There is a villa, not very far from the great cities, named Carey. All the inhabitants seem to live in harmony and the everyday life ticks as the gears on a clock.

On the outskirts of Carey, and by the seashore, there existed an abandoned mansion. The villagers called this large dwelling-house La Moira. Nobody dared to go in. According to the legend, an old man named Victor Moira had constructed her for his retirement home, but on the day of the inaugural celebration, Victor had drunk too much and when he approached the beach to toast with the sea, a wave snatched him up and threw him against the rocks. He drowned there. On the following day they found the fragments of his face embedded on the rock, but his body had disappeared.

Since then, nobody inhabited La Moira. It seemed like the destiny of the misled ones rested in this residence. It had been ten years ago that a man had hung himself there. Nobody knew who he was or from where he came, nor the reason for his death. His body was covered with seaweed and lichens. He was probably a drunk hobo that had nothing better to do with his life. Death was his destiny. After this ordeal, the mansion only served as a nocturnal shelter to the vagabonds and the animals.

A boy was born in this villa and he was baptised with the name of Mark. His parents were surprised when they looked at him for the first time, because when he was just barely born, they noticed a small mark on his face. And as the months went by, the mark became larger, up to the point of causing disgust. It was as if someone had drawn up a map on his face.

Mark was only five years old, when the tragedy knocked on the door of his life. A man entered the house where he lived with his parents, while he slept. He came from La Moira. The man went up to the second floor where his parents were, and shot each one on the head. The madman sat on the ground and calmly watched them die. He rocked himself crossed legged, while he contemplated the sticky pieces of brain slip juicily down their faces. The madman went to the refrigerator, took out some cold cuts, and ate them next to the dead. He offered them some as if they were his favourite dolls: "They are not hungry because they just had supper", he would say to himself.

When it was morning and the sun rose, the madman left and was never heard of again. . Mark woke up and saw his parents. He became a mute.

The orphanage of Carey welcomed him. Later on, the matrons of the orphan home tried to put him for adoption, but nobody wanted him; with that mark on the face and mute... who would?

So he grew up in an orphanage, like a strange beetle. All of them had respect for him because of his determination. There were no buts to anything he commanded, and because they feared the consequences, they yielded and accepted most of his decisions. All of the orphans were scared of him.

One day, his orphanage "brothers" challenged him to enter the damn Moira and remove an object from her. Mark became frightened because the ones in room 'D' had just told that a leper was living there. But he pumped himself with valour and decided to accept the challenge.

They walked towards La Moira and they waited for him on the beach. They did not dare approach her.

He walked on the crumbly sand until he reached the small wooden fence. La Moira was imposing and inhibiting. She was high, made of brick, and covered in ivy. From the front of the house door, a stone footpath trailed until it reached the small fence where Mark was standing. It seemed infinite. Finally he decided to go in, he did not want to lose the brave reputation that he had earned, and so he opened the wooden gate. When Mark tried to take the first step, a cat came out of nowhere and crossed between his feet. He felt that his spine had frozen. Shortly after, he began to walk, but his approach appeared aimless and perpetual, as if he had lead in his shoes.

Finally he reached the door. It was closed. And if he opened it, would the leper come out? With the weight of his body on the floor's rotted wood, the door opened on its own.

In front of him there was a wooden staircase with a worn and wormy carpet. At the rest stop of the stairs there was a portrait of a richly dressed man, perhaps Victor Moira. Suddenly Mark noticed that he had already gone up a step. It seemed like the portrait's eyes beckoned him to enter... they gave him a macabre welcome.

He climbed up the stairs. Under the portrait there was a small table, and on it, an aged key. He took the key, put it in his pocket and continued to go up the stairs.

All the way to the top, he saw an opened door leading to an olive green room, or was that colour slime?

Yes, it was there where the vagabond had hung himself sometime ago. The saying says that curiosity killed the cat, so he went up, entered the room, and saw a rope entangled from a joist, from which dangled a hung body, a pendulum. It was purple and dripping. Mark screamed, recovering his speech. The first thing he said - But what are you doing here? - Mark asked with a voice that was not his - Didn't they take you away?

The hung man opened his eyes and looked at Mark.

The last thing he remembered was the laughter of his "friends" when they saw him come out of La Moira pale as ivory, and then he realised where he was.

He was sweating and had run all the way to the orphanage. When the others arrived, they asked him what he had seen. He told them the truth. They immediately turned him into the laughingstock of the town, but to his face, nobody could deny his story because his eyes spoke the truth, and it frightened them. None of them ever challenged anyone again to go into La Moira.

Mark grew up until he reached the age at which he had to leave the orphanage. He decided that he wanted to try out his fortune at finding his destiny.

He left Carey and travelled across the world. He always travelled alone because he disliked having company, but in one of the caravan trips he made, he ran into a witch, seemingly the piece of the puzzle of his life.

When she saw the birthmark on his face, the witch withdrew from him. So he tried to find out the reason.

When he approached her, she looked into his eyes, like coming out of a trance and asked him - What are you searching for? -

He answered - My fate -

She lowered her head and began to play with some oily coins that she had in her hand.

