Xolotl Strikes!

by William Stafford

  Trask said nothing. He reached both hands into the trunk and withdrew the bandage-wrapped body and found it lacking. “What is this? Where’s the rest of him?”

  Miss Pepper squirmed. “That limey idiot pulled one of the arms off and threw it away.”

  “He did what?” Trask’s blood was boiling. And so was mine. ‘Limey’ indeed!

  “It is of no consequence,” Trask decided. “We have more than enough to make the elixir. Let us begin.”

  He lay the mummy on the flat stone. He beckoned Cuthbert to him. My valet took two stumbling steps like a recalcitrant puppet. Trask tore Cuthbert’s shirt off - which was Miss Pepper’s blouse, you will recall. He was still wearing her jodhpurs and they were such a snug fit, I found myself thinking of peaches. And plums. And a banana.

  Cuthbert set to work on a length of wood, pushing it around and around a circular path. On the turning stone, the mummy was squeezed under the vertical block. It popped distressingly as the skull gave way, reminding me of Christmas nuts.

  Around and around, Cuthbert toiled. His broad back was slick with sweat. Washington Melville kept the stones lubricated with water and vegetable oil - maize, probably, given the former inhabitants’ preference for it. The others, lit by torchlight, were grotesque masks as hideous as anything you might find in an Aztec art gallery - if they had such things, which I suspect they did not.

  After about an hour of grinding, there was nothing left but mess. The bandages, already rotten, were completely disintegrated and as for the body they contained, it had been reduced to a grey and pink mulch.

  Trask was ecstatic. He ordered Miss Pepper to gather the remains of the remains into an urn. I heard her mutter something about it’s always the woman who has to clean up the man’s mess.

  “The time is upon us!” Trask exalted. “Come, let us don our robes. Everything must be just right.”

  “Wait!” Miss Pepper tugged his elbow. “What about the last remaining ingredient?”

  Trask stared at her for a moment and then smiled a thin smile. He stroked her face. “The blood of a virgin.”

  She slapped his hand away. “Don’t look at me, bub. That ship sailed a long time ago.”

  I felt Professor Pepper tense up beside me with paternal indignation.

  “She’s a modern girl,” I whispered.

  “It’s all in hand,” said Trask. He clapped a hand on Cuthbert’s shoulder. Without thinking, I sprang from the shadows.

  “Unhand him, sirrah!” It pained me to say it but I disclosed what Cuthbert had confided to me: when he was fourteen he had dallied with a young lady - for the purposes of experimentation, merely.

  Trask laughed. “Welcome to the party, Mr Mortlake. Your coming could not have been more opportune.”

  “Oh, Hector, you fool.” Miss Pepper clapped her palm to her face.

  “And,” I pointed at Melville, “I happen to know our mutual friend here is a married man.” He nodded and held up his wedding ring. “So, you may as well toss the whole thing in. You won’t find any virgin blood here.”

  Trask sneered. “I think you’re full of it, Mortlake.”

  The professor stepped from his hiding place.

  “It’s the truth!” I protested.

  “Full of virgin blood, he means.” I noticed then that the professor was holding a revolver. And he was pointing the bally thing at me.

  “You ain’t never been with a woman, have you, Hector?” said Miss Pepper. “Not even for experimental purposes.”

  I gaped and stammered.

  “Well done, Professor.” Trask clapped him on the shoulder. “Thank you for bringing our star guest here in time.”

  The professor shrugged dismissively. “I couldn’t keep him away.”

  I felt a prick. The sharp sting of a dart from a blowpipe at Trask’s lips. Consciousness began to fade into blackness and it was at that moment I realised they were all in it together and what a damned fool I had been all along.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I came to sometime later - perhaps a couple of hours had elapsed. The sky was livid with the oranges and purples of sunset - the same hues, I imagined, as the gigantic bruise to my ego.

  I was in prime position to watch Phoebus pack his fiery chariot away for the night because I was flat on my back on a slab of stone, strapped to it as tight as could be. So much for the knockout drops given to sacrificial victims! Perhaps, like me, they were fully conscious and aware of what was happening to them. The blade going in...

