The Mummies of Blogspace9: Chapter Twenty-Six

July 2, 2011
Magdalena de Paz, Peru
Samples      http://www.greatbigLeon.blogspace9.ex

Needless to say, we couldn’t do it. Segovia went through the motions, assembling a bonfire in the yard, out back behind the apple trees.  He even pulled out one of the three fuel cans we have left for the generator.  I think his plan was to cover Kim with the wood and light her up.  But in the end, he couldn’t do it any more than I could.

So we let her rest on the couch, rest in peace, right?  By morning she was cold.  But yes, she was still breathing.  One or two breaths a minute, but she was breathing.  And yes, she still looked lovely. 

I know that sounds creepy, and I wouldn’t bring it up, but it can’t go unsaid.  There’s something about this transformation, for lack of a better term, that dramatically increases the desirability of the afflicted individual.  Enough said, I won’t mention it again, except to say that Kim is hotter than ever.

Bruce, I’m sorry to hear about Cyrus, man.  That kind of sucks, having to knock off the boss.  I guess you can kiss that letter of recommendation goodbye.  Honestly, I never took him for a demon hag, the servile lapdog of an ancient ghoul. 

So this whole project is a joke right?  All along we were searching for a huge pile of Inca gold?  Well guess what, fuckers?  I’m an archaeologist.  I still have my health, my trusted bodyguard, and my dead girlfriend for company.  I’m going to find me some gold!

 

Actually I wrote those lines like twelve hours ago, then the electricity went out.  In the meantime, I got out that journal to see if I could make sense of it, but I didn’t have any luck.  Then I got drunk and passed out. 

I had a dream.  In my dream, Kim was running her fingers through my hair.  I tried to sit up but she pushed me back down, gently.  “It’s going to be OK,” she said.  Then she kissed me.  When I woke up, she was gone.

Segovia screamed his way around the house like a banshee, crazy with worry, but Kim was gone.  The front door was open, the gate was open.  She was gone.  Lying on my pillow was the transcription of the final entry in Sebastiano’s journal.

“Malleus Momias” Hammer of the Mummies

Over the next hours, the old man Acahuna told me everything.  We didn’t leave the church until my indian girl poked her head in to call me to supper.  At that point, Acahuna left me.  I was shaken by his tale, but I made plans to meet him the following day so that we might do the good work of Our Lord.

This unnatural thing, this diabolical reanimation of the dead, had been transpiring since the beginning of time, he told me.  Sopays he called them, devils that live inside the pyramids bring back the dead in exchange for worship.  It was no wonder that I was finding it difficult to attract converts.  Here I was speaking of life eternal in Jesus, but these miserable souls already knew all about life eternal.  I would put an end to this diabolical practice, I promised Our Lord.

And so I became friends with the old indian.  My first friend in this unholy place, my first convert, Acahuna visited me each day for more than a week.  I took careful notes in a tome I am preparing, a tome that will prove vital in ridding this land of evil.  I wrote down the incantations he learned from a shaman when he was a young boy.

“He made me remember them,” Acahuna told me.  “He said that one child in every village must be taught the sacred passages in case the time came to put a bad one down.”

I confess I was concerned that I myself was venturing into blasphemy.  What were these passages I inscribed in my book?  Were they spells?  Were they the work of another pagan demon?  I did not know. 

So I prayed to my Heavenly Father, but I wrote my book.  It was to become a hammer against the unholy walking mummies of Peru, for that’s what they were, walking mummies.  I had long ago shed any pretentions that they were anything else.  Malleus Momias I would call my work.

When my book was complete, when Acahuna had finished his story, he asked me if I would travel to his home to do as he requested, to return his wife to her grave.  We would know then, without any doubt, if this plan would work, if my book could do what I hoped it could do.

“We need but one more thing,” Acahuna told me.  “A shaman’s tumi.”

I frowned.  I had never before heard that word. 

“A tumi was a sword of the ancient warriors, but the shamans have their own tumis.  Theirs are made of wood.  There are few left.”  He opened his cloak to reveal what looked to be a stick.  It was the perhaps the length of my forearm, curved at one end.  Brittle it was, unfit for striking if it was to be used as a sword.  I suggested as much.

“Just its touch is all that is required,” he told me as we made our way to his house.  His wife was there when we arrived.  She had seated herself on the dirt floor and was consuming another cuy, another rodent.  She had not bothered to cook it, nor even indeed to kill it, for its leg was still very much in motion even as the poor animal was half inside her mouth.

I said a prayer, the kind of prayer my superiors taught me, the kind of prayer that sings out to God.  “You do it, please,” Acahuna begged me, and I began to read from my book.  In doing so, I said a very different kind of prayer.  Then, I brought out the tumi and touched that indian woman with its tip.  In an instant, she was nothing but ash.  I had put down my first mummy.

“No,” Acahuna told me when I tried to give him the tumi.  “It belongs to you now.” 

I would hide it.  I would keep it safe.  I would bury it under the little shed behind my house where my milk goat sleeps.

 

July 2, 2011
Seville, Spain
Cuellar    http://www.perdido.blogspace9.ex

I told you so.  Young Bruce, I warned you he would send someone close to you.  I was right, wasn’t I?  And now your friends have gone and made another one of us, a female.  Do you have any idea how long it has been since the last female was made? 

He’ll want her.  He’s calling to her now.  You can hear it in the wind.  Sopay calls to her.  He’ll have her as his bride.  She’s on her way to him now.

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