Chapter 13: You Used to Know Me, Now You Don't

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Author’s Note: You may be wondering, how many books of The Coil will I write? Just like Mictlán has nine rivers, I plan to write nine books of the Coil book series. This story needs room and space to grow, and what you may have noticed by now is that each book is quite different from the other in format and point of view. Yes, there will be six more volumes in this series, which means we are about one third into the story. There are many unresolved mysteries right now: What impact did Clara and José Maria have in Mictlàn when they visited in 2013? What exactly is the Rift? Did Samuel Kahan have a darker purpose when he designed and created the animatronics in his estate in upper New York state? And what are the 13 Secret Cities, exactly? These questions will be answered over time, and in Hall of Mirrors, you will learn many of them. This book will unlock many secrets. So thank you for coming along on this ride. Don't forget that you can chat with me about Hall of Mirrors inside my Discord server.

-Cesar Torres
Chicago

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

Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres

CHAPTER 13: YOU USED TO KNOW ME, NOW YOU DON’T

DELIA DOUGLAS

Delia heard a loud pop, and then the lights went out. One moment, she had been looking at Nestor and Puttock through the one-way mirrored glass, and then they were gone. The building had lost all power.

She used the light from her smartphone to light up the room. If the power was completely out, that could cause big problems in a large prison such as this one.

She opened the door to the observation room and shouted into the hall, “Hey, what’s going on?”

For several moments, no one answered her, and her blood ran cold. An old clock ticked n the wall above her head, and the red glow of the fire exits, bathed her skin in light the color of blood.

“Hello?” she said.

Beneath the silence, she heard distant shouts of men’s voices.

And then a few feet in front of her, a raspy voice broke through the darkness.

“Detective Douglas, it’s best for you to stay inside the interrogation room. The inmates take the blackouts as an opportunity to riot, especially during heatwaves.”

“What about a backup generator?”

“It should have kicked on already. But it just hasn’t. Please just sit tight. I’m back here, at the front desk.”

“Gotcha,” Delia said. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could see him: a thick belly, full beard and elegant eyeglasses, barely visible in the murk. She felt comforted by his words, and sighing, she checked her phone for messages.

“Are you have a signal on your phone?” she said to the guard.

“I’m getting nothing. Cell communication is offline.”

She gave up trying to get her phone to work and pocketed it as she retreated back into the interrogation room. 

This blackout snatched her attention back to her memories of the year 2027, when she was back in a funeral home in Jersey City, waiting for the funeral director to come back. He had left her alone with the body of her father Anthony Douglas, who lay in his casket, just one hour before visitation by all other relatives would start.

She didn’t know how she ended up being his only living relative to take care of the funeral arrangements, but here she was, doing what had to be done, and what her brothers and sisters refused to do. The room was very small, but the flower arrangements were tasteful. Just as she approached the open casket, the ceiling lights had flickered, and the lights had shut off in the room, leaving her alone with her father’s body just two feet before her. He lay face up with his arms crossed over his wide chest.

As she had sat there in the darkness, in her navy blue suit, she had felt terror creep up her chest. Not because of her father’s death or his corpse laid out before her, but rather, her memories of his legacy. He had died in anger, drunk to the gills on whiskey and his system loaded with at least two to three kinds of benzodiazepines. She had been there on the night he died, when he, her two sisters an her brother had been discussing whether they should sell the house and move her father to a part of the state with lower taxes. 

It had been her suggestion, of course. And he had snapped.

They were all seated in his tiny kitchen, eating dessert after eating steaks and baked potatoes Delia had cooked. The house was nothing but chaos, stuffed to the gills with magazines, boxes and all the cherished treasures of a clinically diagnosed hoarder. When she suggested selling the house, her father had tossed the coffee cake on his plate, uneaten, in the trash. And he told Delia and her siblings to get the fuck out of his house. They had complied, because they knew that when he drank, there was no reasoning with him. The next morning, her sister had stopped by his house to drop off  freshly laundered clothes for him, and found him dead in the bathroom. He had suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night. She found him naked, slumped over in the tub after he had fallen over himself.

And when the funeral home had lost power and plunged her into darkness, she had been sure that her father was trying to tell her something from the world beyond.

He refused to be forgotten.

