The Mummies of Blogspace9: Chapter Forty

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Duran http://www.harqubusier.blogspace9.ex

The boy acquitted himself well.  Although I haven’t known the sensation of fear for centuries, I confess to some manner of trepidation as we approached the door.  No matter what transpired next, behind that door waited my maker.  I was not entirely eager to meet him.

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Hanson http://www.historyismine.blogspace9.ex

I didn’t know what to expect.  Not this: a fireplace-lit moldering study that might have been ornate and comfortable some decades or centuries ago, two metro Seville policemen done up in riot gear carrying automatic weapons, and one very old man.

If he had passed me on the street, I’m not sure he would have stood out in any physical sense.  He was neither thin nor fat, tall nor short.  He wore a gray sweater and gray corduroy pants which complimented his gray skin and reddish-gray eyes.  All things considered, except for the petrifying odor and aura of desolation, he could have been mistaken for an old homeless man.  But he wasn’t.  He was Gaspar Quiroga y Vela, the five-hundred-year-old demonically-possessed Grand Inquisitor of Spain.

“I haven’t much time,” he said as he tossed a pile of recyclable grocery bags onto the floor.  “I’m to be married today.  The lady in question is fairly begging to feel my spirit inside her.”

Hard as it was to look away, I stole a glance at the bags – they were from SuperSol, the popular chain where I did most of my food shopping.  “Those are for your heads,” he explained, “if I don’t get what I want within the minute.”

Cuellar collapsed and began to grovel.  I heard some Hail Marys, but most of it was begging, which was really too bad because he wasn’t helping our position.  To be honest, I couldn’t take my eyes off the grocery bags.

Quiroga smiled warmly, taking us in one by one.  “My children.”  He nodded to Naya who backed away, and to Duran who didn’t move, “welcome home.”  Moving on to Sacromonte, “you I have not yet met, but I’m pleased to have this opportunity prior to your imminent expiration.  And you,” moving on to me, “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to join me.  My new prince.”

“I didn’t come to join you,” I said, but he just nodded.

“You did.  You did.”  He motioned to one of the policemen who came at me fast, sweeping my feet with a baton and dropping me flat on my back.

“You went down almost as easily as your lovely Lane did, though I dare say she was more eager.  I miss her; she was pliant.”

I tried to catch my breath as the policeman flipped me over and searched me.  I had hidden the malleus momias book in the inseam of my jacket, and it took him about four seconds to find it.  Dutifully, he delivered it to his patron.

Quiroga regarded the book solemnly, turning the pages carefully as if they might crumble in his hands.  “I had no notion it even existed.  Rumors, yes, but I thought them just that.”  He spent a few moments reading the text as I regained my breath.  Cuellar had groveled his way closer and now hung at his leg.

“Something of a tumi, the sword of the indians, was also mentioned in your communications.  Give it to me.”

I shook my head, but a more thorough and considerably more painful search led to the discovery of the tumi in my sock, and its near pulverization beneath a police boot.

Quiroga laughed; it was little more than a giggle.  He held up the book.  “Then all you have are words.”  He shook his head.  “Don’t misunderstand, I know how powerful words can be.  Precautions must be taken in case you have memorized the text.”  With another nearly-imperceptible motion, he gestured to the nearest policeman who began winding a roll of tape around my head, shutting my mouth.

At that, Quiroga held up my precious and hard-won malleus momias book and tossed it into the fireplace.  It caught the flame immediately and began to burn brightly.  “Now then,” he continued, “as to revealing the location of my gold, or removing your heads, which shall we do first?”

What transpired next transpired so quickly that I still have trouble piecing it together.  As one policeman hauled me up to my knees and the other produced a serrated knife, Duran turned to our host and fired that ancient rifle he’d been hauling around.  “This once is for you, sopay,” he growled, but it produced a tiny wisp of smoke, nothing more.

Quiroga frowned.  Sacromonte deftly shot one of the policemen who caught him in the chest with his own fire as he went down.  My precious Naya made quick work of the other.

Finding himself quite outnumbered, Quiroga lowered his gaze and began petting Cuellar’s hair.  “There, there,” he said turning to watch the book burn in the fireplace, “forgiveness can be at hand, my son.  Let us understand that nothing left in this world can hurt me.  Now… as to my gold.”

