Company N12

By Francisco Angulo de Lafuente

Francisco Angulo's thrilling new novel Company No. 12 offers readers a riveting glimpse into the mysterious inner workings of an elite Spanish military unit. Blending elements of psychological drama, paranormal suspense, and military fiction, Angulo has crafted a profound meditation on fear, authority, and the darkness potentially lurking within mankind.

 

Company No. 12 follows the journey of an unnamed 19-year-old protagonist who joins this secretive special forces company, only to find himself plunged into a terrifying world where cruel hazing rituals, ghostly apparitions, and unexplained deaths haunt the barracks. As sinister events begin to unfold around the protagonist, he must navigate the company's unfathomable rules and strict chain of command, all while questioning his own sanity.

 

Angulo's understated writing style masterfully builds suspense throughout this chilling tale. The atmospheric setting of the old stone barracks provides the perfect backdrop for the unsettling paranormal events, evoking a palpable sense of claustrophobia and unease. The remote mountain location, far removed from any civilians, only amplifies the feeling of isolation as the protagonist realizes he is trapped in a strange place from which there may be no escape.

 

By keeping both the protagonist and the readers in a state of confusion and dread, Angulo creates an aura of uncertainty regarding what is real and what is imagination. The terrors inflicted on the soldiers by their sadistic officers are all too concrete, yet the ghostly visitations allow just enough ambiguity to leave readers questioning the very nature of reality. The book frequently keeps the reader in the protagonist's limited viewpoint, not privy to the full picture, which maintains an undercurrent of tension and suspicion throughout.

 

The inscrutable officers themselves are a source of constant menace with their unfathomable motives and draconian methods for keeping the soldiers in line. Angulo does a masterful job depicting these enigmatic authority figures who seem to answer to no government or moral code, tormenting their troops and inflicting punishment and psychological torture for the smallest infractions. Through these chilling interactions, Angulo provokes profound questions about unquestioning obedience to authority and the darkness human beings are capable of when given total autonomy.

 

Company No. 12 derives much of its impact from the way Angulo utilizes understatement and restraint in his storytelling. Rather than spelling out every detail, he allows fear and tension to build gradually through implication and subtlety. Critical information is often conveyed indirectly or in an ambiguous manner that invites interpretation and analysis. The novella's open-ended conclusion likewise avoids definitive explanations, leaving many mysteries unresolved. Angulo trusts the reader to connect the dots without excessive exposition.

 

This new literary voice from Spain already shows great maturity and depth in his storytelling. With its sophisticated themes and nuanced approach to character and plot development, Company No. 12 should appeal to a wide range of mature readers. It will be of particular interest to fans of great psychological suspense writers like Alfred Hitchcock or Shirley Jackson. Unpredictable and utterly gripping, Angulo's tale of supernatural military horror heralds the arrival of an intriguing new talent on the literary scene.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Old Sailboat
• Release date: Sep 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223235071

Francisco Angulo de Lafuente

Francisco Angulo Madrid, 1976 Enthusiast of fantasy cinema and literature and a lifelong fan of Isaac Asimov and Stephen King, Angulo starts his literary career by submitting short stories to different contests. At 17 he finishes his first book - a collection of poems – and tries to publish it. Far from feeling intimidated by the discouraging responses from publishers, he decides to push ahead and tries even harder. In 2006 he published his first novel "The Relic", a science fiction tale that was received with very positive reviews. In 2008 he presented "Ecofa" an essay on biofuels, whereAngulorecounts his experiences in the research project he works on. In 2009 he published "Kira and the Ice Storm".A difficultbut very productive year, in2010 he completed "Eco-fuel-FA",a science book in English. He also worked on several literary projects: "The Best of 2009-2010", "The Legend of Tarazashi 2009-2010", "The Sniffer 2010", "Destination Havana 2010-2011" and "Company No.12". He currently works as director of research at the Ecofa project. Angulo is the developer of the first 2nd generation biofuel obtained from organic waste fed bacteria. He specialises in environmental issues and science-fiction novels. His expertise in the scientific field is reflected in the innovations and technological advances he talks about in his books, almost prophesying what lies ahead, as Jules Verne didin his time. Francisco Angulo Madrid-1976 Gran aficionado al cine y a la literatura fantástica, seguidor de Asimov y de Stephen King, Comienza su andadura literaria presentando relatos cortos a diferentes certámenes. A los 17 años termina su primer libro, un poemario que intenta publicar sin éxito. Lejos de amedrentarse ante las respuestas desalentadoras de las editoriales, decide seguir adelante, trabajando con más ahínco.

