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Pablo had to work a little to convince Adela to go in. It was strange. Now it seemed like she was afraid; they’d switched places. At the decisive moment, she seemed to understand better. My brother insisted. He grabbed her only arm and he even shook her. At school, the kids talked about how Pablo and Adela were boyfriend and girlfriend and they stuck their fingers down their throats like they were throwing up. Your brother’s dating the monster, they laughed. It didn’t bother Pablo and Adela. Me either. My only concern was the house.
They decided we’d go in on the first day of summer. Those were Adela’s exact words one afternoon while we talked in the living room at her house.
“The first day of summer, Pablo,” she said. “This week.”
They wanted me to go with them, and I agreed because I didn’t want to leave them. They couldn’t go into the dark alone.
We decided to go at night after dinner. We had to sneak out, but getting out of the house in summer wasn’t so difficult. In our neighborhood, kids played in the street until late. It’s not like that anymore. Now it’s a poor and dangerous place, and the neighbors don’t go out; they’re afraid of being robbed, they’re afraid of the teenagers who drink wine on the corners and whose fights sometimes end in gunshots. Adela’s chalet was sold and they divided it up into apartments. They built a shed in the garden. It’s better now, I think. The shed hides the shadows.
A group of girls was playing jump rope in the middle of the street; when a car went by—very few did—they stopped to let it pass. Farther on more kids were kicking a ball, and where the asphalt was newer, smoother, some teenagers were roller skating. We passed among them unnoticed. Adela was waiting in the dead yard. She was very calm, illuminated. Connected, I think now.
She pointed to the door and I moaned in fear. It was open, just a crack.
“How?” asked Pablo.
“It was like that when I got here.”
My brother took off his backpack and opened it. Inside were wrenches, screwdrivers, tire irons—my father’s tools that Pablo’d found in a box in the laundry room. Now we wouldn’t need them. He was looking for the flashlight.
“We won’t need that either,” said Adela.
We looked at her, confused. She opened the door all the way, and then we saw that inside the house there was light.
I remember we walked holding hands under that glow that seemed electric, though where there should have been fixtures on the ceiling, there were only old cables sticking out like dry branches. Or maybe the light was like sunlight. Outside it was night and it looked like rain was coming, a powerful summer storm. Inside it was cold and smelled like disinfectant and the light was like a hospital’s.
The house didn’t seem strange inside. In the small entrance hall was a phone table with a black phone, like the one at our grandparents’ house.
Please don’t ring, please don’t ring, I remember praying, repeating it in a low voice with my eyes closed. And it didn’t.
The three of us went together into the next room. The house felt bigger than it looked from the outside. And it was buzzing, as if live insects were swarming under the paint on the walls.
Adela moved ahead of us, enthusiastic and unafraid. Every three steps Pablo said, “Wait, wait,” and she did, but I don’t know if she was hearing clearly. When she turned around to look at us, she seemed lost. There was no recognition in her eyes. She said, “Yes, yes,” but I felt as though she wasn’t talking to us anymore. Pablo told me later he felt the same way.
The next room, the living room, had dirty, mustard-colored sofas shaded gray by the dust. Against the wall were stacked glass shelves. They were very clean and had lots of little ornaments on them, so small we had to get closer to see what they were. I remember how we stood there all together and our breath fogged up the lowest shelves, the ones we could reach; they went all the way up to the ceiling.
At first I didn’t know what I was looking at. They were tiny objects, yellowish white and semicircular. Some were rounded, others sharper. I didn’t want to touch them.
“They’re fingernails,” said Pablo.
I felt like I was going deaf from the buzzing and I started to cry. I hugged Pablo, but I didn’t stop looking. On the next shelf, higher up, were teeth. Molars with black lead in the center, like my father’s, who’d had them fixed; incisors, like the ones that bothered me when I started wearing a retainer; or sharp canines that reminded me of Roxana, the loudmouthed girl who sat in front of me in school. When I looked up to see what was on the third shelf, the light went out.
Adela screamed in the dark. My heart pounded deafeningly. But I felt my brother, who had his arms around my shoulders and didn’t let go. Suddenly I saw a circle of light on the wall: it was the flashlight. I said: “Let’s go, let’s go.” Pablo, though, walked in the opposite direction from the exit. He kept walking farther into the house, and I followed him. I wanted to leave, but not alone.
The flashlight shone onto things that made no sense. A medical book with gleaming pages open on the floor. A mirror hung near the ceiling—who could see a reflection up there? A pile of white clothing. Pablo froze; he moved the flashlight and the light simply didn’t show another wall. That room never ended, or its end was too far away for the flashlight to reach it.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” I said again, and I remember I thought about fleeing on my own, about leaving him there and escaping.
“Adela!” Pablo shouted.
We couldn’t hear her in the darkness. Where could she be, in that endless room?
“Here.”
It was her voice, very quiet, close. She was behind us. We went back. Pablo shined the light toward where her voice was coming from, and then we saw her.
Adela hadn’t left the room with the shelves. She was standing next to a door and waving to us with her right hand. Then she turned, opened the door, and closed it behind her. My brother ran, but when he got to the door he couldn’t open it. It was locked.
I know what Pablo planned to do: get the tools he’d left outside in the backpack, open the door that had taken Adela. I didn’t want to get her out; I only wanted to leave, and I ran out behind him. It was raining outside and the tools were scattered on the yard’s dried-out grass; wet, they shone in the night. Someone had taken them out of the backpack. We stayed still for a minute, shaken, surprised, and someone shut the front door from inside.
The house stopped buzzing.
I don’t remember how long Pablo spent trying to open it. But at some point he heard me yelling. And he listened.
My parents called the police.
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