Santiago Eximeno: Huerto de cruces

Si terminase así el pueblo, resultaría de una fórmula de perfección o de simulación intelectualista

Gabriel Miró

Cuánto tarda el tren en llegar, pensó Gabriel. Moría la tarde en el horizonte, envuelta en un charco de sangre desteñida, y las copas de los árboles más lejanos extendían sus ramas hacia las vías como ancianas artríticas. Cuándo tarda en llegar, pensó Gabriel, y sintió pereza y quiso levantarse, pero se arrepintió en el último momento. Se removió sobre el banco de piedra, inquieto, y miró a un lado y a otro, a la gente que como él esperaba en el andén a que llegara el último tren. Dónde irán todos éstos, pensó, que no tienen más necesidad que la que les crea su avaricia, y volvió su atención a las vías. Una moneda brillaba bajo los rayos del sol, olvidada entre listones de madera, quizá de un viajero que ya no la necesitaba, quizá de un niño que no pudo comprar su helado. Gabriel apoyó las manos a ambos lados de su cuerpo, sintiendo el frío del asiento de pie­dra en las palmas, y se meció adelante y atrás. No puede tardar ya mucho el tren, se dijo, no me hará esperar mucho más. No dejaba de llegar gente, advirtió mirando hacia las vallas de entrada. Hombres de piel morena y rostros surcados de arrugas; mujeres envueltas en vestidos negros, el pelo cubierto por un pañuelo; niños vestidos con trajes caros o con harapos, el ros­tro congelado en una mueca triste y seria. Les habían robado incluso la risa de los niños, tan querida y necesitada por todo el pueblo. Los hombres de blanco, con su rostro de cristal y sus armas, les habían arrebatado todo lo que tenían, y ahora les conminaban a marcharse, a abandonar todo lo que una vez había sido suyo. Abandonar el pueblo para siempre en un tren que les conduciría a las calles sucias y oscuras de una lejana ciudad. Los hombres de blanco, con sus falsas sonrisas y sus ame­nazas veladas. Así debía ser, pensó Gabriel, así debía ser, desde el momento que Tomás decidió volver a casa. Y, mientras espe­raba, escuchando el ruido de las voces de los hombres silencian­do los llantos de los niños, escuchando el arrastrar de las maletas llenas a rebosar sobre el empedrado de la estación, escu­chando los suspiros contenidos de las mujeres al volverse y mirar más allá de las vallas, Gabriel recordó a Tomás, al viejo Tomás, y su terca decisión de volver a ver a su familia.

Tanith Lee: Red as Blood

A fairy tale! A fairy tale! And finally one with bite.

The beautiful Witch Queen flung open the ivory case of the magic mirror. Of dark gold the mirror was, dark gold as the hair of the Witch Queen that poured down her back. Dark gold the mirror was, and ancient as the seven stunted black trees growing beyond the pale blue glass of the window.

"Speculum, speculum," said the Witch Queen to the magic mirror. "Dei gratia."

"Volente Deo. Audio."

"Mirror," said the Witch Queen. "Whom do you see?"

"I see you, mistress," replied the mirror. "And all in the land. But one."

"Mirror, mirror, who is it you do not see?"

"I do not see Bianca."

The Witch Queen crossed herself. She shut the case of the mirror and, walking slowly to the window, looked out at the old trees through the panes of pale blue glass.

Fourteen years ago, another woman had stood at this window, but she was not like the Witch Queen. The woman had black hair that fell to her ankles; she had a crimson gown, the girdle worn high beneath her breasts, for she was far gone with child. And this woman had thrust open the glass casement on the winter garden, where the old trees crouched in the snow. Then, taking a sharp

bone needle, she had thrust it into her finger and shaken three bright drops on the ground. "Let my daughter have," said the woman, "hair black as mine, black as the wood of these warped and arcane trees. Let her have skin like mine, white as this snow. And let her have my mouth, red as my blood." And the woman had smiled and licked at her finger. She had a crown on her head; it shone

in the dusk like a star. She never came to the window before dusk; she did not like the day. She was the first Queen, and she did not possess a mirror.

Ramsey Campbell: Rising Generation

As they approached the cave beneath the castle some of the children began to play at zombies, hobbling stiffly, arms outstretched. Heather Fry frowned. If they knew the stories about the place, despite her efforts to make sure they didn't, she hoped they wouldn't frighten the others. She hadn't wanted to come at all; it had been Miss Sharp's idea, and she'd been teaching decades longer than Heather, so of course she had her way. The children were still plodding inexorably toward their victims. Then Joanne said "You're only being like those men in that film last night." Heather smiled with relief. "Keep together and wait for me," she said.

