“So … The Mask Behind the Face. I could tell, just from the title, here’s someone who knows some things. Here’s someone who sees. Then I listen and read the lyrics, and I think, here’s someone who understands. How you did it, that’s beyond me, I don’t know how a studio works, but you managed to put together the electronics and all that other aggro shit with those ancient flutes and grinding stones and old drums, and made a sound not like anything I ever heard. An effect not like anything I ever felt. A sound, that’s just noise unless you got an idea behind it. And you did. That was the thing that convinced me, whoever did this is some kind of shaman.”
The Skull was pacing with the frantic movements of somebody who’d spent a long time looking for an elusive prize and was on the verge of finding it.
“It wasn’t just the notes. Anybody can play the notes.” He squatted, nose to tattooed nose with Enrique. “There’s something in there between the notes, looking back out. I don’t know how you captured that. But it’s there. And it’s a fucking monster.” It was hard to tell if his eyes were desperate or insane. “How did you know?”
Slowly, Enrique shook his head. “I’ve got no answer for that. I wish I did.”
“You don’t leave here unless you give me better than that.”
“I could make up a better lie. Is that what you want?”
The Skull peered at him from inches away, as if trying to see beneath the skin. “You got the look of the first people here. Maybe that explains it, why you and not Sebastián. You got the look of the conquered, not the conquistador. You got that blood memory in you, maybe.”
He pulled back, squatting with his bony elbows on his pointy knees.
“And me, see, I know blood. I know sacrifice. I’m one of the ones they call when they really want to send a message, because I can do it and not blink.” He motioned to the towering Santa Muerte, the body parts laid out before her. They buzzed with flies and gave off a stink like roadkill. “It’s just another day’s work to me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t ever think about what I’m doing. To me, it’s nothing new. It’s something that’s come around again, part of something that goes way back. I can feel it in the knives. Their handles, man, they fucking hum.”
His scrutiny turned puzzled, hungry for secrets he’d never been able to grab.
“A guy like you, you don’t get your hands red the way I do. But you figured it out anyway. All I’m asking is how.”
“It’s just knowing some history, some myths, is all. Same shit, different century. It’s just following where it leads.”
The Skull nodded, eager, like they were getting somewhere. “You went straight to the oldest stories, I could tell. The people here, way before the Spaniards showed up, they had a good thing going. They had this teacher, maybe he was a god, or maybe he was something else and a god was the only thing they knew to call him. Kukulcan … Quetzalcoatl … whatever his real name was. He was teaching them everything they needed to know. These people, they were on their way up. The sun was theirs. And then the clouds came. It’s what clouds do, right? Come in and wash things away.”
The legends called him Tezcatlipoca—a dark, malevolent god who had come along and driven the teacher off.
Whatever the differences between them, he and the Skull could speak of this much like equals, at least.
These archaic figures, these events, had always felt to him like more than myth. More than his ancestors’ way of trying to make sense of their failings, their hungers and thirsts, their savagery. Behind the stories was something hidden and true, and behind that, more truths that he couldn’t begin to guess at. He just knew they were there.
Ever since he was a boy, seeing the world take shape around him, farther and farther from his mother’s kitchen, it was hard to deny the sense that something had gone wrong here, in this land. Hundreds of years ago, or maybe thousands. Something had come down from above, or up from below, or in from outside, and convinced the people that it had a neverending need for their blood, shed in all kinds of ways. You see those knives? You see those chests with the hearts beating inside them? You see those skins you can peel away and wear over your own until they fall apart? Get to it, and don’t ever stop. This is what it takes now, so never forget.
It was everything he knew and nothing he could prove. All he’d ever been able to do was turn up the volume and scream into the clouds.
“Gracias,” the Skull whispered, and pushed up from his squat to stand tall again. “Thank you for letting me know I’m not the only one.”
