The Outcast Son Read online

  When we finished the dinner and the compulsory shots of cream liqueur, we headed to the trendiest club in the city, ready to dance till dawn. We went on foot, and Oliver wouldn’t abandon my side, touching my elbow or my shoulder when speaking to me.

  “You’ve always been my favourite, did you know that?” he asked me the first chance he had.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Boss,” I answered, playing the naïve girl.

  “Boss? Hahaha,” he laughed at me. “I’m no boss, sweetie. I’m just your colleague. Particularly tonight.”

  “Is that so?” I asked him. “A colleague who pays the bill at the restaurant, that is?”

  “Well, I’m a really generous colleague,” he said, smiling.

  Stupid little girl. I was falling for it like a teenager. And I loved it. But that wasn’t me. I cut all the flirting and kept my conversation to a polite standard. I didn’t want either him to feel bad or to lose my job. He had always been kind to me, and I wouldn’t let that night spoil a good professional relationship. But he was just too drunk to understand. That was his night too, and who knows for how long he had been toying with the idea of having me in his bed? I looked at Maria, and as soon as she saw my face, she came to my rescue.

  “How has everything been with Oscar lately?” she asked me loud enough for Oliver to hear.

  “Not bad,” I answered.

  “Good. I bet he lost his mind when he saw you in that dress.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said, giggling. Oliver had backed down, at least for a moment, but after a few minutes, and when we were only a few metres from the club, he struck back.

  “Laura, can I speak to you for a second?” he said while stroking my shoulder.

  I couldn’t answer, as a powerful fist impacted Oliver’s left cheek, throwing him to the ground and spreading his blood on the pavement. I turned around and saw him. He was enraged, almost bloodthirsty, I’d say, and his eyes wide open and mad and threatening. Oscar bent over Oliver’s body and punched him in the face. Many times. He was a wild animal, stripped of all humanity. Oliver wasn’t a match for him in his condition, drunk and slow and confused, and if he had the slightest chance, it’d vanished after receiving the first punch and falling to the ground. Maria and I tried to stop Oscar, but all in vain. It took three men who were hanging out at the door of the club to put him down and move him away from Oliver. It was disgraceful. I felt ashamed at the sight of my boyfriend losing his mind.

  “You bitch!” he insulted me. Apparently, it was all my fault. He was grabbing my arm and squeezing it too hard.

  “You’re hurting me!” I shouted. He lifted his eyes and looked around. Everybody in the crowd was staring at him. Then he bowed his head, let me go and walked away without saying a word.

  Chapter 10

  The puppy

  My life had lost all its meaning, and a grim cloud of darkness haunted me from dawn to dusk. Nobody was able to provoke the slightest glimmer of excitement in me. Nothing thrilled me anymore. The world around me was stained in just a few shadows of grey. Everything was a limit. Everyone was an enemy, and I was unable to openly speak about my miscarriage. Not even to Mark. I knew about his frustration, and that made it even worse, to the point that I found him selfish for not being entirely focused on me, as if we both had to give in to pain and sorrow and forget ourselves and our lives and the lives of others.

  I know now I was the selfish one, shunning him whenever he wanted to talk about something more serious than who had to wash the dishes that afternoon or drive Jaime to school, avoiding a conversation which was always present, even though I tried to ignore it so badly. I thought nobody would notice any changes in me. I was strong. I wanted to be strong in spite of feeling empty and withered. Not even Jaime could cheer me up, although he was probably the only reason I carried on.

