Necesito Comida

[I need to eat]

The sun hangs low in the sky and the shadows grow long as Andrew walks tiredly up the empty cobblestone street. The street lights have yet to come on, the quiet is dense and eerie. No pedestrians, no autos, just his footsteps echoing off old brick buildings to either side of the narrow passage.

Andrew is exhausted. The flight had taken forever and he was cramped tightly between other impatient passengers the entire trip. Traveling for what felt like days had left them all edgy and irritable. He now just wants to get to his room as quickly as possible, strip off the stale, sweat stained clothes and collapse into a soft bed.
‘Necesito comida…’
Startled by the suddenness of the low, raspy voice breaking the silence, Andrew leaps sideways. He stops and looks in the direction of the voice. A cold chill runs down his neck, he can feel his heartbeat quicken. A frail, bony hand and arm protrude from a tattered old sleeve and reaches out from an alcove darkened by the twilight shadows.
‘Necesito comida,’ the wretched figure repeats feebly from the shadows. The bony hand opens revealing two small, dull copper coins lying flat in a dirty palm, six cents. Andrew’s hand closes in his pocket around the two euro coins he feels there. He starts to pull them out for the beggar, but he hesitates. Hauntingly dark, sunken eyes stare at him from the shadows. Unnerved, he quickly averts his gaze and hurries off, the change still secure in his pocket.
The wretch’s dark image paints a gloom on his already heavy mood and he quickens his stride. Shortly Andrew reaches the hostel he’s booked and he impatiently checks in. He gets a key and heads to his room. He drops his bag on the floor next to a little wooden table that stands at the foot of the bed and he empties his pockets. The sound of the two euros clinking onto the rough hewn wooden surface fills the room for a moment. Barely noticing he flops onto the small bed, too tired to strip off his now rank travel clothes and the darkness swallows him.
…
The baker inserts his key to lock up the bakery for the day, but before turning it he yelps with surprise as the wretched beggar pleads hoarsely from the darkness, ‘necesito comida’. The wretch reaches out his hand offering six cents and points to a leftover crust on the shelf in the window. With a shaky hand the wretch points to his open mouth. Between a few well decayed teeth he repeats, ‘necesito comida.’ The baker, angry at the wretch for startling him, spins the lock closed with contempt and hurries down the passageway muttering to himself. His quick footsteps fade with the sunlight’s last orange rays.
The wretch slowly hobbles back to his dark alcove, gingerly lowers himself onto the hard steps and leans against the cold stone wall. His frail outstretched arm flops into the passageway and his hand falls open. The two coins drop to the cobblestone with a hollow ringing that somehow echoes more than it should down the quiet passageway.
…
Awakening with a jolt, Andrew sits upright, momentarily confused by the unfamiliar surroundings. He sits quietly collecting his thoughts, slowly reorients himself with his surroundings and recalls his trip. After sitting a while longer letting the fog clear, he gets to his feet with a groan, stretches, and strips off his travel clothes to clean up for the day. Once ready to leave he swipes the change off the table into his hand. Before dropping it into his pocket, he pauses, noticing two small dull copper coins he doesn’t recall from the previous night, along with the two gleaming euro coins. He dismisses the curiosity, chalking it up to travel fatigue, drops them into his pocket and heads out for the day’s adventures.
That evening as shadows begin creeping into the room, Andrew returns to the little room and drops his change onto the old, weatherbeaten table. He glances down, absently counting the coins in his head, three euros and seventy cents. He readies himself for bed and quickly drifts off into a deep slumber, the jet lag still weighing heavily on him.
Early the following morning he again wakes with a start and bolts upright, his heart pounding in his chest. What had interrupted his sleep? Was there a voice? What did it say? As he sits on the edge of the bed again waiting for his senses to return, he tries to remember the dream that surely must have woken him. In a distant room he hears what sounds like two coins drop to the floor, one after the other. They clink on the floor then jingle briefly as they spin and settle flat. ‘Next time I need a better room’, he thinks to himself, musing how thin the walls must be to let sound travel so easily between them.
After showering and dressing, Andrew reaches to grab his change from the table at the foot of his bed, but pauses. He counts three euros and seventy-six cents. He was pretty sure those two dull copper coins were not there the night before. ‘The jet lag must have been heavier than I thought,’ he convinces himself. Still, odd, very odd.
The next night, the notion of the miscounted copper coins still nags at him. Before crawling under the covers he goes back to the rickety old table and again counts his change. Two euros and forty-two cents. He laughs to himself at this morning’s apparent lapse in memory and considers writing his count down on the yellowed page of a notepad that sits on the table. He disregards the thought, assuring himself that he certainly can remember two euros and forty-two cents. He returns to bed, and quickly falls into a very deep, but troubled sleep.
‘CORIDA!’
Reflexively Andrew throws the bed covers right off and jumps to his feet, his heart racing, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. The hoarse voice was inside his room, shouting right from the foot of his bed! Wasn’t it? Was he again dreaming? He stands there shivering from the suddenly chilly room while his eyes adjust to the dark. He strains to see what is in the room with him, but…not wanting to see it at all. A coin drops from the shabby table with a dull ring as it hits the floor. His shivering intensifies, not entirely from the chill. His heart pounds even harder. He steps backward to the wall, eyes straining to see what had knocked the coin to the floor, to see who had shouted at him.
After several tense moments, Andrew convinces himself he is alone in the room. He walks slowly to the foot of his bed to be sure. While standing there next to the table a second coin drops to the floor at his feet, the jangling sound causing him to jump backwards. Looking to see where it had dropped, Andrew notices his bag on the floor next to where he had been standing. How could the coin have hit the floor making that distinct jingling sound with his bag there? After again assuring himself he is alone, he walks to the table and lifts his bag to look for the coins. He finds nothing. ‘That’s…strange,’ he thinks to himself. Where could they have rolled to? As his mind works on solving that problem, a new chill runs up and down his back. On that wretched little table sits two euros and forty-eight cents.
Shaken badly by the dream voice and the ghost coins, Andrew tries to convince himself that there has to be a logical explanation. The walls of his room are quite thin, he reminds himself. Next time he will get a better room. He chuckles, admonishing himself for not writing down two euros and forty-eight cents before sleeping. Tomorrow he’ll be on his way home. His own comfy bed will ease the jet lag and the tricks it plays on the mind.
Try as he might, though, he can’t completely shake the dreadful feeling the ghost coins leave in his belly. When he returns to the room that final evening he lays his change out carefully on that wretched table and counts it out loud. He writes the total, seven euros and eighty-three cents, on the yellowed notepad page. There will be no mystery tomorrow morning when he packs to leave!
Late the following morning, the lock rattles cleaning lady lets herself into the room to ready it for the next occupant. She sees a handful of coins laid out neat and flat on the little wooden table. She thinks it odd. Most people just drop their change into a pile. Seven euros and eighty-three cents, that’s a lot of money for someone to have left behind for the cleaning lady, she muses with a slight grin.
She notices the bag on the floor and realizes Andrew has not yet checked out. Glancing at the bed she realizes someone still lies there. She opens her mouth to voice an apology, backing towards the door, then screams loudly with fright. The bluish tint of his face betrays the fact that Andrew has already departed, leaving a dull copper coin on each of his eyelids.

Author: Ken Gack, the Ripper

Ken did stay at this hostel in Barcelona, Spain. He heard the ghostly coins fall from that wretched table. They jingled as they dropped onto the floor at his feet. Although the story and the reason for the ghostly coins in this hostel are quite possibly imagined, a ghost quite clearly wanders these halls and rooms.