Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

Stay Quiet

Kirt Heinrich coughed and sneezed hard that he feared his brain would blast its way through his nostrils onto the damp floor of the tannery wet with blood and littered by torn hair. The air was musty and muggy, and the scent of urine overpowered him, making him worry about what would happen to his body should the fumes be toxic. 

He had seen what Hernanda had seen when she had first gone into that room: the masks made of cured human skins cut off from their original owners; the cut nipples and chunks of hair and bone lying in that barrel by the side of the wall; and a few defleshed skeletons staring at them. Though those things proved that the being outside — whose bangs were muffled by the walls of the tannery —  might only be a human wearing a mask, that realization failed to mollify him. Rather they made him frantic; a human who could commit such atrocities was not human but a monster who'd forfeited his humanity. 

The sight of that monster's grisly, grotesque visage, that of the mask he wore, flashed before his eyes, and that image never dissipated no matter how many times he had tried to blink his eyes as if the picture had been seared on his pupils and at the back of his eyelids. The monster's image bore semblance with Karmen House: a ghost that people claimed to see walking in the hallways back at Wolfgang Academy though Kirt had never seen it and had even spent hours studying alone in that hallway where the real Karmen House had slit her throat after her boyfriend had been caught cheating on her in 1984. But that monster banging on the wall was more horrific in appearance than the ever-morphing descriptions of Karmen. 

As Kirt's mind wandered to the stories he had heard about Wolfgang Academy — a feeble attempt by his brain to relieve the tension and panic saturating the air — he was reminded of the nasty things that had occurred in Wolfgang Academy's long history, especially the five boiler blasts in Sherbourne Langfear Hall that occurred every year precisely at 12:00 a.m between 1895 and 1900. There were four headmasters who never lasted for more than a year between 1940 to 1944; they were known as the 'jammers' because they'd committed suicide by jamming a cake fork through their nostrils into their brains. One of them popped out his left eye and ate it before doing so. These were true incidents and there were newspaper clippings stored in the George Wolfgang Library to prove their authenticity. Kirt believed that all the incidents that had occurred were real incidents but did not agree that they were caused by some ghost of some slaughtered Native American girl whose tribe had been displaced from the same land the school was built on. 

Hernanda was terrified and he could tell it from her deep breathing, the gooseflesh on her left arm, and from the way she was holding the scimitar. The blade wasn't long enough to pierce through that monster outside without exposing one to harm. Yet, as a last resort, it might help with self-defense though Kirt wished that they wouldn't have to face-off with the monster that day. He wished that it would give up after failed attempts to tear down that wall and fall through. But when he had been outside the tannery, he had seen how weak the wall was, how it splintered with every stroke of that makeshift battering ram that psychopath wielded. 

Hernanda looked at Kirt who was the nicest soul she'd ever seen and smiled. Kirt was an angel to her; there were a lot of things in that boy that made him like her, qualities that made him every teacher's pet, namely: he had a reputation of honesty, he had a record of not being in detention, he was always polite and he was not a playboy like most of the high school guys at Wolfgang. Kirt wouldn't simply flirt around like many guys when he didn't have classes. One would always find him sitting in the library working on his homework, or in the primary school classes helping children. When she'd seen him teaching kids she used to wish she'd marry him one day and they'd raise children together. He was good with kids and the kids loved him. Hernanda found that cute. 

"Kirt?"

"Yeah?"

"I just want to say I love you, very much —"

Boom! They heard the noise of multiple planks falling louder than all the previous noises.

"He's here," Kirt muttered.

"Shhh! Stay quiet!" Hernanda hissed as she pushed another barrel to the door of the tannery. She stared at the ceiling and hoped that the noise wasn't that of the entire wall outside shattering, allowing that monster to come in. The walls of the tannery were weak and could easily be shattered. She closed her eyes as she heard the noise of footsteps thumping on the floorboards and gasped, trying to do it silently. 

Kirt stopped himself from sneezing after he heard the being walk behind the tannery and then along its left side before going in front and then on the right side. The room they had been inside was long and broad. There was a lot of space and probably, the modnter was thinking that the two were hiding somewhere in the dark. Kirt didn't want to be that boy who would spoil their chance at escape; he hoped that the monster would assume that the duo had jumped out the window — as crazy and unrealistic such an attempt be — and go outside to find them there, giving them two some time to run out. 

Hernanda whispered in Kirt's ear as she peered through cracks in the room divider separating the tannery from the rest of the room: "He's coming for the door. Stay quiet."

The two stayed silent and crouched by the corner. Hernanda, trying hard not to breathe, kept the tip of the scimitar pointed in the direction of the door.

She could hear it.

The psycho's palms were gripping the doorknob. 

She gulped.

Kirt gulped too.

They were sweating and if there was a light in that dark, stinking room; their foreheads would've appeared metallic, like the surface of a polished acoustic guitar. 

Hernanda gestured for Kirt to be quite as she got up.

Bang! There was the noise of gunfire and some distant noise.

Kirt looked at Hernanda who looked at him.

"Timothy," Kirt recognized the source of the distant noise, probably coming from outside the house. 

They heard the noise of the doorknob being let go and the being heading out along the left side of the tannery. They both heaved sighs of relief briefly and looked through the cracks in the tannery wall to see the monster leave. 

It did.

"Let's go!" Kirt whispered.

"Wait! Not so fast," Hernanda suggested.