The Mummies of Blogspace9 (14 page)

July 1, 2011
Seville, Spain
Bruce Wheeler

I can’t explain how happy I was to see Cyrus. I’ve been through a lot, so seeing him here in Seville gave me great relief. Maybe things were going to be OK after all. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when we had to kill him.

“We need to talk,” Cyrus told me. He had been in Seville for two days, meeting with Negromonte, convincingly making the case that he was a friend, someone who could be trusted. We headed over to a little sidewalk café by the bus station and got some lunch.

“This has gotten out of control,” he said. We made small talk until our sandwiches arrived. “We stepped into something big, didn’t we, Bruce?”

“You’re telling me.” I nodded in agreement. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be hiding from the police, wearing a yarmulke and sidecurls, calling myself Melman Brezlov.”

“It suits you.”

“Thanks. Can you tell me what’s going on? Undead conquistadors, undead Grand Inquisitor, undead Kim – there’s actually far more undead than I anticipated.”

He shook his head. “No, no. Clearly someone is paying attention to our discoveries, but there’s nothing supernatural here. Kim is going to be fine. I don’t believe in any of this demon nonsense.”

“Really,” I yelled. I yelled because we were closer to the bus station than any sidewalk café had any right to be, and every time one of those huge lumbering busses left the station coughing exhaust, the noise was deafening.

“We’re scientists, Bruce. There are no walking mummies. Snap out of it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “If I hadn’t recently wandered through a harem of long-dead concubines, I’d probably agree with you,” I told him. “But I have recently wandered through a harem of long-dead concubines. So I’m not going to be snapping out of it.”

“I’m disappointed.”

I ordered a beer which never arrived.

“Alright,” he said,”let’s set aside our interpretive differences. Mummies or not, we have a problem. It would seem you have something that somebody wants.”

“You mean I have something that Gaspar Quiroga wants, the undead Grand Inquisitor who is also possessed by a demon of old Peru.”

“That’s all nonsense and you know it. Here’s what I think – I think our excavations are attracting attention because we’re digging near a hoard of stolen Inca gold.”

“Agreed. The Sopay wants his gold back.”

“No.” Cyrus shook his head. “No, you’ve been doing a lot of research. Maybe you found out more about the gold, maybe you figured out where it is. That could be why they’re after you.”

“I don’t think that’s what this is about,” I told him. “This is about the Malleus Momias book. It scares him.”

“Bullshit. That’s nothing but ancient superstition. Besides, if it was about Sebastiano’s journal, then why would they come after you? The journal is in Peru.”

“The journal is. The Malleus Momias is not. It’s here in Spain, as is the gold.”

Cyrus looked up. “What did you say?”

I waited until the bus bound for Jerez rounded the corner. A Granada-bound bus was close on its tail. “I’ve been thinking this through – Sebastiano’s journal references Malleus Momias, but it isn’t the book itself. The book itself is here in Spain, as is the gold.”

“Why would you think the gold is in Spain?”

“OK, let’s assume the gold hoard is real. Let’s accept that Duran and Cuellar hid the gold in our pyramid at the request of Francisco Pizarro, to hide it from the King.”

He glared at me.

“I think we can agree that the gold is no longer in the pyramid. Someone took it.”

“Of course someone took it,” he spat. “That’s why we’re searching for it.”

“Hmmm. I didn’t realize we were searching for the gold. I thought we were excavating to learn about colonial history. In any case, Sebastiano moved the gold. I’m sure of it.”

“Impossible,” he shouted over the din of a luxury long-haul coach bound for Barcelona. “The hoard was untouched when Duran returned for his share. If you follow the timeline, that would have been in 1738. Sebastiano would have been long dead by then.”

I sat back in my chair. Cyrus was breathing heavily, and I was starting to get nervous. “Hey boss, I thought we didn’t believe in undead conquistadors.”

We spent an uncomfortable few moments, both looking down at our plates. “I don’t know, Bruce. I don’t know what to believe. But if Duran is telling the truth, Sebastiano couldn’t have touched the gold. He would have died more than a century earlier.”

