The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) (8 page)

I had grown up thinking that my father was simply very close to nature and that my mother had also been a nature lover, but in fact, José María and I had figured out that the truth went much deeper than just a love of trees. It didn't take much more than a glance around my peers to know that most of their parents were not performing rituals of gratitude in the woods. What my parents did with us had never been normal.

That petrified moss my father gave me was still in my pocket, and I felt it now with my hand, like a charm to hold my resentment toward all this superstition. I fingered it while the tech crews did the sound check and set up the stage for Rhinoceros.

I brought out the nugget of moss so José María could see it.

"I cannot believe that of all places in the Aragon, I ended up behind these two shitbags," said a voice behind me. I turned. Four feet behind me, sandwiched between two women in black lipstick, was the man in the brown work boots.

He had no idea we could hear his words. My stomach started to burn. He leaned over to a woman who I presumed might be his girlfriend. "These two..." he said, pointing to my brother and me. "Nothing but socialist pieces of shit. Fucking idiots."

There was no way José María was going to allow us to move from our spot beneath the stage, so I hoped that was the end of the exchange. My gut clenched and I felt anger flush my cheeks, though. I turned back to my brother. He was smiling at me, oblivious to the rage I was sending out with my eyes.

We turned around to ignore them.

"Things get interesting with legends like the one of the city of the dead," he said. "You know, Arkangel's written some good songs about Mictlán."

"I should have known this was coming," I said. "Of course Arkangel wrote about it."

My brother turned over the crusty flyer again so I could look at the ivory city inside the jaw of the invisible monster. He ran his thumb over the logo, tracing its sharp spikes and white lettering.

In the solar system of my little brother's life, there was him, a planet out in elliptical orbit, and at its center, a giant sun called Arkangel: a Norwegian band comprised of four men and one woman. Arkangel always performed in some sort of visor or mask, and they attracted the strangest kind of person to their concerts. From the moment José María heard them on YouTube, his obsession had never stopped.

"It's on an EP, CD-only limited run, I have it at the house. It describes the journey from death as a dance, and it talks about finding the entrance to Mictlán. Mictlán itself is a kingdom, and the song says it’s one of the most secret cities a human can ever find. But the narrator of the song can only get a glimpse of it, though, you know? It's fucking dark in there, but they know they have to get to a temple made of skulls, and this temple is located exactly in the heart of the city."

When you step inside the Palace of the Skulls.

"They seriously made a song about this?" I said.

"Is weed green?"

I clicked my tongue at my brother. More superstition, more coincidence. Electronic Norwegian death metal and too much weed equaled José María Montes.

Nothing but coincidence. This isn't rational. Just take in the info but leave it there. Too wacky. And don't forget he's still high.

"So, that's a nice coincidence and all, but it doesn't add up to much," I said. "That's only a song, and it has nothing to do with the legend. I am sure the band took huge liberties when they wrote it."

José María thought about what I said and nodded.

"You're destroying my little bubble, reina," he said. "Don't mess with Arkangel."

Such a drama queen.

This wasn't really getting me anywhere. My mother's request for me to go to Mictlán was nothing more than the fucked-up kind of stuff that I am sure every person went through with parents.

At least I hoped so.

It was time to abandon this wild goose chase. May as well be now.

"I've decided to just ignore what Dad and Mom told me about this 'trip,'" I said.

"Oh, reeeeeally?"
 

"It makes no sense at all, and it's going to keep me from moving on with OLF stuff. What you told me sounds good for a literature class, but I got bigger things to accomplish. Between you and me, what you heard about an act of defiance against the legislators is really happening. And there’s another march in the works. I can't lose time on this spooky stuff. It makes more sense to just get back to the OLF."

"I thought Dad told you to quit OLF."

I wasn't sure if José María was phrasing this as a statement or a question. It made my skin prickle, and the rage that was bubbling in me swelled. In some ways, he was just like my father.

