The Sanatorium of Murcia

by Claudio Hernández

  For God's sake! He needed a shower.

  The shirt was now a sticky fabric on his back, but he did not take it off despite being dripping with sweat. His fingers almost slid around the surface of the flashlight handle. And he had touched the door to open it and then, with his shoulder and all his weight he had closed it, fleeing from that madman who was chasing them. Was he infected now after touching the door? The only idea of ​​the belief was driving him crazy.

  And then Danny appeared.

  Danny was the one he talked to when he was alone. That great secret that neither his girlfriend Taylor, now stiff as a club, seemed to know. Luke adopted two personalities and started a conversation to scare their manias. It was something that relieved him of the pressures.

  - "Danny, this is full of germs," -​​he said in a tremulous voice.

  - "Not at all! It is just dust! The most that can happen to you is that you sneeze."

  - "It's not that easy."

  - "Look what weirder tables!!"

  - "They are not tables; they look like stone beds."

  - "Well, that is! This is where they put the dead, right?"

  “Now that you mention it...”

  - "Yes, I'm right. Look on the wall."

  Luke's eyes scanned the wall. It was full of small square doors, all of them open and could be seen like a tunnel inside them.

  - "Are they secret doors?" He asked in Luke's voice.

  - "No idiot! They are niches. The places where they kept the dead." -Danny's modulated voice resembled that of a fake ventricle.

  - "Fuck! that means more bacteria." -The voice itself was modulated continuously.

  He had been doing this since he was five years old. One day he discovered that he could talk to someone who did not get the flu or a simple cold. Also, he found that he felt happier that way. And it frightened those monsters that populated his mind.

  Now he was doing the same, but with his heart in a fist.

  - "It's been a long time since that, Luke," -he said in a childish voice, Danny's, which endured in time with the same ring of voice.

  - "Then, what is this?"

  - "What do you think?"

  - "I do not see bones."

  - "Now it's dust. Those that were on those elongated stone desks abandoned on the black and white squares floor and those of the niche is now all a thin layer of dust.

  - "That's impossible Danny. The bones do not disappear so quickly."

  -Well, then the rats have gnawed them to dust."

  Luke shook his head looking at his left hand as if it were Danny's head. His fingers were claw-like, like a duck's beak. On the right, he held the flashlight, with which he illuminated Danny.

  - "If there are rats, there will be more Danny bacteria."

  - "Shut up and look!"

  And Danny disappeared into the darkness at least of, moment.

  All around him were stone desks, the length of a human body. There were rusty buckets on the floor. Stretchers with springs pointing towards the ceiling. Two huge windows on one side of the room and a triumphal arch on the other wall next to it. This led to another room much larger. The niches were on the wall to the right, and the metal doors were open. He illuminated with the flashlight inside one of them and saw nothing but dust until the end of the wall, no more than two meters deep. He thought that wall was a cemetery. With all the care of the world to not touch anything with his hands, he moved away and walked the entire room.

  He did not bother to count how many of those desks there were in the room, nor those he discovered in the back, which was two wooden supports and on top of a table. He imagined how that must be before 1962. Dozens of deformed lepers were dying or perhaps already dead on all those gadgets and lying on the floor, with their eyes closed and their mouths open, as if they were sleeping and snoring. The flies that would be trapped in their throats and under the white sheets then, which looked unraveled and yellowed now. But stiff as a stick. Scattered everywhere.

  Seeing all this gave him shivers and thinking that he should have passed there, it submerged him into the paradise of terror. Succumbing before the agony until death. And although there were many ways to die, Luke knew that one could die of fear. In his case, to become infected, to get sick and to die until death.

  To one side, something moved.

  He quickly lights up on the board that was on two supports. There was a sheet wrinkled and full of soot. It was slanted and chewed by the rats that presumably would have eaten the bones of the poor unfortuname under the sheet.

  - "What do you see?" -He asked Danny's voice. He had returned.

  - "Nothing for the moment."

  - "I would suggest you get out of here. You are in danger."

  - "And outside? That crazy man is out there."

  - "Are not you afraid of bacteria?"

  - "Yes."

  And Danny disappeared again when the sheet moved again without making the slightest noise.

  Luke's sweaty forehead cooled in a moment even as he continued to sweat profusely.

  From under the sheet came a long dark tongue. It was a shadow produced by a body. But what body? There was no one there. His heart was beginning to tense, hysterical. And his temples ached, which picked up the rhythm of the pulsations as if they were hammers.

  -This is where it was the best. We preferred to be dead than abandoned agonizing.

  The voice, from the grave echoed echoing across all the walls of what he recognized as the morgue. He was already located and heard that deep voice, with total clarity. Someone had spoken and it was not Danny precisely.

  - "Danny! Are you there?"

  He does not answer.

  He had become deliberately crazy.

  From all the sheets, long and faded shadows dragged out, licking the floor and walls. From the niches came more shadows that manifested as human silhouettes. Luke's eyes widened, and his face felt icy. And it was really cold. Luke's breathing had become a visible curtain of smoke that rose to the ceiling before disappearing.

