Chapter 7
The old reggaeton blared through the speakers on the beach. Jimena looked stunning, with her red hair, tanned skin, and heart-shaped sunglasses, sipping melon with wine, defiantly ignoring all the doctors’ advice. Javi gently stroked her skin, a little disconnected from the moment, still worried about everything that had happened that morning. Ron and she shared cold beers, just trying to let go of everything, to forget the mystery, the infidelity, the cold, black eyes, the yarará girls, as they could ever leave her mind. The redhead hugged her, and she rested her head on his shoulder, searching for some comfort, thinking that soon it would all end—the uncertainty, the mystery, the riddle.
People dressed in carnival costumes paraded in front of them, dancing and drinking. Jime stood up, her lanky body full of life once more.
“Come on, guys, don’t be buzzkills. Let’s dance a little. It’s the last few days, I want to enjoy something of the trip.”
She kidnapped Javi, who followed her toward the center; there were still three hours before the main band arrived. Herminia finished her beer and stood up, mimicking the girl.
“Come on, Ron, she’s right. Let’s enjoy what’s left of the trip.”
The night passed like that, sticky, with sand clinging to their feet, which seemed two giant pieces of breaded meat, laughter intertwined with kisses, the taste of melon wine shared with Jimena, and when Miranda started playing on the stage, Herminia thought maybe they still had hopes of ending the summer with a beautiful experience.
She woke up with the certainty that she hadn’t dreamed of anything.
She greeted Ron with a kiss on the cheek and went with Jime to have breakfast at an old café. She ordered a double shot espresso with milk, with some medialunas filled heavily with dulce de leche and dusted with powdered sugar. She wanted to congratulate herself for having survived the vacation in hell. Jime was sipping a banana smoothie with a ham and cheese toast that looked delicious, while the news channel played in the background, listing all the misfortunes plaguing the country because the country was a mess, the people were crazy, and there was no way out, fulfilling its duty of ruining the morale of the many broken people walking the streets of Argentina. She didn’t listen, didn’t notice when they announced that a plane had crashed into a hotel in northern Brazil, killing twenty-three Argentinians who were vacationing there. She didn’t hear that the deaths had been horrific because most of the people had died trapped, stuck in the hotel rooms that shut themselves magnetically during an emergency. She didn’t hear, because the end of the trip was a reward in itself, because the medialunas had stuck to her hands and she couldn’t get the dulce de leche off with the café's flimsy napkins, and because her friend was telling her about the drama of another one of her odd friends, a friend from Lavanda, Luna, and her girlfriend, a Chinese girl who had claimed the nickname “Estrella”, which meant star in spanish. “Don’t laugh, idiot, I’m serious. Luna and Estrella, Moon and Star". “That just can’t be true” “But that’s what she wants to be called!” And then, when they left laughing, they missed the recap of the incident’s victims, where the names of the Graneros dentists had been announced on screens throughout Argentina.
"Everything okay, Mini?" Javi asked while she finished folding the beach rugs to carry them under her arm and tossed her phone to the bottom of her bag.
"Yeah, but I have no signal. My phone’s been like this all day."
"Ah, yeah, mine too. Jime told me there’s an issue with the signal in the whole area."
"Really? Well, yeah, I’m ready. Wait!" She went to grab her wallet, which she had left on the wooden nightstand. Crookie appeared behind the bed and meowed in protest. Her cat was quite independent; she always took him on vacation with her. He liked the beach, the sand, and hunting crabs. She lovingly stroked him, and while the cat purred, she grabbed her wallet and put it in her bag.
"Aww, Crookie, sweetie, we’re going back tomorrow morning. Enjoy the last day. Go hunt lots of crabs."
Crookie meowed in response, like saying “Okay, mom,” and with that impression, she went with Javi, Ron, and Jime to the beach.
The closing party promised to be important. Tourists from other beaches were coming to find a good spot to see the artist of the day. The crowding was uncomfortable for Herminia, who didn’t feel at ease in the mass of people. They found a good spot, away from the main stage, where they could dance to the music without elbowing drunk people. Ron was saying something about having bad luck when you take mate twice, scolding her for serving herself a bad mate and testing its quality by trying it again. She told him to stop being so superstitious and handed him the mate, better prepared, less washed, and felt the urge to pee announce itself as the bad luck predicted.
