In the mountain town of Ashland, a 9 years old girl is sitting on the right corner of what will unfortunately be her grandfather’s deathbed. She is redhaired and she has pale skin, unlike her grandfather, who is now grey-haired but when he was younger, he had hair as black as coal and brunette skin. The youngster’s name is Clarice and her grandfather is called Thomas. He was named after his dad, who sadly passed away a few years ago.
Thomas was diagnosed with an unknown illness a year before his dad slipped away; he has always been very brave so until last week that illness did not become a problem. But he is now lying on his bed fading until dead. But since then, he is going to tell his granddaughter something he has been saving up to his last moment, and sadly, it has arrived.
So now, Clarice is still sitting on the bed with a blanket covering her shoulder and Thomas, weak, reposes on his bed. With a dim light illuminating the room he starts:
—I had nothing, I wasn’t good at anything, I had no friends, everyone made fun of me. So I had two options doing something that could made me shine and more popular or just ending with my irrelevant life. I was there, walking through the woods thinking that luckily, a hungry bear or an angry wolf attacked me and murdered me. However, I found something else instead. I spotted a dim light through the distance, so I walked there to see what that was. When I got nearer, I realized it was a bonfire. I approached and suddenly the blaze grew a few meters, I got scared and I fell on something hard, I turned back and it was a book, an ancient red book. The wood fire went out so I grabbed the book and ran up to my house. — He drinks a bit of water and coughs.
—I didn’t remember about the book till two days later when I saw it on the shelf next to my bed, I decided to see what it was about. I was so disappointed, there wasn’t anything in any page so I threw it to the bin and I left it there for months. Until one day the full moon illuminated the bin through my tiny window, I heard a weird noise and when I looked at it… It jumped on me, like if someone threw it to me… I… I couldn’t do anything, my body didn’t respond. As soon as I could move I opened it slowly and yes, there were things written in the book. — Clarice hides in her blanket while Thomas thinks about what else happened.
—I clearly remember what the book said; it seemed an old diary about someone who studied a thing called
Latrop. I didn’t know what that was at first, but after spending the entire night reading it, I discovered it was a kind of crack in the space-time that could teleport things from A to B and the other way around. And as that old book contained all the steps to create a
Latrop, I determined to create one for the next science fair. — Clarice interrupts him and says that what Thomas is saying is a bit weird.
—As I was saying, I created my own portal and as you may think, I won that fair. In order to show it to the judges I teleported an apple, and yes it worked, but casually there was an earthquake. When I got home I heard some noise in my room, so I thought it was my mom tiding it up, yet when I got in, I got shocked there was a crack on my room and a man with anything else than a robe came out of it, everything started to levitate except from him. His eyes started to glow, I couldn’t breath and he told me to tell someone called Clarice… - He suddenly starts to cough, blood is coming out of his mouth, he doesn’t breathe anymore; he has passed away.
Clarice waits anxiously for Thomas’ answer despite he is gone… When she kisses him
for the last time Thomas opens his eyes, they start to glow and he shouts:
—Watch out with that man!
When Clarice’s mother gets home, she sees Clarice crying on his granddad bed and Thomas dead with his mouth open. She does not know how to act but she decides to call an ambulance.
As soon as the first aid patrol brings Thomas to his funeral Clarice realizes there is a black dot on her grandfather’s bed. When she touches it, she gets instantly teleported to the outside of the house, where she notices there is a book on the ground, and yes, its title is
Latrop…
. . .
She is 10 years old now, there is someone in her house, but who? Whoever it is, it can’t be neither her dad or her mom, as they are working. Clarice silently opens a door, there’s a burglar right there with a weapon! She closes the door and hears the steps coming to her room; she does not know what to do. She randomly sees the book called
Latrop and quickly completes the steps to create a portal and escapes from the thief leaving behind a shuddering sound that scares the burglar.
. . .
Years later, the 12 years old Clarice feels an earthquake shaking the ground, she is floating. Clarice turns back and the hand of someone is coming out from a glowing crack in the wall, he is a black man with a robe covering all his body apart from his face. He shouts a penetrating scream and the girl starts burning while suffering pain all around her body until she loses her life.
Dídac Boldó
Institut Dertosa, Tortosa
*Conte premiat en la categoria de secundària en el IX Concurs de microrelats de terror 2018, organitzat per la biblioteca de l'Institut Cristòfol Despuig.
