Chapter 19: Dark Star
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Author’s Note: We are now entering the final act of the novel. I can't believe I took a six-month break, but I needed it. Some writers can work like machines, and I used to think I was wired that way. But life presents new challenges at every turn. The past six months have allowed me to adapt to the changes in my daily life, the planet, and my own consciousness. I'm grateful to be back. 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 @ 2022-2023 Cesar Torres. All Rights Reserved.
Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres
CHAPTER 19: DARK STAR
NESTOR BUÑUEL
Mictlán’s darkness embraced Nestor and Puttock as they hiked down a steep ravine.
Without the ability to measure and keep track of time, the journey became vast, dark, endless. That is, until Nestor got sick.
The aggregate nature of his enhanced senses overwhelmed him. Though he couldn’t see anything but darkness with his eyes, his smell, hearing, taste and touch created images in his mind that felt even more detailed than ocular vision, but they came at a price. His head spun, as if he were dizzy from a hangover. His feet felt unstable, as if he were walking on cork, despite the ground sitting firmly beneath each step. And worst of all, the way in which his sense of touch, smell and hearing blended make everything spin. He tasted delicious things in the air of The Coil—like fresh orange and mint, but he also tasted copper, mold, and rot.
Nestor stumbled like a wino, almost falling into thorny bushes, but he forced himself to stay on the trail ahead. Puttock led the way and did not look back to make sure Nestor was keeping up.
Nestor took a moment to sit on a a fallen tree log, and put his head between his legs. He was feeling dizzy from thirst and hunger, and his head pounded with the beginnings of a migraine.
After a couple of minutes, Nestor heard Puttock double back to find him.
“Take look at your hand, detective.”
The cut Puttock had carved into Nestor’s palm had fully healed, and a thick scar had formed.
“It should have required stitches,” Nestor said. “How—?”
“And yet you still have no faith in Mitctlán.”
“You don’t need me at your side,” Nestor said. “Just take your faith as your companion instead of me.”
Puttock laughed, throwing his head back. Nestor dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands, wishing to draw blood.
The forest groaned, and behind them, Nestor heard an animal growl that sounded like Citlalín. The jaguar could reach small humans like he and Puttock, he did not doubt that. He tried to ignore his fears, and kept on walking down a steep ravine, as Puttock led the way.
Nestor stood up, wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist, and resigned himself to continue.
As he hiked, Nestor lamented the victims of crimes he investigated the most. The atmosphere, the smells, the sounds of this vast place forced him to remember things he would rather not: the children whose parents had put out cigarettes on their skin; the innocent bystanders who had been shot in the face during gang drive-by shootings; the women who had been raped and choked to death by their husbands; the neglected hoarders whose own children had cut off all contact with them, and who had died of illness and disease in cat-infested apartments in the city.
His life on Earth had been mostly defined by his job, and these mental hauntings were all he had to show for it. He now in fact regretted having chosen to be a cop at all.
He cried hard tears, and he wept until his throat and lungs hurt. Perhaps the pain in his lungs was due to the deep sobs which wrenched themselves from his insides.
As he floated in an oasis of grief, the pain became so sharp in Nestor’s heart that he wished he could kill himself, and when he realized this, his heart sank further. By all accounts, he was already dead. And he was more alone than he had ever felt before.
“This is how Felix felt when he tried to kill himself?” Nestor said out loud to himself. His tears rolled off his face as he recalled how his friend had stolen his gun to commit the deed, in the snowy mounds of upstate New York. When his tears struck the ground below, they hissed and crackled, like water on a hot pan, but they also gave off tiny sounds, soft, and musical. Everything in Mictlán made music.
And through it all, he missed Felix, his closest friend back home.
“Who is Felix?” A voice said from over his shoulder. It wasn’t Puttock’s voice.
Nestor sat upright. The voice was tiny, soft, like a schoolgirl’s, but also ragged at the edges, like that of a lifelong smoker. He focused on hearing sounds bounce ofd the ground and the trees, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t pinpoint the location of the creature who might be speaking. All he could see was a giant tree log that had fallen, perhaps from a thunderstorm. It was roughly the size of a bicycle, twisted and gnarled like spider wood.
“Who goes there?” Nestor said.
“Over here,” the voice said. This time Nestor could sense its location. It was coming from under a dead tree.
It started to sing. It was song unlike any Nestor had ever heard, square-like and very rigid, like lines of graph paper, yet oddly pleasant.
