Chapter 3: Millipede

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Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres

CHAPTER 3: MILLIPEDE

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

NESTOR BUÑUEL

On the morning of the second day of interviews, Nestor rode shotgun in Delia Douglas’ car, sipping on coffee that had already grown cold. The drive from their hotel to the prison took much longer than expected.

“Shoulda let me drive my rental, Delia,” Nestor said. “Even I can smell the vodka on me.”

“You’ve smelled worse,” Delia said. She pointed at Nestor’s hands. “What you got there?”

“They’re called pulseras. Surely you bought some of these from vendors on the street if you’ve ever been to Puerto Vallarta or Cancun. I make these at home in Chicago. It relaxes me.”

“They’re always so beautiful” she said. “Colorful as the rainbow.”

Nestor turned over the pink, blue and yellow fibers between his index finger and thumb. Weaving one of these narrow bracelets in his free time didn’t take much effort, but it soothed his mind, helped him focus. The colors were reminders of his late mother’s wardrobe.

“It’s been hard without my parents,” Nestor said, as he looked out the window and his fingers continued to caress the bracelet.

Delia put a hand on his wrist as her eyes stayed focused on the turnpike ahead.

“They would be glad to see you now. You carry on their names.”

“I guess that’s true. But I’ll be honest—I lost a lot of meaning in life once they passed. Still feel that way.”

“Church helps me with that hollow feeling,” Delia said.

“I suppose,” Nestor said. “But church is just not for me. Maybe I know too much about death, after decades on the force. What lies beyond when we leave this existence—it’s not what I expected.”

“Hold on a second. You’re gonna tell me you know what really happens when we die?”’ 

They both laughed. “No, no, no,” Nestor laughed.  But…I just have a feeling that the experience is not what we expect. Have you ever lost your faith?”

“When I got divorced, I did. Losing faith is like forgetting where you left your car parked when you shop at Target. Eventually you find your way back to it.”

“I suppose,” Nestor said. He popped the lid off the coffee cup and swigged the last drops of liquid.

“Looks like starting your own private investigator business has done you some good, though. Despite today’s hangover, you look refreshed.”

“You saying I looked like shit before I retired?”

“Bitch, we worked together. Of course you looked like shit. You know us cops always look raggedy as hell.”

“Felix helps me out a lot in that respect. He’s got a good nose for investigative work, and most of what we do to make a living is digital. It happens at our offices on a laptop. Very little fieldwork. Felix has curiosity and a great work ethic. If anything, Felix is the one who wants to go out on the field more than I care for. But most days I just can’t. Felix hasn’t been shit pummeled by living the life of a cop.”

“You two dating?”

“No, it’s platonic. Plus, he’s got people going back and forth all the time at the apartment, I can’t keep up. He likes sex. A lot.”

“And you don’t? What about your needs?”

“I date a bit, here and there. It’s just not—“

“A priority. I get that. I live with my dog, and that’s all right for now. But there’s times where I sure could use a man.”

Delia’s stared off into the interstate highway, as if expecting the sun to deliver her meaning through the glass of the windshield. The sun hung fat and greasy in the sky, like an egg yolk, as hot wind whipped and rattled the car. Outside the temperature was reaching eighty degrees already. The air conditioning inside the car was set to high. It was late October.

“When I was still living in New York I wanted to date you,” Nestor said.

“I know. But look at us now. Life took us where it had to.”

“To a federal prison to talk to a serial killer who likes to skin men and women to appease a forgotten Aztec god.”

“Yep. We live daily on rations of murder, grief and human suffering. Which is why cops should never date cops.”

“Is that why things didn’t work out between us?”

“I don’t know if I have the answer, Nestor. Five years was a long time ago. Back then I wasn’t thinking much about dating. I am sure you have a very different life now than the one you did in New York.”

“It’s different all right. But time doesn’t move in a straight line,” Nestor said.

“Excuse me?” Delia said.

“Let me tell you something. The things Puttock has done — his rants about talking to monsters from another dimension, his obsession with the old Aztec gods — they do come from a place of deep knowledge. He’s read about the Maya, and their history. He’s mastered concepts about Aztec and Toltec religion as well. He knows these concepts better than your average Mexican. He’s gone deep. For the Maya and many of the Mesoamerican cultures of that time, time was cyclical. You know what I mean?”

“Not really. Help me out?”