- Fate, eh? and you think you're going to find it? It is she, who is going to find to you, I see it in your face. -

From his feet to his birthmark she glanced at Mark, - There are so many things that I can tell you, but I shouldn't. Your history is rendered in that mark which you have on your face, even the day of your death. But I shall not tell you unless you ask me. Knowing you future is like looking inside a bottle... the more you peer inside, the more you want to know; and that way you squeeze it and squeeze it until you can get out all of its juice, or until the bottle's pressure shows you the depth of the bottom. And when you let go, the pressure sucks in your eye, leaving you one-eyed, with the other trapped within the bottle. -

He asked frightened - I only want you to tell me one thing. -

The witch frowned and told him - They say that curiosity killed the cat, but well, I look at you and see you so lost. I will tell you your past. I see your dead parents, you suffered, you forgot. -

The images of the present vanished and the ones from the past appeared. They enveloped Mark's body and the memory of his actions was personified. Ha was five years old. A leprous man knocked on the window of his bedroom, smiled with his burst gums and winked at him. The leper told him it was time for the second drawer. Mark understood. The man disappeared. His parents were on the upstairs floor, reading in the study. He went into their bedroom and took the gun from the second drawer of the bedside table, the drawer that they had forbidden him to open. He loaded the gun and went up the stairs.

- Enough! Don't tell me about the past, - Mark said - I only need to know... -

- Your fate. For what? If everything is inscribed on your face right from the day that you were born. The key to your destiny lies inside your pocket. It is your decision on how you use it. -

After a pause she asked - What is your question? -

- What day am I going to die? -

She told him.

After that trip he never saw the witch again, but he felt her presence. There were still a few years left for the referred date to arrive.

He continued travelling the world, in vain, because he could not find his destiny. He had no friends nor a permanent job. They all thought of him as mad. Sometimes he would chat on his own, but if anyone who came from Carey had listened to whom he spoke to, immediately s/he would have recognised that it was with his parents and with Victor.

He smoked cigarettes and when he got to the end, he tormented himself by extinguish the butts on his body. The cherry would sink in, and when it cooked, it smoked and and flowered the skin. Every night, he castigated himself with a whip and shouted out asking for forgiveness. He toyed with the key that had removed from La Moira until polishing it and drawing blood.

He dreamed that he climbed the staircase of La Moira and see the portrait of Victor, he would reach for the door and open it. He acknowledge the hung body, but now it was him, Mark. His skin was wrinkled and rotten, his eyes had slipped down as egg yolks and lay on the ground as half digested meats, it smelled like rancid butter. He looked at himself swinging on that damn rope until the skull pulled apart from the spine. A bone would crack and the veins and tendons would stretch. Later they would snap, and the head would dismember from the body. The corpse always collapsed, but the head remained tied up. The eyelids trembled and opened. At the heart of those two abysses he would see Victor's eyes. He always woke up at that moment with a bitter taste in his mouth.

His nightmares and punishments lasted for years. But his worst anguish was to know the day of its death.

It was three days before the witch's funeral prediction. He decided to go back to Carey. The trip took him two days and a half. When arriving at his native villa, would he find his destiny there? why did his goal have to be his point of departure? To Mark this seemed like a stupid circle. If today were his death, why here?

When he arrived in Carey he asked around for his old " friends", but none of them seemed to live there any longer. The town had changed. La Moira was still standing and the orphanage had grown. He did not have a place to sleep and decided to stay at La Moira, like the vile vagabonds he had repudiated so much. . He walked towards her, as if he had passes that way for years. He observed her and noticed that she was smaller, and this trivialised his fear. He opened the fence's half collapsed door and walked down the stone footpath that he had crossed years ago. The door opened again on its own, she was waiting for him. He went up the stairs and stopped to look at Victor's portrait. Almost all of the paint had flaked off because of the humidity. But his eyes appeared intact. He climbed the last portion of the staircase and approached the door; expecting to see the worst he turned the knob. Would he see his worst nightmare come true? The door was locked.

He went back down the stairs up to where the portrait of Victor was, and sat on the first step. He began to wonder.

Why had he lived? He had done nothing in his life that had left a trace of his existence. Did he really have a destiny? Had he been born only to die? and after that, what? die to be born again? how paradoxical!

But was he really going to die today? And if the old witch had been mistaken? And if she was not? how was he going to die? There was nothing here in La Moira, nor in Carey, that threatened him with death.

Time passed and he did not die, so he began to shout: how am I going to die? It was then when he saw a shiny object underneath the table, under the portrait. He went closer and and saw a dust covered wine bottle. The cork, already half-rotten, sank in when he pressed it. He peered inside. His life was within, drowned, and so he began to drink. Was it his fate to drink until inebriation and later drown in the sea?

He drank and drank until emptying the bottle. The alcohol began to stun him, and he began to rock cross legged. He put his hands inside his pockets and that was when he felt the key that he had robbed some time ago in La Moira. He remembered the witch: it was his destiny. He climbed the stairs and inserted it into the lock. In spite of the years, it slipped in with ease. He turned it, first to the left and then to the right. The mechanism squeaked and spun. He dead froze. He did not want to open the door. He removed the key, and returned it to the table under the portrait. He ran up the stairs and opened the door.

The door turned inwards showing its greenish entrails. And there was nothing. Neither the hanged person, nor himself. Only one chair and one rope tied in the form of an oval, fastened to one of the joists. He stepped on the chair and introduced his head inside the oval formed by the rope, this was not for him. Mark only wanted to see what it felt like to be in the place of his dreams. He turned around to see through the window and saw himself when young, outside of the small fence. He turned around towards the door and saw Victor. He slipped off the chair. After struggling asphyxiation, he remained hanging from the rope like a marionette.

A mute boy opened the door of the small fence, but when he tried to take the first step, a cat intertwined between his feet and almost made him fall. He walked towards the house with feet of lead, the path seemed infinite to him. When he stopped in front of the door, it opened. They were waiting for him.

(©) 1994 Erick Merino

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