They’d been friendly enough that the anger began to override the fear. “Man, everything you asked is something you could’ve asked me through the band’s web site. Or hit me up on Twitter. People got questions, we don’t ignore them. We talk back, you know.”
Images flickered like flash cards. Their driver Hector, killed at the wheel. Crispin, shot out of his shoes. Guys butchered outside the window, and forcing Bas to join in. They could let him go right now, and he would never unsee these last few days. For as long as he lived, he would be waking up from nightmares.
“Did it really have to take all this?”
And look. The Skull knew how to smile. “You think this little chat is it? No, this is us getting to know each other. The next part, that’s the initiation. That’s the important part.”
He whistled and motioned toward their makeshift prison, and three guys came out escorting Padre Thiago. He’d chosen not to fight it either. Calmest face you ever saw. Like he expected God was going to take care of him on the spot. There, there, my child, trust in me for deliverance.
“Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.” Enrique had sworn he wouldn’t beg, and listen to him now. Everybody’s got a plan until the knives come out. “Did I not treat you with respect? Didn’t I take you seriously? What’s the point of this? You think trying to turn us into you is gonna get you any closer to answers than you got already?”
The Skull was only half paying attention as he hauled over the box of knives and the compact crate from last night. The latter was the least among his props, and with every other nightmarish thing going on, Enrique had all but forgotten about it.
He made me look at a rock. He kept making me look at the rock.
The desperation was starting to eat deeper. “It wasn’t any shaman that did that album, just three pissed-off people who like to make loud noises. I don’t know shit, all I’m doing is asking the same questions as you.”
I couldn’t see what he wanted me to. But he wouldn’t let me look away from the rock.
Padre Thiago passed him then, patted him on his big round shoulder, the cruelest thing the priest could’ve done—absolving him in advance. It was all Enrique could do to not scream at him. Get your hand off me, old man. Don’t you know where this is going? Don’t you know what he’s gonna make me do to you? I don’t want you forgiving me for any of it.
From the crate, the Skull removed the artifact from last night, flat and heavy. As black as outer space, he’d thought while seeing it from a distance, not knowing why he’d made the connection. Now he remembered reading about an astronaut who came back saying that, from out there in it, space looked shiny.
Obsidian, he realized, now that he saw the artifact close up. Volcanic glass. It was shaped like an irregular rectangle, scooped out but too shallow to be a bowl, too bulky to be a plate, and polished into a black mirror. The rim was threaded with gray-green veins marbled into the stone itself, seemingly random, but nagging him with a promise that if he stared long enough he would comprehend a hidden pattern, an intentional design the earth had woven in the chaos of fire and lava.
The outer edges were rougher, designs carved around the circumference, lines that thickened and thinned, swooped and jittered and curved back onto themselves. Not Aztec, not Mayan, not Olmec, not like any patterns he’d seen before.
As he looked at it, his gaze pulled by its peculiar gravity, it caught a reflection of lumpy clouds skimming overhead, the effect like smoke d
rifting across its gleaming black surface.
I know what this is …
Except when he looked up, there were no clouds.
The Smoking Mirror—it was another of their names for Tezcatlipoca, the dark god who had chased away their teacher. They hadn’t called him that because of his eyes, his face, his demeanor. None of that. It wasn’t poetics, it was practical. They’d called him that because of something he’d owned and used. He would gaze into it and see things—the far-away doings of gods and men, they said.
“Where did you get this?”
“A guy in Tampico,” the Skull told him. “You kill enough people, you’ve seen everything they try to buy you off with. But this? This was a first. Where he got it, I don’t know. I get the idea it’s one of those things that doesn’t stay in the same pair of hands for long. It keeps on the move. It’s … restless.”
Even Padre Thiago looked drawn to it, mesmerized, until the Skull lunged at him and clocked him across the jaw with his fist. The priest hit the ground before Enrique could scramble over on his knees to catch him, not wholly unconscious but not much good for anything else for a while.
The Skull pointed at him. “He tell you why he’s here?”
