Hell Calling (2 page)

‘Shit!’

That day the road carried out its function of providing grip, to assist with the braking. And Carlos burst into tears over the steering wheel.

––––––––

VI

H
e was awakened by some sort of buzzing; a strange and annoying sound that didn’t stop, and ultimately prevented him from getting back to sleep.

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

He didn’t understand what was going on at all. Then he thought about the radio-alarm clock on top of his bedside table: he had most likely left it on, and had lost the signal at some point.

It was with no great ease that he sat up and turned on the light. And the sound stopped instantly.

‘What the Hell...?!’

He inspected the device, but the power switch was off. He did not want to give it any more importance and, albeit with difficulty, he managed to get back to sleep.

VII

He waited until all of the children had left, smiling and lively, with a whole life ahead of them. Their mothers were taking them back to the safety of their homes, and the hullaballoo had been slowly and progressively dying down. Carlos could remember his own schooldays, and an overwhelming sense of melancholy took over for a few moments.

‘How nice it would have been, if I could only have frozen time forever then.’

Standing in front of the main gate, he seemed like a little boy who’s parents had forgotten him. A little boy who was doubtful about the future, disconcerted and little prepared for the occasion. His eyes took in every detail, and in every detail they found a link to his distant childhood.

Without having to ask directions, he went straight to the second floor, where the primary school classes were located. He remembered the trip from only once before, when he had accompanied Laura at the beginning of the year. Although she had asked him to take her to school on many occasions, he never found the time, never made the effort that his daughter deserved, and now it was all too late. The teacher waited for him with a calm smile.

“Good afternoon...”

She held out her hand in a warm and sincere gesture, and inspired immediate confidence in Carlos. She was the type of teacher that any father would want for his children, and had a serene and friendly expression.

“Thank you very much for seeing me.”

“Please, it’s the least I could do...”

“It’s all so complicated now...”

“I have prepared a file with all of Laura’s work and drawings. She was a very lively and hardworking little girl...”

Carlos felt guilty: he hardly knew his daughter, in spite of having shared in the nine brief years of her life. He would have accepted almost any commentary on her as true.

“I imagine she was,” he affirmed, with a forced smile.

The woman looked at him, puzzled, but accustomed to it at the same time. He was by no means the only father who didn’t have the slightest idea of what his children did or stopped doing during the school hours.

“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions...”

“Of course not, I understand that you want to talk...”

“It’s crazy, but...”

“Please, ask me anything you like.”

Carlos picked up the brightly coloured file and took out a few sheets of paper. Here was a pile of sums: simple multiplications and divisions. There were also compositions, and a corrected exam showing excellent marks.

“She was an intelligent girl, wasn’t she?”

“Very intelligent, I can assure you. I’m going to miss her a lot. She was very chatty, too, but with a tremendous desire for knowledge.”

He reviewed the work, stopping every now and then on one to take a closer look, and frequently there was a trace of half a smile. But one drawing suddenly caught his attention, and his blood froze.

“Excuse me... What... what does this one mean?”

The teacher took the piece of paper he was holding out, and observed it with relative calm. It was a sort of horror scene in which someone was being gagged and tortured by a group of people. The lines were thick and imprecise, but he could see the horror in the victim, and the fury in the torturers. Also, an abundance of intense red gave the scene a horrifically macabre and enraged feel.

“Well, as you know, she used to do those strange drawings from time to time.”

“These drawings?”

“I see you don’t know that side of Laura...”

Those words, stuttered hesitantly, almost shocked him more than the picture itself.

“What do you mean?”

“Your daughter used to draw these types of pictures. Your wife was aware, and she was very worried about it.”

“I... I had no idea...”

“It got to such an extent that Laura was receiving treatment from the school psychologist. They would have a session one Friday a month...”

“But... since when did all this start happening?”

“Since the beginning of the year, practically. The one sure thing is that Laura was a completely normal little girl in all other aspects. Perhaps even with a special kind of intelligence. This was the only thing that broke the normality. Forgive me, I thought you knew.”

“And you say that my wife knew about it...”

“Yes, I can assure you. If you like, you can come in one afternoon and talk with the psychologist. She’s usually here on Mondays and Fridays, from five to seven.”

Carlos left the school almost staggering, clinging on to his daughter’s file. Clinging on with a devastating feeling of guilt and distance from the file of a little girl he didn’t know, and had never even bothered to know.

VIII

Esteban was skipping stones over the lake. In spite of his age, he still retained enviable good-health and was in excellent shape.

“As a child, you used to love doing this with me. Once you managed to get it to skip seven times, and it was a record that I still haven’t been able to beat. Then you lost interest in it.”

Carlos looked at his father, sitting on a large smooth rock. They both liked that solitary spot, which was only frequented by a few hikers on Sundays.

“Dad, I didn’t know my daughter. Laura’s dead, and I never knew anything about her.”

Esteban looked at his son, concerned, and shook his head. He threw the last stone, and went up to his son.

“No father can really know his children...”

“You don’t understand. Yesterday, I met with her teacher and she showed me some terrible drawings. Nearly all of them were of people being tortured by other people.”

His father remained respectfully silent, before speaking:

“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I was reading about it during the night. These sorts of drawings are common in children who’ve been through a traumatic event.”

“But Laura never...”

“I know, I know. But perhaps she saw a traffic accident on the way to school one day, or on television. I’m sure that’s what it was; some scary image on the television that she became obsessed about.”

“It’s possible. I hardly ever look at the news anymore. It only ever ends up putting me on edge, and keeps me up at night.”

Carlos held onto his father’s hand tightly, just like he did when he was a defenceless child, in need of a parent’s strength.

