“Close by,” Tabitha says, holding up her wrist to show the handcuff. “This thing wouldn’t let me get very far from you.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Kind of by design. That’s why I got it for you. Figured I got this fancy wedding ring out of this arrangement, why not get you some jewelry, too? How’d you stay close and not end up on Bustillo’s radar?”
She couldn’t have blended in with the crowd. Now that I’ve met the dead in this place it’s obvious how much Tabitha and I stand out. There’s a solidity, a realness, to us that none of the souls have. For all their seeming physicality they still feel insubstantial in comparison.
“The Crystal Road,” she says. “That cave I ran into leads to a network of tunnels that run all through Mictlan. If you’d managed to keep up you wouldn’t have had to go through all that.” She takes another bite of her apple. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Tepito,” I said. “I had a couple bowls of migas.”
“Want some of this?”
“I don’t have much of an appetite, thanks.” I don’t want to eat, and I’m sure as hell not accepting food from her here. Persephone and Hades come to mind. But I need to do something. Exhaustion is yanking at me and there’s no way in hell I’m going to take a nap in this place.
I root around my messenger bag until I find the bottle of Adderall. I don’t really relish the idea of dry swallowing these things, but the only thing I’ve got in here is a flask with some whiskey in it that I haven’t opened since before I lost the Cadillac in San Pedro.
Ah, what the hell. I haven’t had anything to drink since that Coke in Tepito. I toss back a couple of the pills and take a swig from the flask. The whiskey burns on its way down.
“Do that a lot?” Tabitha says, concern on her face.
“The fuck do you care?”
“I—You’re right. Forget I said anything. Now that you’re adequately fortified you want to get going?”
“The sooner this is over the better off I’ll be.” No matter what the outcome. I stand up and wince at the pain in my knee. “Where are we, anyway? I thought the mists were the last stop before Chicunamictlan.” If this is the Aztec’s idea of paradise they’re more fucked up than I thought they were.
“It is, but there’s still a lot of distance between Izmictlan Apochcalolca and Chicunamictlan. As we get closer things will look better, too. Fewer skulls on the ground, that kind of thing.”
“So no more challenges?”
“Not like the mists were, no. I’m sure you’ve got plenty still ahead of you.”
“I saw someone in there,” I say. “Thought it was this guide who talked to me. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe. I was in there, but I couldn’t find you. I kept stumbling around in the fog. Eventually I decided to wait for you out here.”
“You ever gone through it?”
“Not like that,” she says. “I know how to skirt the edges.”
“Good for you,” I say. “What’s the point of it, anyway? Weed out the weak? Toss ’em back like fish that are too small?”
“It tests a soul’s resolve,” she says. “Burns away, well, not sins. They don’t really have a concept like that here. But your doubts, fears. It’s to prove that you have the courage to continue.”
“I can see why Mictlantecuhtli locked himself up if he had to deal with judging that crap all the time.”
“He didn’t. The point is to prove it to yourself,” she says. “Just because he ruled here, doesn’t mean he told people what choices they could and couldn’t make. It doesn’t work like that. If you’re going to get through the mists, you have to want to get through the mists.”
“Jesus. Tell me that’s not what kept everybody from getting through.”
“No,” she says. “That was just Mictlan being broken. But now that you’ve gone through you’ve cleared the way for them.”
“So I was the plumber who fixed the backed up toilet.” I wonder how many of those souls who kept trying and failing, slamming their heads against a door that couldn’t open, aren’t even going to try. And what about the ones who will, but won’t get through anyway. People whose wills are too broken to pass through.
Makes me wonder if maybe I should burn the place down like Quetzalcoatl wants me to. Might be a mercy.
“So where to now, lover?” Tabitha says, finishing her apple and tossing the core over her shoulder into the dirt. Seriously, where the hell did she get an apple?
“Stop calling me that,” I say. I know she’s doing it to get under my skin. “Depends. Who’s closer? Santa Muerte or Mictlantecuhtli?” My knee is in pretty bad shape, and I can’t help but limp. Really wish I had one of Bustillo’s bone cars right about now.
