Chapter 1: The Greatest Stars

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Author’s Note: Welcome to book 3 of The Coil. As you may recall, 13 Secret Cities, the first volume in this series, published back in 2013 as serial in four parts before I released the book as a paperback. With Hall of Mirrors, I am going back to form, and this time, I am offering the book to you as a FREE web serial. The paperback will drop in 2023, once the serial is complete. You can read the latest chapter every Friday here on my web site, or you can also sign up for my newsletter to receive each chapter in your inbox for more convenience. I will be discussing each chapter inside my Discord, which you can join for free here. This is a way to dialogue directly with the author each week, as Hall of Mirror takes us deeper into the mysteries of The Coil. Please enjoy this new book, and stay safe.

-Cesar Torres
Chicago

Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres
Copyright @ 2022 Cesar Torres. All Rights Reserved.

Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres

CHAPTER 1: THE GREATEST STARS

From the Journal of Felix Calvo, October 23, 2030

For the first time in five years, I no longer fantasize about killing myself.

It’s funny how such a powerful thought can arrive during the most banal moments. I realized it just a moment ago, when I was pouring hot water through the ceramic cone of my coffee brewer, and I caught a narrow sliver of myself in the tin mirror from Puebla that my father gave me as a gift.

I’m not sure why my reflection intrigued me in such an arresting manner during my morning routine before work, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I no longer recognize that person starting back at me in the glass. The dark circles under my eyes have faded,  away and instead, they gleam with potential and curiosity. My skin is rosy, no longer gray. And my expressions is not longer sullen and flat, like it was in my twenties. 

This is what a non-suicidal landscape looks like.

My narrow face, its black mustache, and the dangling earring I wear weave in and out of the mirror as I plunge into my coffee cup, and my image entrances me, when a noise from outside the apartment startles me.

The Pueblan mirror seduces me, and not knowing why, I press my face onto the glass. This is something I used to do as a kid until one day my father yanked me by the back of my collar and told me to stop. But now I can feel my lips on the icy mirror, and I kiss myself for just a moment. Just above me, in the trees outside the apartment, a pair of robins start to sing.

As far as I can recall, robins have disappeared from the streets of Chicago and its suburbs, making this a rare, rare event. I can see them dancing through the branches with their blood-orange breasts and bright eyes. I slide my phone from my pocket to record them, but instinct tells me to put my device away.

I marvel at the way the two birds move, short and twitchy at times, then calculated and elegant the next. I have been cupping my hot mug of coffee in my palms for so long that it’s burning me, but I don’t care. What I am witnessing is unusual, maybe even uncanny.

I’m thirty one years old, and I just caught a glimpse of birds that are rumored to be mostly extinct. To be honest, I never thought I would live past the age of thirty.

I didn’t want to live just five years ago.

But I changed.

And I’m not the only one who has changed.

Chicago has changed. The United States had changed. North America has changed. Our planet has entered a new phase, and the fabric of reality has started to dissolve.

It feels a bit selfish to say this, but I wish that this feeling, this moment standing beneath two birds that are virtually extinct, could last forever.

NESTOR BUÑUEL

Nestor dragged himself out of bed with zombie feet but restless mind. He had only slept four hours, but no matter what he did the night before, he awoke each morning at 6:30 AM without fail. He smelled Felix’s hipster coffee before he could even hear any noises coming from the kitchen. It was a good smell—sweet and sour, robust, familiar.

He slogged past the office he and Felix shared. Goddammit, his head was pounding. At the far end of the hall, Felix had set up an ofrenda for Día de Los Muertos. The holiday was still more than a week away, but Felix started the ofrenda earlier and earlier every year. Felix had taken a folding table, covered it with a bright blue tablecloth, and had started to place photos of his dead relatives in a symmetrical pattern of such precision that it seemed machine-like. Today, there were multiple flowers arranged on the table, and a small plate of cookies beneath the photo of Felix’s grandfather, the one they called El Toro.

Nestor nuzzled one of the shortbread cookies with his index and middle finger. Their smell intoxicated him, and despite the nausea churning in his stomach from his hangover, his mouth watered. He picked up a wafer and raised it to his lips.

“Put it down,” Felix said from the kitchen. “It’s for my dead loved ones, not for the living.”

Nestor’s body went cold with fear. What, did Felix have eyes in the back of his head?

“Coffee’s done, and breakfast will be ready in about ten minutes. How was last night?”

Nestor wasn’t ready for such questions today, but the scent of coffee pulled him into the kitchen against his will. Nestor chose to ignore the question and reflect it back instead.

“How late were you out last night?” Nestor said.