The spot they had found had pushed them at least two kilometers from their usual base, which was only three hundred meters from their house. So she would have to walk at least twenty-three blocks to get home. She had no choice but to go wait in line at the portable toilets set up along the waterfront, no matter how disgusting it was.
“I’ll be right back, I’m going to the bathroom,” she announced, throwing her bag over her shoulder. Javi asked if she could bring him a coca-cola on the way, since he was dying of thirst, and she assured him that only if she found a drugstore on the way, as she didn't plan to deviate from the path, with the summer heat and how little she wanted to walk. She kissed everyone goodbye and headed toward the coastal avenue. Only as she walked through the sandy streets did she realize something that horrified her, as if a tight veil had been lifted from her face.
She was alone, walking along the steps she had taken with Tom, on the day of the dunes and the lost barrels. The memory was so vivid that at first, upon hearing the laugh that announced him, she thought he was really there—Tom, the monster, the being who crawled between the dunes and the mud puddles, the one who drove animals insane and steered ships off course. But no, it was just déjà vu announcing itself in her body, looking through the folds of time and space.
Luckily, there was little line. She served a couple of girls and entered with apprehension into the sun-scorched plastic interior, with the smell of a thousand long-distance buses embedded there. Trying not to vomit, she quickly dried herself with the paper they had placed (which was the most supernatural part of the experience) and hurriedly exited the receptacle that seemed like a branch of hell.
And mixed with the relief of having made it to the bathroom, the horror of encountering his attentive, empty, and hungry eyes paralyzed her completely.
Tom advanced toward her, not giving her time to react, when he grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her toward him.
"Not even a hello, Herminia, after everything we've been through together?" His voice seemed to break the enchantment, and she managed to free herself from him, from his heavy, large hands, and ran away, terrified, with adrenaline pounding in her ears. She hadn’t made it five meters when his hands grabbed her by the hair, yanking her fiercely and dragging her to the ground, where he held her immobilized. The impact hurt her; the strength of the man holding her didn't seem human. Her bones contorted in such a way that she felt they were just a bit more pressure away from breaking.
"Help! Help!" she managed to scream, but then he laughed.
"No one can help you on this level." he hissed with fury, enjoying seeing her like that, under his power. He grabbed her head, pulling it backward and forcing her to look at the space around them. The empty, silent street was impossible, almost as impossible as appearing in dreams and feeding off people, knowing the secrets of a forgotten world.
He released her, and the girl jumped to her feet, ready to run again, but then he approached her body once more. His perfume had changed; smelling it was like camouflaging bergamot with gunpowder, with fire, with hell. Tom tightened his grip on her arms, holding her still, while she squirmed in protest.
"What’s wrong? Didn’t you like the messages I left using your friend?"
His mockery seemed to confirm everything she feared, the unreality of magic entangling with her present, and while she fought against the physical pain he had inflicted only moments ago, she couldn’t help but let herself be overtaken by her most basic instincts and burst into tears.
"Oh God, let me go, let me go! I don’t want to know anything about you, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say!" she sobbed, feeling panic overtake her body. She tried to clear her mind. What had she said? She didn’t believe in anything that wasn’t right in front of her, but there he was, in front of her, the devil, the misery, death.
"You’re a terrible liar. Look at me, Herminia, really look at me." And commanded by an invisible hand, her face straightened, and she looked at him—beautiful and terrifying, his eyes glowing with red sparks from within, hungry. "I’m not going to stop. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. There’s no place on this land where you can hide."
"What the hell are you?!" The question escaped her, wrenched from her gut, almost breathless. Tom smiled, showing his perfect, triumphant teeth.
"I think you already know very well what I am. I have many names. Your ears can’t hear the first one they gave me, but for you, I can always be simply Tom." She felt something heavy materialize in the palm of his hand, a familiar metal, shaped like sin, like temptation. She closed her eyes in pain, before the inevitable return of the cursed key. "But if you want answers, I’ll be waiting for you, you know where. And I promise you this, beautiful, I promise you. I won’t stop until I take everything you have, everything you want, until you beg me to let you in, until you plead with me. And I, perhaps, in my eternal mercy, will admit you."
He didn’t release her, but gently placed the ring with the black stone on her finger. Herminia stood there, trembling, staring at him. Suddenly, his black eyes blazed, revealing the hell that ran through his veins. He no longer seemed attractive to her; he seemed the portrait of a predator, something animal, something evil.
"Why me?" she whispered in the end, almost gasping. Riddle looked at her, smiling.
