by David Bowles
“Fool. Don’t listen to me then. Ignore me like you’ve done for years. You’ll pay the price, and so will my daughter.”
With that, the ghostly form faded away. Johnny put his arm around his sister, urging her to continue walking.
“I know it wasn’t her,” Carol managed to say at last. “But what she was saying was true.”
“Maybe. But our real grandmother forgave us. You saw that. You felt it when we ran with her freed tonal under the moonlight. Whatever that thing was, it just used our own guilt against us. And when other quote-unquote ghosts appear, they’re going to do the same. So get yourself psyched up. I’m sure this is just the beginning of the attack.”
They continued along the Black Road, which for a time became the cracked cobblestones of some broad ancient highway. Lined with massive headless statues and broad, shattered plinths, the road led them deeply into the remains of a mighty city, overgrown with thorny black vines. Pale moths and beetles scurried over fallen granite blocks, and the eyes of vultures and ravens followed the twins as they went by.
They were passing under a bridge-like structure that stretched over the highway when another specter stepped onto the cobblestones before them. Unmistakable in his black suit, tortoise shell glasses and meager goatee, the man stared at them sadly.
It was their father.
Putting out an arm to stop his sister, Johnny shook his head. “Forget it. We know you’re not really him. Don’t even bother. First place, he isn’t even dead.”
“Oh, Johnny,” the phantom whispered, his hazel eyes watery. “Of course I wasn’t dead the last time you saw me. But I couldn’t bear to be without your mother anymore. Once I knew you two were safe with her sister, there was nothing keeping me from putting an end to my pain.”
Carol clenched her fists. “You shut up. Our father would never kill himself.”
“Wouldn’t I? All those times you checked in on me, found me drunk and weeping in my study…Did you really never think that I might consider this option? I’m sorry, Sweetie. I know I always told you to stand strong against the darkness. But at heart, I guess I’m a coward. The worst thing is that I know the truth now. Your mother is here, trapped. If only you had been faster. I suppose some of my weakness is in you, too. But now it’s too late. Say you rescue her. What will you three return to?” The apparition began to weep. “Forgive me, kids!”
Johnny was filled with rage. He knew this thing to be a mirage drawn from their own fears, but it felt so real having reached into their hearts in the most cunning of ways. Ironically it triggered the opposite reaction of what Tezcatlipoca and his servants had intended.
“You are not my dad. My dad loves me, and he’s struggling right now to get his head sorted so that he can give Carol and me a normal life. You can point out my weaknesses and screw-ups all you want, demon, but you are not Dr. Oscar Garza. You don’t even come freaking close. You couldn’t even tie the man’s dress shoes, you piece of scum.”
With an expression of sadness on his face and a disappointed shake of his head, the specter oozed into a towering pillar and could be seen no more. Carol, who looked really spooked by the somber pronouncements of the fakes, allowed Johnny to lead her along. The road led into a huge plaza ringed by thick tree stumps that had petrified over millennia. A strange, echoing animal sound flittered through the air, and Johnny felt Carol stiffen beside him. Then he heard her gasp.
“Oh, my God, Johnny. It’s Puchi.”
Johnny turned to where she indicated and saw the ghostly image of their favorite dog. Puchi had been at their side since they’d arrived from the hospital as newborns until she had died of old age two years ago. It had been devastating to watch her go blind and slow down till one day they’d discovered her, curled up under a grapefruit tree, her body cold and lifeless. And when Dad buried her out back, we cried like we had lost our best friend. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what had happened.
The apparition was young and healthy, though, and ran about them with unbridled joy. Carol knelt and called to her with a soft whistle. Puchi rushed at them then bounded away playfully the way she once had when she wanted to be chased.
“Carol,” Johnny warned as his sister stood, “don’t even think about it. This is a trap.”
His sister’s voice was calm but distant. “I’m not stupid, Johnny. Of course it’s a trap. But it’s coming no matter what, so why don’t we just play along? That way we have a few minutes with her, even if she isn’t real.”
