During my return to campus, I had dealt with police interviews and my classwork, as well as short meetings at our OLF chapter. Our attendance was not the same anymore. Besides Edgar, we lost forty other members. I knew fear kept many of us away, but even after what had happened, I wasn't going to give up. In fact, I knew that the Millennium Riot only confirmed for me my path. I had to continue with OLF and the movement.
I ignored my coursework, putting off my reading and skipping discussion sections. I spent my time instead in a corner of the library, deep in a sea of information. In the mornings, I read every news post about the OLF and the Millennium riot investigation.
I read every blog and every tweet, and watched all the videos I could about the riot and its aftermath. I stayed up till four in the morning, reading, absorbing, and reading some more.
The latest death count was 309, and the debate over who shot first was not over. Those protesters who had brought firearms were either dead or in custody, and a federal investigation was underway.
At night, I slept in pain, my back aching and my skin breaking out in a sweat. When I slept, it was only for a couple of hours. I avoided taking too many painkillers. I had always disliked pills, but as a result, I stared out of my room into the orange-black glow of the city lights and cuddled my insomnia. My roommate Morgan slept soundly, as usual. Fog rolled over the bedroom window each night, and the darkness pressed behind it. Winter was approaching.
But I had still wanted and needed sex. The mornings with Edgar helped me start my day; they helped me feel like I was free, like there were no shadows pressing down on me through the sky and no blades of sharp pain running down my spine and inside my skull.
The train stations whizzed past me, and a gush of cold air filled the subway car each time the sliding doors slid open. On the streets below, the police cars saturated traffic. Since the riots, all eyes were on Chicago, and it was now common for anyone to get stopped and searched during all hours of the day.
Thorndale, Bryn Mawr, Berwyn and finally Lawrence. I had arrived at my destination.
I walked down the greasy stairs and turned onto the street. It was much too early for the doors to open, but there, lined up around the corner from the entrance of the Aragon Ballroom, a hundred fans sat with their backs against the wall, checking their phones, complaining about the wind and the cold, anticipating their entrance into the concert hall. The Aragon eclipsed the whole block with its Moorish architecture style and the deep layers of soot and grime that had tarnished it over the years.
As I walked up to the line to look for my brother, I was already regretting my clothing choices. These were the most hardcore Rhinoceros fans, and here I was, caught in the cross hairs of the fashionistas who waited in line. I didn't have any tattoos to speak of, and the indigo of my blouse and the red checkered pattern of my skirt were all wrong for this crowd. It was too late to go back home and change. It was what it was. I walked quickly down the line, avoiding the pressure of the eyes that bore down on me.
Three fourths of the way back in line, I spotted my brother José María. I had been waiting three weeks for this moment, where he and I could see each other alone, away from our parents' house, and I away from campus.
José María smoked a cigarette under his hoodie, letting out big gulps of smoke, one leg kicked out directly in front of him, the other one bent so he could rest his cell phone on top of it in case. He looked up at me with wet, red eyes. He was high already.
"Grab a seat, reina," He said. That's what my father called me when I was a little kid. Queen. Hadn't heard that in a while.
"How much longer till they let us in?" I asked.
"About another hour and a half. This way, we'll be at the very front."
"That's a lot of work just to see some dinosaurs."
"Hey, it's Rhinoceros. Some things are worth lining up for."
Rhinoceros had been playing the Aragon for decades now, and José María had never missed any of their Chicago stops, at least since our parents had allowed him to attend concerts. And that wasn't very long ago—it was barely a year. He was allowed to go if I went with him, and that meant I got to see a lot of shows.
"How much do I owe you?" I said.
"Just gimme thirty," he said.
I handed him three tens. I had ninety minutes, maybe a little more, if we could chat a little inside the Aragon.
"I thought it would take me an eternity to be able to talk to you without Mom and Dad poking in," I said.
"It's no problem; if you want, I can text Dad to turn right around. He just dropped me off thirty minutes ago. He can come hang with us all night," José María said, giggling, threatening to text on his phone.
Oh god, no. Please don't call Dad over here. I'll die.
"Okay, in all seriousness. Let me show you something. Okay?" I said.
I pulled out my phone and brought up all the saved searches I had found online, but also the academic materials I had gathered at the university library since I had been released from the hospital. I found a lot of information, but I organized it as best I could in a folder, because I wasn't really sure if any of it was useful for what I needed. I handed my brother the phone, and he scanned for almost twenty minutes until he handed the phone back to me. He lit up a cigarette and offered me one. I passed.
"So?" I said.
"So what? You know how to Google. Congratulations to you, Stephen Hawking." José María flourished his right hand and took a small bow in my direction. His sleek eyebrows and his hoodie, his thin stubble—they reminded me of a medieval court jester. He would never, ever stop making fun of me, as long as we lived. With a sigh, I turned the phone's screen back in his direction.
"Did Mom and Dad talk to you about their visit to my hospital room?"
"Not really," he said. "Mom stayed up crying every night, and during the whole time you were in the hospital, Dad went up to the attic and reorganized the whole thing. He put every book and tchotchke we have up there into little plastic crates, and he labeled every single one of them. He did this over and over, a real shitload. He did a good job, just like a psycho should, but no, he didn't say anything, either."
