And Cuellar, tell me more about Sebastiano. You’re the only one alive who knew him. Sorry, I guess alive is the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Also, you probably shouldn’t use the voice activation feature. You kind of mumble.
Michelle, I hear you. Wish you were here, but I’m set on seeing this through. I’m too angry to let go at this point. I’m going to finish this.
I’m sitting here in a miserable little ice-cream shop in a bad part of Rota. It’s miserable because ice-cream shops should sell ice cream and this one does not. The only thing they have today is beer and sardines and crusty bread, all of which were served at the same temperature.
Negromonte got me out of Seville before the police showed up. I changed my identity once again, and boarded the next bus to Rota. I didn’t know what I expected to find there, but I knew it was the key to this mystery. I was thinking about Father Sebastiano as the bus trundled over the low hills of Andalucia.
According to Leon’s last post, we know Sebastiano completed his Malleus Momias. Furthermore, he acquired a shaman’s tumi, a tool necessary for destroying the mummies. Sebastiano even describes putting a mummy down. And yet ultimately he failed.
What became of Sebastiano remains unclear, but we can say with some certainty that he was unsuccessful in his bid to destroy the walking mummies of Peru. They’re still walking around, even blogging. So what happened?
I had been rolling the words ‘Archivo Rota Soledad’ around in my head for so long that I began thinking of them as the ‘broken archive of loneliness.’ But that’s not it at all. It’s an archive in Rota. It has to be. As it turns out, Rota is a resort community on the Bay of Cadiz. A little past its prime, it has a low-rent feel to it.
So I wandered through the old town, passing boarded up restaurants and bars not yet open for the day. The beach is nice; that’s apparently where all the tourists flocked. Germans mostly, by the sound of them, they drank frosty cans of San Miguel beer.
I still didn’t know what ‘Soledad’ referenced until I wandered into the poor end of Rota and found myself staring up at a street marker that read ‘Soledad.’
It was a short street, spanning the distance from a derelict gas station to a filthy dock where two plastic rowboats marinated in coastal swill. Four doorways opened onto the street.
One opened to a shop that sold sardines wholesale. The second led to a retail sardine shop that dabbled in marine hardware. The third was the ice-cream shop where I’m sitting. And the fourth was a private residence that looked entirely out of place – not a sardine in sight.
I saw a face in an overhead window. I knocked but nobody came to the door. That’s OK, I can wait. I’m going to sit across the street until someone opens the door. I’m in no hurry. I have beer and bread and sardines, along with… Hold on. The door just opened. I don’t see anyone, but the door just opened. I’m going in.
July 3, 2011
Cupertino, CA
Administrator
Urgent communication to Dr. Bruce Wheeler. Although your GPS software has been disabled in your attempt to avoid incarceration, please recall that you did just identify your location on a public blog.
In our ongoing effort to ensure the success of this project, and our concern for project personnel, we are advising you that we have intercepted three communications from Seville to Rota that mention you and/or the killing of you.
The first call was made six minutes ago from a coded line in the Seville police department to the mobile phone of Tio Regalado, the gypsy patriarch of a Rota-based heroin distribution organization. Your death, and the contents of the house on Soledad Street for half a million euros, was the offer.
The second call, after Tio Regalado ran the offer by his captains, was from Melchor Negromonte, the gypsy patriarch of a Seville-based criminal enterprise, who ordered Regalado to refuse the offer and provide you with security and safe haven.
The third call, which is only now just concluding, was direct from a landline in the old harem in the Seville Alcazar to Angelino Logoreci, an Albanian capo who controls most of the gun running in southern Spain, and who owns a beach house in Rota. Your death, and the contents of the house on Soledad Street for a million euros, was the offer. Contract accepted.
While estimates of Logoreci’s manpower and capacity for rapid asset mobilization are still being processed, you should anticipate hostiles on scene within seven to ten minutes.
Naya
age:
448
occupation:
confidant, and former housekeeper and companion to Fr. Sebastiano Gota
education:
none, illiterate
personal:
single
hometown:
Segovia, Peru
hobbies:
gardening
food/bev:
viscera/red wine
life goal:
eternal love
fav movie:
The Exorcist
obscurity:
unrepentant, cannibalistic tendencies largely resolved, morally restrained
July 3, 2011
Rota, Spain
Bruce Wheeler
Noted.
voice activation mode: enabled
indiv 1: OK guys, I’m crossing the street now. I’m stepping inside the house. It’s actually very cold in here, which is odd because it’s like two hundred degrees outside.
There’s something strange going on, I can’t really explain it, but there’s something here that is calling, or appealing to me. I’m not sure how else to say it, but there’s something very exciting about…
OK, I’m walking down the hall. HELLO. There’s someone in front of me. HELLO. She’s a young woman. She looks Indian. I’d go so far as to say Peruvian. She looks to be in her mid-teens, extremely lovely. HOLA SEÑORITA.
indiv 2: Por que viniste? //
indiv 1: Oh, god. She’s one of them. She’s a mummy. There’s a distinct, uh, a distinct physiological reaction. I’m actually quite terrified right now.
indiv 2: Why did you come?
indiv 1: I want to learn about Sebastiano. I want to find his book.