Sacromonte shot him from the floor but he didn’t even flinch.  I’m not certain he noticed.  I was focused on getting the tape off my mouth but it wasn’t happening too easily.

I didn’t see Duran step around me, but he must have.  Sword drawn, he came at the old man and drove the blade deep into his abdomen, pinning him to the desk.  “Vasco,” Duran called out, “Vasco, I’m a swordsman after all.”

There was no more grinning at this point, no more giggling.  I heard something guttural emanate from the old man, something not quite human.  There was some manner of struggle as his skin began to crack.

“Santo demonios,” Cuellar moaned, “Santo sopay.”

Duran stood his ground as Quiroga, his demon enraged, strode purposefully towards him.  Still pinned to the antique desk by the sword, he pulled the desk along with him as if it were no inconvenience.

Sacromonte emptied his gun to no effect.  Naya stood frozen at my side, a policeman’s head in one hand.  Duran laughed.  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this, sopay.”  I, for my part, retrieved what spindly bits of the tumi remained, and hurled them at the demon.  I’m not sure what good it did; the tumi might have been a prop, nothing more, as swords often but not always are.  Then I hit the PLAY button on my laptop.

What rang out through my speakers were just words, of course.  But throughout human history, words have had the power to move mountains, to forge alliances, to alter destinies, and to vanquish evil.  The transcription of the malleus momias I uploaded to the internet made those words available to anyone on the planet.  It was a fitful yet melodic tongue, and I had recorded the words as best I could.

Those words might provide some comfort to a Peruvian cane farmer who might still shut his windows against the cool night rather than stare any longer at the pyramids of old.  Those words might provide some solace to a dynasty of gypsies long overdue their reward.  Those words might ease the sorrows of men and women transformed against their will to something not of their choosing.  Those words were the salvation of a historian and his undead friends who vanquished an evil long in need of vanquishing.

As soon as that sopay understood what was happening, he extricated that sword from his abdomen and hurled it at my head.  I’d not be sharing this missive had not Duran sacrificed his left hand in catching it.  “That’s just one more thing,” he conceded as he retrieved his hand from the floor.

And he might have made it, that sopay.  He might have made it out of the room, out of the range of my puny laptop speakers had Cuellar not clung tightly to his leg.  Not so easy to dislodge as a Toledo sword, Cuellar was a creature of his making – an undead priest, strong in body and conviction.

“Forgive me, Father,” Vasco Quiroga said, holding tightly as the demon screamed and writhed himself out of existence.  “I’ve been sinning for a very long time.”

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The Mummies of Blogspace9: Chapter Thirty-Nine

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Samples      http://www.greatbigLeon.blogspace9.ex

I’ll admit to some small degree of terror once we split up.  I thought it unfair that Bruce got all three immortals.  All I got was Baltazar and my bud Segovia, 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.  If there were some aerosol death-scent available, I would have been spraying it liberally as we walked.  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,” Baltazar whispered.  “They are unpredictable when they change.  By means of example; Duran seems quite sane.  The same cannot be said for the other.”

“Yeah, Vasco is a nut,” I agreed.  “You’re saying Kim might not be happy to see us.”

He nodded.

Segovia 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 horrifying.  I’m not certain what they were, but a different manner 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, presumably so they wouldn’t fall into her sunken eyes.  Even Baltazar gasped.

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

Segovia shook his head.  “A sopay’s foul breath can keep death at bay, but only a muki can transform someone.  And a muki cannot leave the pyramid.”

“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 jawbone.  “She is making herself beautiful for her husband.”

Baltazar turned away.  “I can understand why he would want a new wife.”

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

Segovia 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 Segovia 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 observed.

“Quiet,” Baltazar warned.  “There are at least a dozen 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.

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

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

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

Segovia got off a volley of shots.  I held my fire for the next guard and then I kept shooting until he was down if not motionless.  But there were dozens more.  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 laughed.  “Leon, don’t tell me you came all this way for me.”

I nodded as best I could. 

“And Segovia, 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 already been promised to another.”

“That’s too bad,” Kim said.  She peeked down at Baltazar.  “This one I don’t know.  But that’s not a problem, I could use some fellows like you on my staff.  There’s just the one thing, you know, two things really.”

Baltazar began to sob.  I think I did do when Kim summoned her remaining guards and ordered them to castrate us.