"José María, I am still having nightmares about the Millennium Riot. The reporters won't stop calling me, and they show up on campus, looking for those of us who were there. And my face--"
"What about it?"
José María had never been prone to coddle me when it came to my looks. He awaited my answer.
"I don't look the same. Probably never will. Feels ugly.”
He nodded.
"What does your face have to do with any of this?" my brother said.
"Well, you're not going to believe me until I show you, so take a look here, at this image I pulled up on the World Digital Library."
"Ah, you went and dug up the Florentine Codex. Nice!"
José María sat up straight, letting the wall support him. He pulled his hoodie back and spikes of his hair rose into standing, while the longer locks fell back . He grabbed the phone from me.
"The Florentine codex is cool as shit."
"It talks about Mictlán. That's why I wanted to talk to you while it's just the two of us."
"Awww... I thought you came out to see Rhinoceros with me because you recognize a person with great taste. You bitch!"
"Relax, I'm here for the show, too. But you're the only person who obsesses this much about...well, this stuff."
This stuff. Legends of gods, statues bathed in sacrificial blood, deities whose internal organs fell out of their stomachs like a Hannibal Lecter trophy. These were stories of old rituals, superstitious crap.
Three weeks ago, in my hospital bed, my parents had warned me about a place called Mictlán. Up until then, they had never mentioned the word much, except in nighttime tales. Or in some books in their library in our small living room. But that wasn’t enough information.
I had started my searches in the university library. I learned Mictlán was the realm of the dead
in the times of the Aztecs, a place ruled by the two lords, the god and goddess of death, blood, and sacrificial tribute. Mictlán was the place where souls were said to travel when they left this world.
In the end I found out almost too much information. It was more I knew what to do with. There was so much of it--archeological evidence, scholarly work, Buzzfeed trash--that by the time I finished my research, I felt like I had not accomplished much at all. And as I stayed up at night in the library reading abstracts, I realized I should have consulted José María in the first place.
"Mictlán is the shiiiiit," he said. "It's supposed to have mountains made of poisonous spikes and rivers swimming with monsters. Hades has nothing on this place. It's about as secret as you can get. After all, you have to kick the can if you want to see it." He laughed, and his laughter infected me with giggles, even though I was the sober one. Each time we looked at each other, we snorted again. When we were done, José María put his finger on the screen.
"That guy right there is the king - Mictlantecuhtli. He's got this sick blade coming right out of his skull face. He's got a wife, too, and together they govern the place. So fucking dope!"
The figure of this god, whose name meant the Lord of Mictlán, showed a reclining figure with a human skull instead of a face made of flesh. His headdress rose into the sky with bird feathers, and a bloody obsidian blade jutted from the nostrils in his skull face.
It really meant nothing to me. José María had moved toward all things Aztec, Olmec, Teotihuacán and Maya since he was a kid, but I had been more interested in history, civics classes and math--the things grounded in tangible reality. I preferred the real world.
Tiananmen Square, the crimes of Pol Pot, the civil rights riots--those were concepts I could operate on. And all through the years, José María lived in his little bubble of mythology books, vampire novels and comics. But that's what made my little brother my little brother. The purveyor of all that was weird.
The image we were both staring at was a page from the Florentine Codex, created in the sixteenth century, and its creator, friar Bernardino de Sahagún, had chronicled the beliefs and habits of the Aztecs during their early conquest. In this particular image, a half dozen men surrounded a woman in a grassy field, while a warrior in headdress brandished a club. In the background, green mountains filled the horizon. Floating shapes like ghosts made of stone floated in the air.
"So, I can't stop thinking about this image, and here's why. That day at the hospital, Mom and Dad said there's something wrong with me. That I have been contaminated by something that happened when I was thirteen. This passage describes a grassy field drenched in death, and for some reason it reminds me the Millennium Riot. Mom and Dad said that I brought something full of death back with me. A creature."
José María whistled. He stretched his legs and the grin on his face lit up from ear to ear.
"Wow...Dad's dealer must have gotten him the really good shit."
"You know Dad doesn't smoke. I am serious. They really said this. This is why I was texting you so much over the past couple of weeks. I wanted to talk to you, to see if they mentioned any of this before."
"All they've talked about is your reconstructive surgery and uncle Teo's divorce. Oh, and Mari's ugly baby. Well, that and the mayor cracking down on OLF after the riots; there's that, too. But they don't mention you that much, not that way."
"Every time I look at this picture, with that warrior and his club—my heart begins to race so fast, I think I'm going to die. If I stare at it too long, I feel that panic of what happened in Millennium Park. Why, José María?"
"Those who make the trip to the city of Mictlán don't come back," my brother said. "That's just the way it works. Maybe you're worried about death, after what happened. Maybe this isn’t so literal. Maybe our parents just want you to get more in touch with our roots."
Roots feel so far away. My Spanish is barely remedial. I don't even know how to pronounce some of the names of the places and things in this research. Touching roots is a sad understatement.
"That's just it,” I said. “Mom and Dad said I have to go on a trip to Mictlán. To reach adulthood. José María, have you ever heard the phrase 'When you step inside the Palace of Skulls'?"
