The Sanatorium of Murcia
The Sanatorium of Murcia
Claudio Hernández
Translated by Nestora M. Salcedo Cruz
“The Sanatorium of Murcia”
Written By Claudio Hernández
Copyright © 2017 Claudio Hernández
All rights reserved
Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.
www.babelcube.com
Translated by Nestora M. Salcedo Cruz
Cover Design © 2017 Higinia Maria
“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Sanatorium of Murcia
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
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15
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THE END
The Sanatorium
of Murcia
Claudio Hernández
First edition eBook: October 2017.
Title: The Sanatorium of Murcia.
© 2017 Claudio Hernández.
© 2017 Cover Design: Alessio Catelli Shutterstock
© 2017 Deck design: kre_geg Alamy
© 2017 Cover design: Higinia Maria
© 2017 Translated : Nestora Margarita Salcedo
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication, including the cover design, may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, either electronic, chemical, mechanical, optical, recording, in internet or photocopy without the previous permission of the editor or the author. All rights reserved
I dedicate this book to my wife, Mary, to whom, if not to her? One more time, she is the first before everything. I love you, and I hope my madness do not separate us.
Introduction
Carlos López was already seventy years old, but that did not prevent him having a shotgun in hand and with the crossbow hanging from one shoulder, all the corners of Espuña Mountains, in Murcia, where his emaciated physique pierced the grove. However, his eyes, although almost lunatic, did not seem with certain fatigue, but tension. He had a height of one meter seventy and had the skin more wrinkled than a lizard taking the sun in a quarry. He weighed seventy-three kilograms, and even so, his knuckles were real sharp bones, almost splitting his skin. His gray hair shaved. He wore brown corduroy trousers and a red plaid shirt. And no, he did not carry any animal or bird on one side. He was not hunting. He was in pursuit. His lips were sealed now, and they looked like a long zipper across his face. Perfectly straight. His index finger did not shake in the trigger at the time of the shooting, and he had already done it three times that same morning in late September.
The fallen of the branches as if they were waves dying in the sand, let a glimpse of that dark figure, while they moved. His eyes opened instantly, one more time, and his finger pressed against the trigger. His forehead was sweaty, and a few beads of sweat impregnate his sparse and grey-haired beard too.
It was certainly that.
Carlos was born in the district of Berro, very near the Espuña Mountains Sanatorium. He remembered very well the urban legend that had created about to this center, which the Murciano government had outlined to open nine years ago with two hundred new beds. Now, in 2017 was not a priority. Nevertheless, for Carlos, it was because of that, the dark figure had got out of the location.
The legend recognized of the existence of the black lady. Something sinister that had seemed the neighbors in several occasions.
A roar that made echo in the tree top and the walls of the rocky mountains filled up the silence that warm morning. The cartridge literally had exploded inside the hunting shotgun, and its heady smell of gunpowder made him wake up the desire to have reached it fully. But it was not like that. That dark figure continued among the branches and leaving a trail as a dense and sticky fog behind.
- “Shit!” –muttered Carlos now that spat on the dead leaves on the ground.
He advanced with his body crouched on a path, and as he moved slowly, he was carrying the shotgun again, barely making any noise. Penetrating the green forest, as if swimming in a murky river, little by little it was reaching ground zero.
The Sanatorium of Murcia.
Its brittle, pale walls were visible as the branches moved away from Carlos's eyes. The whole building had been embraced with passion by a climbing grass that now began to dry the leaves. The multiple windows looked at Carlos like empty eyes, scrutinizing and chasing him somehow. His heart thudded now under his chest, for the first time that morning, but he did not take his hand there, just where the skin was moving. His eyes remained motionless as if his glance anxiously lost, between the windows of that old, and abandoned building built in 1917.
The dark silhouette climbed up the wall like a black salamander, stopped, looked at him with watery, whitish eyes and then continued to climb to the ceiling. The sound of the stones on the wall as they collapsed made the birds' flight, while the dark, empty barrel of the shotgun aimed them for a moment, then returned to the entity.
Another deafening noise covered the air of such a splendid place, which now was withering away with the passage of days. A hare crossed the road from side to side with such speed that Carlos only saw a gray spot. The hole was drawn in the wall like another eye, while the dark figure avoided it.
The sun's rays were barely visible under those branches, but the heat was suffocating, yet a stream of cold air covered like a cloak, the area near the Sanatorium. And for a moment it seemed to Carlos that the growing darkness had entirely hidden the sun. After a few seconds, with a heart in a fist, the vague light as if it were the moon, it intoxicated the road and the facade of that building.
The figure was no longer there.
But Carlos waited outside, sitting on the floor.
And he was chasing something he did not know if it existed. In fact, he did not remember whether he had taken the medication for his delusional disorder.