Book preview

Chapter 1

June 1992

Mediocre is definitely the adjective that best defines me. I never excelled or stood out at anything. I was born in the seventies and although I don't remember too much about that time, I do maintain that feeling that floated in the air. Those hippie university students who studied in the sixties were now starting to work; many of them chose to go into education, as they thought they could influence students with their new ideas, and revolutionize the world. I still fondly remember one of my second grade teachers. He was a strange but charismatic man, with his messy, uncombed medium-length hair, sparse poorly shaved beard, jeans and a peculiar old worn suede jacket. He always made us solve math problems at least three grades above ours; his classes were very intense, but after the work he always ended up telling some story about men who had defeated the greatest armies without using weapons, using only intellect. He himself organized the world peace day events that were held at school. On one occasion he told us to bring all the war toys we had at home, and so we did. We brought guns and machine guns and they exchanged them for educational or traditional games like spinning tops, diabolos, marbles, balls, etc. Then all the plastic weapons were burned in a large bonfire. It was a strange moment. 

I soon realized that the best thing was not to stand out, to remain unnoticed among the crowd. If a child was good at something, he was always expected to be good at it, and when he failed... What happened if he failed?

If you were too bad you had to go to special classes or be seen by a psychologist or special education specialist. Children who excelled at playing the piano spent all day practicing, while average kids like me had plenty of free time to go out and play.

In the last year of school, great emphasis was placed on recent history, democracy and the constitution. So we memorized those laws and tried to make some sense of them in the world around us. An arduous task, rewarded only with dismay and disappointment.

At fifteen all the rules I knew began to falter; at that age I started working. Construction was one of the toughest jobs and there I was, fifteen years old working as a laborer, doing the most unpleasant tasks: unloading a truck, carrying the material up the stairs to the top floor and, to top it off, putting up with the mockery of the older bricklayers. For them it was gratifying to laugh at the young novices, and they often planned some tasteless joke, without any grace, like making you take the material to a place where it was not needed or sending you to collect the tools from another work group without consent, causing a conflict, since they could think you wanted to steal from them. So I began to doubt everything I had learned. Here the laws and norms began to falter. The older bricklayers did whatever they wanted and we young people had to swallow everything that came our way. I earned a ridiculous salary, so I had to be very careful not to spend it all on food and transportation. No one forced me to work, theoretically it was prohibited and I should have kept studying, but there were two paths: working and being able to get a driver's license and with all savings buy a used car, or keep studying, wearing the clothes your mother wanted to buy you, with no possibility of having a car or going on vacation anywhere, without a penny on weekends, locked up at home, with the purpose of finishing a career, which does not guarantee that you will find work, so that, after studying until your mid or late twenties, you could end up without a penny dressed in clothes your siblings or cousins ​​no longer want to wear and working just as a laborer in construction. You also had to do the compulsory military service and at that age if you did not stand out too much among the recruits you were an outcast who could not find your place.

Military accident report 3842-17-8-1985

FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS of Lieutenant Castilla, the soldiers hang a steel cable between two trees, leaving it stretched from one bank to the other over the dry riverbed of the Portecillo river. The capstan is tightened with the usual ratchet device. In the center there is a twenty meter drop. The section measures fifty meters long, which is a considerable distance for a soldier to cross sliding down the cable, especially taking into account the equipment they carry: helmet and combat backpack, old wooden rifle El chopo. The terrain was dry, which facilitated grip. The first tests are carried out and the cable withstands the weight well. Lieutenant orders the soldiers to go one after the other, leaving just a few meters between them, this overloads the cable and with the movement of several soldiers who try to cross at the same time it begins to sway. All the recruits have a safety device, a cord tied around the waist and a carabiner that slides along the cable. In this way, in case of slipping, they remain attached. Throughout the day the same operation is repeated over and over again, the soldiers' strength, concentration and skill are diminishing with fatigue. They have to slide down the cable, lying down, with one leg leaning on it and the other hanging to maintain balance. As night begins to fall, many young men begin to falter, and they often slip off the capstan and are left hanging by the safety device, which gives them an adrenaline rush that makes them quickly return to position. It's soldier Manuel Santos's turn: fatigue makes him lose his balance just as he is halfway through the crossing, he tries to grab the cable but he has no strength left to climb back on, the safety device fails and he plunges into the void over the dry rocky riverbed from a height of 18 m. The medical assistance hastily goes down to the impact site, but they can only certify his death.