The funeral home reeked of lavender-scented disinfectant and the phantoms left behind by talcum and mineral oil used in the heavy makeup used to give the dead a fresher look. Under the dim light of her smartphone’s flashlight, she turned the light onto her father’s face. She felt as if he were staring at her, taking advantage of the blackout, and he didn’t look happy. He had the mean look that often contaminated his face after the second or third drink, and there was no way to predict what he might do or say.

“Why?” she said out loud to his body in the dark. She didn’t expect an answer. She never had.

And though he lay inert, her stomach churned and twisted as she soaked the underarms of her blouse with sour sweat. She had to get out of here, from his sightline. She had seen enough, even in the murk of the blackout.

And then, in an instant, the lights snapped back on as power came back.

His eyes had changed.

Before the lights had gone out, she could have sworn that his eyelids had been fully shut. But now, both eyelids were half open, showing nothing but the whites of the eyes.

She ran out of the room to find the funeral director. When he led her back to the viewing room, she said nothing about what she had seen, or remembered. The director pulled her father’s eyelids shut without saying a word, like a true professional. He had no clue what had just happened.

And now, as this three-year old memory came back to her while she was at work, she felt a deep pang of grief wash over her.

I know now what I saw in those eyes. Wasn’t just hatred. My father died in pain.

Hot tears welled up in her eyes, and she dabbed at them with a tissue, as she secured her consciousness back into the prison hallway. What the fuck was going on with her today? She wasn’t used to getting emotional while on the job, but fuck, what could she do. Her mother had a saying that went, “If there’s a ghost in your house, don’t fret. It’s just god sending you a visitor.”

She needed to make sure Nestor was all right. He was much stronger than Puttock, but Puttock would not hesitate to kill if given the chance.

She put her hand on the door handle to open the door to the interrogation room, when something stopped her dead in her tracks.

From beneath her, the ground was stirring.

Cool and long shapes rose from the floor, undulating, reaching toward the sky. They were dark as shadows, and they let out sandpapery hisses like music. One grazed her arm and she recoiled. A female voice sang a lullaby, and she felt a warmth all around her shoulders, neck and bosom. The tendrils touched her again, and she could feel their slick, smooth surface, soft as calf leather, and unlike anything she had ever felt before.

The tendrils started to give off an uncanny luminescence, the kind Delia had seen once on the Discovery Channel when a crew of deep sea divers had filmed anglerfish that lit the ocean darkness with their own cells. These tendrils gave off colors in soft purples, greens and blues. They lit up her skin with sapphire highlights, and even the floor tiles of the hallway turned emerald, as the tendrils rose from beneath.

The voice below sang louder, faster, and more melodically.

It was a female voice, mature, and resonant. And she sang a lullaby.

The song emerged in a language that had no words, but one which made sense. It came in soft waves and deep pulses, like a radar on a ship at sea, and without knowing how, or why, Delia’s fear settled. She was no longer afraid of the darkness, this prison, and she was not afraid of her father’s memory. In fact, she felt a warmth in her chest, as if forgiveness could seep from the four chambers of her heart.

She could see the tips of the tendrils very closely now, and Delia pulled back. Each tendril was a snake, elegant in shape, careful and graceful in its movements, flicking its tongue to taste the environment, and its eyes tiny jewels that resembled stars in the sky. The patterns on their scales were unlike anything she had ever seen: spirals, helixes and fractals that defied comprehension. By her count, Delia estimated there were about a dozen or so of these snakes, each one as thick as her arm, creating a sort of nimbus around her.

The female voice from below wrapped itself around Delia’s shoulders once more like a shawl, and then it lifted. Delia let out a long sigh, the kind that only deep comfort and safety can produce.

The power came back on, and the prison’s observation room flooded with LED light.

All the snakes were gone. The voice that sang its lullaby was also absent. They had vanished without a trace.

Her phone let out a sharp tweet.

It was from an unknown number from area code 773, Chicago. She saw five bars at the top of her screen. Her cell service was back.

“Ms. Douglas, hey. This is Felix, Nestor’s business partner. I’m a bit worried about him. Can you help me locate him?”

Before she texted back, she put her right hand on the door handle and let herself into the interrogation room.

“Holy mother of god,” Delia said, her eyes wide in shock, and her skin running to gooseflesh. “What is this?”

