The Boarding House by Toni Castillo Girona (best books for 20 year olds txt) 📕

next morning I realized I had forgotten to get the silver tray back, you know.”
He stared at her intently. She had another sip of tea.
“Thus, I went upstairs to get it back.”, she went on. “You can imagine how I felt as soon as I saw the silver tray untouched, still laying right upon that chair.”
She paused briefly; he took advantage of it and poured some more strong coffee in his porcelain cup. He didn't want to miss a word of her story. She remained silent all this process along, looking at the ceiling.
“So, what happened next?”, he asked her.
“I tried to talk to him through the closed door. I said: Weren't you hungry?

But I got no answer. I couldn't hear any sound in there.”
“Didn't you open the door?”
She smiled. “Not immediately; we've got some principles involved when it comes to our guests' privacy, you know.” she said dryly. “I resolved to call on my husband, who were on some errands at that moment.”
She took a deep breath and got up again, quite unexpectedly. She was in evident disgrace, she was not comfortable talking about that matter and still, she had been the one bringing that very same matter up. To some extend, she reminded him of his wife. Those old days before the illness set foot in their home had been the best of their lives. He found himself every now and again thinking about her, even now, amidst that foreign city, whilst listening to that spooky tale of unknown guests entering their rooms and not getting out of them for days on end. That fragrance he could smell at night, somehow replacing that other one belonging naturally to those fresh yellow dahlias, and the feeling she was actually in there, beside him, though invisible, depressed him. Not a single spoken word coming from that landlady would make him think of better days now: that seemed foolish; her words were darkening his days instead.
“He came quite quickly,” she started again, “, grabbed the bedroom's key just in case and opened the door. It wasn't locked.”
He left the cup upon the table, before the plate where some rest of fruit salad could be seen. Then, entangling his hands, said:
“What did you see in there?”
She sighed. He could feel some dreadfulness surrounding them right there, in that dining room. Before knowing anything about that weird scary tale, it looked like charming and homely. Unluckily, it was charming and homely no more.
She sat on that chair on his left again, for the last time that morning, and with evident discomfort, she managed to utter some words due to conclude that tale:
“He was dead. Dead as a doornail.”

5

T

here's no such things as ghosts

, he recalled her saying. His wife was laying on the marital bed, hardly noticing he was right there, because the illness had took her eyes as well. The bedroom was surrounded by fresh flowers: red roses and red tulips. He stood beside her, resting his back against the window frame, observing her sink. The doctors had told him already she was not supposed to last much longer. According to their medical opinion, it was a miracle that she was still alive. “Oh,”

he said to her, “but you are wrong there. They do exist.”

She moved her head slightly, as if trying to accommodate herself in such a way that, if anything, she could keep the false illusion of being able to actually see

him. He looked at her, and in doing so, he watered his eyes. She looked so fragile, so weak, so dependable, that he could barely stand it. “It is you, who is wrong.”

, she assured him, smiling. She could still smile, despite all the pain, and he dried his eyes and reached her bed. He knelt down beside her. He caressed her forehead, feeling the coldness on her skin, which was white as bone. After so many years, this

. He tried to cheer up; he did not want to show sadness in front of her; he wanted to be strong: she deserved that very much. But that sight was insurmountable: she was dying right there, on that very same bed where they had had sex so many and glorious times, and now she was almost like an empty vessel, and he was trembling all over, and he wanted to let her know they did exist, the ghosts, they did really

exist, they had to

, otherwise that would mean he would be absolutely alone without the smallest chance of meeting her one last time, in that so far hereafter, where tearful souls would be reunited for ages on end.
It was all in vain; she passed away that same night. It was quite a shock. He did not want to see anyone; he stayed at home for a whole month barely feeding himself. When he decided it was about time to get out of the house, he was all skin and bones. The moment he set foot on the street, he felt sick and vomited. He started wandering around the streets, trying to pull himself together. Life is quite a different thing to cope with now

, he thought. That last smile is there all the time; a grin on a dead face; long black hair rotting itself, spread all over the marital bed; from it dark and dirty threads emerge, looking nasty and dreadful; and her white face is now surrounded by them, and he does not intend to brush them aside; he knows they are dead but somehow alive as well, and they look like daring him to do so, so that he can end up trapped in them. No way, he says to himself, I am going to touch them; so he does not. It is dark in there and he is cold, and he wonders if that's because of her. I love you, he says to her though he does know she is gone already, and there is no way she can hear his uttered words now, because what is laying there, right now, it's just a carcass.

