The Mummies of Blogspace9 (15 page)

Not that I have much interest in your predicament, but I have a considerable amount of money invested in shipping enterprises, and as such, I am notified when maritime traffic is disrupted.

This morning, a freighter called
Parador Joya
departed the port of Chicama, Peru bound for Los Angeles. Immediately after departure, the ship filed a change of destination and rerouted to Malaga, Spain. Captain Tomas Alarcon reports his holds are empty save “one bale cotton, and one female passenger of extraordinary beauty.”

Sailing an empty cargo ship across the world is an expensive proposition. It was paid upfront from a numbered account in Seville. I could tell you that I am unsure who that female passenger is, but that would not be the truth. I can’t explain exactly how I know, but suffice it to say that I can sense her presence. It is quite unsettling.

I fear my dear insane friend Cuellar is correct. Your colleague is on her way.

July 3, 2011
Seville, Spain
Vasco Cuellar

voice activation mode:
enabled

indiv 1:
I can
mell
[?]
her. She gives
ribosome
[?]
to my spirits, engorges my heart. My
member
[?]
is greatly elevated, buoyed, I might add. My
Soweto
[?]
, if I still had one, would be
leotard
[?]
.

voice activation mode:
disabled

July 3, 2011
Rota, Spain
Bruce Wheeler

Settle down, boys. Enough with the mummy lust. I get it; you’re both hot for Kim. If you want to be helpful, Duran, you could keep an eye on that ship for us so that we can intercept it. I intend to rescue Kim.

And Cuellar, tell me more about Sebastiano. You’re the only one alive who knew him. Sorry, I guess alive is the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Also, you probably shouldn’t use the voice activation feature. You kind of mumble.

Michelle, I hear you. Wish you were here, but I’m set on seeing this through. I’m too angry to let go at this point. I’m going to finish this.

I’m sitting here in a miserable little ice-cream shop in a bad part of Rota. It’s miserable because ice-cream shops should sell ice cream and this one does not. The only thing they have today is beer and sardines and crusty bread, all of which were served at the same temperature.

Negromonte got me out of Seville before the police showed up. I changed my identity once again, and boarded the next bus to Rota. I didn’t know what I expected to find there, but I knew it was the key to this mystery. I was thinking about Father Sebastiano as the bus trundled over the low hills of Andalucia.

According to Leon’s last post, we know Sebastiano completed his Malleus Momias. Furthermore, he acquired a shaman’s tumi, a tool necessary for destroying the mummies. Sebastiano even describes putting a mummy down. And yet ultimately he failed.

What became of Sebastiano remains unclear, but we can say with some certainty that he was unsuccessful in his bid to destroy the walking mummies of Peru. They’re still walking around, even blogging. So what happened?

I had been rolling the words ‘Archivo Rota Soledad’ around in my head for so long that I began thinking of them as the ‘broken archive of loneliness.’ But that’s not it at all. It’s an archive in Rota. It has to be. As it turns out, Rota is a resort community on the Bay of Cadiz. A little past its prime, it has a low-rent feel to it.

So I wandered through the old town, passing boarded up restaurants and bars not yet open for the day. The beach is nice; that’s apparently where all the tourists flocked. Germans mostly, by the sound of them, they drank frosty cans of San Miguel beer.

I still didn’t know what ‘Soledad’ referenced until I wandered into the poor end of Rota and found myself staring up at a street marker that read ‘Soledad.’

It was a short street, spanning the distance from a derelict gas station to a filthy dock where two plastic rowboats marinated in coastal swill. Four doorways opened onto the street.

One opened to a shop that sold sardines wholesale. The second led to a retail sardine shop that dabbled in marine hardware. The third was the ice-cream shop where I’m sitting. And the fourth was a private residence that looked entirely out of place – not a sardine in sight.

I saw a face in an overhead window. I knocked but nobody came to the door. That’s OK, I can wait. I’m going to sit across the street until someone opens the door. I’m in no hurry. I have beer and bread and sardines, along with… Hold on. The door just opened. I don’t see anyone, but the door just opened. I’m going in.

July 3, 2011
Cupertino, CA
Administrator

Urgent communication to Dr. Bruce Wheeler. Although your GPS software has been disabled in your attempt to avoid incarceration, please recall that you did just identify your location on a public blog.

In our ongoing effort to ensure the success of this project, and our concern for project personnel, we are advising you that we have intercepted three communications from Seville to Rota that mention you and/or the killing of you.

The first call was made six minutes ago from a coded line in the Seville police department to the mobile phone of Tio Regalado, the gypsy patriarch of a Rota-based heroin distribution organization. Your death, and the contents of the house on Soledad Street for half a million euros, was the offer.

The second call, after Tio Regalado ran the offer by his captains, was from Melchor Negromonte, the gypsy patriarch of a Seville-based criminal enterprise, who ordered Regalado to refuse the offer and provide you with security and safe haven.

