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Violet was the one who had gone farther than any. One floor below the entrance. She had run down all the stairs that extended before her and had gone to the basement of the Sanatorium.
Also, with the flashlight, something that did not escape any of them, casual or not, was lighting up all the things that were down there. It was like catacombs, through the various ditches she had discovered on the basement floor. There were shovels and picks lying on the ground and leaning against the wall. Those on the wall held in place by a spider's web in which, from the center, an spider was looking at him.
He tried not to touch anything, since he was disgusted immobilized by it all. A sour smell accompanied the landscape. There were wooden tables and sheets stacked on shelves. All of them folded and yellowed. Some spiders were walking through them, and Violet thought, there was life down there. Her heart still rumbled in her chest every time she remembered Gianna with the arrow in her temples. And that it had already been more than three hours. All that time she had spent sitting in the corner of the basement, with her wet back, resting on the dirty wall. Although it was disgusting. She was terrified, but inside she felt sure that this place was a right hiding place.
The madman was loose and had fired two arrows. It was the only thing she could think of now, and she did not suspect what was about to happen to her. The holiday's vacations had started badly, and that was all for her.
Her calm attitude dramatically changed when they appeared. Those faded shadows without a face or some of it. They began to glide across the ground illuminated by the lantern, and some of them came out of the forgotten graves. Like them. Her mind immediately became confused, and she thought she was seeing the shadows of the tables and the wooden boards that were there, leaning against the wall that threatened to fall to the ground. But the fucking shadows moved, and in the background, like a bad soundtrack of a movie, you could hear some laments, as if someone was suffering from deep pain.
The focus of the flashlight illuminated on those shadows that seemed to crawl across the floor, but the black spots did not fade with light. This aroused a deep concern to Violet, who put her hands to her breasts as if that was of some use to her.
If she knew the fate of her companions already stiff-necked like tuna jerky, she would think that everything was too repetitive and predictable. Always some shadows are showing, in an aggressive way and not like in other rooms where ghosts lived, that you had to run after them to see them, for the end, to take a good scare.
That was trivial now, but that, she did not know. None of them knew what the Sanatorium of Murcia hid, and they discovered it separately, but it was boring to the satiety and at the same time, terrible.
Fear can kill you, a voice said in her head bewildered, because those shadows did not disappear in the light of her lantern.
But several of his traveling companions had thought that very thing. Fateful excursion. Faded shadows and the abandoned ones arguing like aliens. Predictable. Very predictable, and the cold; also, foresaw. If you thought a bit, you had already seen all that on television and in the movies, even in the novels. Anticipated, but really tormented.
It was as much as the heart accelerated.
Also, predictable.
And she will begin to sweat copiously, and her eyes will open obscenely. Who could bring some new essence? It's like the killer who squeezes a big knife in one of his hands. Always plunge the knife into the heart, in the side, in the back. But each time, it does the same. Nobody marked an exception, and this time nothing was an exception.
In this case either.
And why did you think so much about these things even though recently someone had killed your best friend in front of your nose and the crazy man who did it go on loose?
They are the defense mechanisms of one's mind.
Everything was in the head.
Until death, for a scare.
There were people who died after learning that the primitive had touched him.
The elongated shadows took positions.
Suddenly she thought how the basement would be in the years that the Sanatorium was open. She remembered that Riley had said that, it had closed its doors in the sixties, that there were lepers and other less critical patients. Then she imagined that the entire building would be full of lepers. Including the basement or perhaps more than the rest of the Sanatorium. She even visualized that the dead would be piled up in the basement, while a low light from a forty-watt bulb was thrown over them. She imagines everything. It was the mental perception that everyone had before seeing them. To the forgotten ones that were so much in their mouths in the last hours of the night.
- "This is absurd," -Violet shouted.
Her voice broken by the shaking bounced on the walls, and these responded with her voice but delayed in time. The light of the flashlight could not capture the moment since the sound is not visible. Neither should they be, but they showed themselves the way they were.
They showed themselves as they were abandoned by their relatives and locked there in the hope of agony. To the only thing that they could accommodate.
Then Violet began to sweat copiously until her top with braces was wet. Her breasts, tiny, could be seen through the sides of the armholes.
One of the shadows showed what it looked like a hand. Elongated and with five shabby fingers, which were taking shape in a few seconds.
The impression of seeing that caused an intense pain in the chest.
Now the hand was purple and skeletal, with the skin irritated.
A forearm followed.
Violet's eyes reached their maximum amplitude, in the face of astonishment.
Her eyes closed momentarily in the sweat that stings her and felt its taste on the tip of his tongue. The sweat was salty, but she could not stop looking.
What if something else happened?
The other hand materialized on the upper edge of the pit that moments before was empty.
Something or someone seemed to be climbing a cliff. But it was just a goddamn half-meter hole.
She figured that there would be a mass grave underneath, while her heart injected blood under pressure inside her brain.
Leaning out there was a crown that had been planted with a bunch of long white hairs, which the air folded towards the back.
It was the skull, and it was full of lumps.
Violet aware of everything, but terrified, knew what was coming next.
Under the intense look with the lantern, the forgotten materialized, and half body crawled on the floor. His legs were missing.
It was like watching a zombie in a cheap movie.
But it was there, surrounded by more shadows and that impressed.
Violet's heart hit the shell of her chest as if it were a shield.
She felt nauseous, and her face cooled, keeping her eyes burning. And then she noticed that she could not stand because she was trembling like a leaf in autumn.
She looked up at the ceiling and saw more shapes surrounding the dim bulb still hanging from the ceiling. But no shine now.
The roof was red brick, and the plaster had fallen to the ground God knows when and the long shadows became hands.
Violet leaned forward and opened her mouth.
She threw up everything she had inside, on those putrefied hands that were trying to catch her. And she felt a tingling all over her head like a trail of blood.
Fear was taking over her.
She was not moaning, but was breathing tired out.
Her vision became blurred although the light of the lantern continued to illuminate all of them that were materializing at every moment.
She felt a voice as if it came from far away. A buzz, something dull that made you go into a coma. Now without being aware of it. Her heart was beating now in her temples, but her head was already tilted to the side, while they had reached her and were trying to drag her into the underworld.
The last thing she saw was a silhouette in front of the door.
The silhouette of a woman.
And she closed her eyes forever.
In a coma produced by the impression.
Seeing, in the beginning, something non-existent for her.
But what really existed.