The Mummies of Blogspace9 (19 page)

As 1830 came to a close - I have pieced together the decades, you see - we were taken to a hacienda near the ocean - Quinta de San Pedro Alejandro, it was called. It was in the north of Colombia. I remember the salt in the air, and the heliconia flowers. It was so much warmer there than in the mountains. But a somber mood awaited us. “He is not well,” I was told, “perhaps not long from death. Perhaps... perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed. And for the first time in more than two centuries, Sebastiano took my hand in his, just for a moment, before he looked away.

Inside the room, a thin figure lay on an enormous bed. Sensing me, sensing something of me, he rose to his elbows and called me closer. Frail though he was, he held a fine pistol in each hand. “Are you an angel or a demon?” he asked, and I told him I did not know.

“Do you know who I am?” He coughed, as he did so, a mist of blood stained his sheets. He wiped his nose with his sleeve, the pistol shining in the moonlight.

I told him I did not know him. “Are you dying?” I asked, and he told me he was. Dying of a broken heart, of lost dreams, of failed plans, and also of consumption.

“What is it you want?” I asked him and he beckoned me closer, removing my robes with a shaking hand, the pistol grazing my stomach as he did so.

“What is it you have to offer?” he asked me, his eyes imagining me, then meeting my own. “I’ve never met a thing like you. Perhaps you’re not of this world. Am I dead already?”

I shook my head. “I have only myself to offer,” I told him, climbing into his bed. “And one of two items of counsel. I’ll not give you both.”

“How shall I choose then?” he asked, “not knowing what those items might be.”

“The first is half the gold known to creation, or if not that much, still a fine sum. I know its location.”

“And the second?”

“A book to end the nightmares of this world?”

He closed his eyes. “Such a choice. How could any man make such a choice? And what must I do in return? Shall I promise you the world? Heaven even?”

“And more.” And I explained that in return I wanted him to make love to me, a sorrowful kind, full of remorse, as if the whole world had already been lost.

indiv 2:
You told me this already.

indiv 1:
Be quiet. I’ll tell it again. I wanted to recapture something of what I lost, you see. I wanted again to know the love of a man who tried in vain to hold onto his virtue, but who in the end could not.

indiv 2:
Sebastiano

indiv 1:
It was the only love I have ever known.

indiv 2:
Wait a minute. Colombia, 1830, consumption...

indiv 1:
Afterward, after he fulfilled his end of the bargain, I asked him for his choice. “The gold,” he told me. “I would be nothing without my nightmares.” Then I asked his name.

indiv 2:
Bolivar. You’re talking about Simón Bolivar, the President of Colombia, and Peru... and Venezuela, and...

indiv 1:
We returned that Spring to Peru, to Segovia, to that pyramid. Twenty-four soldiers accompanied us, but not the general, not Bolivar. I never saw him again. By Spring some instability had befallen him. Rumors of his death were taken everywhere as fact. But no sooner had we loaded that gold into six carriages, six of those soldiers turned on the others, killing them with great speed.

Stealing the general’s gold, they were. Keeping it for themselves was the plan, and it enraged me. I ate them all before dawn, the first time I had ever done such a thing, and I quite enjoyed it.

Sebastiano retrieved his book from its hiding place beneath the altar of the ruined church. But I feared it, and I forbade him to look at it.

We drove the six carriages loaded with gold to Trujillo. Once inside the city, we purchased seventeen coffins from a coffin maker, and filled them with the gold.

The coffins of priests, Sebastiano explained, for he was by then communicating again, if only on paper. He wrote up the documents himself, signing them Goya, as he had begun to call himself, in case any knew of him. But he was still a priest, and he carried himself with the demeanor of a priest. And being a priest meant something, even to the scummy peons, and porters, and dock workers, and sailors who might otherwise peek at our wares.

Our seventeen priestly coffins were laded onto a ship, then transported by caravan across Panama, then laded onto another ship for the voyage to Spain. I felt bad about the general, but I didn’t know where to find him. I owe him still, I suppose.

indiv 2:
What then?

indiv 1:
What then? Then this. Nothing happened after. We buried the gold, then made a home in Asturias. And then nothing. Sebastiano was mad by then, his mind nearly unframed. Nightly I cursed Bolivar for his choice. Was gold worth the nightmares? But it always is in the lives of men.

indiv 2:
Not always.

indiv 1:
Not always. And then Sebastiano left me. I would see him every decade or so praying silently in the old cemeteries of Seville. I bought the house in Rota and dedicated myself to the preservation of his work, his passion, his writings, of which there were not many but some. He had given me the book to keep safe, and that’s what I did. That’s what I did.

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Leon Samples

Good music, fine wine, old friends — and I mean old — we had ourselves a tearful reunion of sorts. Shortly before 2:00 a.m. we crammed ourselves into Melchor Negromonte’s little office behind the kitchen. Assembled there were the following: Negromonte, his muscle-guy Radu, Bruce, his smoking-hot new dead girlfriend, and Duran, and Cuellar, who looked like a puckered gnome. Good times!

I’ll admit it was awkward at first. I was half in the bag from all the drinking, and I couldn’t stop staring at this girl Naya, who had nestled her five-hundred year-old fine self next to Bruce on the couch.

Cuellar was having a hard time with it, you could tell. He asked her to dinner twice. Not a tooth in his head, he couldn’t get a word out without mumbling and spitting at the same time, and I’m pretty sure he wet himself each time he started talking, but he actually asked her on a date twice.

Negromonte was all business. “Where is the gold?” he demanded.

“We’re working on that,” Bruce told him. “There’s just one thing we need to do first.”