The third call, which is only now just concluding, was direct from a landline in the old harem in the Seville Alcazar to Angelino Logoreci, an Albanian capo who controls most of the gun running in southern Spain, and who owns a beach house in Rota. Your death, and the contents of the house on Soledad Street for a million euros, was the offer. Contract accepted.

While estimates of Logoreci’s manpower and capacity for rapid asset mobilization are still being processed, you should anticipate hostiles on scene within seven to ten minutes.

July 3, 2011
Rota, Spain
Bruce Wheeler

Noted.

voice activation mode:
enabled

indiv 1:
OK guys, I’m crossing the street now. I’m stepping inside the house. It’s actually very cold in here, which is odd because it’s like two hundred degrees outside.

There’s something strange going on, I can’t really explain it, but there’s something here that is calling, or appealing to me. I’m not sure how else to say it, but there’s something very exciting about…

OK, I’m walking down the hall. HELLO. There’s someone in front of me. HELLO. She’s a young woman. She looks Indian. I’d go so far as to say Peruvian. She looks to be in her mid-teens, extremely lovely. HOLA SEÑORITA.

indiv 2:
Por que viniste? //<
transmode 145//
> Why did you come?

indiv 1:
Oh, god. She’s one of them. She’s a mummy. There’s a distinct, uh, a distinct physiological reaction. I’m actually quite terrified right now.

indiv 2:
Why did you come?

indiv 1:
I want to learn about Sebastiano. I want to find his book.

Let go of my throat. She’s…she’s incredibly strong. She’s choking me. Can you let me go, please. I mean no harm.

indiv 2:
The last man who came seeking Sebastiano was a pistolero, a kind man with a moustache and two guns who also meant no harm. I almost trusted him. That was nearly two hundred years ago. Do you know who I am?

indiv 1:
No, but I think you were there with Sebastiano in the village.

indiv 2:
I cleaned his house and cooked his food. I shared his bed though it made him as mournful as it made him glad.

indiv 1:
So what happened? How did you become...? How did you turn into…

indiv 2:
You must understand, we did not know who we could trust. In the next parish lived a lunatic priest named Cuellar who had long ago come under the spell of the damned. For his sins, he was imprisoned. Sebastiano then approached the cleric who imprisoned him – the Inquisitor himself, and told him what he had learned, how to put down the dead.

indiv 1:
Thank you for letting go of my neck. But Sebastiano didn’t know that the Quiroga, the Grand Inquisitor, had already become a demon.

indiv 2:
The soldiers brought us to the pyramid that night so the Quiroga could watch it happen. They brought us into the dark room, the room with the candles, and those…things.

indiv 1:
Demons?

indiv 2:
Demons, yes. Imps. They bled us. Made us what we are. It was unfortunate really, not in anyone’s best interest. The Inquisitor wanted to punish Sebastiano, and punish him he did, turning him into the last thing he wanted to be. But of course he couldn’t be killed after that. They cut out his tongue but he lived. Ironic, isn’t it, that the only man left in the world capable of putting down the dead was now himself dead?

indiv 1:
Where is Sebastiano now?

indiv 2:
His mind began to wander a century ago. I mourn that he is quite mad by now though I haven’t seen him in four decades, perhaps five. After the war, he would walk the cemeteries of Seville, saying silent prayers for the fallen.

indiv 1:
What are you doing? What are you smelling? What is your name by the way.

indiv 2:
Naya. I am Naya. Someone approaches. Many men. You have little time, not time enough to ask about the book as well as the gold. I’ll give you neither, but you may ask about one or the other.

indiv 1:
……….the book.

indiv 2:
They are here. There is a tunnel below that runs under the house; you must go there now.

indiv 1:
What about you?

indiv 2:
I am about to dine.

voice activation mode:
disabled

July 7, 2011
Segovia, Peru
Leon Samples

Bruce, it’s been four days, man. How about giving us a shout out? Otherwise, we’re left wagering as to your demise. Did the hot mummy eat you, or did you escape through the tunnel only to be captured by Albanian gangsters? Dude, if you’re some gun runner’s bitch, I can understand your silence. But if not, send us some love.

We’ve had quite an adventure here these last few days. I’ve been doing some excavating, which has been informative. Also, Michelle and I are lovers now.

I’m sitting here in the pyramid’s outer chamber. I’ve got the laptop set up on a pile of adobes, and I’m tracking shipping through the Panama Canal. I’m also eating a tuna sandwich and having a staring contest with one of the imps in the back chamber. I think I’m winning but I can’t tell; you can’t really look at them full on.

The Parador Joya, the cargo ship carrying Kim, passed through the Panama Canal yesterday, and is currently steaming past Colombia. I tried sending a message to Kim on one of the maritime channels, but there was no response. I’m not sure exactly what I would say anyway – missing your cold embrace?