Recently I found myself thinking about a strange situation from my childhood.
My aunt, my mother’s sister, lived in another city and we went to visit her every two months or so. Something strange always happened related to my uncle, her husband. We would get together for dinner or whatever and my uncle was never there. He always arrived in the middle of the “event” very tired and exhausted from the day’s work. He would arrive, greet the family, talk for a few minutes and go upstairs to take a shower and go to bed. I remember him being a funny guy, but he always looked tired and was rarely present. If I look at birthday photos from that time, he isn’t in any of them, as he was always working.
Anyway, the other day I was at my mother’s house and I discussed this subject with her. She was a little disconcerted and said, “Your uncle always worked very hard, poor thing. Maybe that’s why he passed away so early.” I asked her what he was working on that he was always so absent from. She was once again disconcerted and said “I don’t know for sure, your aunt says it was in a factory or something.”
It turns out that talking to my mother, I became intrigued, because I realized that my mother had as many unanswered questions as I did. I felt like she thought it was weird too.
I took a vacation recently and took the opportunity to visit my aunt, who had been having health problems since my uncle had passed away.
I was very sad when I got there and saw that the house where we spent good memories was now aged and almost abandoned in appearance. My aunt was very happy to see me, I was a little scared by her appearance, I don’t know if it was due to her illness, but she looked much older than she actually was. Anyway, we remembered several memories, we were moved when she said that she considered me a son, since she and my uncle tried for many years and never managed to get pregnant. When she spoke about my uncle I took the opportunity to talk about that subject, my mistake, perhaps.
I spoke in a casual tone, “Speaking of uncle, what did he actually work with, aunt?” She immediately turned pale and made a scared and at the same time angry face at me. She replied with a somewhat harsh tone, “He worked in a factory. And how is your mother?” I realized I touched a delicate point, but I was more curious than ever, so “She’s great auntie, we were actually talking about her uncle’s work a few weeks ago.” She quickly got up and went towards the kitchen, where she dropped something. We were silent for a few minutes that felt like hours. I thought about her fragile health and had already decided to leave the matter aside, but then she came from the kitchen and before I could say anything she said “Look, son, I’m going to tell you something and you’ll think that I’m crazy. I don’t care. I don’t have long to live either, so it’s better if someone hears it from me.”
Then she told me the story of my uncle’s work. She says she doesn’t know all the details of how he got the job, but my uncle said that one day he was in a bar and a very tall man approached him asking if he wanted to earn some extra money. This man gave him an address and asked him to arrive at the place at 8:30 in the morning and knock on the door. Anyway, so he started working at this place. He told me that two other men and two women worked with him. There was an industrial treadmill, this treadmill was connected to a kind of brass box that held VHS tapes and the work consisted of taking these tapes, rewinding them with a tool, placing them in a box and writing a number on the box that was passed to them every start of the day. That was just the job. At the end of the day, that same tall man came and brought payment for the work.
Until then, a strange but ordinary job. Then my aunt continued “Son, your uncle died without being able to explain what was happening there, I think in the end it just took away his health. The first time he told me I thought he was joking, you remember how he had that dark sense of humor He told me that on the first day he came in to do the work, approximately an hour and twenty later the work day ended, the man brought the money, which according to him were wet, moldy and very aged-looking notes, and explained that every day they should leave 5 minutes apart from each other. He said that a woman came out, 5 minutes later a man, 5 minutes later another man, and then another 5 minutes he left. Son, I get goosebumps all the time I remember him telling me this story. Your uncle was a joker, but never a liar. He said that when he walked through the door he felt enormously tired, a great fatigue, and realized that it was already night outside. He looked at the clock and there were It had been 12 hours since he had entered that factory. Which was impossible, since he had been in there for just over an hour.”
Naturally I had no reaction. I know my aunt had no reason to lie to me, and I could see truth and wonder in every word she spoke. Then she continued “That night he came home very dejected and scared, took a large amount of moldy and dirty money out of his pocket, and told me this story.” She took out of a small wooden box some notes that could easily be 100 years old by the looks of them and showed them to me. It was the supposed money he received for his work. I could see that it was the currency, nothing wrong there, but it was as if they had been excavated from beneath an ancient ruin, they were so aged. She continued “Our life changed from then on, he had no explanation for that, but he was earning well so he decided to continue with that job. After a few years we could see that his health was becoming more fragile, the doctors had no definition of what was happening , but we knew it had something to do with that job.”
She looked at me with a “that’s it” look on her face. I realized that this was a very delicate subject to discuss with her, I tried to change the subject to a lighter one and so my visit continued, although it seemed that after that story, we were both pretending, acting.
When I was saying goodbye to her and going to the car, she grabbed my hand and put a piece of paper in it, I opened it and it was an address. She looked at me and said “Son, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go there, but who knows, maybe you’ll find an explanation for that.”
It must have been around 8 pm when I left my aunt’s house, so I decided to go to the address that wasn’t too far away. It wasn’t difficult to find the place, which from the outside didn’t have much, it just looked like a very old house, with peeling paint and rotten wooden windows. I looked through the crack in one of the windows and it was completely dark, with the little light that came in from the street I could tell for sure that the house was abandoned and was definitely no longer a factory. I turned to go back to the car, when I heard the sound of an old and heavy wooden door opening, when I looked back I saw a very elderly woman coming out of that house. She didn’t see me, she left with her head down and turned the corner.
Well, there was definitely something going on in there. So I opened the door and entered. Just like I had seen before, the place was dark and abandoned. A strong musty smell wafted through the place, everything was very dusty. With the little light that came in, I could see in the background what looked like an old industrial treadmill, also very dusty and rusty. On top of the mat there was a cardboard box and inside was a VHS tape. Well, at that moment I believed my uncle’s story, in a way.
I quickly grabbed the tape and went home to view the contents on an old VHS player I had saved.
The tape appears to be a home recording of a children’s birthday party. It shows family members interacting with children. The tape suddenly cuts to another family gathering, it appears to be a barbecue, everyone talking normally. It took a while for me to realize that the person filming seemed to be out of sight of the people involved, as if he was filming hidden. Again the camera cuts to an empty room, and again the person filming appears to be hidden. A few seconds later a boy enters the room, takes off his shirt, sits on the bed looking at a mirror, extends his hand slowly towards the mirror, the lights in the room blink frantically, when the boy goes to touch his own reflection the observer leaves with the camera where he was hiding and says quietly but audibly “You can’t go to Sombralina”. The camera lowers, a sharp noise appears in the recording, which abruptly cuts to footage of the barbecue again.