Chapter 6: The Masks We Wear

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Author’s Note: It’s a dark day in U.S. history today as the Supreme Court has overturned Roe V. Wade. The fight for democracy and our rights is more prescient than ever before, and working together is what will get us ahead. The persecution of women's reproductive rights is something I foretold in my novels almost a decade ago, and sadly, I am seeing it come to life in the real world. And I didn’t want to publish a new chapter without at least acknowledging this breaking news story. This week in Hall of Mirrors, Nestor Buñuel heads into the third and final day of interviews with serial murderer Steven Puttock, and what he discovers will send shivers down your spine. 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 6: The Masks We Wear

NESTOR BUÑUEL

On the third and final day of interviews, Nestor set down a bag of McDonald’s on the table before Steven Puttock, who peered inside and retrieved two quarter pounders with cheese and double fries. It was 11 a.m.

“No Diet Coke?” Puttock said.

“Be grateful,” Nestor said. “The heat wave fried the ice machines at McDonald’s. I can get you all the black coffee you want to go with your food.”

“I’m game,” Puttock said, as he bit into the hamburger.

The room was being monitored through the mirrored glass that covered the eastern wall, and Nestor waved his hand toward it.

“Who you got in the front row seats today? That black woman cop Douglas? The gay prison admin with the shiny new haircut? Or another politically-correct character your administrators slot into these investigations for clout?”

Nestor ignored Puttock’s comments and kept his facial expression neutral.

“I wanted to go back to the very beginning today,” Nestor said. “I really want to understand your point of view.”

“Noble intention. You want to know about my hometown, or if daddy was hooked on meth, if mommy beat me? Or if my uncle did bad things with my pecker, don’t you?”

“No, I want to go back to the beginning of time.”

Puttock’s eyes widened. He chewed with his mouth closed, very quietly, and he put his closed fist up to his mouth too he could finish chewing his bite. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, and folded the napkin with origami-like precision before tucking his hands under his chin, and leaning forward in his chair.

“You got my attention, Buñuel.”

“You are very familiar with the concept of time for the Aztec empire, so let’s start there,” Nestor said.

“Of course,” Puttock said. “In their myths, the universe went through five ages. Massive spans of time in which the gods built the world, made creatures for that world, and in each age, the world—hell, the whole universe—collapsed. A hard collapse. Everything gone. Extinctions, in others words. In each age, one of the gods took a turn to become the sun. Very poetic.  Wash, rinse, repeat.”

“And back in 2012, the fifth age was said to have ended,” Nestor said. “We are now technically living in the age of the sixth sun, according to records left by the Maya, Aztec, etc.”

“True, except that the Aztec religion didn’t create myths about the sixth age. They couldn’t see past the time they were living in.”

“That describes the human condition well,” Nestor said.

“That’s the novelist and cop in you speaking. Indeed, time collapses, rebuilds itself. Time exists on planes our biology can’t fully comprehend.”

“So talk to me about the role that Xipe Totec played at the beginning of time. Show me what you’ve learned by reading books.”

“Xipe and his three brothers have been around since the beginning of time. But before there was time, Xipe’s father and mother, Ometeotl and Omecihuatl, existed. And they gave birth to the illustrious quadruplets, didn’t they?”

“That’s also what I understand about those creations myths. So why do you focus so much on Xipe? You have killed people in his name. You even carved his name into Marlene Grue’s skin back in 2025.”

“So you have figured that out!”

“Took time. But the pictographs confirmed it. You killed her as tribute to Xipe Totec, the Night Drinker. And you implored his name in images on her flesh.”

“Xipe is the most undervalued brother. He gets no respect,” Puttock said. “But his time has come. The rage he feels against injustice justifies my actions. He has come forth to claim a throne that should have always been his.”

“And according to you, he’s promised you entry to Mictlán?”

“Yes.”

“Then explain this to me. Why didn’t you send up tribute to the gods of death, instead of Xipe Totec? After all they rule the kingdom of dead souls, not Xipe Totec. In many ways they are above him.”

“Mictecahuatl and Mictlantecuhtli? Oh yes, powerful as can be. But not able to do what Xipe can.”