“Time repeats itself in cycles,” Nestor said. “An era collapses entirely, making way for a new era to start all over again. It’s never linear.”

“I think I get what you’re saying.  So you’re saying the past is still happening right now?”

“Something like that. Maybe those concepts come from the pain of seeing our loved ones die. Ever since my parents passed away, I feel as if there’s less of a distinction between past and future.”

“Or maybe you’re saying history repeats itself, Nestor.”

“Sort of. I just don’t think our minds are evolved enough to really understand how time actually works.”

“Just listen to you. Your mom would be real proud of you right now, then,” Delia said. “She’s shining down on you right now they way she did when you were just a baby. Right? Her past is our present. I get it.”

“Not sure I’d articulate it like that, but you get the gist. But agreed, I don’t think time moves in a straight line.”

“I’m glad you don’t shy away from reflecting on the unknowable parts of human existence,” Delia said. “Cause lord knows I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t really like working this Puttock case. I can’t stand that man. He sickens me to the core. But I do it because I have lived with this case for a long ass time, and I want his victims to get justice. It deserves closure. Investigating Puttock’s true motives, the absolute bat-shit craziness inside that psychopath’s head — is something I don’t want to get reflexive about.”

“Why do you say that?” Nestor said.

“Because if you get too close to a monster, eventually you run the risk of becoming the monster yourself,” she said. “That’s why I admire your approach. You’re not afraid to go investigate the root source of problems, even if the answer is terrifying. You’re able to look at the predator right in the face. You seem immune somehow.”

“I’ve never met anyone like Puttock before. Beneath that rough veneer lies a very cunning man. He may not have the good looks of a Ted Bundy, but the two men match in terms of charisma.”

“So why does he kill?” Delia said.

Nestor let a stretch of silence drag on, as he gathered his thoughts.

“Because he wants to become a new being,” he said. “Puttock wants to transform himself.”

“But he already did that,” Delia said. “He’s a monster.”

“No, a different kind of monster. One imbued with supernatural power. The kind of yellow-eyed creature that lurks inside your closet when you’re a kid. The kind that is said to be stalks you in the woods. The thing that grazes your neck when you walk alone in an alley.”

“Puttock watched too much Pinhead, Michael Myers and Freddy,” Delia said.

“He’s an abomination, agreed,” Nestor said. “I just him to give up as many names as he can in the  next couple of days,” Nestor said. “I want the victims of his crimes to have dignity, and their families to feel a sense of justice.”

They pulled up to gate of the prison. An armored van carrying the new prisoners drove past them.

The guard in the booth glanced at Nestor and Delia’s badges and waved them inside.

“Just a heads up,” the guard said. “Seasonal heatwaves are causing problems with the central air conditioning today. Temps inside the facility are about 98 degrees right now. Stay cool..”

Delia parked the car in their designated parking spot. She slid out of the wool sweater she was wearing. Beneath she wore a white blouse.

“You’re going to tell me that the same problems with cooling we had to sit through yesterday in Manhattan are happening here too?”

“The inmates say the heatwaves are a sign that the end of the world is near,” Nestor said.

From the Journal of Felix Calvo, October 25, 2030

Slowly, and throughout the day, my vision came back yesterday. I called my doctor, and he said that my eye problem might be stress related. He didn’t seem to think it was the virus, and I tested myself twice. By dinner time, I could see without any blurs or gray spots.

Last night, I went to bed anxious, still shaken by the brief bout of blindness I had suddenly experienced the day before. But I did sleep. I dreamt that I traveled through an empty spaceship, and that a malignant artificial intelligence was hunting me. It had no body to speak of. It was only made of pale blue light. In the dream, I was naked from the waist up, and from the waist down, I could not see my body.

This morning, the front buzzer woke me up.

I leapt out of bed and answered the door. It was FedEx.

“I didn’t order anything,” I said to myself as I brought the broad, flat package inside.

And then I did remember.

“This can’t fucking be!” I shouted.

If Nestor could see me now.

It was here. The most elusive object I had ever hunted down was here.

I had found it inside a crypto auction hosted by Ebay almost four months ago, and somehow, I had forgotten to check the status. I looked at my records in my phone and in my crypto wallet, and there it was.

My digital invoice showed I had won the auction for: Vintage leather bound book. Sourced in Mexico City.

