I’ve never seen so many cameras.
I kept my Maglite burning all night as I pored over those documents, searching for answers to questions I hadn’t even adequately framed. All I got were dead ends, and a reference to the ‘Archivo Rota Soledad’ – the broken archive of loneliness.
Negromonte came for me in the morning. “It’s about time,” I told him. “I have questions.”
“I do too,” he said. We sat in his office, and he poured me a brandy.
“What is a Sopay?” I asked.
“It’s a malevolent,” he said. “How did you become part of this project?”
“What is a malevolent?”
“Answer my question.” He picked up a pair of dice and began rolling them in his hands.
So I told him about us, Michelle. I told him about the party back in New Haven, when from across the room our eyes met. I told him it was academic karma – we both studied sixteenth-century Peru. I told him that you lured me back to your apartment, not that I was resisting, and that you lured me to Peru.
“What’s special about you?” Negromonte asked.
voice activation mode:
enabled
indiv 1: I’m breathtakingly handsome in a classical sort of way. What is a Sopay? And don’t use the word malevolent.
indiv 2: A Sopay is a demon of an ancient time. You’ll find them in the folklore of any tribe, though they might be called something else.
indiv 1: So a Sopay is a demon of ancient Peru?
indiv 2: Yes. They whispered to men through the centuries; build me a pyramid, larger and larger. Bring me gold. In return, your departed loved ones can walk again.
indiv 1: Mummies.
indiv 2: The Sopays were among the first mummies, created eons ago at the very kernel of time. Ancient, they live deep within the pyramids. Their minions – shadowy imps that can barely be seen – lay their weapons on a person, transforming them into something undying.
indiv 1: So Duran and Cuellar are real – undead conquistadors?”
indiv 2: They are. In hiding the stolen gold, Duran and Cuellar unwittingly returned the gold to the Sopay in that pyramid, gold the Inca themselves had taken.
indiv 1: So they were killed and turned into walking mummies as a reward?
indiv 2: A Sopay’s logic need not mirror our own.
indiv 1: Who was that man in the doorway, the first night we met? Was that Sebastiano?
indiv 2: No, no. I don’t know who he is. His mind is long gone.
indiv 1: But he’s a mummy, right?
indiv 2: Oh, yes. My grandfather purchased him at a bazaar in Algiers many decades ago. He’d been shipped from Panama and caged and kept as a curio. I keep him for two reasons. To remind myself that I am not a crazy man, that this is all very real. And because I don’t know what else to do with him.
indiv 1: I guess you can’t very well just kill him. How many more are there?
indiv 2: Hundreds, thousands I should guess. They still haunt the quiet parts of the Andean world, as we have discovered. But you must understand, my concern in this matter extends only so far as the gold. It is only the colonial mummies, those Spaniards who were there at the time of Pizarro or shortly after who concern me.
indiv 1: And how many of those are there?
indiv 2: Cuellar and Duran I didn’t know about. Four others I have come across. One is curated privately in the Archive itself by the director. Then there was the man in the doorway you spoke of. A third I located in a vineyard about a hundred kilometers outside of Oporto, where he is chained to a poplar and employed in the capacity of scarecrow. The fourth is kept by a Parisian widow of some enormous age, as a servant, she claims, though I suspect also as a lover. I paid her twenty-five thousand euros to meet him, but his mind, like the others, had long since deteriorated.
indiv 1: So how did Cuellar and Duran become involved in this?
indiv 2: I can’t say. Perhaps they read the newspapers. It is now my turn to ask questions. What is special about you? Are you the best in the world at something?
I kept my Maglite burning all night as I pored over those documents, searching for answers to questions I hadn’t even adequately framed. All I got were dead ends, and a reference to the ‘Archivo Rota Soledad’ – the broken archive of loneliness.
Negromonte came for me in the morning. “It’s about time,” I told him. “I have questions.”
“I do too,” he said. We sat in his office, and he poured me a brandy.
“What is a Sopay?” I asked.
“It’s a malevolent,” he said. “How did you become part of this project?”
“What is a malevolent?”
“Answer my question.” He picked up a pair of dice and began rolling them in his hands.
So I told him about us, Michelle. I told him about the party back in New Haven, when from across the room our eyes met. I told him it was academic karma – we both studied sixteenth-century Peru. I told him that you lured me back to your apartment, not that I was resisting, and that you lured me to Peru.
“What’s special about you?” Negromonte asked.
voice activation mode:
enabled
indiv 1: I’m breathtakingly handsome in a classical sort of way. What is a Sopay? And don’t use the word malevolent.
indiv 2: A Sopay is a demon of an ancient time. You’ll find them in the folklore of any tribe, though they might be called something else.
indiv 1: So a Sopay is a demon of ancient Peru?
indiv 2: Yes. They whispered to men through the centuries; build me a pyramid, larger and larger. Bring me gold. In return, your departed loved ones can walk again.
indiv 1: Mummies.
indiv 2: The Sopays were among the first mummies, created eons ago at the very kernel of time. Ancient, they live deep within the pyramids. Their minions – shadowy imps that can barely be seen – lay their weapons on a person, transforming them into something undying.
indiv 1: So Duran and Cuellar are real – undead conquistadors?”
indiv 2: They are. In hiding the stolen gold, Duran and Cuellar unwittingly returned the gold to the Sopay in that pyramid, gold the Inca themselves had taken.
indiv 1: So they were killed and turned into walking mummies as a reward?
indiv 2: A Sopay’s logic need not mirror our own.
indiv 1: Who was that man in the doorway, the first night we met? Was that Sebastiano?
indiv 2: No, no. I don’t know who he is. His mind is long gone.
indiv 1: But he’s a mummy, right?
indiv 2: Oh, yes. My grandfather purchased him at a bazaar in Algiers many decades ago. He’d been shipped from Panama and caged and kept as a curio. I keep him for two reasons. To remind myself that I am not a crazy man, that this is all very real. And because I don’t know what else to do with him.
indiv 1: I guess you can’t very well just kill him. How many more are there?
indiv 2: Hundreds, thousands I should guess. They still haunt the quiet parts of the Andean world, as we have discovered. But you must understand, my concern in this matter extends only so far as the gold. It is only the colonial mummies, those Spaniards who were there at the time of Pizarro or shortly after who concern me.
indiv 1: And how many of those are there?
indiv 2: Cuellar and Duran I didn’t know about. Four others I have come across. One is curated privately in the Archive itself by the director. Then there was the man in the doorway you spoke of. A third I located in a vineyard about a hundred kilometers outside of Oporto, where he is chained to a poplar and employed in the capacity of scarecrow. The fourth is kept by a Parisian widow of some enormous age, as a servant, she claims, though I suspect also as a lover. I paid her twenty-five thousand euros to meet him, but his mind, like the others, had long since deteriorated.
indiv 1: So how did Cuellar and Duran become involved in this?
indiv 2: I can’t say. Perhaps they read the newspapers. It is now my turn to ask questions. What is special about you? Are you the best in the world at something?
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