by Rex Hurst
Jon just nodded. His throat was parched and raw. He was afraid speaking would hurt.
“You should say thank you to us for treetin’ you so good, sí?”
A trickle of blood slid out of the talking Mexican’s nose. The others laughed arrogantly at his words, once they had been translated. Blood then started to run out of another’s nose, then another, then another, till they were all bleeding.
In the first few seconds, they were pointing it out to each other. Then they realized it was happening to them all. Terror gripped them and they jabbered in their native tongue. The blood poured out thicker and faster. They started screaming. Some ran. Others dropped to their knees clutching crucifixes and pagan fetishes. The rest were too stunned to react.
As they panicked and their hearts pumped faster, the blood flushed out of them at an increased rate. It flowed from every possible orifice. It leaked and leaked until they fell to the ground, shaking and shivering, then stopped moving altogether. Jon was left alone, tied to a chair with a room full of glassy-eyed corpses and a lake of blood.
For half a day, he sat like that. Watching rigor mortis set in. Smelling the rot churning in the dead men’s guts. Scared beyond all reckoning that he would die there as well, only slowly from dehydration. He sent pleading deals to all sorts of unseen entities, begging for release, until he heard footsteps outside the hovel and Father kicked the door open.
“He’s in this one,” Father called.
The twins rushed in. The male snipped his bonds, while the female looked him over. Her fingers probed his head and body with the same sterilized lack of empathy she had while examining the bowl.
“It’s fine,” she said to Father.
It? Maybe he’d be better off with the kidnappers.
“Release him then,” Father said. “I don’t want to spend any more time around here than necessary. Feels like I’m getting a rash just standing in this dump.”
At least five other dead men lay about outside, having blown their lives out of their nose. A warm can of Coke was shoved at Jon, then he was bundled off in the twin’s car.
“You get kidnapped by the worst people, son.”
Jon silently sipped his drink, too much in shock to register anything beyond the sugar water and stink of dried blood on his feet. As in response to Jon’s thoughts, Father took off his own shoes, hand-tooled Italian leather loafers, and tossed them to the buzzards. The twins kept theirs on.
“Just bought the pair last week. What a waste.”
The contents of the Coke can brought him around a little. He shook off the mental cobwebs and looked outside. The kidnappers must’ve taken him to some abandoned cattle ranch in the wildlands around Tijuana. The land was desolate, bleached to nothing under the sun.
As they began to reenter civilization, he spoke up. “Was all that you?”
“No,” came the sarcastic reply. “They all had fatal hemorrhages at the same time by coincidence.”
“How?”
“We have ways,” Father said.
“We have ways,” the twins repeated simultaneously.
“More bargains with demons?”
All eyes, even those of the driver, turned and stared at Jon. The glare from the sun through the windows made these gazes look yellow. They were outside the skull, outside the soul, creatures beyond the sacks of flesh attached to them, exhibiting alien menace and evil contemplation. Then all of the occupants began laughing and returned to the human race.
This wasn’t a mocking laughter, or an insane cackle, but one that expressed disbelief at Jon’s ignorance. There was an aspect to it all that he missed, a puzzle piece not revealed. Once again, he was the fool walking toward the cliff’s edge.
They arrived back at the house and Jon saw there were several more cars parked around. These were of poorer quality than anything the twins or Father would drive, yet they were still a cut above the average vehicle Jon had seen littering the streets of Tijuana. Inside the foyer, the scraping maid whispered something to Father.
Then the man did something Jon had never seen him do before. Sweat. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it across his brow. Father pulled Jon close.
“Go take a quick shower, then come back down. We have business.”
“Is he too tired, tio?” Arlo, the male twin asked.
“That doesn’t matter. He just has to be there. We can’t put these people off anymore. It’s now or else the entire deal swirls down the drain.”
“I’ll just make sure he doesn’t disappear again,” Arlo said.
