NOTE: This was translated from
spanish with the help of one of those automatic translation programs
... I was too lazy to do it on my own ... so several things might
sound quite funny :)
The Hotel
It was a hotel near the beach... Henry, sat down among the rocks, near the ocean, at scarce meters of the building, and began to write:
"It was located in a place without solid shades, where the succession of the days were only marked out by the dairy darkness that slowly spreaded in there.
The trees, almost empty of leaves, were the solely victims of the eternal gray in which they lived. The wind, always watching, didn't loose a chance to break those few branches already dry, and entangling them around an imaginary point, making them dance in a cold whisper. The pavement, matching with the dark and depressing landscape, formed a serpentine and broken road among the hotel, the beach and the highway.
This construction did definitely reach to an agreement with the image of solitude that surrounded it. The hotel, unhabited for some years now, had deteriorated until forming a narrow knot with the solitariness and sadness that surrounded him."
Henry stopped his writing. If someone thinks that this it is a terrifying place, then he is right. There were plenty of ocasions to confirm this, among the last years. A strange aura surrounded that place. The four boys which Henry will write about now, vaguely realized this, and decided to make use of it. They didn't know what they where doing, really...
And then, Henry continued his writing:
The Youths
"They were young, with the curiosity and vitality characteristic of their age. For causes of the destiny, they decided to focus a great part of this energy in the production of videos. They wanted to film something really good.
This history began when John, in a trip to USA, bought a video camera. It was a very impressive model, of the new ones. It was light, it didn't need a lot of light to film, and it worked with batteries of long duration. In some months, John together with the other three main characters of this story, Henry, Alexander and Charles, entered in the secrets, tricks and rules of the filming art.
They filmed on a car, a motorcycle, from the roof of a building, to inclination of different eyeglasseses, looking for the angles, degrees of light and methods ... They were enthusiasts, without place to doubts.
As they went discovering the world of the image, they were capturing their ideas in tape. They filmed small movies, just as "Mortimer, the lunatic of the Musto" where Henry played the role of Mortimer, having to jump of a second floor of Pérez's Mill located in the height of a stream. As they progressed, Henry was the one that contributed the degree of madness to the filming. Charles was the one humorist with the strange ability of finding the funny side to all the situations in which they run thru, and he was also a great critic, with a strong common sense. John, owner of the camera, made of cameraman, and lastly Alexander was the born-to.be-actor of the group."
Henry began to enjoy this story. Alexander screamed at him something from the entrance of the hotel, but he didn't pay any attention, and continued his writing:
The idea
"As time passed, it was stronger and stronger the need of filming "The Movie". They began to write a script, about an idea of Charles. The idea was ambitious: A movie that incorporated the branches of the terror and the science fiction, also involving a police plot.
The script was about the history of three engineering students that rented a house in a spa in order to study, and if they could, to enjoy the quiet, relaxing place, far from ' the city'.
As they arrived at the house they found out that it was a very old house, under terrible conditions. Once inside, the external image repeated itself, showing them a livingroom full of spider cloths, with the fallen painting, and the broken furniture, just announcing them what would surely be the rest of the house.
When entering, they left their first shift of valises next to the door, going out again in order to pick up the rest of the bundles that where inside the car. When they returned with these, the livingroom was completely different: the furniture appeared to be in excellent conditions, covered by sheets, the walls were in perfect condition, and to finish off the weird image, everything appeared to be bathed with a strange light. Of course, the valises that they had entered some moments ago were still beside the door. Starting from this moment, everything what happened in that house was completely disconcerting: the rooms changed place, the things appeared and they disappeared, and one by one, the students (just in armony with the place) also disappeared.
At the end, it was only one of them that through diverse maneuvers begins to discover the truth that was wrapping the house, and concludes the plot with an excellent nut turn that we won´t reveal in here ! :)
That was a good script. It was a good script provided they found a house that gathered the necessary conditions..."
Henry lifted the view from the papers just to observe that Alexander and John were walking toward the highway, moving from the hotel in a weary step. They surely were going shopping (they had a handbag of errands with them)... that would take at least one hour.
Alexander turned around, realizing that Henry was observing them, and made him a rather unfriendly expression with his hands. He surely wanted Henry do the shopping in the first place... -nevermind -, Henry said to himself... -I won't move from here- and then he took the pen again and prepared to continue the writing:
The search
"John, Henry and Alexander agreed with the script devised by Charles. But it was necessary to find a place that gathered those conditions that imposed the house described in the script, and to that task our friends were dedicated an entire month. The solution was brought by Charles uncle.
In their vacations, Charles uncles usually
went to Piriápolis, and they remembered this small hotel,
next to the beach, several kilometers before arriving Piriápolis,
which has been closed for some years now. Apparently, judging
by the descriptions that they gave them on this place, it was
a perfect place for shooting Charles script. That very same Saturday,
both Charles and Alexander went there to try to locate the owner
of that closed hotel. Thanks to the indications that Charles
uncles gave them, the Hotel was not very difficult to find.
Once there, they marveled at the sight offered to them. It was
exactly what they wanted, and
according to Charles, the place was surrounded by the exact atmosphere
that he had in mind for the movie. Even, as Alexander observed,
that particular day did help a lot, since there was no sun. In
spite of the sky being quite clear, the few clouds that hanged
up there were crowded together in such a way and under such an
angle that the star king didn't arrive to that precise area,
being the whole scene bathed with a whitish light, quite special
for filming, since it doesn't generate hard shades and also the
natural colors come out perfect. What Charles and Alexander didn't
really know was that this so particular day, loaded with the
strange atmosphere which Charles made reference, actually belonged
to this place.