“He said it was for doing exorcisms, and somebody didn’t like it.”
“Yeah? That’s what he told you? Well, he’s half right.” The Skull squatted before him again, voice at a murmur. “I heard about him. This priest. Still God’s warrior while the Church is losing people left and right to Santa Muerte. Still out there saving souls.”
It took Enrique a moment to catch on: The Skull didn’t want any of these other murderers listening to what he had to say.
“So I went to him, see what he could do for me. I thought maybe this thing inside, whatever it is that’s got its hooks in me, I want it out, and he’s the one who can do it. Most of the time I think it’s just me. But that’s the lie it feeds you. There’s other times I can feel it moving. Like something else has got itself lined up with my eyes.”
Or maybe that was the lie. Anything to believe it wasn’t purely him all along.
The Skull glared at Thiago with scorn. “He didn’t do shit for me. Isn’t that the worst thing a priest can do? Leave you the same as he found you? But I don’t know why I expected more. He’s still got this Old World way of looking at things. What’s he gonna do for me when he’s stuck chasing after some pointy-tailed devil?”
The Skull patted the bony cage of his chest.
“So I figure as long as I’m stuck with it, I might as well go all in, make friends with it. And I got that.” He hitched his thumb at the black stone, its shiny jet surface still drifting with billows and clouds. “Only it doesn’t work for me. That’s all it ever does. It won’t show me shit.”
I couldn’t see what he wanted me to.
And now, now, Enrique understood why they were here.
But he wouldn’t let me look away from the rock.
“You? You got the vision. You got the look, like your DNA never heard of Spain. You got as far as you did figuring some of these things out on your own,” the Skull said. “So I got to wonder, how much farther could you get if we juice it up for you? How much farther can you get when there’s blood?”
The Skull set the black stone, the smoking mirror, next to Padre Thiago, who still hadn’t come to his senses. Then he chose a knife and tossed it over. Enrique stared at it, lying in front of him on the hard-packed dirt. He gauged the distance between himself and the Skull. Looked at the guys with guns, tuning in again now that the time for talking was over.
If he wanted a firing squad, the moment had come.
“You know what to do,” the Skull said. “First one, that’s always the hardest. Then it gets easier. It did for Sebastián.”
Enrique glanced back at the church and saw Sofia in the window, fists wrapped around the bars and everything about her imploring him to live. She hadn’t watched for Bas. But she was watching for him.
He picked up the knife. The blade was long, thin, with tiny serrations along its edge. A boning knife, it looked like. It would go in easy. The Skull had chosen it for that. Enrique wiped it clean on his pant leg. Pointless, maybe, but he did it anyway.
He made himself look at Padre Thiago, at the man’s droopy, stubbled face as he rolled his head to the side, gaze meeting gaze. There was already blood, leaking from a split lip swollen like a bicycle tire about to burst. The priest was coming around again, peace in his eyes as he granted permission, stupid old man lying there ready to be a martyr. This is what it takes to be like Jesus.
Fuck these guys. He didn’t want to give either one of them what they wanted.
Enrique didn’t think about it. He just did it. Shoved it up the long black sleeve of his shirt, crusted with days of sweat and dirt, and slashed the blade across the meat of his forearm. It opened like a lipless mouth, red on the inside but nothing happening, just like he didn’t feel anything yet, then all at once it hurt and welled up and spilled over hot.
“You stupid motherfucker! Why did you do that?” The Skull turned frenetic, diving toward him to snatch the knife and fling it out of reach. “Why would you do that?”
Somewhere behind him, Sofia was screaming too. A voice like that, maybe it should’ve been her at the front of the stage all along. And it was almost funny. This is what it takes to say I love you.
The Skull scrambled with him in the dirt and the blood, and he was strong, crazy strong, freakishly strong as he dragged the stone over and grabbed Enrique’s arm to lay it across the shiny black surface. Because while it may have been the wrong blood, as long as it was flowing, might as well not waste it.