“What you’re doing is the equivalent of offering tribute to Poseidon instead of Hades to gain access to the underworld.”

“Just remember that Xipe Totec is the god of spring and renewal. He may have unusual fashion taste, but he has the power to move through worlds, Buñuel. He has the power to transform whole planes of reality. The Lords of Death can’t.”

Puttock started on his second burger. As he chewed, he started up at the ceiling and let out a long sigh. “Carl Jung once said, ‘People don’t have ideas; ideas have people.’ I think it’s more accurate to say that ‘People don’t inhabit gods. Gods inhabit people.’”

“Are you saying you were chosen? Special?”

“Not at all, detective. What I am telling you is that Xipe Totec has me in his grip. Ever since I was old enough to read the myths about him, I just knew that he meant a lot to me. But I don’t feel he’s chosen me. In fact, I have to earn my way to his graces.”

“Through human sacrifice.”

“Through servitude and ritual, yes,” Puttock said.

“It’s funny, you don’t really strike me as a religious man.”

“If you came here to insult me, you can take your ass back to Chicago right now.”

“Who told you I live in Chicago?” Nestor said.

“I know more about you than you do, detective.”

“You said that you’re seeking entry into Mictlán. As far as myths go, the only way to get into Mictlán is to die.”

“Over the past fifteen years, many urban legends have developed surrounding that very topic,” Puttock said. “Of course, al those subreddits, podcasts and YouTube channels never invoke the name Mictlán, but they are always alluding to it, if you know how to read the clues.”

“What clues should I look for?”

“Here’s one. Have you ever heard about the shadow that lives beneath lake Michigan? It’s right by Lakeshore Drive and Chicago Avenue, in downtown Chicago. The shadow can never be seen from above on a plane, and it can’t be detected by sonar, but if you get close to it on a clear summer day, you can sometimes see it, shimmering under the water. It’s as large as a football field, and dark as ink. They say the shadow is made of fish scales, or butterfly wings.”

“Never heard of such an urban legend.”

“That urban legend appeared at around the same time that people started spotting the Mothman around Lake Michigan in 2012. I believe they are connected myths.”

“Those don’t sound like proof of Mictlán,” Nestor said. “They simply sound like Internet rumors.”

“Every legend is built on grains of truth, Buñuel. As a novelist, you should know that.”

“Fair point. And I can’t disagree.”

“How about this one? In Mexico City, many riders of the subway have reported sightings of a large creature that haunts the tunnels late at night near the station Zocal on Line 2. It creeps, hunched over, with long claws and eyes that are like a pair of hot coals. Those rumors have been so prevalent, that authorities have actually put up signs prohibiting selfies on the platforms, because so many people were trying to crawl onto the tracks to investigate the creature, which CDMX residents have started to call El Chamuco de La Plaza de la Constitución, or the devil.”

“I don’t see any connections between these anecdotes,” Nestor said. “They’re just urban legends. And I think you’re just tying to find whatever you want to find in them. It’s simply confirmation bias.”

“You’re using your head and not your gut,” Puttock said. “This is about the cities.”

“Go on,” Nestor said.

“CDMX and Chicago are hot spots of supernatural activity. That’s the connection. These locations, detective, are places where the thin layer between this world, and worlds found in other dimensions, becomes very, very thin. Thin enough to see through to the other side.”

“Sort of like Samhain, I suppose,” Nestor said. “In Ireland, people believed that the barrier between our world an the world of fairies and spirits grew very thin around the November 1.”

“You got it.”

“But those Irish legends didn’t ever seem to suggest people would want to enter the realm of the dead willingly.”

“Definitely not. But that’s because people of earlier eras had less knowledge at their disposal.”

“And you think these entry points are…permeable? Accessible?”

“More than you know. You see, people, animals and things gather around these entry points, detective, even if they are not consciously aware of it. These areas have a significance most people are not aware of.”

“And what about New York? You omitted the very place where you were convicted of the crimes you call tributes.”

“So smart, detective. So smart. Cities like CDMX, Mexico City, are the most obvious place to nominate as locations that contain entry points into Mictlán. New York doesn’t seem to have one.”

“Does that upset you?” Nestor said.

