El Diablo
A supernatural thriller
by G. Zotov
pre-order - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HR174DN
Release - December 26, 2018
Prologue
Lima, capital of the Republic of Peru
October 14 1931
THE
OLD TELEPHONE rattled, jumping up and down on the bedside
table. Miguel groped for it, then swatted it like a fly with a blow of his
hand.
Contrary to his expectations, the phone
didn’t shut up. It continued to annoy him with its repeated buzzing which
sounded like a snoring man having rust poured down his throat.
Miguel struggled to rub his eyes. What was
going on, dammit? He reached out in the dark, feeling for the receiver, and
brought it blindly to his ear. “Speaking.”
“Excuse me, Señor Capitan,” the phone
wheezed.
“You have any idea what time it is?” Miguel
said, swelling with spite.
“Yes, Señor Capitan. It’s four a.m. May the
Virgin Mary and Jesus himself be the witnesses of my apologies, but I was told
to wake you up on the orders from Deputy Minister Juarez. He demands you arrive
at Plaza Mayor ASAP. This is an emergency.”
“And what’s up there?” Miguel asked,
suppressing a yawn.
“I’ve no idea, Señor. We’ve had a driver
sent to get you. The car should already be waiting by your front door.”
Miguel hung up without saying goodbye.
He sprang from his bed. A dull light bulb
under the ceiling lit up a closet which the hotel keeper had had the audacity
to call a furnished room. A well-worn bed, a wash stand, a faded bedside table,
a stone floor (especially welcome in this constant heat), a writing desk
(which, judging by its age, must have been left behind during the
conquistadors’ retreat) and a portrait of El Presidente on the wall, generously
embellished with the dried bodies of mosquitoes. Luis Sánchez Cerro stared
wearily into the semidarkness of the room, lips pressed tight, his epaulettes
resembling large unwashed dishes on the faded photo.
Miguel splashed his face with some icy-cold
water. Yawning mercilessly, he buttoned up his tunic.
He walked down the loose steps which
groaned their death throes underfoot. That bastard landlady of his had had the
cheek to ask fifteen sols a month for this dilapidated box of a “hotel room” on
the third floor of a 17-th century colonial shack.
The car’s motor was already chugging away
below. Predictably, a Ford and a rather ancient model at that. Could anything
new come out of this country?
A familiar young driver courteously opened
the car door. Miguel slumped onto the worn back seat, immediately transported
to another planet: one that smelled of cheap two-centavo cigars, with a
magazine picture pinned to the dashboard, a cracked windscreen and a missing rearview
mirror. It was a good job the driver was sober - something that didn’t happen
very often in Peru.
The car sped off, racing through the empty
city.
“Do you know what happened, Señor?” the
driver tried to strike up a conversation.
“It’s none of your fucking business,”
Miguel snapped.
The driver subserviently shut up.
The Ford turned off toward the Barrio
Miraflores, bypassing a coconut grove and a row of dark yellow morisco houses
with their columns, tiled roofs and little carved balconies. The sound of the
ocean surf lulled him to sleep; the car’s rocking motion felt like a cradle.
Unwittingly Miguel closed his eyes and didn’t even notice himself dozing off.
He had the same dream he’d always had in
Lima ever since his first arrival here. It had already become some sort of
tradition. American and Japanese warships, packed into Vladivostok harbor like
sardines. The clouds of explosions hanging in the autumnal sky. The screams and
the sounds of weeping and cussing voices that hung in the air.
It felt like true pandemonium. The whole
world seemed to be there: respectable merchants, their beards quaking with
fear; petrified young girls in school uniforms; ladies in threadbare furs.
That was the early-morning scene of October
25 1922 during the evacuation of General Dieterichs’ troops from Vladivostok.
Rumors spread, one more terrible than the next, about the Japs’ treachery and
their alleged retreat from their positions. The Bolsheviks were expected to
enter the defenseless city within an hour.
