Hell Calling (10 page)

“I’ve known for a while what it is I have to do, but I haven’t dared to face it.”

Esteban turned to look at his son, worried.

“You know what you have to do?”

“More or less,” replied Carlos, evasively.

“And what do you have to do?”

Carlos avoided answering hastily. His eyes reflected the mountains aspiring to reach ever further, brushing with glory, but never achieving it.

“Dad, I’ve spent almost my whole life not believing in things I can’t sense for myself...”

“And?” inquired Esteban, intrigued.

“Well... How does a person get to Hell? How on earth do they find the way?” asked Carlos, ironically, with half a smile on his lips.

Esteban understood immediately the direction in which his son was wanting to steer the conversation. He squeezed his hands together. His cracked and tired hands.

“I don’t know. I’ve always been looking for the opposite way. I imagine that you get there by doing evil, being evil, wishing evil.”

“Then... was Laura evil?”

His son interrogated him as if he were a complete ignoramus; like a sardonic child in a Religious Education class trying to mock the teacher.

“Like I said, I don’t know anything. I’m only making assumptions. I believe that my granddaughter was a very good and precious little girl. Something has to have happened at a certain moment; something that neither you nor I know of.”

Those last words, painful for his father to say, made Carlos remember the abandonment he had subjected Laura to, and the lack of awareness he had had for what had been the brief existence of his only daughter.

“From this world, I’m not doing anything other than wasting time, whilst all the while, she’s constantly sending me messages and asking for my help...”

“Pray, my son. It’s the only thing we can do. In the end, the Lord will show that he is more powerful than evil,” said Esteban, although his voice sounded awkward and lacking in confidence.

Then Carlos’ eyes opened very wide, as if he had just found the answer to a lengthily formulated question, and with an almost impossible answer.

“I’ll do that, Dad. I’ll pray...”

XL

Elena was late coming that night. Carlos did not stop tossing and turning in bed, uncomfortable. The images of recent events came into his mind in a constant stream, and then there came a terrible desire to leave himself, to be someone else; it was a desire that was overpowering.

‘Please let me begin another life.’

The week he had spent at his father’s house had contributed enormously to soothing his spirit. He had not spoken with anybody, only Esteban and Elena, and over the last few days he had not even thought, allowing his mind to go completely blank.

‘Please let me cease to be myself.’

With his eyes fixated on the ceiling, he could see the image of Laura, his daughter, running through a long park, her face full of happiness. What could have happened to make everything fall apart? At what moment had she stopped being herself, to become something else? Was it that Laura was deliberately evil, and that was the reason she was in Hell, or was it because she had, by chance, been possessed by the Devil?”

‘What would be going through the little girl’s head?’

What tormented Carlos so much was precisely that; that she was just a child, defenceless and without the experience to face everything she was facing. He, at least, had lived long enough to adapt to complex situations... Even though, in all truth, nothing he had previously experienced was of any use. It was too horrible.

Bzzzzz... Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii... Bzzzz...

––––––––

C
arlos jumped up in bed, like he always did when he heard that sound coming from the radio-alarm clock. It had been so long since he had last heard that cursed sound.

Bzzzzz... Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii... Bzzzz...

He stared at the device, as if sensing what would happen in the ensuing moments: as if some premonitory gift was forewarning him of what in a few brief moments would pass from future to present.

‘No, no, no...!’

And in that moment, the dial on the radio-alarm clock began to move by itself, as if trying to find a specific wavelength, like on all the other occasions.

‘No, no, no...!’

Carlos grabbed the device and threw it to the floor. Then he began to stamp on it and throw it against the wall again and again, and then again on the floor, until it was rendered completely unusable; until it stopped producing any kind of sound; until all that was left was a
deafening
silence.

‘That’s enough...’ he thought.

He stayed there for a long time contemplating those remnants of plastic and metal scattered across the entire room, satisfied, until a feeling of absence and uncontrollable helplessness made him burst into tears. He cried like a child, until his sobbing transformed into the moans of a madman. And he lay exhausted on the bed.

