Alfredo knelt down and started rummaging through the broken furniture stacked in the corner, grumbling under his breath the entire time. "Waste of time. I’m sure to regret this tomorrow with my back, crawling around here for some playing cards."
"Are you going to try explaining to Bron that you did not take it seriously?" André was moving the light slow along the wall.
"I would prefer to be upstairs drinking," said Alfredo.
"Not your choice, buddy."
Pedro gave a nervous laugh somewhere behind a crate. "Looks like an old couple to me."
"Keep your mouth shut, Pedro."
"That’s what I said."
André’s lamp moved some more along the wall and stopped suddenly.
The others caught on to his silence first before catching up on why, and then they turned together as the lamp finally shone fully on the far wall and revealed a row of cards lying face-up on the stone wall in a pattern none of them could understand at first glance – the edges of spades, hearts, and clubs arranged in a shape that looked like a half-formed symbol between a message and a threat.
At the very center was one card standing out from the rest and at an angle to catch the light.
Across it, written in a hand that none of them recognized, clear and small, was the message:
Hello friends.
No one moved. No one talked. The heavy breathing of Pedro had become audible in the whole basement, and Alfredo had froze where he knelt, one hand still immersed in the pile of broken furniture.
André gazed at the wall for a while before he finally found his voice, now softer than it had been the whole night. "Get everyone. Now."
André’s voice rang through the basement. "Get everybody now."
Pedro shook himself from his stupor, rushing up the stairs, mumbling some nonsense under his breath. "Yes, yes, everybody, I will get, I will get everybody—"
André’s eyes fell to Alfredo, who was still cowering on his knees over the overturned furniture. André chuckled. "Pathetic. Stand up. I’m not paying you for just sitting there gawking."
His eyes drifted lower, focusing on the card which was lying upside down right before his boots. The card shivered a little, and then shot straight up.
André recoiled sharply, raising his hands in defense, and the card slashed through his sleeve, cutting into his flesh. He pulled the card away, winced, and turned it around.
Ace of spades.
The color drained from his face. "I have to tell Bron. Now."
Pedro was already heading downstairs, heart pounding so loudly that it drowned the sound of his feet on the floor.
They’re not kidding around; no one pulls such tricks with playing cards inside a house full of mens. What if they’re already dead? What if I enter the next room and see them stuffed in the corner with the cards stuck through their whole body? Their eyes will be open...
He forced himself to concentrate and continued looking for the boys, but saw nothing. Neither Fidel nor Arturo were here.
"I don’t want to die like that," Pedro realized aloud, voice breaking on the last word.
He began running down the hallway calling their names, fell over the carpet and recovered, pushing himself back up and going further until he caught sight of Fidel, lying near the bottom of the stairs, hands clasping his head, rocking slowly while saying something over and over.
"He’s dead. He’s dead. I’m next. I’m next."
Pedro caught him by the shoulders and shook. "Fidel, look at me! Where is Arturo?"
Fidel looked up at him, already crying. "He’s dead. It killed him."
"What? Where?"
...
Once André had descended into the basement, Fidel and Arturo had continued their own search of the upstairs rooms on their own, walking very close to each other, both unwilling to speak aloud about how terrified they were.
"Do you think it’s a person or something else?" Fidel whispered, moving to check under a side table once again, for the third time within five minutes.
"Don’t say something else," Arturo whispered back, pulling open a wardrobe. Finding nothing there, he closed it again. "It’s a person. It has to be a person."
"A person capable of being in five different places at once, apparently."
"There might be more than one of them."
"That would be even worse, Arturo. Much worse."
One room after another, they searched behind the curtains, under the beds, in each drawer they saw – and each silent search took longer than the previous one. Arturo kept looking towards the windows, half-expecting to see someone’s face peeking through the glass.
"Do you think Bron is really going to fire us for this?" Fidel whispered. "It feels wrong to lose a job because of something that we couldn’t have prevented."
"He doesn’t care whose fault it was."
"Well, that’s the problem with him."
They reached the end of the hallway, and Fidel was about to turn and ask another question that didn’t fully form itself in his mind, but when he turned around, Arturo was already gone.
"Arturo?" He first asked quietly, then more loudly, rotating in place. "Arturo, stop playing jokes with me!"
No one answered. The hallway stood deserted both ways, all doors closed just as they were.
Fidel’s legs buckled, dropping him to the floorboards with an unpleasant thud. In the air above him, something floated slowly, catching whatever little light was there in the hallway, and landed flat on the floor in front of him.
The jack of hearts with the edges darkened by something wet, with blood faintly wet on the paper surface.
...
"’He’s not dead. Get a grip!’ Pedro grabbed hold of him fiercely, but Fidel’s gaze was vacant, staring off into space."
Pedro rose and stepped back, toward the stairs. "I am leaving. I will not stay under this roof for even a moment longer."
"What?" Finally, Fidel glanced up. "But, but André said—"
"From now on, it doesn’t matter what André says." Pedro’s voice trembled. "Better alive elsewhere than dead following orders. Coming or not?"
"Yes—"
Cling!
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter