SHORT STORY THE MEDIUM
THE MEDIUM
Automatic traslation from the original story in Spanish. Not checked manually
It was three forty-five in the afternoon. Sara was opening the door to her office. She had a new client at four and she had to get everything ready.
While she was preparing the room, she remembered the young man’s call. She had asked him to connect with her recently deceased father who, in addition to the immense pain of the loss, her mother had been left without financial resources… She had not asked him any more questions, perhaps because the situation that she had to live through years ago was similar. a lot.
Thirty years ago, she was lucky enough to meet a man. A wonderful man, who also thanks to his work (he was a prestigious presenter), had an unbeatable economy. He only had one problem: he was married and at the moment he did not feel ready to divorce his wife.
Despite everything, they went to live together. He and his wife had been living separate lives for quite some time. Everything was perfect. She was sure that soon she would have the strength to tackle the divorce. She had even made him quit his job as a cashier in a store.
For five years they had led a perfect life, with financial comfort and without depriving themselves of anything. Sometimes it felt like a dream…
One morning the phone rang. It was the time the broadcast ended, she missed him, but she quickly picked him up thinking he was calling her for something… But, it wasn’t him. It was the Civil Traffic Guard that informed her of the unfortunate accident in which her partner had lost her life…
After several days of despair, she had to face another harsh reality. She had no money nor could she access her partner’s accounts, since her possible heirs had blocked them by notifying the banks of his death. Neither She had no success trying to claim a widow’s pension. Because it had already been awarded to his wife.
Shortly after, she had to leave home and had nothing… she would live with a cousin – her parents lived in another country and the truth is that she had not helped them either during this period of opulence – she would look for a job and start again.
It was not so easy to find something that would allow him to rent an apartment and live at a certain standard. He finally decided that he would set up an office as a medium. He had no idea about it, but a friend, who was dedicated, had explained to him that with a little skill and a few tricks, people were easily influenced and a lot of money could be made from them.
She invested the little she had in renting an office, she decorated it in an esoteric way and as her friend had taught her, she prepared some devices that she could activate with a remote control that made gloomy sounds… They should be played very quietly, she had told her, in this way clients would perceive them as whispers from beyond the grave.
She prepared some scripts to release to customers appropriately and get them to spend as much as possible. It was a different time, in 1993 people were still very fond of occultism and it worked very well almost from the first moment.
Most clients wanted to contact a recently deceased family member. She performed a certain theatre pretending to enter a trance and after a few minutes, she surreptitiously pressed a control hidden under the table and certain noises began to be heard, like feet dragging with difficulty.
Then some very small blowers, which she started with a tiny pedal hidden in a leg of the table, made the flame of the candles that were profusely distributed on the table move noticeably…
Over the years she perfected it and instead of a remote control, the sounds were activated with her voice when she said certain words…
Then she said in a deep and strange voice: “Is that you, and she mentioned the name that had been indicated to her…?”
She did not get a response and insisted: “Is that you, and did she mention the name that had been indicated to her…?” “If you can’t speak, knock three times” Then three very muffled knocks sounded as if they were coming from inside a tomb… At that moment the consultant’s face was already white, scared and deeply convinced that his relative had attended the appointment…
Suddenly she simulated spasms and feverishly screamed: “No, no…! “It’s not that way… follow the light…!” Three more knocks sounded again, after a moment three more sounded… Then she simulated a few more spasms and finally with a tired air and breathing with difficulty she came out of her “trance…”
She usually waited a few seconds and the customer with a visibly impressed face asked: What’s wrong? Has something happened to my relative…?
Madame Sara—that’s what she called herself—answered him… “No. Nothing happens to him. She is on an intermediate plane from which she cannot communicate, but I have perceived that she is well and is seeking the light. There must have been something left to resolve in this life and that means that sometimes they find themselves trapped between two worlds. But I have had the opportunity to perceive the love that she feels for you.”
The client used to ask: What can do?
To which she responded: “If you want him to find peace, you have to guide him to the light with some rituals, the problem is that when they have been trapped between two planes, sometimes it takes them years to be able to communicate with us.”
90% paid the price they were asked to do the ritual and never came back… In addition, they used to recommend their services if someone asked them.
Just then the doorbell brought her out of her musings. She went to open it.
—Good afternoon, are you Manuel? —She asked solicitously.
—Yes, it’s me, Madame Sara. —She responded.
-Sit down please.
After a few minutes, she began the session with the script learned from her, less than half an hour later, after a few death rattles, she came out of her “trance.”
Manuel had an expression of surprise on her face, which she assumed, as usual, was due to the impression of the “ghostly contact,” but Manuel simply asked: And…?
She also blurted out the explanation of the plans and the light, waiting for the ritual to be ordered, but this time she was surprised by the response…
—Before doing any ritual, I would like to try a new session. I’m almost sure that my father had nothing left in this world to solve. Possibly in a new session we will be able to contact him. When do you think we can meet? —Manuel asked, while he placed the amount of the visit on the table, which he had told her when he called her, to make the appointment.
Sara, with a kind expression, opened her calendar and looked for a time for the new appointment. She gave it to him for seven days. “Of course,” she added, “In my experience I cannot guarantee that the results you obtain will be significantly different from those of today.”
—I am convinced that they will be…
“I wish,” she replied as she walked him to the door.
When she came out, she thought: “This one is even more profitable. In addition to the ritual that he will surely ask for, he will have spent two visits.”
Meanwhile, on Manuel Street… well, actually the man’s name was Pedro, she smiled. He had achieved what he set out to do.
A year ago, when her father died, her mother visited this forger, who took a lot of money from her, leaving her in a dire financial situation. Luckily, he, who was a special effects specialist in film, made a pretty good living and was able to help her. He didn’t want to tell her anything because what was true was that she felt better, thinking that she had helped her husband find the light…
But he had decided to investigate. One day he passed by Madame Sara’s stairs and knocked on another floor, when they asked him what he wanted, he said it was business mail and like, mistakenly, most people do, they opened the door for him. He looked at the mailboxes and found out Sara’s last name – who had not even bothered to change her name – and thanks to friends on television, after a while he became aware of the relationship she had with a man. announcer. This allowed her to have recordings of his voice, with which she would prepare her revenge.
To do this he needed to know what special light and sound effects Madame Sara used to suggest her victims.
He now already knew it. The system used, although sufficient to impress people with unbalanced emotional states due to some loss, was actually quite simple and crude. It had been enough for her to place a sound player, which was activated by her voice and depending on the phrase it made certain sounds…
For example, when she asked twice in a row, “Are you…?”, three knocks sounded… When she said, “No, no…!” Three knocks sounded and an instant later three more knocks. As for the blowers installed under the crocheted rug of her table, she activated them by pressing with her foot a tiny pedal located on the leg of the table to the right of her. All very simple but effective to impress minds disturbed by pain and in need of healing her wound.
She was going to pay him in her own coin. Using artificial intelligence, she would prepare a message with the speaker’s voice, slightly distorted to give a sensation of the afterlife. She would install him on a sound player that would activate when he asked, “Do you think he’s coming…?”
Although it wasn’t cold, he would put on a jacket that he would hang on the rack that was right next to the furniture from which the supposed noises from beyond the grave came and she would enjoy watching the scammer’s reaction when she heard the voice of her husband. she…
The long-awaited day arrived for the new visit and as Pedro, the woman, expected, followed exactly the same scheme…
At the moment that Madame Sara asked “Is it you, Marcial” – that was the fictitious name that Pedro had chosen for her father – without giving her time to make the second invocation Pedro asked “Do you think he will come…?”
Suddenly a voice from beyond the grave that, with a ululating voice, prolonged each word, filled the room: No, Manuel! Will not come. Sara is a scammer… she has never cared about anyone. She didn’t even love me. Only I was dazzled by my money… When I realized I was so obsessed that I got distracted and that’s why I had the accident…
Madame Sara, absolutely distraught, was stammering trying to pronounce the name of her former companion… she stood up from her chair, as if a spring had pushed her. Her face was white, almost dead. He was no longer paying attention to “Manuel” or his work table… Horror was reflected in his pale face… Just then, Pedro pressed a small bellows that he had hidden under the sleeve of his left arm and a gust of wind extinguished a couple of candles…
A huge scream from Sara preceded her fainting with her body on the ground. Without worrying about it, Pedro picked up his jacket, left the amount of the visit on the table, and left…
He hoped that when he regained consciousness and found the money, he would think that he had also left scared by what had happened, which would increase the terror of the experience even more for her, if possible.
Every day Pedro looked at the advertisement section in the newspapers, where Madame Sara’s advertisements never appeared again, nor did her website exist on the Internet. After a few months, he knew that his revenge had been effective and definitive.
That same day, Sara had died of a heart attack.
Her ads, it is logical, disappeared when she stopped paying, but what about the website, who made it disappear…? Maybe the dead presenter…? We will never know.
The Medium – Short stories series – Copyright ©Montserrat Valls and Juan Genovés