  I was aware there were figures around me but I couldn’t lift my head to get a better look. I imagined the gang was all there. A more treacherous bunch I had never come across. There was movement around me. Someone was playing bongos, a quietly insistent rhythm just a touch faster than the human heartbeat - my own organ needed no encouragement; it was racing aplenty. I feared it would burst from my chest and make a bid for freedom, saving Trask the trouble of unseaming me from the navel to the chops.

  The rhythm waxed faster and louder, augmented by the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet. There was evidently quite a crowd gathered around the pyramid to see old Hector Mortlake have his heart ripped out. Would that my book signings were so well attended! I was unable to see this clapping, stamping multitude but I could hear them all right and, furthermore, I could sense them. Something happens when a large group of people focusses on a single purpose. There is a build-up of energy unlike any other. Religious leaders know this and capitalise on it to reinforce whichever narrative they are peddling. Hiram Trask and Professor Pepper had done their research. The stage was set for the summoning of Xolotl and the elixir of immortality.

  Or so they thought.

  Someone loomed at my side and released my left arm from its bonds but I had no opportunity to flex the limb. The tip of a knife was pressed into the crook of my elbow.

  “Ouch!” I cried. “Have a care!”

  I writhed about a bit and saw it was Cuthbert standing there, holding a copper bowl to catch the blood - my blood! - yes, my virgin blood, damn it. If I had known that one simple dalliance with a female would have spared me the indignity of bringing about the destruction of the world, well, perhaps I might have had a stab at it, so to speak.

  Cuthbert was staring blankly ahead, still under the influence of the mind-control drug.

  “Psst!” I urged, hoping he would snap out of it.

  Miss Pepper hove into view and deftly exchanged the now-brimming bowl for an empty one. Cuthbert did not even blink. I tried to follow Miss Pepper, to keep her in my field of vision. She moved around my feet and out of sight.

  “That’s right, my girl,” her father, the perfidious professor, encouraged her. “Pour it into the urn. Mix it into a paste.”

  I knew I couldn’t afford to give up much more of the red stuff before passing out altogether and forever. I hoped they would get a move on; I wanted to be still conscious when their precious ritual all went wrong.

  A shadow fell over me. Trask was standing at my head with his arms raised to the darkening sky. He declaimed incantations (or should that be Aztec-tations?) in the ancient Nahuatl language, of which I don’t understand a bloody word but I imagine they went along the lines of praising Xolotl, the bringer of death, and asking him if he would be so kind as to pop down for a visit if it wasn’t too much trouble.

  Underscoring all this the drum beat continued but the crowd of spectators was hushed, like when one tosses a blanket over a parrot’s cage. Trask was working himself into a lather. He called, in English, for the elixir and was handed an ornate goblet - I watched all this upside down, which added to the surreal aspect of the whole farrago. Trask was bedecked in ornamental robes he must have had run up especially for the occasion. No detail had been overlooked. Except for one - but I’ll come to that in a bit.

  Trask quaffed a hear
ty swig, smacking his lips as though that macabre concoction was the most refreshing libation, or ambrosia itself! He handed the chalice to Cuthbert who did not drink but passed it around the other celebrants. Professor Pepper, his daughter, Washington Melville... they all drank of the potion. I shuddered to imagine a world with that mob forever in it. Repulsive idea - but of course, what they didn’t know but I did: their dream of immortality was not going to come to pass.

  The sky was quite dark by now with barely any streaks or smears of sunlight left. Clouds rolled swiftly by, obscuring the moon as they flitted past.

  Silence. Absolute and pregnant.

  A roll of thunder shook the pyramid to its foundations and, for a brief instant, I was glad to be strapped in place - except I wasn’t. Not entirely. The arm that had been released for bleeding was still free - another detail overlooked by the megalomaniac Trask!

