The House of Bonmati Read online

  “Kill him.”

  Juan saw a dark figure hidden between the branches of the trees, right on top of his father. It was quiet and it had two black holes where the eyes were supposed to be; two blurry spots. It didn’t even flinch.

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  He did not say a word about the fire. He only said: “He is such a weasel!” before the stunned eyes of his wife and his daughter. He didn’t go near Pili and he did not caress her any longer in the following days and weeks. He didn’t even touch his little and pathetic tits, hard like nuts.

  Antonia kept on drinking and getting boozy every day, and she kept showing one or more new bruises on her body every day. Winter came and soon they needed to wear sweaters, which helped her to hide her bruises. But the arguments could be still heard through the walls.

  Dozer used to stare at Pedro every morning, showing his teeth and growling. Even the cat kept away from him, hissing at him when he was near. The cows looked at him with ruthless eyes, and Duska gored him.

  Pedro left the Evangelist congregation those days.

  With the arrival of autumn things became quieter. Pili and Juan stopped seeing those strange silhouettes in the shadows, on every corner and every window. They no longer saw those pale grey faces with no eyes, but the sounds persisted. It was the only thing that the house of Bonmati had left.

  But there were still voices. Those voices were increasingly clear for Pedro as days went by. Kill them all, the different voices said. Pedro, who was starting to go crazy, tried not to listen to them, but they were like a drill sound resonating inside his head bypassing his eardrums. Covering his ears was useless, because they were now inside his head.

  Now he was always walking erratically, carrying his Bible in one hand and a hammer in the other hand, talking to himself around the immense house.

  But then, winter came.

  And one of those winter nights the most terrible thunderstorm blew up.

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  There were no Christmas celebrations, but a simple supper with a tree with Christmas lights flashing all the time like Antonia’s eyelashes. Pedro had been silent all the time, scrutinizing what was going on around him suspiciously. Juan and Pili were playing on the sofa and his father had scolded him for doing it. His hand was caressing the handle of the hammer then. They had noticed it and they felt scared, and there were reasons for it.

  But there was an unexpected turn one winter night. Madness had overcome Pedro, and he had bent his mind to listen to the voices and obey them. No doubt, they were still present there, but now they occupied Pedro’s mind. He had taken a decision. It could be seen by his penetrating gaze and his insane expression. He was going to listen to what the voices murmured inside his head. And he was going to obey them. He was going to do what they were asking him to do.

  Kill them.

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  Two weeks later, it was a Saturday evening in January, the snowstorm blew up. First, it was the rarefied atmosphere, as it was warm just before the first snowflakes fell, and they seemed to be dried seeds of the dandelion flower after being blown. Those first snowflakes were falling slowly, and it was difficult to believe that it was so warm despite the fact that they were water droplets.

  Slowly and gradually, the ground started covering with a wonderful shiny layer under the overcast sky, and the temperature suddenly dropped. The snowflakes got bigger and they fell hardly on the tree tops, the roof of the house and the road. What once had been green, now it was a huge white carpet on the ground and it was as if it had been installed a fragile shiny roof in the sky. There were no thunders or lightening among the clouds, although they were probably crashing up there.

  Juan was thrilled about what he was watching. He opened the door to the room where Duska was and he made the hens go inside. Of course, there was no rooster. Claudio the rooster would not be substituted, not for the world.

  The hens pecked the snowflakes and raising their heads, their eyes full of amazement. But Juan had always seen them with that look. They had a firm, penetrating look. Their feet slipped on the thin layer of snow that was already there, and Juan thought about going to his shelter under the ground for a while, to watch from there how the snow heaped up.

  Temperature dropped and the snowflakes turned into something similar to popcorn that fell heavily, and a slight noise could be heard when they plowed into the ground. The sound was like a buzz, as weak as silence.