He grabbed Jon under the armpit and frog-marched him up to the room. Once there, he refused to speak again. As Jon cleaned up, the twin simply stared with blank intensity. Jon didn’t think he saw the man blink once. Once ready, he was marched back down in the same manner, then into the cellar, then the wine cellar below. The wine cellar was odd in that it didn’t contain any actual wine. There were racks and vats available, but they were all empty. A stack of twelve mattresses were piled on top of each other in a corner. They were well maintained, each had clean sheets attached, but he had no idea who they were for. The servants all went home at night, leaving just the twins and their vegetable mother.
Arlo pulled on a wine rack and tripped a hidden door catch. A fake rock wall, indistinguishable from the real thing, swung open and revealed a further flight of stairs. Soft lights and soft conversation drizzled up from below. The pair went down.
The sub-sub-basement was not much more than a hole. It looked half-finished. The floor was dirt and support beams propped up the ceiling. Dozens of black candles, shaped like human skulls, illuminated the pit. The sickening sensation grabbed Jon the moment his toe crossed the threshold. This was it. One of the soft places of the earth. The power was stronger here than he had ever felt before. He nearly vomited. Arlo had to help him down the final steps.
In the hole was Father, the other twin, the non-responsive aunt, a man and a woman, and two further people tied hand and foot on the floor with bags about their heads. The new man was in his early twenties with squinty eyes and a fashionable mullet. Wearing jeans and a leather jacket, he took in everything with a haughty air. The woman was dark-haired with an oval face and full lips. Although she was attractive, her body language was off-putting. Something about her radiated evil. Her tongue darted in and out and her thighs rubbed together sensually as if she were aroused. Both had their eyes on the cryptic bowl in Father’s hands.
“Now that we’re all here,” Father said. “I want to present to you, Señor Constanzo, the ultimate find, the Holy Grail of your religion. Stolen by the conquistadors and now re-stolen by us. The nganga of Montezuma himself!”
Jon remembered Kathy’s mother telling him that a nganga was a personal, spiritual altar, filled with bones and debris meant to give power to the shaman. What was the religion again? Palo Mayombe. Were these two strangers practitioners?
The woman’s thighs rubbed even harder. The man’s cynical expression hardened. He was no fool. Arrogantly, he gestured for the bowl, which Father offered up gingerly.
“Do whatever tests you wish. The bowl, the skull top, the paint—all of it will carbon date back to the time of that noble Aztec.”
The man nodded and kept looking. The woman peered hungrily over his shoulder.
“As we told you, your religion is far older than you have been led to believe. It is part of the lifeblood of this land. It is integral to its nature. Palo is the one true religion of South America. All of the others are false. The ancient Aztecs used it to build an empire.”
“But Montezuma fell,” the man called Constanzo said.
“That’s because he made the mistake of believing Cortez was a god, allowing the man an opportunity to steal this item. Had he not, the results would have been very different. If you add this power to your own nganga . . . Well, use your imagination.”
The woman whispered fiercely into the man’s ear. Constanzo nodded and placed the bowl on the ground. The Aztec symbo
ls etched into its bone bottom shone out. Constanzo pulled a large pocket knife out, unsnapping a jagged blade from inside the hilt.
“I’m sure, Mr. Zanzibar,” Constanzo said to Father, “that we could send away for all of these tests and they would say this-and-that in language no one understands, but there is only one true test.”
“Oh, yes,” Father replied, nonplussed about the wrong name he had been called, “but to get this power, you must embrace the old ways. All these Palo practitioners use less acceptable vessels to build their spiritual power. They are too scared to seize true might as the Aztecs did. Animals are fine for lesser men, but in the old times one built their might by human sacrifice.”
Constanzo nodded. “That is the old way.”
“And before I sell to you. I have to be sure you have the cajones to use this sacred bowl as the ancients did, as all the spirits of the land demand it be used.”
Constanzo hesitated, then glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman staring at him, gauging his manliness based on his next words.
He hiked up his pants and said, “I have no hesitation. Bring me the creature.”
“You brought them with you from Matamoros. Those packages we asked for.”