My hands started to shake with excitement.

I peeled the white plastic envelope off, and removed the book from its bubble wrap.

I had never told Nestor that I had put in a bid for this book. It had dipped into the gray market to do it. I spent more than I should have. The gray market operated on the fringe of the dark web, and I know Nestor would not approve. I had used my own money for my bid.

I turned the book over in my hands a few times, and I noticed it gave off a pungent smell of libraries, a smell I had virtually forgotten by now.

I turned the book on its spine and read it out loud.

“Los Nueve Seńores de La Noche. Maximiliano Carmona.”

This was the best day of my life.

NESTOR BUÑUEL

“It’s called prison pizza,” Puttock said, arranging ingredients on his paper plate with his index and middle finger. “And around these parts, it’s a delicacy.”

Puttock put down a layer of Dorito’s as a substrate, and he topped it with onion, tomato, green peppers, salami, and a thick layer of Velvet cheese. He cut all of the fresh ingredients with a plastic spoon. He never rushed, and he hummed to himself as he crafted the dish. Once he had the pizza arranged to his liking, he popped it into the microwave that Nestor had arranged to be placed in the conference room.

The cost of one of these pizzas inside the prison was around $25, and it was indeed a luxury.

“Bon appetit,” Puttock said, as he scooped a portion for himself on a fresh paper plate. His eyes bore into Nestor’s.

“Thank you,” Nestor said. He peeled off a large triangle of the dish and ate it to be polite. It was surprisingly good, in the way that this kind of 7-11 slop tasted right after a night of drinking or weed smoking.

“It took some effort to get permission to have food during today’s interview,” I said.

“Privileges–I got ‘em,” Puttock said. “I have a lot of pull inside this prison.”

Nestor wanted to rattle the convict by the shoulders. Did he not hear what had just said? It was Nestor who had arranged to get the pizza into this session, but now Puttock was taking all the credit.

“You gotta keep up, Detective Buñuel,” Puttock said, ignoring the request to not address him as detective. “Food and the supply chain are one of the biggest problems inside the prison industry — ahem — system. But I am not your average inmate. I have power. Isn’t that right, Zarja?”

“You’re all right,” said the officer who was in charge of supervising the privilege. She packed up the microwave and tucked it under her arm. She wore her hair cropped very short, and her eyes were perpetually flat, impenetrable.

“Aren’t THEY are a great addition to team prison?” Puttock said as he took a small bite of his food. “I got your pronouns right, didn’t I, Zarja?”

“Enjoy the food,” Zarja said in a flat tone, and left the two men alone in the room to start the interview.

As soon as the officer had shut the door behind, Puttock leaned forward and whispered, “Let me tell you about Zarja there. They have problems at home. They have an alcoholic girlfriend and  a ton of credit card debt. Not to mention Zara’s own budding addiction to Norco and other prescription painkillers. It’s written all over their fucking dykey face.”

Nestor didn’t move a single muscle. He had to do his best to conceal his anger at how Puttock had just spoken.. 

“Why don’t we get started shall we?” Nestor said. “What’s your attitude toward vulnerable people?”

Puttock ignored the question and scooped up more of the pizza into his mouth. He then frowned, turning his face into a mask filled with deep hatred. Puttock placed a hefty slice of the pizza onto a fresh paper plate, the kind used for birthday cake. He slid it across the table to Nestor.

“Go on, have some more. I have no interest in poisoning anyone. It’s damn good.”

“Lieutenant Douglas tells me that you volunteered the name of a third vitim this morning before we met.”

“Oh yes, I like talking to Lieutenant Douglas. Sharp woman. And flawless skin.”

“Why did you decide trust her with the information you gave her?” Nestor said.

“Because she’s your friend.”

Puttock’s eyes turned into pure ice. This was the method of a psychopath: to play games and to manipulate. Puttock never stopped playing games.

“I don’t follow,” Nestor said.

“But she is your friend, is she not?” Puttock said. “Go on, answer the question.”

“I’d like to ask you about this third victims’s name you gave to Lieutenant Douglas,” Nestor said. "Armando Velez from Sandusky, Ohio.”

“Ask away,” Puttock said, spreading out his arms. His smile had vanished, and his eyes went flat and cold again.

“Did you have some existing relationship with Mr. Velez before his death?”