  Dozer was licking the snow, and his eyes had a sort of nostalgic look, or maybe it was a wondering look. Something inside him was telling him that it was water. But he liked licking it, he even dug the thin layer of snow with his forelegs and he was surprised every time he saw the bare ground. But the snow was now falling thoroughly and his snout was filled with starry snowflakes, as if they were spit. He passed his tongue over his snout and he swallowed part of the snow, watching the ground going shiny and white again, and he didn’t bark.

  Within half an hour the layer of snow was more than a centimeter thick, and its weight began to be noticed on the treetops, which were bent like an old man with back pain. And then the wind came up. It was blowing among the trees and it came from nowhere. The wind was pushing the snowflakes towards the glasses of the windows, and they crashed into them, forming strange figures and then falling on the window sill.

  Pili had her nose leaning against the glass and she could sense it was getting really cold behind the window. But it was also cold inside the house. Her eyes grew large with expectation and astonishment. Her heart started beating a bit faster. It was excitement. It’s not like she had never seen the snow, but it rarely happened. Sometimes it took years to see the snow. It was so bright and splendorous.

  The cows were ruminating in the barn, apparently calmly. But it would not last long. It lasted the time Antonia needed to drink a glass of rum with trembling hands. She had taken to drink rum now. And on top of that she had begun smoking. She was lolling on the sofa, with a cigarette in the gap of his tight lips that was drawing strange forms in the air, until it reached the ceiling languidly.

  Pedro’s Bible was on the sitting room table, and the fireplace was burning in the kitchen. The flames had been stoked with five logs. The fire was scorching the horseshoe, which had been placed on the border of the fireplace hanging on a hook. This time luck was not with anybody.

  Pedro was listening to the crackling of the fire and watching the flames, that was forming a red face, as red as the devil’s face in children’s storybooks. Nobody knew how the devil was, and even less if he was red.

  Smoke was impregnating the kitchen, and Pedro was clutching his hammer.

  He was waiting for the right moment.

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  He patiently waited for the night to fall. The layer of snow had reached half a meter already, and the tree branches were completely white and they bowed under their own weight. Now the wind blew stronger and Juan was compelled to leave his shelter because of the biting cold, long before the sun had set one more day. The wind was howling in every corner of the House, specially were the snow had been heaped up, and they had become isolated from the rest of the world.

  Juan wondered what his neighbors would be doing, those neighbors who lived so far and who now were separated by a layer of snow that was becoming a mountain by the minute. He wondered how the old woman who lived at the house in front of their rear window would be. The snow was like a giant ball that wanted to start rolling down the road, like a way through a maze. He had never seen that woman and he wondered if Valenti had really spoken about her or it had just been a product of his imagination.

  If you kiss me, you will be protected; then Juan remembered the black sticky tongue into his mouth. His heart shriveled when he remembered the way the woman in the locked-room looked like. He thought he was going crazy like his father. But unlike him, he did not have a hammer in his hand and he had not that crazy look in his eyes.

  Then his father, hammer in hand, started looking for his family all around the house without them knowi
ng.

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  Pedro came out of the kitchen with clenched teeth, clutching the hammer with his right hand so hard that his knuckles looked white.

  “You bloody slut! You are a bitch!” Pedro was yelling for no reason. His eyes showed pure madness. He had bitten his lower lip and he was bleeding. A drop of blood dropped from his mouth to his scraggly beard. “They have told me! You are putting the horns on me!”

  “Pedro! Calm down! Who told you such a disgusting thing?” Antonia’s voice was trembling and her voice sounded like an old bullhorn. She had suddenly realized that her husband was really mad and that made her stomach turn.

  “You whore! They have told me! Actually, they have been telling me for months!” Pedro’s lips were hardly moving, but there were times his gums could be seen, and they were bleeding. A fickle of drool leaked from the corner of his mouth. Hell could be seen inside his whitish eyes.

  Antonia raised her arm instinctively to protect her face, but a last minute decision made her put her feet up from the sofa.

