Deal with the devil

Tres

Iphigeneia woke up around five in the morning. She still felt very sleepy, but she needed to get up. She threw on her clothes with haste, and aroused herself from the pitiable memories of the night and evening before.

She left her own room to look for Maria, but she didn’t actually know where her room was exactly. So she knocked on the doors of all the rooms when she walked along the long hallway.

“Maria, I’m ready. Are you awake?” She said in a low voice, because she remembered that Maria’s grandfather was also sleeping, and that he was sick. She knocked on the door of the room that was next to her own room but nobody answered. She tried to open the door but it was locked.

“Maybe in the next room,” she said to herself.

She kept on walking towards the second room in the hallway, when she heard something that was coming from the first room. She decided to go back to the first room.

“Maybe Maria’s awake and those sounds were made by her,” she thought to herself. She then went back to the locked room.

“Maria? Are you getting ready?” She asked while standing outside the door of the room.

She grabbed the door handle, but peculiarly, this time it wasn’t locked. She couldn’t help but wonder why it suddenly was unlocked. She reasoned that perhaps Maria had unlocked the door.

She opened the door slowly and peeked inside, but the room was very dark and there was a bad smell of decomposition oozing out of the room. She reached inside trying to find the light switch, but her fumbling was unsuccessful.

“Maria? Why is it so dark in here? Are you taking a shower? Hurry up!” She said enthusiastically, while walking inside the room.

But still there was no reply from her. It was really dark and she couldn’t see a thing. To take away the eerie feeling, Iphigeneia decided to open the door fully, so the light from the hallway would flood inside the room.

She was still near the door of the room – not having entered fully – when she heard some whispers. It sounded like it was coming from deep within the room. And the whispers sounded like there were many people talking silently.

“Does Maria have other visitors?” Thought Iphigeneia curiously to herself.

Out of curiosity, she walked towards the direction of the whispers, but as she delved into the innermost regions of the room the light from the hallway was more or less dissipated.

The room seemed to be very large, because she walked quite far without touching or bumping into any furniture while she progressed towards the source of the whisperings.

The whisperings became louder and louder. She still hadn’t found the whispering people, when the whispering suddenly stopped. She looked all around her, but the room was very dark so she couldn’t see a thing.

“Maria? Are you there?” She asked, while an eerie feeling came over her.

She decided to leave the room, because of the strange and unnatural atmosphere. She was walking towards the door when she heard another whisper, the whisper of a woman’s voice.

She stopped walking, concentrating intently on the whisper of the woman’s voice, because it sounded so close. She looked back and saw nothing but darkness. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but now she was starting to get scared.

“Arriba!” Said a very hoarse voice.

Iphigeneia was already terrified. She tried to see where the voice came from.

“Arriba!” Said the voice even louder, repeating the word that she didn’t understand.

The voice sounded like it was emanating from a person who was out of breath, so it was very creepy.

“Arriba,” repeated the voice once more.

And now Iphigeneia had an idea where the voice was coming from.

In fact, she was very sure that the voice was coming from the ceiling. But how on earth could that possibly be, and she didn’t have the nerve to check out what it was all about.

So she silently walked straight towards the door. But the sound seemed to be crawling over the ceiling towards her direction and what terrified her even more was a cracking sound, like the breaking of bones.

“Damn!” She said.

She walked faster towards the door, but the crawling sound also move towards her faster, and the cracking sounds became louder.

She finally reached the door and grabbed the handle, but before she could open it, someone else on the other side of the door had opened it.

“Maria,” she cried out, teary eyed and trembling very badly.