“Actually, I did,” Puttock said. He cackled to himself, as if he had just heard the world’s funniest joke. “But I only knew him for a brief amount of time.”

“His name was Armando Velez,” Nestor said. “He was 22 years old, and his family called him Mando. What else can you tell me about him?”

“We took firearm lessons at the firing range together. That’s where we first met. Oo boy, did he love guns. He’s the first one I tried skinning.”

“You said you tried?”

“Tried and failed. I had no technique. No amount of book reading teaches you how to skin. He was so damn hairy, too. And if there’s one thing that disgusts me, it’s body hair. Makes me want to puke. I tried peeling back the skin from the neck down with my bare hands, but it just didn’t work out.”

“Why skin him?”

“Ah, you want a full confession, Buñuel. Cute. Very cute.”

“I just want you to tell me what happened between you and Mr. Velez.”

“Do you know who Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz is, detective Buñuel?”

Nestor’s eyes snapped toward the tiny slit of a window off to the east. Gray shapes fluttered in the distance as a winter storm gathered strength. Birds migrating, or fleeing.

“Why would you ask me that just now?”

“Answer the question. Do you or don’t you know who Sor Juana was?”

“Of course I know. She was a Catholic nun from the colonial period in Mexico. She was the first poet of the Americas, a feminist icon before we even had the words for what that is.”

“For Juana was a great thinker, and a great writer, indeed,” Puttock said. “An iconoclast. She went against the grain.”

“She did,” Nestor said. “She refused to let her gender define her destiny.”

“And how does that make you feel, detective?”

What Nestor saw in Puttock’s eyes was a flat detachment that made him shudder. Though he was able to fool most people with his crude exterior, Puttock was cunning, alert, and cruel. Puttock wanted to get a rise out of Nestor with that last comment, and he was out for blood. Puttock wanted to talk about gender, and he was looking to find an emotional reaction in Nestor.

Suddenly, Nestor did feel regret. He should never have left Chicago for this trip.

“It doesn’t matter what I think about Sor Juana’s gender,” Nestor said.

“But you’re a novelist! Surely you have a thought or two about how her womanhood played out in the grand scheme of things…”

“Why do you care so much about Sor Juana? Have you read her?”

“Yes, I have read all her ouvre, in translation, of course” Puttock said. “She was sharp as a tack.”

“I really enjoyed First Dream by Sor Juana. El Primero Sueño. It’s an epic poem. It tackles the concept of the shadow.”

“Yes, detective, yes! I knew that splurging on this pizza for us would be worth it. I had a feeling you would have read First Dream. You understand Sor Juana’s vision, which is both simple and complex: the intellectual potential that each individual contains, which can scale up to the total collective human potential. She married science and the materialism of the modern thinkers of her time together with the divinity of god as a modality to achieve this greater state for man. As she accomplished this literary feat, she also attempted to conquer the shadow.”

“So Marlene Grue, and Armando Velez—would you say you murdering them was an act you committed for the sake of the shadow?” Nestor said, trying to find a thread to connect back to the interrogation at hand. “Was killing your shadow?”

Puttock’s smile collapsed.

“I really don’t see the connection you’re trying to make here.” Puttock drew a long breath and curled his right hand into a fist.

“It’s just a question, Steven.”

“Listen up, detective,” Puttock spat, ignoring yet again Nestor’s request to not be called detective anymore. “You think I’m in this prison for my fucking good looks? No. This is part of a larger plan. You may think I’m a piece of white trash here sharing a tray full of microwaved Dorito’s with you, but you’re underestimating the scope of what’s about to happen in our country, and on this plane.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

Puttock spread his fist open and drew his hand to the back of his neck and held it there, as his breathing slowed down, as he compartmentalized his rage and an icy aspect came back into his eyes.

“Let me tell you something, Nestor,” Puttock said. “Do you think I’d waste my time asking you about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz  if I didn’t have a good reason to do so?”

“The name is Buñuel. You call me detective, or by my first name one more time, and I will slice your tongue out and stuff it down your throat,” Nestor said. He was sweating through his blazer now, and his heart raced.

Puttock leaned back in his chair and licked Velveeta cheese off his pinkie. He was smiling.

“So it is possible to get under the detective’s skin. Just takes a little while.”

“Fuck you, Puttock.”

“Do you know about the literary company Sor Juana kept?”

“I’m not a historian. Go ahead. Inform me.”