She glanced up at the castle, set atop the hill like a crown, snapped and bent and discovered by time. Overhead sailed a pale blue sky, only a wake of thin foamy clouds on the horizon betraying any movement. Against the sky, just below the castle, Heather saw three figures toiling upward. Odd, she thought, the school had been told the castle was forbidden to visitors because of the danger of falling stone, which was why they'd had to make do with the cave. Still, she was glad she hadn't had to coax her class all the way up there. The three were moving slowly and clumsily, no doubt exhausted by their climb, and even from where Heather stood their faces looked exceptionally pale.

She had to knock several times on the door of the guide's hut before he emerged. Looking in beyond him, Heather wondered what had taken his time. Not tidying the hut, certainly, because the desk looked blitzed, scattered and overflowing with forms and even an upset ink-bottle, fortunately stoppered. She looked at the guide and her opinion sank further. Clearly he didn't believe in shaving or cutting his nails, and he was pale enough to have been born in a cave, she thought. He didn't even bother to turn to her; he stared at the children lined up at the cave entrance, though by his lack of expression he might as well have been blind. "I'd rather you didn't say anything about the legend," she said.

His stare swivelled to her and held for so long she felt it making a fool of her. "You know what I mean," she said, determined to show him she did too. "The stories about the castle. About how the baron was supposed to keep zombies in the cave to work for him, until someone killed him and walled them up. I know it's only a story but not for the children, please."

José Gutiérrez-Solana: La sala de disección

Desde pequeño sentía yo cierta atracción por todo lo que las gentes califican de horrible; me gustaba ver los hospitales, el depósito de cadáveres, los que morían de muerte violenta, yo me metía en todos estos sitios; muchas veces me echaron y entonces volvía disgustado a mi casa. Cuántas veces he seguido a las camillas, a los heridos de algún accidente en la calle; algunas he sido testigo involuntario de estas tragedias emocionantes, de impresión desagradable. Luego estas escenas han provocado en mí tal afición y curiosidad que cuando leo un periódico que relata un crimen, me hago de conocimientos para ver la casa donde se desarrolló el suceso, el estado de la habitación, qué posición ocupaban la víctima o víctimas, en fin, todo el curso de las investigaciones de la policía. Una vez, en las inmediaciones de la Casa de la Moneda, vi una aglomeración de gente que se estrujaba por entrar alargando el cuello y poniéndose de puntillas; otros trepaban por la verja. En aquel grupo corría la voz de que dentro había el cadáver de un suicida; un guardia dijo a la gente que podían entrar para ver si alguno reconocía al muerto, que estaba sentado en el suelo, con el busto contra la pared y vestido elegantemente; tenía la sien destrozada de un balazo. En los hombros, sobre los pliegues de la americana negra, la sangre estancada la daba un tinte morado; por la boca abierta corría la sangre en estrechos hilos; a poca distancia había

Robert Bloch: The Dead Don't Die!

This is a story that never ends.

This is a story that never ends, but I know when it started. Thursday, May 24th, was the date. That night was the beginning of everything for me.

For Cono Colluri it was the end.

Cono and I were sitting there, playing two-handed stud poker. It was quiet in his cell, and we played slowly, meditatively. Everything would have been all right except for one thing. We had a kibitzer.

No matter how calmly we played, no matter how unemotional we appeared to be, we both were aware of another presence. The other, the kibitzer, stayed with us all night long.

His name was Death.

He grinned over Cono's shoulder, tapped him on the arm with a bony finger, selected the cards for every shuffle. He tugged at my hands, poked me in the back when I dealt.

We couldn't see him, of course. But we knew he was there, all right. Watching, watching and waiting; those big blind holes in the skull sneaking a look at the clock and counting the minutes, those skeleton fingers tapping away the seconds until dawn.

Félix J. Palma: Los Arácnidos

Antes de acudir a casa de mi abuela cacé una mosca. Era un ejemplar diminuto, de cuerpo gris metálico y ojos de un negro fulgurante. La atrapé al vuelo en la terraza, y la sostuve entre el pulgar y el índice, como quien se dispone a enhebrar una aguja. Así estuve un rato, aspirando el aroma de los almendros que la brisa arrastraba hasta mi ático mientras sentía contra la yema de los dedos el rebullir de aquella vida minúscula e insignificante que, como un dios cruel, podría truncar con sólo una ligera presión. Hice algunos amagos de aplastarla, arrancándole acordes agónicos, pero finalmente la encerré en un frasco y aguar­de a que Sandra saliera del baño contemplando cómo el insecto exploraba su prisión en un vuelo frenético, negándose a aceptar que se encontraba atrapado.

