The House of Bonmati Read online

  “I can’t see it” Juan said, still holding the rats at gunpoint.

  “Apparently I am the only one who can see all those damn silhouettes in this house.”

  “It seems like it. You are like a magnet for them. Did Dad do something to you when we were living in the other house, when he was involved in witchery?”

  “Yes. He prayed for me and he took me to a ritual.”

  That was the connection. It was the door between her and them. Apparently, she was the most vulnerable among them.

  43

  Two nights later, it was already October, Dozer, the family dog, who was tied up to a long chain, started barking furiously. He was shouting his head off and foaming at the mouth. He had not been like that when Duska, the goat, attacked that thing.

  The dog had made a hole with its paws trying to move forward a few steps. It had soil between its hind legs. The poor animal had blood shot eyes, and it was staring at the fig tree. The 40 watts bulb was on that night.

  Suddenly there was a noise behind the door. Pedro was removing the board that jammed the door. After that the metallic noise of the lock could be heard and Dozer was barking stronger. He was seeing something.

  There was not much light that night. It was disturbing to see that dim lighting on the earth; at least on that part of the earth. The sun was shining on the other side of the earth, but here, at Bonmati, there was no sun. There were only rivers. Although the dim outline of the trees could be seen under that moonlight.

  Dozer kept foaming every time he barked, and his tongue was quite near the floor. Sometimes he halted to howl. His forepaws had excavated a perfect tunnel, and his neck was tense, pulling the leash that was tied to the chain.

  “Hey! Dozer! What’s wrong?” Pedro had started shouting euphoric but then he calmed down. He tried to caress the dog’s head. “What have you seen?”

  Pili’s face crumpled when she heard that. Perhaps dad had seen it too and he was asking the dog. Or perhaps he thought the dog was going to answer; perhaps. She looked innocently her dad’s face. Dozer kept barking noisily, and all the hens were frightened, and they were cornered on one side of the barn.

  “What a dork! When will you stop talking to the animals? Are you so stupid so as not to notice that they do not understand what you say?” Antonia had raised her voice above Dozer’s barking. And Pedro could hear her.

  “You are a bitch.”

  Antonia saw her husband’s lips moving, but she did not hear what he had said, she didn’t even know if he had said anything at all.

  “Shut the damn dog up!” Antonia yelled, covering her ears with her hands. She looked a big funny with her pajamas on. It was a striped pajama.

  Dozer kept on barking and foaming. He was staring at the fig tree.

  “Dozer! What’s wrong?” Juan asked, getting closer to the dog.

  “Here we go again!” His mother gasped with arms akimbo.

  Pedro stood up quite tense, straight as an arrow, turned around and walked right past his wife, without looking at her, towards the inside of the house. Antonia followed his movements with her eyes, again confused.

  Pedro went into the kitchen and Dozer kept on barking. Just one minute later, no more and no less, Pedro came out again. This time he had his Bible in his hand and something similar to a stole wrapped around his neck.

  “Dozer, be quiet. I am here to protect you.” He said while getting closer to the dog, There was a big hole already under its paws.

  “What the hell are you wearing on your neck?” Antonia asked. “That is not a scarf.”

  Her words fell on deaf ears.

  Now Pedro was two feet away from Dozer, and raised his hand holding something that was hanging and dancing freely in the air.

  Suddenly Pili’s eyes looked bigger, and her face was covered in sweat.

  “Can you see it, dad?”

  “Shut up!” Her father yelled, showing his teeth with a crazy look in his eye.

  It was the umpteenth time that he had shouted at her for the last three weeks. Pili had starting to worry about it. Her eyes started to fill with tears. However, she did not stop staring at the fig tree. She couldn’t stop looking at the thing that was lurking between the branches of the fig tree.

  “Don’t speak to your daughter like that!” Antonia shouted, raising her arms. Her boobs moved up and down like two water filled balloons.

  Pedro was under the fig tree now, his right hand extended, holding the Bible with his left hand.

  And then she saw it.

  She looked at his brother and she beckoned him to look at it too. Juan shrugged his shoulders. Then he turned his attention to the branches of the fig tree and his jaw dropped. He was seeing what his sister was seeing. He knew it as soon as he saw her closing her eyes and turning pale.

  It was a dark figure with a human shape, although it had no feet. It neither had mouth or eyes; it had two black blots instead. Its long arms ended in something quite similar to claws, like a fork. It was among the branches of the fig tree, watching Pedro and the dog.

  Juan’s heart sank, while his mother kept heaping insults behind him. His father raised his hand and started praying.

  “Oh Lord, even though I cannot see them, I know they are here. Deliver us from evil. Deliver me from...”

  “You fucking selfish prick!” His mother exclaimed. “He said Deliver me!”

  “That is why I entrust myself to you, so as to be delivered from this evil I am not able to see.” There was a mad gleam in Pedro’s eyes. He had had another outbreak, but he was not aware of it and he would never ever be.