José María considered my words, and he glanced at me sideways, as if I were the one who was high on weed.
"You know, I'm not going to answer that quite yet. Mostly because I think I have heard the phrase, but I can't remember exactly where. But I can help you dig up info on the place. I'll look it up when I get home tonight. Of course, some of the stories conflict, and some details are lost with the people who died in the colonization of the New World. And one more thing--shouldn't you be consulting with some archeologist professor at school? I'm only fifteen, remember?"
"This stuff is so weird that I am embarrassed to bring it up to anyone. All I have done is pull up my own searches. And you are the one that's always reading up on this. You have to help me."
My brother and I had been sitting on the cold pavement for so long, we were going numb. We faced a gray wall that was part of the elevated tracks of the train, and several people had been walking up and down the line, chatting with friends, finding the end of the line or simply killing their boredom with a cigarette. Scalpers orbited the block, too, asking who needed tickets for the show. I was so focused on what my brother was saying that I never noticed the pair of workman's boots stop right next to where we sat.
"After all this time, you fuckers insist on this socialist shit, still?"
The owner of the boots was a short man, packed with muscle, his face taut with tension. He wore a Rhinoceros baseball cap and a flannel shirt.
I knew immediately he was referring to me. I wore an OLF armband on my left shoulder. It was a logo-less design, just white letters on a black background, but unmistakable. The armband usually sparked a lot of conversations around campus, but it didn't occur to me that it would anger someone like this outside the Aragon.
"Hey, we didn't come here to get yelled at," José María said. "We're just hanging out."
"All our taxpayer money gets sunk into doubling up on cops and riot gear, thanks to pieces of shit like the OLF, man. It all starts with the stupid fucks that join in on this shit. Do you really think the OLF is looking out for you?"
I had to say something. I remained seated, though I felt awkward. But I was scared of standing up. What if he started a shoving match, or worse? I remembered the pain I had felt for days inside my bones from being beaten physically. The man in the work boots looked ready to lunge, his thick neck puffed like a cobra.
"Have you looked around this place recently?" I said. "The city is close to being insolvent, and we've got one of the worst murder rates in the country. And our school system's going down the hole and fast. You have faith in the traditional way of doing things, then?"
"This is the same shit I get from all of you fucking hipsters every time I bring this subject up. We wouldn't have this shit if you all you losers just got jobs and we kept illegals from stealing jobs."
José María stood up. I dreaded this moment already.
"You want to watch what you say," he said.
The man in the work boots crossed his arms and laughed in José María's face. He texted on his phone for a second and laughed at us again. "Fucking beaners. I'm sending YOU my damn tax bill next time it arrives."
The man peeled away toward the end of the line, laughing at us as he walked away.
My heart was racing, and the scars inside my cheeks hurt. My back pulsed with electricity.
"I get so angry, and yet I never know the right thing to say," I said.
"Forget it," José María said. "We came here for the show. Look, they are opening the doors. Tell me the rest of what we were talking about inside."
As the line of concertgoers went through the glass doors of the Aragon, I looked over my shoulder to see if I could spot the man in the work boots. He was nowhere to be seen. I felt as if he wa
s somewhere near, watching us. As I handed over my ticket at the door, my hand shook uncontrollably, like the hand of an old person.
"Relax, Clara," José María said off to my left as security searched him. "You look like you've seen a ghost. When we get upstairs, I'll tell you how to get to Mictlán."
Suddenly, the cavernous entrance of the Aragon, with its Spanish motifs, felt like a suffocating tomb. I put my hand on the OLF band on my jacket and considered taking it off, but I knew José María wouldn't let me. I walked through the turnstile. As we joined the hundreds of people in line in the concert hall, I got the distinct sensation that whatever I felt was watching me was not the man in the brown work boots. I was being watched by something or someone feral and dark. I felt an ache come over my joints and face, and it took me several seconds to get my heart rate down through heavy breathing. If I could have bought a beer, I would have.
José María waited for me at the bottom of the double staircase, and we ascended into the dark together.
My brother and I pressed our bodies against cold metal, and hundreds of bodies closed in behind our backs. We had nowhere to go. This space, our little slice of room right by the stage, was going to be ours for a while, and though other conversations surrounded us with noise, I felt like we had the best privacy I could ask for. This was the anonymity of the city, and I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me earlier to hold important meetings in the pit of the Aragon in between acts while surrounded by thousands of people.
José María pulled out his wallet and unfolded an old concert flier. The image at its center showed a gaping maw filled with white teeth. Inside the cavernous mouth, small stalactites shot upward toward the creature's palate. I looked closer and noticed those stalactites were buildings--little skyscrapers. There was a tiny city in that predator's mouth. Above it, in ragged white script, it read "Arkangel: Murderous Tour, 2009" The lower half of the flyer showed stops in North America, Europe and Latin America. José Maria turned it over and drew a single vertical tube. On the tube, he plotted a single black dot, and labeled it "Earth." Above the dot, he plotted thirteen empty circles, evenly spaced. Below, he drew nine more empty circles, pointing downward.
The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) Page 5