“No, not a story, it’s a legend. A legend from the United States, it says here.”
“Pablo, you mongoloid. I’m telling you what’s happening to me and you come out with Borges and some bullshit of his.”
She left in a huff, ignoring Pablo’s apologies and thinking that he was also pretty crazy. Thinking that Gaspar would understand. How could I be bad for him, explain that to me, she asked her mother later. I’m his best friend. Give me his phone number, don’t be an asshole.
“You curse at me again and I’ll smack you.”
“You always say the same thing, the same old shit. Like you’d ever smack me. Give me the number!”
“We do not curse in this house!” said Victoria’s father, who had come in from the kitchen holding a cup of coffee, the paper tucked under his arm.
“Hugo, stay out of this.”
He slammed the kitchen door.
“I’ll give you the number, but Luis won’t let you talk to Gaspar. You can talk to Luis.”
She snatched the paper with the number from her mother’s hand and called: her fingers were trembling, and she had trouble dialing the new phone. Luis was very friendly and explained that Gaspar was sick, that he needed time.
“Time for what?”
“To recover.”
“I’ve never even seen you with Gaspar. When your brother was all crazy and sick, he was always alone. Pablo and I were with him. Where were you? Who do you think you are? I don’t know what you were even doing. We’re his friends. I miss him, he must be missing me.”
Silence from the other end. Fucking old man, thought Victoria.
“You’re right.”
Well now, thought Victoria.
“But he’s my responsibility now. I’m taking care of him and his psychologist says that for the time being, in order to take care of him, the best thing is for him to get away. Not from you, but from everything that reminds him of what happened.”
“You’re a dick.”
“Child, give it time. He’s going to get better.”
Victoria hung up and went into her room. She had to go back to school the next day, but how she was going to do it, she didn’t know. It was high school, it would be different, and luckily it wasn’t a Catholic one anymore. She’d be going to a normal school where she didn’t know anyone, although some of the kids must know she was the girl from Adela’s house, and if one of them knew, they all would, eventually. She called Pablo. “I forgive you, get over here, but don’t give me any bullshit that’s gonna scare me, I’m already plenty scared. Aren’t you scared? What’s with you?”
“I’ll come over and tell you,” said Pablo.
What Pablo had to tell her was so simple and so horrible that Victoria wanted to call in her mother and ask her to fix it; she was an adult, she had to be able to change things and make them better. Pablo told her something that had only happened to him twice, but now he didn’t move from his room until the sun came out. If he had to pee, he held it; he’d brought in a bucket just in case. Never again would he leave his room at night. He’d gone to take a piss, as normal. In the hallway before he reached the bathroom, someone had grabbed him by the hand. And not a friendly touch. It had been a sharp yank, so hard he’d almost lost his balance, and the hand was hot and dry, fevered. He screamed, thinking someone was really there—the house was totally dark, and a thief could have broken in. His father got up, sent Pablo to his room, and searched the house, while his mother shouted at him: don’t act all macho, think of the baby, stuff like that. She even wanted to call the police, but in the end his father said no. He said he didn’t want to make a scene. He said Pablo was just afraid of the dark. And then he sent everyone back to bed.
It had happened again a few nights later. He’d wanted to hold it until morning, but the moment came when he just couldn’t and he had to get up. He decided to turn on the light. The hand had grabbed him while he was fumbling in the darkness, walking with his arms stretched out to keep from running into something. This second time, the hand had grabbed him by the shoulder: it was behind him, in the darkness of the living room. And it had thrown him to the floor. He couldn’t see a thing. There was nothing there, or the hand had escaped quickly. Pablo ran, too, back to his room, and from then on, he never left it at night. He had the bucket if he needed it. He wanted to move.
“I’ll kill you if you leave,” Victoria told him. “You didn’t tell your dad?”
“No. It’s the same hand as when we lost Adela. When we were in the house, it touched me from behind.”
“Yeah, you told me.”
“It’s the same, it feels exactly the same. I’m not gonna say anything to my dad. Every time I tell him I’m scared he calls me a fag. He’s right, anyway. Not about being scared.”
Victoria was quiet. It was the first time Pablo had said it out loud.
“Have you told anyone else?”
“Are you crazy? Gaspar knows, he realized. Anyway, he doesn’t care.”
“It’s normal to him,” said Victoria.
“I miss him so much, I’m afraid something bad’s happening to him.”
“Do you like him?”
“Obviously, Vicky.”
Vicky sighed and said: “Listen to me. We have to make a plan so they won’t call you a fag at school, because they’re going to make fun of you and you don’t know how to fight. We’ll come up with it later.”
That night they slept together in Victoria’s single bed, their arms around each other, and before going to sleep they pricked their fingers with needles and mixed their blood together and promised they would never separate. Then, so that their sleep would be dreamless, they took the pills that Victoria stole every week from her dad’s pharmacy.
Gaspar went punctually to his appointments and almost never seemed angry with Isabel. She was Isabel now, not “the doctor” or “the shrink,” just Isabel. She had gradually cut out the antipsychotic medication and left him only on antianxiety and antidepressant drugs that helped him eat. But he still had those blackouts when he lay paralyzed, sprawled in bed with his pupils dilated, unresponsive to touch.
Luis had had a meeting with Isabel, and she’d told him she thought Gaspar had been misdiagnosed. Luis felt his forehead relax in relief. Those blackouts Gaspar suffers, she told him, are flashbacks, he experiences the trauma all over again, with all the same sensations and emotions. It’s post-traumatic stress disorder, the flashbacks and anxiety attacks are clear symptoms. I want him to see a neurologist again to see whether it’s also a case of epilepsy.
“He doesn’t have convulsions. Not that I’ve seen.”
“Epilepsy doesn’t always have generalized tonic-clonic seizures—that is, convulsions. Sometimes it manifests as blackouts: you’ve described them, but Gaspar doesn’t remember. Sometimes the episodes are similar to night terrors. Epilepsy can also be accompanied by complex visual hallucinations. In general, hallucinations tend to be very simple, but we could be looking at an exception.”
“Is it curable?” Luis wanted to know.