Hell Calling (5 page)

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying at all.”

“Remember how you didn’t want to go and identify the bodies, so I had to go? Do you remember they performed a post mortem on both of them?”

“Yes, I do,” said Carlos, his voice broken.

“Alicia died of severe trauma to the skull; but Laura, my granddaughter, died of a heart attack. It’s a strange fact, although it can happen in certain circumstances. She could have withstood a shock before the car crashed.”

“But then...”

“She had not suffered any serious injuries, and none of the injuries she did have would have caused her death.”

Carlos saw himself walking through a dense wood as if in a dream. The leaves and branches from the trees preventing him from hardly seeing any light, although he sensed its presence. Little by little, as he went forward, the light became increasingly brighter, more evident, stronger.

“And you’re linking this now with...”

“Wait. It’s just that, that isn’t all, and it’s by no means the most important thing. Like I just told you, you didn’t see Laura’s body, and I was the one who had to go and identify her. The forensic scientists were more than a little bit puzzled by the cause of death. There were two other facts that are difficult to explain. And now they make sense, and shed light on what’s happening to you, as unbelievable as it may seem to both of us.”

“What two facts...”

“Laura’s eyes were popping out of her skull, and completely full of blood. When they explained it to me, I lifted her eyelids myself, and they were far too swollen. It was a horrible image. They were so full of blood, they were practically red: a dark and brilliant red, like in your dream.”

“Dad!”

“And then secondly, there was something that in the beginning was not important; something that the medics gave little relevance to, but which now takes on extraordinary dimensions. Laura had heavy bruising on her arms; marks from adult fingers that could have been throwing her around with force.”

XXIII

The time passed by with a slowness that was both tiring and exasperating. Carlos wanted the hours to speed up, and arrive at a moment in which everything that was happening would dissolve into memory along with everything else, and end up almost unreal.

‘I’ll end up thinking that nothing happened.’

On many occasions, he felt like a caged animal, pacing ceaselessly through the lounge. He had decided to diminish his own living space within his house, leaving some rooms closed up forever: his daughter’s, and a small living room that had become transformed into a storage room for everything that reminded him of his wife.

‘Otherwise I’ll end up locked away in some psychiatric hospital, tormented by the same terror as Laura,’ he thought.

All of his old friends (of which there were few) had gradually stopped calling. He was always a shy man, turned in on himself, and this personality trait had become exaggerated since the accident. And nobody, with the exception of his father and perhaps Marta, would be bothering with him.

‘The important thing now is to count the hours, count the days, let the years pass, and wait for everything to return to normal.’

He was getting into the habit of reading and watching programmes about parapsychology, about inexplicable topics and situations close to the unreal. He was nurturing the idea of writing to some magazine, or sharing his case directly with some radio station. But in the end, he always held back at the last minute, in the belief that the rest of humanity would take him as a madman.

‘My father believes me. My father knows that I’m telling him the truth, that I haven’t lost my mind.’

It was awful, but the recent developments, regarding the information that Marta and Esteban had given him, confirmed his theory: his daughter really was being tormented in Hell. Laura, for some reason, had been dragged to that place where they would be tormenting her, exactly as she had foreseen in her drawings.

‘How can this be happening to me; I don’t even believe in God, and I’ve never had faith in anything that I couldn’t see or touch.’

Every night began the same verbal attack, and every night he had to submit one half of himself to a questioning by the other; the more thorough and pragmatic side of him, that always kept his feet firmly on the ground, and resisted laughing freely at an explanation bordering on an insanity of the most profound and uncontrolled variety.

‘Is all this really happening? Did I really speak with my father? Have I really met a psychologist called Marta? Isn’t it possible that I’m just trapped in a swirling confusion of dream and reality created by my own mind...’

And then everything would start happening again, during which hours and hours went by, and he would spend the entire night without a wink of sleep, right up until the break of dawn. And this is how he passed the time that he longed to speed up, and make almost anaesthetic. But the final conclusion was always the same: it was all real, his daughter was in Hell, and she urgently needed his help.

XXIV

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

That sound again; that sound that made his blood run cold no sooner than he heard it. He waited, alert.

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

––––––––

Y
et again, the radio alarm dial began to speed through from one station to the other, on a search for what he feared would end in the same way as it had done on the previous occasion. And then came the voice he had been expecting: the voice that was hers, the voice of his precious daughter:

“Daddy, Daddy... Help me... I’M IN HELL!”

He jumped right up in bed, turned on the light, grabbed the radio-alarm clock and with great suddenness, he tore out the batteries. He left the device on the bed, and it lay there, as if defenceless. Carlos breathed with difficulty. He was still shocked, still full of rage and violence.

‘I’m mad, I’m mad, I’m mad!’

And then he turned his stunned gaze back towards the radio which, incredibly, was working once more; searching tirelessly with the dial once more; and, once more, there came the anguished and uncontrollable voice of his daughter:

“Daddy, Daddy... Help me... I’M IN HELL!”

XXV

Marta’s voice sounded almost broken on the other end of the line. She no longer knew what to think, and she no longer knew how she had even come to know this man, how she had got to this situation, how she had found herself involved in such an extraordinary predicament.

“Carlos, calm down, you’re very nervous.”

“How can I not be?! What am I supposed to think? Marta, I’m listening to my dead daughter, talking to me through a radio that has no batteries in it!”

Carlos pressed the phone against his face, as if trying to bring Marta closer to him.

“I’m going to call Elena, my parapsychologist friend. She’ll be able to help you.”

“Listen... Marta... I need you to do me a favour...”

Marta was silent for a moment, considering her answer long before finding out what the question would be.

“What kind of favour?”