“Heh, you think you’re clever don’t you? I decided to take matters into my own hands and build my own gateway in New York, by making ceremonial sacrifices to Xipe, in a city I knew well. I set up a beacon for him.”

Puttock tucked the burger wrappers back into the paper bag and set it aside. On the table, he extended his right arm with the palm face up, and using his index finger on his left hand, he drew a long invisible line up his the veins in his arms, from wrist to bicep.

“In order to get the attention of a powerful being like Xipe Totec, I needed to create a trail of the life source of the universe. That life source is human blood.”

Puttock drained the last of his coffee, and crossed his arms so he could lean back in his chair and judge Nestor at his leisure.

“It’s arrogant to think you can invoke a god by killing in his name,” Nestor said.

“What kind of naive statement is that? You speak like a five year old. Have you never heard the crusades? Or the Inquisition? Have you never read the damn Bible? It’s all blood sacrifice, detective.”

“I can still label you as arrogant,” Nestor said. “You presume that a human being can be on the same level with a god. Or goddess.”

Puttock winked. “By that logic, It’s arrogant to think that you can deliver justice operating as a cop, isn’t it? It’s arrogant to shoot your firearm and take a life in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘The American Way’, innit?”

Nestor wasn’t prepared for Puttock’s philosophical statement and question, and for a moment, he felt exposed, self conscious, and just a little bit afraid of Steven Puttock.

From the Journal of Felix Calvo, October 26, 2022

Fucking Nestor is still ignoring my texts. I swear I’m gonna wring his neck.

I finished reading 9 Lords of Night this morning after breakfast. And I realized something HUGE.

9 Lords of Night has two faces.

One is the original face that its creator, Friar Maximiliano Carmona gave it. In his novel, the indigenous couple try to assassinate the viceroy of the Spanish crown. In that sense, the novel is a highly charged piece of historical fiction and political intrigue. And it breaks my heart to know that the attempt to overthrow the colonizing, murdering force of the Spaniard invaders failed.

And then there is the other face of 9 Lords. A face it wears on the outside.

That’s the face that the filmmaker Samuel Kahan created for the film version.

Samuel Kahan changed the heart of the novel. In the film 9 Lords of Night, the same indigenous couple makes their vow to the god Xipe Totec, asking for his blessing. But they are not trying to murder the viceroy. They are trying to murder La Malinche, Cortes’s translator and eventual mother of his son. They seek to put to death the woman who has historically been blamed for many of the ills that befell Mexican society. They tried to murder one of their own.

This difference has hit me like a smack in the face.

The fact that Samuel Kahan changed the plot of the novel to suit his film is not new. He did this with all the books he adapted into movies. He had a huge falling out with Stephen King over his changes of Salem’s Lot into what became The Marsten House, and his rift with Octavia Butler over the adaptation of her novel Dawn into Xenogenesis never got resolved. Kahan just did whatever the fuck he wanted in the name of art.

And I fucking love the fact that he did so.

Did he appropriate culture? Did he take a point of view he shouldn’t have? Did he undermine the Mexican people by making a film about their art, history, and their ancient gods?

Not at all.

Because if I learned one thing during the horrors I experienced in the woods behind the Kahan mansion in the Catskills, it’s that art is perhaps our only enduring gift to our existence on this planet. Art may be one of the last tools we have left to survive.

NESTOR BUÑUEL

“In the days before my trial, before you arrested me, I use to pay a lot of attention to social media,” Puttock said, “And Mexicans’ posts on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube always drew my attention, mostly because of their wasted talents.”

“Oh?”

“Mexican culture, detective, is not just one of the richest in the world, it’s one of the most active. It’s alive. Many indigenous traditions that existed before the conquest by the Spaniards, live today in all regions of Mexico, and to some residual extent, in the United States, where many have migrated. They may not know this, but in their food, their religious customs, and their traditions, Mexicans retain a strong connection to a mighty past, which happens to include dialog with powerful beings like Xipe Totec and his three brothers the Blue, White and Black Tezcatlipocas. But would you believe me if I told you the average Mexican can’t name more than one or two of these gods? That they lack knowledge and understanding of the rich myths of the Maya, Toltec, Aztec and other cultures? Would you think it ludicrous, and a bit sad, if I told you that the average Mexican is better versed in Game of Thrones trivia and the the MCU blockbusters than to know the very roots of their own metaphysical power and culture?”