NESTOR BUÑUEL

“You can’t have my heart. I need it to live,” Nestor said. The walls of Xochicalco bulged, slithered, and moistened themselves, releasing myriad perfumes.

“Then you both will stay here forever,” Xochicalco said.

“Just a moment ago, you told me how to exit Mictlán, but now you won’t let me leave this temple,” Nestor said. “A bit cruel, no?”

“Are you always this resistant to what’s good for you, Nestor?” Xochicalco whispered. The vines were creeping toward him, emerging from the very ground, to caress his ankles and calves. They kissed his bare skin with wetness and velvet textures. He yanked his foot away in surprise and disgust.

Nestor felt a pang of hunger in his belly, and a chill swept through his body—one of those chills that arrive on damp November evenings in Chicago. Suddenly, he would kill to be back home, in Edgewater, back in his warm apartment, drinking a cup of coffee, listening to the clacking of Felix typing on his laptop. This darkness—this awful landscape of pungent smells and deep black—made him want to cry. But he held back his tears.

“I just…want to go home. Can you understand that?” he said.

“We want your heart as a gift, but we didn’t say when we will take it.”

“You sure have a way with words,” Nestor said.

“We are the fountains of poetry. We thrive on the symphonies we create with words.”

“You take pride in it.”

“Poetry is the language of all flowers, here in Mictlán, but also in the other cities and realms of the cosmos.”

“Understood,” Nestor said.

“Yolotl,” the pyramid said uttering the Nahuatl word for heart. “Now, your heart.”

“As long as you let us out of here, fine, you can have it.”

Nestor wasn’t sure what he had exactly bargained for, but he didn’t see any easy way out, other than to take the offer.

As Nestor backed up, his left foot bumped up against something hard. He lost balance and fell backwards, landing hard on his ass.

“What’s going on?” He heard Puttock say. The convicted killer rubbed his head where Nestor had bumped into him with his heel.

“You must leave now, Nestor,” Xochicalco said. “Find the Tree of Remembrance, and speak to the powerful Xolotl.”

“But my companion isn’t well enough to travel yet—“

“He’s fully healed. Help him get up,” the pyramid said in thousands of polyphonic voices. Nestor pulled Puttock up by lifting him from the armpits.

“I’ll be damned,” Nestor said. “He is.”

“Who are you talking to?” Puttock said. Through the gloom, Nestor could smell and hear Puttock to such a degree that he could even sense his wounds. All of them had coagulated and closed, as if time had sped up and healed every cell. He smelled of renewed flesh, a clean and tender smell.

“You don’t hear the voices?” Nestor said.

“Hear what?”

“The pyramid.”

“All I hear is the sound of rushing water beneath us. And rustling, like leaves. This place reeks like a flowershop. What the fuck is going on?”

Nestor realized then that the pyramid of Xochicalco had stopped speaking. Now an eerie silence permeated the vast chamber. About 200 feet in front of him, Nestor smelled a strong draft of fresh air, and the sounds that bounced into his ears showed him a wide doorway set into the wall. That opening in the chamber made up a back entrance of the temple, and this strong breeze was showing him the opening. Puttock was standing on two feet now, and though he was still a bit unsteady, he was able to take slow steps with Nestor’s arm looped around his shoulders.

From behind the two men, Xochicalco roared with its poetry. It was a roar made up of millions of words, in a language that was both unrecognizable but also human, and Nestor’s senses picked up its mood, even if he couldn’t identify any syntax.

The pyramid was opening up its walls of flowers, and another wall off to their right parted, revealing a vast, spiral-shaped mouth filled with needles and nettles, like a giant Venus fly trap. The pyramid was preparing to eat them if they didn’t exit the chamber immediately.

“We have to go,” Nestor said, and he led the two men as fast as he could toward the back entrance.

Nestor pulled Puttock by the hand, and they broke into a light run as they crossed the threshold of the back entrance. Just as they burst into the open air, Nestor screamed and made cartwheels with his hands. In his haste, he hadn’t realized that the back entrance opened onto to a sharp drop in the back of the building, unliked the front of the building, which featured a wide plaza. The distance to the ground looked like thousands of feet, and there was yet another creature in the canyon below waiting for them. He knew this, because he heard and sensed its eyes, twin orbs that glowed with music and energy, preying on two small humans at the very edge of Xochicalco. It was a hungry predator, and he knew that. That creature was waiting for them.