With shouts of “Get back, motherfuckers!”
the Americans fended the panic-stricken people off with their bayonets as the
crowds stampeded for the last ships, even though the night before, the most
beautiful girls in Vladivostok had parted with their virginity in the sailors’
cabins, paying for their right to be the first to step on the life-saving
gangplanks. The whole surface of the water was littered with the contents of
smashed suitcases, clothes and children’s toys floating side by side.
Miguel had been one of them that day, a
puny blond lad of about twenty years of age with a pallid freckled face. ‘Allow me to introduce myself, ladies and
gentlemen: Second Lieutenant Mikhail Martynov’. He'd been wearing a
tattered army greatcoat, with a Nagant revolver in his hand and a crazy look in
his eyes.
Good God, how long had it been... he could
still clearly remember the moment when the ship had finally set sail, packed to
the brim with fugitives. And as the gray strip of the shore began to widen,
he’d realized he’d never return to his home city.
As he’d stood on the deck that day, he'd
vacantly put the revolver’s barrel into his mouth and licked it. The taste of
gun oil assaulted his tongue. He’d said a prayer, then silently sworn as he
pulled the trigger with all the determination of youth.
The click echoed in his ears like the
tolling of a funeral bell. Of course. There hadn’t been any rounds left in the
cylinder for a long time. The White army had been completely depleted of
ammunition during the prolonged campaign.
What a young idiot he’d been then. He'd
then spent years in Tokyo gutters - without money, in lice-ridden tatters,
subsisting on one cup of rice in three days and sleeping rough under the bridge
next to drunken prostitutes. He quickly realized that his Spanish was of no use
here whatsoever and began dreaming of getting to Spain which was prohibitively
far away.
Three months later, he found a job as a
deckhand on a rickety old tub which was taking some Japanese migrants to Peru.
That’s when Mikhail Martynov had become
Miguel Martinez.
He got himself a Peruvian passport, then
made a quick career from ordinary policeman to criminal investigator. He
finally had a roof over his head, never mind it that was only an old shack but,
excuse my French, only generals could afford the good life on their salaries in
this country. How many of his fellow officers had either gone on the bottle or
shot themselves; some of them were now shoeshine boys in Tokyo and Shanghai
while countless others had become horse-cab drivers in Harbin. He'd been one of
the lucky ones...
“SEÑOR?
Excuse me, Señor, but we’ve just arrived,”
the driver had already opened the car door and was shaking him awake.
Reluctantly Miguel climbed out of the Ford.
His head felt leaden; he was falling asleep as he walked. He reached into his
tunic pocket for a small wad of pressed coke leaves and blindly sent it into
his mouth. Great stuff. It may have numbed the tongue and tasted like a cross
between bay leaves and peppermint, but it gave you a real boost.
In just a couple of seconds, he felt fresh
as a daisy. His mind had cleared, his eyes could focus, his body sensed the
chill in the air. Where had they brought him to? He was in some rundown back
alleys behind the pretentious Plaza Mayor. He'd been here many times before.
Murders were common in nighttime Lima. The city thrived on them. Knife fights,
shootouts, rapes and drunken brawls... very nice.
The sunrise was long in coming. Miguel
headed for a group of men with flashlights who froze in the gloom between the
skeletal remains of houses. A beam of light flashed straight in his face.
“We’re very happy you’re here, Señor
Capitan.”
Hearing the voice had finally awoken Miguel
to the fact that something bad must have happened. Up until then, he’d thought
it just a bad joke... but if the deputy police minister had arrived at the
scene in person, there must have been a reason for it.
He brought two fingers up to his kepi in
salute, “Good morning, Sir.”
The Deputy Minister Juarez, a squat
overweight balding half-breed (like half the local population, he was an
explosive mix of the Quechua Indian and Spanish colonials) and looked rather
funny in a civilian suit and a Fedora. He
would have looked more at home hunting jaguars in the jungle with a spear in
his hand, Miguel thought lightheartedly in Russian.
The deputy minister brought a handkerchief
up to his head and wiped his brow. His lips were shaking. Miguel’s reckless
cheerfulness vanished, replaced by an uneasy anxiety. The two of them stood in
a small clearing between an ancient colonial casa and an abandoned church. The old priest had died almost a year
ago and a new one hadn’t yet been assigned.
