Flora took a deep breath as she recalled that frightening night at her public high school in Cardena. It was curious that she felt the same feeling standing there in the corridor of a luxurious mansion on an island in the middle of the ocean when her public school’s dilapidated facilities and peeling wall paint were a far cry from her present location. It felt surreal that she stood once again in a dark corridor and needed to conquer her own fears once more, but this time, without her best friend Perlita to accompany her and support her.Still, her experience that night in high school taught her valuable lessons that she would often get back to whenever she felt helpless and afraid of what could be lurking in the shadows. She started to see her life as full of unexpected surprises that were sometimes heartbreaking, but in some other times full of happiness. Nadi was one of those experiences when Flora was full of foreboding at what the future would bring. She knew that taking care of
As Flora rolled the cleaning cart in front of her, she got near one of the portraits that were hung on the walls. She made another gasp when she found an old portrait of a man wearing the traditional formal clothes worn in Cardena about a century ago. The man had thick black hair combed neatly over his head and the black and white suit he had on was expertly painted that the brush strokes easily converted into the folds of his clothes. It was not his clothes, however, that made Flora gasp, but the intense look from his eyes that seemed to look directly at her even as she walked in front of it. Flora noticed that the other paintings were also portraits of old men and women who might have been real persons, possibly relatives of the master. If they were portraits of real people, Flora wondered if the south wing really was reserved for the master and his guests and she wondered if the guests that Pablo mentioned were staying in the house were in fact relatives of the master. She would lik
Flora looked around the room and noticed that the wooden floor was highly polished. She remembered Maya earlier showing her the vacuum cleaner, but she also noticed the floor polisher standing in the corner next to the mops. The electrical appliances were quite useful and would make her work easier thought, Flora. However, Maya did mention that they were supposed to use the vacuum cleaner only in specific days to keep the noise down to the minimum. Flora assumed that it also applied to the floor polisher. Still, Flora observed from the smoothness of the wooden floor of the room as well as the carpets in the corridor outside that the south wing was still being properly maintained. Flora remembered how as a maid working in Malen, many of her employers just had her do everything manually. She thought how these employers probably thought that it was cheaper to get a maid who could do multiple things rather than many appliances that still consumed electricity and still needed to be operated
After getting the drapes down, the room did not brighten as Flora had expected. She got off the chair with some difficulty as it wobbled slightly and the cushion on which she stepped was too soft and did not provide her feet with enough support. With the two layers of drapes taken down, Flora noticed that the windows were boarded up to block the view outside. That was the reason that despite having taken the drapes down, the room was still dim with only the few light bulbs on the ceiling shedding light.Unusual, thought Flora, that the windows were boarded up when most people would want windows open to be able to peer out and to let the sunshine in. For this room, not only were the windows heavily draped, wooden boards had also been nailed on the windows to prevent most of the light outside from streaming in. Flora wondered if the windows were also boarded to prevent intruders from coming in. She had to strike off that idea though since it would be highly unlikely to have thieves climb
The five rooms where Flora had already taken the drapes down and pulled the sheets and blankets had been more or less the same. Flora could tell, however, that they were designed to have different personalities, as if they were designed for specific people. At first, it felt weird as she entered each room. They were roughly of the same size and layout. The types of furniture were also similar to each other. Yet, as she entered each one and did her inspections before taking down the drapes and removing the blankets and sheets, she felt as if she were entering a new house. It felt like she as if she were seeing the room of a different person, as if the room had its own personality. She had worked briefly in a hotel as a room attendant where the rooms were almost identical and, in a way, she also expected the same in the mansion. However, each of the rooms felt much different to the others and Flora sensed that different personalities could have possibly designed each room. Why that was s
As Flora was already halfway through all of the rooms in the south wing, she wondered if any of them had been occupied by guests before. She thought that it was a shame for such beautiful rooms to remain unoccupied and yet efforts were exerted by servants like herself in maintaining them. Flora was in the middle of the dim corridor. In the middle of the coffin, she thought to herself. There was a portrait just between the fourth and sixth room that she was about to enter, and Flora found the sitters in the portrait just as frightening as the others. It was an idyllic scene of a small pond in the middle of a lush forest. The leaves of the trees were emerald green while the ground was covered with grass that were given a deeper shade of green. The painting was quite detailed and Flora could see that there were insects in some of the blades of grass, nibbling away at the green leaves, while on the trees were some animals as well. She saw two woodpeckers knocking on the branches. Flora co
Flora did not know what to do and she stood frozen by the dresser, staring at the strange vision of the young man reaching out a hand to her from behind the curtains. The young man's eyes looked dazed as if heavily intoxicated. His hand gripped the edge of the bed as he tried to pull himself up. He made a soft gasp as he emerged from between the curtains. Then, a white slender arm reached across his shoulder while another went around his bare chest like tentacles. The man looked at Flora with his dazed eyes. He lost his grip on the side of the bed and with his mouth gaped open, he slid backwards into the shadows behind the curtain.Flora stood there by the dresser for just a few moments, but it felt to her like long agonizing minutes as she did not know what to make of the scene that she just saw. Then, flabbergasted, Flora left the room in haste, trying not to make any sound. She was embarrassed at having entered the room that was still occupied with Mr. Dante’s guests and she realize
The dazed expression on the face of Mr. Dante’s guest burned an afterimage in Flora’s mind. Mr. Renan’s face suddenly emerging from the darkness of the curtains covering the bed was shocking to Flora who least expected to see the guest inside one of the rooms in the south wing. First of all, Flora knew that Mr. Renan’s room was in the north wing, after having gone there with Pablo earlier in the day. Flora had interpreted the silence from his room when Pablo knocked earlier as the guest being terribly tired and just did not want to be disturbed, even if it was to eat breakfast. Seeing Mr. Renan in the south wing revealed a different story.Flora recalled the last time she saw the young man. It was just the previous night when he was smoking a cigarette on the terrace. Then, he was approached by the three women wearing white flowing dresses before Flora lost sight them as she entered the servants’ quarters. Their laughs however were distinct and Flora likened them to the laughing hyenas