After a while, Pablo knocked on the door again. Flora looked at Pablo’s face that had started to look strained. When there was still no reply nor any sound of movement coming from inside the guest’s room, Pablo turned to Flora.“Go back to the dining room and wait for me there.” Pablo’s voice was hushed, but it was stern and commanding and Flora knew that she needed to go at once.Flora immediately turned back and went down the corridors and the staircase without looking back at Pablo. As she walked, she could not help but think what could have happened. Is Mr. Renan sick or had he overslept? It did not take long however before her dim surroundings and the pale faces of the portraits hanging on the walls made Flora uneasy and all that she could think about was getting back to the dining room as fast as she could. Soon, she was able to breathe a sigh of relief when she opened the door to the dining room. Not knowing what else to do, she jus

The whole south wing looked forbidding to Flora. She had not gone to all the areas of the house and had seen only the rooms where she had worked including the laundry area, the kitchen and the dining room, but there was something about the silence and the atmosphere of the south wing that made her a bit more nervous than usual. For one thing, it was darker than the other places she had been to, lending much to its ominous atmosphere. There were only a few lightbulbs on the ceiling that shed just small circles of focused light on the carpet. The plants and decorations casted eerie shadows and patterns on the walls and it was not quite easy to imagine peering eyes and dark faces looking and sneering at her.Flora had not felt the same feeling since high school when she and Perlita were forced to stay later than their classmates to clean the classroom as punishment for coming in late from recess. They had become so engrossed with sharing stories and recalling the movie they had just seen

“Are you sure you don’t want to wash at the lavatories?” Perlita asked Flora, seeing her friend’s arms had smudges of dirt from cleaning the windowpanes.“D-do you want to go?” asked Flora, her voice wavering.“I think I need to go to the bathroom,” replied Perlita. “Maybe we can just go there for a quick wash and pee before we go home.”Flora also felt that her bladder was full and that she would not be able to hold her urine for long. She relented and nodded at Perlita. “I think I need to go too. Let’s just hurry up.”The two girls finished sweeping the floor and collected the dust and dirt in their dust pans. Afterwards, they placed the dust in the trash cans at the back of the room. They also hung the brooms they used at the hook behind the door while the rags went to drawer where they normally kept the soiled rags.“Let’s just wash those tomorrow. We can come here early,” suggested Perlita.“Yes,” agreed Flora. “We really need to get going. I just hope the landlady’s not waiting a

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

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