  Sometimes I’d wake Mark up in the middle of the night with my screams. I suffered the worst nightmares nearly every night, and one of those nightmares comes back to disturb me even while I write these lines. I’m sleeping the sweetest of all dreams, still carrying a child and noticing the movements inside me. I know I’m asleep, but I smile at the thought of a little baby growing in my womb. The miscarriage never happened. It doesn’t cross my mind. Not even the possibility. Everything is just fine. I dream I wake up and Mark is hugging me. I feel protected. I feel safe. My house is a fortress where nobody can hurt me or my child. I kiss Mark and fall asleep again. Then the pain starts. And it’s not only my belly. My whole body hurts. I feel every muscle, every bone. Blood and flesh burning and drowning and being torn apart. Then I wake up, but I can’t move. I’m alone on the bed. But it’s not my bed. It’s like a hospital bed. My belly feels as if it were about to burst. I shout, but there isn’t anybody near to hear my agony. I’m on my own, and I can’t move, and every cell in my body hurts. And then I see him: the faceless man. He is old and wrinkled and carries a black suitcase. I can see his bare torso, deformed by the pass of too many cruel years. I can’t even scream. I try, but words won’t go past my lips. I can’t move either, and the harder I struggle, the more it hurts. The pain is so unbearable that I think I’ll faint. But I don’t, and I can see everything. I can see how he opens his suitcase and pulls the tongs out of it. Then I look around and I’m not in a hospital anymore, but out in the forest. It’s dark, and I can’t see anything but the campfire next to me. I’m on the ground, lying on my back. My legs are open. I can’t move. I can’t shout. I can’t speak. All I can do is stare at the man. I’m just a spectator of my own tragedy. He looks at me. He doesn’t have eyes or a mouth or a nose, but I somehow know he’s looking at me and smiling. He holds the tongs over the fire. The shadow it projects is like the jaws of a monster. I can’t move, and my arms are open just as my legs are. And I’m naked. The night is pitch black, but I can’t feel any cold because I only feel the pain. I hear the owls and the wolves and the little pieces of wood cracking in the fire. The tongs are red and ready. He walks towards me. I can’t move. Not even a finger. I can’t speak. I can’t even look away. He pushes the tongs inside me, and the pain is so intense that I can’t even think. I’m dizzy, and I feel sick. I smell my own flesh burning between my thighs. He grabs something and pulls it out of me. It’s not human. He holds it while approaching, so I can see it clearly. I see it in front of my eyes. Then I can finally move and scream, and I wake up horrified, and I can’t regain my full consciousness for minutes. My sorrow is physical. I’m broken, and I don’t want to get fixed, only sink deeper and deeper into the abyss.

  Months had to pass for the pain to slowly fade away and the nightmares to become less frequent. But there was a shadow over me I couldn’t get rid of, and the wound feels still warm whenever I think back.

  If I didn’t lose my mind right then, it was thanks to my husband and the brilliant idea he had. I woke up on a warm, sunny Saturday morning, and Mark was already out of bed. I hadn’t had any nightmares that night, and it was sweet to find myself alone in bed after a long night of dreamless sleep. I got up and put on something. I was starving. I checked on Jaime and he was still sleeping, so I went downstairs to prepare breakfast. I heard some noises. Mark. What was he up to? There was movement in the living room. Mark whispered something I couldn’t hear. I came closer and distinguished a few words: “Come on, boy, here! Drink!”

  “Oh my gosh!” I shouted when I saw a white little puppy moving his tail and playing around.

  “Good morning, Laura.” Mark smiled at me. “I’m glad to introduce you to Happy.”

  “Mark!” I looked at him with a severe expression. “How could you?”

  “Stop being so thoughtful about everything and come here to stroke your new friend.” I couldn’t help laughing out loud when I saw the puppy tripping and falling in the milk Mark tried to make him drink. It wasn’t that funny, but I laughed hard, moving my whole body and bending my knees. I got everything out of my chest. I felt I was coming back from a dark and awful place where I thought
I’d be stuck forever.

  “Oh, Mark! This is the sweetest little creature I’ve ever seen!” I said while rubbing Happy’s bright fur.

  “I know I should’ve asked you, but I wanted it to be a surprise. Besides, this is the dog you’ve always wanted to have, isn’t it?”

  But I wasn’t even paying attention to my husband anymore. All I cared about was my new friend. He was the most handsome retriever puppy in the world, naughty as a little demon. I wasn’t very keen on the name Mark had chosen, although that wouldn’t bother me either. I took the dog in my lapel and wiped the milk away from his face. He felt so warm in my arms. His sad eyes and muffled whimpering made me think he had probably been taken away from his mum, but I just avoided that upsetting thought and focused on the good moments ahead.