“You still want to kill her?” she says. “Mictlantecuhtli tried to kill her and got caught in his own trap. All those souls stuck out there outside the mists? That was Mictlantecuhtli’s doing. She’s trying to help them.”
“Killing my sister kind of trumps all that.”
She starts to say something, then looks away, won’t meet my eyes. Whatever argument she might have dies on her lips. “I told you I’m not going to help you kill her.”
“You’re really struggling with this, aren’t you?” Is she just as caught up in this mess as I am? I don’t want to feel sympathy for her. I don’t really want to believe her. That’s already screwed me.
“What? No. Don’t be stupid. I don’t want her dead.”
“No, but you want her different,” I say. “You argued with her about my sister. What else did you argue about?”
“I don’t … Look, I’m her avatar. I don’t get to like everything she does. And no matter how I feel about it, I’m not going to let you destroy her.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I say. “You’re here because I needed someone to get me in here. I need a guide. I’ll find her eventually. With you, I’ll find her faster.”
“And then you’ll kill her. I don’t see how that’s any different.”
“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, yet,” I say.
“That was bullshit the first time you said it and it’s bullshit now.” Her face goes hard. If there had been any doubts about her before, they’re gone. “You’re going to kill her and then you’re going to kill me. We both know it. So stop fucking lying about it.”
“Fine. Mictlantecuhtli, then. Or do you have a problem with me killing him, too? I don’t know who’s telling me the truth. You? Him? Her? And since when do you care about dying? I don’t know if there’s even a ‘you’ in there. So tell me, Tabitha, who do I kill? I’m gonna shank somebody. At this point I’m not sure I care who it is.”
She says nothing for a long moment and then stands up from the rock, her face grim. She turns and starts walking away. “We take the Crystal Road,” she says over her shoulder. “There’s another entrance nearby. We can reach Mictlantecuhtli’s tomb that way.”
The Adderall doesn’t do anything for the pain in my knee, the road rash on my hands, my swollen eye, but it does make me care less about them. I’ve been popping these pills so long I barely even notice the jitters. If Tabitha does she doesn’t say anything. It’s probably not that different from how I’ve been since before I got here, anyway.
There are no roads, no paths. The bone landscape has mostly receded into dirt and stone. Actual plants dot the ground, a smattering of madrones, ficus and copperwood trees, not their sick mimics of bone and stringy flesh. Sickly looking grasses poke up through the dirt, wasted and thin, but alive or however close to alive this place gets. The sky is still a flat, uniform gray, though. No clouds, no sun. Does it ever become night here?
When I came here I was absolutely certain what I was going to do. Kill anything that gets in my way until I sever whatever connection I have to Santa Muerte and Mictlantecuhtli.
But now, I’m having doubts. I still want those things, but I’m wondering what will happen when I get them. My stepping through the mists re-opened them to the souls
trapped on the other side. If I kill Mictlantecuhtli do they shut down again? If I kill Santa Muerte does something else fall apart here?
I still want to kill her for everything she’s done and I want to kill Mictlantecuhtli whether it will stop this transformation or not because he annoys me and he’s kind of a dick.
But what about Tabitha? I thought I wanted to kill her. To clean up a loose end if nothing else. But is she just a meat puppet for a chunk of Santa Muerte’s consciousness? Is she actually still in there?
When I discovered that she was Muerte’s avatar she told me she didn’t care if I killed her or not. It wouldn’t destroy the goddess. It’d just leave me with a corpse I’d have to dispose of.
But now I have to wonder. She ran from Bustillo’s crew. She accused me of wanting to kill her as if it mattered. This shit is giving me a headache. I need a distraction to keep my brain from eating itself. Mictlan delivers.
“Hold up,” I say. I squat to get a closer look at the dirt. “You see this?” Depressions in the dirt that look like handprints spaced the way an animal might leave them. Something that walks on its hands.