Me apresuré a disimular el tarro entre los adornos de la mesita cuando oí abrirse la puerta del baño. Sandra emergió junto a una nube de vapor y efluvios de perfumería, envainada en un sugerente vestido de terciopelo azul que le dejaba la espalda al descubierto y dibujaba con precisión su silueta de ánfora. Su aspecto me agradó, pues nunca la había visto tan elegante, pero enseguida comprendí que con semejante tributo a la sofisticación lo único que pretendía decirme era que aquella cita era tan importante para mí como para ella. Otra vez su notorio afán por agradar, su empeño mal disimulado por hacer que lo nuestro funcionara, que aquellos pasos erráticos nos encaminaran hacia algún sitio. Nos habíamos conocido hacía apenas un par de semanas, pero yo la había catalogado casi al instante. Sandra res­pondía a un patrón que conocía de memoria: treinta y muchos, con más llagas en el corazón de las que creía merecer, recelosa ante los nuestros pero con miedo a quedarse sola, a envejecer sin un cuerpo amigo al otro lado del colchón. Enseguida supe que bastaría con que yo le diese pie para que me asfixiara con todo el amor que venía recolectando desde los remotos tiempos del ins­tituto, cuando en las últimas filas de los cines empezó a com­prender que los príncipes azules no eran más que una engañifa.

Silvina Ocampo: La expiación

Antonio nos llamó a Ruperto y a mí al cuarto del fondo de la casa. Con voz imperiosa ordenó que nos sentáramos. La cama estaba tendida. Salió al patio para abrir la puerta de la pajarera, volvió y se echó en la cama.

-Voy a mostrarles una prueba -nos dijo.

-¿Van a contratarte en un circo? -le pregunté.

Silbó dos o tres veces y entraron en el cuarto Favorita, la María Callas y Mandarín, que es coloradito. Mirando el techo fijamente volvió a silbar con un silbido más agudo y trémulo ¿Era ésa la prueba? ¿Por qué nos llamaba a Ruperto y a mí? ¿Por qué no esperaba que llegara Cleóbula? Pensé que toda esa representación serviría para demostrar que Ruperto no era ciego, sino más bien loco; que en algún momento de emoción frente a la destreza de Antonio lo demostraría. El vaivén de los canarios me daba sueño. Mis recuerdos volaban en mi mente con la misma persistencia. Dicen que en el momento de morir uno revive su vida: yo la reviví esa tarde con remoto desconsuelo.

Vi, como pintado en la pared, mi casamiento con Antonio a las cinco de la tarde, en el mes de diciembre. Hacía calor ya, y cuando llegamos a nuestra casa, desde la ventana del dormitorio donde me quité el vestido y el tul de novia, vi con sorpresa un canario. Ahora me doy cuenta de que era el mismo Mandarín que picoteaba la única naranja que había quedado en el árbol del patio. Antonio no interrumpió sus besos al verme tan interesada en ese espectáculo. El ensañamiento del pájaro con la naranja me fascinaba. Contemplé la escena hasta que Antonio me arrastró temblando a la cama nupcial, cuya colcha, entre los regalos, había sido para él fuente de felicidad y para mí terror durante las vísperas de nuestro casamiento. La colcha de terciopelo granate llevaba bordado un viaje en diligencia. Cerré los ojos y apenas supe lo que sucedió después. El amor es también un viaje; durante muchos días fui aprendiendo sus lecciones, sin ver ni comprender en qué consistían las dulzuras y suplicios que prodiga. Al principio, creo que Antonio y yo nos amábamos parejamente, sin dificultad, salvo la que nos imponía mi inocencia y su timidez.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Premature Burial

THERE are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of Truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of "pleasurable pain" over the accounts of the Passage of the Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the fact -- it is the reality -- it is the history which excites. As inventions, we should regard them with simple abhorrence.

I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on record; but in these it is the extent, not less than the character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy. I need not remind the reader that, from the long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed -- the ultimate woe -- is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass -- for this let us thank a merciful God!

Kim Newman: Coppola's Dracula

A treeline at dusk. Tall, straight, Carpathian pines. The red of sunset bleeds into the dark of night. Great flapping sounds. Huge, dark shapes flit languidly between the trees, sinister, dangerous. A vast batwing brushes the treetops.

Jim Morrison's voice wails in despair. 'People Are Strange'.