Nestor stayed silent. This was a painful topic for him to discuss.

“Unfortunately, I am aware of it. Mythology and history are not taught in schools the way they ought to be. No one fucking reads books anymore. Most of my people don’t even have a crude working knowledge of these myths. And I agree. People are invested in corporate entertainment on a screen instead of myth.”

“If the average Mexican could dig deep, and I mean deep, into the powerful legacy of their ancestors, like the Maya, the Toltec, the Olmec, and the Mexica, Mexico would be a superpower today,” Nestor said.

“I somehow doubt that. Idolizing ancient religions that way leads to fascism,” Nestor pointed out.

“Good point. But think of it another way. The average Mexican spends most of their life lapping up every bit of pop culture and social media ephemera that the algorithm throws their way. They devour it, they cherish it, and while they do so, they waste away their own ability to leverage this rich past, and the pantheon of gods that lives in it. They are hooked on American pop culture, and they waste their talents with every second that goes by.”

“And you—a white dude—You made your life’s work all about Xipe Totec and the creatures that live inside Mictlán.”

“If Mexicans won’t make contact with Mictlán, then I will.”

“You’re an arrogant man.”

“You’re one to talk. You’re an arrogant, mediocre writer with a veneer of policeman. You’re both bourgeoise and slave. You’re pathetic.”

Nestor caught himself scratching the thighs of his jeans under the table. It was an old habit from adolescence, and one he only reactivated when he felt deeply angry, humiliated and anxious. Puttock was spewing many truths, but it didn’t mean Nestor had to like them.

“Who else have you murdered in your lifetime? Let’s get to it,” Nestor said.

“I’ll give you one more name, one you will enjoy digging up from the past,” Puttock said. “But only under one condition.”

“Name it.”

“We make an exchange. I tell you a story, and you tell me a story. No holding back, no omission of facts. Each one of us offers up a story to each other.”

“What type of story?”

“I’ll go first, and you can choose any story you like, as long as it’s...truthful. If your story proves to be truthful, I’ll give you another name for your investigation.”

Nestor had promised himself not to share any personal information with Puttock, but he figured he could embellish or fabricate almost any story and make it seem plausible. Puttock was smart, but not omniscient.

“I’ll go first,” Puttock said. “Can I get more coffee first?”

Nestor waved toward the mirrored glass and kept his silence. Two minutes later, a guard placed two cups of coffee on the table, one for Puttock and one for Nestor.

“I met a book collector on Reddit in the year 2008. He told me he had a copy of 9 Lords of Night in his possession, and that he would be willing to sell it to me. He refused to ship it. Said I had to come in person to retrieve it. And he told me that I better pay in cash. My knowledge about Xipe Totec was very faint then, but I knew enough to be intrigued. I drove to East Lansing, Michigan that very weekend to meet with the seller. He lived in an 8-story apartment building near the Michigan State University campus, or at least that’s what he told me. He said his name was Villa. When I arrived, I asked to see the book, and he told me to wait. His house was decorated in so many antiques that for a moment I thought an old lady lived there. He sat me down at his cherrywood table, and he promised me that the book would be in my possession very soon.

“Villa man made me a cup of coffee. We talked for two hours about Mexica artifacts that had been discovered in Mexico City in the past decade, and we talked about books we liked to read. Just like me, Villa had a deep fascination with the myths of the Mexica. The gods, their children, and the mysteries that lay buried beneath the metropolis of CDMX. Villa opened his bookcase, which had sliding glass doors. He placed a thick paperweight on the table before me, shaped like a flat disc, and said, ‘you will find the book right in there.’