  All this had nothing original. He had seen many ghost movies and had read quite a few horror novels from someone who sold as much as the Big Mac burgers. However, seeing it with your eyes made one feel very uneasy. To tell the truth, the hairs on your whole body bristled, and you suddenly felt your heart beating in your neck. It made you panic.

  That was the fucking reality.

  He illuminated all the niches, the planks that were the bed resting on two wooden supports, those stone tables, the buckets abandoned and turned into ruin by the passage of time, and they were there. Sliding through each slot, licking and covering the whole morgue and now they would rise out of nowhere, he thought.

  And he was not wrong.

  He removed his glasses to contemplate them. To make sure that the crystals were inside their frame. And he saw them. They even shone in the light of the lantern. So everything that was happening was real. He stood for a long time with his glasses hanging from one of his fingers, like a lost pendulum. It was not the time to think. Because they advanced and converted. And his mind wandered into what had happened before closing the Sanatorium. And it was not the best time to do this. Because they were advancing. They always moved forward, and they could see their hands full of pruritic blisters. Verduzcas and that gave off a nauseating smell. Like the breath of a monster taken from a bad horror novel. He knew that all of that could be reality and a part of him thought otherwise. Danny was no longer there to talk to him. His double personality had dissipated, and now it was only him. Luke. A young man terrified by what he was seeing and would soon touch if they moved further towards him. And in all the corners, those shadows recovered somehow a face. A body. And there was a current of cold air that hit his face like a hammer blow. He also knew that this could happen. He had read it in many books. And he thought that everything was the work of an entity, which lasts in the corridors of abandoned hospitals and castles that fall apart little by little every day that passes. That and much more, addr
essed Luke's feverish mind.

  He was shaking.

  The light from the flashlight oscillated like a laser on an engine programmed to vibrate. Except that he was vibrating with fear. That was much more than trembling.

  And he put on his glasses.

  He put them on well. And he kept seeing the same thing, but now with greater clarity. His fingers dropped the lantern into space. It rang on the floor as a door closes and continues to illuminate those faces. Those men and women who had materialized and who were mourning perhaps pain or perhaps sorrow.

  That did not matter now.

  Luke knew he was close to death. The bacteria he feared so much, had gone down in history and if all of that suddenly came to an end. If the bodies disappeared, Luke would be healed. He would no longer talk to Danny if he touched his fucking dark-rimmed glasses so often.

  And the time, unfortunately, was coming.

  And he thought about the others. In a moment of carelessness, he thought about them, but he came back to reality immediately, just when a rough hand when touch and slick by a type of slime that covered it touched him.

  Oh, my God! it had touched him.

  His face wrinkled until it crumpled like a raisin. His teeth grinded as he clenched his jaw hard and his eyes popped out from their sockets.

  One of those disgusting things, had touched him.

  And worst of all, he knew they were lepers.

  The forgotten ones by their relatives.

  A good title for a novel.

  If he came out of this, he would write a book talking about fear. But something inside him told him that this book would never be written. Also, it would contain three words or maybe four. You die of fear. With those words, everything would be resolved.

  But why did he think so many things while falling freely from a tenth floor?

  Was there time for everything?

  He rubbed his hand with his pants in order to cleanse his fingers and the back of his hand. There would be thousands of bacteria there.

  Even though that did not matter anymore.

  He was getting crazy.

  Human reason ceases to exist when you see a dead person get out of his coffin while they watch him. It gets lost when you see someone walking with their guts out. When hundreds of shadows slip in every corner and watch you with their dark eyes. And when the spirits and the souls reveal themselves physically.

  His heart was pumping faster.

  A lacerating pain that came from the stomach went through the body through the chest and neck.

  He wanted to scream of pain, but could not.

  The fear of pain, touching the lepers and discovering that the lady in black really existed was the final step before falling off the cliff.

  But each one expressed fear in different ways even though the symptoms were always the same and the causes of the deaths, the same.

  They grabbed him by the ankle naked, because he was wearing shorts. Beautiful printed shorts of very bright colors that would soon darken. Another mystery more than what the human mind can get to see even if there really was a plate of chips.

  Nothing could be distinguished and before the great uncertainty that was breathed, there was always something that told you, this is true.

  You must to screw up, he thought.

  And it was the last thing he did.

  Until his heart was stiff as an orange.

  And it was always reflected in the face, the scars of fear, fear and panic.

  Anyone clung to anything.

  But his body that turned whitish, almost immediately collapsed on the rusted buckets projecting a sound blow from which the walls would respond with a reverberant echo throughout the room.

  That had been the fatal outcome, something he had already expected at the same moment that he felt the cold sweat of death.

