Chapter 4: The Shape of Time
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Author’s Note: If you ever wondered how some of the mysteries of 13 Secret Cities would be explained in the sequels, then you will find some big surprises in this week's chapter. Don't forget that you can always get to the table of contents for Hall of Mirrors here. Please share that page with your friends so they can discover my book! It's formatted for your phone and tablets, to make the reading more pleasurable for you. And now, without further ado, let's see get into this week's installment.
-Cesar Torres
Chicago
Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres
Copyright @ 2022 Cesar Torres. All Rights Reserved.
Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres
CHAPTER 4: THE SHAPE OF TIME
NESTOR BUÑUEL
With the Puttock interview cut short by the heatwave, Nestor figured he and Delia would wrap up the site visit for the day, but she had other plans.
Delia walked with Nestor down the hallway with grace, her braided hair flowing around her shoulders.
“Puttock said he wants to see the nurse,” she said. “He’s been known to do this. He claims to be sick, but then he’s always diagnosed to be as healthy as a horse. But since he’s pulling this stunt today while you’re visiting, that means you and I can go check out his cell while he’s being examined.”
“For real?” Nestor said. He felt excitement in his belly. This was almost like the old days on the force before he retired.
Delia smiled from ear to ear. “Come on cowboy, let’s go take a look.”
Once they arrived at Puttock’s cell, Nestor snapped on a pair of purple nitrile gloves and donned a face mask. Though he was inoculated with the vaccine, he had to wear the extra protection, because in the past thirty days, two inmates had tested positive for the virus, and this prison had some of the worst ventilation of any correctional facility in the state of New York.
“All right, let’s do this,” Nestor said, as he flipped open his pocket notepad and started to take notes.
The room contained two beds, each one placed opposite of the other. A steel toilet and wash basin punctuated the middle of the room. There was a sense of symmetry to this layout that seemed more intentional than meets the eye. And then Nestor realized why. Puttock and his roommate had decorated each of their walls with their drawings, which had been made on sheets of printer paper. But they had tacked them on the wall using putty and placed the drawings at precise positions, creating a mirror-like effect. Puttock’s side of the room was a mirror image of Raska’s side, and vice versa.
“They’re both artists?” Nestor said, clicking his tongue.
“It happens eventually for a lot prisoners. Sometimes art is all you got.”
“Interesting subject matter,” Nestor said. Raska’s drawings featured hellish beasts that resembled werewolves, set in a landscape that looked like a small European village. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought they were drawings of scenes of the movies American Werewolf in London and The Wolfman. A small detail caught his eye: the werewolves had slits on each side their torsos, below the nipples, like gills. The drawing technique was fairly sophisticated. Raska had the promise of talent. The figures were muscled, hairy, and drawn in such a way that could only be categorized as homoerotic.
Puttocks’ drawings on the other hand, were a universe onto themselves and very different than Raska’s. Two of the drawings featured tiny particles and platelets suspended either in air or liquid. The compositions looked like facsimiles of a microscopic view of platelets and cells in a drop of blood. The level of detail was astounding, and Puttock’s level of skill formidable.
“What do you think these are?” Nestor said.
“Hard to say,” Delia said. “Puttock is known to check out every available book from the library. Perhaps this is a study of something he saw in a science book.”
“These particles seem to sparkle, even though he only used pencil. How did me manage to do this?.”
Sandwiched between the two drawings of the particles was a third drawing, which featured a completely black canvas. Puttock and Raska only had access to black pencil, and despite the gray color of the graphite, Puttock had managed to give the black drawing an incredible depth. The effect of looking at his drawing was that of looking down a deep well. The image commanded full attention. This image was meant to show the viewer that even in what we humans perceive as darkness, there are always dimensions, planes and realms as rich as any nature scene that could be depicted using light.
In other words, this drawing felt as black and mysterious as looking into outer space, or into a grave.
At the foot of Puttock’s bed, Nestor found three books. The Shape of Time by George Kubler, Poems, Protest and a Dream: Selected Writings by Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz, and the novel Valis by Phillip K. Dick.