“You still haven’t told me–who is Felix? Is that someone in your tribe?”
“Show yourself,” Nestor said.
“Stop ignoring my question! Who is Felix? Baby, I’m ready to go.”
Nestor laughed. “Baby?”
“Yeah, baby! Isn’t that one of the words from your world and your language?”
“Well yeah, but…baby?”
“Stop idling. WHO IS FELIX, BABY?”
Nestor scratched his head. “Puttock are you fucking with me?”
“I don’t know who Puttock is. That’s not my name, baby!”
The music’s 4/4 rhythm sped up and became danceable. Nestor recalled the first track of an old rock album by the band Garbage. That song, Temptation Waits, had felt like this–a hissing whisper that exploded into a thrashing beat.
“Puttock is a man who’s here traveling with me. He is not my friend. Is that good enough for you?”
“Oh yes, I heard Puttock already, baby. But Felix, Felix, Felix, who’s Felix, baby?”
Nestor was in no mood for jokes, but suddenly, his laughter escaped his throat against his will.
“A friend. He’s like a brother to me.”
“Yes, yes baby, I understand that.”
The dead tree shifted. And suddenly, the vibrations it gave off changed. The music stopped, and its ridges and bark softened, turning into a lush coat of fur. Two of its largest branches peeled backward to form a pair of ears. And at the very tip, a tiny mouth and nose formed. At the end of that mouth, two large teeth protruded. The tree shifted, bulged, and changed itself. And in a matter of seconds, a creature towered above Nestor, at least seven feet tall, and solid in its flesh and bone. It rose, gnarled, like a corrupted oak, yet it was something much more sentient than any creature on Earth. And it was also gigantic.
The first word Nestor thought of to describe this being was demonic.
Nestor’s mother had promised him many times that demons existed. She had witnessed an exorcism when she was in her twenties and she had just met his father. According to her, the Vatican had approved the exorcism, and she had wandered over to the church on a late October evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of the exorcist. Though she hadn’t been able to see fully through the windows ofd the sacristy, she had definitely caught a glimpse of a shape, gnarled like an old ash tree, twisting and bending, while a child screamed from deep within the belly of the building. She had told Nestor this story many times since he was a boy, to ward him off from smoking dope, cutting school or stealing, and it had worked. That image of the demon, lumpen and misshapen, writhing inside a church, was forever imprinted in his memory.
And now, that’s what he felt he was witnessing. The creature’s glowing eyes locked onto his as it turned its head to face Nestor.
“Come closer, baby.”
“No.”
“But we’re having so much fun!”
“I’m certainly not . Didn’t you just see me cry?”
“Living is not just about laughing, baby. You’re also supposed to cry.”
“I just want passage through this forest. I need to get up to the third level of Mictlán.”
“Come closer, baby. Much closer.”
He wanted to turn away, but part of him was drawn to it, too. Not knowing why, he took two steps through the mulch toward the demon. Nestor’s curiosity did the driving.
“Felix is a good friend where I’m from. He’s in his late thirties, skinny guy. Isn’t that what you wanted to know?”
“I can smell Felix on you, baby. You want to get back to him.”
“Just need to get back home.”
“I have only heard legends and myths about the hairless apes of the Fifth Age, but it turns out you’re real.”
“What?”
“Me and my brothers and my sisters sit around sometimes and tell stories to scare each other. Stories of the Tlacatl.”
“Tlacatl, I heard that Nahuatl word before. Means men.” That’s a word Felix had taught Nestor.
“That’s you, baby,” the demon said, its words slithering out of nowhere, and everywhere all at once. Its whiskers flickered, sending vibrations through the air like dragonfly wings. “COME CLOSER,” the demon said.
“You have to promise not to hurt me.”
The rabbit-like creature laughed, and its voice looped and coiled through space thousands of times, like the sound of steel wires snapping right off a bridge.
“Why would I hurt you, baby? We’re having a good time.”
“Who is we?”
“You and me. Put your hand right there, on my back. Don’t be scared.”
When Nestor’s palm made contact, the creature’s body burst into a festive song, bright and full of color, like the most perfect pop confection he had ever heard. This music was as bright as the DJ sets he might dance to back at home in a queer bar in Brooklyn. From deep inside the creature’s body, black butterflies burst upward in a vertical column, filling the air with the scents of vanilla and strawberries. The insects formed infinity loops in the air before dissipating like smoke.