"I'll be waiting for you tonight. I've been wanting to have a proper date with you for a long time."
And just like it had happened with the drug addict on the first day at the beach, he vanished like pieces of wind, fading like a light that flickered out. And with his absence, the buzz of the people filled the street again, the stage announcing a support band playing a national rock song washed out with trap. It took her a while to get moving, barely aware that she was still holding the key in her hand, cold, unmoved by the warm heat spilling over the street, unmoved by all the love from the families coming and going, with kids full of snot, humidity, and sunscreen. She kept walking, and when she reached the spot where she had seen her friends, she confirmed with horror what she had already suspected.
They had disappeared.
She arrived at the cabin only to confirm what she already knew. They weren’t there either. She took her phone out of her bag with trembling fingers, hoping, praying, that she had a signal to call them. The icon showed she had 4G again. And there, materialized, were the forty-nine missed calls from all her friends and family, both near and far, piling up one on top of the other. She threw herself into the plastic chairs in the kitchen, which protested with a squeak under her weight, trying to organize, understand, everything that had happened during her absence.
The first message she saw was from him. Draco had sent her at least fifteen messages and twenty-two missed calls. She arranged them chronologically, while messages from her friends kept coming in at incredible speeds, permanently blocking parts of the screen.
“How are you????”
“Your aunt called me. Answer.”
“Mini. Please.”
“I just spoke to one of the twins. Call me.”
“I’m coming to get you.”
“Wait for me.”
She pressed the call symbol and dialed. She needed to understand what had happened. The tone rang once, twice, four times, before he answered.
“Draco, please tell me…”
“Ma’am,” a hard, strange voice answered through the phone, and the ominous feeling fell over her. “Do you know the victim? We need someone to come identify the body. The kid had an accident; we’re here pulling out the remains. He was speeding on the highway.”
She threw the phone to the floor and burst out laughing.
Of course, of course, the bastard had killed her ex-boyfriend. Why else would he have wanted to know his name? She hadn’t given it to him, that was true, but she was still tagged in some pictures with him, she still had the file of a story where the blonde appeared, of course. And while the messages kept coming in, the laughter turned into a general tremor when she realized that she still didn’t know what had happened before Massera’s death.
And so, with a message from her great-aunt Juana, she understood that Riddle’s promise had materialized right in her hands.
She didn’t even notice the flies coming out of her room, nor the cat’s corpse and the yararás slithering through the kitchen, filling the room with an unbearable buzzing, a permanent vibration that seemed to want to bring down the cabin.
The procession took her all afternoon. She let her feet take her to San Bernardo. She left behind the festival, the pier, her hope of finding her friends. She let the magnetism of the house claim her.
Her feet left trails of blood as she walked. Maybe that was what letting go felt like, maybe that’s how the druggie felt when she appeared and disappeared. Maybe limbo was that, walking barefoot on the burning sand, leaving pieces of oneself behind as she passed.
The setting sun abandoned her, handing her over as a change of guard to the night when she arrived at the house. She didn’t need the key to enter through the gate, which opened with her proximity, as if pushed by a gust of wind as she passed.
She felt nothing when she stepped on the stone path that would lead her to the dark wooden door, but she sensed out of the corner of her eye that every step she took was accompanied by thousands of snakes, vipers, serpents, yararás, which flooded the field so much that it looked like a painting by Van Gogh, twisting in spirals, hissing.
The house door also opened, as if waiting for her, and when she entered, the dirt she had expected was replaced by the cleanliness of an English mansion from the 1970s. The room had a scent she already knew, one that clung to the entire space, the wood, the bergamot, the rosemary. The glossy furniture gleamed under the lights that hummed above her, buzzing like the snakes that hadn’t entered but had accompanied her on the pilgrimage.
Her knees buckled magnetically to the floor, and she knew she had to make the journey this way, crawling, like the processions in northern Argentina, which are done on knees over the rough stones of the mountains. She moved forward with pain in her body, advancing with the agonizing humiliation etched into her soul, toward the only door that was closed in the house.
She stood up, trembling, the effort to pull herself up from the floor overwhelming. She let her body fall against the wooden door and used the little strength she had to pull the key from her bag. Twisting it between her fingers was difficult, while the floor called to her, and the rust of age prevented the lock from yielding. But then, with a click, the door opened, and she could rest again, adhered against the floor.
And as the door to hell opened, she felt relieved when thousands of hands grabbed her, forcing her to stand.