The Mummies of Blogspace9

  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.”

  Alcazar of Seville

  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.

  “A Toledo sword,” he said
, hoisting one from the rack. “Now there’s a weapon you can trust.”

  “If you take the time to train,” Cuellar told him. “You were never an effective swordsman, not even at Cajamarca.”

  “No,” Duran agreed, tying the scabbard to his belt. “No I was not. And for all I know, this was my very sword, the one General Rumiñavi used to cut off my feet. How I miss those feet.”

  “You’ll want to see this,” Cuellar called to him as we tried to move our party forward.

  “Oh, my yes. Now there’s a weapon I can manage.” Duran hefted the harquebus from its pegs. “A tortuous weapon on a good day – two minutes to load, half again if your hands are shaking.”

  “And louder than an Andalusian whore on All Souls Day,” I said before he did. “We’ve heard this all before. We can come back another day, but we need to move.”

  “There may be no other day,” he said, inspecting the weapon. “Vasco, fetch me the powder. I’ve spotted a fine ball to load.”

  So we waited until Cuellar returned with a powder horn and Duran loaded the harquebus. Suddenly, a stranger jumped in front of me, aimed a gun at my face and fired. I froze, imagining myself to be both dead and deaf, but the stranger quickly threw me aside and fired two more times. It was a full moment, how ever that can be measured, before I realized he was shooting past me, saving my life.

  Three men lay on the ground, each shot in the forehead.

  “Sopay watches us all,” Cuellar spat. “He will have our souls for a poor snack between his breakfast and his lunch if we do not come to him now.”

  I turned back to my protector. “Who are you?”

  “Bolivar,” he said, reloading a pair of antique pistols. “You were careless.”

  “Bolivar,” I repeated. “I’ve heard a lot about you. That was fine work you did, liberating South America. Fine work.”

  He nodded and clicked his heels together.

  “He’s with me,” Leon said. “I brought him from Peru. We’re really good buddies, like best friends, like two swords in one scabbard. Wait, that sounded gay.”

  I felt a stab to my heart when I saw the look that passed between my lovely Naya and Bolivar. They had been lovers too, I realized, almost two hundred years ago. And yet Bolivar was still human, not a mummy. By now I could easily distinguish the living from the…the not quite living.

  Radu pointed to a low doorway which I remembered racing through when we escaped from the harem. “It is time we split up,” he said, and we bade farewell to him, to Leon, and to Bolivar - Kim’s rescue team.

  And so I led my own squad through the hall of ancient weapons: Negromonte and the three mummies - Duran, Cuellar, and Naya. I can’t use the term fearless to describe my sense of mind, but my fear was manageable. I had only some idea of what was waiting for me behind that broad door in front of me, but I was certain it would be something unimaginably terrible.

  Even so, I walked first, Naya behind me for her protection, which was probably not necessary given the nature of her existence. Then came Negromonte, and the two long-dead conquistador knights I now called friends.

  A month and a half ago, I knew not one of these individuals, and yet each was now precious to me. I felt certain that they would be the great friends of my life. But when that door opened and I saw what stood behind it, I didn’t have much faith that life would go on much longer.

  July 24, 2011

  Seville, Spain

  Leon Samples

  I’ll admit to some degree of terror once we split up. I thought it unfair that Bruce got all three immortals. All I got were two normal, every day, garden variety humans: Radu and my buddy Bolivar. But life goes on. And on and on, as I would soon learn.

  If I told you that the hallways smelled like death, I’d be sugar coating things. Decay was everywhere; in the woodwork, in the wilting mushrooms that sprang from the woodwork, and in the rot, which was itself somehow decaying.

  What might have once been a carpet softened our steps as we crept forward and came to a room lined by louvered screens.

  “We must take great care,” Radu whispered. “Harem is guarded by eunuchs. They are very good with their weapons.”

  Bolivar let out a gasp as he peered through the louvers. I joined him and suppressed my own shudder. “Early risers, aren’t they?”

  Sunrise was not far off, but already the curtains were being drawn on the apartments the Caliph built for his harem a thousand years ago. And as the servants unrolled the carpets, and lit the morning fires, the concubines began to rise.

  Horror is a word too kind for what I saw in front of me. I’ve made no secret of the fact that Kim got five times hotter after her transformation, but these things were hideous. I’m not certain what they were, but a different kind of thing.