Black and red, red on black—it pulsed and spattered, and the Skull smeared it across the smooth glass like a kid starting on a finger painting. Enrique was already going lightheaded, maybe not so much from actual blood loss as the idea of losing it. He’d always been a wuss about that, seeing himself leak a reminder of those childhood beatings from guys like this, the kids who listened to the call.
Lightheaded—how else to explain what he was seeing? Stone didn’t absorb blood. Sandstone, maybe, a little, but not obsidian. That wasn’t how it worked. That wasn’t how anything he knew about the world and rocks worked.
But the stone was a greedy thing, and it drank as if a million microscopic mouths opened wherever the blood pooled, and wanted more. His arm delivered. The Skull saw to that.
Whatever the black glass was showing him, clouds or smoke or steam, the billows and wisps began to drift apart. The space he saw waiting behind them looked shiny, shiny in a way that went beyond the glossiness of the surface. There was depth here, or a perfect illusion of it, the smooth black more like a porthole than a screen.
He couldn’t tell if what he was seeing belonged to the infinite depths between worlds or the unplumbed recesses beneath the earth, only that whatever stirred there stirred alone. No, not stirred … crawled, all body and no limbs. His perspective was small, yet what stared back seemed vast, titanic in the way only something so pure and simple could be. When it raised its head, its blind face had the unfinished look of a worm.
The Skull was riding his back now, jamming his head next to Enrique’s like they were both reading from the same engrossing book.
He thought of everything that lay between him and this monstrosity on the other side. He thought of altars, of ritual bowls and chacmools. He thought of killing fields and the steep, blood-slick steps descending the side of a pyramid. Channels and conduits, all. It didn’t matter where this thing was—he sensed that much in his heart. Didn’t matter how near or far away it dwelled. When blood was let, the flow found a way there. All spaces were one, a single point in time.
It drank him the same as it must have drunk millions before him, the thinnest visible drizzle falling on the flat, probing slug of its tongue. It then recoiled, as if it didn’t like the taste of him. Blood was blood, you’d think, but maybe its palate was more refined than you’d expect. Maybe
it could discern some difference in the flavor of him, his blood let by his own hand because he would rather do that than slaughter the man next to him.
And it spewed him from the cavern of its mouth.
The smoke billowed across the glass to obscure the gulf between once more, and the stone was only obsidian again, black glass and nothing more.
He thought it was a trick of the mind when a shadow seemed to dim the light on this patch of ground where he lay facedown and bleeding. That’s what blood loss did. Made your world a dimmer place.
But did it make hardened killers, bored with watching men die, shout and run?
Did it make the ground shake under three ponderous footsteps?
Did it make a sound like an enormous scythe sweeping down from above to cut the air in two?
Beside him, Padre Thiago lifted off the ground, there one instant, then gone. It took the last effort Enrique could call on to roll over onto his back, where he saw the halves of the priest’s body fly away to either side of the enormous blade, and beyond that, looming far above, the bone face of their Santa Muerte, the skull he’d always thought looked much too real.
A red rain showered them all.
* * *
He awoke to heat and stillness and the lazy buzzing of flies. There were flies in Hell, weren’t there? Pesky, biting, pain-in-the-ass flies that never let up tormenting the sinners. So maybe he was okay. These were just hanging around, the same old everyday shit-eaters.
The inside of his left forearm burned, but that was his own fault. Enrique found it bandaged, and beneath that, stitched. The Skull and the rest of his crew—what were they, if not a unit gone to war? It made sense they’d have a medic around.
He lay on a thin mattress atop squeaky springs, staring at a ceiling scarred with peeling paint and plaster so cracked and crumbled he could see the wooden slats above it. Some rundown room in some other building that wasn’t the church. He’d slept in worse places, actually, back when the band had to take whatever it could get. Never in clothes sticky with a priest’s blood, though. There were all kinds of ways to hit a new low.
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3 Page 21