  After the thunder came a fork of lightning. It struck Trask - a hit, a palpable hit! - on the noggin, right on the crown of his ceremonial headgear. A gasp rose from the crowd. More lightning came, and more, against all laws of meteorology. The scene was thrown into chiaroscuro. I tugged at my bonds to free myself and found Cuthbert coming to my aid. His blank expression didn’t change but he tipped me a cheeky wink.

  The little faker!

  I hoped I would live to have it out with him.

  He pulled me from the altar stone just as Trask swung stiffly at me with a dagger of stone and glass. The tip broke off on the slab but Trask kept coming. Cuthbert, abandoning all pretence, affected to shield me with his broader torso. Everyone was in confusion. The other celebrants scrambled to get away but fell over themselves and each other.

  There was one last blinding flash and a figure was revealed standing on the sacrificial stone. Man-shaped but with the head of a dog, it arched its fearful neck and bayed at the moon.

  “Xolotl!” gasped the crowd and stampeded for the exits.

  Trask dropped to his knees and raised his arms in supplication. “Lord!” he breathed. “You have come!”

  That damned fool Professor Pepper chose that moment to fire his bally revolver. I imagine fear motivated this impulse. His daughter tried to pull him down - the shots went wide but drew the attention of the figure on the altar, who sprang from the stone and tore out the professor’s throat with a single swipe of a clawed hand. Miss Pepper screamed and scrambled aside. The bringer of death surveyed the faces of the mortal fools who dared to summon him.

  “Master!” cried Trask. “The rites are incomplete. You must join with me and we shall rule as one.”

  “Here,” said Cuthbert, nudging me gently. “Did he just say he wants to fuck a dog?”

  Xolotl stood blinking at Trask and his high priest’s regalia. He appeared to find him wanting and turned away. His gaze fell on me and he let out a yelp of recognition. He bounded gleefully behind the altar and retrieved something that he presented to my feet like a faithful Labrador.

  “He’s brought bones!” gasped Trask. “Bones from the underworld!”

  But I knew this was no Aztec deity.

  “Good boy!” I enthused. I stepped from behind Cuthbert to scratch between those doggy ears. “Good boy, Tommy.”

  Tommy’s tongue dangled as he panted with undisguised pleasure.

  “Tommy?” Trask was gaping. “You mean that’s not the Aztec deity, Xolotl?”

  “I’m afraid not, you deluded maniac.” Well, someone had to say it.

  “But the ritual - the potion-” His face darkened. “Have you been sleeping with women, Mortlake?”

  I greeted that accusation with the sneer of disdain it deserved. Trask’s gaze fell on the object at my feet.

  “Er - whose arm is that?”

  I picked it up and made it wave at him. “Why, King Xolotl’s, of course. You, sir, drank the wrong mummy.”

  It took a few seconds for this information to sink in. Trask’s hand rose slowly to his throat. “Then... who... ?”

  And so I revealed the secret I had been keeping since I left the train in New Orleans. I had swapped the king with One-Eyed Helen, wrapping her in the bandages in such a way that one arm was strapped out of sight - in case Miss Pepper or someone should think that King Xolotl could regrow limbs like the lizard axolotl.

  Trask paled. “So I am not immortal, then?”

  “Up to this point,” I observed, “with the exception of the mad professor, we have all proved to be immortal. And shall continue to do so until the moment we die.”

  Trask roared in frustration. “That may come sooner for some than others!” Moving swiftly, he grabbed Miss Pepper and put the broken blade of his obsidian dagger to her pretty neck. “Give me that arm. There is still time while the planets are in alignment. I shall have my eternal life, I tell you. I must!”

  There was a wild look in his eyes that was more than the flickering reflection of the torch flames. That bolt of lightning must have frazzled away what had been left of his reason. The man was insane.

  I nodded to Cuthbert who picked up the arm and delivered it to the madman. Tommy’s eyes never left it - he was anticipating another game of fetch. Trask snatched it from Cuthbert and shoved Miss Pepper into my valet’s arms. I bristled as Cuthbert brought Miss Pepper back to my side. We watched in horror and disgust as Trask sank his teeth into the mummified limb and tore off a sizeable chunk, which he devoured with a display of poor table manners not even Tommy could match.

