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There was a note written on the wall; written with a spray of those that come out spurting of a boat with a ball panting inside. Alaina while reading was touching her curly hair. Her fingers tangled in her like a fish trapped in a net. The story, because it was an excellent piece written on one of the walls that were next to the aqueduct of the Sanatorium, which entered on the west side, where the air whistled, said the following;
A few years ago, while a group of soldiers spent the night in the sanatorium, something happened. Abandoned definitively since 1995, because before it was occupied for a limited time as a children's shelter after the regional government proceeded to its reopening in the eighties. One of them, who stood guard, woke the others with a flurry of a rifle. It destined to an entity, of green color, that froze the blood of those who witnessed it. And they saw the lady in white.
Alaina's eyes widened. She had just discovered more things about the Sanatorium. Riley would not have soaked well at all because their dates and history were distorted concerning this writing, although they were going in the same direction. Riley lacked explaining the legend that covered the sanatorium of Espuña Mountains.
At the end of the long sentence it said;
I saw a black lady walking on the first floor, it was not white, moron ...
A grimace was drawn to her lips under the charismatic light of the moon. Below was another phrase;
And they treated the tuberculous as well as leprosy ...
Alaina raised her right eyebrow. She already knew that from Riley's mouth, but there was something else. Much more mysterious. It was written a few meters ahead, always next to the aqueduct. The stone pavement corridor was outdoors, just above the second floor. In it said;
A door has been built between the two floors so as not to have access to the older level.
- "That's impossible," -murmured Alaina. - "We went up to the second floor. And in fact I'm on top of it. In the aqueduct. She spoke as if in front of her she had Riley letting go of her verbiage.
And below said the following;
Only in 1932, 28,000 Spaniards died. Almost all of them lived at home without ventilation, overcrowded and very cold during the day and night.
- "Well, I'm learning a lot of things that Riley has not said or does not know." -Alaina's voice sounded sharp, almost like a scream. - "When I see him, I will explain these interesting things to him. - But she did not know he was stiffer than a mummy in the attic.
Alaina saw in these descriptions a true historical treasure, while the elongated shadows were approaching her. Blind but with deformed hands and lamenting of her stay there.
Alaina turned abruptly, toward the tallest structure in the Sanatorium. The attic, which was just above that giant Christ. Naturally, she saw nothing. Alaina was holding her flashlight in a trembling hand. It illuminated the floor, the walls and finally, the aqueduct, which looked like a Roman bridge. Now it was dry. Shee turned back to the wall and continued reading, returning to enthusiasm again.
Once a week the gravedigger of the Sanatorium went up in a car and drove up from the Alhama de Murcia Cemetery, to collect the corpses, which were accumulated, with the sole purpose of giving them burial. In winter, with the snowy roads, it became the only link between the hospital and civilization.
- "Wow. This is scary." -Alaina's heart began to pump more blood into her veins. And the voice rang with a bell. But she kept reading, now passing her fingertips over the letters. They were disturbing.
The dead were taken out the back door, according to several witnesses, believing that they were dead. And when they were taken to the morgue, to put them in the coffins, once closed and ready to take them to the cemetery, sometimes the corpses revived and began to hit hard on the lid of the coffin.
- "Fuck! What is this? Where are we?" -Alaina's voice rose in the air like a siren rising in volume. All that, if it was true, gave her chills and she felt her heart beat wildly. She was in doubt. If that was true, it was to think twice and not about that crazy arrow, she thought and closed her eyes for what seemed like an eternity.
She saw them when she opened her eyes.
They were like drawings on the letters she had just read. A few elongated shadows that could well produce the trees around, but these were too far and, also had a very peculiar. They looked like human silhouettes.
Her breathing began to get nervous.
Still focusing on the wall, she took a step back toward the aqueduct, which reached his hip. Those shadows became spots under the powerful light of the lantern. And one of the first ideas that came to mind, is why they kept seeing themselves in the light. Her heart began to pump almost as fast as when that damn arrow pierced Gianna's skull.
She hit her hip against the edge of the aqueduct, and the wind stroked her hair. She was hot, and the sweat started to run down her face until she reached her neck. Her back was a sauna. Those forms moved. She thought it must be something close, that moved with the air. The light of her flashlight looked for something, but it did not find it. Only the aqueduct, the corridor and the wall full of letters. There were some more letters but she did not continue reading, it was not the moment to do it. And the wind cried.