Then the creature twisted and rolled over, hissing, and Nestor backed away. Its oily body changed texture, and soon, it morphed, retaining its rabbit shape, yet growing powerful hind legs and paws that ended in sharp talons. Its front paws rose in the air, and they too were made of powerful muscle, and were covered in smooth hairs that formed a soft pelt. It’s former tree-like form melted away, and the demon developed a narrow head that ended in a pointed nose and mouth, with two sharp teeth that resembled machetes. Four long ears sprouted from its head and elongated almost six feet. They smoothed themselves out on its head, pointing back toward the rear of the creature.
Nestor knew this new shape all too well.
“Well I’ll be damned. You’re a fucking rabbit?”
“Shout it out, baby,” the rabbit said. Its ravenously curious gaze showed a an intelligence that transcended time. The rabbits back in the front lawns and back yards of Edgewater in Chicago had soft, tranquil eyes, but this creature’s eyes were those of something very cunning and inquisitive. These eyes were deeply conscious. And what was even stranger is that Nestor was able to make out their details through every single sense except his own eyes.
But even if it was a rabbit, Nestor didn’t feel safe. The animal was massive, and those claws looked sharp enough to slice flesh like a knife slicing through soft butter.
He pivoted and ran. He covered roughly twenty five feet, his arms pumping. As he dashed, he lost traction in the mulch beneath his feet, and he fell on his face. He screamed, shuffled back up to standing and realized that there was nowhere to go. The rabbit had trotted ahead, and it was now towering directly in front of Nestor.
“Don’t go away, I want to play,” the rabbit said. It used its front limbs like arms and held Nestor by the shoulders. It brought its mouth, and those pointed teeth so close to his face that he could smell its breath.
“Let’s play, baby.”
“Say that again?”
“Don’t be scared. Let’s play a game. I could use your help. You see that ball court in the distance?”
Nestor turned his head to the right. And there, past the sightline of the trees, a stone wall held a large hoop set perpendicular to the ground. Before it, a wide expanse of grass stood very still, waiting. These were the very same ball courts Nestor recognized from ancient Mesoamerican architecture.
Nestor was about to wet himself, when he realized the ridiculous position that he was in. A giant bunny was hoisting him like a rag doll, and it wanted playtime. He burst into panicked laughter, shaking his head.
“You gotta be shitting me, right?” he said.
The creature laughed too, and it even smiled as it did so. Its eyes radiated more pop-tinged music, and for a moment, Nestor allowed himself to let his inhibitions, and his fears, go.
“Okay, but if I play with you, you’ll show me how to travel to Iztepetl?” Nestor said.
The rabbit’s fur bristled, emitting gorgeous music, and the air started to taste of mint, sage and pear.
“Yes, baby.”
The rabbit unfurled its ears and picked Nestor up by the armpits. Using the four ears as a limb, it placed Nestor on its back with the gentleness of a mother attending to pups.
“Hold on to my ears, baby.”
The demon hopped forward on its legs, and Nestor held on, clenching his fists over the supple flesh of those ears.
“We can’t leave yet. Puttock. I can’t leave him here.”
“Then we wait for the Puttock after we play,” the rabbit said.
The rabbit dug into the ground and using its front paws, and it pulled out an earthenware jar that had been buried in the dirt.
“I knew I left my stash here, heh, heh” it said. Using its free set of ears, the rabbit twisted off the lid and fumes flowed upward from the jar. The smell was pure joy, a mixture of fermented plants and flowers and fruit, congealing into a smell that Nestor knew really well: booze.
“You and I, let’s make a toast while we wait for your brother to come back from the trail.”
“Puttock is not my brother,” Nestor said.
“You’re wrong about that. You’re both Tlacatl.”
Nestor turned his head toward the bushes, and he heard Puttock’s footsteps, and his nose picked up a faint scent of his skin. Puttock was nearby.
“I’ll do your game if you tell me your name.”
“My name, baby? I thought you would be able to learn it from my sound signature alone.”
“No. You just sound like…music to me. Tell me your name.”
“I am the 74th of the 400 children of the gods Patecatl and Mayahuel, baby. My name is 74-Centzon.”
“400 children…”
“Of course, baby. My mother had 400 of us. How many children do you humans have?”
“Usually one or two.”
“Interesting.”
“How long have you lived in Mictlán?”
