The Mummies of Blogspace9 (12 page)

Amos and Samuel Wempel each took an arm and led me outside to their truck. Apparently, they’d been alerted when their nephew’s stolen ID lit up on some database. Apparently too, they were Mennonites.

I spent an uncomfortable half hour drinking unpasteurized milk with Amos and Samuel, denying everything. Mistaken identity, I assured them. I was Abraham Prim, of Barcelona, and this was just a simple case of mistaken Mennonite identity. We hugged as we parted, and they admired my beard.

I returned the next day as Elvis Tanaka of Kyoto, Japan. It’s always risky stealing the identity of someone from another race, but Elvis’ wallet contained a credit card overlooked by my roommates, so I took the risk.

On a whim, I figured I’d have a look at all the document referencing S. Goya. Copying archival materials is expensive, but Elvis Tanaka spent two hundred euros to copy nine fat manuscripts so that I wouldn’t have to risk returning to the University each day. I’d like to think it was worth his investment.

I recognized Elvis instantly when his tour bus pulled up at the University gates. Several dozen Japanese tourists accompanied him as he stormed into the library, presumably to reacquire his credit card. I’ve never seen so many cameras.

I kept my Maglite burning all night as I pored over those documents, searching for answers to questions I hadn’t even adequately framed. All I got were dead ends, and a reference to the ‘Archivo Rota Soledad’ – the broken archive of loneliness.

Negromonte came for me in the morning. “It’s about time,” I told him. “I have questions.”

“I do too,” he said. We sat in his office, and he poured me a brandy.

“What is a Sopay?” I asked.

“It’s a malevolent,” he said. “How did you become part of this project?”

“What is a malevolent?”

“Answer my question.” He picked up a pair of dice and began rolling them in his hands.

So I told him about us, Michelle. I told him about the party back in New Haven, when from across the room our eyes met. I told him it was academic karma – we both studied sixteenth-century Peru. I told him that you lured me back to your apartment, not that I was resisting, and that you lured me to Peru.

“What’s special about you?” Negromonte asked.

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indiv 1:
I’m breathtakingly handsome in a classical sort of way. What is a Sopay? And don’t use the word malevolent.

indiv 2:
A Sopay is a demon of an ancient time. You’ll find them in the folklore of any tribe, though they might be called something else.

indiv 1:
So a Sopay is a demon of ancient Peru?

indiv 2:
Yes. They whispered to men through the centuries; build me a pyramid, larger and larger. Bring me gold. In return, your departed loved ones can walk again.

indiv 1:
Mummies.

indiv 2:
The Sopays were among the first mummies, created eons ago at the very kernel of time. Ancient, they live deep within the pyramids. Their minions – shadowy imps that can barely be seen – lay their weapons on a person, transforming them into something undying.

indiv 1:
So Duran and Cuellar are real – undead conquistadors?”

indiv 2:
They are. In hiding the stolen gold, Duran and Cuellar unwittingly returned the gold to the Sopay in that pyramid, gold the Inca themselves had taken.

indiv 1:
So they were killed and turned into walking mummies as a reward?

indiv 2:
A Sopay’s logic need not mirror our own.

indiv 1:
Who was that man in the doorway, the first night we met? Was that Sebastiano?

indiv 2:
No, no. I don’t know who he is. His mind is long gone.

indiv 1:
But he’s a mummy, right?

indiv 2:
Oh, yes. My grandfather purchased him at a bazaar in Algiers many decades ago. He’d been shipped from Panama and caged and kept as a curio. I keep him for two reasons. To remind myself that I am not a crazy man, that this is all very real. And because I don’t know what else to do with him.

indiv 1:
I guess you can’t very well just kill him. How many more are there?

indiv 2:
Hundreds, thousands I should guess. They still haunt the quiet parts of the Andean world, as we have discovered. But you must understand, my concern in this matter extends only so far as the gold. It is only the colonial mummies, those Spaniards who were there at the time of Pizarro or shortly after who concern me.

indiv 1:
And how many of those are there?

indiv 2:
Cuellar and Duran I didn’t know about. Four others I have come across. One is curated privately in the Archive itself by the director. Then there was the man in the doorway you spoke of. A third I located in a vineyard about a hundred kilometers outside of Oporto, where he is chained to a poplar and employed in the capacity of scarecrow. The fourth is kept by a Parisian widow of some enormous age, as a servant, she claims, though I suspect also as a lover. I paid her twenty-five thousand euros to meet him, but his mind, like the others, had long since deteriorated.

indiv 1:
So how did Cuellar and Duran become involved in this?

indiv 2:
I can’t say. Perhaps they read the newspapers. It is now my turn to ask questions. What is special about you? Are you the best in the world at something?

indiv 1:
I’m fluent in Latin. I can read sixteenth-century Spanish, even handwriting, as if it were typed text. I am a researcher of uncanny skills. I have commendations, awards, a Ph.D. I’ve written two books on colonial Peru. I find things that other scholars overlook. What is the Archivo Rota Soledad?

indiv 2:
I have no notion.

indiv 1:
Hold on. What’s your interest in all this?