Miguel cussed as his shoe got stuck in the
viscous mud. Juarez lowered his flashlight.
All the remaining drowsiness had now
cleared from Miguel’s head. His shoe was colored a deep cherry red.
“It looks like the murderer bled her to
death,” the deputy minister said. “It’s
like a lake here. All the grass and tree roots are soaked in blood. The rest
you’ll see in a minute, Señor Capitan,” he stepped aside, giving way.
The police photographer’s camera flashed,
imprinting the scene on Miguel’s retinas. A girl, dressed in a lacy
cream-colored dress puffed up with
petticoats almost medieval in their style, the sort women still wore in the
areas bordering Bolivia. Her thick black hair was meticulously coiffed, her
eyes wide open - as was her mouth with just the tip of her tongue showing. Her
face resembled a crimson mask: someone had covered it with blood, painting it
like a fence around a peasant’s hut. Her arms had been tied behind the trunk of
a thick tree, her body positioned on top of its roots. A wash tub stood by her
feet; judging by the dirty-brown streaks covering its bottom, it must have been
used to collect the blood.
He shouldn’t have been so cross with Juarez.
This was indeed an emergency.
Miguel walked over to the body. The cops
parted, letting him through. Blood squelched underfoot.
“How long ago was she found?” Martinez
asked, peering at the dead face.
“Two hours ago, Señor Capitan,” a young
corporal said in a stifled voice, trying not to look at the victim. “You know
how old people can’t sleep at night sometimes, don’t you? They just take their
dogs for a walk or something. It was one of them who found the Señorita. You
can’t imagine how quickly he ran to the police station. At first we wanted to
untie her but... as soon as we touched her we decided to call an officer. He
told us to contact his superiors. And his superiors called you, Señor.”
Miguel crouched in order to get a better
look at the dried blood on the girl’s cheeks. A faint pleasant aroma hung in
the air. How strange. Normally, a murder victim stinks like a dead animal at an
abattoir. And this... he couldn’t quite place it. It smelled like perfume but
sweeter... more delicate.
He reached out and touched the girl’s arm,
pulling it toward himself, then recoiled as the body gently leaned toward him
with a soft rustling sound, like a pillow.
Martinez touched her arm again, gently
pressing the skin. Something crunched inside. How interesting. The murderer had
professionally removed every bone from her body, then stuffed it with aromatic
herbs, painted her face with her own blood and brought it to the slums behind
Plaza Mayor about midnight. He must have drained her of blood prior to that
(aha, there was a lacerated wound on her throat), then used some of it as
decorating material and dumped the rest of it on the ground.
This wasn’t going to stop at the Deputy
Minister’s level! Very soon El Presidente would know too.
Her eyes were framed with four glittering
lines pointing in different directions. Miguel nodded to a cop to bring his
flashlight closer. He'd been right: it was gold dust, hence the shimmering. Oh,
great. The guy had some sick imagination. Miguel didn’t for one moment doubt
the fact it had been a man. He'd already solved three serial killer cases in
the past in different Peruvian cities, including the Trujillo Predator - a
baker who’d strangled four street whores. But those were rather narrow-minded
people with no imagination whatsoever who’d collected their victims’ body parts
as souvenirs following the moth-balled example of Jack the Ripper.
This was something different. A very
specific approach. This girl wasn’t a well-ridden priestess of the high street,
the kind he’d encountered already in Vladivostok. She appeared to be no more
than fifteen, a mere schoolgirl.
So what would our murderer’s profession be,
then? A surgeon? A taxidermist? A crazy artist? In any case, it made no sense
for Miguel to linger here. The body (or cynically speaking, the stuffed bird)
had to be sent to the station for further investigation. It was hard work
trying to examine it in this weak light.
It didn’t look as if he’d get any sleep
tonight. Nor the next night, most likely.
Miguel rose to his feet.
The sound of surf came from the ocean. The
girl, painted with blood and stuffed with aromatic herbs, looked like an
expensive doll in the first sunrays, similar to those that Miraflores-based
rubber tycoons give to their spoiled little daughters. The gold streaks around her dead eyes were
dazzling.