The tied up woman was dragged over and the hood torn off. Though he had a sinking suspicion before about their identity, shock still smacked Jon in the face when he saw Kathy’s mother trussed up below. A gag was still tied around her mouth, eating up her pleas.
“Say the rite, splash some blood around. See the power for yourself,” said Father.
“I want her intelligence, so save parts of the skull to add to my nganga.”
“But of course. You might want to take her tongue too. She was always making phone calls, waggling it about, asking dangerous questions.”
Without further thought, without the slightest trace of humanity, Constazo straddled Kathy’s mother. Chanting away in some forgotten tongue, he pulled her hair back, forcing the head up, and readied the knife. The woman, silently orgasmic, held the bowl under the victim’s chin. The voice reached a crescendo. One practiced slice across the neck produced a torrent of blood. It hit the bowl and the world turned. This time Jon did vomit.
The lights below didn’t move, but the shadows around them did. The air grew thick and noxious. It wasn’t wet, but had a weird dry humidity as if the air pressure suddenly doubled. The thinness of the world was weaker than he had ever felt before. It was only a slight sheet, a mucous membrane, away from some horrible place. He could feel things pushing, fingertips rippling on reality’s skin, trying to break the seal.
Jon flipped back from one nightmare after another. Eyes open, he had to watch his friend’s parents butchered. Eyes closed, scenes of evil shot all about his brain.
Kathy’s mother flopped about like a fish out of water. Her mouth opened and shut, lips half forming objections. How could this be happening? It was her first taste of life far from the Ivory Tower. She believed the people of Mexico are of a quaint, spiritual variety, not prone to violent superstitions like the bigots said. This was all very different from what sociologists had assured her was the truth.
Echoes from creatures of darkness raced around the cellar. Dogs with thick spikes instead of hair. Bat creatures hunting for souls. Ghoulish ruddy-faced things that spat out precious stones and drank children’s tears. Constanzo sniffed and licked his lips, as if he could taste the evil in the air.
Crowded around Constanzo were reflections of human monsters from the past, committing almost the same ritual, using nearly the exact same gestures. Aztec priests, dark Spanish peasant women, leftover Mayan tyrants, occultist serial killers, and barely human mutants, all slathered about. Each offered up a foul sacrifice, a symbol of innocence betrayed.
The husband, a figure who was mostly a blur in Jon’s memory, was hauled forward and the bag ripped off. Gagged like his spouse, he spotted her corpse and struggled. Constanzo just laughed and chopped into the man’s neck, roaring with power. He yelled something about two skulls being better than one. His female companion laughed/screamed, hands rubbing furiously down her pants.
It was over. The academics were dead. Their skull caps harvested by a machete. The rest were tossed aside. A plastic bag was provided for the transport of the gory items. Constanzo stood triumphant, gazing adoringly at the blood-stained bowl. The woman, having seemingly orgasmed multiple times, curled serpentine-like around his feet, whimpering in submission and pleasure.
“Are you satisfied?” Father asked, as if the answer was in any doubt.
“Yes. You can claim full payment. One phone call and it will be delivered.”
“Ah, not here. Let me give you an address to drop it off.”
The men went up, Constanzo made a rude comment about Jon squatting on the stairs. The twins stood absolutely still, staring at the woman on the floor. She was still moaning, a ripple of pleasure occasionally ran through her. Jon could do nothing but clutch his stomach and marvel at the volume of vomit he had disgorged. He hadn’t eaten that much with the kidnapping and everything. It was unpleasant to look at, but he needed a distraction from the corpses of his friend’s parents not twenty feet away.
Eventually the woman rose, covered in freshly fallen blood. The twins became animated, offering a towel and directing her to a shower on the second floor. Jon, not wanting to be alone in this evil place, could only pull himself up the stairs and roll through the door. All the while, he panted like an overheated dog.