With a shrug and a sigh, Johnny went along with her. They followed the dog off the Black Road, onto an intersecting boulevard lined with thorny black rose bushes that led toward a white tower looming in the near distance. As they came closer, Johnny saw that the building was a single piece, as if cement had been poured into an impossibly massive mold. There were no apparent doors or windows, only a jagged parapet ringing the very top. The spectral canine dove into a tangle of silvery, wilted herbs that encircled the tower’s base, and the twins came to a stop.
Johnny shuddered with realization. “Carol, that tower was carved from bone. From a single, freaking huge bone.”
“What sort of creature has a bone that size, Johnny? That’s got to be a hundred feet tall.”
“Well, I’m guessing whatever it was doesn’t exist anymore.”
They walked around the base of the tower, looking for the ghost dog. There were no markings of any kind anywhere on the surface of the stele and no sign of Puchi’s doppelganger.
“Weird. They used her to lure us here,” Johnny mused aloud, “so where’s the trap?”
“There’s no trap, kids.”
Despite six months without hearing it, Johnny recognized the clipped, lightly accented voice immediately. Verónica Quintero de Garza stepped from within the ivory white tower, a haunting smile on her cracked lips. Her dark hair was standing out wildly in all directions, her brown eyes sunken deeply into a face stripped bare of its normal elegant make-up.
“I sent the vision of Puchi to draw you here,” she continued, her hands reaching out to them. Johnny noted that her slacks and blouse were badly stained and torn. “I don’t have much time. They use this tower to send demons against you, trying to make you despair. In moments they’ll return to try again. So let me be quick, mis amores.
“Han sido muy valientes, los dos. Very brave. I’m prouder than you can imagine. But you cannot continue. The danger is too great. Even if you get past all obstacles, when you stand before him, you’ll be weakened beyond belief. And he will twist you, make you give your power to him. Rather than risk that, I’m willing to sacrifice myself.”
Carol, who had been trembling for a while, suddenly cried out. “No, Mom! You can’t!”
Johnny shook his head. It’s a trick. Has to be.
“This is nuts. They’re really desperate, Carol. To give themselves away like this? We scare them.”
“What are you talking about? Johnny, that’s not a fake! That’s Mom!”
The phantom turned loving eyes on him. “Yes, Johnny, listen to your sister. It’s really me.”
Johnny laughed, finally certain. “Oh, they’re scared, alright. And scared people always screw up. It’s not her, Carol, and now you know it.”
Carol closed her eyes and nodded. “I guess…I guess I just wanted to believe…”
Their mother’s double narrowed her eyes. “Kids? What are you going on about? You need to leave, now. Travel counterclockwise until you come to the Green Road, and then follow it back. You’ll emerge…”
“Carol, sing.”
She stared at him, her mouth open. “Sing what?”
“Anything. One of Mom’s lullabies. Use the Force, Luke.”
Closing his eyes, Johnny began to picture his mother, dressed to the nines, her hair perfectly done, make-up flawless, all five foot six inches of her joyously alive as she walked along an exhibit of her sculptures. In his mind, she turned to him and beckoned.
Carol’s voice began to echo in that
damned wasteland, at first tentative, then with greater confidence and beauty, sounding out clear, powerful notes that seemed to set the tower thrumming:
A la ru ru niño
A la ru ru ya.
Tus sueños te protegen
De la oscuridad.
A la ru ru niño
A la ru ru ya,
Porque viene el coco
Y te comerá.
Y si no te come,
Él te llevará;
Y si no te lleva,
Quién sabe qué hará.
Este lindo niño
Ya se va a dormir
Háganle la cuna
De rosa y jazmín.
Toronjil de plata,
Torre de marfil,
Arrullen al niño
Que ya quiere dormir.
As the dark lullaby flooded his soul with memories, his mother’s face loomed larger and larger, filling his mental vision. Her eyes crinkled beautifully, and she called to him, as she always did.