  The noise in the house and Happy’s thin, suffocated cry when feeling himself the centre of attention woke Jaime up. I first noticed him when he was coming downstairs. He advanced, suspicious, knowing that something new and mysterious was happening at the Johnsons’. I turned my head around and saw his little figure appearing with doubtful eyes, a small and beautiful goblin making his hesitant way through the corridor. He didn’t know what was going on until he discovered Happy, and then his face glowed, his eyes amazed and large, trying to see everything at once. His smile was so wide it didn’t appear to fit on his face, and it seemed to widen when he approached us and scanned our furry companion.

  “Come here, sweetheart!” I told him. “Look at this!”

  Jaime got close and extended his hand to reach Happy, who was still in my arms.

  “He’s cool!” Jaime exclaimed.

  “He is. But he’s still very little, and you need to look after him. Are you going to look after him, Jaime?” Mark said.

  “Yes!” Jaime answered at once.

  “He’s your friend now, and a new member of the family, so we need to watch over him and walk him every day. And make sure he’s got food!” I said.

  “I can walk him,” Jaime said, smiling. I felt my heart growing warm and filled with love again. My life had recovered some of its meaning, and I remembered I had a purpose: I was a mother, and a wife, and a good person who wanted to do the right thing and look after her family. Our little puppy made me open my eyes and realise there was much more to my life than a tragic miscarriage. I wasn’t a failure. I had something to fight for, people to care about, and still much love to give away.

  “Yes, you can!” I said. “And we can build a house for him to live in the garden when he grows.”

  “When he grows?” Jaime asked.

  “Yes,” Mark said. “Happy will be very big in a year. Even bigger than you.”

  “Wow!” Jaime said. “That’s so cool! He’ll help me make people love me because they’ll be scared of him.”

  “People already love you, Jaime,” Mark said, frowning.

  “Some people love me. But not all the people.”

  “Well, that’s the same for everybody, sweetie,” I said. “You can’t force people to love you.”

  “Yes, you can,” he said confidently. “You can if you have a big dog. People are scared of big dogs.”

  “Well, they won’t be scared of Happy because he’ll be lovely and harmless,” Mark said, “but you’re right, you can make people love you. You just have to be nice to everybody all the time, and they’ll be nice to you in return. That’s the way the world works.” Mark’s words had seeded doubt in Jaime’s heart. He looked confused as if he were struggling to understand the meaning of what he just heard.

  “Yes. People will like me,” was all Jaime said.

  For the rest of the weekend, my child was overwhelmed with excitement. He just couldn’t cope with all the joy Happy had brought to our home, so he repeated the same sentence again and again as if he wanted to say something but the words didn’t come to his mouth due to the turmoil inside him. “Happy is great!” he repeated. “I love Happy!”

  Chapter 11

  The beach

  They say that near-death incidents change you forever. Something happens to your brain when your heart stops beating, something that modifies and shapes the way you see the world. People have been reporting abnormal events or visions they experience when wandering along the frontier between life and death. It’s something traumatic that shocks your mind and makes you see things you couldn’t possibly see before.

  Paradoxically enough, the most common feeling is the awareness of being dead, but a number of people have gone through more complicated and hard-to-explain occurrences. Encounters with what most describe as angels, a bright tunnel you are supposed to cross or a feeling of peace and well-being are just a few examples of a list that goes on and on. Most people who have “come back from death” base their descriptions on their personal, religious beliefs, and that’s why it’s so hard to determine whether these visions have an external source or are just the subjective product of a rush of chemicals released in the brain.

  Uncountable films have presented individuals’ spirits abandoning their bodies, only to return a few minutes later, enough time to have an epiphany and arise as saviours of humankind. This is somehow backed up by witnesses’ reports, although it’s not clear to what extent they see what they want to see. But one case made me feel uneasy, and for a while, I questioned everything I knew.

