Hell Calling Read Free

can assure you. I’m going to miss her a lot. She was very chatty, too, but with a tremendous desire for knowledge.”
    He reviewed the work, stopping every now and then on one to take a closer look, and frequently there was a trace of half a smile. But one drawing suddenly caught his attention, and his blood froze.
    “Excuse me... What... what does this one mean?”
    The teacher took the piece of paper he was holding out, and observed it with relative calm. It was a sort of horror scene in which someone was being gagged and tortured by a group of people. The lines were thick and imprecise, but he could see the horror in the victim, and the fury in the torturers. Also, an abundance of intense red gave the scene a horrifically macabre and enraged feel.
    “Well, as you know, she used to do those strange drawings from time to time.”
    “These drawings?”
    “I see you don’t know that side of Laura...”
    Those words, stuttered hesitantly, almost shocked him more than the picture itself.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Your daughter used to draw these types of pictures. Your wife was aware, and she was very worried about it.”
    “I... I had no idea...”
    “It got to such an extent that Laura was receiving treatment from the school psychologist. They would have a session one Friday a month...”
    “But... since when did all this start happening?”
    “Since the beginning of the year, practically. The one sure thing is that Laura was a completely normal little girl in all other aspects. Perhaps even with a special kind of intelligence. This was the only thing that broke the normality. Forgive me, I thought you knew.”
    “And you say that my wife knew about it...”
    “Yes, I can assure you. If you like, you can come in one afternoon and talk with the psychologist. She’s usually here on Mondays and Fridays, from five to seven.”
    Carlos left the school almost staggering, clinging on to his daughter’s file. Clinging on with a devastating feeling of guilt and distance from the file of a little girl he didn’t know, and had never even bothered to know.
    VIII
    Esteban was skipping stones over the lake. In spite of his age, he still retained enviable good-health and was in excellent shape.
    “As a child, you used to love doing this with me. Once you managed to get it to skip seven times, and it was a record that I still haven’t been able to beat. Then you lost interest in it.”
    Carlos looked at his father, sitting on a large smooth rock. They both liked that solitary spot, which was only frequented by a few hikers on Sundays.
    “Dad, I didn’t know my daughter. Laura’s dead, and I never knew anything about her.”
    Esteban looked at his son, concerned, and shook his head. He threw the last stone, and went up to his son.
    “No father can really know his children...”
    “You don’t understand. Yesterday, I met with her teacher and she showed me some terrible drawings. Nearly all of them were of people being tortured by other people.”
    His father remained respectfully silent, before speaking:
    “I don’t know what to say to you.”
    “I was reading about it during the night. These sorts of drawings are common in children who’ve been through a traumatic event.”
    “But Laura never...”
    “I know, I know. But perhaps she saw a traffic accident on the way to school one day, or on television. I’m sure that’s what it was; some scary image on the television that she became obsessed about.”
    “It’s possible. I hardly ever look at the news anymore. It only ever ends up putting me on edge, and keeps me up at night.”
    Carlos held onto his father’s hand tightly, just like he did when he was a defenceless child, in need of a parent’s strength.
    “What’s awful is that she never told me anything, and I never realised anything. I was so buried in my work and other things. And to make things worse, Alicia was aware of the situation and she didn’t even tell me.”
    “She didn’t want to worry