  “Oh, shit, do I have to sit through this?” Antonia exclaimed, twitching her right foot. Obviously she was not able to see anything at all. She could only see her husband behaving strangely, as he used to do a few years ago when he had branched out into black magic. But now he was holding something similar to a rosary. And evangelists did not use images or religious objects. What kind of lunatic had she married? What was wrong with him? What was happening lately that he had even dared to pinch her arms and her boobs?

  Pedro, who was oblivious of his family and Dozer’s barking, kept on praying and mumbling until he started talking nonsense. But that thing did not leave the fig tree until the following morning.

  Juan and Pili knew it for sure.

  44

  Juan and Pili had talked about it every day throughout the following week. Now they were both aware that something was wrong. Something was wrong with Dad too. Now they regarded him as an evil person, who was angry, hostile and aggressive. And he seemed to worsen every day. Juan did not say anything about the woman in room six, because he simply did not remember much about it, just that he had seen a beautiful naked woman who sitting with her back to him and that he had woken up from an erotic dream. But he had talked about it with her sister.

  Pili saw that woman in her room. She looked like a nun, with a black head covering. She used to talk about those apparitions as something quite normal, as nothing else happened. That is, the noises and apparitions were constant, but it was like watching lizards running down the walls or stuck there, that was all. They impressed them, but they did not do anything else.

  What really worried them was their father’s attitude; his new attitude. They had even seen him carrying a huge hammer in one hand, just to move it from one side to another.

  Now he was wearing a stole wrapped around his neck instead of a black cloak, he took the Bible with him everywhere. And both agreed that their dad did not see them. The even had heard him asking protection only for him. What a selfish thing to do.

  Mum, who had always been the one wearing pants in the family, but now she had had to resign herself and she was getting drunk every day. And she appeared every day with a new bruise.

  The marriage was already broken, and so was the family. The house hid secrets, but the worst was yet to come. And it would come from their dad’s hand. They both sensed it. And they were right.

  The Evangelist c
ongregation stopped coming to the house.

  45

  Now it was his turn to explore the room where Angels had slept for a week. It was supposed to be one of the forbidden rooms, but it was not locked. However, it had never occurred to any of them to enter that room. Antonia did not clean that room since they had started living there.

  Juan had never been tempted to see what was inside the room, even though he had the spirit of adventure that most kids have. But one day, it was October, he was awake and he had the idea to visit it with his sister, after school.

  But what they saw there was not different to what inhabited the house.

  46

  “How about going into Angels’ room, Pili? Maybe we can find her dirty pants on the bed.” Juan said, with a mischievous look on his face.

  Pili burst into laughter. Both were playing in the room that shared the four bedroom doors and the window.

  “Yes, of course. You know we might run into something terrible, Juan.” Pili said. “Do you remember that day?”

  “Yes, I saw two big yellowish hooves.”

  “And something else.” Pili’s smile faded.

  “Yes, I saw what happened with her walking stick. It gives me goose bumps.”

  “Me too, me too” She repeated blowing her fringe, which was now quite long.

  But finally they decided to go.

  Their parents were again engaged arguing about nothing, and the two siblings drew near the door of the room, ready to open it as if it was one of their bedrooms. But when they reached the door, something stopped them.

  It was Fear.

  They looked at each other, as if their lives depended on it, just to find out that both were really pale and scared.

  “Pili, you look white as a sheet.”

  “And you look white as a ghost.”

  “But we have to overcome our fears and go into that room. That will be the only way we will be getting us out of the stress.” Juan explained with a frightened expression.

  Pili shook her hand in the air and blew.

  This time Juan did not rest his forehead on the door. He laid his fingers on the door handle. It was cold, and his heart started beating faster. He had not turned the handle yet. They were not bent this time, they were standing with their heads held high, but they were gripped by fear.

  Pili wondered if it was right what they were doing. She knew his brother was thinking the same as soon as she saw his trembling fingers.

  “I’m going to turn the handle...”

  “¨What do you think is going to happen next?”

  “Nothing ”

  His five fingers closed around the handle and he started turning it down.

  The door creaking was barely heard. The latch opened. Their hearts raced while the door was opening. The first thing they saw was a flood of orange light shining down from the window, because it was sunset and the sun was caressing the mountains.

  Then, they could see the bed, or the cot, as they called it. It was made of iron. It looked like the iron bars of a prison and it shined. The bare mattress was yellow, like old Angels’ nails, Juan remembered.

  “What a tacky bed” Pili said, touching her fringe.

  The door opened completely. They took a deep breath, they were really scared. Juan thought that he might made her angry and that way she wouldn’t be so scared, but he finally didn’t.

  “It is a normal bed, with no sheets.” He pointed towards the mattress. “But look, that’s a huge pee.”

  Pili looked at it. It was a big yellow spot, almost rust colored that took up most of the mattress, but she did not see any abandoned pants.

  “It’s disgusting!” She exclaimed.

  Juan started moving his legs like a soldier to enter the room, as if he was not scared. His heart had its normal rhythm again, about eighty or ninety beats. And his breathing was steady. He squinted his eyes, trying to see among the bars the mattress pee and the iron chair that had been left on a corner of the room.

  “There is nothing strange here. So much of a mystery and there is nothing weird.” Juan complained raising his hands, his fingers opened.