  Laughing, with his mouth still full of dead king, Trask menaced us all with the dagger. “Need blood...” his words were muffled by the mummy he was masticating. “Need more virgin blood to wash it down.”

  “You can get stuffed,” said Cuthbert, stepping in front of me. As rock hard as his pectoral muscles were, I knew they would be no armour against Trask’s ceremonial dagger.

  It was Tommy who saved us.

  He leapt at Trask, clamping his jaws around the ragged arm. Man and dog-headed boy bowled over and over, rolling down the steps of the ziggurat.

  “Come on!” said Cuthbert, taking my hand in his - and also Miss Pepper’s, I noticed. We plunged down the other side of the pyramid and into the empty canal.

  “Not so fast!” It was Washington Melville, levelling the professor’s revolver at us.

  “Is that the railway’s motto?” I sneered. “You back-stabbing blackguard. You shall let us pass and, if you have any honour in you, you will surrender yourself to the authorities at the earliest opportunity.”

  Melville laughed. “I’ve had my troubles with white folks, Lord knows, but the English take the biscuit. You don’t own me. Nobody does.”

  “What do you want?” Miss Pepper said, exaggerating her American accent it seemed, to distance herself from me.

  Melville smirked. “I ain’t after no eternal life. But only a few people know of the existence of this city. I want to reveal it to the world. I want the fame and the riches that will come with it. It gets mighty old mighty quick punching folks’s tickets, riding up and down the railroad and never going anywhere. This is going to make my name and my fortune.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “What are you going to do? Kill all those people who were at the ceremony? How many were there? Hundreds? Thousands? I doubt even your lust for fame will drive you to so many murders.”

  Melville spat on the ground. “Superstitious fools. They will be too scared to come back. You saw how they ran away.”

  He had a point. Damn him.

  “Washington, honey,” Miss Pepper toyed with her tresses. “You’re going to need transportation. I’m your gal. We should go into partnership. Together we could really fly.”

  “Oh, please,” I rolled my eyes. “Is there nothing to which you won’t stoop?”

  Miss Pepper sneered and looked me up and down. “Yes. You virgin.”

 
Outrageous!

  I was about to give her a piece of my mind when Melville began to cough and splutter and claw at his throat. He toppled to his knees, his eyes rolling white. He wrapped his arms around his belly as though to squeeze the agony away. He wriggled about a bit, convulsed sharply a couple of times and was still.

  Cuthbert stooped at his side and pressed a finger to his neck. He shook his head. Miss Pepper let out a gasp.

  “Poisoned, it looks like,” said Cuthbert. “Hardly surprising giving what he drank. You and all, Miss.”

  Miss Pepper’s eyes rounded. Her lips trembled.

  “We must get you to a doctor,” I said.

  “Really? You’d do that for me?”

  “Miss Pepper, I should hate for there to be any bad blood between us.”

  * * *

  “If you don’t mind, Miss,” said Cuthbert. Without waiting for a reply, he scooped her up in his arms. She lay her head on his shoulder. I suppressed my jealousy and paused to prise the revolver from Melville’s cold, dead hand.

  We walked from the city and into the jungle. Miss Pepper uttered directions but was growing weaker by the minute.

  “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

  “Tush, girl,” I said. “Conserve your energy.”

  Now that she was dying I was altogether more disposed to be civil to her and forgive her treachery.

  We came to the road that led to the farmstead but Miss Pepper shook her head. “The other way,” she said, her voice little more than a croak. “There’s a village. Maybe a doctor.”

  And indeed, not quarter of a mile away, a settlement hove into view. The welcoming warmth of lights in the windows drew us like weary moths. I was plodding by this point but Cuthbert was showing no sign of fatigue, carrying Miss Pepper like a rag doll.

  We reached the first residence.

  “We’re here now, Miss,” said Cuthbert softly. Miss Pepper didn’t respond.

  I took her wrist in my hand. Her skin was cold and there was no pulse.