“What’s awful is that she never told me anything, and I never realised anything. I was so buried in my work and other things. And to make things worse, Alicia was aware of the situation and she didn’t even tell me.”

“She didn’t want to worry you over nothing. She wouldn’t have given it as much significance as you are now.”

Crestfallen, with his eyes fixed on the bank of the lake, Carlos added:

“Or she saw me as being so distant that she thought there was no point telling me anything...  What could I contribute, being so far away and unfamiliar?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Today’s society isn’t set up so that parents can enjoy being with their children. Put simply, son, you were just one of the many others.”

Carlos got up and went over towards the lake. He picked up a smooth, flat pebble, and threw it with force.

“Four bounces, Dad. Let’s see who can beat that.”

IX

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

Carlos turned over in bed, still foggy from the deep sleep he had been in.

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

He sat bolt upright.

‘Shit, what the hell is going on with this alarm clock.’

He inspected it, but just like on the previous occasion, the radio was switched off. He decided to stay there with the light on for a while, watching the small device on top of his bedside table.

‘I don’t believe this.’

He watched as the minutes went by. Half an hour later, when the digital clock was showing that it was now quarter past three in the morning, he chose to turn off the light and try to get back to sleep. Forty second’s hadn’t even gone by when, to his irritation, he heard:

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

X

That day, he gathered together all of his things. He did it slowly and hesitantly, as if every movement and every object required an extraordinary amount of attention. Luis, the president of the agency, observed him attentively, and with an expression of sincere sadness.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t know.”

“I can offer you some little things to do, so you don’t get bored at home. I’ll pay you well for it...”

Carlos made a gesture of refusal with his hands.

“Luis, you’ve already done a lot for me. You’re still doing a lot.”

“I don’t know. I was the one who insisted that you leave work for a while. Perhaps now I’m regretting it. I realise that in some way, I’m being selfish, but on the other hand I’m not sure if not doing anything at all is the right thing for you at the moment.”

“I will be doing something. At the moment, I want to find out who my daughter was, what she was interested in, who her friends were. It seems as if it’s only now, when it’s all too late, that I suddenly decide to act like a real father.”

Luis went up to him and hugged him, without embarrassment. It was the first time he had ever done it. He hadn’t even done it when they had just landed a big contract for the agency.

“This place won’t be the same without you. These doors are always open to you, you know that.”

“Thank you.”

Luis left him alone with his things, and walked discreetly out, only just managing to contain the emotion that he usually had well under control.

“Thank you,” repeated Carlos, although there was no longer anybody around to hear it.

He continued rummaging around the drawers and shelves, picking out which items he would be taking home with him, and which ones would be going in the bin. Eight years meant the accumulation of many kilos of rubbish, many kilos of memories and useless papers: more useless now than ever.

‘Well I’ll be...’

On one piece of paper there were notes on things that needed attending to, and it was from the same date that his wife and daughter had died. Some of them were written out in red, and to the side he had emphasised them further with a couple of exclamation marks.

‘Call Sánchez... Visit the Merchandising Fair... You small-minded little man, you absolute idiot!’

That list, with twelve or thirteen topics written on it, was now completely dispensable, absurd, and ridiculous. He would have gladly turned back time and modified the list to read: Spend more time with Laura, go out to dinner with Alicia, go for a day out at the aquarium next weekend...

XI

Everything in the lounge was still, immobile, as if paralysed. Carlos’ eyes were fixated on a part of the wall on which there were no pictures, shelves, or anything in particular. It was just a piece of smooth, white wall; undressed and clean. He needed to focus all of his attention on that piece of purity, on that empty and unspoiled space. In so doing, he was also able to keep his mind blank, like the wall. There was just the hi-fi emitting a weak melody, over and over again:
Tannhäuser
, by Wagner. Close to the armchair, to which he was glued, was a piece of paper that had been tossed onto the rug, with some words written on it: ‘This is a present for my Daddy, who I need and love loads and loads and loads. From Laura Miranda’.

XII

The woman, Marta, looked at him with an unusual intensity. Carlos reluctantly accepted the fact that, in reality, all psychologists have an element of deep scrutiny in their eyes.

“I realise that you weren’t up to date on anything. You’ve no reason to be worried.”

“Thank you very much. I won’t deny that I’m feeling rather uncomfortable.”

Marta made a gesture of understanding.

“You think I’m going to reproach you for something; that I’m thinking you’ve been a bad father, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, push those thoughts from your mind. Nothing could be further from the truth. You’re a modern father, and that’s it. I’m getting increasingly used to the fact that parents don’t even come to see me themselves anymore; they send their nannies. That’s how things are.”

On the one hand, Carlos was unsettled by the confidence with which the woman spoke to him, and on the other, he felt bizarrely comforted conversing with her.

“What happened to Laura?”

“I still don’t know. You’re daughter was highly intelligent, and behaved normally. She just had this fixation with drawing terrible pictures. I asked her about them many times, and she almost never gave me an answer. She used to just come out with excuses.”

“And my wife...”

“Your wife waited outside, the majority of times. Only on two occasions did I have them both here together: the first time, and the last time.”

“And what was her opinion on it?”

“Well... I believe that initially, your wife was very concerned... me included... at the end...”

Carlos remained silent for a few seconds, trying to internally process those words.

“You wouldn’t have any idea if there was anything in those last few days...”

“Look... it’s just that I would not want to exaggerate anything, nor did I think that I, well...”

“Please, I trust your word.”

“Your wife told me that she was afraid Laura was capable of hurting either one of you. Your wife was beginning to think about admitting Laura to a psychiatric ward.”