36. Tezcatlipoca #2
The mist clears a little as Liam stops at the bottom of stone steps, looking up to a platform that used to be my attic. Where the worst thing I used to hear from it was some angry ghost dragging chains back and forth. Life used to be so simple.
“Will you stay with me?” he asks.
“Of course I will,” I promise him. “I wouldn’t leave you for anything.”
“No, I don’t mean…” He bites his lip. “It’s not through fear. I know you wouldn’t run. You’ve saved me so many times already. I know that. But if it shows me…”
I take his arm and pull him around to face me. “I promise you, I’ve seen it all. You don’t need to worry about me.”
He nods, once and slowly, his face blank with whatever he’s doing to prepare himself.
I stroke a hand down his cheek. “I’m here for you, no matter what. You’re strong. And you’ve got this.”
“Okay.” He smiles the smallest, saddest smile, then tilts his face to catch my kiss. A quick one that I give him instantly, that’s sweeter than words could describe. Because now I’m his boyfriend, and he needs my comfort, and I’m so determined to be here for him.
I trace a hand down his back and rest it there when he ascends. He’s fast to the top, resolute, then he steps aside quickly to make room for me.
I follow, some altar, some stone slab coming into view as I climb higher and higher.
Bright sunshine streams from an opening in the ceiling, torches illuminate every dark corner, rows and rows of skulls on racks grin back at us.
Then, from across the room, footsteps. Or…
one thump that sounds like a footstep. Then something different. Sharper.
Liam focuses the muzzle of his gun in the direction of the sound. There, from a distant blackness, we both watch as the smoke clears, and a face appears in the mist.
A skeleton. A white skeleton face. But even as we watch, it darkens, blooming with sparkling colour until it morphs into something I recognise.
The face of Tezcatlipoca.
Liam was right. It’s the exact face from the mask I showed him earlier.
But this one is flesh. It looks so real. Not like a ghost. It looks real and here and viscerally touchable. His body comes into view, tall, well built, his skin dark, the loincloth at his waist white, the gold and jewels that adorn his arms, his chest, his legs glinting in the light.
Liam’s holding his fire. He’s letting him come towards us, out of the mist, stepping into that shaft of swirling sunlight, which lights him gloriously, head to… toe…
One set of toes.
Because one foot is long and well-formed and beautiful. But the other… It’s missing. His foot is missing, and that sharp sound, that step, tap, step, tap—it’s his mirror.
The mirror is his foot.
The very one from the paper. The mirror that I think for one moment can’t actually be missing at all, because Tezcatlipoca must have stolen it back.
And I’m happy for him. A little relieved, if perplexed.
But then the mirror wavers, morphs, and turns into a snake. A snake wrapped around a bare shin bone, slithering up and down the fleshless appendage, its long red tongue licking at the air.
Liam watches with more calm than I’d imagined him capable of a few days ago when Raul was killed by chandelier. Watches, takes the lot in, then says, “I can get your mirror. I know where it is, and I’ll bring it to you.”
“What?” The word escapes me on a breathless whisper. What is he talking about? Why is he making deals he can’t keep with a literal god?
Deeply, boldly, he demands, “Give me my brother back. Let him go. Let him cross over—just let him rest—and I’ll do whatever you like.”
Tezcatlipoca raises his chin, as if he’s assessing Liam. Slowly, his hand extends towards the altar.
We both follow the line of it, looking for what he’s showing us, but in one blink, the room has transformed again.
We’re in some kitchen beneath fluorescent lights. There are men, arguing.
Liam grips my arm hard. He’s got me so tight it hurts, and I put my hand over his, trying to calm him.
“There,” he whispers. “That’s Jem.”
His eyes are sharp, scanning all of it, every detail of the men before us, not just the one he names.
The one who, unmistakably, is his brother.
I recognise the face from the hospital. But in all the blooming colour of life, I also recognise Liam in him.
The same hair. The same lips. The same height.
And given how long ago he lost him, probably close to the same age.
A shot rings out, and Jem drops. There’s blood everywhere. Blood and brains.
My immediate urge is to shield Liam through it. Hide him from this horror. But when I reach an arm around him, he pushes it down gently. Even as tears stream down his face, he stays locked on, saying, “It’s okay. I think I must need to see this.”
I cannot imagine why. Because from there it devolves.
From there we see the men who shot him laugh.
Have to listen to them discuss what to do with him.
Have to hear the sound of a knife being freed from the block, the decision having been made to strip him, burn his clothes, and cut him up right there on the floor, so he’s easier to dispose of.
“Liam, come away.” I pull at his arm.
“No.” He refuses it, gripping me with a fist of steel as I try to shift him.
“Please, Liam, this can’t—”
“Look.” Fingernails in my skin, he moves closer to the vision, trying to get into the kitchen, trying to see over the shoulders of the men.
I’m half terrified of what he might witness, more scared he’s going to fall down the very real hole in my attic floor, so I try one last time to pull him back.
Yet he stops dead of his own accord. Stops dead as the men fall back from the body, all of them stilling in perfect silence, just like Liam did.
Then they stare at one another, as if they’re just realising the awful thing they’ve done.
But when I follow their gaze, I can see… it’s not that at all.
Right there on the floor, to the left of Jem’s head, is what looks like… an earpiece.
It must have been knocked out when he fell. Just a small, black, electronic device, lying there, these killers staring at it.
A small whimper escapes Liam, his shaking hand at his lips, his eyes locked onto the device.
One of the men starts forward, stomps on it, spilling tiny wires onto the floor. “Told you he’s a snitch,” he utters. Then he’s out the door. We hear his footsteps on whatever stairs must have been out there. The others follow sharply on his heels without another word.
But the vision doesn’t fade. It keeps on and on.
The lights flicker overhead, the hands on the clock move fast, like the hallucination is speeding through time.
Around and around it goes. An hour. Two.
Three. And Jem lying there on the floor, his eyes wide open, staring into nothing.
Four, five, six hours, and on and on. Until the light outside that building becomes brighter than the fluorescent light above.
Until sunshine hits his sickly looking face.
Until the door finally opens once again.
Police.
But not police bursting in with guns ready to try to save him.
Police wandering in casually, knowing exactly what they were about to find.
Police taking photos. Police dusting for fingerprints.
Police stepping over Jem, wandering back and forth, ignoring him, chatting.
Until another one enters, and I have to catch Liam, pull him back from that hole in the floor as he tries frantically to get closer.
“I know him!” he cries. “I know that man! He’s the detective on Jem’s case.”
The man does the same as the others—talks about what’s happened, oversees some collection of evidence. Pays little attention to Jem’s corpse, cold on the floor.
Finally, the Coroner’s people arrive, stick the body of Liam’s brother into a bag with zero reverence, only the most basic of care.
Then one of them poses a question. “Who do you want to call the family?”
The detective, leaning against a bench drinking his coffee, looks across. “No one. It’s an active investigation. We’ll deal with it.”
And with those words, Liam drops.
He falls straight to the floor, the hallucination, the temple, Tezcatlipoca, everything disappearing around us as I drop to his side, take him in my arms, and hold him tight against my chest while the sobs rack out of him.