The Mummies of Blogspace9 (13 page)

The bullet drove it back into the wall. It screamed, then squeezed itself into a crack in the floor and disappeared, leaving a puddle of green sludge that smelled like bargain tripe on a hot day.

“What the hell was that?” I yelled. Bolivar raised his gun at me and pulled the trigger, dropping another one of the things that crept up behind me. It wiggled through the floor as well, leaving another sludge puddle.

“Imp,” Bolivar said, as if that explained anything.

I turned to Kim and saw another one, another imp, caressing her chin. It was laughing. Kim was laughing too. I started towards her but Bolivar pushed me back through the wall. Then he went for her.

He kept shooting, but this imp was faster, as was its friend. Bolivar switched guns, then grabbed Kim by the hair and dragged her out, shooting all the while. He didn’t stop until he had pulled her through the wall.

“We’re safe here,” he said. “The imps can’t leave the chamber.” He gestured to the room we had just left. “This is where the gold was.”

We turned and stared at Kim. She stood and looked back into that haunted room. “It’s all gone now,” she said. “The gold is all gone now.” Then she threw her head back and coughed repeatedly, revealing the deep cut along her throat that the rest of her blood now poured from.

June 29, 2011 Seville, Spain
Bruce Wheeler

June 29, 2011 Lima, Peru
Michelle Cavalcante

June 29, 2011
Seville, Spain
Vasco Cuellar

Is she going to be OK? Bruce, is that your question? A scientist you call yourself, and you yet ask? Those creatures drained the blood from her body, and let it seep down below the floor where it pools, fueling the dark part of eternity. No, she’s not going to be OK. The hunger will start soon.

Oh, she’ll walk. She’ll speak, which is more than can be said for you. The storms are gathering, Bruce. He’s coming for you. Sopay knows your name. He can smell your breath. He’ll send someone for you.

I implore you, as I have before, take your own life before it is too late, before you come face to face with what you fear most. Go to the police? Go to the Consulate? They’d deliver you to their master within minutes. He’ll burn your life away, and then things will really go downhill. Understand something: if you find this book, this Malleus, if it is indeed real, then you’re the only thing left in the world who can hurt him.

He’s sending someone for you now, someone who knows you, someone you trust. You must be stopped, you understand. That’s why your girl wants you to turn yourself in. She’s been his for a long time now.

June 29, 2011
New York, NY
Rafael Duran

It would seem Cuellar is off his medications again. Vasco, please consider a sedative of some potency. You do tend to rant. The boy is asking for help. One would hope that wisdom acquired over the centuries could be brought to bear on the events at hand. But one wonders how much wisdom you have accumulated.

That being said, Cuellar is not completely without reason. When that girl was bled, fuel was added to a fire that burns in the unquiet heart of a torment. I don’t understand what that torment is, but I am an aspect of it, as is Cuellar. I know he felt her blood drain away because I felt it too.

So no, she’s not going to be OK. Unless of course you consider me OK, or Vasco Cuellar. Cuellar is an insane cannibal given to gloomy grandiosity. And I am a soulless ghoul living in a skyscraper. A hunger deepens in me, and I spend much of each day trying to keep it at bay.

I had thought the last of the Sopays was long gone, but I’m no longer certain. If one still exists, then Vasco is correct – your life is in danger. And no stone will be left unturned until you are delivered to him. Your girl is almost certainly his. She’ll come for you. It will be someone you trust who comes for you.

You could kill yourself as Vasco suggests. It would certainly save you the heartache, not to mention millennia of soulless anguish. Your torture will be ceaseless. On the other hand, you could find what you’re looking for and kill that Sopay instead.

June 29, 2011
Seville, Spain
Bruce Wheeler

Bullshit. Michelle isn’t part of this. She’s not some demon hag, and she doesn’t want me to get hurt. I don’t know what or who I’m up against, but I am not without my own certainties about the world. And I am certain that Michelle loves me.

So fuck you, Vasco. I’m not going to kill myself. I’m going to finish this, and finish you off as well when the time comes.

And fuck you too, Duran. You’re just as crazy. Michelle ISN’T PART OF THIS!

I’m going to finish this. You know what I’m doing right now? I’m sitting in my bedroom fishing through stolen wallets to plan out who I will be over the coming days. Then I’m going to figure out what the Archivo Rota is. I’m going to figure out what exactly Malleus Momias is. Then I’m going to kill this Sopay.

Hold on, there’s a knock at the bedroom door. Folks, that’s a little odd, because I share a room with three middle-aged pickpockets, and they don’t knock. OK, I just shouted out for whoever it is to come in.

Holy shit. It’s Cyrus! Cyrus Sanderson in the flesh.

June 30, 2011
Segovia, Peru
Leon Samples

You know what can really help keep you from unraveling after coming face to face with a demon? Mescaline. Unfortunately, we’re all out, so I spent the day completely sober, contemplating the remnant wisps of my sanity. Every time I started thinking about what happened, I’d start to shake.