There was simply nowhere to run, nowhere to jump, and Nestor was out of ideas.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Puttock said stretching his arms as if rising from a dream. “This is just—majestic. This place — it goes on for trillions of miles.”

“We can’t stay here. And we will never survive this fall.”

“Can you taste all this blackness, detective?”

“What are you talking about?”

“We made it. We are here. We arrived in Mictlán,” Puttock said, bursting into laughter, and raising his arms above his head, as if welcoming a summer shower. “We are SAVED!”

Nestor jammed his thumbnail into his mouth and chewed.

“Perhaps we’re already dead,” he said out loud to himself. The thought became more viable now.

And Nestor he considered its possibilities, he asked himself a question. Why had he made the effort to save Puttock’s life when they had plunged into the mirror and crossed over into Mictlán?

He could not yet answer this for himself.

Puttock sat cross legged, about two feet away from the ledge, and he let out very long sighs as he breathed in the sweet darkness Mictlán horizon. It was a vista that resembled video images from the James Webb telescope, but magnified a million times to a degree of detail that was not just beautiful, but terrifying. Mictlán was so vast, it seemed to exist into infinity. But it had a structure, too. Nestor’s enhanced senses could feel how this realm curved into itself, forming a spiral that flowed downward, like a maelstrom made of darkness and unknowable dark energy. He dreaded to think of what lived at the very bottom of the Coil.

“This kingdom is even better than I imagined,” Puttock said. “Right now, I can hear, smell, taste you, and even feel you through my skin, as if I had 20/20 vision under daylight, but I get to do it under the cover of darkness. It’s like being a bat, dolphin, whale, and an owl at the same time. My eyes only see darkness, yet you’re rendered in even more detail than what’s possible on Earth. Do you hear those whistling sounds in the distance?”

“Yeah. They sound like birds.”

“What could they be? Just imagine—you’re actually hearing the creatures of Mictlán, in their natural habitat,” Puttock said. “And what’s even better is that the Lords live here.”

“You mean the Lords of Death.”

“They’re a holy couple: saviors and saints. Lady Mictecacíhuatl and the venerable Mictlantecuhtli. They are our guides, and they too will help me make direct contact with Xipe Totec, Our Lord the Flayed One.”

“We have to figure out a way to get down from this pyramid,” Nestor said, changing the subject. “This building’s almost a 1,000 feet tall.”

“We need to go there,” Puttock said, pointing directly in front of them. About six million miles away, a steep mountain broke the skyline. Echoes of sound bounced off the sharp cliffs and icy peaks.

“How can you be so certain?” Nestor said.

“Like I told you, I have faith. And I have made many sacrifices to Xipe Totec. In my heart, I know he want us to climb several levels up in The Coil.”

“You can go there if you want,” Nestor said, keeping the information about the montain of Iztepetl that Xochicalco had shared to himself. “I’ll split off once we get down from here.”

“No you won’t detective. We are bound together, like night and day.”

“Fuck you, Puttock.”

Ten thousand miles away, a large creature emerged from an ocean made of sulfur, water and diamond crystals. It let out a long plume of liquid, and it rose to the surface. It gave birth by opening its belly, where four calves emerged. The creatures resembled whales, but only in their shape. Their skins were made of hot coal, and the music they made was a bubbling beat of minor-key howls and chirps.

“You can sense that birth, can’t you?” Puttock said. 

Nestor nodded.

“No digital technology on Earth can ever give us power like this. I can see that marine animal’s blood vessels by simply attuning myself to the sounds and music it makes from within its body. Do you think she likes to eat her young?”

“Let’s get this straight, Puttock. I’m not your friend. We get down the steps of this building, and you go your own way.”

Puttock laughed. “You didn’t do the reading, detective. There’s a lot you yet need to learn about Mictlán. But sure, you tell yourself that if it makes you feel safer.”

“Let’s use this ledge to make hug the walls and go around this temple. On the other side we can use the plaza to reach the stairways. There’s two of them.”

“Such a thoughtful policeman you are. I have some bad news for you. We have company.”

