Authors: Enrique Laso
"And you think I cannot succeed in this mission?"
"No, my son. I think you may well succeed, but I think that you can come out of this badly. It's a difficult struggle even for the most solid exorcist..."
Father Gabriele's words hung in the air for a few seconds. The Mexican priest thought he could see a shiny aura around the old man's body and wished he could entrust his soul to this wise, patient man.
"You say you can see inside me. I beg you, tell me what is that you see..."
"You know that already."
"I insist... what do you see, Father Gabriele?"
"I see Beelzebub roaming inside you, fighting tirelessly to take over your soul."
XII
They'd seen the recording more than a dozen times already, but Andrés could not stop watching it over and over.
"I think it's the distorted figure of a woman. It could be Alicia," mused the technician, who still hadn't recovered from the tremendous shock those images had given him.
"I don't know. "It's possible, but it's also imperative that we return to Carlos's to keep on working there. We're just wasting our time here," replied the parapsychologist, shrugging.
They were at Elena's flat. Andrés refused to go back to the room where he'd recorded that freaky, phantasmagorical scene.
"I'll only do it if I someone else can be with me, at all times. You are investigating Alicia's past, which is essential, so you cannot spend all your time there with me."
"Obviously."
"Well, then, I'd like to get Rodrigo involved in the team. You know him already, the photographer and image technician. "
Elena thought about it for a moment. She needed to weigh up the pros and cons of that decision. When Carlos was still alive, she had been the one who'd filled the house with people, although her trusted person had always been Andrés. Now things had changed, and she'd seen that the best they could do was to keep the number of people involved in this bizarre, mysterious situation to a minimum.
"Ok. Just so you're not alone, but this is the last concession I'll make."
"For fuck's sake, Elena, do you realise that we're facing an
unknown being
? Are you aware that our own lives may be in danger?"
"I know all that! Do you think I'm not terrified myself?"
"No, of course not," Andrés answered, hearing the anguished tone in which Elena had just spoken.
"But we need to keep this under wraps. We need to keep it..., I don't know how to put it... let's say 'private'. I suspect that if we get a lot of people involved, Carlos's and Laura's souls will stay trapped in Hell forever."
"Then we'll need all the wisdom and experience of Father Salas."
"Yes, but we must give him a hand. For some reason he feels weak, and also needs our support and our knowledge. This recording is bound to be of interest to him."
Andrés stood up and hugged his colleague. They both felt the need of each other's warmth and understanding.
"Thanks, Elena. You know well that this is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, and I'm thrilled to be able to experience it. And yet, I can't help being a little bit scared."
"And you are quite right to be careful, Andrés," said the parapsychologist, waving a small book with a pink cover.
"What's that?"
"Laura's diary. I've brought some drawings and her diary to reinterpret them. We were confused and, from the start, we have been looking at every detail in the wrong way."
"I'm not following you..."
"I think Laura discovered that her mother was evil, that she wanted to do something terrible to her. What at first we took as evidence of Carlos's daughter's demonical possession could now mean something entirely different."
"Such as...?"
Elena gave Andrés the little diary, pointing at a particular phrase:
I HAVE TO KILL MOM.
E
steban had arranged to meet Father Salas at the pond, a place that, of late, he'd only visited alone or with Carlos. He knew the priest was bringing news from his short trip to Rome, and he'd rather receive them in this pleasant environment, far from the rest of humanity.
"I used to come here with my son."
"It really is a wonderful place."
"We used to play here; skimming flat stones and counting the number of times they bounced off the water. I still feel that I can see him over there, at the water's edge," Esteban mused, emotional.
Father Salas put his hand lightly on the shoulder of the father who was now suffering, gripped by his loss and melancholy.
"I bring good news from the Vatican."
"Really?" Esteban asked, thinking that he might have been saying that just to ease his sadness.
"Yes. It is possible to perform the ritual of exorcism. Although this is a dangerous procedure, and also, in the best of cases, it will only allow us to save the souls of your son and granddaughter."
"What do you mean?"
"That you will not see them again... until you meet them again in Heaven," said Father Salas, hiding the possibility that those innocent spirits could be left wandering forevermore in Limbo.
"Anything is better than knowing they are terrified, and in Hell."
"That's why it is worth trying."
"Do you need me to do anything?"
"Yes. I'll need you by my side at all times. We'll need some personal objects that belonged to Carlos and to Laura, and we are going to bless them. They'll be a sort of link to their souls."
"No problem. As I've said before, I'm entirely at your service. I'm not afraid anymore."
Father Salas looked at Esteban and saw his face withered by the endless pain he was enduring.
"It's good that you've lost all fear. But it's important that you never leave prudence aside. The Evil One and his acolytes are immensely powerful."
"But God is much more powerful, And my faith is more solid than ever before."
"That's right. God is more powerful, than us, Esteban, we are just men. Please, never forget that."
The daylight was beginning to fade and the two men started their walk back. Father Salas kept a reflexive silence, while Esteban seemed to mumble something to himself, a sort of personal litany.
"Father, what possible dangers lie in wait for us, once we begin this ritual?"
"Actually, I don't think either you or Elena will run any risks."
"Please, could you elaborate?"
"Father Gabriele gave me access to a demonological treatise where I found every step we need to take in detail."
"I see..."
According to that ancient codex, the possibilities of being affected by a
return shock
or of being tempted by the Devil are almost completely restricted to the exorcist leading the ritual."
"But I cannot allow this to happen!" exclaimed Esteban, horrified.
"Don't worry. I am God's servant and I have carried out hundreds of exorcisms. In addition to this, I have now received advice from the greatest expert on Earth on the subject. The probabilities of anything bad happening to me are practically zero," lied Father Salas, mercifully.