The Mummies of Blogspace9: Chapter Thirty-Eight

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Hanson       http://www.historyismine.blogspace9.ex

Although it felt as if we were traveling to another world, the Alcazar was only a few blocks away, so it only took us about five minutes 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 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 appear to be police or prostitutes, nobody paid us much mind.

Baltazar soon led us off the path and through a tangled maze of vegetation.  The hidden door in the fortress wall had been padlocked, but a pair of giant 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 paid him no mind.  Sacromonte shone his light about the room as Baltazar 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.  Cuellar, who would not be excluded from our mission 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 weaponry.  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 reprimanded 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 Ruminavi used to cut off my feet.  How I miss those feet.”

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

“Oh, my yes.  Now there’s a weapon I can manage.”  Duran purred as he 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 could.  “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 just 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 me.

Three men lay on the ground, each shot in the forehead.  They wore slippers, which is possibly how they had snuck up on us.

“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?”

“Segovia,” he said, as he reloaded a pair of antique pistols.  “You were careless.”

“He’s with me,” Leon said.  “I’ll explain later.  It’s time to split up.  Gentlemen, we’ll see you later for cocktails.”

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

Baltazar pointed to a low doorway which I remembered.  We had raced through it when we escaped from the harem.  “We go this way,” he said, and we bid farewell to him, to Leon, and to Segovia.

And so I led my own squad through the hall of ancient weapons.  I can’t use the term fearless to describe my sense of mind.  I don’t think I ever could, 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 confident it would be something unimaginably terrible.

Even so, I walked first, my lady behind me for her protection, which was probably not necessary given the unique nature of her existence.  But knowing she was with me gave me great comfort, as did the presence of my benefactor Sacromonte, 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 somehow 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 transpire for very much longer.

The Mummies of Blogspace9: Chapter Thirty-Seven

July 24, 2011
Seville, Spain
Samples      http://www.greatbigLeon.blogspace9.ex

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 Sacromonte’s little office behind the kitchen.  Assembled theirein were the following: Sacromonte; his muscle-guy Baltazar; my bud Bruce; his smoking-hot new dead girlfriend; Duran; and Cuellar, who looked like he lived under a bridge.  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 self in Bruce’s lap, where she sat purring.  Cuellar was having a hard time with it, you could tell.  He asked her to dinner twice.  Not a tooth in his head, and I’m pretty sure he wet himself each time he started talking, but he actually asked her on a date twice.

Sacromonte 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.”

Sacromonte stared at his brandy.  “He is quite probably the most powerful man in Europe.  He will be heavilly-guarded.  Not only does he own the police, but on such a day, his wedding day, he will certainly take extra precautions.

“Here’s one thing I don’t understand,” I ventured.  “It’s our working supposition that the possessed Gaspar Quiroga y Vela, 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.

“Then 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,” Sacromonte 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?”

Sacromonte lit a cigarette.  “They know who he is, but not what he is.  A malevolent businessman, nothing more, if you were to ask.  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 chimed in, “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.  Baltazar knows the way out through the harem, so therefore he knows the way in.”

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 the point?”

“The point would be to get me into the same room as him, close enough to touch him,” said Bruce.

Cuellar shrieked with either glee or horror, perhaps both.  “He’ll smell your blood before you enter the room.  He’ll have your soul in a place where it will never stop screaming, and he’ll flay your skin to keep him warm at night.”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Bruce told him.

Bruce is like serious diesel at this point.  He’s a fearless diesel dude.

Sacromonte stared at him.  “And if we do this, you will bring me to the gold, or the gold to me?”

“Without hesitation.  You’ve earned it.”

Sacromonte gave it some thought.  “We will need to strategize.”

Bruce nudged the girl off his lap and 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.”

Sacromonte nodded as Bruce continued.  “Once inside, we split up into two teams.  Leon, you and Baltazar find Kim.  Because if Quiroga gets cornered, he may try to use her.  Meanwhile, 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.  Remember, he is something more than a mummy, to use your term, something more than me.  He is also a sopay, a very old and very powerful malignant.  And that sopay has no more need for sleep than a shadow or a suicide does.”

“He’s right.”  Sacromonte 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.  He needs to talk to me.  Remember, I have something he wants.  He can’t find the gold without me.”

“Then I’m coming too,” Sacromonte said.

