And I’m not going to listen to you two anymore, thought Gaspar. Because he had shone the light to either side and seen the walls covered in vines and moss. And, when he lit them better, he saw little white things in among the plants. Bones. Some very small. Animal bones, he told himself. Chickens. At least now it looked more like an abandoned house. He moved the flashlight and saw a black piano, and, nearby, what looked like mannequins hanging from the ceiling. The floor was covered in burned-down candles, and he said aloud:

“Careful, it’s slippery.”

Vicky and Pablo didn’t ask why; maybe they imagined something horrible, but Gaspar couldn’t reassure them that it was only wax because just then the flashlight revealed a window, and what he saw through it was impossible. Gaspar didn’t want to stop and look, but he did: on the other side of the dirty glass he saw the moon above trees, many trees, a still forest, as if the house were high atop a hill that allowed for a panoramic view. It wasn’t a pretty forest. It could also be a very detailed painting, he thought. A painting of a window that looked out on a forest. That’s what it was. Still, there was something off about the painting; it looked like a trap. The whole house was a trap.

He didn’t shine the light on the walls anymore. Or on the floor. He kept it pointed straight ahead, painfully aware that if someone really was in the house, they could snatch the flashlight from his hand at any moment, hit him (hit all of them), and drag them into one of those dark rooms, like the one Adela had chosen. Why had she waved to them like that? It had been such a small gesture, a goodbye.

What if the person who’d slammed a door somewhere in the house was Adela’s father? What if he was still alive? Not disappeared, but a serial killer? Pablo gave a feeble scream in the darkness, and Gaspar asked what’s wrong, what’s wrong?

“Something touched me. On my back,” said Pablo.

“Enough,” said Gaspar. “We’re getting out of here. Don’t turn around.”

Vicky said nothing. Had she heard Pablo? She must have.

The flashlight illuminated a wooden staircase with a beautiful handrail: it led to another floor upstairs. The problem, of course, was that the house on Villarreal didn’t have a first floor.

“Do you see the door?” Vicky asked. Her breath was very hot and smelled of pennies. But now she sounded less scared. Her hands squeezed Gaspar so tight that it hurt a little.

“We’re almost there,” he said, and he thought: Adela is locked in this house, Pablo is about to have a little brother, and Vicky is loved. Enough, he thought. Dad, show me the door. We have to get out.

“Vicky, do you hear anything?”

“The buzzing, but less.”