Chapter 2

June 4, 1992

Ihad received notification a few days ago that I was to report for military service after the summer. The unit and location were what I had selected. Some of my friends had already completed their compulsory military service and told me that it essentially consisted of acting as a servant for a year, having to serve in the cafeteria for officers, cleaning toilets, peeling potatoes, etc. All for free and usually hundreds of kilometers from home, so I thought that requesting to join a unit no one wanted to go to could solve some things for me: first I would choose the location and could be close to home, and second, maybe I could avoid working as a servant. I already had enough being a soldier, without also continuing to be scammed or even worse, exploited.

THE PREVIOUS SUMMER I only had five days of vacation; work did not seem to be a good solution to my problems. After about three years of work, I barely had any money, since the salary remained miserable and, what was worse, I also had no time to spend it. There was always a lot of work, so you couldn't take more than a week off per year for vacation. The job was so stressful that most men spent their weekends drinking at the bar trying to forget their miserable lives. Cellars full of lost souls, sinister drunks who drowned their sorrows in gin and stood for hours in front of a bar staring blankly, absentmindedly, enthralled by some absurd place, perhaps waiting, like those who wait at a bus stop for a bus that will never arrive. Perhaps it is the antechamber or perhaps purgatory, the same place they will one day enter.

Anyway, as I was saying, the previous summer I only had a few days of vacation, and since I barely had money to go anywhere, I invested my savings in a bicycle and spent those days traveling the roads, crossing sun-scorched lands. In a short time I went from enjoying three months of leisure in the summer as a kid, playing Indian in a small mountain village, to competing in productivity with the Chinese and Japanese. When I received the notification to report for military service I thought about taking advantage of that summer like in the old days, without money, but with time to meditate.

I already had my driver's license; I don't want to make any comments about it, but what a scam, another one of the rules that make the letters of our constitution dance. If you want to drive, you'd better toe the line and get along well with the instructor and the examiner, here the best drivers don't pass, those who get along best with the instructor pass, and for that you have to leave them a good sum of money and take all the classes they want to foist on you. But back to the matter at hand, since this driver's license business could fill more than one novel, I had a license and also a car. It was a car made the same year I was born, so we were the same vintage. The poor jalopy climbed hills in second or third gear at forty and sputtering like a wounded bull. I managed to get to the small village where my grandparents have a little house and stayed there, ready to spend the whole summer.

When we were thirteen, fourteen or fifteen we had a good group of friends, but now most of us worked and it was hard to get everyone together, even in August. The first few days I didn't have much to do, but talking to my friend Javier, he told me he had an old cross country moped that had been parked for several years due to an undetermined fault, but it didn't seem too damaged. I had a brand new welding kit that I couldn't use because the contracted power in my grandparents' house was minimal and when I tried to turn it on, it tripped the breaker. We made the exchange and both got to work fixing it up. After completely disassembling the engine and cleaning all the parts the problem was solved, so we were able to ride the mountain roads surrounding us, this time without pedaling and climbing the hills without blowing up.

Another way to pass the time and escape the summer heat was to go to the swimming pool. A good friend of mine worked there as a lifeguard, so I went frequently and we spent the afternoons chatting. Until early August there were hardly any vacationers in town, so there weren't many people and we all knew each other. The weekends were different since in the small town we had two pubs, a disco bar and a discotheque, many people came from the surrounding villages and even from the capitals to spend Friday and Saturday night.

The town square with the church was in the town center, where we young people used to hang out. I rode my moped down the main road when I saw two unfamiliar girls sitting on one of the few benches that you could still tell had once been white marble. As I got closer, my heart began to pound. One of them, the tanner one, was gorgeous, she seemed to me the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I straightened up on my moped, strutting so she would see me well, and when she looked back at me I twisted the throttle, revving it to the max to pop a wheelie. I wanted to impress her by doing a wheelstand, but I lifted the bike so fiercely I nearly fell backwards and zigzagged across the square, trying to regain control before crashing and knocking my teeth out. Finally I managed to keep my balance and quickly left the place, dead embarrassed. That same afternoon I went to the pool hoping to find her there, since it was the only place you could be in such heat, but no matter how long I waited I didn't see her appear. I asked my friend Emma if she knew anything about them, since she lived in town she knew everyone well. I described the two girls in detail, but she had no idea who they were.