“Shit,” Tabitha says. She looks along the ground. “I think it looped back behind us.”
“Ahuizotl? Or is there something else with feet like hands around here?”
“I’ll be honest, I’m actually kind of curious to see this thing. It’s one thing to be chased through a river of blood and not wanting to take a swan dive into it, it’s something else when it’s on solid ground where I can see it coming.”
“Yeah. Come on. We’re not far from the entrance to the Crystal Road. I don’t want to be here if it notices us.”
“If it’s looping back around it’s a safe bet it knows we’re here.” I don’t see it among the trees and brush, which is surprising because there just isn’t that much. “It’s got good camouflage, doesn’t it?”
“You ever see that Predator movie?”
“Huh. Yeah, that could be a challenge. Do they travel in packs or singly?”
“There’s only the one.”
“So if that’s what was following us in the river, then it’s hunting us. Awesome.”
“Which is why I’d like to get out of here. It never gets too far from its prey. And if it’s been stalking us since we got into Mictlan it’s probably getting impatient.”
“You’re no fun,” I say.
“Hey, if you want to be eviscerated by an ancient Aztec horror, knock yourself out.”
And again with worrying about her own safety. It’s clearly got her spooked. But why? The only difference I can think of from before is that now she’s been disconnected from Santa Muerte. Is that what’s doing this? Is she Tabitha now? Or is the piece of Santa Muerte in her trying to keep its own hide intact?
Interesting, if it is Tabitha. I just don’t know what to do with it, yet.
“Lead the way.”
I follow her through the trees. They cluster together closer to each other the further we go until it’s an almost impenetrable forest of madrones.
“How the hell are there trees in the land of the dead?” I say, pushing my way through a tight bundle of branches.
“They’re not trees,” Tabitha says. She picks up a rock from the ground and strikes a sharp corner against one of the trunks. The tree visibly shudders and bright red blood walls up from the cut. “They’re Cihuateteo. Women who died in childbirth and brought here by the goddess Cihuacoatl. They’re warriors and they’re given one of the most important jobs, guardians of Mictlan. Try not to piss them off.”
Tree warriors. Something tells me that they’re not nearly as immobile as they seem.
“Cihuacoatl. She’s a fertility goddess, right? I remember reading that somewhere. Where is she now?” But I hadn’t heard of this thing with the trees. I wonder how much of the histories and myths I’ve read are actually true. Like so many of them around the world, they’re never quite what you think they are.
“One of several,” Tabitha says. “Dead. Missing. So many of the gods scattered, disappeared, or flat out died. Hard to say.” She pushes past another tree, squeezing through its branches. It takes me a little longer to get through the tight space.
“Any of the other gods still around? Quetzalcoatl?”
“Quetzalcoatl’s been missing ever since he got his ass handed to him by Mictlantecuhtli. You know about that, right?”
“I know he sided with the Spanish,” I say. “But that’s all.”
“He’d been lending his power to the Spanish. Hitting the other gods while the Spanish took on the Aztecs. Mictlantecuhtli and he got into a fight and Quetzalcoatl lost. But by then it was already too late.”
Pieces are beginning to fall into place. Mictlantecuhtli told me he’d been trapped in his tomb when he did something to a weapon the Spanish were using. So maybe that weapon was Quetzalcoatl and that’s why he’s got such a hard-on to burn this place down?
It fits, but is it right?
Tabitha disappears past a tree and I struggle to keep up, tree branches snagging at my clothes, as though the Cihuateteo are actively trying to slow me down. And who knows, maybe they are.
I get past one more tree and stumble out into a massive, stadium sized amphitheater of carved stone steps leading down into a pit a good forty feet deep. An arch of thick bricks carved with stylized skulls sits at an angle at the bottom, a dim, yellow glow emanating from inside.
Vines crawl down from the tree line. Tall wooden scaffolds of horizontal poles dot each level of the amphitheater all the way down to the bottom. Each pole in the rack pierces a dozen skulls, their lower jaws missing, tattered skin hanging loose off the bone.