“Three, I think,” Felix said. “It was a cute night. Real cute.”

“I used to be able to do that in my thirties, too. Stay out all night, and you’re fresh as a daisy. God my head is killing me.”

“Don’t tell me you never made it out of the house, Nestor.”

“Home is where the heart is.”

“Okay. So you drank alone at home. I get it. But you’re really that hungover?”

“This one hurts like a bitch.”

Felix got lost inside his smartphone. This is the way he liked to disasociate and show his disapprovale.

“I get it. You don’t like me to drink on my own,” Nestor said.

“I’m not one to judge. I’ve  done my own share of drinking alone at home. Who hasn’t? But Nestor, you gotta admit—“

“Admit what, Felix?”

“Just forget it.  I’m not mad at you. Just surprised. You weren’t always like this.”

“Last night I just needed to blow off some steam. Things are really hard right now. Sometimes you need a drink to tolerate it.”

“How bad?”

“Let me help you with those eggs. They’re gonna burn”

“Okay, I get it. You’re going to change the subject. You working today?”

“Wasn’t planning on it. It’s Saturday and I want to run some errands.”

“I’m gonna put in a couple of hours on the Ferber project,” Felix said.

“We’re close to getting all the data sets for that one, aren’t we?”

“Very. If her husband laundered that money, we have a crypto paper trail that we can try to exploit. And if I can just confirm it, we can close out that project, get payment, Mrs. Ferber can file for her divorce, and we can finally afford to get some nice cashflow for the business..”

“Miss Ferber’s a good client,” Nestor said. ‘Thank you for closing on this case, Felix.”

Nestor buried his face into the coffee cup. He didn’t dare tell Felix just how wild his night had actually been. Two beers, he had told himself at three in the afternoon. But those two beers had become four, and they had led him all the way to  a brand-new bottle of mezcal that lifted him into the wings of the night. The rest was just a gossamer memory of heartbreaking cumbias on the speakers and tiny handfuls of Spanish peanuts to complement the mezcal. He had drank the whole bottle. And now the kid was running circles around Nestor, putting in a work ethic that Nestor had lost almost a decade ago.

This is what happens when you don’t make enough money to retire properly, he thought. His NYPD pension  money hadn’t been enough for a true nest egg. He had bought this condo in Chicago, used the remainder for the moving costs, but the truth was that he was going to have work until the day he died. There was no retirement in his future.

But that was neither here nor there. He reached into the cabinet and popped three ibuprofen tablets. Nestor let out a belch and scratched his right shoulder. It ached from time to time, from a bullet wound he had taken while serving on the force.

“How is it that the harder you party, the more jacked you get?” Felix said.

“Huh?”

“You got abs like an ear of corn, and titties out to here, and here I am, skinny fat, working like a dog to get these love handles off. What’s your secret?”

“I don’t know, man. Just years and years of wash, rinse, repeat in the weight room.”

“What a waste. You would be pulverizing pussies and dicks if you just took a week to get into the dating pool, you know that?”

“Let me enjoy my self-punishment together with my coffee, missy.”

“Oh, she’s fierce this morning. I like it!”

“How about you?”

“Got my bussy serviced last night. Had a good time. Left his place by two. Hey, I saw something interesting this morning.”

“Another shooting?”

“No, thankfully not that. Robins! There’s  a pair up in that tree. It’s been years.”

“Real robins?”

“Yup. Auspicious, if you ask me. Maybe it’s a sign that they’re out there, watching us.”

“Come again?”

“The gods. One of the Nine Lords. These birds  could be one of their guardians.”

“Oh Felix…it’s too early in the morning for this shit.”

“Listen. The Nine Lords are not just myth and you know it—“

“Felix, after all this time, I value the fact that you and I can chat about Aztec-god lore, yet we each can still have completely different points of view.”

“But you were there, Nestor. You actually saw one of the gods’ offspring in person.”

“No I didn’t. I had a psychoactive event. Maybe it was even a psychotic break, who knows. I don’t think anything I experienced that night is as real as you think it was.”

“You and I wouldn’t be living here in Chicago if it weren’t  for that creature you and I saw that night in the woods behind Samuel Kahan’s house.”

“I don’t want to talk about creatures anymore,” Nestor said. He clicked his tongue and finished his coffee. “Gonna shower.”

“What about this breakfast I just made you?”

“I have to puke. The whole apartment is spinning.”

Nestor walked out of the kitchen, and almost instantly, its cozy smells faded. As he traveled back down the hallway, he glanced at the ofrenda, which only featured photos of Felix’s relatives. There wasn’t a single photo of Nestor’s dead loved ones on that altar, and that was by choice. He liked to mourn the dead inside a very still place inside his heart.