All that is true, they had us like dogs. They abandoned us.
That could not say it the wind, that cried in every corner. And the branches of the trees waved inside the forest like tambourines, producing a strange noise. But that had been something else and had come out of the wall. Each syllable, each letter. In a torn voice, brittle and almost distant at the same time, a voice that produced chills and grief at the same time. Alaina felt the first thing.
- "It cannot be true," -she whispered.
And then there was silence, but for a short space of time.
We are still waiting here, all of us.
Alaina's hairs were the closest thing to hooks. Her heart pumped blood under pressure. The veins hurt when they dilated. And it rumbled at her temples like a locomotive.
And she saw her too.
Between the play of lights of the moon and the darkness of the night, there was a silhouette of a woman in black who walked by the east wing, on a corridor that Alaina had stepped on before. The woman did not stop or turn her head. Alaina knew that she was a woman and was getting crazy at times.
She was always with us.
Alaina distressed once more. Who the hell was that lady? In one of the sentences, she had just read there was a certain discrepancy as to whether it was a lady in black or white. She did not know why she was thinking this in a moment of torment, but she needed to know. It was the lady in black. What would be, then, the superior mother of the nuns? Or another one among the many of the buried dead? I could not answer a single question for two reasons. One, because she did not know, and two, because fear was breathing in her neck.
Like millions of crowded ants, faded shadows were forming and drawing arms and hands in the gloom, but they were clearly visible. They were arms that twisted like worms. Bare arms and arms that had a bandage wrapped around them. And then the faces appeared. Some faces with grotesque spots on the eyes and in the mouth, and some fingers. Perhaps, the same ones that hit the closed lid of the coffin. And now they were there, emerging from the wall and the ground.
There were also hands outstretched from the ground, and the cries doubled in mass.
She illuminated them and saw the horror of the lepers, but some scrawny men and women did not look like leprosy. These would be the ones who suffered from tuberculosis. In any case, they were abandoned or buried alive, and now they were here to show themselves. To find their relatives, because they were all waiting.
And there were children.
Alaina let out a cry of horror.
The children had their faces eaten by leprosy, and scraps of skin and pieces of flesh hung on them until they fell to the ground and their cries were sinister. Full of despair and pain.
Alaina was about to cry for them. Her eyes moistened. She felt like these were a hot spot on an icy face. She looked towards the east side. The lady in black was gone. In the message on the wall, there was a racial message, he thought at that moment and did not know why she had done it. But sometimes the mind plays tricks on you. She turned to them.
They were everywhere.
Now the veins in her neck swelled. The heart seemed to be there, rumbling in the swollen veins as if it were a ball that could not pass inside one of them. A twisted mouth grimaced and showed its ugly yellow teeth and tongue filled with pus. The fingers of some of them scratched the wall while the earth of the bricks fell to the ground before being dragged by the wind.
She was so impressed that her eyes left their sockets. And she began to scream holding on to it as if life depended on it. Her cries were now mixed with the cries of the entities, which continued to materialize and come out of the wall and the ground with their long-outstretched arms. Her eyes, like dark blurs, sometimes glowed watery, like those of a zombie.
The lantern fell inside the aqueduct, and the moon witnessed what happened to Alaina moments later. Someone, somewhere in the bushes, was listening to the exasperating cries, but he did nothing but close his ears.
The hands full of scabs closed on her ankles and brushed her bare thighs, for she was wearing jeans so short that he could see his chubby cheeks. Her legs kicked on the ground, raising puffs of dust. And her heartbreaking cry broke in two when she sounded hoarse during darkness. Her heart felt on the tip of her tongue, beating it outrageously. She was short of breath, and they continued to caress her legs until they reached her waist and the scream was more and more heartbreaking.
Suddenly, those leprous bodies and other emaciated, they made themselves back to Alaina's bewilderment, but it was to return to attack her with all their violence. Those bodies collided head-on with hers and broke apart like the ashes. Illuminating a pale and dark sky. Millions of particles had surrounded her body, and after it, they were composing again in the bodies they were. In that instant, Alaina's heart stopped beating.
Her glassy eyes remained open, fixed on the moon and her fingers ungainly and claw like, seemed to ask for a plea. A second later and before the look of those dark and blurred eyes, Alaina's body collapsed on the floor producing a fleshy noise that was absorbed by the silence of the night.
No bird sang.
Until dawn.