1
The sun disappeared, gobbled up by the full moon, giving way to an almost total darkness. In the middle of the narrow road formed by continuous curves that defied even the law of gravity, the engine of the van exploded like a firecracker, spitting a bluish cloud through the exhaust pipe, which dissolved in the darkness, though it seemed to glow for a moment, like devilish fireflies.
Kevin, who was on the wheel, clenched his fist and clenched his teeth in an instinctive act of rage. The steam, which shone and smeared the glass with an opaque mist, suggested that everything was gone. The engine groaned and ceased altogether, only the hissing of the steam escaping from the radiator.
- “Fuck! What kind of van did you rent? -Inquired Leah, Kevin's girlfriend, who was sitting on the passenger side. Her eyes would have burst open, and her lips did nothing but move.
Kevin, the captain of the group, set up of three couples from Florida, who had chosen Spain for tourism, was a young man of twenty-three, blond hair, with a long
hair and light eyes. Almost so blue that they seemed to glow in the dark. He was athletic because of his fondness for bodybuilding and used to wear jeans with a tight white shirt. His long fingers were now stroking the rough steering wheel and denoting he was quite tall. His height was about one eighty-five meter, and his weight was more than ninety kilos.
- "A fucking van!" -Exclaimed Kevin in response to his girlfriend. – “A fucking van that's supposed to be new and checked!”
From the back, there was a chuckle, and Kevin turned his head as if on balls installed in his neck, by the way, he did. His vertebrae did not crack, but his dazzled look made that giggle disappear.
- "The truth is we're too many in the van. We are twelve,” -Jackson explained, breaking the ominous silence. His face was a blur in the dark. Jackson was black, and you could only see his white eyes like two billiard balls, watching the darkness. And his teeth, these also shone for moments.
- "You're right. And that has been with the engine. You told the tall girl behind the counter that we were only five of us,” -Jayden said as she tried to pull away from the sweaty bodies of the others. They were all squeeze together, like pigs, before going to the slaughterhouse.
- "Do you think you're smart, are not you?" -Kevin asked, his neck twisted and his lips tight in a thin line. – “Now we have to push the van and find a place to spend the night. I'll be at the wheel.”
Luke grunted between the flat faces.
Kevin turned to his regular position and found that at least his lights were on. The white light that licked the fifty meters of the causeway and could catch until it faded in a grayish stain.
- “What do we do now? -Leah asked, staring at him in disbelief.
- “I do not know. Although I think I already said that,” -Kevin remembered. – “Let's push the van sideways and spend the night here maybe. He stopped suddenly, as if a light had gone on in his mind and added after a few seconds. – “Perhaps it is better that we seek refuge in one of the many houses that are abandoned by these places. I saw it on the internet.”
Leah looked at him even more incredulously. Her eyes were dark and her hair faded in the dark because she was a brunette. Her long hair was curly and seemed to shine during the day at times. Her protuberant breasts erected in an angle that could hardly withstand those melons and her wasp waist hidden behind a pink sweater. She was wearing short jeans with a pile of strings hanging over her buttocks. For Kevin, it was his perfect girl.
Behind, the whistles began breathing through panting, and little by little the murmur took over the night.
- "I do not know why I listen to you, Kevin," -Jayden grumbled. His face was one of the ten faces that crushed each other in the back. Chase, the fat one of the group next to his girlfriend Sadie, occupied three parts of the available place in that hovel.
Jayden extended his long arms forward, escaping from the sweating of the others, as if trying to catch something with his shabby fingers. He was a tall young man. He was one ninety tall, and redhead. Many times, he was the object of the jokes of his friends, who named him Murcian corn or ear of maize when it was already dry. That did not matter to him at all, and his passive character made him an object of worship. He had no freckles, unlike the other redheads on the planet. His skin was taut and silky, a pinkish color. His green eyes dazzled to Violet, his girlfriend. He had no beard. Not even a sparse beard. Not a hair on the cheeks or the chin, but in the balls.
"Damn, you cannot breathe in here." Luke complained, which was literally crushed by Taylor's tits and Sadie, Chase's fat girlfriend.
Luke had brown hair. With an unusual bangs, it looked almost like a tupé. But most of the day the hair was unsustainable in that position and they rested on the crystals of their huge black-rimmed glasses. And no, he did not have any plaster wrapped in one of the sideburns of the glasses. He was neither fat nor thin. It was normal. What was understood as an ideal body. He was neither tall nor low. Luke fulfilled the expectations of his girlfriend Taylor who, with her long blond hair and gray eyes, would reach orgasm at any moment. He was made for each other. None of the twelve young men reached the age of twenty-five. And all had a very high life expectancy, but from that moment on, the countdown had begun to release the sand through the thin glass tube.
"Get out of the van!" Exclaimed Alaina, Jackson's girlfriend. She was also dark-skinned and both Jayden and Riley joked about the dark coffee in front of them. That made a human bark out of them and everything was as before. His hair tangled as if he were forgotten in time, covered his narrow shoulders and tense dark skin. Her eyes, as white as a zombie's, glowed in the darkness like her boyfriend's.