“She had a friend. A quiet Jesuit seminarian named Maximiliano. And he was a budding writer too, did you know that? Maximiliano exchanged correspondence a few times with  Sor Juana. Some scholars even think he was her confidant.”

“Maximiliano Carmona. You mean—“

“Yes sir. Maximiliano Carmona, who penned 9 Lords of Night, also knew Sor Juana very well. He completed his work at the seminary, but before he could be assigned to a parish, he left the priesthood and disappeared without a trace.”

“Not surprised.” Nestor said. “9 Lords is not just a transgressive and bizarre novel—it would have been considered a blasphemous text by the clergy of that era. Authoring such a book would get Carmona executed by the Inquisition for being the work of Satan.”

“Exactly. But much to the clergyman’s credit, his book mostly faded into obscurity. Just a handfuls of copies were ever printed and bound.”

“What happened to Carmona?”

“No one knows. We don’t even have any facts surrounding his death. But we do have some documents about what he was doing when he was drafting the book. He was an avid letter writer. In some of his letters to Sor Juana, he offers her early versions of his manuscript to read. Whether she read 9 Lords of Night, we will never know. But it’s likely that she did. And yet, Carmona faded into obscurity, while she was timeless and renowned as an intellectual and a poet.”

“You got that wrong, friend,” Nestor said. “Sor Juana became timeless after her death, and don’t forget that after she had a confrontation with the Jesuits over  her writing. She took a literary vow of silence as an act of defiance. She didn’t exactly fade into obscurity, but she made a choice to step away from the spotlight.”

“She made a woman’s choice.”

“What would you know about women’s choices?” Nestor said.

“Ah, the trans cop’s feminism rises to the surface. Of course you would side with Sor Juana. Typical.”

“Let’s focus here. What does it matter if Sor Juana read 9 Lords of Night? I don’t see the relevance here, other than interesting historical trivia.”

“Use your  imagination, detective. Friar Carmona wasn’t just a writer of pulp fiction. He was a prophet. In his book, he foretold of darkness to come. He was able to describe the terrifying power of the Aztec god Xipe Totec, something no other writer, indigenous, mestizo, mulatto or otherwise, has been able to accomplish since. He also foretold the ways in which the Spanish colonizers would rape, murder and rake over the coals millions of indigenous people. It was in the book. Carmona was a genius, even if he left hardly any legacy behind. And perhaps Sor Juana’s masterful writing— because she indeed was a master—was stimulated by Carmona’s writing, and vice versa,  like mirror images of each other. To understand darkness, For Juana would need get close to it, see it up close. And Carmona’s book, though fiction, gave her a glimpse into how expansive the shadow can be. She used his book like Perseus used Athena’s shield, and as a result, she became a great writer.”

“So you’re saying the god Xipe Totec represents evil?”

“I didn’t say evil. I said shadow,” Puttock said. “The real evil in the book 9 Lords of Night is found in the hearts of men. The crimes they commit against each other, and against nature. That’s where true darkness exists.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It will help for you to think of these Aztec massive gods as something beyond the physical. They don’t have human bodies, or in some cases, they don’t have a body at all. You need to think of them at a scale you can’t possibly understand. Xipe Totec is a being beyond comprehension, just like his three brothers, the other three Tezcatlipocas. Xipe, Quetzalcóatl, Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca cannot be comprehended by the human senses. Hold that notion in your heart, okay?

“Carmona’s novel shows us just how many lives the Spaniards took from the Mexicas and other civilizations of the Americas. And it also shows us the Mexica’s own darkness—their thirst for military power and blood. Both the colonizer and colonized cultures were driven by military greed and the thirst for war. Yet the god Xipe Totec—so different and  alien than the god of the Bible and his son Jesus—exists in a realm that the Catholics can never touch, and that’s because Xipe is not the devil, and he is not a demon.

“Xipe Totec—whom we also know as the Night Drinker—exists beyond good and evil, despite the cultural norms you and I are conditioned into. The two Mexicas in 9 Lords of Night try as hard as they can to murder the Viceroy of the Spanish crown, and they fail miserably. It’s heartbreaking, really. And yet, in their meager effort, they appease Xipe Totec, a being so complex that he can’t be seen. And at least the two Mexicas die with this knowledge in their hearts. They know Xipe listened to them. He spoke to them. It’s both failure and accomplishment all at once.  And that in itself is the paradox 9 Lords of Night. It’s a story where the main characters fail, yet emerge victorious in another realm of existence.”