“Juan Ángel, ven acá, amor.”
Not Johnny. Never Johnny. And in that moment, the love he had been bottling up within him—fearful of forgetting, frightened of losing the sound of her voice forever—came rushing out like a tide, and he instinctively directed it at the specter before him, shouting with authority he had never imagined he could muster:
“Show us what you really are!”
A muffled shriek made him open his eyes. Before them their mother’s form peeled away, revealing a pterodactyl-like monster with the backward-bent legs of a rooster. Its human-like face was shattered and scarred, and as it spread its leathery wings, it shrieked again in bitter rage.
“Behold Ixpuztec, master of faces!” Its voice was like the snapping of dry bones. “And now I shall gladly rip yours from your foolish heads you sniveling brats!”
Ixpuztec’s wings beat the air twice, lifting about four meters. Then the demon dove at them, razor-sharp talons first.
Seizing the screech owl feather, Johnny transformed, clutching at his clothes and spiraling away on an updraft. Carol was now a snatch-bat, and Johnny caught a glimpse of her as she raked her own obsidian claws against Ixpuztec’s already ruined face.
Fly, Johnny, fly! I’m right behind you!
Catching a strange, rushing current, Johnny corrected his trajectory and then hurtled parallel to the Black Road. Ahead the sky wavered and seethed, like summer air above the blacktop. Twisting his agile owl head, he saw his sister gliding behind him. Below her, rushing upward, was a cloud of black: Ixpuztec, accompanied by thousands upon thousands of ravens and vultures.
Well, Carol, we’re almost past this desert. I see the next one up ahead. Lava plains, right? Scarface and his feathered friends can’t cross over. We’re almost in the clear.
The warm current soon drew them to a chain of volcanoes that appeared to serve as a border between the two circles of Mictlan. The mass of demonic birds had almost caught up when the twins winged their way between two bubbling calderas. An explosion of super-heated gas and ash fried the hundreds of ravens and vultures who had not turned aside at the last minute.
Wow, that was close , Carol projected.
Yeah. Those birds got fried extra crispy. We just need a jalapeño and some charro beans, and we’d have an awesome feast .
Gross!
Yeah, well, after who-knows-how-many hours or days in the Underworld, I’m really working up a craving for some comfort food, you know. Anyway, four down, five to go. I think we’re really getting a hang of this, yeah? And look, just a bunch of lava flows. Great updrafts. I think we’ll get through this desert quick.
He glanced down just in time to see the enormous flying wyrm before it wrapped itself around him and plunged toward the fiery plains.
Chapter Thirteen
Carol screamed in her ragged bat voice as the winged serpent lunged through the air, seizing her brother in coils of shimmering red and gold. Pulling her own wings tight against her body, she dropped like a stone after them. The wind whistled past her sensitive ears in a warbling wail, but before she could reach Johnny, another huge iridescent snake emerged from the sulfuric mists and plucked her from the air with the tip of its twisting tail.
Terrified, she squirmed around inside the serpent’s unalterable grip, almost shifting before she remembered the bat was her only flight-capable option if she got free. She soon realized she couldn’t reach her animal talismans anyway, so she worked to calm herself down. It was difficult. She knew she was panicking, but couldn’t help remembering what had gotten her here. Overcoming the cehualli attack, convincing the kamasotzob to help her, being saved by Xolotl from the icy whirlwinds only to watch him abandon her…All of those trials paled beside the psychological ordeal of facing the doppelgangers of her loved ones and hearing their dreadful but inescapably true pronouncements.
Dad said that souls had their humanity stripped away, bit by bit, till only a wisp was left. I can’t let that happen to me. I’ve got to hold on to who I am.
Her captor veered left and then right, avoiding the super-heated blasts of steam from below. Carol, her mind calmer, waited to discover where the creature was taking her. Hopefully Johnny will be there, too, and together we can figure out a way to escape.