Miguel
reached into his pocket for his cigarette case. The cop offered him a lighted
match with a bow. Miguel’s head disappeared in clouds of bluish smoke. Tobacco
was excellent here, much stronger than the Russian home-grown samosad. The only thing he couldn’t get
used to was the local brew, pisco,
and there was no way he could get vodka here, even from smugglers. Red parrots
shuttled between palm trees, squawking. What was he doing here, at the very
edge of the Earth?
Martinez stepped toward the Deputy
Minister, then swung round.
The nails.
The dead girl’s fingernails had been
different.
He walked over to her and took a closer
look, bringing her hands to his eyes one after the other. Her left hand had the
long, sensitive fingers of a piano player. Her right-hand fingers were short
and knobbly.
Miguel cussed in Russian, investing all his
fury into two snappy words.
This time he spent a good ten minutes
examining the body before he finally returned to the Deputy Minister.
Juarez raised his blood-shot eyes to him.
Miguel waved his hand at the tree to which
the girl was strapped. “I’m afraid, this is gonna be fun, Señor.”
The Deputy Minister raised a quizzical
eyebrow. “What makes you think so?”
“She was put together from several bodies -
at least four, by the looks of it. The murderer took his time creating this
doll. It looks like he might want to open a toy shop.”
Seagulls squawked hysterically over the
ocean. Dark clouds concealed the sky. A powerful gust of wind from the shore
threw up grains of sand which stuck in the teeth of early-morning passersby. A
storm was brewing.
Chapter
One
Vintage
October 14 2015, location unknown
HAVING
ARRIVED on the scene as the promise of a new world
wonder - the mixture of a childish dream and medieval magic - the film industry
had quickly degraded to the state of a mediocre dumb-entertainment option. By
the early 21st century, it had already grown into a fat kraken whose tentacles
had already reached into any available space, forcing its way out of the tiny
movie theaters and taking over the world which had willingly succumbed to its
dominance. Take a look around yourself. Movies are everywhere: in our offices
and lounges, in front of our airplane seats and on our smartphone screens. It
reaches its fine predatory earbuds into our brains, focusing our eyes on the
images it wants us to see. We’ve been reduced to a state of blind zombies, the
obedient slaves of a colorful world of make-belief. Movies have been absorbed into
the bloodstream of every living being on planet Earth. We can’t be a hundred
percent sure anymore whether it’s us living our real lives or whether it’s
someone else filming a movie of them. As any priest will tell you (maybe in not
so many words), God is the film director of our Universe which makes us a bunch
of underpaid extras in His latest blockbuster.
But I digress. Time to start this show.
The lights dim. The celluloid rustles in
the projector.
Ladies and gentlemen, please remove your 3D
glasses. You won’t need them: the movie’s rather old. Everybody got their
popcorn? Make yourselves comfortable and try to disconnect from the rest of the
Universe in order to hear these two people speaking.
They’re walking toward you gingerly,
groping their way in the pitch darkness. You can hear the sound of their
footsteps from afar: a soft and predatory feline gait interspersed with a timid
clatter of stilettoes on the cemented floor. Like a tiger stalking a young
deer. Or is it the other way round?
[Male voice] Please don’t. The electricity
doesn’t work here. There’s a candelabra here somewhere.
[Female voice] Why doesn’t it work?
[M.v.] It’s a very old basement. I don’t
think there’s electricity in it at all. It’s been empty for ages. Nothing lives
here, not even rats, can you imagine? This is my underground world. The rusty
pipes, the smell of a rotting mattress, the rustling of crumbling old
magazines, the crunching of broken bottles underfoot... This is the music of my
solitude. You understand, my girl, don’t you? The symphony of salvation.
[F.v., unhappily]. Sorry to be so rude but
this place is a mess! It looks like a BDSM torture chamber.
[M.v.] That’s how I need it to be. This way
I can hear it when they finally get to me.