The room was as silent as a grave now. Puttock scratched his chin and leaned back in his chair.

“I enjoyed the fact that an indigenous husband and wife decided to take revenge  upon their oppressors in 9 Lords,” Nestor said. “And I do agree, that the morality of both sides—colonizer and colonized—both show a touch of evil.”

“Well said, detective. But you have shown me your tell. Looks like you have researched the book, huh?”

Fuck. Puttock had Nestor buy the balls now.

What Puttock wanted was to verify the rumors and legends of a vast kingdom of darkness called Mictlán, and Nestor had just handed the serial killer a small, but very significant morsel of information.

Puttock had sniffed him out, and now he was very close to confirming his theories. Puttock had gotten a fresh haircut this morning, and the trim gave his gray hair a silvery look that matched the color of his eyes. 

“Let me show you something,” Puttock said, as he rolled down the cuff of his jumpsuit. He pulled out a wriggling black object, and he set it down the table. It had a tiny head, a segmented body, and hundreds of legs.

“This prison is infested with these. Did the administrators warn you?”

Nestor’s stomach twisted itself into a knot. The animal on the table was clearly some kind of centipede or millipede, and its glossy exoskeleton looked almost wet to the touch. The animal crawled in a figure eight pattern, equidistant to both men, like some sort of living locomotive.

“Okay, you brought a bug with you to this interview,” Nestor said. “So what? All prisons end up having some sort of problem with pests. In some it’s mice, and others cockroaches. What’s your point?”

“Wouldn’t you say a millipede infestation is… unusual?”

“I don’t know, I don’t manage this prison. I’m sure it happens.”

“Stop playing games with me, Buñuel. You know better. The inmates in this  prison have told me that every wall, every nook and every cell in this building is crawling with these black millipedes. And they are not happy bugs. They bite. Hard.”

Nestor made up his mind. It was time to wrap up these interviews. He couldn’t imagine having to sit with this psychopath for a third day. Two had been plenty.

“I’m afraid our time is up,” Nestor said.

“I don’t mean to scare you, but I think these millipedes are not from this earth, detective.”

The millipede inched closer to Nestor, and as it undulated toward him, its shiny body reflected a rainbow of colors, iridescent yet somehow nauseating, like a puddle of gasoline gleaming under the sun. Nestor could handle almost any animal, except bugs. But he knew that if he got up now and flinched from this millipede, he would lose face in front of Puttock. He held his ground, yet fear flowed through every part of his body

“This species is not native to New York state,” Puttock said. “I’ve checked. Now what would it be doing here in New York State, you ask?”

“I didn’t ask you anything.”

“I’ll tell you, anyway. The infestation we have going on in this prison is a sign that we are very, very close to Mictlán.” Puttock pronounced it Meek-Tlahn, enunciating the consonants so hard that the word sounded like a branch breaking in half.

Nestor shivered.

“You’re saying this animal is from Mictlán?” Nestor said.

“This millipede, and the thousands of his brothers and sisters that are crawling behind these walls, come from another realm. They are signs that he is watching us.”

“Who?”

“Xipe Totec. He’s close, and that means that if he’s near us, there is a gate accessible to Mictlán somewhere nearby. You catch my drift?”

Nestor had enough with this shit.

“Like I said, our time is up, Mr. Puttock.”

“Don’t believe me? Ask the prison administrators. There’s a long shadow that is being cast over this whole prison. The suicide rate inside this hell hole is through the roof. Not to mention the dozen or so people that die each summer during the heat waves. And these millipedes in our mattresses are a warning to all of us. A warning we are not heeding.”

Nestor closed up his notepad and tucked his pen into his pocket. “In general, our species isn’t very good about heeding warnings,” he said.

“Ain’t that something, Buñuel. That’s why we have water refugees leaving California, Nevada and Colorado seeking refuge in the Midwest and Canada. Only the rich will be able to  afford air conditioning soon. We know how this will end.”

“Who’s we?”

“Don’t you get tired of playing the ingenue? You and I are cut from the same fabric, detective. We’re both voracious book readers and thinkers. Stop pretending.”

The millipede rolled over once, twice, almost as if it were in a state of play. It crawled back toward Puttock, who scooped it up using his sleeve.

