The Sanatorium of Murcia

by Claudio Hernández

  Still focusing on the wall, she took a step back toward the aqueduct, which reached his hip. Those shadows became spots under the powerful light of the lantern. And one of the first ideas that came to mind, is why they kept seeing themselves in the light. Her heart began to pump almost as fast as when that damn arrow pierced Gianna's skull.

  She hit her hip against the edge of the aqueduct, and the wind stroked her hair. She was hot, and the sweat started to run down her face until she reached her neck. Her back was a sauna. Those forms moved. She thought it must be something close, that moved with the air. The light of her flashlight looked for something, but it did not find it. Only the aqueduct, the corridor and the wall full of letters. There were some more letters but she did not continue reading, it was not the moment to do it. And the wind cried.

  All that is true, they had us like dogs. They abandoned us.

  That could not say it the wind, that cried in every corner. And the branches of the trees waved inside the forest like tambourines, producing a strange noise. But that had been something else and had come out of the wall. Each syllable, each letter. In a torn voice, brittle and almost distant at the same time, a voice that produced chills and grief at the same time. Alaina felt the first thing.

  - "It cannot be true," -she whispered.

  And then there was silence, but for a short space of time.

  We are still waiting here, all of us.

  Alaina's hairs were the closest thing to hooks. Her heart pumped blood under pressure. The veins hurt when they dilated. And it rumbled at her temples like a locomotive.

  And she saw her too.

  Between the play of lights of the moon and the darkness of the night, there was a silhouette of a woman in black who walked by the east wing, on a corridor that Alaina had stepped on before. The woman did not stop or turn her head. Alaina knew that she was a woman and was getting crazy at times.

  She was always with us.

  Alaina distressed once more. Who the hell was that lady? In one of the sentences, she had just read there was a certain discrepancy as to whether it was a lady in black or white. She did not know why she was thinking this in a moment of torment, but she needed to know. It was the lady in black. What would be, then, the superior mother of the nuns? Or another one among the many of the buried dead? I could not answer a single question for two reasons. One, because she did not know, and two, because fear was breathing in her neck.

  Like millions of crowded ants, faded shadows were forming and drawing arms and hands in the gloom, but they were clearly visible. They were arms that twisted like worms. Bare arms and arms that had a bandage wrapped around them. And then the faces appeared. Some faces with grotesque spots on the eyes and in the mouth, and some fingers. Perhaps, the same ones that hit the closed lid of the coffin. And now they were there, emerging from the wall and the ground.

  There were also hands outstretched from the ground, and the cries doubled in mass.

  She illuminated them and saw the horror of the lepers, but some scrawny men and women did not look like leprosy. These would be the ones who suffered from tuberculosis. In any case, they were abandoned or buried alive, and now they were here to show themselves. To find their relatives, because they were all waiting.

  And there were children.

  Alaina let out a cry of horror.

  The children had their faces eaten by leprosy, and scraps of skin and pieces of flesh hung on them until they fell to the ground and their cries were sinister. Full of despair and pain.

  Alaina was about to cry for them. Her eyes moistened. She felt like these were a hot spot on an icy face. She looked towards the east side. The lady in black was gone. In the message on the wall, there was a racial message, he thought at that moment and did not know why she had done it. But sometimes the mind plays tricks on you. She turned to them.

  They were everywhere.

  Now the veins in her neck swelled. The heart seemed to be there, rumbling in the swollen veins as if it were a ball that could not pass inside one of them. A twisted mouth grimaced and showed its ugly yellow teeth and tongue filled with pus. The fingers of some of them scratched the wall while the earth of the bricks fell to the ground before being dragged by the wind.

  She was so impressed that her eyes left their sockets. And she began to scream holding on to it as if life depended on it. Her cries were now mixed with the cries of the entities, which continued to materialize and come out of the wall and the ground with their long-outstretched arms. Her eyes, like dark blurs, sometimes glowed watery, like those of a zombie.

  The lantern fell inside the aqueduct, and the moon witnessed what happened to Alaina moments later. Someone, somewhere in the bushes, was listening to the exasperating cries, but he did nothing but close his ears.

  The hands full of scabs closed on her ankles and brushed her bare thighs, for she was wearing jeans so short that he could see his chubby cheeks. Her legs kicked on the ground, raising puffs of dust. And her heartbreaking cry broke in two when she sounded hoarse during darkness. Her heart felt on the tip of her tongue, beating it outrageously. She was short of breath, and they continued to caress her legs until they reached her waist and the scream was more and more heartbreaking.

  Suddenly, those leprous bodies and other emaciated, they made themselves back to Alaina's bewilderment, but it was to return to attack her with all their violence. Those bodies collided head-on with hers and broke apart like the ashes. Illuminating a pale and dark sky. Millions of particles had surrounded her body, and after it, they were composing again in the bodies they were. In that instant, Alaina's heart stopped beating.

  Her glassy eyes remained open, fixed on the moon and her fingers ungainly and claw like, seemed to ask for a plea. A second later and before the look of those dark and blurred eyes, Alaina's body collapsed on the floor producing a fleshy noise that was absorbed by the silence of the night.

