Durval had been trapped inside his neighbor Heitor’s house, who had disappeared along with his wife Melinda. The front door of the house was locked. Durval looked out the window. Outside, perched on the railing of the porch, the cockatoo was slyly watching him. Every now and then it let out a sharp scream and shook its head up and down, irritated with the whole situation. After all, it was locked outside the house, and he, Durval, the unwelcome guest, was locked inside. Meanwhile, Heitor and Melinda had simply vanished without a trace, except for the box of cigars they were looking for, which had been left open on the desk in the library with the lamp light on.
Durval forced the doorknob once more, just to make sure it was indeed locked. He raised his cane. He felt like breaking the window glass out of sheer anger. But even if he did that, he still wouldn’t be able to pass through the opening, which was only slightly larger than a palm.
His only alternative was to exit through the back door and then return to the front of the house, hoping that the gate leading to the street wasn’t locked. He started walking back down the hallway towards the back door. With each step, using the cane to support his casted leg, he felt the darkness increasing as night quickly approached. The yellow light of the sunset reflected on the ceramic floor began to take on a dark red hue.
He took a glance inside the library. Nothing had changed in those few minutes. The open box of cigars. The lamp light on the desk. But now he noticed one thing. He entered the room and approached the desk. He couldn’t tell if he hadn’t noticed it the first time or if it hadn’t actually been there. But on the desk, right next to the box of cigars, was the skull with horns. The one Heitor had shown him a few minutes earlier that had driven the cockatoo crazy and almost made it attack them until they managed to get it outside.
For the first time, Durval could look closely and calmly at that extraordinary skull.
He left the cane resting on the desk and carefully, almost reverently, took the skull in his hands. It was magnificent. Incredible as it might seem, that thing was indeed hypnotic, just as Heitor had said it was when it was alive. Durval attentively examined the shapes of the skull. The pointed teeth gave a sense that the skull was smiling malevolently. The two eye sockets were deep, and the bone around the orbits was prominent and furious. The horns projecting from the forehead, each the thickness of a closed fist, were quite similar to a goat’s horns, curved and wrinkled, and at the tips, as thin as a dagger.
Then Durval heard a noise behind him.
Episode LIII continues in the next edition.
JOSÉ GASPAR
Filmmaker and writer
www.historiasdooutromundo.com