  37

  Carlos was squatting, waiting, shotgun in hand, pressing it to his chest. Now he no longer had the crossbow, and although he had not heard any new cry, he knew that the abandoned ones were advancing their particular path. Because since 1963 all the neighbors of Espuña Mountains and nearby towns had heard the cries of the forgotten souls. And they talked about the lady in black. Carlos focused on that, while on the other hand, he felt sad for having missed the shot with the crossbow that hit the head of a young girl and then an obese boy. He really felt sorry because he followed them. To those who hid in any corner. The ones that drove you crazy. And he discovered that thinking a lot about it and always describing the same facts, was not only boring; it was childish. Not to mention, repetitive. Carlos aware of it, low his head closing his eyes and started thinking about the birds, his great passion.

  And everything to forget.

  For a moment, he felt the desire to retire, but he kept waiting.

  And waiting.

  While one part of his eye hung from the optic nerve until it touched the cheekbone, it did not hurt anymore.

  38

  Jackson was far from the others, though not as much as Riley's rigid body. He had chosen a strange room in which at the bottom of everything there was a wooden Christ, splintered by the time, which could still recognize the drops of blood on his chest, forehead and feet. With the confusion of the great escape of that crazy man, Jackson had gone to the wake of the Sanatorium. And he knew that soon. Nothing more to see that squeaky stretcher of springs in the center of the corridor, where several banks arranged in a disorderly manner, some on the right and others on the left. The racket was as if there had been a stampede of those present when the deceased raised his head and stood as if driven by a spring on his back.

  Despite everything, a rictus was drawn on Jackson's lips. Despite everything, yes. Alaina was not on her mind right now. She was in the Sanitarium aqueduct, still alive.

  But soon things would change. And the grimace would become a cry of terror and fright. That kind of bed or rusty stretcher was in front of a lectern made of stone and the passage of time seemed not to have happened to it. The Christ was looking at the stand or worse, the coffin. His heart hit his chest. He had not seen it before, and on the stretcher, there was a coffin of clumsy wood and splintered. Without the lid.

  It was so small that it had gone unnoticed by the light of the lantern and his dark eyes, although they shone even in the dark. He opened his mouth as if to want to scream and only gave a caw. The white teeth gleamed in the wake. His tongue, red to satiety, was also visible.

  The flashlight illuminated inside the coffin. There was nothing. He gave thanks to God for not having found anything inside. A skull for example. The coffin was so small that one day it had housed a dwarf or a child. He opted for the latter, and although Riley was no longer at his side to release the tirade, Jackson knew that the youngest was also the most affected by leprosy and tuberculosis. On the floor, one could still see a handkerchief, dry as cardboard, yellowish and pierced by the teeth of rats.

  On one of the walls, two windows looked on the east side and through which it now leaked, the greyish reflection that the moon emitted to the earth. And that made the place gloomy. His heart returned to normal after the shock. There was nothing there that had been repeated.

  But on one occasion there was something.

  -Hello Dad.

  He had heard it perfectly, and the voice was sharp and soft. The one of a boy. Maybe a girl's. His ears had received the waves of that phrase. "Hi, dad", he had said. He looked around, for he was confused. Everything was full of dust and furniture destroyed, as if suddenly everyone present had fled something, stumbling over each other. Only the Christ witnessed what happened there, but he could not talk about it.

  - "He has fucked us. Kid's voice has spoken to me," -Jackson whispered for fear of being heard.

  Heard by whom?

  It was a mental lapse.

  There were always many questions to ask when you find yourself in these kinds of situations. Also, his beliefs did not allow him to accept that sort of truth. The ghosts, he thought. And his featu
res turned pale, from the coffee that Chase so much joked about, to the milk he had now become.

  With the flashlight, he illuminated the interior of the coffin again. There was still nothing. But something inside him told him that he should leave that place as soon as possible.

  -Dad, do not leave now.

  He had heard it again; now his body was like a spring giving strange jumps in front of the stand, which was watching him in silence.

  - "I've heard it again," -he whispered again. - "I will be going crazy. It is nothing but fear. This disgust me."

  To speak only for the first time, he did it quite well; he was surprised.

  The light bulb of the lantern licked the face of Christ and then the windows that had the broken glass. Many of them, several colors, he saw them lying on the floor, next to the benches on the left side, shining like blind eyes, under the light of the lantern. He lit every corner of the room and saw nothing strange. But I had heard the fucking voice twice a voice that was close to him.

  -Now that you've returned, you will not leave me abandoned again, right?

  Jackson moved like a dock. Almost on tiptoe, he wanted to leave that room that smelled stale and listened to things, that maybe they were only in his head, but just in case, he would run away from there. But he could not.

  Something was grabbing his ankle.

  He illuminated on his feet but saw nothing. However, He could not move his feet. No matter how hard he tried, something heavy was closed on both ankles now.

  - "You have to fuck," -Jackson muttered, unable to be quiet or underwater. - "Chase if you're around, release the nylon thread that holds my ankles."

  But nobody answered him, except for the wind when crying from the other side of the Sanatorium, in the west wing, which with its corners cut and scratched the air causing deep wounds.

  - "Chase?"

  Then he supposed that it could not have been him, since they had all fired as projectiles into different places and if Chase were in there, he would have seen him even though he covered his eyes in the wake of terror and panic, when they escaped from that crazy of the crossbow. That was about two hours or maybe more.