"Dad's not in charge of that decision. He can't stop me from joining the campus chapter, and plus, he can't be there all the time to watch over me the way he'd like to."

"Is it true you guys are looking to target City Hall and the mayor?"

I frowned and crossed my arms, frustrated with José María's naiveté. The ceiling of the Aragon was dotted with tiny lights to give it the appearance of a night sky. How had I never noticed that before?
 

"Give it up, little brother. You get no info unless you want to get involved with us. The marches are public, you know? And there's plenty of internet groups you can join if you really want to find out."

"Oh, please. I ain't signing up for shit," José María said.

Applause interrupted us as the lights on the stage went dark, and we felt the space around us constrict as people took small steps to get closer to the stage. The sounds of the crowd filled the dome of the Aragon.

"There's still a bunch of other stuff you should know about Mictlán," José María. "But I'll tell you after the show."

Rhinoceros was known to take up to ten minutes to arrive on stage. Tonight was no different. Droning electronic tones filled the air while we waited for their emergence.

José María and I hooked our hands over the safety railing that divided the audience from the stage. Our hands did not resemble each other's, but they did lay bare our history: I wore several rubber bracelets on my right, and a cheap Casio watch on my left. Despite my long arms and legs, I had tiny hands and tiny nails. José María, on the other hand, gripped the steel railing with long talons. His wrist bone jutted out from his arm like a tumor, and the dark hairs on the back of his forearm shone under the powerful blue lights on the stage. Long and intricate designs looped and swirled on the skin of his arms, where he had drawn them using a black gel pen. They were rudimentary, crude images, drawn poorly and with lots of frequency. These were the tattoos my parents would never allow him to have. The primitive and desperate nature of these curling spines, birds and female faces on his skin were out in the open for anyone to see, and I felt an embarrassment for my brother that I could do nothing about. The Arkangel logo he had drawn in the crook of his elbow was now a dull smear. I was so embarrassed for him that I couldn't even tell him to roll down the sleeves of his hoodie.

There was no point in taking any action, because suddenly, music was pouring from the speakers that framed the stage, and the blue lights glowed brighter. We had stood in this crowded spot for two hours, enduring a dismal opening act. Now we finally had the payoff.

Rhinoceros took the stage swiftly, each band member moving with agility despite the fact that all of them were in their mid-fifties by now. The grind of the guitars made my ears ache from the first strum, but the music drenched my bones and my hair with a wave of sound. José María and I shared a love for these shows, and we got lost in the lumbering but sharp sound of the music. The main set lasted seventy minutes, and I don't recall ever lifting my hands off the railing. The air was thick and hard to breathe, but José María and I craned our necks toward the stage, where Cheetah the lead singer crooned their massive hit "Hail to the Chief."

After the main set, the crowd roared for an encore. We chanted and stomped for twenty minutes, until Rhinoceros came back to the stage. Before they started playing again, Cheetah took to the microphone.

"Chicago," he said, and the audience shrieked for almost a full minute. He pursed his lips and continued. "We just want to take a moment to acknowledge the tragedy that took place in Millennium Park just a few weeks ago. We have always loved your city."

The applause and shouting from the crowd went nuclear. It took a full minute for it to get quiet enough for Cheetah to get back to the mic.

"On this visit, we have noticed that the place looks grayer than usual. We feel the sadness and mourning as if we could almost touch it. Too much blood has been shed in this place, and we hope for peace."

The audience applauded.

"Now if only we could bring ourselves together and reject the anarchism that's splitting us apart, man. OLF, and Anonymous, we wouldn't be here today lamenting the graveyard that we created in Pritzker if it wasn't for the bullshit that groups like OLF cause.”

The noise from the audience became pure thunder.

“You know who you are, man,” Cheetah said. “If you're caught up in this shit, stop it. You're the very root of the problem, and you can take yourself out of it. You can prevent more bloodshed."

A series of boos rang throughout the Aragon, but they were few. Other voices cheered.