“Like I said, Cyrus, I’ve been thinking it through. It had to be Sebastiano, and you know it.”

He shook his head angrily. “How would I know it?” he spat.

“Nobody can get into the chamber and get out alive. Kim is proof of that. But Duran was able to get in and take his gold. Do you want to guess why?”

Cyrus stared at me.

“Because he was already dead,” I continued. “Look, I don’t know what happened, but Sebastiano made a promise to rid the world of walking mummies, and he failed. That much is clear. He failed. Someone stopped him. Someone turned him into the last thing he wanted to be.”

“Speculation,” Cyrus said calmly, but I could tell he put some effort into saying it calmly.

“Sebastiano is a mummy too, Cyrus. He grew angry at what had happened to him, and he was the only one left who could walk into that chamber and out of it alive. He came back home to Spain, and I think he brought the gold with him.”

“No way.”

“Yes way. It’s the only way this makes sense.”

Two busses chuffed by in a row, their LED signs blinked their destinations –Madrid, both of them.

Cyrus was breathing heavily. “Where’s the gold, Bruce?”

“I don’t know. Honestly I’m more interested in the book. And I’m going to find it.”

He slammed his fist down on the table, bouncing his fork into the air. “Fuck the book,” he screamed, though there were no busses passing at that moment. “Where is the fucking gold?”

“I have no idea.”

Everything happened quickly after that. A gypsy woman came begging at our table. I recognized her as Negromonte’s granddaughter. She had a crumbled up paper cup in one hand and a pistol in the other.

I remember staring at the next bus, an old clunker bound for Rota. When I turned back, Cyrus was shouting at me. And he had a dagger out. It was a mean-looking thing, a foot long at least, hafted in some kind of curved horn.

I turned as Negromonte grabbed my arm and pulled me to safety, but I caught the gist of what Cyrus was trying to convey. “…dare defile his name, Bruce, he’ll flay you alive and wear your skin like a coat for your insolence. You’ll burn in Sopay’s holy fire for eternity.”

He came at me, but the gypsies shot him. It might have been the granddaughter or someone else, or all of them, I don’t know.

“You touched me,” I told Negromonte. I was half in shock, and nothing else came to mind. “Aren’t you afraid of my pollution?”

He grinned. “Some weeks of absolution, a session of counseling, I’ll be right again.”

It took Cyrus a long, angry, screaming time to die, but for some reason, all I could think about was that bus headed for Rota.

July 2, 2011
Segovia, Peru
Leon Samples

Needless to say, we couldn’t do it. Bolivar went through the motions, building a bonfire in the yard, out back behind the apple trees. He even pulled out one of the three fuel cans we have left for the generator. I think his plan was to cover Kim with the wood and light her up. But in the end, he couldn’t do it any more than I could.

So we let her rest on the couch, rest in peace, right? By morning she was cold. But yes, she was still breathing. One or two breaths a minute, but she was breathing. And yes, she was still lovely.

I know that sounds creepy, and I wouldn’t bring it up, but it can’t go unsaid. There’s something about this transformation, for lack of a better term, that dramatically increases the desirability of the afflicted individual. Enough said, I won’t mention it again, except to say that Kim is hotter than ever.

Bruce, I’m sorry to hear about Cyrus, man. That kind of sucks, having to knock off the boss. I guess you can kiss that letter of recommendation goodbye. Honestly, I never took him for a demon hag, the servile lapdog of an ancient ghoul.

So this whole project is a joke right? All along we were searching for a huge pile of Inca gold? Well guess what, fuckers? I’m an archaeologist. I still have my health, my trusted bodyguard, and my dead girlfriend for company. I’m going to find me some gold!

Actually I wrote those lines like twelve hours ago, then the electricity went out. In the meantime, I got out that journal to see if I could make sense of it, but I didn’t have any luck. Then I got drunk and passed out.

I had a dream. In my dream, Kim was running her fingers through my hair. I tried to sit up but she pushed me back down, gently. “It’s going to be OK,” she said. Then she kissed me. When I woke up, she was gone.

Bolivar screamed his way around the house like a banshee, crazy with worry, but Kim was gone. The front door was open, the gate was open. She was gone. Lying on my pillow was a printout of her transcription of Sebastiano’s final journal entry.

Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 1580, 2 Julio
// year of our lord 1580, 2 July

Over the next hours, the old man Acahuna told me everything. We didn’t leave the church until my Indian girl poked her head in to call me to supper. At that point, Acahuna left me. I was shaken by his tale, but I made plans to meet him the following day so that we might do the good work of Our Lord.

This unnatural thing, this diabolical reanimation of the dead, had been transpiring since the beginning of time, he told me. Sopays he called them, devils that live inside the pyramids bring back the dead in exchange for worship. It was no wonder that I was finding it difficult to attract converts. Here I was speaking of life eternal in Jesus, yet these miserable souls already knew all about life eternal. I would put an end to this diabolical practice, I promised Our Lord.

And so I became friends with the old Indian. My first friend in this unholy place, my first convert, Acahuna visited me each day for more than a week. I took careful notes in a tome I am preparing, a tome that will prove vital in ridding this land of evil. I wrote down the incantations he learned from a shaman when he was a young boy.

“He made me remember them,” Acahuna told me. “He said that one child in every village must be taught the sacred passages in case the time came to put a bad one down.”

I confess I was concerned that I myself was venturing into blasphemy. What were these passages I inscribed? Were they spells? Were they the work of another pagan demon? I did not know.

So I prayed to my Heavenly Father, but I began writing my book. It was to become a hammer against the unholy walking mummies of Peru, for that’s what they were, walking mummies. I had long ago shed any considerations that they were anything else. Malleus Momias I would call my work.

When Acahuna had finished his story, he asked me if I would travel to his home to do as he requested, to return his wife to her grave. We would know then, without any doubt, if this plan would work, if my book could do what I hoped it could do.

“We need but one more thing,” Acahuna told me, “a shaman’s tumi.”

I frowned. I had never before heard that word.

“A tumi was a sword of the ancient warriors, but the shamans have their own tumis. Theirs are made of wood. There are few left.” He opened his cloak to reveal what looked to be a stick. It was the perhaps the length of my forearm, curved at one end. Brittle it was, unfit for striking if it was to be used as a sword. I suggested as much.

“Just its touch is all that is required,” he told me as we made our way to his house. His wife was there when we arrived. She was sitting on the dirt floor, consuming a cuy, a rodent. She had not bothered to cook it, nor even indeed to kill it, for its leg was still very much in motion even as the poor animal was half inside her mouth.

I said a prayer, the kind of prayer my superiors taught me, the kind of prayer that sings out to God. “You do it, please,” Acahuna begged me, and I began to read from my book. In doing so, I said a very different kind of prayer. Then, I brought out the tumi and touched that Indian woman with its tip.

I read some more. It didn’t take but a moment. The woman gave me a kindly look which soon turned to something else, something forlorn. Then she collapsed. Her body hit the ground very hard, the bones shattering, the flesh now more pallid than it was even a moment ago. She died. I had put down my first mummy.

“No,” Acahuna told me when I tried to give him the tumi. “It belongs to you now.”

I would hide it. I would keep it safe. I would bury it under the little shed behind my house where my milk goat sleeps. And I would write it all down in a great book, my tome, my Malleus Momias, so as to save the world of men.

July 3, 2011
Lima, Peru
Michelle Cavalcante

Bruce, honey, I’m still here in Lima. I can’t believe Cyrus is dead. More than that, I can’t believe he was somehow involved in something like this. I planned to head back up to the project yesterday but I still can’t wrap my mind around all of this. Cyrus was my friend and mentor. I trusted him with my life.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe he had some kind of brain tumor. He’s too young for Alzheimer’s, but it could be some dementia. Perhaps we’ll learn something from the autopsy. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me, Bruce.

But just following up on what Leon mentioned, maybe we should see this through. At this point, I want to find the goddamn gold.

So what do you think, Bruce? Want to finish this and get rich in the process? With Kim and Cyrus gone, we have fewer soldiers on the ground, but hey, that’s fewer people to worry about when we divvy up the hoard.

July 3, 2011
New York, NY
Rafael Duran