  Where once were faces, only leather on bone remained. As the nearest concubine turned, a ray of light illuminated the rouge that had been applied directly to her exposed cheekbone. Coyly, she peered into a mirror and brushed away the six wispy hairs that remained on her head. Even Radu gasped.

  “What are they?” I whispered. “I thought we would find a harem full of mummy honeys.”

  Bolivar shook his head. “No, only the imps in the pyramid can transform someone. These are still women, kept alive by Sopay’s energy.”

  “So these women are what? Zombies?”

  “No,” he said. “They are living women, centuries old perhaps, but living women. They see themselves as they once looked.” He pointed to a lingerie-laden crone who applied lipstick to her jaw. “She makes herself beautiful for her husband.”

  Radu turned away. “I understand why he would want new wife.”

  “He’s not going to get that chance,” I told him.

  Bolivar put his hand against my mouth as a harem guard passed on the other side of the louvered screen, his scimitar dragging on the tile floor. Something creaked as I drew back, and the guard stopped. He turned and looked straight at me. I would have screamed if Bolivar didn’t have me by the mouth.

  Something of a face remained, the face of a very old man. He peered through the louver, his toothless mouth hanging open. I wanted to pity him as much as fear him, but the fear was winning out. I don’t know how much sight he had left in his clouded eyes, but fortunately he didn’t see us. A remnant of lip drew up in a sneer as he turned back to his route, his scimitar scraping behind him.

  “That was one scary old eunuch,” I noted.

  “Quiet,” Radu warned. “There are many more.”

  We waited until the fires had all been lit. That’s when they brought her out. She was wrapped from head to toe in a woven tapestry, but there was no mistaking her. I would recognize Kim Castillo anywhere.

  Bolivar checked his guns. “Radu must create a distraction. I will cut a path through the guards. Leon, be ready to grab her. If she resists, call out to me.”

  I nodded, but before we could even get that underway, the attendants began unwinding the tapestry from her body.

  “Madre de Dios,” Radu whispered when she was naked. He must have whispered it too loudly, because another ancient eunuch appeared at the screen. Before we could react, he shoved his hand through the louvers and grabbed Radu by the throat.

  Bolivar got off a volley of shots. I held my fire for the next guard and then I kept shooting until he was down. But there were too many. They mobbed us, and soon had us flat on the ground. My face pressed into the tile and I shut my eyes.

  When I dared open them, I saw an impossibly lovely foot in front of me. I looked up and saw the rest of her. “Hi, Kim.” The scar at her throat had healed.

  She knelt down. “Leon, don’t tell me you came all this way for me.”

  I nodded as best I could. “I came to rescue you.”

  “Rescue me? From what? Do you know how hard it was for me to get here?”

  What the hell? “Kim, that old demon Quiroga intends to marry you. You’d be his slave for eternity.”

  She laughed. “You never did understand women,
Leon. That old demon, as you refer to him...goddamn, I could smell him in the air even from Peru. I want him. I came for him, Leon. I’m going to make him mine. Quiroga is about to become my bitch for eternity.”

  “But...”

  “But yourself. And you,” she turned to Bolivar. “You came too? You had your chance. How many times did I strip down for you, and each time you turned me away?”

  “Eleven times,” he said. “But I am a gentleman. My love has been promised to another.”

  “That’s too bad.” Kim looked down at Radu. “This one I don’t know. But that’s not a problem, I could use some guys like you on my staff. There’s just one thing left to take care of, you know. Two things really.”

  Radu began to sob. I think I did too when Kim summoned her remaining eunuchs and ordered them to castrate us.

  July 24, 2011

  Seville, Spain

  Rafael Duran

  The boy acquitted himself well. I shall admit at this point that I was quite touched by his concern for me. None of us knew whether our plan would work, but the risk to myself was not inconsequential. The words that Bruce would speak would be dangerous to me.

  “I don’t know if these will do the trick,” he told me, handing me the earplugs. “I can’t promise anything.”

  I smiled at the boy. “The risk is well met,” I told him. After the cones came the wax, stuffed into my ears. Naya was outfitted in the same fashion, as was Cuellar, though it was quickly revealed that he already maintained enough wax in his ears, obviating the necessity for more.

  Although I haven’t known the sensation of fear for centuries, I can admit to some trepidation as we approached the door. No matter what happened next, behind that door waited my maker. And I was not entirely eager to meet him.

  Gaspar Quiroga

  age:

  501

  occupation:

  former Grand Inquisitor of Spain, currently Chairman of Grupo Yapos Iberia

  education:

  Doctor of Theology from University of Salamanca