Perpetual Winter: The Deep Inn by Carlos Meneses-Oliveira Read Free Book Online Page B

fact, where had that bathroom gone? he thought. At this time, the police must be questioning all of the neighboring houses to see if anyone could have taken it from there. Perhaps they’ll find some clue that will prove they pulled in the wrong fish and leave me alone. With that thought, he went to sleep.
                  But his nightmares wouldn’t let him. A thousand and one terrifying ideas filled his mind. Lucas felt deep nausea and a pain in his shoulders as if Quiroga had resuscitated with two more palms of width and was now squeezing him in a bone breaking embrace. To the left, it was an iron grip. He couldn’t even breathe. Without enough time to get up, he vomited on the bed. Oh no. He cleaned his face on the sheet and then sat down. It’s cold. He jumped quietly from the bed to not awaken his mother or Luís. He saw things out of focus. Lucas rubbed his eyes but it didn’t help. The window was open. Again? What is it this time? It’s like ice. He turned on the lamp and leaped back—on his chair, there was an envelope and on the envelope was a pistol with a silencer. The gun from the crime.
     

Chapter 5
    The Machination
     
    Lucas opened the envelope. Photographs of the dead body of the woman who’d testified on his behalf. A small orifice in the forehead, just like he’d seen on the neck of the giant’s dissected body, which explained how the evil deed had been committed: a bullet in the brow. More photos of the woman in the street and the woman dead. Finally, a picture on heavier paper came on and showed a film in which his witness was murdered by someone unknown. Lucas breathed rapidly; he had cramps in his hands and a pain installed itself in his head over his eyes. He felt hot. He threw up again, as silently as possible. There was a smell of gas in the air and his vision was slowly becoming cloudy. He was lost.
                  “You’re lost, Lucas,” agreed the gun, in a metallic voice.
                  Was he seeing things? Had he been drugged? Suddenly the photographs erupted in spontaneous combustion. They burned like newspaper. Lucas quickly smothered the fire with a bedspread. The pistol, hoarse, laughed at the young man’s bewilderment. Lucas rubbed his sore eyes once more. This was not happening. The pistol said nothing but raised its eyebrows and rolled its eyes upward and to the left, as if saying, “Puedes no creer en brujas, pero que las hay, las hay,” Spanish for “You may not believe in witches, but they exist, yes, they do.”
                  He now had no witness. He had to flee. But where to? Where to? There was nowhere to go. The police and countries are made one for the other. Interpol would never let him go, there was neither refuge where he wouldn’t be wanted, nor memory that would be lost, no matter how many years or decades went by. Maybe he could hide on an island in the Pacific or in a village in the Amazon. No, no. They would immediately recognize the stranger and immediately surf the Internet using facial recognition software that Interpol made available on its site. A better alternative would be going to a big city, he thought. He could pass by unnoticed in a large metropolis in Latin America, in Mexico City, in Buenos Aires or in São Paulo. Suddenly, he was hit by a lightning bolt: Mother, Father, Luís. If he successfully escaped Lisbon, he would never see them again. He fell to his knees. His projects and the people he loved were going to disappear.  He was going to terminate them, cut his umbilical cord in order to be free. Lucas bent over until his head touched the ground. Is this war? Is this the price of victory, if I am able to achieve a victory by fleeing? He was going to burn everything, incinerate his heart and soul in order to be free, in a law of eternal return in which the flames that killed his parents in his old life returned by his hand, for him to be the incendiary of his own immolation. He bit the