"If you're going to push for this kind of anarchy," Cheetah said, "just take yourself out of the equation."

"Take yourself out," chanted the crowd, an echo of thousands.

"Yeah, like this fucking traitor up front," shouted someone behind me. I knew the voice. It was the guy with the brown work boots. "We got two little OLFers right here."

I blushed, and José María turned to me, his face pale with fear. The crowd around us had turned to look at us, and the white lights from the stage burned my skin. Now even the band was looking at us.

"Leave the kid alone," someone shouted behind me.

"Traitors," someone else said.

"Anonymous pieces of shit," rang out.

"Fuck you and your kind."

"Terrorists," someone shouted.

Terrorists.

José María had nothing to do with this, but now people were shouting names at him, too. The man in the work boots came up close and he tapped my shoulder hard with his index and middle fingers. I turned around and looked into his drunken face. The can of Miller in his hand was too likely to become a weapon if he decided to brandish it or toss it at me.

Suddenly, I felt sick, and a gray shroud clouded my vision. I was remembering hazy images, where I ran down a grassy field and shots rang out in the distance like thunder, and around me people kept on falling on their knees, their hands and backs. I could suddenly remember clearly the woman in the pile of bodies next to me, and the way her breath was there one moment, hot under the chilly air, then gone forever in the next. Her glassy eyes stared at me, pulling me in, tighter and tighter.

I felt out of air.

I was going to suffocate to death, and all the pain in my back and in my face came back, stabbing my insides and making me want to collapse to my knees, right here in front of everyone.

But I wasn't going to cry, and I told myself I was not going to pass out. Pain blasted inside my head, and I wondered if I was finally inheriting my mother's migraines.

"They should have popped you and the rest of them in that park," spat out the man in the work boots. I stood as tall as I could, and I spat the thickest phlegm I could find in my throat right onto his face.

"Fuck you," I said, and then he tossed beer in the air as he took a step toward me. He swung a punch near my ear, but he missed. Around us, the crowd was breaking out into shoving matches, and men and women got swept into a sea of bodies. Others were beginning to shove and taunt, and I knew more punches would be arriving soon. I had been beaten in the face once, and the humiliation of this punch by a stranger brought a sense of dread and rage into my gut.

A gnarled hand pulled me back, and I bucked and kicked away at it, until I saw it was my brother José María. He curled his long arms around my arms, and he literally yanked me out of that pit. He dragged me to the sides, where we could leave the crowd and follow the long hallways that led out to the stairs and eventually the exits.

This took some time, and all I could hear as José María dragged me was "We need to get out, we need to get out."

I glanced one last time at the stage, and it looked like the disturbance had dissipated. Rhinoceros was looping their guitar straps over the shoulders and starting up their encore.

As we bolted down the old stairway and down the long tunnel that led to the exit, I wanted to punch out, to tear away at something, anything. Maybe the T-shirt and merch table. Maybe flip the beer cart. I saw a trash can at the end, and I knew I would kick it as hard as I could. Finally, a target. José María still had me locked into his grip, and I got ready to let out my rage through my feet.

It was a long hallway, and now that Rhinoceros was back on stage, the tiled tunnel was virtually deserted.

At the end of the corridor, a final set of glass doors led to the street. These were plain double doors, just as one might find in a department store or office building. In the dim light of the hall, they gave off a strong reflection, almost like a mirror, and as my brother and I approached, I could see our ourselves in fairly sharp detail. Me in my checkered skirt and with my asymmetrical face, my brother's long frame swimming inside his hoodie and his face taut and pale.

"Stop running," someone shouted from the merch table, but we ignored them.

We ran as fast as we could, and time began to slow around me, my blood beating inside my ears like a drumbeat. It grew louder and louder, and the reflection in the glass doors began to change as we approached.
 
José Maria and I were determined to fly out of here, hand in hand, running

(once, long ago, I ran with Edgar on a field of grass beneath a valley of skyscrapers)

(once, long ago, I had my original face)