With each wobbly step, the smells of copper, tin, and rancid oil, filled Nestor’s  nostrils. His gut roiled, and nausea enveloped him.

This was going to be very bad.

After he emptied out all the contents of his guts into the toilet bowl, Nestor made his way into the office he and Felix shared for their private-investigator business. Above them, framed photographs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Frank Herbert, Carlos Fuentes, Toni Morrison and James Baldwin looked down onto two slim workstations: one laptop each for Nestor and Felix, a corresponding monitor. Multiple bookshelves were brimming with books-and the volumes threatened to spill down.

“What am I doing with my life?” Nestor said out loud with a chuckle. He was glad he had left New York City, but Chicago had delivered new challenges. In many ways, it was harder to adapt to this city. After five years in Chicago, Nestor still couldn’t feel the comfort and familiarity that NYC had offered him.

He logged onto his computer, even though he had told himself he wasn’t going to do any work today. But work always felt familiar, warm and cozy, the way a fresh cup of coffee– or a cocktail–felt on his lips. 

.

On the laptop, his news app pushed out  headlines for Nestor.

Protesters clash with Chicago police for third day in a row across electoral districts

QAnon supporters form a new coalition with the New Brown Party during the primary

Army to set up security checkpoints along Illinois highways starting in 2032

“Hey Felix,” Nestor said, projecting his voice so he could be heard across the apartment.

“What’s up?”

“You’re a really good man,” Nestor said. “Just wanted to say that.”

“You had to put several walls between us just to share that intimate thought, huh?”

Nestor burst into warm, effusive laughter.

“I meant it.”

“Well, keep rejecting my awesome breakfasts, and you’ll lose this good roommate, bitch.”

Nestor glanced at his manuscript files in his filing system. Last updated in 2026. Four years without writing any fresh copy in his novels. Two book contracts lost. His Mutant Tactical series was indefinitely on hold, and his readers wondered why he had disappeared from all social networks.

Truth was, he couldn’t bear to look at his novels.

Before Nestor had ever published any of his books, he had imagined that seeing his book on a hardcover or a paperback would save him. He had been naive enough when he was a young man to think that his books could save him. And for a few years, they did. Hell, he made a name for himself as the NYC cop who wrote Mutant Tactical, a vast space opera where humanity pursued justice alongside other species in the cosmos, and lo and behold, before he knew it, he had become a real author. The book advances had always been welcome, too, and he had enjoyed the writing process itself.

But after the Millennium Riot of 2012, Nestor’s intricate universe of characters and intergalacti treaties had started to feel hollow. And that was because the world in which Nestor lived in began a steep decline. More riots ensued. Disenfranchised white men shot innocent people on a more frequent basis, and yet, none of the media or politicians refused to label those acts terrorism. The incomes of the middle class also began to shrink, and as Western society began to fray at its edges, Nestor began to resist his own urges to write more books. Mutant Tactical felt childish now. And he wanted to write a different kind of book, one which could describe reality with a strong point of view, but he couldn’t.

He just couldn’t do it. Instead, Nestor became weaker. He began to rely on Mutant Tactical just for the money. The series always sold  plenty of copies, in the last two books, he had just phoned it in. He knew that there were new books he had to write, and he was too weak to write them.

And now, in 2025, the covers of the Mutant Tactical  paperbacks on the shelf stared back at him, as proof of his own lack of character as a writer. Even though the books were inanimate, Nestor could almost hear them whispering shameful reproaches every time he saw them on the bookshelf.

“Fuck all you,” Nestor said to his own books. The office plunged into silence for a few moments, and Nestor shook his head. He walked up to the bookshelf and reversed every single Mutant Tactical book so that the back covers were facing him, as if he were flipped over a framed family portrait in order to avoid shameful glances.

He poked  around his email and direct messages from clients, when the overhead lights in the office flickered. The disruption had a strobe-like effect, and the images on his monitor also began to pulse. Though all windows were closed, a cold draft blew in. And then, from behind Nestor, a loud noise startled him. It was a long series of clicks and hums and screeches, like an MRI scanner. The room grew dimmer, and for a fraction of a second, Nestor felt a shadow move into the office, the way a large animal might enter a cave. It was large, dense, and unfriendly. It threatened to seep through the floorboards, and it carried with it pungent smell, like fish gone bad.

He was certain that this was not his hangover.

The sunlight from outside faded too, as if the shadow that had entered the house was absorbing it like a sponge.

Nestor started to shake, and time slowed down.

“Felix, it’s happening again,” he managed to shout. But even his own words seemed to be swallowed up by this unnamable shadow engulfing the room.