This time it was the phone that woke him up. It was not late; he had been dozing for maybe half an hour on that comfortable settee. That could explain why, at first, it was so difficult for him to reach out for the cell phone, resting all by itself upon the bedroom's carpeted floor.
“Yes?”
“How are things going, pal?”, asked a voice on the other side of the line. He stood up, a bit surprised. Pacing the bedroom up and down, he held the cell phone tight against his right ear.
“Doctor!”, he said.
“Yeah, that

is me!”
After his wife's death, a lot of things had changed for the worse. Therefore, certain help was required. That doctor speaking now on the phone was the first form that

help had adopted; a cheerful psychiatrist expert on amending people's life using an astonishing assortment of legal drugs. It was his idea, in fact, to get out of that house and go on travelling; no drugs this time

, he would say smiling, there is no need to do so, not yet

. So, after much more pondering, he decided he would go to Holland.
“Oh, you know, not so brilliant.”, he admitted, resignedly.
The Doctor came to a silence for a long while. He waited for him to continue, and in realizing he did not, he added:
“It is not your fault.”
That appeared to work, for the Doctor hurried to say:
“Oh, I see, it is okay. Maybe I could prescribe you some drugs, after all.”
“Not at all, I'll be fine.”
He could hear the doctor sighting on the other side of the line. He could even imagine him seated on that black-furred armchair; upon the desk a laptop running the screen-saver; some papers spread out all upon the wooden desk in such an obsessive and ordered manner; a pile of sorted folders standing on its left side, a bit far from reach, with big blue printed out letters: surely on top of that same pile there would be the one summarizing his own life.
“Is anything the matter?”, the doctor asked him, doubtful.
He took his time before answering:
“Doctor, do you believe in ghosts?”
“What sort of question is that

?”
He smiled. Ghosts; no way he was thinking seriously about having a ghost right upstairs. However, that first night had proved relatively plausible.
“Oh, I've been having, you know, experiences

.”
“It is not that

; it's just you are a bit down in the mouth. That's all.”, observed the doctor.
“That perfectly may be, but still ...”
“You are talking nonsense. There is no such things as ghosts.”
“So my wife said.”
But he was not so sure now. According to his landlady, someone had died upstairs, and now the second room was empty. Despite so, he could hear the water running and the steps of someone above getting out of the shower and going to bed. That was not pure imagination, that was something real. He could possibly need some drugs to get on, but that did not change the matter-of-fact situation he got right there, in that old Dutch medieval boarding house.
“You see? Put your mind at rest; go on a tourist rampage or something!”, the doctor suggested.
“I intend to pay the tower of the city a visit late this afternoon.”, he said mechanically.
“That sounds great!”
“They say it has forty hundred and sixty five steps to get to its very top.”
The doctor talked again. He could catch a slight change on his voice: maybe now, turning the conversation to that area of climbing towers and sight-seeing the city, was something he really wanted to hear. He was a psychiatrist, after all.
“Enjoy the climbing, then! Keep me posted, okay?”
“I will; thanks for calling, Doctor.”
“My pleasure.”
The doctor was the first one to hang up the phone. He left his cell phone upon the bed, looking out the window behind the curtain. It was getting dark again, maybe time to go downstairs and fix some dinner. His landlady told him so: he was free to go to the kitchen any time to prepare his own food. However, he was not hungry. He put the TV on. A sheet showing an exhaustive TV-channel list laid upon the bed table. He studied it largely, and finally he came to a decision and put the BBC World Service on, making himself comfortable upon the bed. Some awful problem related to Spanish cucumbers was the main European authorities' concern, and according to the news, some German people had died of e.coli already, as a direct consequence of eating those very same Spanish cucumbers. He was astonished, but not as astonished as he had been after knowing there was no-one

upstairs.
“I miss you.”

, he said. His voice sounded sad and hopeless in that almost quiet bedroom, because he kept the TV volume at a minimum; he did not want to annoy his landlady and her husband. He looked at the place where those yellow dahlias had stood; they were gone. In their place, looking majestic, rested some big and beautiful red tulips. Of course

, he thought, this is Holland after all. So why not? Some red tulips, sure

. Maybe it was the tulips' fragrance, or maybe it was because he was tired, or maybe it was even because the British voices coming from the TV were flawless and, being so, were, in fact, almost mesmerising him; but the fact is: he fell asleep, and he dreamed of her, and he cried although he did not notice it because he was dreaming; and his tears went all his face down until pooling upon the bed, where small stains appeared almost immediately. He quivered