indiv 2:
I already told you. I want what is owed to me. I want my family’s gold.

indiv 1:
If you’ve been reading along, Vasco Cuellar never touched the gold, and when Rafael Duran took his share, he left the rest of it in the pyramid.

indiv 2:
It’s gone. Historians and archaeologists have been searching for centuries. But that Sopay grows angrier with each disappointing decade. That’s why Quiroga assembled the best researchers and built a new team. That’s why you were chosen.

indiv 1:
Quiroga? Who is Quiroga?

indiv 2:
Who do you think you’re running from?

indiv 1:
I’d say the police.

indiv 2:
Perhaps. And who do you think owns the police? Whose harem did you disturb during your daring escape? Who is it you think everyone is afraid of?”

indiv 1:
I’m not sure.

indiv 2:
Gaspar Quiroga, the Grand Inquisitor; those are his wives. He chose you to find the hoard.

indiv 1:
So, an undead Grand Inquisitor has corrupted law enforcement in the process of sponsoring archaeological excavations to find stolen Inca gold. Is that what you’re telling me?

indiv 2:
Indeed. He needs the best people in the world working on it. He needs you. Quiroga became something different when he gave himself to that Sopay. And Sopay wants his gold back. It belongs to him. It sustains him.

indiv 1:
No, then why did they come for me at the Archive? Why did they lock me up in the Alcazar if I was supposedly working for them?

indiv 2:
Because you found something unexpected - not the hoard, but a dangerous book. A book long thought to be legend. But if it exists, Malleus Momias is the only thing left that can harm him.

indiv 1:
That day when your granddaughter saw me, that whole thing about me being damned – that was all some gypsy game, right? You were just trying to get me to work with you.

indiv 1:
So I’m not damned?

indiv 2:
Possibly not, but Sopays are powerful corruptive forces. You’re already too close.

indiv 1:
It still doesn’t make sense. Quiroga, or the Sopay, whatever – it wasn’t him who brought me onto the project. It was Michelle.

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Negromonte looked down at the table. I heard the first notes of the flamenco music outside as the dancers began practicing their moves.

Michelle, can we talk?

June 28, 2011
Segovia, Peru
Leon Samples

Is anybody reading this? If so, can you please send the police, a team of doctors, an exorcist, and an assload of rum? I don’t know how else we’re going to get through this.

We didn’t have power yesterday, so I wasn’t able to get back online until this morning. That’s when I saw Kim’s post. If I knew she was going to go inside the pyramid, I’d have gone after her immediately. But when she didn’t show up for dinner last night, we all figured she went into town. And I wish she had.

I don’t understand all of what’s going on here, but I’m well past the point of doubting the undead mummy thing. So when I read Kim’s post, I knew she was in mortal danger. The color drained from Bolivar’s face when I told him, and he has precious little color to begin with. He strapped on his guns, and we ran.

It was early. The sun was just coming up, but something was off. The sky was puffy with low clouds, and arcs of far-away lightning snapped all over creation.

This gloppy pyramid is spooky on a good day, and this wasn’t a good day. The bricks seemed to be pulsating just faintly, like light architectural breathing. And there was something else wrong – there was a smell coming from inside. It smelled like candy. It smelled like those hard nasty sugarless candies that diabetic old ladies suck on.

We climbed up to the entrance but Bolivar held me back. I’ve been inside a hundred times. There’s not much there except for an empty vault, probably a burial chamber for some noble a thousand years ago, but at this point I was deathly afraid of what we might find. Bolivar inched his way inside, and I followed.

Candles lit the room, hundreds of them. Little candles, burnt down nearly to the base, they were flickering out one by one. At the back of the room, a section of wall had been removed. The adobes were stacked the way an archaeologist would stack them. I’m pretty sure Kim did it.

More candlelight emanated from behind the wall. Bolivar got his guns out and crept toward the opening in the wall. I followed. We heard laughter coming from the other side – Kim’s laughter. We looked inside.

She was kneeling in the center of the room. Her legs folded underneath her, she was surrounded by candles. And she was naked. A line of blood ran along her throat and down between her boobs. She smiled warmly when she saw us.

I rushed through the wall, but Bolivar yanked me back. I felt something flutter in front of me as I fell back. I saw it only out of the corner of my eye. It looked kind of like a misshapen dwarf, but when I tried to get a better look, it faded away.

Bolivar called out, but Kim laughed at him. And every time she laughed, more blood dripped from her throat. Say what you want, but I love this woman. I know she doesn’t love me, but that’s not the point. Nobody hurts my Kim. I shoved Bolivar aside and jumped back through the wall.

That thing was on me in an instant. It grabbed me by the face. I suppose I could have tried to break free, but I was petrified. At that moment I saw it clearly; it was little, like a one-legged dwarf, but not quite human. It had mean eyes.

I’ve seen this image depicted on pot sherds. There’s also a painting on the wall at the Inca temple at Pachacamba, but I never imagined it was a real monstrous thing.

It grinned at me, revealing a mouth full of crooked razor teeth. I saw the tumi in its hand, the short round sword favored by the warriors of Peruvian antiquity. It drew back the tumi to strike me, and Bolivar shot it.