The wyrm’s wings beat the hot air for several minutes before it began to descend into the large, bowl-like caldera of a smoking volcano. Craning her head back, Carol saw that the crater contained a steaming lake, at the center of which stood an island of volcanic rock. Lava dribbled from a sort of shattered hill, draining down into the water in a glowing ribbon. Along the fiery stream a massive black temple had been erected, its ziggurat steps reflecting the red with hellish fierceness. It was atop this temple that the flying serpent released Carol and landed, coiling its body beneath itself and digging winged claws into the black stone to support its upper half. It had no legs.
Tightening her own talons around her clothes, Carol spread her wings, ready to attempt her escape.
“That would be quite useless.” The voice was smooth and aristocratic, employing the cultured tones of a Spanish prince or Aztec emperor. Carol lowered her wings a bit as a man ascended the steps to stand a few yards away from her. He was tall and thin and extravagantly dressed. On his head sat a golden circlet, part of a headdress from which a ridge of white feathers emerged, followed by blue-green plumes that swept backwards down the black, downy cape draped over his broad shoulders. His skin was the faint blue of the dead except for strange golden tracings: ancient glyphs tattooed on cheeks, chest and forearms. Around his eyes was a black mask that glittered with pinpricks of blue fire like the glowing azure of his irises; a loincloth of the same material hung to his knees. In his right hand he clutched a sinister-looking dart and in his left, a broad shield at the center of which had been mounted an obsidian mirror. Carol saw her bat form reflected in its depths and quailed.
He smiled. “To be sure, I invite you to make the attempt. My fire serpent, Xiuhcoatl, would easily recapture you. However, even if he did not, I could bring you back down with little effort. In fact,” he pronounced with a slight tipping of his shield, “you are now quite unable to escape.”
Irritated by his mocking tone, Carol flapped leathery wings, only to discover that he had been telling the truth. Some sorcery kept her talons firmly attached to the top of the pyramid.
“We need to converse, you and I, Carolina. Return to your normal form. Now.”
Carol stared at him with red eyes, and then gestured with her wing.
“Ah, you wish for me to turn around? Childish thing. Do you truly believe me interested in your unripe flesh? Very well. Dress quickly.”
He gave her his back, and it was her tonal that rather randomly sensed his cape was covered in eaglet down. Shifting into her human form, she pulled on undergarments, pants and shirt. Xiuhcoatl hissed softly, smoke curling from its nostrils. Carol jerked her chin up at it in a defiant gesture, and it flicked its forked tongue at her hungrily. As she bent to slip on he
r socks, she noticed a single shimmering scale that had flaked free of the winged serpent, lying a few feet away. The seed of a plan began to germinate.
She was slipping into her sneakers when the masked blue man faced her again.
“Better. Do you know who I am, Carolina Garza?”
“No. Batman? A lucha libre wrestler?”
His grim smile conveyed a desire to break her bones slowly. “I am Huitzilopochtli, you sniveling wench. Resurrected warrior of the south. Lord of sun and fire and battle. Do you know me?”
Carol recognized the name immediately. Her father had told her many stories of the arrival of the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico. She had been fascinated by the nomadic Mexica tribe and how they had been forced to leave kingdom after kingdom until settling at Lake Texcoco, and how they had worked as mercenaries for decades until forming the Triple Alliance that in a century had conquered the entire Valley of Mexico. Dr. Garza had written several monographs about the first Moctezuma. That pre-Colombian king had sought to erase the history of the nations he conquered and replace it with a glorified tale of Aztec dominance. His brother the high priest had developed a religious doctrine that required greater and greater human sacrifice to stave off disaster. They had elevated their bloodthirsty god of war to the head of their pantheon.
“Sure, I know who you are. The god the Aztecs worshipped above all others. The one who led them out of Aztlán, down into Mexico.”
Huitzilopochtli’s smile broadened. “Very good! I see your father taught you well, Carolina.”
She stopped in the middle of tying her left sneaker. “How do you know about my dad?”