“I laughed. This is not a book, I said. This is just a polished stone. The man began to laugh, and when he opened his mouth, I saw that he was missing all his upper and lower molars. That only left his incisors and canine teeth. ‘I thought you were a real book collector,’ he told me. ‘Go ahead, read it, it’s right there.’ I peered down at the disc, which was about six inches in diameter. The black glass was as smooth and polished as a mirror, and I saw my reflection. Obsidian. Back then I had a beard and had lots of hair, and the reflection in the stone was sharp as a photograph. But my reflection was missing its eyes. No matter how I turned my head, or how close I leaned into the stone, my eyes were nothing but blurred splotches. I looked up and realized that perhaps the man had slipped me a roofie or a tab of acid in my drink, and I began to panic. Suddenly, I had a very bad feeling. But I also didn’t want to let on that I was afraid. I simply nodded toward the man and smiled.”

“What did the man look like?” Nestor asked.

“That’s the funny thing. To this day, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t remember if he was young, or old, white or black. His image has faded in my memory into a sort of mannequin-like figure in a three-piece suit. Yet when it was happening, he didn’t seem abnormal. The man asked me if I understood what the book was about. And I said, ‘but where is the book?’ He turned to me, lit a cigarette, and told me I needed to be more flexible with my definition of what a book could be. He told me his family was from Guanajuato, Mexico, and that he had many relatives in Chicago, just a few hours away. He was a visiting professor here at MSU just for two semesters, and he had brought part of his book collection with him to East Lansing. I glanced at the tomes on his bookshelves and marveled. There were many original editions of Joyce, Faulkner, and Borges, as well as gilded editions of Don Quixote and the plays of Federico Garcia Lorca.

“I wanted so badly to get up and inspect each book, to cherish its weight in my hands, but something kept me seated there in that tiny wooden table next to the man’s kitchen. The man’s cigarette smoke danced throughout the room, and he told me the stories about Xipe Totec’s brother Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror. Out of the four siblings, Xipe and Tezcatlipoca, the Red and the Black, respectively, got along the best. They each made a creature that did their bidding.Tezcatlipoca’s was the Oculín, a bristling worm that could eat a man’s courage just as easily as it could eat him alive. It fed on fear, and it infected man’s heart with fear. 

“Xipe Totec created Miahuacóatl, a serpent whose face was covered in razor-sharp stones shaped like arrowheads, and whose tail was the head of a bony fish. Xipe Totec had created Miahuacóatl for a single purpose: To eat men’s dreams. This is a story about the two gods that I had never read in any book. Villa tapped the black disc on the table and said, it’s all right there, inside the book. It’s inside 9 Lords of Night.”

“I looked down at the table, and I noticed the disc was no longer there. Instead, there was a small book, titled Los 9 Señores de La Noche. I picked it up with my hands and rifled the pages. Here was the treasure I had travel so far to attain. Villa turned to me, and said, ‘Would you like to know what it’s like to dance inside a labyrinth?’ He let this question linger in the air, like the smoke from his Marlboro Lights. I could smell flowers on his breath, and something else, a smell that was oily and metallic, like petroleum. I turned my eyes back toward the table, and the book was gone. Now all that was left was that flat obsidian disk he had laid out before.”

“Care for a drink?” The man said. He opened a bottle of tequila from the bookshelf. “Let me get some glasses from the kitchen.”

“I sat in that tiny dining room, scratching my head, wondering what was happening to my vision, what had happened to the bound book that was no longer there, and why the light looked so strange in this apartment. It was light that shifted and turned, bending itself into colors that were not humanly possible to perceive. It was at that moment, that I heard a whispering coming from the kitchen. Villa was whispering to someone in the kitchen, loud enough to be heard, but low enough that I couldn’t make out any of the words. Was there another person living here? Were they with him inside the kitchen? What were they talking about, I wondered?  I wanted to acquire the book 9 Lords of Night, but I also felt uneasy, very nervous, sitting here.

“The whispering continued, stopped for a moment, and then changed over to laughter. It was mean, terrible laughter, the kind that ridicules and hurts. Malicious cackling. Then the whispering resumed with more intensity, as if there were suddenly more important things to say in secret. I put my index and middle fingers on the surface of the black disk, and something strange happened. Suddenly, I could feel every sound around me, and every sound became music. The beating of my heart an orchestra; the low rumble of traffic outside the building a nursery rhyme; and yes, even the whispering by my host in the kitchen became like an electric bass at a rock concert. I had never experienced sound on such a deep level. When the whole world turns into music, your consciousness rises to another level. What I experienced in those moments became more powerful than any DMT or mushroom trip you could ever muster.