‘I know what I have to do.’

XLI

Elena had spent the previous night at her own home, finishing sorting out a few things. Although Carlos had said to her to come back, after spending a week at his father’s house, she preferred to leave him alone for at least a day, so as not to overwhelm him with questions or cause him any more anxiety. Some time ago, he was noticeably very tense, and the days he’d spent with Esteban seemed to have relaxed his spirit.

She entered his house noiselessly, imagining that, given how early it was, Carlos would still be sleeping. She left some shopping in the kitchen and set to very slowly tidying the lounge, although it was hardly a mess. Then she sat down.

‘How can I help this man?’

One idea had occurred to her: call a medium, who was a friend of Andrés, the latter of whom had met her on a famous radio program dedicated to the occult and paranormal occurrences. There was nothing to lose by asking, and perhaps that way Carlos would be able to formulate some key questions to ask his daughter, and they would also find a way to help her leave Hell, if she really was there.

‘The medium will give us answers, I’m sure.’

She had not finished saying these very words to herself when she noticed that her heart seemed to stop beating, and all of a sudden, time stood still. Just in front of her was the same chest of drawers as always, with the same books as always, with the same frame as always, inside of which was the same photo as always. But something had changed.
Before
, it had been a photo of Carlos alone on a beach, a smiling Carlos. And now there was
someone else
by his side.

‘It can’t be.’

She approached the chest of drawers and, with trembling hands, she picked up the frame to get a better look at the photo. She had to stifle a shriek. The person who had joined Carlos was none other than his own daughter, holding his hand, and with an almost malevolent smile. Laura seemed to be looking her defiantly in the eye; she seemed to be looking at her with all the hatred in the world, concentrated within herself, and emanating out through the paper. However, Carlos had lost the happiness from the previous instance, and now he was also looking at her, but in his eyes was an expression of desperation. In Elena’s mind, the two images were confused: the photo from the past, and the photo that she was holding now, almost breathless.

‘There was not a single photo of Laura in the lounge...’

The time became dense, along with the air. And then Elena noticed the
silence
in the house: the
strange
silence pervading the entire room since her arrival. She went running into Carlos’ room, but she found nothing there, only some crumpled sheets on an unmade bed.

‘Not so bad,’ she thought, relieved.

But then she remembered the toilet door, which she had seen fleetingly on passing. It was closed, which was unusual. And once more, she was overpowered by an immense and uncontainable fear. Walking slowly, she made her way to the bathroom and, also very slowly, she opened the door. She immediately saw the blood; the blood that stained the floors and walls; blood with which words had been written on the walls and mirrors:

I ADORE GEHENA

I GIVE THANKS TO MY LORD MOLOCH

SATAN, ACCEPT ME INTO YOUR BOSOM

With hardly any strength at all, she reached the bath, which was covered by a plastic shower curtain, also stained with blood. She drew it open sharply, and then lowered her eyes, her view clouded by tears. Only one image was able to imprint itself onto her retina before she fainted: a face, that of her friend Carlos; but now it was like the face of an animal screaming with all its strength as it was sacrificed, as it bled.

XLII

Esteban walked alone to the lake where he and his son used to often chat. The mountains in the background seemed to be sad, melancholy, muted... He walked as if he had no strength left in his body, dragging his feat, and stumbling every now and then.

‘Another loss.’

As he had said to Carlos during the last time they had met, he had less and less desire to die. He was completely overwhelmed by some enormous doubts, and he now no longer had a clear idea of what to think. He had been a man with an iron-hard faith in God, and in his capacity to triumph over evil. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

‘The worst thing comes with death.’

He knew that he had to get those terrible thoughts out of his head, but how? Elena had called him immediately, and he had the opportunity to attend the Dante-esque scene his own son had created before the police arrived.

‘How could he do that? How could he do that
to himself
?’