A
ndrés had settled himself again in Carlos's flat. Now he had the company of his colleague Rodrigo, round-the-clock, which, while not diminishing his apprehension, did help keep his panic under control.
"This place is fascinating. And the equipment the Americans have lent you... amazing," said Rodrigo while he checked the photographic records of the last few hours, where several figures could be seen, which he thought were spectres, but which were, in any case, anomalies.
"I hope you don't have to go through any situations that turn your excitement into sheer terror."
"Come on, Andrés, how long have we been chasing a story like this one?"
"A long time. I don't know, maybe more than five years..."
"Something like that. Five years visiting the houses of hysterical or mad people to find nothing at all."
"Well, not quite, remember Zaragoza, or that little village in the back of beyond, in León..."
"Mere bagatelles, and you know it. We'd never had such solid, such evident and undeniable proof of the presence of...
something
out of the ordinary."
"Shall I show you the wall again?" asked Andrés, who understood the excitement of his colleague, but didn't share it.
Rodrigo smiled. Deep down, he envied Andrés, who'd lived that fascinating story from the start.
"I wish I'd come with you that day."
"I used to speak like that before..."
"Come on, cheer up. Get up from the bloody sofa and come and work a bit with me. We have loads to do."
"Have you finished processing last night's audio recordings?"
"I'm on it. This is your job, my friend. First I'm doing the photos. They really are mind-blowing."
"Rodrigo, seriously, thanks for being here with me. I still feel a bit uneasy, that's all. This afternoon I'll be in a better mood. I've had two very big scares in a very short time, and I am still taking it all in."
"Don't worry. I'll keep going with this.
Rodrigo got down to work with the recordings that the high-sensitivity microphones should have done through the night. After over an hour of frenetic work, he'd managed to isolate and clean two fragments of any real interest. He couldn't help feeling a certain uneasiness, but his analytical spirit and his will to gather as much proof as possible overcame any misgivings. He turned around, only to discover that Andrés had fallen asleep.
"Hey, buddy, I want you to listen to this..."
The sound technician woke up looking sleepy but in a better mood.
"Sorry. I'm exhausted and I can't rest properly at night."
"Come on, let's see if you can help me understand what the hell we've recorded."
Andrés went back to the computer, turned up the volume of the speakers, and played the first fragment.
«Bzzzz... Fiiiii... Bzzzz...»
"Fuck, it's the bloody radio!"
"What radio?"
"Elena's. That's the radio that Carlos spoke through from Hell and begged for her help."
"This was recorded in the little girl's room" said Rodrigo, in case that was relevant.
"Then there's no doubt about it. Elena left her radio there, in case Laura tried to communicate again through that device. Anything else?"
"Yes, and it's more interesting and more explicit ."
"The voice of any of them?"
"Actually, I think it's a woman's voice."
"What mic is the recording from?" asked Andrés impatiently.
"From the one in that sort of junk room full of stuff, the one with the cracked wall."
The sound technician was startled and went to the table where his mate was. His pupils had shrunk like those of a cat stalking a prey.
"Go on, hit
play
and see what messages they are sending us from the
Underworld
."
"Easy, man. That's more like you! Just a minute ago you looked like a wet fish."
Rodrigo played the recording and, while it played, he checked out his mate, gauging his reactions.
«Damned you all. Stay away from me. Get away. I curse you»
"Does it mean anything?"
Andrés fell heavily on one corner of the table. He was crestfallen and, once again, he could feel the panic gripping his gut.
"I think it does."
"Do you know who it might be?"
"I think it's Alicia, Laura's mother..."
" The one that cracked the junk room's wall?"
"That one..."
Rodrigo thought for a while. Part of him was jumping with joy, the other was feeling ill-at-ease.
"It seems the threats are back. We don't really have anything to fear."
Andrés walked away from his friend and went towards one of the large windows of the modern, luxury flat. The bright light of a cloudless day wasn't enough to fill him with much hope.
"Actually, we do have a lot to fear. In fact, I think that, as of right now, we are risking our own necks. They're trying to tell us something and they're putting it in quite plain language."
E
lena had gathered all the courage she could muster and had finally managed to find herself in front of the door of Alicia's best friend, the only real one, according to Carlos. She was inside one of those U-shaped buildings that surround a nice garden and a large swimming pool. Its corridors were endless and brought to mind a derelict psychiatric hospital, which didn't help in calming her anxiety. Similar to what Andrés had felt regarding Carlos's flat, she sensed that behind that door a dark secret was hiding. In the end, after much rumination, she dared to push the doorbell.
"Hello, can I help you?" said a dark, middle aged woman with bright eyes and impeccable looks.
"Are you Ana?"
"Yes. Who are you?"
"I'm Elena, the psychologist that was seeing Carlos in his last days, before he..."
"I see. Come in, please."
Ana led the way to a spacious living room with a floor-to-roof window. The magnificent garden was visible through the glass, and at that time it had been invaded by a handful of little ones who were playing freely. Seeing the image of the smiling children, even when she could not hear their voices, had a calming effect on Elena.
"Have there been any new developments, remarkable or otherwise?"
"To be honest, no. I'm working on Carlos's notes and I'm trying to find out more about the reasons that led him to commit such an atrocious act."
"And what do I have to do with that?"
"He came to see you soon after the car accident in which Laura and Alicia died..."
"Yes, so he did."
The parapsychologist could see that Ana was uncomfortable. She couldn't tell why - however, if she insisted, she might get somewhere.
"I'm researching Carlos's case, I may publish a paper in a scientific magazine, you know."
"Not really. "I'm an architect, I don't have a clue about psychology."
"I wouldn't want to waste your time. What exactly did Carlos want from you?"
"Well, I was Alicia's best friend..."
"As I said before, I have access to some of his last notes," Elena said, hinting that she knew more than her host could initially have imagined.