“What a strange question. Certainly, us 400 rabbits were born to Patecatl and Ayahuel, but there’ no single answer to your question. Time is not what you think it is. Look over there,” the rabbit said, taking two small hops toward a clearing in the woods. Off in the distance, a massive structure punctured the skyline. It was city unlike any Nestor had ever seen. Every building shimmered like diamond and glass, and its architecture defied logic: a long set of tall, obelisks lined with furrows running along its length. The buildings shimmered with a solidity that suggested they were strongly and solidly built.
“That’s where my brothers and I live,” the rabbit said. “The city of Tochtan, made of trillions of bones polished to perfection.”
“Can I call you C74?”
“Ahhh, you like language games. Yes you may, baby.”
Nestor’s panic had faded. His heart beat slowly in his chest, and he marveled how he could hear its slow pumps, and even small echoes inside the veins and arteries. He felt warm, safe. The feeling was that of burying oneself in a blanket on a winter morning. Maybe this rabbit wasn’t so demonic after all.
“I can teach you anything you like,” Nestor said.
From the woods, Puttock emerged, carrying two small slabs of raw meat, which he ate with relish.
“You should ask Nestor to teach you how to be a liar and a rat fink,” Puttock said, as he spat out bone and gristle. “He’s a cop after all.”
“Your brother is here, baby,” C74 said.
“I told you he’s not my—never mind,,” Nestor said. “Puttock. This rabbit’s name is C74. He’s going to help us reach Iztepetl.”
“At what price?” Puttock said.
C74 rattled its mouth, and shook tiny bits of plant matter loose. It deposited a hard pellet beneath the roots of a tree. The tree groaned and opened up a hole the size of a basketball in order to swallow the pellet. The rabbit was feeding the tree.
“Price?’ C74 said as it finished its chore. “I don’t understand your transactional nature, Tlacatl. I can take you as far as the fifth level of Mictlan, which is called Paniecatacoyan. After that point, it is too dangerous for me to take you any further up the Coil.”
Puttock licked his lips as blood ran down his chin.
“What happens in Paniecatacoyan?” Puttock said.
“It’s an upside-down place, baby,” C74 said. “It has winds and energy bursts so strong, that you and I would no longer be able to stick to the ground. It’s a place where souls suffer.”
“Then take us that far,” Puttock said. “We’ll figure out the rest.”
“Entities with bodies like yours (or mine) don’t often survive Paniecatacoyan. I know many denizens of Mictlán who were pulverized trying to enter the fifth level.”
“You think I care?” Puttock said. “Just take us there.”
“Be a little more respectful, Puttock,” Nestor said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Puttock said.
“First we celebrate with ritual and games, baby,” C74 said. The rabbit removed the lid on the jar once more, and the sweet, boozy smell flowed outward like a flower of scent.
“You read my mind, rabbit,” Puttock said, walking toward the jar. “Bottoms up.”
“First, you learn the ritual,” C74 said. He shrugged Nestor off his back with an elegant flourish, and pushed Puttock out of the way with his ears. The rabbit knelt before the jar and he started to sing.
Mother Mayahuel, From my throat spills forth a song of faith and devotion,
The 400 rabbits thank you for the jewels that spill from your stellar womb
You, one of the three Great Mothers, praise you be.
Please bless this gift of pulque, and remember we will keep our appointments with you in the prisms of a sheared sky
Love from your son, Centzon-74, also known as the Dark Star.
From the jar, droplets of the pulque formed long rivulets that danced to the music like cobras enchanted by fakirs. The smell invaded every square inch of space in this clearing in the woods, and Nestor’s mouth watered.
Nestor knew this thirst well. The longing for the bottle of whiskey, the craft beer, the bottomless bottles of wine during a big meal. He marveled at the way the pulque seemed to have a mind of its own, each tendril of liquid defying gravity to seduce him with a soft caress on the cheek. The lid of the jar resembled an octopus as the pulque seduced the rabbit and the two men.
C74 dug empty human craniums from deep within the earth and filled them with the milky liquid. Puttock held on to his serving, hypnotized by the sounds and smells of the brew. But when Nestor was given his portion, desperation filled him up with electric energy. He had taken a long, long break from drinking in Chicago, especially after Felix asked him to stop, but here he was again, looking down at an old friend who hadn’t been so kind throughout the decades. The pulque settled into the skull, but it swirled over and over, in a terrifying spiral that seemed no different than the massive spiral shape of Mictlán.