  “Well, there is a sink here.” Pili said, pointing to the right.

  “I see; and a mirror.” Juan observed, somehow confused.

  “I’m going to try the faucet, to see if it works.” Pili explained, turning it. A loud squeak indicated that it was being turned and then the miracle happened. Water gushed like a spring.

  “Hell! Water comes out and all!” Juan exclaimed very surprised, arms akimbo. He was within two meters from his sister, in front of the window. The sun hardly warmed his shoes.

  Pili turned it off. The water stopped slipping down the drain. A last drop remained hovering like a booger on the faucet.

  “Well, no surprises.” Pili admitted, a little bit disappointed too.

  Did they like to be scared? Did they want to keep seeing those blurry faces? Did they feel morbid fascination about all that? Anyway, it didn’t take long for them to decide to leave the room, their heads lowered.

  They were determined to leave the room when suddenly a figure appeared into the mirror. It was a cadaverous face, with empty sockets, as always. Its torn mouth was a blur in the mirror. But it was something more or less usual, just one of the many apparitions around the house. What really made their hearts race was something else.

  It was their father image.

  47

  Pedro went through the house, walking around mumbling verses like a bible-toting zombie. He raised his hand every now and then, index and middle finger on the thumb, tracing the shape of a cross in the air. When he reached the barn and he did it, one of the cows kicked him out with its legs, like a horse would do. Pedro was thrown two meters away towards the wall, and he crashed against it like a runaway train. The cry was long and loud, but he had the strength to get up and start kicking and punching the poor animal, even though he was packed with crap and straw in his clothes. His eyes were filled with hatred. And he was clenching his teeth, as madmen do.

  The rest of the cows started to ruminate all at once, but more than ruminating, they seemed to be calling for help. Their big innocent eyes watched Pedro’s endless kicking and the sweat on his brow. It was Saturday morning and therefore Juan and Pili were home. Now they were leaning on the door jamb and they were absolutely stunned, showing pain, compassion and fear in their eyes.

  “Mom! Dad has gone nuts!” Juan shouted, opening his mouth so much that his tonsils could be seen.

  His father glared at him with eyes so full of hatred that he got scared, as he had never seen him looking like that. Was Dad changing? What a stupid question at this point. Juan knew he had changed, and a part of him felt crushed.

  Pili closed her eyes, instead of putting her hands over them, which was easier. But that way she could have both hands free to cover her ears. The animal had been named Wuasky by them, and now it was crying and kicking.

  Antonia managed to get to the barn, even though she was already drunk, with an empty glass in her hand. She made a burp and cursed her husband’s father. She did it all in a row. Juan found himself trapped between two nuts and he feared for his life.

  “What are you doing to the poor cow?” Antonia inquired, peering at her husband, who had his foot up.

  “She is one of them. All of them are against me.” Pedro explained between gasps. He was bouncing his foot against the belly of the poor animal.

  “You are mad!” She yelled.

  Juan stepped back. He could not stand watching such an awful scene, and even less hearing the cow crying. He remembered the figures that showed themselves around the house, and he thought that he was no longer frightened by them. Now he was terrified by his father, with those dilated eyes and his clenched teeth. What on earth was going on? What plans did fate have for them? What did the house have to do with dad’s strange attitude? Was everything related? Maybe they had gone for the weakest one. Who were they? Could he see them too?

  He
had already the answers.

  “You bloody cunt!” Pedro shouted with bloodshot eyes.

  48

  Things were getting worse, and Sunday at noon something happened. Juan had the worst scare of his life, but it helped him to discover something crucial. He found out that his father had hit the skids and he was now a threat to the family.

  He was the weak point of the family for them, those who inhabited the house.

  49

  There was a wood and a few farmland hectares two kilometers away from the house. Some grapevines and corn had been planted there. They had to take care of those cultivated plots and all the woods surrounding the house too, it was part of the deal. They had also to look after the farmland located on the other side of River Ter, behind the taller trees, which had been leased to another neighbor who lived a kilometer away.

  The road leading there was like a winding serpent, full of sharp blind curves. His dad had been the first one to get into the car, a four-door Citroen 2CV. It was yellow, Juan’s most disliked color. His father had loaded up the car with the necessary tools to remove the weeds in the cornfield, as this year the corn would be gathered sooner because it had become ripe earlier due to the hot weather.

  Dad was grabbing the huge steering wheel and handing the gear lever on the dashboard, and the engine was running noisily, exhausting a blue fume out of the tailpipe, which was trembling like a high-pressure hose left on the floor. The whole hood of the car moved and vibrated like a tin can whacked by a stick. The wheels were turning slowly on the esplanade as they were heading to the dirt road, making a lot of noise. The car headlights were on, as in the night, and they looked like two bulging eyes, and the rays of sun reflected off the plastic part of the headlights.

  “You have to go up walking” his father had told him while he accelerated the car and the two pistons roared like a jet engine.

  “Ok.”

  “Don’t delay.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  He just had to walk two kilometers through the narrow road to get there. There were two chestnut trees in the middle of the road. He would stop there for a minute to check in on the chestnuts and he would go on silently, hearing nothing but his own voice, talking to himself.