A match strikes. A weak uneven candlelight
sends the trapped shadows darting in horror across the walls. The floor is
heaped with half-rotten women’s clothes and colorful underwear, some filthy red
leather corsets and stockings. The dark lair of a grim monster who doesn’t
leave his den for months at a time.
[M.v., catching her gaze]. Yes, this is my
bed. I sleep here too. That’s why I chose this ruin in the suburbs. No one ever
pays any attention to it. I get out once a day, to get some food and see what’s
going on. I don’t have to hide. I don’t paint my face with camouflage, if
that’s what you think. Still, even once a day is once too many. I need to bring
my outings to a minimum, otherwise it might end very badly. Very. They don’t
for one moment stop hunting me down.”
[F.v., echoes] I know.
[M.v., coughs]. Finding something suitable
to eat is a problem. There’s no decent food here! I’m sick to death of
cucumbers, bananas and whipped cream! My stomach is in tatters. I’m getting
jumpy like a wild animal. Whenever I manage to doze off, I dream of those awful
streets flooded with neon lights. Me cowering behind trash cans from the
floodlights searching for me... encircling me, baring their teeth as they close
in...
The shadows flitter. Obeying a sudden bout
of sympathy, she raises her hand, about to stroke his cheek. He recoils from
her touch.
[F.v.] Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. I
keep forgetting...
[M.v., gasps]. It’s not your fault. Nothing
to do with you. Where was I? Yes, the horror of it all. The City’s divided
between several groups, you know that, don’t you? There’re certain twilight
zones where the likes of me disappear like melting snow. We never hear from
them again. I’m sick and tired of never having any money because the City lives
in a subsistence economy. I can’t afford even the barest of necessities. I have
one last candle left. Once it burns down, I might need to-”
[F.v. shakes, breaking]. But from what I
heard, the monastery...
[M.v.] Maybe. I have no choice, do I? Even
though the monastery is the craziest place in the entire City. No one stands a
chance there. Have you any idea who inhabits it? If you meet a couple of Black
Habits in the street - or three even - you still have a chance of escaping. Or,
if push comes to shove, you can work it off. But the monastery is jam-packed
with them. There’re at least a hundred of them in there. That’s death. They can
sniff you out the moment you approach its walls; you can hear them laugh, a
disgusting laughter, sort of carnivorous. No male has ever come back from
there. Even their skeletons have never been found. Me, I’ve been in there
twice.
[F.v.] Twice?!
[M.v.] Well, what do you want? I need more
candles. It’s no fun siting in the dark, it’s sorta spooky. Tomorrow I’m going
there again. You know why, don’t you? It’s my only chance of survival. I’ve
been here for way too long. I’ve learned to survive in your world - and no one
knows what it’s cost me! Without money or food. I’ve been forced to show up in
the City’s most dangerous streets, knowing they
could suck the life out of me drop by dwindling drop. They’re constantly
hungry, those creatures, regardless of their age. The Checkered Skirts are only
merciless during their springtime hunting periods; but it’s the Black Habits
who are the real monsters. You never know who you might come across: they’re
masters of disguise capable of putting even the most vigilant of townsfolk off
their guard.
[F.v., with regret]. I used to help them.
How awful... I didn’t know what I was doing. You opened my eyes to their true
nature. I wish you good luck - I won’t go to bed before I hear from you, I
swear. Don’t fall for their charms. The Black Habits’ voices are sweet like
those of sirens, it's all too easy to forget oneself listening to their songs.
Sometimes they used me too to lure passersby to the monastery walls. I’m so
ashamed of it.
A little light flickers on with a typical
hissing sound as one of them lights a cigarette.
[M.v.] Stop beating yourself up. That was
meant to happen. Before I came to your world, I too used to think of it as
heaven, everything a red-blooded man could wish for. I used to think things
like these could only happen in a teenager’s wet dream - or on Cuba although
there you’d have to pay. Whatever. I couldn’t have even imagined I’d be stuck
here cowering in a basement, hungry, exhausted and totally wasted! I thought...
doesn’t matter, sweetheart. I used to think lots of things, none of them too
decent. Instead of coming to heaven, I’d been given a one-way ticket to hell.
