The Ring — El anillo

The ring

I’d never been able to go down to the basement alone. I was afraid of it.

I had just turned nine years old when, on a cold, rainy and sad winter morning, I was awakened by strange noises coming from the basement. I was home alone. From bed, I concentrated as hard as I could to identify them. I’ve never heard anything like it. Then, over the years, I could try to describe them as if someone with their fingernails or the claws of an animal would be scratching a door.

That strange experience lasted only a few minutes. I didn’t leave the bedroom until my father came home at noon. My mother had died a year earlier. As he known I was fearful, I didn’t tell him anything about what had happened to me, but from that day on I tried not to stay home alone.

Forty years have passed and today I return to my parents’ house, which I inherited from my recently deceased father. I have left the country where I have been living for many years and I intend to live in this house forever.

With a certain apprehension I slipped the key into the lock and entered the hall. Everything was as I remembered it. Fleetingly, I thought of the basement.

That night I slept soundly. When I woke up, I remembered perfectly the dream I had had. A feminine voice, with no face, she told me:

“When you wake up, you must go down to the basement and free me from oblivion. I was your father’s mistress. He gagged me, tied my hands behind my back with…