  No bird sang.

  Until dawn.

  42

  Jayden had witnessed Alaina's horrible cries from the fortified tower, the highest part of the Sanitarium. Almost five high floors. And even though it felt like a blur in the darkness and he was the only one without a flashlight, he knew it was her. However, as peaceful as he was, he did not know what had happened and what was really the cessation of Alaina's screams.

  He wanted to call her, shouting with his hands making a hole around his mouth, but he did not. He was still thinking about the madman of the crossbow. Despite his calm and clumsy appearance, he had some concern for being discovered by that madman of the crossbow.

  - "Do not. I cannot do it," -he muttered, holding on to what looked like a chimney. - He had climbed up there by spiral staircases, rusty and stormy.

  He thought about the madman of the crossbow and Gianna. In all the blood under his head and in the grey matter that oozed in his head. He thought long and hard about all this, for several hours, unable to make decisions. Unable to listen to the agonies of the forgotten.

  Besides being a quiet man, Jayden was a coward, who did not think about his girlfriend Violet, nor about the others. He only knew that there was a man with a skilled finger with a crossbow and that he had to be as far as possible from him.

  Then, he saw something that caused him to awaken some interest.

  From the forest, several shadows appeared that resembled a group of people walking slowly. They did not carry torches. Their hands were empty. Inert on both sides of their bodies. They seemed faded in the distance, but Jayden knew they were people because the miserable moonlight helped him to see them, whether from the branches of the trees.

  His expressionless eyes opened a little more to watch as they grew in number. Sudden heat rose from his stomach to his mouth.

  - "There are more people. What I supposed," -he said into the air, and his words were carried away by the warm wind of that night. In the tower, at the top, the wind ran wildly hooting in their ears.

  There was a small balcony surrounding the tower, and abo
ve it, large eyes were watching him. They were windows that were taller than the attic window. Nor did he stop to think about the process of its construction. He did not care. Only his life. He moved slowly to the other side of the turret; where it had built a small house, right in the back. That did not fit into Riley's description of the Sanatorium. And he did not wonder what the hell it was. He just saw a sunken roof and skirting that structure; more people were looking up, where he was.

  His heart skipped a beat breaking all tranquility in his state of mind. They were watching him. He came back to where he was before, now moving faster as if he were suddenly a nervous person.

  The people down there had their heads up and were looking at him. There was a significant crowd.

  - "They're watching me," -he breathed, sweating. That quiet boy was losing his temper.

  Unaware of everything that had happened to his companions, except Alaina's long scream, now the worry had increased.

  The calm, ungainly boy was now euphoric.

  He saw them coming everywhere.

  He had heard Alaina's disturbing scream, and he did not know why he had stopped listening to her.

  He did not know if she was still there. Hidden in the shadows.

  He was aware that everyone had discovered him and he wondered if all those people were neighbors of the area, who had joined in a final assault.

  Truthfully, he would never discover it.

  Although before his eyes only perceived the blackest darkness in the world, he would see something heartbreaking. Frightening.

  The wind blew softly, and his hair danced over his head as his eyes grew larger and larger.

  - "I'm fucked," -he said, without further ado.

  From that height, he could be reached by a shot, because they were already on the esplanade of the Sanatorium entrance.

  And in the back.

  And both sides.

  He was surrounded by hungry wolves that showed their wet drooling fangs, while their throats roared like an accelerated engine.

  However, he did not see anyone raise their arms. Only the look. He had to escape down the twisted stairs again, but he thought it would be too late because all those people would already be inside as well. So he chooses to wait.

  Now his impatience had taken away his personality.

  - "Fuck! Fuck! It was the only word he managed to articulate, while his hands clung to the railing of the circular or square balcony. That was more important now.

  They were all there, and that was the only thing that mattered.

  His eyes were tearful. They were tearing in an attempt at a crying outburst. Jayden's quiet was about to mourn, because of nerves, because he knew he had no escape and saw death very closely. Too close, he could smell it. A smell that could not be described. Nor could one explain that eternal silence in the forest, on the floor below and below. The silence that broke when her tears caressed her cheekbones and overflowed his chin.

  Then all of them climbed the wall in a vertiginous way, like the crowd, forming mountains of bodies on top of each other. They rose like cockroaches, which do not detach from the wall no matter how much you blow them. They all climbed suddenly, crowding together, building a human mountain, which ultimately was not. Because Jayden saw them up close when the crowd of bodies reached the turret. Everything seemed unreal. How can they climb the walls like insects? He did not give her time to think about anything else. Those big, stinking mouths screamed in front of his face. Touching the tip of the nose, licking the sweat on his face. And they had grabbed onto their legs and arms like gigantic ticks. And he saw them. He saw that they did not have eyes. He saw the suffering in that darkness and heard his cries before he lost his balance and fell into the emptiness.

  None of those hundreds of hands grabbed him.

  Their bodies disintegrated like particles and Jayden's retinas saw how the ground was getting bigger and bigger and time was getting shorter.

  The impact was like that of a projectile digging into the earth without exploding.