The breathing remains of Catherine de Courriere were left with the corpses. A few moments out of the corrupted atmosphere below was all it took to restore Jon’s strength, though the horror still weighed on him. Constanzo and his woman were departing. A few goodbyes were spoken in Spanish, Father still erroneously being called Mr. Zanzibar, and they zipped off, back to wherever they practiced their foul religion. The twins and Father waited a breath, then two, then three, then—cheered. Champagne was produced. Corks popped. Glasses clinked. Jon was offered a flute full. He took it, but not happily.
“Relax, boy,” Father said. “We did it.”
“Did what? That bowl thing wasn’t real, was it? Some lost relic of Montezuma?”
“Of course not. We had it especially made to pass any tests, but we shouldn’t have bothered. That dumb peon snapped it up easy enough. The family has always thrived on such idiots. Too stupid to even know his own religion.”
“So, we sold this fake in exchange for—?”
“A pallet of pure cocaine. Once cut, it should garner about a hundred million on the streets.”
“So we’re drug dealers now?”
“Only in the short term. The grand plan we’re embarking on requires an influx of cash beyond our current reserves. This will tide us over for quite a bit. And it felt really good. Even great-grandfather never pulled a score like this.”
The twins laughed. Now they were childishly giddy. They poured champagne on each other and threw pillows in mock-fight. Lola, the girl, jumped up and down on the couch, slamming harder and harder until the frame broke. Her brother hooted. Jon downed his drink, not expecting the bubbles to run up his nose like it did. He sneezed out half of it and a servant refilled the glass.
“What grand plan is that?”
“The great concordance. I can’t tell you more, you haven’t yet been fully tested into the faith of the family. The wheels are in motion and once that occurs everything will be made plain. You see here a small part of our dealings but you can’t know the rest.”
“Why did you bring me down here then?”
“Because we couldn’t have done it without you. Why do you think your mother hates you?”
That was an abrupt detour. Jon was flummoxed, the bad taste of the champagne didn’t help. “Because you’re raising me to be manly in the family traditions and—”
“No, no, no. She hates Michelle, too. You might not have noticed, because there’s little more we could do to ruin the girl. As you may know, your mother and I are third
cousins. She knew the deal when our marriage was arranged. Any males would be brought up in the tradition. She accepted this and the first girl— Well, she has a special purpose as well.”
“Then why the hate?”
“The one thing your mother always wanted, her deepest soul’s desire, was to be a mother and have a baby. One that would be hers alone with no strings attached. She has that in Catherine. But until she was born, there was just the two of you and bitterness set into her heart. I’m afraid she vented her frustration on you children.”
“I never saw it with Michelle.”
“That’s because you’re a self-absorbed teenager, but trust me, it’s there. Also, she was very upset about the manner of your conception.”
“What?”
“You were bred to be special. We call it The Opener of Ways. Why do you think these things affect you more than anyone else? The soft spot is strong in this cellar, but no one else lost their lunch. You were born to be a living conduit. We performed the ritual in our basement at home and, while swirling between worlds, I shot my semen into your mother’s ripe womb. The transition was not pleasant to experience.”
“I don’t need all the adjectives. It’s weird.”
“That’s why you are attuned to the beyond so wonderfully.”
A deafening crash from the other room. The male twin had knocked over a mahogany curio case stuffed with antiques. Porcelain pieces and wood splinters scattered across the floor. The female twin laughed and hacked into a rosewood dining table with an axe. Jon was uncurious about all this. The revelations, the head games, and murders fully occupied his mind.
“What makes you think I’m gonna help you with anything? You just committed two murders of innocent people right in front of me and for what turns out to be a fraud. Those experiences would have happened no matter what they did down there, correct?”
“As long as they thought it would produce a result, yes.”
“Then why have them killed?”
“Because some dumbass went around showing them pictures of an object that couldn’t be true, potentially queering up our hundred million dollar deal. They were asking questions among the Palo sects down here, collecting statements about the bowl’s inauthenticity, getting the wrong people interested. The bitch even called up our house about the polaroids you showed her. Too stupid to live. You might as well have cut their throats yourself.”