Raska, on the other hand, had no belongings to speak of. No family photos, no stash of cigarettes, nothing.
“Any other belongings for the late Raska?” Nestor said.
“Nope,” Delia said. “He had nothing in this cell. He hung himself with a bedsheet on that small hook at the top of the door. Puttock wasn’t present when it happened. He’s got an alibi.”
Both beds were neatly made, and the scent of cleaning fluid and disinfectant was milder here. Instead, a scent like that of wet wood or moss, permeated the room.
Nestor got up from his haunches and tapped the windowsill.
“There’s an infestation of these little critters,” he said. Black millipedes formed a dark smudge in the right hand corner of the windowsill. Delia recoiled and shook her head.
Both Delia and Nestor had heard Puttock talk about the millipedes in his interview just minutes ago. They both glanced at each other, but they stayed quiet about that subject.
“Something about this prison has never felt right to me,” Delia said. “I hate coming here. I really do. But the sudden suicide, and the awful way in which Puttock speaks — it all gives me the fucking creeps. Reminds me of stories my grandma used to tell me. Stories of curses left behind by ghosts.”
“We’re cops. You know that the dead do leave curses behind. But those curses are called pain and grief, and it’s’ the families who take them on. Nothing supernatural there.”
Delia clicked her tongue and pushed up her glasses onto the bridge of her nose.
“Nestor, I’ve been meaning to ask you something for some time. Things that I wanted to ask even before you retired and left New York.”
“I’m all yours. What do you want to know?”
“Well, no one ever articulated this, but there were times when other cops in the department just didn’t feel comfortable around you.”
“I’m a trans man. It’s not my responsibility to make cis-gendered people be comfortable around me. No apologies.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your vibe, Nestor. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Care to explain?”
“You know, sort of a weird, eerie, kind of brujeria kind of vibe.”
Nestor couldn’t help but crack up. When he was done laughing, he made sure to look Delia in the eyes.
“Is it my all-black wardrobe?” he said, hoping to add some humor into their conversation.
“You always look sharp in black, you goof. No, I mean, mystical shit.”
“I’m not into things like that. Not into Tarot, not into astrology. And definitely not into brujería. My mother, god bless her memory, would kill me if she knew I was.”
“Just let me explain,” Delia said. “You and I, we’ve been cool since the day we met. I trust you. But what I’m trying to say is that over the years, other men and women who worked with you in the department talked. And sometimes they approached me. They told me that they felt kind of a spooky energy around you.”
“Okay, that’s kind of insulting. We have known each other for years, but you waited to tell me this until now?”
“Yes. Because before you retired, you and I were still working together. I was too close to all of this, and I couldn’t get perspective. I didn’t see what our colleagues meant. But so much has happened since then, Nestor. The world has moved on. Things we thought were part of fantasy and science fiction are now part of the real world.”
“ I wish it weren’t so,” Nestor said.
“Military police regularly gun down black Americans at protests now. They specifically target black people. We’ve lived through a virus and a pandemic that is projected to stay for decades. Vigilante cells keep popping up all over the nation. We have a real die-off of most fish happening world-wide. Birds and insects wane. Our penal and correctional systems are in worse shape than they have ever been. And yet you and I are still here, schlepping in law enforcement.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m retired, I just do private investigations.”
“Oh just shut up, you crusty old man. Once a cop—“
“Always a cop,” Nestor said and chuckled. “Okay, point taken.”
“Most people would label us fools for hanging around in law enforcement for so long,” Nestor said.
“But we’re alive,” Delia said. “And that’s what counts. Alive in a world that has begun to decay faster than we can imagine. But you—you still amaze me, after all these years. I admire what you did. In you I see someone who reinvented himself and moved the fuck on. You made a new life in Chicago for yourself. You’re a strong man. But, just like I was saying a moment ago, you make people uneasy, and it wasn’t until life separated us for five years that I have had the balls to ask you about some of the weird stuff that seems to happen when you’re around.”
