Ariadna climbed the stairs leading to the front door. She knocked three times before realizing that it too was open. Looking back, she took in the atmosphere of ruin that permeated the estate: with the fall of the emperor and his privileges, the servants had fled the palace. Ariadna pushed open the door and stepped into the house. It already smelled of a graveyard, of oblivion. A velvety half-light tightly gripped the network of corridors and staircases opening up before her. She stood there, motionless, a white specter at the doors of purgatory, staring at the dead splendor with which Mauricio Valls had dressed up his days of glory.

A faraway lament reached her ears. It came from the first floor and sounded like the feeble whine of a dying animal. She walked up the wide staircase unhurriedly. The walls hinted at the outlines of stolen paintings. On either side of the stairs were empty pedestals on which she could still make out the marks left by looted figures and busts. When Ariadna reached the first floor, she stopped and listened for the moaning again. It came from a room at the end of the corridor, which she headed slowly toward. The door was ajar, and a powerful stench wafted from it, brushing her face.

Ariadna walked across the darkened room and approached a four-poster bed. In that light it looked like a funeral hearse. An arsenal of machines and instruments sat idly on one side of the bed, disconnected and pushed back against the wall. The carpet was strewn with rubble and abandoned oxygen tanks. Ariadna stepped over those objects and pulled back the veil surrounding the bed. Behind it she discovered a human figure twisted upon itself, as if its bones had turned to jelly and its whole anatomy had been recast by pain. The figure’s bloodshot eyes, enlarged on a skeletal face, observed her suspiciously. That guttural groan, halfway between weeping and suffocation, came out of her throat once more. Señora Valls had lost her hair, her nails, and most of her teeth.

Ariadna gazed at her without compassion. She sat down on one side of the bed and leaned over her. “Where’s my sister?” she asked.

Valls’s wife tried to form words. Ariadna ignored the stink she gave off and drew her face close to her lips.

“Kill me,” she heard her plead.

2

Hidden in the dolls’ house, Mercedes saw the woman go through the villa’s gates. Dressed in ghostly white, she advanced very slowly in a straight line, carrying a bunch of red roses. Mercedes smiled. She’d been waiting for her for days. Death, dressed in Pertegaz couture, at last visited Villa Mercedes before hell swallowed it up, leaving in its place a barren land where grass would never grow again, where wind would never blow.

She had climbed onto one of the windowsills in the dolls’ pavilion, where she’d been living since the staff abandoned the house, soon after the news of her father’s death. At first Doña Mariana, her father’s secretary, had tried to stop them, but that same evening some men dressed in black had come and dragged Doña Mariana away. Mercedes had heard gunshots behind the garages, but she didn’t want to go there and look. Over the next few nights they took away the paintings, the statues, the furniture, the clothes, the cutlery, and whatever else they fancied. They would arrive at sunset like a starving pack. They also took all the cars and destroyed the walls of the sitting rooms, looking for hidden treasures that they didn’t find. When there was nothing left, they went away and never returned.