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

blackness surrounding him was certainly of no assistance at all; he could hear a door getting open but it took a whole minute to understand what that

meant. His head was turned left, towards the door. He held his breath, waiting. The door was shut rapidly. For the best part of a minute, nothing was what he could hear; but then a slight clank came to his ears: something metallic, a key ring probably. He smiled; that has to be the keys, dangling, as he had foreseen, from the door's keyhole and clinking against one another. Then, some steps going towards the bed; he tried to shrink away from them, commanding his body to move itself to the right, but it turned out it was impossible: there was no much room down there. He changed his mind and decided to stand still, listening. The steps seemed to stop somewhere near the bed, on his left. He perceived a puff and then nothing. That silence was so intolerable that he stupidly thought he had been detected, and he was waiting for the blanket to be brutally removed, and for some supernatural force to grab him and push him fiercely out of his so-obvious shelter. He closed his eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to skip a headache; an insurmountable throbbing pain was now at his left temple. He thought of an unexpected migraine, and why on earth he did not bring some painkillers with him before getting under the bed. The ghost could not be more than some centimetres away from him, and it was precisely because of his proximity that he could smell that fresh sweet scent. He opened his eyes, surprised, almost forgetting about his headache. It can't be

, he said to himself. His head was still turned left, so he could see how the blanket seemed to be grazed. He envisaged some invisible presence passing by the bed, brushing the blanket to and fro, as if he was made of wind. A voice coming all of a sudden from the telly startled him. More about those Spanish cucumbers: it turned out Germany had been terribly mistaken, and those vegetables had nothing to do with the e.coli small crisis. At last, some good news. Then it came a slight thud; the remote falling upon the bed, he guessed. The steps seemed to get further from the bed, so he surmised the presence was going towards the bathroom. At some point or another, he could barely hear those steps, and he couldn’t tell if that was because of the carpeted floor or because the ghost was starting to do things properly, maybe stepping on the floor one out of every two steps. Apart from the voices coming directly from the TV, now he did not hear anything else. Someone was talking about that cucumber European crisis quite excited, and then another voice would come out in no time in order to put that one at ease; amidst some irrational speeches about the different and unquestionable ways Spain was supposed to deal with Germany to sort that out, he heard the water running in the shower. Now that he thought that presence locked in the bathroom, he would allow himself some time to spare. His first thoughts would be related to that fragrance he had smelt as soon as the door got open. It was still there, everywhere. He recalled the first time he had smelt it: that first night, downstairs, in his very room, coming from that fresh yellow dahlias. Then, it was her perfume, no doubt about that. It seemed absolutely impossible that ghost could use the same elegant sweet perfume as his deceased wife. Mixed with that scent, there was a slight yet perceptible one only he could recall from her young white smooth skin. The steps came back, this time getting closer and probably returning from the bathroom. The ghost had had a shower, and now he was undoubtedly due to bed. He thought he would see the blanket being slightly lift from his left, because he was laying right under the place where the pillows were supposed to be, up there, upon the bed. However, that wouldn't happen. Whatever sort of ghost that was, it decided to lay down over the blanket and, most likely, the bed-spread as well. He could hear the bed frame cracking faintly under the ghost weight whilst he was accommodating himself upon it. His both hands were put against the back of the bed frame instinctively, as if trying to avoid himself from being smashed. But it turned out that ghost did not weigh much, so he removed his hands and let them rest upon the hot carpeted floor, sighting. He waited. That thing was indeed breathing; now it was time for some averts on the TV. The entire bedroom came to a silence out of the blue; he thought the ghost was exhausted after a whole wandering-around-tourist-day, and decided to turn the TV off; those sparks and popping noises lasted for less than a second, but even so he would hear them pretty well. He closed his eyes in order to get rid of some little pinpricks which had appeared suddenly in his vision; that somehow unexpected headache was becoming something much worse: a migraine, maybe. He tried to stay calm. That scent of hers was more intense now. The ghost's breath went slow; he was probably asleep. He kept his eyes closed tight a bit longer, whilst thinking about what he would do next. The first idea had been to get out of under the bed, go towards the room's door straight away, grab the key ring, open the door carefully trying not to make the slightest noise, and lock it from the other side. Thus, the presence would end up trapped in there. Not any-more

, he thought. He wanted that scent to be explained. He was in need of understanding why he could almost feel her presence in that room, not only because of that sweet smell, but in almost every single movement that ghost had performed. For instance, the way his wife used to sleep over all the bedlinen because, she told him once, she hated the way the fabric brushed her skin uncontrollably; or his custom of letting the remote fall down upon the bed recklessly. But more importantly, he recalled, she was probably the only person he had ever met having showers every night, before going to bed, instead of having them after getting up early in the mornings. It can't be

, he repeated to himself one more time. And yet, there the facts were. He opened his eyes again. The darkness where he was enclosed in helped him to avoid the migraine; the pinpricks had vanished. He was himself once again. Apart from the ghost's breath, there were no sounds in the bedroom. He listened: nothing. Carefully, he passed his left hand under the blanket and grabbed an edge of the wooden bed frame, all his fingers slid under the mattress but his thumb, which would stay under the bed frame, firmly, and pushed himself out. At first he was a bit dizzy; he had spent almost the whole day under the bed and with no much light. So it was normal to need some time for auto-adjustments. His eyes craved for more darkness, but he commanded them to open wide and resist; his second order would be for his groggy legs to awake; and so they would support his entire body once again, until he was standing upright and staring, astonished, at that white blanket resting irregularly upon some, yet unseen, human form. Where the human-breast was supposed to be, the blanket rose briefly, just to fall down smoothly, rhythmically, once again, clearly following the ghost's breath; the fabric would delimit a beautiful woman shape resting upon that bed, deeply asleep. She had found her way under that white clean blanket, after all. He stood in front of the bed; the first tear would show up, barely watering his left eye, but not rolling all his face down, not quite yet; he stood still, looking at that charming yet undefinable human-shape, breathless. He knew he was not allowed to touch the blanket, otherwise that form would be vaporised; that was the trick: the connection

he was in pursuit of: that bedroom, that bed, the blanket, earthly goods now having a new and supernatural meaning: to keep the dead alive. That ghost was clearly that one of a woman, and therefore he was now sure it was her. So he was not scared, his headache was long-gone. He thought of so many plausible explanations why his wife was there

; he tried to understand how, instead of that writer, the presence dwelling upstairs had turned out to be that one of hers

; he considered different ways she could get the keys to get in; and yet, there she was; now that she was invisible, he thought her a new kind of beauty. Explanations apart, in fact, there was only one thing he could do right now. He had known all along, right since her death.
“I was right.”, he would say to that unseen human form resting upon that bed, now crying profusely, because of that certainty

, that obvious resolution, that he was due to cease his own existence. Then, that form would move itself slightly to the right side of the bed, leaving the left one free: his side

, he would realise. Not even death would make her forget about his habits. There would not be scrambling voices coming from the hereafter; not even funny lights or sparks hovering oddly in that room. He would lay down by her side, closing his eyes. She would caress his right cheek and she would follow his lips with an invisible index finger until the blackness eventually came.

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Publication Date: 08-17-2011

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To Ida and Kees; they know why.