Like the flickering, jittery images from a 1920s film, the memories of that old house were I spent many a summer started to become dust. My mind was in a state of decay, no longer able to differentiate between a real memory and the embellished stories that were like a botched plastic surgery. Blame it on the rose tinted glasses we all wear.

I pass my hand over the old record player that Grampa Humberto had on the dining room. It’s all dusty and I’m sure the valves are all now busted, a combination of the shit electrical installation the city received after the hurricane of 58 and the musty humidity that makes you feel like a chicken in a spit roast.

I get out Rachmaninoff‘s Symphony No. 1. I clean the album, religiously, just like Gramps used to when he taught me how to handle vinyl in the summer of ’88. The vinyl is still intact. I play it and instead of those powerful, goose pimple givin’ sounds, I get some strange noises, like those ghostly voices you can supposedly hear in televisions and radios. It was like the ‘voices of a broken machine’, chaotically spiralling out and in control. The room trembled and although I only wanted  to make the cacophony stop, I couldn’t.

The record stopped after 13 minutes. I flip it on the side and wait for the needle to drop. The otherworldly sounds, like the transmissions from lost cosmonauts still flying in space, boom out of the speakers, specks of dust flying as a droning, sustained sound makes way for a pounding repeat of drums. What is this? A note? A note is sticking from the sleeve. It reads ‘They gather on the horizon’. It’s my Gramps’ handwriting, I recognise it.

A couple of numbers are written there too. He used to enjoy these type of riddles, the old cantankerous fool! I do recognise them as chess moves and I look at the pile of strategy books he collected. Reading them felt tiring at first, but I soldiered on, feeling like a droning bee, buzzing my way to work, back and forth, back and forth.

I could feel the excitement rising like the steady beat of a cymbal and an expansive, floaty guitar creating soundscape after soundscape. I eventually go for a book that is titled Smokescreen by Kellar. No surname. I look for the particular movement and I flip the pages, praying for some luck. There’s a photograph of a burnt pier. In the back there’s a series of numbers.

His old safe in his room! We never opened it. He never gave us the combination and we can’t afford a locksmith. I go to his old room, where the persistent smell of sandalwood still remains. The safe opens and there’s a can of film and a bunch of photographs. They differ little from each other and I put them on a stack and flip them rapidly. It’s a woman at the turn of the 20th century, she starts to float! What sort of phantasmagoria is this? Surely wires were involved! The title written in the last photo says ‘The levitation of Princess Karnak’.

I look at the film can. What is inside? Grandpa, what is the meaning of this? The phone rings. It’s my friend Aguirre. He has a projector. This isn’t luck. Wonder what’s in the film can? I’ll soon find out…

Words: Sam J. Valdés López.

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