“I need you to prescribe me some sort of sleeping pill. I want to rest, I want to sleep at night.”

“You won’t go and do something stupid...”

“No way. Honestly. All I want is to be able to get some sleep. All I want is for the night to be a mere transition point that passes by without me noticing, and for me to be able to wake up to the light of the following day.”

Once more, Marta felt compassion for this man who had lost all faith in himself and his sanity.

“Can you last one more night?”

“Yes... I think so.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll ask Elena to come to your house. She’ll bring you some pills.”

“Thank you so much, Marta, thank you.”

Marta held the phone in silence. She did not know if Carlos was paying any attention, until she heard a sort of light whimper.

“Are you alright?”

Carlos was crying on the other end of the line. He cried in a muffled, inconsolable way, in the way that only small children do.

“Yes Marta, I think so.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure Elena comes tomorrow.”

“Will she be coming to my house?”

“Yes. It’s better that way. She likes to work directly in the area concerned. Your daughter... is... manifesting... in your house.”

“Manifesting?”

“Well, the best thing for you to do would be to talk to her. She’s a great person, if a little eccentric. In any case, I’m sure that her eccentricities will suit you at the moment.”

“Thank you so much again, Marta.”

She waited; she waited a few seconds, before saying, and regretting it almost instantly:

“It’s no problem. Don’t hesitate to call me whenever you need to. I won’t fail you, I promise.”

XXVI

He decided to spend the night out in the fresh air, walking through the streets, every now and then popping into some café to have a drink of something, only to resume afterwards an aimless and senseless walk. Well, it did have one aim: to be far away from his house, far away from that device through which his daughter communicated with him... Or in which he manifested his deep-seated insanity.

‘I could destroy the alarm clock, or throw it into any bin, or chuck it in the river, and then I’d never see it again.’

But then he was gripped by a strange fear: he could lose forever the unifying link with Laura. If his daughter really was trapped in Hell and urgently needed his help, how could he destroy the only link that was keeping them in contact? On the other hand, if those voices were the product of his extreme madness, he would surely imagine new ways for it to manifest, and as such it was useless doing away with something which was really just a symbolic object that his own mind had chosen to currently torment and torture him with.

‘Her voice is so real...’

The streets were wet, as a result of the recent passing through of the street cleaners. The delicate gleam from the streetlights on the road gave off a pleasant sense of tranquillity, of peace. It was good to feel the air; even if he could not stop thinking about things completely, it was good to clear his head for just a short while at least. But that night, everything he did was done from a different perspective. He also had to put himself in Laura’s place, although that suggested embarking upon a terrible exercise. He imagined her defenceless, in the Hell that’s always been described to us, red and with numerous open craters, overflowing with fire and lava. But it couldn’t really be like that, even though her drawings did indeed depict a very similar panorama. And then there was the other big, gaping question; another great unknown in the case, if it were to indeed be true: how could she be establishing contact with him?

‘She does it via waves; radio waves, at a certain frequency.’

If that were the case, anybody else could listen to the message. Any other person could tune in to that particular frequency and hear his daughter asking for help. Yes, it was going to be very easy to demonstrate that he hadn’t lost his mind at all. All he needed was for just one other person to dedicate themselves to working their way through the radio frequencies until they found his daughter’s. But no, that was almost ridiculous, because the device
insisted
on contacting him, as if it had a life of its own, or as if somebody could manipulate it remotely.

As far as theories go, it was pretty hare-brained, because the radio-alarm clock emitted the messages for
him
, whether he liked it or not, and
whether it had an energy source or not
. His daughter had found a paranormal way of establishing contact with him, and it was almost madness trying to conjecture, and find a rational, logical explanation as to how she did it, when everything else was frenzied insanity.

‘Tomorrow, I’ll be able to start getting to the bottom of this.’

He had tremendous confidence in the parapsychologist’s visit. The woman would be able to uncover if what was happening to him was real, or if, on the other hand, his brain had not been able to withstand such terrible loss, and he had succumbed, losing all sanity and sense. This woman would help him to learn how to adjust to the future.

XXVII

The woman moved confidently through the house, as if she had already been on many other occasions; as if she were just a neighbour, accustomed to the walls and the furniture.

“Can I open those doors?”

Carlos felt somewhat uneasy, almost shocked. His replies were clumsy and insecure:

“This... yes, of course... if that’s necessary...”

“Had you closed them off?”

“Yes...”

“That’s normal. Don’t worry. I need to inspect every inch of this house. I hope that isn’t a problem.”

“No, no...”

“Is something wrong?”

“No... I just thought that Marta would be coming with you, that’s all.”

The parapsychologist smiled.

“She prefers to stay on the periphery. She doesn’t really believe in everything I do, as you’ll know. Although I should say that in your case, it’s all different. Now she’s beginning to have... doubts.”

Elena made her way to Laura’s bedroom. She opened it up without delay, as if preventing Carlos from having any time to regret it. It had to be quick; it had to be cold. Otherwise, she would not be doing her job well, and the story that Marta had conveyed on the phone the previous day had fascinated her. Elena was passionate about the occult sciences, although in order to make a living, she had to conform by holding consultations as a psychologist at the neighbourhood health centre. Whenever an opportunity arose to intervene directly in any kind of anomalous manifestation, she didn’t need to think twice about it. Fortunately, although her work didn’t leave her with much money, she had her afternoons and weekends completely free.

“Will you come in with me?”

“I’d prefer to wait here,” he said, shaking his head.

The room was the same as that of any other girl Laura’s age, with plentiful pink details, and posters of films and cartoon series, framed and positioned on the walls.

“Everything’s very tidy,” commented Elena, raising her voice slightly.