“Trust me, I’m no fortune teller or mystic.”
“I get that. You’ve always been a man of science. But did you know that Devon says he saw phantoms during that snowstorm back in 2025 when we were trying to catch Puttock?”
“I remember officer Devon. Incredibly handsome rookie. Very closeted.”
“Devin shared stories with me,” Delia said. “He said he saw big visions—visions of a great bird, red as blood, with wings that sparkled like metal, big as a house, and he said this bird stalked him at home, and also during the snow storm. And—-“
“Let me stop you right there,” Nestor said. “I know what you’re going to start asking me about.”
“Yes, I want to ask you about your connection to stories like the one Devon told. Because I too, have felt a weird vibe around you that–”
“I said stop.”
“Why? I just want to know. Are you into…occult shit?” Delia said.
Nestor let out a long sigh and scratched his beard.
“You’re not wrong in asking,” Nestor said. “And I respect you a lot as a cop and a friend. But you have to do me one favor, right now.”
“What’s that?”
“Let me borrow your notebook, Delia.”
Delia handed it over, and Nestor scrawled in it in his nearly illegible handwriting: I’ll answer your questions, but not here. We have to leave this cell. Something is watching us, and it’s listening. We need to get the fuck out, now.
He turned the pad upside down so he could show it to Delia. She stared at it in disbelief. She tucked the notebook into her briefcase and pressed her lips together, smiling and shaking her head.
“I swear to god, every time I see you, you pop some new surprises, boy.”
“Life is better when you expect the unexpected,” Nestor said, smiling. “Keeps your dopamine in a good place.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel, type up our notes individually for the day, and go grab a big burger at the diner down the road from where we’re staying,” Delia said. “That will be our time to talk.”
“You‘ll get no pushback on that from me. But know this. I’ll chat with you tonight, wrap up the third day of interviews with Puttock tomorrow morning, and then I am seriously done with this case for the rest of my life. Don’t ask me to talk to this piece of shit again. There’s no force in this universe that can make me spend even just once more second with Steven Puttock.”
“Deal,” she said.
They closed up the cell, tossed their gloves in a trash bin, and split up.
Delia still had to review footage, sign off on timesheets and finish some admin work inside the control room, and so she told Nestor she would meet up with him later at the hotel.
Nestor decided to take the long way to get to the parking lot. He would be meeting Delia for dinner in the evening, and now he had some time on his hands.
His long walk wasn’t just for kicks, however. He wanted to see how the population of this prison lived during this blast of heat in later October. He was escorted by a burly office who hardly spoke to him, and that was perfect. Nestor could observe the cells without drawing too much attention to himself.
What he saw shocked him. But it was what he smelled that shocked him even more.
Almost every inmate was in the same state of heat-induced stupor. The outside temperature was in the upper 90’s, but the heat inside these concrete rooms was easily past 100, and perhaps higher than 110. And because of the design of this building, hardly any air circulated. The prisoners languished, face up on their beds, and some of them even lay flat on the floor of the cell, because the concrete was cooler and less sticky than their cots. This is the type of heat that could easily kill a person.
But the stench was what really terrified Nestor. Its most pungent notes were of human sweat, a deep kind of musk that stung the nostrils. But this smell swirled together with the smell of so much urine that it stank of ammonia. There was also the smell of shit and old farts, and something else, like vomit, but sweeter. That last smell reminded Nestor of the liquid he sometimes threw up during his hangovers.
There was no dignity in how these prisoners were being treated, but there was no other way. The state of New York had no budget to speak of, and the most that could be done for these prisoners was to bring them each a bucket of ice water once a day. But this water soon turned warm as piss, generating steam that only made the smells of these hallways worse.
Nestor almost choked as he made his way through to the end of the wing. A few inmates shouted at him, asking him for a cup of ice in exchange for money or other favors, but he walked with his eyes looking straight ahead.
He needed out of this hellbox.
Once he walked outside, got cleared by security and made it past the chain link fence, he ripped off his black blazer. His t-shirt clung to his body like plastic wrap, and he himself stank of something ungodly.
