“Don’t touch anything. Seriously, I’m telling you.”
I just have to get her out of here, he thought. I’ll drag her out if I have to. He felt the attraction, too, not as strongly as Adela did, but he felt it: they had to leave but they didn’t want to, or something was holding them there.
“But why?” she asked. “There could be things of my dad’s!”
“You don’t know your dad.”
“Maybe those teeth were his. Maybe they had a lot of people in here. A lot of people. We’ve both read about how the army used regular houses to torture people. Maybe they used this one and no one knew. There are parts of a lot of people here.”
Adela spoke in a tone that terrified Gaspar. He thought of Omaira in the mud, her eyes like cockroaches; he remembered his father’s fixed pupils, and he thought of a world of black and shining crystals. There are parts of a lot of people here. It wasn’t Adela who had said that, though someone had used her voice. Who was speaking through her?
“We have to get out,” said Gaspar.
Adela shimmered under that artificial light. Gaspar felt like they were in a theatre: he knew he was being watched. And when she darted toward a hall that was just past the rusty stove in that house that from inside seemed to never end, he stopped her. He threw her down and heard her chin hit the floor. She wriggled under his weight and with an inexplicable strength managed to extricate her only arm and stick two fingers in his eyes. In a second she was free. Gaspar couldn’t believe it. He must be at least fifteen kilos heavier than Adela and he was strong, he swam, he knew how to fight. Still, he was no match for her.
Because he wasn’t fighting with her, he thought; he was fighting with the house. Or with the owner of that voice.
Vicky tried to catch her too, and couldn’t. Pablo merely ran after her, panting. And then the three of them followed her down a wide hallway that had several doors to either side, an impossibly long hallway, meters and meters long, impossible for it to exist in that little house, its wooden floor a bit dirty, but not abandoned, and the walls papered with a fleur-de-lis pattern. It looks like a hotel hallway, Gaspar thought. All three of them watched as Adela opened a door that must lead to a bedroom. Before entering, she turned around and waved at them with her only hand. No one stopped her, because they planned to follow. They couldn’t have imagined that after waving, she would close the door behind her. Or that someone would close the door.
And then, when he saw her yellow hair disappear into the darkness—there was no light in the room she had entered—Gaspar knew that this was one door he wasn’t going to be able to open. It was out of his reach. He felt it in his body and his mind with a luminous clarity. First Vicky tried to open it: the doorknob turned, but that was all. None of them had heard the sound of a key turning. Then Gaspar tried, though he already knew it was useless. All three of them tried, not giving a thought to the presence, the someone else who could be in the house. They used the crowbar, they kicked, they ran at the door and tried to break it like they’d seen people do in movies. There was no opening it.
“We have to get help,” said Pablo, and in that precise second, as if he’d given an order, the light went out.
Vicky screamed and then started to cry very hard and loud and Gaspar realized her sobs were coming from below; she had sat down or fallen, it was hard to know which in that utter darkness.
“Hand me the flashlight,” he said, and Pablo fumbled with it behind Gaspar’s back until he found his hand. Gaspar took it and switched on the beam. The light was feeble, but it would have to be enough. Pablo was crying too: Gaspar recognized that contained, quiet sobbing. He didn’t feel like crying himself. He had to get them out of there, because they wouldn’t be able to do it on their own.
“Vicky,” he said. “Get up and grab my waist. Pablo, you grab her, that way we won’t get lost.”
“Why would we get lost?” cried Vicky, and her voice sounded childish, so paralyzed with terror that Gaspar squeezed her arm and held on to it with his free hand while his other tried to hold the flashlight steady. He’d put the crowbar in his pocket; he knew it must be sticking out, but he couldn’t see it in the darkness. He didn’t answer Vicky. It was obvious why they could get lost: the walls of the hallway were no longer there. This wasn’t a hallway anymore. He was scared by the thought of crossing the room with the shelves again （what was on the highest shelves? Hearts, lungs, brains, maybe heads?）， but he knew they couldn’t go any farther into the house. Whatever was farther in was very far from the street, from their homes, from the neighborhood, from their parents. If Pablo realized they were no longer in the hallway, he didn’t say anything. Gaspar heard him sniff in the darkness. He could hear his own heart beating too fast, skipping some beats. He raised the flashlight to neck height and shone it on what was no longer a hallway. Vicky’s breath was on his ear and he heard her say:
“Turn on the flashlight, please, please.”
He was surprised. Were her eyes closed?
“It’s on,” he said.
“Don’t lie, asshole! I can’t see anything.”
Think fast, think fast, Gaspar told himself. If she finds out the flashlight is on and she still can’t see, she’s going to think she’s gone blind. If I pretend it doesn’t have batteries or doesn’t work, she’ll get mad at Pablo. If Pablo can see, maybe he’ll understand enough to keep quiet. That was better. Vicky furious was better than Vicky terrified.
“I can’t see anything either,” said Pablo. He wasn’t crying anymore. Gaspar felt he could trust him, didn’t have to take care of him. He didn’t understand why his friends couldn’t see. The flashlight illuminated only a little space, but very well. He could tell the batteries were new. It was a detail Pablo never would have missed.
“It went out. Vicky, take it easy, I can see a little.”
Vicky never acted like a baby. That’s why it was so easy to be friends with her. But now she was hysterical. And she started to say aloud, right by Gaspar’s ear:
“I can’t stand this buzzing anymore, and now they’re talking! Can’t you guys hear someone talking?”
That’s why she’s acting like this, thought Gaspar. Vicky didn’t lose control so easily: she was hearing things, something different was happening to her than to him or to Pablo. She was locked inside her head as well as inside the house. Gaspar didn’t hear anything at all. Not the buzzing—which he’d heard when they entered but had now disappeared—and of course not any voices. He shouted in the darkness:
“Pablo, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” said Pablo, doubtfully. “I don’t hear anything either.”
“Okay. Hold on to Vicky, and walk. I’ll guide you; you guys just walk. Don’t let go.”
And I’m not going to listen to you two anymore, thought Gaspar. Because he had shone the light to either side and seen the walls covered in vines and moss. And, when he lit them better, he saw little white things in among the plants. Bones. Some very small. Animal bones, he told himself. Chickens. At least now it looked more like an abandoned house. He moved the flashlight and saw a black piano, and, nearby, what looked like mannequins hanging from the ceiling. The floor was covered in burned-down candles, and he said aloud: