhere. To them. The forgotten ones or perhaps the black lady.

  Kevin's hand was holding the small knife held high, just at the level of the face of the man who saw it most closely. His grey hair, his hairy skin and his yellow teeth when he opened his mouth to scream. Then the sharp and small razor entered what might be the man's left eye socket, or at least Kevin thought that as he opened his hand and left the handle of the knife. He heard a terrifying scream, but did not look back to see how Carlos put his hands to his eye or was it his temple? Kevin had noticed how the silver blade scratched a bone. It seemed profound to him. While he had done this and after turning his back on it, he had heard the crossbow strike as it fell to the ground. The screams of his companions running with their flashlights on in any direction and at all.

  - "You've fucked my eye! I just wanted to help you!" -Carlos shouted, turning towards them, but they were already far enough away, each by his side. Chase and Sadie holding hands, lumbering and panting. The corridor filled with footsteps that responded from the walls. Several elongated shadows accompanied them at a frantic pace. They were their own shadows.

  Kevin smiled as he ran. He had hurt him where he wanted. He was pleased. Now he would bleed out, he thought. And as they were running instinctively they separated. Chase and Sadie stopped feeling their fat hands. Sadie went into one of the rooms and slammed herself against the wall. Chase, however, kept running, until the end of the corridor. He enter another room. Kevin started down the stairs again with his heart in his belly. His belly hurt. Riley had chosen the stairs that took him to a third floor. At the end of these, there was a door, but it was open. Violet followed Kevin but kept going down and down to the basement. Jackson went to the east wing. There was a strange room where there was another big Christ statue, although not as much as the one at the entrance. There were banks everywhere, like a chain of dominoes knocked down. It was the chapel of rest. Luke met moments later at the morgue they had built. Where those who did not resist spent their last evening in the sanatorium before being burned to ash. Alaina ran to the aqueduct that was used to collect water from the rain as if someone could light there. Leah ran into the concierge's house, which was just another room, but better accommodated, but with more corners to hide. It was on the ground floor. Right at the exit. Jayden, the most passive stayed in the tower in the center of the building that caressed the stairs, tall and elongated. Another wrong place to hide. Taylor chose another room on the floor below, as did Kevin.

  They had all dispersed, in panic.

  - "You're dead!" -Carlos shouted at the end of the hallway. - "She will reach you!" -and his voice went off.

  27

  Sadie hid under the old and oxidized bed. Down there was a strong smell of urine that still lingered in time and faeces. With the flashlight, she illuminated the bottom of the mattress and saw that it was filthy with large yellow spots. For a moment, she thought it was going to drip infected urine. On the floor, there were pellets of rats or maybe mice. If she saw any of them there, she would scream like a hysteric, but now things were not enough to give her that luxury.

  Chase was not by his side.

  Her morbid body crawled like a heavy, slow, plaintive worm. Her butt went up against the springs of the metal bed and pushed the mattress up. Then her lips twisted into a grimace of disgust, and she decided to turn off the light so they would not discover her.

  Who were they?

  Her breathing was faltered, but little by little she recovered her regular rhythm, before exploding in a final climax. But that was later.

  - "This is crazy," she whispered, her lips pressed to the floor. In the darkness, she could still feel her heart beating in her temples, but the tension was lowering for a few moments until the alarm went on again.

  Suddenly she felt as if someone was pacing behind the door of the room she had closed tightly. Of course, without a key, for two reasons, because there was no key and because it could not be closed from inside.

  Her eyes watch at what might be a long shadow in the darkness. As difficult as that, but she saw it. However, she was still, and it had seemed to her that this one was in movement. However, it was not so. The shad
ow was a black tongue on the ground. Then she realized.

  It was the shadow of the door, just like that.

  Her breathing had gone from snorting to the rhythmic movement of his lungs. But she was still breathing through her mouth. The dust got into her nostrils, and she had even reached the tip of her tongue. It tasted acid and disgusting, or at least it seemed really disgusting. She wanted to throw up but restrained herself. Now the silence was absolute. I did not listen to steps. It appeared that this crazy guy had succumbed to death or maybe not. Surely, she would be waiting sitting at the end of the corridor in the west wing, listening to the wind howling.

