We haven’t done much work inside the pyramid. Actually, I didn’t even know there was an inside, other than that little chamber with the murals. But I’m wondering what we might find if we started poking around at some of those old adobes. A doorway, maybe?
And you know what? Before anyone else wakes up, and before I lose my nerve, I’m going to have a peek inside. Don’t worry, if I see any monsters, I’ll skedaddle. But before I leave you, I have Sebastiano’s third entry transcribed. Here is it, a little shout-out from the year 1580: Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 1580, 26 Junio // year of our lord 1580, 26 June
I continue to sleep poorly, not fully understanding the nature of the demons that walk the village at night. They are quite well-tolerated by our Indians, even entering the houses, but they always return to the pyramid before dawn.
Despite my gripping fears, I determined to explore the pyramid. But each time I approached, I was rebuffed by my congregation. They’d grow quite alarmed, quite insistent, even blocking my path.
So great was my concern, my fear for my own soul, that I rode my mule to Chocope, to seek counsel from Father Vasco. It was he who founded my very church before our Bishop granted him a larger congregation. Surely, Father Vasco would have taken some notice of these lurkers.
Upon arriving in Chocope, I found him ill, too ill to see visitors, his housekeeper informed me. She was an Indian woman of quite robust appeal. Might I speak with the good Father for a moment, I inquired. It’s a matter of some urgency.
A fuss was made, but she led me to the bedchamber where Father Vasco lay on one side of a very large bed. I’m not certain why I found that point curious, but had it been me so reposed, I would have aligned myself in the middle of the bed. However, that’s a detail of no consequence.
After inquiring as to his maladies, I told him of my interaction with the demon, and my conviction that these spectral things were nearly as numerous in my village as were the Indians. For some time he made no response.
We live in a word full of demons, he told me finally. Were it not a world full of demons, there would be no need for priests. Surely though, I was letting my imagination run wild. The night is filled with shadows, he suggested. And he reminded me, that as my superior, he was charged with supervising my ministry. He encouraged me to pay more attention to my sermons, and to worry less about my superstitions.
Chastened, I bid Father Vasco a speedy recovery. I untied my mule, that Indian woman hissing at me all the while like a snake. And I prayed as I rode. I prayed that Our Heavenly Father in his wisdom would help me find a way to banish this evil from our world.
As I turned onto the path leading up to my village, I became convinced that God had answered me. I rode up to the door of my small church and pushed it open. Not a grand place, I assure you, no riches adorned it, no silken tapestries, no windows of Venetian glass. But it was a house of God. And I was a man of God.
My life’s work would be to rid this world of those unholy things. And when I next made my prayers, they were prayers of gratitude for this conviction, this clarity.
That evening, having finished my supper, I read my Breviary before putting out the candle. But I had no intentions toward sleep. I waited, and then I quietly ventured forth. I kept to the shadows, moving quickly to the pyramid.
As I crept around the farthest corner, I noticed a light from within. I moved closer, nearing the narrow entryway, from where I heard a throaty noise, like a purring, if one could imagine something the size of a small mountain purring. I jumped back behind a ruined wall as two Indians approached. Each carried some squawking poultry, for what purpose I could not imagine.
I determined to get closer, but each time I left my hiding place, another Indian neared with a bird or a guinea pig. It was then I understood what was transpiring inside. It was a mass. An unholy mass, but it was a mass nonetheless.
It was my intent to march inside, to hold my crucifix high and consecrate that place, but no sooner had I taken one step did a figure emerge. I flattened myself against the wall lest he notice me, but I saw him standing there. The clouds were intermittent, but allowed enough moonlight to see something wet, something moist on the man’s face and chin. Something was dripping.
I prayed for the clouds to part, and they did. One must be careful what one prays for, and I will wish to my dying day that I did not see what I saw next. As the moonlight illuminated the whole world, I saw that the wetness was blood, and the face and chin from which it dripped belonged to Father Vasco.
June 27, 2011
Seville, Spain
Vasco Cuellar
Duran, you yet live! I’ve long believed I was the only conquistador left. You disappeared after Cuzco, leaving me alone with our secret, our curse. And now you question my sanity? Always the deep thinker, weren’t you?
Why not steal half the king’s gold, you suggested, and hide it in a portal to hell? What’s the worst that could happen? We died. We were murdered by malignant demons discontent to let us remain murdered. That’s the worst that could happen.
I too fared poorly after we parted company. I wandered the countryside for years, traveling by night, avoiding the villages when I could. My presence was alarming. I had become something alien, not a man, but something understood by the Indians, if not yet by me.
I set myself a goal one evening as I feasted on a sea lion washed onto the beach – I would reacquire my soul. So I marched into the city of Lima and reacquainted myself with the one man in Peru who I believed could help me; Vicente Valverde.
Do you remember him, Duran? The great priest – a Bishop he became. That day in Cajamarca when the Inca emperor was captured, it was Valverde who shoved the Bible in his face. And though the story is told otherwise, you and I know better – the emperor threw down the Bible not because it was a Bible, but because it was a thing shoved in his face.
Though nine years had past, Valverde remembered me well. He paled when he heard my confession. He was returning to Spain, and I begged him to bring me home so that I might take Holy Orders myself and embark on a penitent life.
