Padre Salas by Enrique Laso Read Free Book Online

the girls’ necks. Upon feeling the contact of the stoles, the girls emitted moans, grunts, and some of them even cursed in Spanish and Latin. Upon finishing, the priests were now facing each other; one to the left, and the other to the right of the row of girls, and each holding in one hand one end of the tied stoles, and in the other, a copy of the Holy Bible along with a Saint Benedict medal. Positioned on the floor, halfway between the two parishioners, and just at the girls’ feet, a crucifix stood majestically.
    “Begin the reading,” indicated Padre Salas.
    “Oh Lord, in your name, save me, and with your power defend me. Oh, Lord, hear my prayer; hear the truth I speak, because evil has risen up against me, and men of violence are in pursuit of my life; they have not placed God before themselves. Here, I have the help of the Lord God, who will return the evil back to my enemies; He will cut them down with His truth. I will voluntarily sacrifice to you, oh Lord; I will praise your name, because it is good; because it has liberated me from all anguish, and my eyes have seen the ruin of my enemies.”
    Two hours passed in which the priests did nothing else but pray and recite litanies. The journalist was exhausted, along with the family members, but, however, he was the impartial witness for the integrity, the resistance and the resolution of both priests. Then suddenly, something changed, and Padre Salas began to shout out in Latin, as if giving imperious orders to the demon that had taken hold of the girls. The little ones began to twist around, and shout, as if something white hot was burning away within their stomachs. Sancho approached, as he sensed that something important was happening. He was focussing, steadily, on the girls’ faces, which were deformed by pain. It was horrifying, and he could barely hold the camera in his hands. From somewhere, there came sobs and desperate cries, which he attributed to the girls’ parents, who must be completely emotionally torn apart. It was at that moment when one of the girls, Adelina, began to vomit. At first, it seemed to José Antonio to be an amorphous and greyish mass, but upon adjusting the camera’s focus, he discovered to his horror that they were slender snakes, dark in colour, and some thirty centimetres long. Shortly after, the rest of the girls began to double up, suffering from violent convulsions, and then began to regurgitate, almost in unison, snakes identical to those which poor Adelina had just expelled from her own mouth.
    ––––––––
    XIV. Hotel NH Guadalajara, Guadalajara, State of Jalisco
    J osé Antonio Sancho was working intensely, in spite of the fact that it was very late and he felt completely worn out. He had to finish the long article that would be going out in the Sunday newspaper, in which there would be a space reserved for him on page one. Before setting out on the task of writing, he had reviewed all of the recordings and photographs that he had taken to date, and he understood that the material, aside from its horrifying nature, was a gem: it was a report that any journalist would have given their right arm for. So as to avoid potential problems, he made safe copies in each of the online storage facilities with which he had a Premium account: Dropbox and Google Drive . Once all of the archives were on the Cloud , he felt relieved: if for any reason he lost them, they were stolen, or his memory cards or hard disks were destroyed, he would always be able to recover them.
    A certain sense of guilt tormented him as he wrote out the article, since he was going to share with the public information that he had still not shared with Padre Salas. But he hoped that the priest would understand the position he was in: it was one thing maintaining the due respect towards the girls, and the process of exorcism until it had concluded, and another thing entirely to wait until an indeterminate date without sending a single item of