Not knowing why Nestor brought the shell up to his lips, as he started to weep his own tears into the drink.
The droplets hissed as they touched the pulque, and they turned into hard nuggets, like salt crystals.
“Drink. Now,” C74 said.
Nestor swallowed the whole shelfful in big gulps. The taste of alcohol, its sweetness, its lightness, awoke something in him he thought he had put away. Suddenly, he wanted more. He wanted another ration, maybe ten of them, as long as his belly could hold it. He wanted other things too, like vodka, whiskey, and wine. Anything with that familiar edge.
“It’s so good,” he said. The rabbit C74 blinked and drank quietly from its own skull cup. Puttock had already finished his, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He tossed the bones he had been picking at over his shoulder and let out a loud belch.
“Good shit,” Puttock said.
Nestor became lightheaded, and there was his old friend, booze, brushing his forehead, sweeting the world, and urging him to have more. He waltzed, laughing, dancing in lazy circles, drawn to the large jar that contained moire of that milky sweet juice. He was so close to getting a refill that he licked his lips.
But as he reached the edge of the drunkenness, a pain stabbed Nestor in the stomach. He felt his guts twist and churn, and a wave of nausea floated from his stomach up into his chest and throat. The world started to spin, and he felt very, very ill.
The taste of metal suddenly filled his mouth, and he felt wetness somewhere in his body, as if his sense of touch were far away and very distant. He looked down and saw that the front of his t-shirt was drenched in his own vomit. It gave off a very strange vibration that was so rich in detail, he didn’t need to be able to see with his eyes. The vomit swirled, shifted and moved, as if it had a life of its own.
He had puked all over himself, and the liquid on his shirt wasn’t just pulque and gastric juice. It was his own blood. He fell forward and landed on his knees in the soft earth, and began to wretch.
More blood, bile and pulque flowed from his mouth, and he was sure now that he had never felt this drunk, or this ill, in his entire life.
“And so, our ritual begins,” the rabbit said.
Puttock had wandered off back into the trail and was now out of ear’s reach, but C74 didn’t seem to be alarmed by his departure.
“What kind of ritual?” Nestor said.
“You have drunk celestial pulque, which is sourced from the deepest bowels of Mictlan. Once you drink it, there’s no going back.”
“Going back to what?”
“To your former self, don’t you know?”
Nestor shook his head.
“Now I get it,” “C74 said. “You have never had any teachers on Earth to show you these methods of self development.”
Nestor vomited more blood into his hands. It flowed like a river, with power and force. So much blood, in fact, that it started to form a pool around him.
“Who is it you seek?” The rabbit roared, with a new terrifying edge to its voice that shook the whole forest.
“The Black Tezcatlipoca’s Hall of Mirrors,” Nestor said. He could only tell the truth.
“And why do you seek the Hall of Mirrors?”
“To get back home.”
“Wrong. Very wrong,” the rabbit shouted. The creature’s fur coarsened, becoming sharp and deadly, like needles covering its whole body. He took on a fearful appearance, its body dissolving into millions of eyes and teeth, then forming the shape of a rabbit again.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Nestor said, but before he could get away, he doubled over and vomited more blood. His clothes, his legs and his hands were covered in it. He crawled on all fours, crying, moaning, unsure of where time had gone.
“It’s not you who seeks the Hall of Mirrors, Nestor. It’s instead the other way around: The Hall of Mirrors seeks you. It has been seeking you for a very long time, or at least in the way you think of time.”
Nestor felt a coldness fall over him. He reconsidered all his waking memories of his decades on Earth. This rabbit suggested that he had been observed, followed, tracked and monitored. It suggested in fact, that his own free will may not be such. The rabbit was suggesting that Nestor had been tracked by something he had no idea even existed.
“What does the Hall of Mirrors want from me?” Nestor said, as more blood emerged from his throat.
“You will only find out when you sacrifice yourself to it,” C74 said. “You know its true and secret name, after all.”
As C74 shared this information, its legs and paws lengthened. It picked Nestor up like a rag doll with one claw and dragged him through the pool of blood, bathing him completely in it. And in one swift move, the creature leapt into the air, hopping, headed toward the ball court, which also lay in the direction Puttock was climbing.
“So let’s offer you up, baby,” C74 said, as the music from its body flowered and bloomed, filling the darkness with sweet melody and a touch of melancholy.
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