Riley started laughing and did it so hard that he missed a fart. Suddenly she got a glimpse of Sadie, the chubby of the group, but her tits were the most desired. Riley was the formal, dark, normal-looking child. Nothing to write home about. Except that he wore very striking T-shirts with terrifying drawings on his chest. However, he was not a rocker and he did not like the country either. To tell the truth, he did not like music, unlike Jackson who was always tattooing a random and invented rap.
-You are disgusting! Barked Violet, Jayden's girlfriend. His nose was caught by his index finger and thumb and his voice sounded, as if he were speaking through a tube. She was the one with the least tits, but Jayden loved it. I used to wear long jeans all summer long and dark t-shirts well baggy. Now the sweat hit his skin with the cloth and felt disgust. She was dark and her eyes were no more than the traditional brown. It was petite and rather short. And that was all.
"Wait, I want to get another fart," Chase announced, lifting his ass from the seat and making a noise like a chainsaw. His fat was close to obesity, but he was the funniest in the group. He let out a laugh as Kevin's eyes were bloodshot behind the wheel and his back to them.
-Fuck! Do you want to behave at once? Kevin's voice sounded grave. He was furious. It was normal to see him like this on many occasions, except when he put a pint of whiskey in his belly. Then her eyes grew tearful and her lips spread all over her face.
Leah touched his shoulder to calm him. His long nails painted bright red seemed to glow in the gloom like the claws of a wild animal.
"Calm down," he said.
2
Something was moving in the bushes, but Carlos saw nothing, except he heard the noise of the foliage as it moved. I was sure it was not strange at all. At night, there were animals in the forest and more in the Espuña Mountains, a natural site of a good number of protected species. It could be a lynx. It was the first thing that came to mind, but as he looked toward the area from which the noise came, he saw the white wall of the sanatorium, bright, in the mean light of the moon, which gave it a ghostly appearance. The dark eyes of the whole main facade continued to watch the forest as empty basins. The front door, forged of iron and as tall as a truck, looked like a mouth with long teeth, waiting to open at any moment.
Carlos still had the shotgun held in both hands, as if his life depended on it. The crossbow was on the ground and the arrows too. His breathing was intermittent, and he felt like a cold sweat running down every facials feature. He needed his medication and he thought he remembered that he had wandered through the forest for three days, not knowing exactly what he was doing or what he was after.
His bladder about to explode cried out for an eternal piss, but it did not move from the ground. His eyes looked around and moved within their sockets like balls held by springs. His eyes were wide as plates, and the vague light of the moon drew silhouettes among the shadows that seemed to shine at times, like a dense, sticky fog.
He felt another noise and his head tilted to the left as soon as the sound ceased. There was nothing, but now he could feel his heart at his temples, rumbling like a drum. He was a man of few words and barely spoke alone. His lips remained sealed like the sticky sides of the paper in a mail envelope.
Now the wind rose like a blanket that covered everything, warm and muggy you could hear whistles in the branches of
the trees that seemed to cry of emotion or perhaps of sadness.
And meanwhile, he kept waiting.
3
Under the reflection of the full moon that watched them with their face inflated, the twelve were pushing the van that remained with the lights on, and as it went along the narrow road, the white light pierced the darkness crossing it in silence, except for the wheezes of those young people.
- "I cannot take it anymore," -Chase said as he separated his hands from the side of the vehicle, drying his sweaty face with his shirt.
- "He screwed us up, nor the others," -Jackson urged with his head down, his hands sliding down the warm, metallic side. The side door was open and only Riley's hands were clinging to their edges, which could push harder. The girls were behind, pushing with their pointy ass.
- "Do you want to stop complaining already?" -Kevin asked, his body drenched in sweat. His eyes shone in the gloom. - "You look like girls."
Leah let out a laugh from the back.
- "Where will we leave this fucking van?" -Jayden asked from the other side of the vehicle. His voice sounded hollow as if speaking in the distance-
"When we find a way out, a road," -Kevin explained as his knuckles came out white and his forehead wrinkled under effort. The tires emitted a slight sound of rubber tearing which was something like a goat trail. There were holes everywhere on the asphalt. That's why sometimes one of Kevin's hands grabbed the steering wheel and turned it hard.
Chase rested his pudgy hands on the side of the van and with his belly falling to the ground, began to push.
- "Who was the idea of renting this old van?" -Sadie asked from the back. She was suffocating and her voice was between gasping.
- "Everyone," -Kevin answered. - "Or do you think we would do the walking tour?"
- "Excursion?" -Luke interfered but said nothing more.
- "We could have rented two cars," -Sadie replied. - "Two fucking cars and now we would not be here, trapped in the middle of nowhere under a grotesque moon."