The shadow moved as if it had a mind of its own, flowing, bending and expanding. As it grew, time slowed down even further. Nestor held up his hand, and it glided and slogged, as if he were watching slow-motion video.

The machine-like sounds shortened, became more compact, until they sounded like rattle, and all Nestor could think was that it was the sound of bones clicking together.

The liquid darkness had reached his waist, pooling like fluid that couldn’t be touched, but only seen. And in this vast lake of nothingness, he felt its presence again.

He tried to scream, but he couldn’t.

Something shifted inside the shadow, like an animal emerging from an egg.

It had two eyes: diseased, rimmed with pus, its pupils hungry. And there was a mouth too, with teeth covered in slime, blood and shit. Its head was embedded deep in the oily muck, staring at him.

Nestor tried to shout, but time congealed around him, and no sounds emerged from his throat. He felt terror so deep that his spine lit up with electric pulses and he felt as if he might piss himself.

Then something shook Nestor by the shoulders. It rattled him like a rag doll, and he bit down on his tongue with how forceful it was.

A new face emerged from the dark.

“Nestor, stay with me. You’re having a flare-up,” Felix said, his soft skin and skinny mustache becoming more solid. Time was still moving slowly, nothing more than a gelatinous energy, and Nestor tried to speak, but he could not. The shadow had awakened a fear inside Nestor that had left him paralyzed. 

Felix said more words, but his voice was muted, faded and far away.

But Felix Calvo never gave up. He pressed a cold compress on Nestor’s forehead, gace him a sip of ice water through a straw, and his eyes never left him.

After  a few seconds, the black shadow had vanished, and Nestor reclined in his office chair, his ears ringing. Felix pressed the cold compress on his own forehead for a moment.

“What did you see?” Felix asked, over and over.

“A being with eyes of pus,” Nestor said. “Larger than an elephant or a whale. I don’t know how I know this, but it was made of a lot of…bones.”

Felix sat down for a moment and put his head between his hands, shaking his head back and forth.

“Fuck,” he said. “It’s happening again."

“It is.”

“I think this will pass, Nestor.”

“This thing, it’s not like any I have ever seen during an episode. Time started to slip away, as if it had slowed down to nothing. And the things inside the pool of shadow–this thing meant to do me harm.”

“And you still don’t believe, do you?” Felix said. Nestor grunted and pushed Felix away.

“Give me the compress. I can do it myself.”

Now Felix was arranging the post-its, headphones and device chargers on his desk with fury, wiping down the surfaces with a cleaning cloth, and violently snapping the blinds open to let in more of the scorching light from outside. Nestor could see that Felix’s hands were shaking, and he had broken out in a sweat.

“They’re just hallucinations,” Nestor said.

“ You make me fucking sick sometimes, you know that?” Felix said. “You’re an old stubborn cop, worse than old stubborn dog.. How can you just dismiss these episodes ?”

“It’s just a bad hangover. They mean nothing. ”

“That’s because nothing means anything to you. You’re as narcissistic as the day I first met you, goddammit.”

“Felix, giving these hallucinations attention doesn’t help our finances, or the business. So what’s the point of caring about them? It’s just PTSD from all the death, violence and suffering I witnessed all my years on the force..”

Felix was ready to snap back at Felix, when a special ringtone went off in the kitchen.

“Oh no,” Felix said, and dashed out of the office. He returned from the kitchen with his phone.

“It’s my mom, my nosy fucking mom,” Felix said. “Ohhhh fuck.”

Nestor was now fully operational, and the vision had faded. Strangely enough, he felt a little better now. The hot, greasy feeling of the hangover had receded, and his mind was even a bit clearer. He let Felix have his moment.

Felix came back into the office, running his hands through his hair.

“Everything okay?” Nestor said.

“You’re gonna want to look at this,” Felix said, bringing his smartphone over to Nestor.

The text from Felix’s mother read, “Please take care. The vice-president just announced they’re deploying the national guard to island cities. Chicago was the first one on the list.”

“I hate calling them island cities,” Nestor said.

“But it’s true,” Felix said. “Chicago’s surrounded by red politics. Once you leave the metro area, it’s a whole other world out there in Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin.

“I know. I just can’t believe it’s come to this.”

“Just be glad we’re not living in one of those awful states where having an abortion is illegal and your boss can fire you for being black.”

“But what’s the national guard going to do? They can’t stop the civil unrest. Not now. It’s been decades.”

“I don’t fucking know, Nestor. But you’re not being helpful, and you’re stressing me out, just like my mother and her texts.”

Nestor’s phone also started to ping.  