He fished his phone out of his pocket and called Felix Calvo.
“I don’t care if you don’t like talking on the phone. I ain’t texting this shit,” Nestor said out loud, as he waited for the call to connect.
“Yo,” Felix said, his voice quivering.
“Yo? You never use the word ‘yo’,” Nestor said, laughing.
“Don’t worry about it, yo.”
“Just wanted to catch up. Puttock gave up two names yesterday,” Nestor said. “And the victims check out.”
“For real? So all his boasting in his manifesto was legit. Congrats, Nestor.”
“I hope to get the rest of the names tomorrow on the third day of interviews. The investigations, and the trials that will follow, will of course take time, but if Puttock crimes committed in states outside New York, he will quality for the death penalty in those states.”
“But not in New York for Marlene and our John Doe’s murders.”
“Correct.”
“I don’t like the death penalty, Nestor.”
“I remember you don’t. If I hadn’t served in the NYPD, I probably wouldn’t either.”
“How’s everything else going?” Nestor said. “You feeling good?”
“I guess. The whole National Guard situation is freaky, but here in the streets, you wouldn’t know anything’s happening. People are out and about at bars and restaurants, doing their usual Chicago shit.”
“Chicago’s been lucky enough to have fewer attacks by the vigilantes, which is why I think the president has sent the National Guard. It’s a deterrent to keep it stable.”
“Whatever. Just another day in this hell hole.”
“Why are you so grumpy today?” Nestor said.
“I’m having some eye issues at the moment, but nothing to get alarmed about.”
“Care to explain?”
“Nope, I’m fine. Just need a new prescription for my glasses.”
“You sound kind of weird.”
“That’s because I had a date I had last night and–”
“Okay, I get it, I get it,’’ Nestor said. “You don’t want to talk right now. I’ll leave you be, okay?”
“It’s just that… I also got my hands on something you and I have been looking for.”
“The book?”
“The book,” Felix said. “The fucking book!”
Nestor felt his stomach drop, and his breath quickened. Even though he and Felix had been hunting for a copy of 9 Lords of Night, part of him was regretting their success.
“I’ll need to check it out when I am back in Chicago, I suppose,” Nestor said.
“I’m already halfway through it. It’s one of the most terrifying stories I’ve ever read.”
“How terrifying?”
“That book gets right under your skin.”
“Okay, so please don’t tell me anymore about it.”
“Huh? Are you crazy, Nestor?”
“Hear me out. Even though I trust myself to not reveal too much around Puttock, an intellect like his will be able to smell the book on me. He will be able to sense if I have read it. I am better off staying ignorant until I am done with the interviews.”
“That makes no fucking sense, you fool,” Felix said as his tone of voice grew angrier. “What if information in that book can help you get more out of Puttock during the interviews?”
“Felix. Let me remind you. You’re not the one that has recurring hallucinations about a shadow with demon eyes. And you’re not the one interviewing this serial killer.”
“You’re pandering to Puttock,” Felix said.
“My dear Felix, please take that back.”
“Looks like we’re officially fighting, doesn’t it?”
“Gonna level with you. I don’t feel well. The hangover from Chicago is still lingering here in New York, I don’t know what the fuck I saw in our office, and you haven’t seen the miserable conditions inside this federal prison. What’s more, you don’t know the details yet of how Puttock killed the victims before Marlene and John Doe. Some of the things he says he did are just abominations.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know if I can take all this on,” Nestor said, as he started to cry into the phone. He trusted himself to show emotions to his work partner Felix, even if they often didn’t see eye to eye. He was scared, confused, and hesitant.
“Nestor…” Felix said on the other end.
“I’ll be okay. It’s just that this world we live in right now—shit feels heavy, and very complicated.”
Nestor was now cooling off inside the air conditioned rental car. He put his forehead down on the steering wheel and put his phone on speakerphone.
“So you got Puttock to talk to you,” Felix said. “This is good though. Did he talk about—you know—-“
“Costco? Oh yes. Costco is all he wanted to talk about.”