  Pedro had lifted the hammer over her head, ready to drop it on her skull. But her right foot hit his belly and stopped him for a few seconds allowing her time to react, even though she was drunk. She took the empty bottle of rum and showed it to him glowering with rage.

  “And now what are you planning to do? If you get too close to me I’ll bust the bottle over your head.” Her eyes fell on the bottle momentarily and then on Pedro’s face again.

  The hammer hovered in the air, as if his madness had disappeared for a minute and he was himself again, but the hammer shivered a couple of times without swinging.

  “Kill her!” Pedro exclaimed, expressing out loud what somebody had just whispered inside his head.

  Antonia’s eyes opened wide like an owl. And her heart skipped a beat under her huge boobs. She could feel its beat into her nipples and her temples, and then she saw them.

  Juan and Pili were standing on the stairway, right were the bend of the stairs was, on the left, but she could see their frightened faces. Their eyes were wide open and they were silent. Pili was grabbing his brother’s sweater with her right hand, with her fist clenched, and suddenly she remembered she used to do the same with her dad. It was the same person who was now wielding the hammer and swinging it in the air.

  They did not say anything.

  “Are you going to kill me in front of your children?” Antonia inquired in a choked voice. She was still grabbing the bottle.

  “They are evil! You birthed them; therefore they are as evil as you!” The hammer was still suspended in midair, and suddenly the wind blew hard and rattled the door, then the falling snow could be heard knocking at the door so hard that they sounded like ping pong balls. “I will have to kill them too!”

  “You will not!”

  Then the hammer began going down, and it hit Antonia’s thigh. A stabbing pain went through Antonia’s body up to her brain, warning her that something bad was happening. Something cracked inside her.

  She pressed her injured leg with her hands like an octopus while still holding the bottle in her other hand. She bent her neck backwards and opened her mouth and screamed.

  The hammer went up again, and his fierce gaze seemed to latch onto her. His furrowed his brow and puffed out his chest. He had just a close-fitting shirt on that would soon turn red.

  Right then the bottle smashed on his teeth, and one tooth fell out like a bullet fired from a shotgun, towards the stairs. His face became blurry, turning into a fuzzy form. Then it returned to its original shape, as if it had bounced from a rubber wall, and blood began pouring from the corner of his mouth.

  “You bitch!”

  Antonia was just holding now a piece of the neck of the bottle, and she had a cut on her hand caused by the broken glass after falling down like hail on the floor with an appalling clinking.

  Juan covered his mouth and his eyes grew even larger. He felt a strong and rhythmic knocking on his shoulder. It was Pili’s heart that seemed to be pulsing in her hand. Then Antonia rose up from the sofa while kicking Pedro. One of those kicks hit his testicles and pain forced him to writhe, and then he left the hammer on the floor vertically.

  She put her bare feet on the ground, and she was overcome with a burning pain. She felt pangs of pain on the soles of her feet. The small glasses were embedding in her feet and she felt something wet and warm was running down her feet. She looked down, although she knew it was risky, and she saw a growing puddle of blood on the floor. She did her best to approach the stairs.

  “Children, run away while you still can!” She exclaimed extending her hand as if she was trying to hold onto something.

  Pedro gripped the handle of the hammer with his fist and he clenched his teeth. He was trying to stand up again, with his other hand in his crotch. Madness made him look even glummer.

  “You fucking whore! You like breaking other people’s balls, don’t you?” Pedro said with grave and hoarse voice.

  Pili was panicking, as pale as a ghost, and she darted up the stairs as quickly as she could. Juan stood still for a few seconds on the stairs. His fingers touched his mother’s and then he started running upstairs.

  “Mom” He could only say that.

  If you kiss me you will be protected; that sentence came to his mind again, at the most inopportune time. And he also remembered that sticky tongue. Who is protecting us all? He wondered, but he got no answer. He only felt his heart racing.