Let go of my throat. She’s…she’s incredibly strong. She’s choking me. Can you let me go, please. I mean no harm.
indiv 2: The last man who came seeking Sebastiano was a pistolero, a kind man with a moustache and two guns who also meant no harm. I almost trusted him. That was nearly two hundred years ago. Do you know who I am?
indiv 1: No, but I think you were there with Sebastiano in the village.
indiv 2: I cleaned his house and cooked his food. I shared his bed though it made him as mournful as it made him glad.
indiv 1: So what happened? How did you become...? How did you turn into…
indiv 2: You must understand, we did not know who we could trust. In the next parish lived a lunatic priest named Cuellar who had long ago come under the spell of the damned. For his sins, he was imprisoned. Sebastiano then approached the cleric who imprisoned him – the Inquisitor himself, and told him what he had learned, how to put down the dead.
indiv 1: Thank you for letting go of my neck. But Sebastiano didn’t know that the Quiroga, the Grand Inquisitor, had already become a demon.
indiv 2: The soldiers brought us to the pyramid that night so the Quiroga could watch it happen. They brought us into the dark room, the room with the candles, and those…things.
indiv 1: Demons?
indiv 2: Demons, yes. Imps. They bled us. Made us what we are. It was unfortunate really, not in anyone’s best interest. The Inquisitor wanted to punish Sebastiano, and punish him he did, turning him into the last thing he wanted to be. But of course he couldn’t be killed after that. They cut out his tongue but he lived. Ironic, isn’t it, that the only man left in the world capable of putting down the dead was now himself dead?
indiv 1: Where is Se
bastiano now?
indiv 2: His mind began to wander a century ago. I mourn that he is quite mad by now though I haven’t seen him in four decades, perhaps five. After the war, he would walk the cemeteries of Seville, saying silent prayers for the fallen.
indiv 1: What are you doing? What are you smelling? What is your name by the way.
indiv 2: Naya. I am Naya. Someone approaches. Many men. You have little time, not time enough to ask about the book as well as the gold. I’ll give you neither, but you may ask about one or the other.
indiv 1: ……….the book.
indiv 2: They are here. There is a tunnel below that runs under the house; you must go there now.
indiv 1: What about you?
indiv 2: I am about to dine.
voice activation mode: disabled
July 7, 2011
Segovia, Peru
Leon Samples
Bruce, it’s been four days, man. How about giving us a shout out? Otherwise, we’re left wagering as to your demise. Did the hot mummy eat you, or did you escape through the tunnel only to be captured by Albanian gangsters? Dude, if you’re some gun runner’s bitch, I can understand your silence. But if not, send us some love.
We’ve had quite an adventure here these last few days. I’ve been doing some excavating, which has been informative. Also, Michelle and I are lovers now.
I’m sitting here in the pyramid’s outer chamber. I’ve got the laptop set up on a pile of adobes, and I’m tracking shipping through the Panama Canal. I’m also eating a tuna sandwich and having a staring contest with one of the imps in the back chamber. I think I’m winning but I can’t tell; you can’t really look at them full on.
The Parador Joya, the cargo ship carrying Kim, passed through the Panama Canal yesterday, and is currently steaming past Colombia. I tried sending a message to Kim on one of the maritime channels, but there was no response. I’m not sure exactly what I would say anyway – missing your cold embrace?
So today I’m taking it easy. I’m sitting here in the pyramid, hanging out with my favorite imp. I’ve been throwing corn chips at him all morning, and by now he can catch them in his mouth. I suspect he’s grateful because he throws me presents in return. A breastplate just landed by my feet. I also have two greaves and a gauntlet. If I keep this up, by the end of the week I’ll have a full set of conquistador armor.
July 7, 2011
Segovia, Peru
Michelle Cavalcante
First of all, Leon and I are not lovers. I don’t know why he says things like that at a time like this, but rest assured, that day will never come.
Leon has made a mess of things, archaeologically speaking. He did a lot of digging before I got back, and he didn’t record any of it. He didn’t even take notes. This isn’t archaeology, it’s just random digging.
So yesterday, he and I spent the whole day trying to repair his damage while looking for this tumi thing, this shaman’s tumi. But we didn’t find anything. We looked exactly where Sebastiano’s journal said it should be – under the little shed behind his house.
The problem is, like every other frigging building here, even that little adobe shed was rebuilt six or seven times, so it’s hard to know where the original walls were. And then of course Leon tore through half of it before I got back, so it’s a mess. And we’ve dug through three floors already, so I don’t know where to look next.
And I can’t believe I’m even writing this sentence, but could you please discourage this friendship Leon has cultivated with the thing inside the pyramid, whatever it is. It’s not healthy. He named it Clyde.
July 11, 2011
Rota, Spain
Bruce Wheeler
The girl…how I can still refer to her as that I don’t fully understand. But she was at some level still a girl, though her humanity was only porously intact.