In order to not leave a paper or digital trail of their more esoteric investigations, Felix and Nestor used coded language during phone calls and texts to talk about the creatures that lived inside Mictlán. They even refrained from using Mictlán’s more accessible English name, The Coil. If their texts, voice or video calls were ever compromised, Mictlán would always be coded as Costco. It wasn’t foolproof protection, but it was important to not draw attention to Mictlán. These phone calls were encrypted, but regardless, it was better to cover all the bases they could.
“So why is Puttock so into Costco?” Felix said.
“I really don’t know what his endgame is in terms of prison politics. I don’t see him finding much leverage with prosecutors, or judges. Perhaps he’s made friends with gangs inside, or maybe he wants protection from the gangs. But I also doubt he would do that. Out of character for him. I don’t yet understand how knowledge about Costco helps him get ahead with his personal goals, except maybe one..”
“Has Puttock talked about The Night Drinker yet?” Felix said. The Night Drinker, another name for the immense and unknowable Xipe Totec, the god of fertility who liked to wear flayed human skins as a trophy. Puttock had dedicated the murder of Marlene Grue to The Night Drinker; he had sliced into her skin like tissue paper, carving right into it.
Puttock had also removed Marlene’s heart. The organ had never been found.
“Puttock didn’t mention the Night Drinker or even Marlene Grue,” Nestor said. “But he did start talking about Costco right away. He knows about the book 9 Lords of Night. That’s why I don’t want you to give me any spoilers about the novel. He’ll use weaponize anything I know against me. I was–”
Someone knocked. Nestor was startled. A lean security guard made hand gestures for Nestor to drive his car out of the lot.
Nestor needed to wind down this call.
“Sounds like you can’t say much about Costco at the moment,” Felix said. “Are other cops there with you right now?”
“Yes,” Nestor said.
“Nestor, I have a bad feeling lately,” Felix said.
“Be more specific” Nestor said.
“Just a vibe I am feeling. Just tell me you’ll leave soon and get your ass back to Chicago tomorrow evening. What’s your plan for the third day of interviews?”
“I want all the names Puttock can give me. And something else. I want to leave the prison with the certainty that he isn’t trying to make contact with the Night Drinker.”
“Why?” Felix said.
“I also have a bad feeling, just like you do,” Nestor said.
“Well I guess we’re both Walter Mercados, aren’t we?”
Felix laughed at his own joke, but he stopped as soon as he realized Nestor wasn’t laughing on his end.
“Puttock wants to travel to Costco, Felix. He wants to go inside Costco.”
Felix grunted, and Nestor wished for a moment he could see him on a video call, just to make sure he was okay.
“That’s impossible,” Felix said. “You don’t just travel to Costco and make it out. As far as we all know, it’s a one-way trip. Plus, it’s a myth.”
“Puttock’s self confidence is astounding. If you heard him speak, he seems determined to travel there.”
“Then in that case, there’s something you need to know.” Felix said. “I am reading the book, and I can’t let you continue your project unless I can tell you what I have learned about 9 Lords of Night.”
“You’re a good man, Felix Calvo,” Nestor said and hung up. He silenced notifications, too.
The call was severed, and Nestor drove down the drab highway back to the hotel. Not a single insect hit the windshield, and the asphalt glimmered and quivered. The temperature outside the car had reached 100 F.
From the journal of Felix Calvo, October 25, 2030
Now that I’m almost done reading 9 Lords of Night, I simply can’t believe how this book could have been overlooked by Mexican intellectuals, and by the rest of the world for centuries.
Holy shit. 9 Lords reveals so much.
How come I never properly learned about the connection between the four Tezcatlipocas?
These four brothers are not just gods, they are cosmic forces almost as big as the universe itself. They are the four sons of the creator gods Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl. And in the early parts of the book, some of the best-known myths about this family are told in beautiful prose.