  His mother reached the first step while her bleeding feet left strange drawings on the floor. She turned around to see Pedro, even though she knew it was risky. She heard the sound made by his boots stepping on the broken glass. Since when did he wear boots? That was the first thing Antonia asked herself. Where had he got them from? That was the second question. But that did not matter now.

  The hammer drew a perfect circle in the air and stopped again. The glass was still crackling under Pedro’s boots. That noise made Pedro cringe, as he found extremely irritating the sound and feeling produced when scraping a chalkboard with the fingernails or a fork scraping on a plate. And those damned glass scraping on the floor. It was giving him the creeps. His face was sweaty, in contrast to the cold around the stairs. The fireplace of the kitchen was too far.

  Antonia went up three steps more, leaving a trail of blood. But now that puddle of blood had turned into some drops which were continuous but spaced. Even though she still felt the pain in her brain, and she wanted to shout, she couldn’t. Adrenaline was all over her body, and it made her body move like a spring.

  Panic encouraged her to move on, and she went up a few more steps trembling.

  Pedro was behind her, on the third step already, leaning on the wall with his free hand. But she was leaving traces of blood. Pedro was still showing that creepy smile, and there was a dark blood between his teeth, going down his neck.

  Juan and Pili were already on the big room landing, next to the light switch. And Juan had the idea to turn the light off. That way his father would not be able to see them so as to hit them with the hammer. But then they might run the risk of bumping into each other and falling down the stairs, going full circle. Still, his thin fingers turned the switch off, and a soft clicking sound could be heard.

  Suddenly Pedro’s eyes seemed to glow in the dark, as well as his teeth, but it was just a product of his imagination, one of those strange sensations that a person can feel and experience in a terrific situation.

  Only the laments of the wind skimming the corners of the house, and the snow beating against the windows could be heard now. Only a white reflection could be seen through the window. It was snow shining out there.

  “Do you really believe darkness will save you, slut?” Pedro inquired from the gloom. “I can smell your cunt from here.”

  Antonia kept on going up the stairs silently, stifling a cry, because her injured feet and the blow of the hammer were making her feel a shooting pain. She was convinced that she had her femur broken. The p
angs of pain were going straight to the brain through her nerves, and all the warning alarms had triggered.

  “Mum, are you all right?” Juan asked from the darkness.

  His mother did not answer.

  Pili tugged at his brother’s sweater and she pointed at Mrs. or Miss Angel’s room, she did not remember, but it did not matter. The door seemed to be waiting for them impassively.

  Then they could hear a series of awful blows. No, they weren’t doing them. It was Pedro’s hammer hitting the wall. Every time they heard a bang, a piece of wall could be heard falling down the stairs. Antonia was almost on the landing already, sitting on the floor and feeling her blood leaving her body. Her hair was covered with sweat, and her eyes were wide open because she was appalled.

  “I know you are there” Pedro said, hitting the wall again with the hammer. Then they could hear his footsteps going up the stairs groping.

  “You will not get away with it.” She spat out.

  “I can smell your blood.”

  “And I can smell your fear.” She said.

  “I have already been warned by them.”

  “But now it is too late to complain.”

  “See it? You are fucking crazy.”

  More footsteps could be heard going up the stairs and then his face came out of the shadows, with the hammer metal sparkling like a diamond under the reflection of the snow out there.

  Then Pedro saw her feet again. He saw the dark spot on the sole of her foot, and how it was coming close to his belly. He was pushed hard by that foot and Pedro lost his balance, falling down the stairs like a square ball. They could hear the bumps. After a long silence, his yelling could be heard again.

  “You slut-whooooore!” The sound echoed in the darkness and up the cold staircase.

  “Fuck off!” She exclaimed, stifling a cry of pain.

  “Mom, are you ok?” Pili asked her, standing quite close to the room door. It was one of the few times she had dared to address her in her whole life. Now it was like his beloved father was possessed, and he had become dangerous, so her mother had regained an important relevance for her.