Modern times, civilization and technology saved Pablo a lot of time on this excursion, although it was already half past twelve when he arrived at Monistrol at the foot of the mountain. But from there, taking the cogwheel train, it took him less than ten minutes to reach a point that would otherwise have taken him hours to reach.
Compared to the terrible mountain that he remembered from millennia ago, the arrival of civilization had had a strange effect. On the one hand, it was still the same imposing sight, the same overwhelming stones, even the fact that it was a place of religious worship gave the monastery a certain mystical air. But on the other hand, the tourists taking photos, the stalls where he himself bought a mató, a fresh cheese with honey typical of the area, had distorted part of the wild nature of the area.
He had to be guided by pure memory, he went to a viewing point to be able to count the peaks of the mountain and to be able to find his way. The location had to be above the sanctuary that was separated from the main complex on the mountain. It was an hour's walk, since he had to leave his bike tied up before going up there. Also, after reaching the small chapel, he still had a long way to go around rocks.
He didn't even know if he could get there with that human body; he didn't have the skills or strength of his old self. He started walking with the feeling of a pilgrim who is approaching the goal, with a certain nostalgia and uncertainty and the feeling of being fulfilled just by walking the path.
Luckily, Friday mornings were not the days when most tourists came to Montserrat, nor was the path he was going to take one of the busiest. When he skirted the mountain to reach the area where it was said that the carving of the Virgin had been discovered, a strange thought came to his mind.
It was curious that the Virgin had been discovered precisely there in a cave, a few meters below that mystical place to which he was heading, that ancient sanctuary. The security guards at the complex were distracted helping some tourists who were still planning to go further along the path to the last viewpoint on the mountain. He, on the other hand, moved away from the path, the escaping slope made a narrow and vertical ravine between the rocks that rose upwards some fifty meters. Luckily there was vegetation and handholds to hold on to, but that did not mean he was less at risk of falling off a cliff if he took a wrong step.
He continued climbing to the top of the cliff where the ravine widened and formed a small V, from there he had about twenty more complicated meters of climbing on the rock to be able to reach a small hollow that served as a landing.
He was sweating, the sun was stinging him and his muscles were tense from a life or death effort, but with his heightened senses he could detect any loose stone before grabbing hold of any handhold and with his physique, climbing up at the end was just a matter of sweat.
That little hollow was what he was looking for. To anyone it was just a natural formation in the rock, a small cavity made by the water as it flowed down from the peaks, but to him who had been there before it was the door to the sanctuary.
Unlike the rest of the smooth walls, with large planks and paths, this was a wall where several stones the size of half a man were piled up at the bottom. He could not, nor should he, throw the stones down the slope; he could only use leverage and force to move them away.
Never in the seventeen years that Ashan's consciousness had been living with Pablo had he missed his vampire body as much as he did at that moment. Not only did his muscles show signs of fatigue from climbing a difficult wall, but also the stones he was trying to move were of an impossible magnitude of weight. Pulling on his strongest leg muscles, he managed to move the largest rock. Ten centimeters, twenty, thirty. When he moved it half a meter, what he found was the hole, the devil's hole he was looking for. Although it was full of slime, it was still the same water runoff through which the master had put him in.
Cautiously, he tied a light rope to the stone and began to slip through that hole that went into the mountain. Although he had to use force to go down it, he barely fit due to his corpulence, luck had wanted that the passage of time had not collapsed the tunnel.
It was a natural chimney of more than fifty meters with a slope that in some points almost exceeded verticality, but with the rope, and helping himself with his strength and the narrowness of the tunnel, he was able to descend slowly but steadily.
The tunnel finally opened up into a main gallery, full of stalactites and stalagmites. This part of the gallery did not connect with the old caves of Montserrat, now mostly explored, it was on the other side of the mountain and much higher, only some drains carry rainwater from there to the other complex of caves but without it being possible to know that this natural wonder existed.
The cave was no more than five meters in diameter although its roof was almost perfectly round, as if some hands had chiseled it little by little. With the light from the screen of his mobile phone, Pablo had enough light to be able to locate the small circle worn by millennia in the middle of the room. To any eye they would be just some small meaningless grooves created by some prehistoric inhabitant.
But if you looked from above and knew what it was for, the concept was much more sublime. It was the great altar of prophecy, the primordial place where the great master Athod took refuge the first nights after being transformed into a vampire and where he locked himself in to control his hunger.
He meditated there for decades, until he was not only sure that he could control himself but that he had found the truth.
The previous time Ashan himself came, he had meditated inside the cave for more than a year until he had the revelation, the one that guided him to study the parasite, the seals and the phylactelia. The vision was nothing more than disjointed reflections, but being able to reach it was very revealing for him.
And now here he was again. He didn't have years to spend in the cave, he would just do the ritual and sit down. If providence and prophecy appeared, it was not something he could guarantee, and even less so without having yet recovered his powers.
He lit the candle, using a small knife he carried in his backpack to cut the tip of his finger and traced all the grooves, soaking them with his blood. On a small promontory of the circle he left the blood-stained fishing line with which he had just killed a criminal a few hours before.
He sat directly in the center between the candle and the promontory and from his mouth began to sound a litany so ancient, so old that even he had never managed to learn the language, he had only memorized it completely as Athod had told him.
Pablo began to concentrate on the candle, on how it was burning, on his breathing, on the cave where with every second he could see more and more symbols engraved on the walls, in the areas where there were no stalactites on the ground beyond the circle.
When the candle burned out, the most complete darkness assaulted Pablo, it was a complete sensory deprivation, it was like being in a vacuum. And then he fainted.
When he tried to open his eyes he began to see a disco with people dressed as goths, a business building made entirely of metal without a single exterior window, a modern monument, and then the fire, the war, the blood splashing the walls, there was a woman with long hair and the flash of a camera, then shadows running free in the night through the streets. He was sure it was Barcelona, he wanted to see where the shadows went, he wanted to know, but before he could reach his destination he noticed that red eyes were looking at him, he knew those eyes, he knew that look better than anyone, they were the eyes of his teacher.
At that moment Pablo woke up startled, he didn't know how long he had been unconscious nor could he know the meaning of his vision. He groped for his cell phone and looked at the time, it was two thirty in the afternoon, he had been unconscious for more than half an hour.
Using the cell phone, the rope and his strength, Pablo began to climb towards the exit, his breathing was agitated, as if he had the need to go back up to the surface and get out of there. When he reached the hollow in the mountain he hurried to reposition the stone, making a titanic effort that almost caused him to fall down the slope. When he was ready to begin the descent he noticed how a climbing rope fell just above him, he looked out to see how two young boys were going to begin the rappel descent from the summit. Had they discovered him?
However, from the surprised faces the boys made when they saw him it seemed that they were not expecting him there.
"Holy shit, what the hell are you doing there without a rope?"
Pablo had to find an excuse and quickly.
"Free climbing, but I got stuck at this point, I was thinking of going down now"
"Free climbing in Montserrat and with those sports shoes? You're crazy, let us get to your height and we'll help you out."
The two climbers kept scolding him all the way for the stupidity he had committed in climbing up there. They had climbed that route early in the morning to attack one of the most difficult vertical climbing areas up on the summits.
But with the rope and some help, Pablo managed to reach the holy cave without any mishap.
Acting repentant, he invited two beers to the boys who were a little older than him in one of the bars in the complex, and finally went back down to Monistrol. From there he picked up his bike and went straight back to Barcelona.