  Her huge breasts crushed against the floor, and they were sweaty. When suddenly something cold grabbed her ankle, and jerked her. Her heart set to a hundred in less than a second. Something had thrown her off her feet, and she was frozen. She crawled almost out from under the bed, escaping of what she could not see. She was not sure of turning on the flashlight, but for God, she had noticed.

  A kind of cold fingers had surrounded her foot and thrown her against the wall. But that was impossible. She wanted to scream and say out loud that she was going crazy that night. However, she did not do it. I hope.

  I had the foot free.

  The silence was absolute, except in her head that began to hear voices and the pulse of her heart accelerated.

  She felt that she was becoming delirious. It was stress, she told herself. It's the fucking stress, wanted to scream.

  But then that icy thing closed on her foot and pulled her back. This time with more force, almost until dragging her a hand span. Her heart raced like a furious animal. Her eyes widened in the darkness, and she switched on the flashlight, illuminating on her foot.

  There was nothing there. However, she still felt that thing clinging to her ankle. She moved her foot, but the sensation of a foreign body did not disappear. She was still frozen, and her heart threatened to pop out of her mouth and spit it out like an acid caramel.

  - "Fuck! what's happening to me?" -She whispered so that no one would hear her if there were anyone in the hall.

  Now you come to look for us?

  She hears it clearly and loudly. It was the voice of a man. A deep and torn voice at the same time. The sound of an old man. She had heard the damn voice. She turned around and tried to get out from under the bed, but that was still holding her. The light from the flashlight only illuminated on piled plaster, the shattered wall, the springs of the bed, and the urine stains.

  They abandoned us to our fate.

  - "Fuck! I am getting crazy!" -She cried aloud, her heart already in the palm of her hand.

  -Scream, scream, nobody will listen to you. Not even the crazy man, a voice said in his mind.

  The thing was still tightening her ankle and saw how the flesh was sinking around it. Her eyes opened like dinner plates. She was watching how fingers marked the pressure on her foot. Only the prints, but she did not see anything else.

  She leaned on her tiny elbows.

  - "Who are you?" -she asked trembling.

  Nobody answered

  Everything was silent now. A halo of the miserable moonlight gleamed in the corridor below the door. Her flashlight still illuminated on her foot that still held by something that did not exist and the flesh was sinking forming fingers that were squeezing. And they were freezing, so freezing.

  Sadie was sweating profusely and started kicking, but that did not let her go.

  - "Fuck! What's going on?! -She shouted, not caring if suddenly the door opened and someone with a crossbow appeared in her hands. She was becoming hysterical and confused.

  Then she saw it.

  And her heart stopped for a moment in the face of such horror.

  The hand was full of bumps and yellowish ampoules. The fingers were bony and had a purplish color. The face of that being was grotesque to the satiety. He was missing an eye and instead had a deep, dark hole through which a viscous white liquid oozed. His teeth were tight, yellowish and had no lips. His hair was white and long, up to his shoulders. His body came out of the wall as if there were nothing there. The other eye that was without eyelid was watery and showed an enraged look. The smell was stinking, moldy, rotten, and sooty. The flesh of the face had partially disappeared, and there were also deformed lumps, like yellow scabs. In other areas of the face, there was green pus oozing like cream.

  Sadie had not seen such a thing in her life or the movies. Seeing him gave her more terror than what appears in a film. What she was seeing was a real dead man. A forgotten leper who after showing his shadow first showed him now what he really was like, lasting in time.

  He did not breathe.

  But he did have breath.

  His mouth came dangerously close to the lips of Sadie who was petrified without being able to scream because she wanted and she wished that this was a damn nightmare. That horrible man had brought his teeth to his lips and opened his mouth.

  The foul smell was unbearable.

  Sadie's body was stiff with terror, with that sensation called fear. For that natural reflex. Now that being brought out the nasty tongue. It was black, and he put it in Sadie's mouth. She felt like it was sticky and had a bitter taste. She had it over her, and she did not know how she was now out from under the bed. If that thing was pulling towards the wall and her body was showing going throughout the wall. How could he be in the center of the room now?