That demon, that imp lifted me off the ground and looked me in the eyes. Had Bolivar waited one more second before shooting, my throat would have been slit, and I’d be a different kind of thing entirely

I lied about being sober. I found a liter of rum in the kitchen, and I’ve been nipping at it steadily all afternoon.

The local doctor came last night. He demanded to be paid before he would even enter the house, so I paid him. But he had one look at Kim and threw the money back at me before leaving.

Kim has been sleeping for more than twenty-four hours now, if you can call it sleeping. She’s breathing, but her body temperature has cooled beyond the point at which life can be sustained.

Bolivar won’t leave her side. He moved her to the couch by the fireplace, and he has her all bundled up. I suggested we get her out of here, take her to the hospital but he was adamant in his refusal. Finally I cornered our caretaker in the kitchen. It was time he and I had a little talk.

“You’re not supposed to go inside the pyramid,” he told me, “not in the chamber.”

“What happens in the chamber?”

“They turn you.” He stared at the floor. “It was common in the past, even during the time of my grandfather. Many of the ancestors still roam at night, but it has been two generations since the last ceremonies, since the last mummies were made.”

“So that’s what they are? Mummies? No cloth, no ribbons, no special preparation? What makes them mummies?”

I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Bolivar. “Sometimes they used cloth,” he said. “The Inca wound their dead kings tightly in cotton, as did many Indians. But it wasn’t necessary.”

“Then what makes them mummies?”

“The imps - minions of the Sopays. If an imp bleeds a man, he’ll turn. Then he’ll walk.”

“And that’s going to happen to Kim?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

Bolivar stared at the floor.

“Can we stop it from happening?”

Bolivar looked me in the eyes. “If we burn her before she turns, we can stop it. Once she gets up, there will be no putting her down.”

I felt a chill in the air. I’m half ashamed to say this, but when I looked over at Kim lying there, I swear she never looked more beautiful. I mean to say that there was considerable appeal. It was disturbing. I took another belt of rum.

“It’s my fault,” Bolivar whispered. “I was supposed to keep her safe. I failed, so I will keep her safe now. I will do it tonight. I will build a fire outside.”

“No.” I couldn’t bear to let that happen. Absolutely not.

“There is no other way,” Bolivar told me.

But I’m not sure he’s right about that. Prior to going inside the pyramid, Kim had translated the fourth entry in Sebastiano’s journal.

Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 1580, 30 Junio
// year of our lord 1580, 30 June

After seeing Father Vasco standing in the moonlight of his unholy mass, blood dripping from his face, I experienced a fear unlike any I had ever known. I fled to my house, latched my door, and drew my bed frame up to the door so that nobody could enter.

I was quite willing to die before opening the door again. I begged the Lord to deliver me from this hell. I prayed until the sun was high in the sky, but my prayers went unanswered. The Indian girl who brought my midday meal also brought news of a man who wandered into the church seeking my counsel.

I dined quickly, then I made haste to the church, uncertain what to expect. Upon entering, I saw an Indian kneeling at the altar. A candle had been lit, and he was praying in the style of a Christian.

“Can I help you, my son?” I approached him.

“Padre Sebastiano.” He turned, and I knew him. He was an old man who came to town from time to time to sell his corn in the plaza. I remembered him because his wife had recently died. I said a mass for her, though neither the man nor any other Indians attended.

His name was Acahuna, he reminded me. “Is it true your God offers life everlasting?

I assured him that this was indeed the case, and he asked me to baptize him in the name of Jesus Christ. So delighted was I by the thought of my first true convert that I scarcely remembered the terrors of the night before.

He grasped my hands as I placed a small iron crucifix in his. He had a single tooth left in his mouth, I noticed as he smiled softly. “There is but one thing I ask of you,” he whispered. “My wife, do you recall?”

“She is already in the company of the Lord,” I assured him, but he frowned.

“What is it, my son?”

“She is sitting on the floor of my house chewing on a cuy.”

I recalled that a cuy is a rodent that the Indians roast for their food. “Forgive my misunderstanding,” I told him. “I had thought you spoke of the woman who died.” He stared in my eyes and I understood then what he was speaking of.

“She came back,” he whispered. “And I don’t want her back.”

I felt the tendrils of fear climbing up my back. “I don’t…” I began, but I did, and I didn’t know what to say. “I don’t understand how they…”

“I do,” he said softly, kissing the crucifix I had given him. “There is a way to return them to the ground. An old way, a shaman spoke of it long ago, but it may still work. We will do it together – you, me, and our Lord.”

I determined at that moment that this was my calling, this was the reason that God in his eternal grace called to me. My ambition is none other than to compile a breviary, a book of most uncommon prayer for most uncommon times.