“I’m coming too,” Cuellar managed to get out 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,” Baltazar 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 one thing,” Naya, the girl began as she clasped Bruce’s hand.  It was the first time I had heard her spoke, and her voice was nothing short of angelic.  “I will not leave his side, come what comes.  I have my own score to settle.  And I am not without considerable strength and resolve.”

More shrugs and nods of agreement.

“Let’s talk supplies,” Sacromonte offered.  “I will be armed, as will Baltazar.  Do any more of you wish to bring weapons?”

Bruce shook his head.  Only Cuellar and I nodded.  Cuellar got 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.  Even so, we must take care not to harm her.  She’s one of us.”

“Word to that, my 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.”

The Mummies of Blogspace9: Chapter Forty-Two

July 27, 2011
Seville, Spain
Hanson http://www.historyismine.blogspace9.ex

It took us two days to find Sebastiano, but Naya let us to him as she promised.  It was mid-afternoon when we came across the old priest holding court at the San Fernando cemetery.  Some distance from the monumental graves of poets and politicians, smaller plots marked the final resting places of orphans and the dispossessed.

A not-insubstantial line of beggars, runaways, and gypsy women with their children in tow led to the nondescript gravestone from which Sebastiano gave out his blessings and his offerings. Behind him, an ageless hunchback tamped the earth back over a grave which had been recently disturbed.

Not wanting to interrupt his ministry, we waited in the shade of a poplar, watching as the old priest doled out rings, wire, bits of filigree, even thin plates, all gold of course.  As I suspected, the seventeen coffins that Sebastiano recovered from Peru two centuries ago did not contain the bodies of priests, but rather the Inca gold that Duran and Cuellar hid in the pyramid, to cheat the Spanish King of his share.

As the line thinned and the grateful stragglers headed off to the jewelers of Seville to convert their treasures to cash, Naya made her way forward.  The old priest fell to his knees when he saw her.  He folded his arms around her knees and wept.

He made no sound as Naya explained the events of recent days, recounting our adventures, but some distress was evident when she told of the destruction of Sebastiano’s greatest accomplishment, the malleus momias.  Naya’s explanation of the internet, and the place the book now had in that realm, was slow to load.  When he spoke, Sebastiano did little more than murmer, his tongue having been removed by the Inquisitor centuries ago, but Naya seemed to understand.

This was the last of the gold, only a few pieces remained.  It had all been doled out, all that Inca treasure, over the last two hundred years to the needy, to the orphans of Seville.

Sacromonte sighed as he rubbed the last few pieces between his fingers.  “So much effort, for so little,” he said.  “So in the end, we fail.”

But that wasn’t the case, of course.  We didn’t fail.  Sebastiano did the work of a priest, long after his dying day.  And that is an accomplishment of some sort.  And of course, we did find the gold.  Duran let those few pieces slip through his remaining hand.  He’d already taken his share, he reminded us.  Vasco Cuellar bit a gold ring to be certain it was real, then swallowed it to be certain he would keep it.

We wouldn’t hurt for money, of course.  The last thing a demonically-possessed long-dead inquisitor thinks about, apparently, is naming an heir or an executor, but for good measure, we took all the money anyway.  Quiroga’s company, Grupo Yapos Iberia, now drained of nearly six billion euros, would soon see the departure of all its executives and the foreclosure of all its properties.

We would split the money.  There was a lot of it.  We had but one final duty here before we left the cemetery.  Naya had insisted on it and ultimately, we reluctantly agreed.  “It’s something he has been craving for centuries,” she counseled.

So we waited as she explained to the old priest what had become of his words, so painstakingly recorded nearly five hundred years ago.  And we waited still as she told him what that meant for him.  When he finally understood, he wept openly, tears falling to the ground.  He nodded once, then again and again as if he could not stop.

“He wants to say something first,” Naya told us, “but he doesn’t know how.”  So I opened my laptop.  Sebastiano was our number nine.  We still had a place open on this, our last day of service from Blogspace9, and nobody deserved it more than he did.  Naya would help guide his fingers on the keys.  Then when he was ready, she would guide his fingers to the PLAY key which would bring his old words back to life, and guide him out of this world.  Although we had just met, we said our goodbyes.

July 27, 2011
Seville, Spain
Father Sebastiano Gota                http:www.sebastiano.blogspace9.ex

Have mercy on my soul, O God.  Restore me to the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing heart.

Amen.