Never again will I ever ask for a dream to come true! Because they do come true
only to devour your life with demonic laughter. Had I believed in God, I’d have
considered my fiasco a punishment for my sins. Do you think I’m crazy? Life
amongst monsters prays on my mind which shrinks in panic, inch by desperate
inch...
[F.v., hopeful]. Are you sure you’ve chosen
the right place? Old women say, there’re some old-school settlements only a
couple of hours’ drive away. They have those cute 1970s cottages, very pretty,
and the air there smells of milk and fresh hay. Nothing too complicated, everything’s
pretty natural. If they catch you, they finish you off quickly. They don’t
torture you to death. The locals are a happy bunch. They’re not into any BDSM
stuff.
[M.v., sighs]. I know. It’s called vintage
mode. In vintage mode, the entire ordeal lasts from twenty seconds to a maximum
of five minutes. It’s not that bad, even if they attack you in bulk. But... I
can’t get there, can I? From what I hear, the journey is too perilous. I don’t
even want to tell you what kinds of neighborhoods it crosses. Have you ever
heard about the “tough illegals” neighborhood? I knew you haven’t. When they
play, they kill for real. In my world, a video of this kind costs eighty
thousand bucks. There’s so much dirt here... so many perverts, mutants and
predators. How come I knew nothing about it before?
She looks him in the eye. Their lips almost
meet.
[F.v.] Let’s change the subject. You seem
to be nicer... and calmer when you’re telling me about your world.
[M.v., heaves a sigh.] Oh. Can you imagine
I didn’t really appreciate it? Now I go to bed every night hoping that I might
wake up and realize all this was only a dream. Dream my ass! Every morning it
starts all over again. And the thing is, I know
I’m not asleep. If I die here, I’ll die for real. It’s a real Freddy Krueger
nightmare.
[F.v.} Who’s that?
[M.v.] Just a horror creature from my
world. You have the likes of him too in some neighborhoods. He’s an incredible,
unbelievable killer who visits his victims in their dreams. He pierces them
with his steely claw and they die for real... what a lot of bullshit. I’m stuck
here now and I’ve got no idea what to do. Luckily, I met you. I never thought
creatures like you existed in the City. They might, theoretically, but they
don’t.
[F.v., pensively]. If your theory is
correct and we’re just an artificial embodiment of other people’s fantasies,
why not? Didn’t you say that even in your world virgins are difficult to come
by?
[M.v., agrees eagerly]. Absolutely! Not at
your age, anyway. Funny, isn’t it, there’re plenty of fourteen-year-old virgins
around but if you want to find a twenty-four-old one, you’ve got your work cut
out for you. And even those who are are mainly fakes courtesy of cosmetic
surgery.
[F.v.] Well, I’m not exactly innocent,
either. Here, virgins are preserved for very special kinds of games. Did you
say that our world is based on a mere dozen scenarios which keep going round in
circles, repeating themselves? You might be right. I’m quite experienced at
certain things. I’ve taken part in BDSM orgies and seen things that would make
the most seasoned of City whores shrink in horror even though it might not
involve penetration. Would you like me to tell you? Having said that... no, not
a good idea. You’d better tell me how you got here. I’ll listen to you. I won’t
interrupt you, I promise.
The weak candlelight expires. In the
thickening darkness, the two converse in whispers - but the audience can hear
them. For the umpteenth time, he describes in every detail how he came to the
City while she shrieks weakly in fear and suspense. In the absence of light,
all the camera shows is a black square. The man explains that very soon he’ll
go hunting in the monastery; the girl sobs, sympathetic. Their relationship is
just as erotic as it is innocent. She wants to touch her new friend but is
reluctant to do so even in the dark... because she already knows his reaction
to touch.
The two seem to be perfectly safe. No one
can find their secret hiding place. They’re alone in the basement, just as the
man said.
Still, he’s wrong. There’s at least one
other man watching their secret meeting from a considerable distance. He
doesn’t exhibit any emotions neither does he show any animosity.
He just watches them. He’s been doing it
for quite a while.
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