“What else can go wrong at this point?” Nestor said, letting out a long sigh.

Nestor accessed his messages, and read a new text from Delia Douglas, one of his old colleagues from New York City Police.

“Got some bad news, Nestor. It’s about Puttock.”

Steven Puttock had murdered the lawyer Marlene Grue, as well as a homeless man in New York in the fall of 2025. That had been the case that had ended Nestor’s career in a pathetic and desperate final act. Steven Puttock, an incredibly clandestine but vicious killer, had flayed Marlene and another victim in the name of an ancient Aztec deity known as Xipe Totec. Puttock, who had no ancestral connections to indigenous people, had offered up his killings as a type of tribute to Xipe Totec, and Marlene Grue’s murder had been his most dramatic set piece. He had carved runes into her flesh in the darkness of a Times Square and left her skin in ribbons during a screening of Samuel Kahan’s last film, ØIE. A few days after, Puttock had also slain and partially skinned a homeless man in upper Manhattan, and of course, that killing had been mostly forgotten, because no one ever gave a shit about the homeless. It had been Marlene Grue’s killing that had haunted Nestor to this day. Marlene Grue would have been exactly Nestor’s age if she were still alive today.

The killing of Marlene Grue had also led Nestor and Felix to upstate New York, where they had investigated the case at Samuel Kahan’s mansion in the woods. Terrible things happened in that mansion, and even more terrible things had happened in the snow-covered woods just behind the property. And Nestor had never quite recovered from the experience. But in early 2026, he invited Felix to join him in Chicago as Nestor launched his own private investigation firm.

Nestor couldn’t get out of New York fast enough, and it was Puttock’s crime in that Times Square theater that had become a catalyst for change in Nestor’s life.

Nestor  thought he was done with Steven Puttock. But now here he was again, haunting him in a completely new decade and across 800 miles of distance.

Part of him wanted to just say fuck it, and ignore the text, but before he could even formulate the thought, he was answering Delia Douglas’ text.

“What happened?” Nestor texted back.

“We’re still piecing it together, but Puttock persuaded his cellmate to commit suicide.”

“Fuck.”

“Happened last night. Russian kid, barely twenty years old. Hung himself. There’s more to it, though.”

Nestor’s head was pounding with the faded ghost of mezcal. He scratched at his elbows, a nervous habit that reappeared every few years when shit got hard.

“Puttock said some strange things, and I wanted to run them by you.”

“Go on.”

“He said he made his cellmate go to another world. A place of darkness and monsters. He called it the paradise of shadow, shaped like a spiral, a forbidden place. And he brought up your name.”

“?”

“He said you would know the place he’s talking about. I think he’s giving us clues about other crimes he might have committed, and that’s why I am reaching out to you.”

“You talked to him in person?”

“Yep. He threatened me. What an asshole. He said he will continue inducing suicides in the prison, unless he gets a chance to talk to you.”

“I want nothing to do with him. I told you I’m done with that case. I’m retired.”

“Nestor, you don’t understand. He said that if you can meet with him, he will  give up all the names of his victims. You know what this could mean for the case?”

“I do. It would mean those families would have some closure, and they could seek justice.”

 “I don’t know if the suicide stuff is true, but Nestor, you don’t know this guy. He’s a true psychopath. I do think he could make other inmates hurt themselves He has a sinister way of talking to people..”

“I know, I profiled him as such in the Marlene Grue case.”

“We’ll pay for you to come out to the prison as a consultant. Just a couple of days. Please. This is a really hot lead.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Puttock made his roommate kill himself. This is not what he needed to hear on a hot and grimy Saturday morning.

He thought about the shadow he had seen just moments ago–its monstrous head, and its rotten teeth, trying to consume him. It was better to go back to work than to think about that hallucination, to be honest.

From the other end of the apartment, Felix shouted, “Hey do you need a refill on your coffee?”

“Just finishing a text, Felix. I’ll join you in the kitchen.”

Nestor scratched his arms with more force now, leaving white furrows of dry skin behind. He was still nauseous, sleepy, and oh so irritated. He shook his head and sat in silence for a few minutes. He had drawn blood from the scratches. 

Not knowing why, he typed on the glass of his smartphone, and he felt almost as if someone else was in control, as if he had left his body for just a few moments.

“Okay I’ll go to New York,” Nestor typed back to Delia. “When do you need me there?”

He closed his eyes and fought back the urge to vomit on his desk. He shoved himself up from the chair, leaving his smartphone behind on the desk. He grabbed a black tee from his bedroom and pounded his feed down the hall. He caught a glimpse of the trees outside the window, and not a single animal, neither squirrel nor bird, were to be found.

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