The forensics had determined that the cause of death had been due to an acute loss of blood, provoked by numerous self-inflicted cuts: suicide.

‘I’ll never be able to forget his face...’

Carlos’ last expression was that of someone suffering terribly, but also that of someone who has searched for that suffering. It was clear that his insanity had definitively taken over him, because nobody in their right mind could have been able to set up such a macabre spectacle, nor be able to cause those sorts of terrible injuries.

‘Perhaps I myself would end up losing my mind.’

But then again, his son was not that mad either. Padre Salas had been conclusive in explaining what his son had done, and that in the beginning, it didn’t make the least bit of sense: ‘he’s provoked God, and with that final act he’s invited the Devil to take him. He will have firmly carried out his final wish’. The priest himself hoped for all that effort to have not been in vain, because Satan is deceitful, and there remained the possibility that it had all been a sham, in which the only one possessed had been Carlos himself.

‘Perhaps that’s true; perhaps, in the end, and desperate following the terrible loss of his family, Carlos was the one taken by the Devil’.

Esteban contemplated the calm waters of the lake, which were reflecting a few solitary clouds in the sky.

‘How do you get to Heaven?’

He looked up to the sky and screamed with every last ounce of his strength. He screamed without saying anything; screaming out years’ worth of rage, which exploded out of him from having never received a single answer.

‘Damn everything!’

Exhausted, he grabbed a rock, round and smooth, perfect. He threw it with force across the lake, and didn’t even make the effort to count how many times it skipped over the water.

‘The game’s over, my son.’

XLIII

Padre Salas was anxious as he left his flat, and didn’t calm down at all until he arrived at the garage and got into his car.

‘I need to get to the church as soon as possible.’

Over the last few days, his sleep had been plagued with nightmares, and he was assailed by terrible premonitions throughout the day; they were fleeting, but intense. He saw himself surrounded by fire, and beset by horrifying but undefined creatures that were pushing him with sharp weapons towards the flames. Those dreams reminded him of the last phase of his life in Mexico, shortly before he had needed to emigrate and stop performing exorcisms for the church.

‘This can’t be happening to me again.’

As he drove carelessly along, all of the people he had exorcised came flooding back to his mind and, in a parallel sense, all of his meetings with the Devil, in his different forms. Satan always leaves a profound and indelible mark, and that was why he had had to stop.

‘I have to go far away again; start over, in a new country.’

He then noticed a presence in the back of the vehicle, in the back seat. There was
something
fidgeting, moving, and even producing small but detectable sounds with its breathing.

‘Don’t look behind, don’t look behind.’

Trying to control his nerves, he accelerated, longing like never before to make it to the church, to cling like a man possessed to the altar, to the protection of Christ, the eternal saviour. But the thing that had turned up in his car seemed to be progressively materialising, and increasing in size.

‘Lord, have faith in me, give me strength now.’

The thing panted intermittently as if enraged; panting at intervals like an enormous animal. It moved with increasing speed, as if it moved from one side of the back seat to the other, on the prowl, waiting for the right moment in which to pounce on its prey.

‘Remember:
don’t look behind
.’

It was hardly three hundred metres now to the building of salvation, and it became increasingly difficult to maintain his calm, control his nerves, contain the fear and terror taking over his entire being. Then, in an instinctive and uncontrolled action, he raised his gaze slightly up to the rear view mirror, and he was fleetingly able to make out Carlos’ face stuck onto a furry, reddish coloured beast. Terrified, he opened the car door and threw himself out before the creature could get him.

‘Lord, give me strength, take pity on me.’

Although injured by the fall, he ran with all his strength towards the church, not caring about the car, which was slowing down progressively until finally crashing into a lamppost. Nor did he pay any attention to the other passers-by, who looked at him incredulously, in astonishment. When he arrived at the building, he closed the doors violently after him and rushed towards the altar, getting down on his knees before the image of the crucifix.