Monday passed and on Tuesday I went for a walk around town intending to run into her again. I rode my moped back and forth to no avail. That afternoon Emma told me she had done some snooping: it was a family that had come from Valencia and rented a house in town for the summer. At that moment I felt happy - if they had rented the house for the summer vacation it was certain I would run into her again. I left the pool earlier than usual and went looking for her again around town. Now I knew where she was staying. I passed by her house frequently, although no one could be seen. Thursday and Friday arrived and I found no trace of her. That same evening Emma found out she had family in a nearby village and it was possible that although the family had rented the house, she ended up spending the vacation with her relatives after all. My spirits fell and I thought I had lost my chance - instead of acting the fool with the bike, I should have stopped to talk to her. The truth is it's one thing to think it and another to do it, I probably wouldn't have been able to utter a word if I had approached her.

Some friends arrived Friday afternoon and after dinner we went out for some drinks at Juanpe's. Alcohol had always made me feel sick and often the next morning I was hungover even if I hadn't drunk more than juice. That night ten of us got together and bought half a box of beers and half sodas, took them and went down the street to the outskirts of town. We sat on the bridge over the creek, on the road that goes up to Póveda's spring, and stayed there chatting, killing time until the atmosphere picked up at the disco bar.

At the back of the bar there was a door that gave access to an interior courtyard, and once you crossed it, you entered the disco bar area. That night there weren't many people, which was common at that time. Most people didn't go out until midnight. We had dinner around 10 and were at Juanpe's by 10:30, around 11 we went to the disco bar, and later, around 12:30, we went up to the disco. It was almost 1am and there were still not many people in the place.

I think it's better if we go upstairs now, there's sure to be more people there, said Raúl. 

We all agreed to the proposal and went out to the street, walking down the middle without worrying about vehicles, there was usually little traffic at that time and there was no danger. It was starting to get cool, since the town was located in a valley surrounded by mountains with lush vegetation, even in the middle of summer the temperature dropped sharply. We went up forming a group of several rows and we were all talking practically at the same time. We were very young and felt as if we were the center of the universe. We arrived at the disco whose façade was painted with thick colored spiral lines that gave it its name. To the right there was a small closed window with a little metal door. I remembered that a few years ago there was a cover charge. At that time most of us were not yet 16, the minimum age to enter the venue, and we spent the nights trying to sneak in.

We entered the venue, the music and colored lights enveloped us. Now it was hard to keep up the conversation. The disco was the last place we went to, since it was rare that we could get a drink there due to the high drink prices. The usual thing was for us to go to the right corner where there were some comfortable individual seats arranged in rows like movie theater chairs, and in front, a screen where music videos were projected. I looked around to see if I recognized anyone, but before I could get a good look I realized something was wrong, I heard some voices and everyone started running. In those days, fights were common, some nights I felt I was in one of those old West saloons that appear in old movies. Fights broke out for any reason, simply for a look or saying any word. I ran out with the others and at the door, we found a huge group arguing. In the middle of it was my friend Raúl embroiled with a forty year old man. We all intervened to separate them so they wouldn't hurt each other, shortly after the Civil Guard appeared and seeing they wouldn't calm down, tried to handcuff them and take them to the station, but Raúl confronted them and the officers were taken by surprise. In front of all those people they couldn't be embarrassed by letting a kid laugh at them and they went all out trying to subdue the young man. The rest of us didn't know what to do or how to intervene. Then, his brother threw himself on them, tackling them like an American football player. He was a boy who had only recently started going out with us, as he was about three years younger and we saw him as a kid. The two officers were overwhelmed, it seemed the situation was getting out of hand for them. One of them pulled out a baton and began hitting the young men, we all jumped on them holding them as best we could. At that moment a tragicomic scene occurred, Raúl and Iván's cousin intervened, making a speech that left everyone paralyzed. The officers were left speechless and their faces turned pale. I don't know exactly what he said about rights, but even though he was a kid everyone took him for an authority, the officers must have thought he was a lawyer or journalist, if not a graduate then at least in his last year of university. We all calmed down and now the brawl had turned into a peaceful conversation in which the Civil Guards were making excuses for their behavior and trying to get out of that situation looking as good as possible. David was a genius, I don't know if he had any knowledge of law, but he definitely had impressive skills as an actor. In the middle of the fight, I couldn't think of anything, much less come up with such a splendid ruse as his. It was definitely a clear example of how the pen can conquer the sword. When I calmed down I realized that someone beside me had been watching me for a while, I turned my head and found myself staring directly into those gorgeous green eyes. It was the beautiful girl I had seen days before in the square. Her hair was shiny black and cut shoulder length, her complexion very pale, her thick, well-shaped eyebrows further