  Everything was so unreal.

  The tongue of that being moved inside Sadie's mouth. A viscous flow filled her mouth, and her heart began to throb like the blows of a hammer against the iron to forge. She felt sick and nauseous, but she could not vomit or close her mouth. It was stony. Immobilized.

  She saw some more shadows around her. They were still. As observing them. The teeth of that being, collided with her teeth and produced noise.

  Then those lumps swelled more, like pockets of pus or a yellowish liquid. And they exploded. Sadie felt how that liquid was hot on her cheeks and inside her eyes. A part of that fluid came into her mouth and was pure acid

  Sadie saw death coming, silent, like a long shadow and not exactly sweet. It was grotesque and horrible. Her heart was pumping so hard that her big tits moved. Her eyes watered and opened like plates guessed that death was near. She felt cold all over her body that was sweaty at the same time. And the tingling that was present in her limbs and the fingers of her hands. She also felt the tingling on her face. And then she saw it even more grotesque before dying of fear.

  Suddenly she leaned back, and her mouth opened until she broke into a long dark spot and suddenly she had two mean eyes, as red as fire, looking at her terrifyingly. The skin that hung fell to the floor, and the one that remains in the face was stretched back. A strong current of hot air surrounded the spectre and distorted her head, her face, her gaze and began to scream. A sharp, intense, terrifying sound.

  And Sadie's eyes rose from her orbit at least two millimeters when she saw that. Still, with the acid taste in her mouth and already with it open, she gasped for the last time, because her heart stopped in a shock of fright. An intense pain ran through her chest to her neck and left arm. Her eyesight grew fuzzy, and she did not die precisely in peace, but in terror and with many strange sensations that pierced her body like stakes.

  Sadie died with her face disfigured.

  With the mouth, open and glassy eyes out of their sockets.

  The flaccid breasts fell to one side and the fingers of her hand entirely stiffed.

  She would never have imagined such a violent death without being torn apart by a chainsaw.

  And she did not see the dark tunnel with a light at the end, if not a torn face that joined others.

  The flashlight, forgotten on the floor, went off.

  28

  Riley had climbed the twelve steps of the stairs stealthily, with his mind on Gianna. It was as if he were wandering among the most absorbed thoughts. He grabbed the doorknob, which he found weird because the construction w
as before the appearance of the rotating knobs and opened the door without deepening, why that door had a knob. The Sanatorium had been restored several times over the years, he recalled. That would be a good reason to understand the knob, but that did not matter. The door closed with a metallic noise as if two metals brushed against each other while he turned his back on it. And what he saw after panting the door in the frame, did not surprise him at all.

  - "I imagined it," -he said loudly, surrounded by furniture, lamps, and chairs with wheels abandoned under a huge spider's web or under yellowed sheets. Although his heart was beating fast, it seemed that now he was beginning to relax, but his gaze remained sad after seeing his beloved with his eyes closed. He wanted to remember her that way and he wanted everything to be a story, of the many he wrote in Florida. However, he had to settle for the current situation. With a sore heart and watery eyes, he tried to find shelter under one of those old sheets or some abandoned furniture. Abandoned, "he continued in the silence." That was the word he had heard most that night. He walked slowly to the center of the attic, in the direction of the large window through which the rays of the full moon penetrated if he could call it that. His shadow, long and grey, followed him.

  He noticed that the window had its two large crystals that were almost opaque, covered with dirt and dust and saw for a moment a slight glow in the glass under the influence of the moon. Even so, the attic was probably the room that had the lightest. But it was deadly dense, like a layer of fog, that you see, but it does not let you see through it.

  Just below the window was a wheelchair accusing a larger size than the others. Several cobwebs covered it and the wheels, strong but deflated, looked like two dark eyes on either side of the seat and the armrest. In the center of the seat, which was lined with something he did not know because he did not see it at a distance, he had a massive hole through which the moustache of a young rat peeped out. His little eyes, red as two cigarettes lit in the dark, shone with unsettling force. That was what caught his attention and something else he saw.