“Tzompantli,” I say. Racks filled with the skulls of sacrificial victims. “The drawings don’t do them justice. There’s gotta be, what, couple thousand skulls here?”
“Easily,” Tabitha says. “Come on.” She starts down the steps, navigating past the rows of tzompantli. I follow her down.
“So what’s with the Cihuateteo? Why are they here and not around the entrance to the Crystal Road out in the bone desert?”
“They used to be,” Tabitha says. “Cihuacoatl has a thing for crossroads. Groves surrounded all of the entrances. But like everything else, once Mictlantecuhtli was locked up it all went to shit. Cihuacoatl disappeared, the Cihuateteo died off. Only ones left are on this side of the mists.”
“And the tzompantli?” I stop to look at one of the racks. Most of the skulls are bare, but a good third of them are still covered in skin and muscle. I poke at one with my finger and its eyes pop open, milky orbs staring at me.
“Ambiance.”
The trees above us groan as though twisting themselves into shapes they weren’t designed for. Creaking. A snapping of wood. And then a guttural howl shatters the air.
“That’s our cue to leave,” Tabitha says. She hurries down the steps, taking them two at a time.
“Hold up, I want to see it,” I say.
I watch the trees weave together into a twisted bonsai wall. The howling grows louder, a guttural shriek of anger and frustration, a tearing of wood. That thing is pissed.
“Stick around and you can see it up close and from the inside.”
A dark shape pokes over the tree line. The Ahuizotl scrambles to get over where it can’t get through. It looks to be about the size of a lion. A dog’s face with a wide slash of a mouth filled with enormous teeth. Hands where paws should be, finger tipped with razor sharp claws. Its tail whips up over its head and another hand at the end of it grasps the top of one of the trees to help it climb.
It catches sight of me, its eyes flashing a bright red. It doubles its efforts, tearing and ripping through the trees. The trees retaliate by growing more branches to block it.
That thing is fucking terrifying.
“Okay, I’ve seen it,” I say and run to the archway where Tabitha is waiting for me.
“Great. Can we go now?”
“Yeah, I think that’s a good plan.
Wait. Can’t it follow us in there?”
“Eventually, yes. The arch will resist it, but it won’t last forever. I want to get as much distance between us and it. With any luck we’ll lose it inside.”
“Luck really isn’t my strong suit,” I say.
“Yeah, I’d noticed. Come on.” She steps into the arch and disappears in a flash of light. I hesitate at the entrance. So far my track record with being in Mictlan is not exactly stellar. Is this going to work? Is this a trap?
I steal a glance toward the trees and see the Ahuizotl climbing ever higher. It swings one of its massive hands at a branch that has shot up to block its path, tearing it off the trunk in a shower of splinters.
It rips through the trees like a cat in a bag, clearing the trees and crouching on the edge of the amphitheater. It pulls back its lips in a Cheshire Cat grin of shovel blade teeth.
If the archway’s a trap, at least it’s not some Aztec horror trying to eat me. I give the Ahuizotl the finger and step backward through the arch.
The arch isn’t just a hole into a tunnel. I can feel the magic before it hits me and I feel myself stretching like a rubber band, my mind pulling in multiple directions. A moment later it all snaps back into place and I come through the arch into a cavern that looks like the inside of a geode.
Crystals thick as tree trunks shoot up from the ground, down from the ceiling. A soft white glow emanates from deep inside them, smaller crystals in the walls throwing back sparkling rainbow light.
A road paved with stone blocks has been carved through the crystal forest. It stretches out in two directions, twisting and disappearing behind massive crystal columns.
“The Crystal Road,” Tabitha says.
“I can see that. The Aztecs were pretty literal, weren’t they?”
“They weren’t big on superfluous language.”
“How long do we have before our friend out there breaks through the archway?”
“Should be a while. Hours, at least. Maybe a day,” Tabitha says. “But I’ll feel better if I’m not right next to the entrance.” She starts to head down the road and I fall in step beside her.
Hungry Ghosts Page 14
