I turned and ran. In my state of semi-vision I stumbled over a stool and crashed onto the floor by the cash register, barking my knee on a wooden stool and inadvertently yelping in pain. I swore I heard heavy breathing approaching but snapped to it and realised it was just me. I pulled myself up half-expecting to see whatever it was that was pursuing me bearing down with a maniacal roar. I hauled myself to my feet, knee screaming in pain, and ran through the door to the rear of the store into the back room, straight passed the ice-cream maker and into a cold and completely white-tiled utility area. I realised with mounting horror that it was a dead end. There was one thin window at almost ceiling height, and still gripped with panic I leapt up onto the work surface and went at it. Mercifully it opened easily and without stopping to check behind me I began lurching through the window. It was slightly less than the width of my body, but the last couple of weeks had mercifully seen me lose quite a bit of weight and sucking in my stomach I was able to wriggle through, all the while imagining some horrific monster about to grab at my heels and drag me back in to splash my blood all over the white tiles.
Quite a sight I must have looked from outside. Half in and half out, kicking and screaming as I fought to get out of a space no right-minded person would have got themselves into. I scraped my stomach on the window ledge but finally got over half my frame outside, meaning there was now only one way to go.
Down.
Six foot down onto the concrete curb. Scrabbling with one hand wedged under my groin and grabbing the window ledge for support I rotated myself around to get my legs out. By this stage anything that had been chasing me would have had ample time to grab hold of me but that hadn’t yet occurred to me in my state of panic.
Inevitably, as gravity took effect, I slipped out and landed heavily on my back, the pavement jolting the wind out of me. As soon as I landed I realised how stupid I had been, and let out a hysterical bark of laughter as I lay and got my breath back. I sat up on my elbows and shook my head to orientate myself.
That’s when I saw the sign saying Bibiloteca. The wooden door was white painted like every other on the street and looked like it would take a few hefty shoulder barges to break it open. Just as I was bracing myself for the first I stopped myself and checked the handle. It turned and the door swung open. It made sense; who would burgle a back-street library?
I felt a sense of trepidation as I entered. Libraries were places of quiet of course, but the fact that everywhere else around me was so silent seemed to heighten the spookiness of this empty building. There was the inevitable and reassuring smell of dusty paper, and books lined every wall on shelves that looked older than the building could possibly have been. Somebody had taken care of this place. The floors were spotless, the sofas in the reading area plumped up, the information desk tidy and organised. There was no computer, but an elaborate shelving unit that seemed to hold millions of cards for checking books in and out. It was like stepping back in time. I had no doubt it had been run by a fastidious old man or woman, who took the utmost pride in keeping their library impeccably organised. The kind of people whose wrath you would incur by deigning to return one of their precious inventory late. Posters on the walls in Spanish no doubt advocated the benefits of reading.
I was unsure exactly what I was looking for as I traversed the many aisles. I wanted to learn more about this place, to research why it might have been abandoned.
It seemed to me there were four main reasons why an entire town could be deserted.
It had become uninhabitable due to some sort of environmental disaster, flood, earthquake or such like. This included the most obvious example I could think of, Chernobyl, but that was due to a man-made disaster: nuclear meltdown. Playa Blanca had not been devastated in any way, so I ruled this option out.
It had become the centre of some sort of military activity and had become contested, an invasion or something. But there was no evidence of martial presence anywhere, no guns, no tanks, no bomb damage, and of course no soldiers, so I ruled that out too.
It had outlived its usefulness as a trading post. I ruled this out too, as it was obviously a popular tourist resort and had been catering for holiday makers so recently that their names were still in the log books in the hotels I had been in.
Everyone was dead. Whether due to disease or famine or alien activity. Maybe the whole world was dead, and I was the only one left.
It was option four upon which I ruminated the most. It seemed most likely that it was either everybody else that was dead, or it was just me. I kept coming back this idea of purgatory, and when I found a section on religion I must have become immersed as I didn’t even realise darkness was setting in outside and I hadn’t locked up. It was the door banging shut that jerked me awake the next morning.
65%
Again the disorientation. Again the flashing numbers. But this time coupled with the shock of being jolted awake by a loud noise. I sat bolt upright and the pain instantly hit me as my screaming limbs protested at being wrenched from their comfort. I had fallen asleep on a wooden desk on my arms, and my back spasmed as I sat up.
The main door to the library had slammed shut. I had forgotten to close it before I drifted off. Begging the question, how had it done that? Another mind trick like the footstep in the shop yesterday?
Tentatively I made my way to the front door, suddenly aware yet again of the incredible silence that pervaded the room. There appeared to be some noise emanating from the other side of the door on the street. It sounded like dragging feet or something.
The zombies have finally found me, I thought.
I realised there were no windows anywhere in the building. It was a mid-terrace, designed to be kept shaded from the blazing heat outside by rejecting any form of opening in its fabric. So I couldn’t even see outside to determine the source of this latest nerve-shredding sound. There was only one way to find out.
Slowly I turned the handle and, taking a deep breath, yanked the door fully open expecting to be greeted by rotting, groaning faces and a good ripping apart. There was nothing but a steady wind. It seemed to increase in speed slightly as I took it in.
The dragging noise I had heard was a newspaper blowing around in a circular vortex on the street outside. Talk about an anti-climax. The door had slammed shut in a draught, that was all it was. I audibly sighed in relief, but then I noticed that the sun had vanished behind some fairly ominous looking clouds in the distance. Something about those clouds made me retreat back inside and seek shelter. The temperature had dropped considerably, almost to the point where I was cold for the first time since being here. I rifled through my rucksack and slipped on another T-shirt as I repositioned myself at my desk and tried to recall what I had learned the night before.
The books were splayed out in front of me, illustrated with rich classical drawings depicting fiery landscapes and winged angels and one of Dante staring at a mountain. The inscriptions were obviously all in Spanish, yet I was able to understand quite a lot by plumbing the depths of my memory for the remnants of school Latin classes.
The overriding theme behind purgatory was the concept of the soul being purified in order to enter the next phase of existence, which in Christianity is either heaven or hell. Mostly, it is regarded as a state of mind, but in medieval times it was conceived as an actual place, a sort of limbo between life and death.