Negromonte stared at his brandy. “He is probably the most powerful man in Europe. He will be heavily-guarded. Not only does he own the police, but on such a day, his wedding day, he will certainly take extra precautions.

“Here’s something I don’t understand.” I leaned in. “It’s our assumption that the possessed Gaspar Quiroga, the five-hundred year-old Grand Inquisitor of Spain, intends to marry our friend Kim, right?”

I got some shrugs and general nods of agreement.

“So, like, why does he have to marry her? Not to put too fine a point on it, but why not just, you know, date her, or just hook up?”

I got nothing but stares.

“Quiroga is many things,” Negromonte said finally, “but he is still a priest.”

“So he can kill and plunder and condemn people to hell, but he still has morals.”

“Something like that.”

“Then tell me something, how is it he lives in the Alcazar, one of the most famous buildings in Spain? It’s a museum. It’s open every day for tourists.”

“Part of it is open to tourists,” Negromonte told us. “Several of the upper levels are the property of the royal family, their official Seville residence. But it’s been a long time since they dared enter.”

“So they know who he is? They know that he lives there?”

Negromonte lit a cigarette. “They know who he is, but not what he is. A malignant captain of industry, they might think. But he hovers like a doom over the monarchy. They’d not dare oppose him.”

“Then how do we get in?” I asked.

“I’d advise you not to.”

“We get in,” Bruce interrupted, “the same way we got out. There may be police and guards, but they won’t be in the harem. They wouldn’t dare go there. Radu knows the way.”

The large gypsy by the door looked up when he heard his name spoken, and once he had processed the words, he began shaking his head. “No, no. What would be point?”

“The point would be to get me into the same room as him, close enough to touch him,” Bruce said.

Cuellar shrieked with either glee or horror, perhaps both. “He’ll smell your blood before you enter the room. He’ll flay your skin to keep him warm at night.”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Bruce said.

Bruce is like seriously diesel at this point.

Negromonte stared at him. “And if we do this, you will bring me to the gold?”

“Without hesitation. You’ve earned it.”

The old gypsy gave it some thought. “We will need to strategize.”

Bruce produced a floor plan of the Alcazar, which he spread out on the desk. “We enter here, through the hidden door in the fortress wall.”

Duran moved in closer as Bruce continued. “Once inside, we split up into two teams. Leon, you and Radu find Kim. Duran and I will head to the private residence. We’re going to hit him where he sleeps.”

“He doesn’t sleep,” Duran noted.

Bruce stared at him. “Even you sleep.”

“But he’s far more powerful than I am. Remember, he is something more than a mummy, to use your term, something more than me. He is a Sopay, a very old and very powerful malignant.”

“He’s right.” Negromonte poured another glass of sherry. “And Cuellar is right too. He’ll kill you the moment you walk in.”

Bruce shook his head. “He’ll welcome me. Remember, I have something he wants. He can’t find the gold without me.”

“Then I’m coming too,” Negromonte said.

“I’m coming too,” Cuellar managed to say before a sneeze sent tendrils of mucous across the room. “Pardon.”

“No, no.” Our newly-formed gang seemed to agree on this point. “You would be better here manning the telephone,” Negromonte suggested. “Right here in the nerve center of it all – a most important role.”

Cuellar spat, then sulked back into a corner.

“You must all understand something.” Naya, the girl, clasped Bruce’s hand. It was the first time I had heard her speak. “I will not leave his side, come what comes. I have my own score to settle.”

More shrugs and nods of agreement.

“Let’s talk supplies,” Negromonte offered. “I will be armed, as will Radu. Do any more of you wish to bring weapons?”

Bruce shook his head. Only Cuellar and I nodded. Cuellar was ignored. I got a brutal-looking .45 automatic with a spare clip.

“One more thing,”Bruce noted. “We don’t yet understand Kim’s frame of mind. She may not welcome us, so we have to be careful with her.”

“Word to that, my mummy-hunting brother.” I looked around the room. “So what else do we need? How much water should we bring with us?” That got me nothing but frowns.

“We’re going to be in and out in an hour, Leon. Have a drink of something now. Use the bathroom too, while you’re at it. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

The oldest European palace still in use, the Alcazar was originally built in the eleventh century as a Moorish fortress.

Although much of the structure is open to the public, the Spanish royal family retains a private apartment in the palace, and several of the annexes are occupied by commercial tenants.

The Alcazar was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987.

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Bruce Wheeler

Although it felt as if we were traveling to another world, the Alcazar was only six blocks away, so it didn’t take us long to get there. Seville’s public parks are not empty at 4:30 in the morning, far from it.

Beer was flowing in great quantities from tall bottles, wine too, and love in all of its forms was being made and played on benches, in flower beds, even in the playgrounds that would soon be turned over to Spanish children. But since we didn’t look like police or prostitutes, nobody paid us much attention.

Radu led us off the path and through a tangled maze of vegetation. The hidden door in the fortress wall had been padlocked, but a giant pair of clippers made quick work of it. Our small army was soon inside. The last time I was here, I was terrified. This time too, but it was a different sort of terror. This time I didn’t feel helpless.

Leon remarked on the foul air, noting that the liquid dripping from the walls reminded him of an apartment he once sublet in Muncie, but the rest of us stayed focused. Negromonte shone his light into the darkness, and Radu led the way.

We were cautious, conscious of the noises our movements made on old stones and old boards. Most of us were, I should clarify. Vasco Cuellar, who would not be excluded despite our protests, proved to be more flatulent than anyone could have anticipated.

We turned a corner into a great hall which I dimly remembered from my last visit. In my haste to leave, I had apparently neglected to admire the exhibits of ancient weapons. Duran could not look away.