According to the book, it was Quetzalcoatl and his brother Tezcatlipoca who once, a very long time ago, entered Mictlán and emerged from the underworld to create humankind. That is a myth that is very well known already in literature and art history, and which can easily be Googled today.
But 9 Lords of Night tells us what happened after that myth! According to 9LN, after many years passed, the four Tezcatlipoca brothers, Quetzalcóatl, Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec and Huitzilopochtli, decided to travel together into Mictlán to make new animals and plants to help the world of men. According to the poetry the four brothers sang to each other, new life was created from dead matter, and Mictlán was the best destination to start the process of making more living things.
But during this ceremonial act of creation inside the darkness of The Coil, the brothers got into a big fight. They pummeled, stabbed and wrestled each other, shaking the nine rivers of Mictlán so hard that they flooded. This disaster was grave enough to alert the king and queen of Mictlán, the gods of death, Mictlantecuhtli and his wife Mictecacíhuatl.
The Lords of Death chastised the four brothers for disrupting their realm. And as punishment, they asked them to leave Mictlán until they atoned for the havoc they caused.
But Mictecacíhuatl and Mictlantecuhtli made one exception: They allowed one brother to set up residence inside Mictlán.
That brother was the black Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror. And it was the Smoking Mirror’s privilege that enraged his brother Xipe Totec, who felt that he deserved the same, or better treatment, as his brother.
I never knew that these brothers had such drama between them.
Why hasn’t academia pushed harder on exploring—and celebrating—the stories from Carmona’s book?
I don’t have an answer to that, but one thing is true: the most terrifying aspects of the book 9 Lords of Night comes directly from the narrative of the nove. In that narrative the two Mexicas who attempt to kill the viceroy are the ones who reveal more answers to the mysteries surrounding the four Tezcatlipocas.
Those two Mexicas sought revenge against their colonizing Spanish oppressors. They failed in their attempt to assassinate the viceroy inside his very court. And in their last hours before being executed, the Mexica couple spoke truthfully about their gods.
It was in these last moments of their lives that the husband and wife told the Grand Inquisitor how they had perpetrated their murder attempt. When they had planned to kill the viceroy, they had asked for the blessing from the Red Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec. If they had been successful, they planned to flay and skin the viceroy, wear his skin as a trophy, and remove his heart to appease Xipe and prevent the complete collapse of the city of Tenochtitlán at the hands of the Spaniards. Because Xipe Totec was also the god who affected men’s skin, the Mexica couple also hoped that this ritual murder would cure the thousands and millions of indigenous people who continued to die from smallpox.
That was their intention, at least. History had turned out very differently.
This was a fiction, of course, carefully crafted by Carmona, but whenever Felix was lost inside the pages of the book, it felt as if it had actually happened.
What a loss. What a failure. What a pity.
The nameless Mexica couple of 9 Lords of Night failed to push back against the Spanish crown, just like Moctezuma II, had failed to ward off the European colonizers in factual history.
The couple’s last words were ominous. They told the inquisitors that it was Xipe Totec, who was the most vulnerable and sensitive of the four Tezcatlipoca brothers. Xipe is the one most often forgotten, the brother who lives in the shadows. A black sheep. But it was precisely Xipe Totec who was poised to do something the other three Tezcatlipocas could never do.
Xipe Totec, according to the book, cleaved a sharp blade into the flow of time and space. He did this because even though he couldn’t help the husband and wife complete their mission, he needed to take vengeful action on their behalf. And as he did so, he unleashed powerful new forces into the world of men.
Xipe unleashed rage.
He unleashed it in the same way blood flows freely when you cut into human skin with a sharp blade.
And I can feel it: Xipe seems to exist everywhere, all at once, in how we live today. I didn’t have a name for this sensation until now. It’s a red rage.
And according to the book, this hatred can travel not just though time, but also inside time.
I wanted to warn Nestor about the prophecies from the book, even if the book is nothing but a ribbon of fiction. I wanted to tell him about what Xipe Totec did inside the book 9 Lords of Night.
But Nestor’s too damn stubborn. He hung up on me.
F.M.L.
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