Fire blossoms. Blue flame, pure as candle light. Black trees are consumed ...

Fade to a face, hanging upside-down in the roiling fire.

Harker's Voice: Wallachia ... shit!

Jonathan Harker, a solicitor's clerk, lies uneasy on his bed, upstairs in the inn at Bistritz, waiting. His eyes are empty.

With great effort, he gets up and goes to the full-length mirror. He avoids his own gaze and takes a swig from a squat bottle of plum brandy. He wears only long drawers. Bite-marks, almost healed, scab his shoulders. His arms and chest are sinewy, but his belly is white and soft. He staggers into a program of isometric exercises, vigorously Christian, ineptly executed.

Harker's Voice: I could only think of the forests, the mountains ... the inn was just a waiting room. Whenever I was in the forests, I could only think of home, of Exeter. Whenever I was home, I could only think of getting back to the mountains.

Montague Rhodes James: A Warning to the Curious

   

    The place on the east coast which the reader is asked to consider is Seaburgh. It is not very different now from what I remember it to have been when I was a child. Marshes intersected by dykes to the south, recalling the early chapters of Great Expectations; flat fields to the north, merging into heath; heath, fir woods, and, above all, gorse, inland. A long sea-front and a street: behind that a spacious church of flint, with a broad, solid western tower and a peal of six bells. How well I remember their sound on a hot Sunday in August, as our party went slowly up the white, dusty slope of road towards them, for the church stands at the top of a short, steep incline. They rang with a flat clacking sort of sound on those hot days, but when the air was softer they were mellower too. The railway ran down to its little terminus farther along the same road. There was a gay white windmill just before you came to the station, and another down near the shingle at the south end of the town, and yet others on higher ground to the north. There were cottages of bright red brick with slate roofs… but why do I encumber you with these commonplace details? The fact is that they come crowding to the point of the pencil when it begins to write of Seaburgh. I should like to be sure that I had allowed the right ones to get on to the paper. But I forgot. I have not quite done with the word-painting business yet.

    Walk away from the sea and the town, pass the station, and turn up the road on the right. It is a sandy road, parallel with the railway, and if you follow it, it climbs to somewhat higher ground. On your left (you are now going northward) is heath, on your right (the side towards the sea) is a belt of old firs, wind-beaten, thick at the top, with the slope that old seaside trees have; seen on the sky-line from the train they would tell you in an instant, if you did not know it, that you were approaching a windy coast. Well, at the top of my little hill, a line of these firs strikes out and runs towards the sea, for there is a ridge that goes that way; and the ridge ends in a rather well-defined mound commanding the level fields of rough grass, and a little knot of fir trees crowns it. And here you may sit on a hot spring day, very well content to look at blue sea, white windmills, red cottages, bright green grass, church tower, and distant martello tower on the south.

Anne Rice: The Master of Rampling Gate

Ramp ling Gate. It was so real to us in the old pictures, rising like a fairy-tale castle out of its own dark wood. A wilderness of gables and chimneys between those two immense towers, grey stone walls mantled in ivy, mu I Honed windows reflecting the drifting clouds. But why had Father never taken us there? And why, on his deathbed, had he told my brother that Ramp ling Gate must be torn down, stone by stone? "I should have done it, Richard," he said. "But I was born in that house, as my father was, and his father before him. You must do it now, Richard. It has no claim on you. Tear it down."

Was it any wonder that not two months after Father's passing, Richard and I were on the noon train headed south for the mysterious mansion that had stood upon the rise above the village of Ramp ling for 400 years? Surely Father would have understood. How could we destroy the old place when we had never seen it? But, as the train moved slowly through the outskirts of London I can't say we were very sure of ourselves, no matter how curious and excited we were.

Richard had just finished four years at Oxford. Two whirlwind social seasons in London had proved me something of a shy success. I still preferred scribbling poems and stories in my room to dancing the night away, but I'd kept that a good secret. And though we had lost our mother when we were little, Father had given us the best of everything. Now the carefree years were ended. We had to be independent and wise.