“Back inside you go, darling. Now, detective—“

A buzzer interrupted Puttock, and Zaria, the officer who had facilitated the meeting, peeked into the room. “Detective Buñuel, can I speak to you for a moment?”

Nestor stepped outside. A second officer stepped was standing out here in the hall, which was about ten degrees cooler than the interrogation room. 

“We have a security breach on our hands,” the officer said. “A group of inmates in the eastern wing are rioting right now.”

“Do we know why?”

“It’s the heat. They are protesting against the conditions they’re living in.”

“I don’t blame them,” Nestor said. “It’s in the 90’s inside this place.”

“The air conditioners can’t keep up. We didn’t really expect for October temperatures to be this high.”

“You didn’t? Well that smells like bullshit. Sounds like the real issue is a lack of budget.”

The officer shrugged.

Nestor walked back into the conference room. He felt the space widen and zoom in scope, as if he were watching some old Alfred Hitchcock movie. The smell of antiseptic and industrial cleaner had worsened since he had first arrived. It stifled his nose, and all he could think of was hospital corridors. How much time had he spent in hospitals during his parents’ last days fighting the virus. How much disinfectant had Nestor taken in during those two years, and how funny that the smell seemed identical to what he smelled now. There was a thickness to the air, made worse by the rising temperatures, and suddenly, he felt very afraid.

Nestor took a peek at Puttock, and sneered. He changed his mind. There was still more to investigate, besides Puttock’s interview. Nestor turned around, headed back into the hallway and caught upon with the officer he had just spoken to.

“Hey, did you ever meet Puttock’s roommate?” Nestor said. “Raska.”

“I did,” the officer said. “He kept to himself, mostly stayed out of trouble.”

“What was his relationship to Puttock?”

“Hard to say, I never saw them together in public areas. And whenever I passed by their cell, both of them were reading, silent as can be.”

Nestor took some notes in his notebook. “Did they ever socialize out in the yard together?”

“Like I said, never. They kept to themselves on opposite ends of the yard. But there was one thing.”

“Okay, what was that thing?”

“Raska’s appearance. When he showed up here at Otisville, he had looked pretty good. Lean, muscular, like a football quarterback. But as soon as they paired him up with Puttock, he started to lose weight. Turned pale as milk.”

“Strange, but not out of the norm,” Nestor said. “A lot of inmates lose a grip on their health when they get here.”

“But that’s not all, sir,” the officer said. “It was the sounds at night that got really eerie.”

“Sounds?”

“All sorts of sounds came from Raska and Puttock’s cell. No one has told you this?”

“No, and he didn’t mention it the last couple of days.”

“I was there more than once on my night shift. At first I would hear clicking sounds, like wood striking metal. But, like, real loud. And then a buddyin the day shift told me that he had heard it too. When I would check on their cell, Puttock and Raska would be dead asleep, and the sounds would vanish. But if I stepped away just 20 feet or so, the sound would come back. After a few days, I realized it wasn’t the sound of wood that I was hearing.

Nestor took notes, and nodded his head so that the officer could continue.

“I had heard that sound before from my dogs. That’s when I realized it wasn’t wood.”

“You did?”

“I have two pit bulls at home, and I take good care of their teeth. I get them beef bones from the butcher once a month. And the sound they make when their teeth crunch on bone is exactly what I was hearing from Puttock’s cell. Those sounds lasted for almost a whole week. But as much as we checked, we never found any food, tools or contraband inside the cell. And Puttock and Raska held on to their defense. They said they slept through it all.”

“I see. Did Raska ever mention it to you?”

“He did, sort of. He spoke in broken English. You know, he was Russian. But there was one day when he told me that there was a monster outside the prison, in the woods. He said he had seen it slithering past the trees, and coming toward the prison. When I asked him to tell me more, all he said was that it had eyes that dripped with pus, and a long tail, longer than a bus, made only of crusty, dry bones, and it dragged along the ground. I never thought much of it, until now. Because if you were to ask me, the sounds I heard sometimes at night, sounded like old bones snapping, breaking, and being dragged across the concrete floors you see here.”

Nestor took in a deep breath, pressed his lips together, and texted Delia immediately.

“Hey,” Nestor wrote. “What’s up with this situation on the east wing?”

