Free Hell Calling by Enrique Laso Page A

having her close. Like a small child looking for the warmth of his mother, it made Carlos feel secure to feel Elena there, sticking by him, and sleeping right there just as if nothing had happened.
    ‘For her, it really is the case that nothing’s happened. She still doesn’t have a single shred of evidence : just a few little demonstrations, and nothing else.’
    He contemplated the radio-alarm clock. He had made a conscious effort not to take the batteries out at all since the last time, but it had still not displayed the least sign of anything out of the ordinary.
    He pressed the illuminator button so that he could see the time.
    ‘It’s so late... or so early.’
    He spent a little while playing around with it, and every now and then his hand lingered for a long time on the switch, like he was looking to make an antenna out of his entire body, and increase the possibility of capturing some frequency.
    ‘This is all stupid.’
    He turned to lie face up, looking at the ceiling. He didn’t know for sure if it was just his imagination, but he began to see a small image forming on its white expanse. The image was growing increasingly bigger, and increasingly clearer. His terrified eyes reflected the shining and reddish scene: his daughter was being dragged by some black spectres, in the middle of a place that reminded him of the images we always have of the planet Mars, and the spectres were dragging her towards some sort of crater that was emanating acidic vapours and lava. And then, he seemed to hear Laura’s voice, although very faintly: ‘Daddy... come to me... save me...’.
    Bzzzzz... Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii... Bzzzz...
    The noise from the radio made him jump, and the image on the ceiling disappeared as if it had never been there. He turned his head sharply back towards his right, but the device seemed to want to play games with him.
    “What’s happening?”
    Carlos looked at Elena. She was also awake, and perhaps for the first time she had heard that cursed noise.
    “Didn’t you hear it?”
    “Hear what?”
    “That sound...”
    “No, I haven’t heard anything. I just felt you jumping. What’s happened?”
    Carlos sank heavily back down into the bed, desperate and beaten.
    “It’s not important.”
    “Carlos, everything’s important.”
    Elena pressed her body up against the doubtful and disconcerted man, who was alone once more, and faced with his feelings.
    “I’m going to call some people who can help us.”
    “Nobody can help me,” said Carlos, disconsolately.
    “They can. I should have counted on them right from the very beginning.”
    “And what are they going to do?”
    “They have some really good teams, and they carry out EVP recordings. EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. Perhaps they can record what only you can hear at the moment,” she added, with a broad smile on her face.
    Carlos didn’t know what to think anymore, although he did feel that there was an ever increasing number of people around him wanting to give veracity to his story.
    “At the end of the day... there’s nothing to lose by trying it...” said Carlos.
    “No, we won’t lose anything.”
    “And perhaps...”
    “I’m sure it’ll work. It has to work.”
    Carlos doubted whether or not he should share with her the experience he had just had. Surely Elena would go quiet, but she would think that it was all in his imagination, a product of his injured and twisted mind, that was just playing another trick on him. And lamentably, at worst that would be right. No matter how much everybody focussed on the evidence, still nobody had confirmed that all those strange happenings befalling him were real, and not the product of insanity. The worst thing of all was that if what was happening were definitely true, then it surely just all came down to an issue between him and Laura ; an issue in which nobody else could intervene. If that were the case, the message that his daughter was sending him was very clear, and it