They talked with some neighbors of the hotel -although the term neighbors should be understood in the usual way inside the country, separated by at least three kilometers the one from the other ... Finally, they reached to the conclusion that the hotel didn't have an actual owner, as he/she never appeared in the last 7 years.
They went to await the bus that would bring them back to Montevideo on that evening, and it arrived two and a half hours late, as it is the tradition in this country. Once back in the capital, Henry and John listened, excited, to the story of the place that Charles and Alexander brought back with them.
They decided to use it for the filming of the movie. After the next two weeks it would be the "tourism week", and they would take advantage of that to travel to the hotel with all the equipment in order to film the script."
Charles had secretly come to the side of Henry, and he was reading the story, whilst Henry wrote it. Henry, noticed Charles presence, but he continued writing:
The Arrival
"They arrived at the hotel one hour later of that foreseen thanks to the bus that, remember, has the habit to be usually late. After walking about a kilometer they faced with the same view that two weeks before did welcome Charles and Alexander.
Henry, which went with his old tape player, the volume pumped up (listening ' wild wild life' of Talking Heads), song in the mood with the summer day they where in, had to turn it off because of the impression that this depressing sight gave him. John had no choice but to internally congratulate Charles uncles on telling them about this place !
They almost crashed down the entrance door, but Alexander, the only one apparently with common sense, told them that they proved with the key that was hanging up above near the door. After many failed tries because of the rust, it achieved to open that enormous door. Once inside, the only words that perfectly described what was presented before their eyes, were those pronounced by John: ' It is exactly what we describe in the script! ... COOL! '.
Of course that it was what they described in the script, and it has been that way during the last month, as the hotel was waiting for them, and he/she already knew what they wanted. The whole region was hungry of these four youths. The roots of the trees vibrated with new life while feeling the steps of our friends. The clouds hurried to cover even more the sun, and the wind hid soon to jump over them. The whole place was waiting for them, and they were unaware of this terrifying fact."
Charles he/she had all his attention in Henry´s story, Fact that impelled him on continuing with the writing:
The Play
" We should hurry to install the video gear. This atmosphere can leave in a matter of hours. - John said a couple of seconds after entering in the place. Henry, which also carried the heavy equipment, took down of the shoulder the case that contained the camera and the tripod, preparing to arm the whole filming Set. He left his tape player in a ramshackle table that was some meters away from the door, putting to play the DURAN DURAN´s Cassette named "ARENA", and then he took out the camera of its box. He checked out the four batteries that will give enough for the next 8 hours, and the 4 video cassettes that they would use to videotape the script, leaving them to the tape player's side.
John asked Henry to go upstairs with the camera and the cassette labelled as number one loaded in it. Henry took that cassette, and then went where the camera was. As he passed in front of the hotel´s entrance door, he found that some meters from the porch a tree had bowed queerly, but that was ridiculous. When he placed the video cassette inside the camera he found out that it was the number three, and not the number one that he grabbed some seconds before.
-obviously, we are all crazy in here - Henry Said aloud. He went to the table, and took the correct cassette, placing it inside the camera.
The hotel was practicing some easy tricks on them.
To the evening, they had advanced a lot in the script filming. But although the camera could perform quite well with little light, everything has a limit, and there was that to wait until the following day. Our characters prepared to sleep inside the hotel. They extended the sleeping bags in the reception hall, they fixed the alarm-clocks for 6:30 in the morning, they had dinner and then went to bed.
Four hours later, the real trouble began.
A harrowing scream woke up Alexander. He, as soon as could light hislantern, noticed that the sleeping bags of Henry and Charles were empty.
He hurried to wake up John, showing him
the empty sleeping bags, and telling him about that weird scream.
They started to call out loud to Charles and Henry.
As nobody answered, they decided look for them. According to Alexander, the scream came right from the hotel´s first floor. They went to the stairway, and began to ascend. Then, John saw something. Some steps before the upper end of the staircase, something shone and moved by the light of the lantern, . When they came closer enough, they realized that it was liquid, blood actually.
Alexander, after realizing that John was too afraid to speak, he said what they were both thinking -that is blood -.
They gathered a good amount of value and spirit from where they could, and continued the ascencion until the first floor, following the rakes of blood. Two meters away from where the stairway dies, they found Henry, over what seemed to be a puddle of blood.
The screams emitted by John and Alexander
could surely be listened several kilometersaway. And they continued
screaming for about 20 seconds, until John saw an eye, a brilliant
eye that winkled some meters from behind of where the body of
Henry layed, inside the most complete and terrifying darkness.
Then John screamed stronger, but then he thought about it.
After some seconds of complex calculations inside his head, John screamed again, but this time kicking the immobile body of Henry.
Everything was a trick, and surely Charles was right behind the red eye that it was not another thing that the recording indicator of the rolling camera, which was taping all the event for sure.
At this time, Henry incorporated, and run towards the red eye, from where Charles emerged, and then both began to laugh quite wildy. "
Henry finished his writing, giving the last page to Charles, which began to uncontroledly laugh , while his eyes began to shine. Drowned, among laughs, his only comment was "at night Today... today at night without a doubt!" ...
THE End:
Of course, the characters are real and
their personality
is very near to the reality. A great percentage of the facts
happened in the real world :)