“Suddenly, I had a double urge: to snatch the disk at all costs, to make it mine forever, as well as the urge to get rid of it and shatter it into pieces. I was about to pick it up in both hands, when I heard the whispers in the kitchen turn into a slow purr and rumble, like that of a large beast of prey. The image of a lion, its mouth caked with dry blood,  came to mind. The apartment had grown dim, and the temperature had dropped by at least ten degrees.

“‘I’ll be right there,’ Villa said in very clear English, which soon turned again into his whispers. My heart raced, and my forehead and neck burst into a sweat. Suddenly, I felt very ill, and very frightened. I am not a man prone to being spooked, but I was pretty fucking sure I didn’t have the nerve to look at my host again straight in the eye. I stood up, snatched my coat, and headed for the door. I took one last glance at the disc on the table, and I heard the whispers start again in the kitchen. I caught sight of the man’s silhouette in the doorway. Villa’s back was turned to me, and he was very intent on some activity on his kitchen counter. If I didn’t know any better, I would have guess he was chopping up vegetables on a cutting board for dinner. But he kept on whispering. The whispering became deafening, louder than any sound I have every heard. And just when it became unbearable, I heard a loud crack erupt from the kitchen. The kind of crack you would expect from a butcher breaking a bone of a steer. I turned toward the door and ran out of the apartment building. I felt cold air strike my nostrils, and I ran  toward my car, panting, wanting to be safely inside, and far away from this place. I drove away and never went back.”

“Did you take the disc?” Nestor said.

“Was too afraid. I was able to find another copy years later.”

“Did you ever find out who this book seller was?” Nestor said.

“I did. He was a visiting anthropology professor by the name of Villa. MSU had invited the The UNAM university professor to guest teach for a year. But there’s something I didin’t found out until later. The address where I met him, that antique-filled apartment —it wasn’t his. It was the apartment of another professor who had died recently just days before of a heart attack.”

“And what was Villa doing in his apartment?”

“Raiding his book collection, I suppose.”

“Breaking and entering?”

“And pretending it was his,” Puttock said.

“Were they connected, the two men?”

“I have no idea. But in all the research I did, I never found any evidence that they knew each other or spent any time together.”

“What happened to Villa?”

“He returned to Mexico, and disappeared.”

“He just vanished?”

“His family never reported him missing. But yes, we can say he disappeared. He was last seen in a city of Santa Teresa in 2013, near the U.S.-Mexico border.”

“What do you think Villa was doing in the kitchen?”

“I’ll never know. All I can tell you is that hearing a man whisper like that shook me to the core. I have never felt as afraid as I did that day, listening to his whispers slither from the kitchen.”

“And the disc?”

“I don’t know.”

“Cool story, bro,” Nestor said, letting out a soft whistle.

“Neat? That’s all you have to say, detective?”

Nestor nodded. He enjoyed teasing Puttock. A man with an ego of such gigantic dimensions also ran the risk of having a very fragile ego.

“Fuck you, Buñuel.”

“Don’t take it so personally. Here’s what I think went down. I think you got invited to dinner by a gay professor who was a little lonely, and you got paranoid. Maybe you smoked a little hash, you got a little loopy. And when the time for romance became inevitable, you bolted. Maybe you’re just afraid of your own queer urges.”

Puttock’s face hardened into stone. He slid his coffee cup forward two inches using his index finger, as it were filled with rat poison. As the cup traveled, he deepened his frown.

“You think this is just a game, do you?”

“I’ve been interviewing men like you for a long time. You need to remember that. Are you ready to give me the name of another one of your victims?”

“I do, but first, it’s your turn to tell a story. It’s the deal we made.”

“Fair enough,” Nestor said. He slipped out of his black sportscoat and wrapped his muscular arms around his coffee cup.

“My story is about the masks we wear,”  Nestor said. He adjusted his black t-shirt, sat up straight, aware that the cameras were recording through the mirrored glass. “It’s also about how closely time is bringing us to…”

“Close to what?” Puttock said.

“Close to absolute collapse, followed by darkness.” 

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