“It’s happened before. It’s a form of protest for lack of air conditioning. It’s been contained, but I have some bad news, you have to cut today’s interview short. The security risk level is too high right now. My manager told me that you can definitely come back for the third and last day of the interviews tomorrow. So, you have a half day now, and by default, so do I.”

Nestor peeked into the conference room for a second. Puttock was silent as a mouse now, with his hands clasped, both of them still cuffed. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing deeply. He was meditating.

Nestor shut the door, and nodded to the officer next to him.

“Let Puttock know that we are done for the day, and that I will be back tomorrow. Keep a close eye on that motherfucker.”

From the journal of Felix Calvo, October 25, 2030

I’m already halfway through the book. It’s 4:55 pm. Where has my day gone?

I can feel it. I am getting close to something. I have copied and pasted a short passage here, so I can study it further much later.

Chapter 11

Two indians had attempted to murder the viceroy, but the royal guard managed to capture them in enough time to keep him safe. The man and the woman will face execution of course. But I had a chance to interrogated them before they were hanged, and their words revealed secrets previously untold.

They spoke in Nahuatl, and I am translating here into the language of the Crown. According to the indians, nine of the most vital Mexica gods each have a corresponding bird, a giant avian who does their bidding, like a familiar. I asked the indios to name the list of those nine gods, but the couple only gave up one name. They claimed that a giant guajolotl, or turkey, like the ones found in the hills of this valley, acted on behalf of the horrific and demonic god Tezcatlipoca. The same Tezcatlipoca that we the clergy are aware of. Otherwise known as the Smoking Mirror, this is the Mexica’s god of witchcraft, black sorcery and magic. Tezcatlipoca is considered an abomination by most of my brethren in the church. I myself have more questions than answers about the deity.

 Legends said that Tezcatlipoca’s bird companion lives inside a cloud of black smoke, and it likes to perch atop the cathedral in the center of the city at night. According to the indios, this turkey is twice as tall as a Spaniard and can vanish into thin air like a plume of breath.

What other demons exist out there in the valleys, and in the mountains?, I asked. Even just speaking out loud about these demonic spirits struck fear in my heart. To defy the divinity of god’s word, just by speaking about these legends of the Mexica, was absolute insanity. But I have always remained a curious person, so I continued my work.

The husband suddenly spoke to me in perfect Spanish, his eyes boring into my soul with their tenacity, and his voice echoed in the chamber of the chapel where we both stood.

The nine birds belong to the nine lords of the night, he said. But the birds are not malevolent. It is another creature that men need to beware.

There is a serpent who was born in the first age, and whose power is so immense, his breath burns like the rays of the sun or the lakes of lava in a volcano.

The serpent’s name is Miauhacóatl, and men who dare look this monster in the eye are said to die on the spot, frozen in fear as their hearts literally stop beating. This serpent was said to be even more ferocious and malevolent than the worm The Ocullín, which had been created by Tezcatlipoca out of anger and mischief. Miahuacoatl’s power eclipses that of the Ocullín. The serpent was said to be so horrendous that to gaze upon it meant imminent death.

And this serpent— is he another familiar of the gods? I asked. The indio clicked his tongue and cleaned his fingernails with a small sliver of wood. No, he said. This snake is a god unto itself. You see, the nine birds are children of the nine Lords, but this snake is not. This snake has been made, not born.

Miauhacóatl does have a connection to one particular god, the indio said. The serpent is forever interwoven with the destiny of Xipe Totec, the god of Spring, our Lord the Flayed one, also known as the Red Tezcatlipoca. It is said that Miahuacoatl has conspired together with Xipe Totec to steal dreams from men, and to deliver misery to those of us who live on Earth.

The creature Miauhacóatl is as big as the volcano Popocatépetl, which you see in the evenings as the sun sets. And Miauhacoatl is hungry, forever hungry.

Hungry for what, exactly? I asked.

Oh, Friar Maximiliano, I thought you would know better than any other priest, the india said.

I bowed and spread my hands open. Please, illuminate me, I said.

When is the last time you could recall one of your dreams, Father?, she said.

I scratched my beard. I honestly could not remember.

The reason you can’t remember any of your dreams, Father, said the india, is because Miahuacóatl, the celestial serpent whose tail ends in the ferocious mouth of bony fish skull, has been eating your dreams for years.

Read Chapter 4
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