  Salvatore Canali, an Italian soldier wounded in Libya while fighting Gadhafi’s troops in Benghazi, was reportedly dead for five full minutes. He woke up in the middle of the night yelling his daughter’s name. According to the doctors who witnessed the scene, he was very unsettled, scared and emotional, although lucid and clearheaded. He assured them he had seen a car accident in Verona, more than one thousand miles away from where he was. Giving in to Salvatore’s plea, one of the doctors phoned his wife, only to confirm their daughter had fractured a leg while a car crashed into her auntie’s vehicle when she was driving the little girl to the school.

  That wasn’t all. Salvatore predicted that the war in Libya would last longer than expected and that the world would have a controversial leader who would jeopardize peace. It’s also true, nevertheless, that Salvatore made some other predictions we wouldn’t see fulfilled, such as the fall of the European Union in 2015 or a mission to colonise the moon in 2017. I understand it’s hard to believe it was a coincidence, but his prophecies were very vague, and he wouldn’t talk much about them. He could’ve come back from his coma or his near-death experience thinking about the welfare of his family, as I’m sure he did. He was worried about them, particularly about his little girl. He probably dreamed of her or saw her in a hallucination, and that’s why he thought she was in trouble. As for the president, chances are that almost every leader of the United States sees themselves involved in many wars and conflicts all over the world. We sure make the obvious association in our minds, but he didn’t say any name, and his words would work with literally any of the candidates.

  Of course, I didn’t know anything about this subject before it happened to me. I rushed to pack my stuff for the day ahead. A spare bikini, a towel and sunscreen. I was ready to have a great time in the sun on one of my favourite beaches in Galicia. I left home wearing just my bikini and tight denim shorts. I wanted to sunbathe from minute one, so I walked instead of taking a bus. I was going to meet Marta, Luis and Mario, who will drive us all in an eighty-minute journey from Compostela to Louro.

  I arrived at the café where we were meeting only ten minutes late, but all of them were already there. Mario scanned me as if it were the first time he saw me, stopping to inspect my breasts very carefully. He used to do that. We had spent a couple of nights together and managed to stay friends, although I didn’t know for how long it would last. He was very attractive, but stupid as a stone, and I didn’t want to have anything serious with him. And neither did he, so we just hung out and had fun together. He looked so good in his sleeveless T-shirt. He wore it loose, and you could see part of his pectorals.

  Marta was my best frie
nd. She always supported me, and we knew each other’s deepest secrets. We used to study together, to go out together, to travel together, and we even lived together some time when we shared a flat near the faculty. I still don’t know why we lost contact, and it saddens me to see how such a good relationship faded away little by little.

  Marta was a smart young woman, obsessed with books and science. She spent half of her life reading. She used to read everything she got her hands on, but she particularly loved Galician poetry, and I can understand why.

  Luis was too little for her. He sure was fit, but he wasn’t particularly handsome and certainly not very smart. Also, I found him boring and a meddler, one of those people uncomfortable to be with just because you never know when they will ask an impertinent question or make a stupid comment about a stupid thing that happened to one of their stupid friends. I never liked him, but Marta was in love, and the last thing I heard about them is that they continue together and have two children.

  We left Compostela at around 12:30 pm. We were no early birds, and we had been drinking a little the previous night. The car was parked in the sun, and the air within it boiled my lungs. I sat in the front passenger seat and opened the window. It was a rather old car. I can’t remember the brand. A Peugeot? A Seat? But I do remember it was one of those everlasting small cars which were around since the 90s, or even the 80s. It didn’t have air conditioning, but it did the job and took us for day trips on a regular basis when we were studying our degrees.

  It was nearly 2:00 pm when we arrived at Area Maior. We could see Monte Louro, the little mountain next to it, from many miles away as we approached. The car park was in the middle of a pine wood where you could grill your own food until several years before a fire burned the forest down. Thousands of acres were destroyed all over the country in that dry summer, and the government introduced a ban to all campfires, barbeques and any type of burning without the strict permission of the local council. From the car park, you could see the nearby beach of Ancoradoiro and the wild sea smashing the coastline. There was always a strong smell of saltwater mixed with rotten algae drying out on the sand. I loved it. It made me feel that I was there, watching the impossible shapes the sun drew on the waves as they approached the beach and the rocks and the small cliffs.