Nestor cocked his head and his ears picked up a familiar sound, thousands and thousands of miles away. That sound grew stronger as it headed in their direction. Without having to use his eyes, Nestor knew who it was.

The creature Jade Heart flapped its wings in mid-flight as he rode air currents, headed in their direction. As he soared, the skulls hanging from its neck clacked together, like percussion. Its empty eye slits made a whistling sound as air passed through them and into his skull. 

Nestor remembered what the pyramid had said about Jade Heart.

“We have to move, Puttock. We don’t have time.”

“That’s a glorious messenger of death,” Puttock said. “Sheer lyricism. Look, it even has skulls as a necklace. Do you think it’s one of the birds that serve the nine lords of night?”

Jade Heart flew incredibly fast, closing a gap of thousands of miles within minutes. 

Nestor turned around and gazed at the doorway they had just exited a few minutes before. 

Nestor gasped.

The back entrance through which they had exited Xochicalco was gone. It had sealed itself shut, and now it was smooth and hard as concrete.

Xochicalco had locked them both out.

The canyon below gave off sounds and smells. All of them were sinister, deadly, and oblivious to human life.

The ledge they stood on did not wrap around the building. After a few more feet of platform, it stopped.

I don’t want to do this, Nestor thought. I don’t want to fall down and break every bone. And yet, down was the only way to go.

“Let it happen. Let this glorious owl take us!” Puttock said, raising his arms in praise. This was a religious moment for him, and that was very obvious by now. He was fearless in his faith and conviction.

But the open beak of Jade Heart wasn’t offering them redemption or safety. Instead, it revealed raw hunger. As it opened wide, its two twin serpent tongues wriggled. Meanwhile, its talons opened wide, sharp as razors, and tearing up the air with subtle whistling sounds.

The bird flew across oceans of distance within what seemed like just seconds.

Now it was just 1000 feet away, moving through the air in a manner that defied any laws of physics from Earth.

Jade Heart’s wings eclipsed the sky, and its talons of human hands opened wide. As the bird beat its wings, air currents whipped Nestor and Puttock in the face pushing them backwards. Jade Heart flew past them once, as if to display himself before making the kill. Nestor saw the sharp claws of the creature whiz past his nose, and he was able to smell the blood, dirt and fungus that caked the creature’s claws. The stench was overpowering, suffocating.

Nestor stumbled backward, and Puttock put his hands out before him to prevent being slashed. He fell sideways, and tripped over Puttock. Nestor landed on top of the man, and they both screamed as they pushed back on the wings of this beast. Nestor felt something hard jab him in the kidneys, and before he knew what was happening, he was clumsily tumbling on the ledge on which they were standing. Jade Heart screeched with the fury of a thousand volcano eruptions, and from deep within his chest, the owl radiated a sickening liquid heat, like the warmth of an infected pustule.

Nestor grabbed Puttock by the shoulder of his prison uniform and yanked him away from Jade Heart and toward the far end of the ledge. They needed to find some cover before the bird delivered them injuries. But the bird’s flapping wings made every sound and touch confusing, horrendous, and Nestor was reminded of Melanie Daniels’ futile struggle against birds that had invaded an old attic once in northern California. He understood that panic fully now. The sound of beating wings scorched all his courage.

Nestor slid an arm under Puttock’s armpit and yanked him toward the far end of the ledge they stood on.

“Move!” Nestor shouted.

Puttock mumbled and moaned. He was confused, and more than a little started. Nestor could hear this heartbeat increases in speed.

“Don’t run, Nestor. It’s better that way,” Jade Heart said, as its words melted into a hiss. The owl then wrapped both of its human hands around Puttock’s shoulders. The talons started to draw blood as they punctured Puttock’s skin through the jail uniform.

“No!” Nestor shouted and yanked as hard as he could on Puttock. Jade Heart erupted into a horrifying screech, and Nestor felt a very short but intense pop. The owl had knocked its head into the masonry of the pyramid. As he reared his head 180 degrees, the creature let go of Puttock for a moment. Nestor, who was using all his strength to hold on to his companion, let out one single word.

“Fuck!” he said, as he and Puttock stumbled off the ledge and fell into the canyon below them, leaving Jade Heart behind at the crown of Xochicalco.

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