The flat he shared with his sister, the home they had shared with their late parents for most of their high school years, was silent. Javier could almost hear the echoes of its coming solitude defy time and space as he got ready to leave. It felt as if the flat begged him to stay, as if it bemoaned Madalina’s leaving and feared that he would never return. Javier felt haunted at once. He called his boss and explained that he needed to follow some leads on his sister’s whereabouts and then called his aunt to ask if he could borrow her car for two days. She was reluctant, but once he elucidated that it was to look into some information about Madalina, she agreed immediately.
With his work and transport obstacles sorted out, Javier trudged into the shower. He planned to drive to Alicante immediately, since he would never be able to sleep knowing that his sister had made contact with him. Night driving was favorable since his eyes were so sensitive of late.
While he was under the showerhead, one thing came to mind. What had she done with the boy she was so obsessed with? Javier wondered if she still had the child with her or if she had relinquished him to the care of some old convent, true to the tradition of unwanted children in fact and fiction. Javier had removed one of the two ceiling lights two days before to soothe his sore eyes. He looked down as he ran the washcloth over his body. An inadvertent gasp came off his lips as he noticed the condition of his skin, and the bony mounds protruding on his hips.
“Dios mío!” he shrieked through an impending raw throat. “What the fuck is happening?”
Javier was horrified to see how rake thin he had become in little over a week. It was unnatural, he reckoned, for his body to have reduced itself to almost half its original size. Had he changed his eating habits, he would have thought it possible to lose this much weight. But he had not changed anything. As upset as he had been since Madalina disappeared, Javier had retained his nutritional habits. He slept normally, maybe even more than the average person, yet his eyes felt heavy and sensitive. If this were a virus, where would he have contracted it? Even after searching the internet, he could find no disease that correlated with an exact match of his symptoms.
“I’ll see a doctor once I get to Madi. I will. I must,” he decided out loud, picking at the sporadic films of skin that peeled from dry patches on his abdomen and arms. Repulsed, he winced as he stripped pieces of dry skin off like paper. “Oh Jesus! Oh sweet Jesus, this is not happening.”
Done with watching his body shed like a snake, Javier wrapped a towel around him and shut off the water. When he came into the bedroom to get dressed, a shadow figure scared him half to death. It sat in his chair in the low light, making no sound, but it moved to the side and reached for the light switch.
“No!” Javier protested, but it was too late. The ceiling light of the bedroom was strong and stung his eyes, prompting him to cry out in pain. His hands covered his eyes. “What do you want?” he wailed. He did not look. He could not see who was there, because he dared not open his eyes. “What do you want?” he screamed.
“Keep your voice down or I’ll cut your goddamn throat right now, Javier,” he heard as he sank to his knees. It was a voice he knew well, a voice he hated.
“Dr. Sabian,” he announced calmly. “I knew you were behind this.”
“In the state that you find yourself, my boy, I would be a lot more courteous if I were you,” Dr. Sabian warned. “And you have already done most of your damage, spreading that ridiculous theory of yours around, so don’t think I will not resort to… shall we say, snuffing you out.”
“So why don’t you, you creep?” Javier defied him, still unable to look. “Why are you infesting my home with your witchery? Just kill me if that’s what you think you can scare me with.”
He could hear Sabian get up, his footsteps rounding towards where Javier was kneeling. The soft crunch of his weight on the carpet fibers ceased, and Javier heard him speaking from his left.
“Where are you going so hastily, inaquosum?” he asked.
“None of your fucking business,” Javier sneered. “I can go anywhere I want.”
“Going to meet our beloved Madalina, perhaps?” Sabian hissed. “I know, you see.”
“Because you are an evil son of a bitch with a sixth sense,” Javier barked.
Suddenly Dr. Sabian’s voice came from right next to him, startling him into a jerk. “No, because your friend Aldo told me. Perpello.”
Javier felt betrayed. In disbelief, he held back the tears of rage that begged to surface in his eyes. Sweat rolled down his bare back. “He would never tell you anything! It does not take a psychic to see what kind of vermin you are. Aldo will tell you to go fuck yourself before he snitches on anyone!”
“That is precisely what he said, you know?” Dr. Sabian smirked, turning off the big light so that he could speak to Javier, eye to eye. “Just before I skewered his skull with a rusty burglar bar from Conchita Bakery’s basement window.”
“You’re lying, you bastard!” Javier seethed, his defective eyes blazing with hate.
“Oh come now! Come on, Javier,” the wicked Dr. Sabian replied with that hideous serenity that made his manner even more unbearable to tolerate. “How else would I know that your sister in in Sax, waiting for you to join her? Hmm? How would I know if our late friend did not share it with me? Lucky for you, I need you to take me to her. I do not have the details on the little piece of paper you tore up.”
“No!” Javier exclaimed. His mind was whirling and his soul was furious, sad and loose inside him. He could think of no other retort but the single word. As if it would undo the truth, he kept shouting, “No! No!”
“Shhh,” the serpentine shrink said, trying to eased him and running his hand over Javier’s crown as if he were petting a dog. “Don’t lose your mind over this. You will still be given a chance to redeem yourself,” he grabbed the young man’s hair in his fist, jerking his head back hard, “if you don’t fuck with me!”
Javier’s body ached, his dry skin taut over his knees. Dr. Sabian nuzzled his jaw. “If you lose your mind too soon, you are of no use to me. Make no mistake, boy, I can do this with or without you. Finding her in such a small town would be child’s play. Oh, and speaking of child’s play,” he chuckled. Javier could not weep, even though the rage asked for it. He watched the diabolical man sit down on his bed as if he owned it. “The child with her is very important, you see. This is all happening because of him. We’ve been waiting for a very long time for him and lo and behold, your sister’s unstable mind was our way to him.”
“Our?” Javier asked, swallowing the urge to strangle Sabian.
“My friends, a group of like-minded individuals aimed at fulfilling the prophecy this boy is part of,” Dr. Sabian revealed dreamily.
“You are out of your mind,” Javier growled.
“No, my dear Javier. I control minds, and superbly so,” Dr. Sabian smiled. Once again, Javier felt the heat of abhorrence consume him as the psychologist acted like some corrupt evangelist or dictator. “Typical of your generation to dismiss the great mysteries of ancient times as madness. Naturally you do not fathom the power that lives in the mind, having been brainwashed into believing it to be superstition. All that we are capable of is locked in our minds, at one with old forces that lingered here before time.”
Javier decided that he would do better to play into the psychologist’s hand. Hostility would only afford him more trouble and his condition was faltering. In being agreeable, he realized that he would attain more information about the bastard’s plans for his sister.