We sailed within the month, but when our ship made urgent port on the island of Puna, we were captured. Wild Indians they were, and I screamed that night as they roasted Valverde in their fire. Horrified, I watched when they carved him up for their consumption. Horrified still, I took the bowl handed to me, and began to eat.
I was ordained in Seville in the Spring of 1550, but my mind had well-unhinged by then. No man in Spain understood what those cannibals saw clearly back on that island; that I was soulless.
I didn’t sleep, you understand, but I dreamed. I dreamed of those imps in the pyramid, those little demons who cut us. I prayed for those dreams to end, but they would not. Nor would the hunger.
I was not well-tolerated by my superiors in the Church. My howls, my cries to God discomforted them, so they dispatched me to an impoverished village high in the Pyrenees, a congregation of nearly two hundred miserable wretches. They hated me the moment I arrived, and I ate the last of them just before Christmas, saving me from the chore of crafting a holiday sermon.
I spent decades wandering my empty parish, dining well on the occasional pilgrim, but the dreams would not abate. I concluded one morning, after a fine French meal, two gentlemen from Toulouse having recently arrived, that I would redeem myself to God. I would return to the darkest place on earth, to the place of our transformation.
I sailed for Peru. With great trepidation, I conspired to become a missionary priest, and one evening I plied the Bishop of Trujillo with such fine Alsatian brandy that he agreed to my proposal. I would bring the word of God to those Indians who guarded our very pyramid. I was going home.
We built a small church, but it was of no consequence. Those Indians knew what I was. I went inside the pyramid that first night. I wasn’t afraid, and the Indians made no attempt to block my entrance. The walls had been freshly painted with the blood of animals. I closed my eyes and I licked the blood from those
walls, as I would every night hence.
I never entered the room with the gold. Never. I had no use for gold. Nothing I sought could be purchased. I had come for redemption, but redemption was not at hand. Before long, I had become an altogether different sort of priest. The language of the Sopays flowed freely from my mouth as I delivered my sermon, my dark mass.
For two years this continued, until the Bishop arrived to evaluate my performance. He expressed great concern about my failings. I had not a single convert, and the two Indian women who shared my home were quite marginally clothed. My Bishop shook his pious head. But our Church works in bewildering ways, and I was transferred, given a larger parish.
I tried, Duran. I tried again to speak to God, to beg his forgiveness, but it was not forthcoming. To my old church, the Bishop dispatched an idiot priest called Sebastiano. I prayed that his counsel might lessen my burden, but I nearly ate him on nine occasions, so I kept him at some distance.
Finally, I made one last effort at redemption. I penned a long missive to the only man alive who had the power to intercede with the Heavens on my behalf. No, not that flatulent imbecile Pope; I’m speaking instead of Gaspar Quiroga – the Grand Inquisitor of Spain.
I wrote my confession. I told everything, and I begged his forgiveness. Many months passed, but he came. He came with his servants, his soldiers, and his priests and his chroniclers, and he bade me sit quietly with him by the fire, just the two of us one evening, so that I might share every detail.
In the morning, he cast me in chains. I was shipped back to Spain and imprisoned in a remote monastery. The penitent monks who guarded me had taken their vows of silence, and I heard not another human voice for three hundred and fifty years.
Not until the ravages of the Spanish Civil War came to an end, did a lone misguided soldier release me from my prison. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old, but tasted like fifty.
Did the dreams stop during those long years? What do you think, Duran? I call myself Perdido because that is who I am. I am no longer a priest, no longer a man, no other than a howling revenant unleashed into this world. I stopped being Vasco Cuellar centuries ago.
As for Sebastiano, I never heard from him again. But it’s not him you have to fear. You’re wrong, Duran; the Sopays are not gone from the world. There is one left. You did not sense him when you returned to the pyramid because he had by then departed. He was invited in by my captor, by the man who chained me. Invited into his heart, that Sopay was, by Gaspar Quiroga, the Grand Inquisitor himself.
Melchor Negromonte
age:
67
occupation:
proprietor of Flamenco Melchor, a Seville dinner theater
education:
unknown
personal:
married, details unknown
hometown:
Granada, Spain
hobbies:
dominoes
food/bev:
rabbit stew with cabbage rolls/sherry
life goal:
recover gold promised by Queen Isabella
fav movie:
French Connection II
obscurity:
numerous arrests, wealth estimated at approximately ten million euros, widely believed to be the patriarch of the Triana Gitano Captiano, Seville’s gypsy crime syndicate
June 28, 2011
Seville, Spain
Bruce Wheeler
I miss you, Michelle. I would dearly love to know if I’m still dearly loved. I hope you’re not souring on me just because I’m an international criminal.
I’ve changed identities more rapidly than expected. My pickpocketing roommates keep an abundance of wallets strewn about the apartment, but I consistently pick the wrong ones.
For two days, I was Jakob Wempel of Berlin, Ohio. I wore eyeglasses and a long fake beard. Identification is required to access the research library at the University of Seville, so I handed over Jakob’s Ohio driver’s license, and began searching for historical references to Sebastiano Gota, and to our new undead friends; Cuellar and Duran.
Nothing came of it, except a link to a source called ‘Archivo Rota’ the broken archive, which I chanced upon accidentally, having keyed in S. Goya instead of S. Gota. But I found no other references to it. Then Jakob’s uncles came for me.
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.
voice activation mode: enabled
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?
The Mummies of Blogspace9 Page 8