  Jayden did not die of heart attack with his body disintegrated, but he felt and savoured the purest fear before he became a mess of flesh with all the broken bones in the middle of a great puddle of blood and guts winding for the last time.

  Someone who was hiding in the bushes heard the impact, but he did not flinch.

  All those entities that reached the tower had already disappeare.

  43

  Kevin, if he kept the flashlight, had heard in two minutes two heartrending cries that were familiar to him. However, he had never heard such a desperate and gloomy cry. He felt a huge desire to take a cigarette to his mouth and what the fuck, a can of beer to his lips. But he did not have either. Less than an hour to dawn, Kevin had been patient in his wait. But patience had a limit and decided that it was time to act. There was a reason he was the most energetic boy. Captain. But under the circumstances, he had not exercised it. Each of his companions, including his girlfriend, had chosen their destiny. His own hiding place and now they were all dead. Which Kevin did not know at all. Nor the fact that those wandering shadows appeared to him or heard the cries that made your blood run cold.

  He was confused and believing that everyone needed his help, decided to go in search of it.

  Yes, he would face the man with the crossbow. He would punch himself and with a little luck would stick an arrow in his other eye because he knew that he had made the right decision because he felt the bone of the socket on his fingers. It was as if he had scratched a wall to make a deep mark. And that had assured him that he had been right, although at no time had that madman uttered; There is my eye!

  The door to the room in which he had been hidden all night long creaked open slowly. The beam of light from the lantern drew streaks on the concrete floor of level one. In reality they were not stones but white tiles and red bricks were discovered on the walls after the plaster had fallen.

  He went out into the hall.

  There was no one.

  - "Guys, I'm going for help," -he shouted and, his words echoed in the hallway. He remembered Leah and her eyes, but nothing made him think that those eyes would no longer see him. He still believed that everyone was still, hidden.

  He continued walking without making a sound, something ridiculous, for he had shouted.

  But nobody or anything got in his way.

  He reached the door of the entrance.

  Without resisting it opened under the thrust of his sweaty hand and after opening felt the breeze on his face. He breathes deeply. It seemed he was caressing freedom. His feet rang in the terrace at the entrance. Next to it, about two meters away, was a mound of flesh and bone still hot. It was what was left of Jayden, but Kevin did not see it. His feet continued to ring on the ground, and his body pierced the leafy forest.

  44

  Carlos had taken the difficult decision of his life. To tear off the eye that hung from its socket, well, the optic nerve and a piece of nudged grape.

  He picked up his shirt that remained folded like a ball and took out one of the sleeves. He put his right hand inside with a serious face. He knew it was going to hurt, but he had to, and he knew that too. He put his hand to his cheek. The touch of the shirt with the sweaty skin gave him a chill that dissipated right away. The wound was numb and painful. The fabric of the shirt brushed the optic nerve and the piece of the eye. The pain became a little more unbearable. Carlos had stretched out and had prepared a plan B for the bleeding. With his fingers afflicted by arthrosis, he gently squeezed until he narrowed the separation of his fingers around the optic nerve. The pain became a little more unbearable but did not feel anything hot coming out of the socket or the sweet smell of blood. He squeezed hard and gritted his teeth. With force, he pulled the optic nerve as if he were taking an arrow out of his leg. The pain was lacerating and howled in pain. Kevin, who was already halfway between the Sanatorium and the van, was unaware of Carlos's scream of pain. Suddenly, a soft warm liquid stroked her cheekbone
and cheek and began to smell the pleasant smell of blood. The pain lasted a few seconds, but it was not so intense, and with the other eye, he saw that what had been part of him for a lifetime, was caught in the sleeve of his shirt. He shifted his hand to the side and separated his fingers. He heard a silky noise at his side, after falling to the ground. It did not raise any cloud of dust. With the temperance of a fighter, he approached the other end of the shirt to the basin, to plug the bleeding.

  And he waited.

  He waited for everything to happen.

  It was about to dawn and both, the shotgun and the crossbow, waiting next to him, like two sleeping cats.

  He needed the fucking pills.

  45

  Kevin approached the van that remained with the door open, just as he had left it. The ignition keys were on, and he let the flashlight fall on the passenger seat. The light blinked and went out.

  - "Ok, let's see how you behave baby," -he whispered as if speaking in the ear of a horse.

  His fingers rubbed on the key. The electric starter engine grumbled and made the bonnet of the van move on the first attempt. Kevin did not turn on the lights because he needed all the battery power to start. And he thought again of his girlfriend, Leah.

  - "Honey, I'll be back soon with the heavy artillery." -But his voice was carried away by the wind and scattered among the branches of the trees. He did not know he would never see Leah again. At least alive, with his bright eyes facing him and her mouth half open. Now she was disintegrated like a snack. But fortunately, he did not know that.

  He turned the ignition key again, and the engine roared like a beast, sending huge clouds of blue smoke through the exhaust like particles that would soon fall to the ground like drops of water.

  Kevin started laughing. His eyes shone again. On the horizon, he saw the glow of dawn.

  - "All right! It has worked!" -The engine was overheated! But now it works again! Come on, baby." -And he kissed the steering wheel.