There was, of course, no tunnel, just a shallow pit under the floor. Naya’s words were for the benefit of our attackers who came swiftly, crashing through the doors and windows as she tucked me into a crawlspace under the flooring. And from that meager damp prison, I watched in horror through the cracks and warps and wormholes.
The girl, Naya, mummy though she was, smiled coyly at first, flirting as the first men came into the room. She has an extraordinary appeal, as I mentioned, and I nearly called out with desire. The first two men didn’t do so well when they approached her, their weapons falling to the ground in afterthought.
The men who entered through the back door (and mind you, the wormholes in the floorboards were so comprehensive, that I could even now faithfully diagram each person’s movement) did somewhat better. They were older, wiser perhaps, and they had the good sense to look away when she locked eyes with them. Unfortunately, they were still looking away when she smashed their heads together with enough force to fill my mouth with dust.
Five more came poking around, but they didn’t dare enter the house. My protector sat cross-legged on the floor, mere inches above my face, gnawing on the long bones of my assailants. And when one or another of those gangsters, or whoever they were, set their minds to entering the house, she had only to toss an ear or a lung his way, and their resolve softened.
“How long will you keep me here?” I asked, as she sucked the marrow from a tibia, cooing with delight.
She laughed, and her laugh did not fill me with hope. I waited another six hours under the floor, dying of thirst, until I dared ask again.
From somewhere she produced a heavy jar, which she tipped over, letting the wine trickle through the floorboards. Having no cup, I did my best to capture each drop, to drink deeply. “If you’re hungry,” she said, “I’ve plenty to share.”
“No.” I said it louder than I intended. And she laughed. She laughed like a girl, like a carefree girl, and it unnerved me. “Let me out,” I called. “You’ve no right to keep me imprisoned.”
She spent another hour working on her meal, and she twice tipped that wine jug, sending a respectable stream through a respectable wormhole. “The book,” she said finally.
“Say again?”
“The book, you said. I asked you to choose between the gold and the book, and you said the book.”
I didn’t know what to say, half mad with thirst, half drunk from dry wine. “The book, yes; the Malleus Momias.”
She was licking her fingers when I looked up through the cracks in the floor.
“The last time a man asked these questions, he chose the gold. Almost two hundred years ago as I mentioned, he was a beautiful man, a kind man, a pistolero who promised me the world, heaven even, if I would help him.”
“And did you help him?”I called up from under the floor.
“I told him the same thing I told you. I told him there was time only to answer one of his questions. And he asked about the gold. I told him I’d help him if he made magnificent love to me, a sorrowful kind. I told him it would mean nothing to me if he came to me willingly, if he had nothing to lose, no remorse.”
“You wanted him to regret it?”
She nodded. “I wanted only to recapture something of what I’d lost. I wanted once again to know the love of a man who tried in vain to hold onto his virtue, his promises, his assurances, his very soul, but who in the end could not. You see, it’s the only love I’ve ever known.”
“Sebastiano.”
She pried up a floorboard, the nails screeching as she pulled them free. “Yes. Padre Sebastiano, my only love.” She held out a hand, and I climbed up onto that floor, littered with bodies, body parts, viscera, and hair; the horrors of ruined worlds. But I had no eyes for that. Only for her. She was beyond compare.
“That pistolero did his best. He took me with some heartfelt measure of abandon, for which I gave him credit. And in return, I promised him I’d reunite him with that gold hoard one day. Bolivar was his name; he loved the feel of silk.”
“Bolivar,” I repeated.
She turned to me as she r
etrieved a short rib from the floor, discarding it only when she found it to be already clean. “And yet when I put the same question to you, you asked not for the gold, but for the book. That was unexpected.”
“I want to help Sebastiano,” I told her. “I want to help him finish what he started.”
She drew me into her arms and kissed me deeply. “I’ll offer you the same thing,” she said, when I could do nothing but quiver and yearn. “I’ll offer you what I offered the pistolero. I’ll promise you the book if you make the same kind of love to me.”
“But I have...I’m engaged to...”
The finger she pressed to my lips was neither mine nor hers, just one of many strewn about the floor. “Promise me,” she said, as she tore at my belt, “promise me you’ll regret this until your dying day.”
I promised her, Michelle. I’m sorry, but I knew even as I kissed her that I was lying.
July 20, 2011
Seville, Spain
Vasco Cuellar
Are we not damned, Duran? God has no love for the damned. He has precious little love as it is. All my life I’ve called out to him, begging to be saved, and not a whisper in any of the world’s winds have I heard in response. And I am a priest.
That being said, I take some pleasure in learning that young Bruce has found enduring love with one of our kind – Sebastiano’s old consort at that. The precious young priest wasn’t perfect after all, was he? Always so pious. He’d leave my home riding that stupid mule and I’d feel such shame about my behavior, my heresy, my gluttony, my lust, my fornications, my murders, my cannibalism, my apostasy. And all along, Sebastiano was breaking his own vow of celibacy. Well, none of us are perfect, are we?
But I’d dearly love to meet this girl. Many a poet has opined that a woman becomes lovelier with each passing year. But so few poets pen sonnets to the lines of beauty that the centuries etch onto her face.
The Mummies of Blogspace9 Page 11