Jorge Luis Borges: La loteria de Babilonia

Como todos los hombres de Babilonia, he sido procónsul; como todos, esclavo; también he conocido la omnipotencia, el oprobio, las cárceles. Miren: a mi mano derecha le falta el índice. Miren: por este desgarrón de la capa se ve en mi estómago un tatuaje bermejo; es el segundo símbolo, Beth. Esta letra, en las noches de luna llena, me confiere poder sobre los hombres cuya marca es Ghimel, pero me subordina a los de Aleph, que en las noches sin luna deben obediencia a los de Ghimel. En el crepúsculo del alba, en un sótano, he yugulado ante una piedra negra toros sagrados. Durante un año de la luna, he sido declarado invisible: gritaba y no me respondían, robaba el pan y no me decapitaban. He conocido lo que ignoran los griegos: la incertidumbre. En una cámara de bronce, ante el pañuelo silencioso del estrangulador, la esperanza me ha sido fiel; en el río de los deleites, el pánico. Heráclides Póntico refiere con admiración que Pitágoras recordaba haber sido Pirro y antes Euforbo y antes algún otro mortal; para recordar vicisitudes análogas yo no preciso recurrir a la muerte ni aún a la impostura.

Debo esa variedad casi atroz a una institución que otras repúblicas ignoran o que obra en ellas de modo imperfecto y secreto: la lotería. No he indagado su historia; sé que los magos no logran ponerse de acuerdo; sé de sus poderosos propósitos lo que puede saber de la luna el hombre no versado en astrología. Soy de un país vertiginoso donde la lotería es parte principal de la realidad: hasta el día de hoy, he pensado tan poco en ella como en la conducta de los dioses indescifrables o de mi corazón. Ahora, lejos de Babilonia y de sus queridas costumbres, pienso con algún asombro en la lotería y en las conjeturas blasfemas que en el crepúsculo murmuran los hombres velados.

Brian Lumley: Zack Phalanx Is Vlad the Impaler

Harry S. Skatsman, Jr., was livid. He was a tiny, fat, cigar-chewing, fire-eating, primadonna-taming,
scene-shooting ball of absolutely livid livid. Of all things: an accident! And on his birthday, too! Zack
Phalanx, superstar, 'King of the Bad Guys', had been involved in some minor accident back in Beverly
Hills; an accident which, however temporarily, had curtailed his appearance on location.
Skatsman groaned, his scarlet jowls drooping and much of the anger rushing out of him in one vast sigh.
What if the accident was worse than he'd been told? What if Zack was out of the film (horrible thought) permanently? All that so-expensive advance publicity - all the bother over visas and work permits, and the trouble with the local villagers - all for nothing. Of course, they could always get someone to fill Zack's place (Kurt Douglash, perhaps?) but it wouldn't be the same. In his mind's eye Skatsman could see the headlines in the film rags already: 'Zack Phalanx WAS Vlad the Impaler

Herbert George Wells: The Plattner story

WHETHER the story of Gottfried Plattner is to be credited or not, is a pretty question in the value of evidence. On the one hand, we have seven witnesses--to be perfectly exact, we have six and a half pairs of eyes, and one undeniable fact; and on the other we have--what is it?--prejudice, common sense, the inertia of opinion. Never were there seven more honest-seeming witnesses; never was there a more undeniable fact than the inversion of Gottfried Plattner's anatomical structure, and--never was there a more preposterous story than the one they have to tell! The most preposterous part of the story is the worthy Gottfried's contribution (for I count him as one of the seven). Heaven forbid that I should be led into giving countenance to superstition by a passion for impartiality, and so come to share the fate of Eusapia's patrons! Frankly, I believe there is something crooked about this business of Gottfried Plattner; but what that crooked factor is, I will admit as frankly, I do not know. I have been surprised at the credit accorded to the story in the most unexpected and authoritative quarters. The fairest way to the reader, however, will be for me to tell it without further comment.

Gottfried Plattner is, in spite of his name, a free-born Englishman. His father was an Alsatian who came to England in the Sixties, married a respectable English girl of unexceptionable antecedents, and died, after a wholesome and uneventful life (devoted, I understand, chiefly to the laying of parquet flooring), in 1887. Gottfried's age is seven-and-twenty. He is, by virtue of his heritage of three languages, Modern Languages Master in a small private school in the South of England. To the casual observer he is singularly like any other Modern Languages Master in any other small private school. His costume is neither very costly nor very fashionable, but, on the other hand it is not markedly cheap or shabby; his complexion, like his height and his bearing, is inconspicuous. You would notice, perhaps, that, like the majority of people, his face was not absolutely symmetrical, his right eye a little larger than the left, and his jaw a trifle heavier on the right side. If you, as an ordinary careless person, were to bare his chest and feel his heart beating, you would probably find it quite like the heart of any one else. But here you and the trained observer would part company. If you found his heart quite ordinary, the trained observer would find it quite otherwise. And once the thing was pointed out to you, you too would perceive the peculiarity easily enough. It is that Gottfried's heart beats on the right side of his body.