Procession of the Dead (30 page)

“Anyway, this went on for some time. We killed a couple more—each time it seemed like an accident, but I think we let it happen because we enjoyed the buzz. My mother introduced me to drugs, tried to hook me, so she could take more of my money. But I was no fool. I saw drugs for what they were and avoided them.

“One night we killed a hooker’s man. Bad mistake. She paid a call with some of her friends. They cut my mother to shreds before my eyes. It was slow and bloody. I watched it all. They let me go with a minor thrashing—I was a child and they thought my mother had killed alone. From that day on I lived by myself. Life was hard, I took many beatings, I was raped a few times—but I survived. I kept going and refused to give in. I was a few months short of my sixth birthday.”

I’d seen a lot in my time and heard even more, but never anything to match this. Nothing that came close. I listened with awe and horror.

“I was a violent, backward child,” he went on flatly. “My mother never taught me how to speak. I spent most of my early years avoiding people, slithering around the alleys at night like a mute, lonesome rat. I could understand what others said but I couldn’t respond, except to grunt and shake my head. I was an animal. I didn’t wash, I wore rags, I had no friends, I fought anybody I could.

“Fighting was my only release, the only time I felt good. I was a fierce fighter, even though I was only seven or eight. I had strength enough to beat grown men. I developed quickly, toyed with clubs, ropes, knives, guns. A man came to me one day, a shopkeeper I’d often stolen from, and offered me money to leave him alone. I learned about protection that day and never looked back.

“I discovered the glories of women when I was eleven. The streets where I lived were throbbing with prostitutes and junkies. I only had to reach out and grab. I liked sex—it was almost as pleasant as fighting. I fucked a lot after that, every time I got a hard-on. I didn’t understand the concept of waiting.

“One day a couple of prostitutes asked me to be their pimp. I was tough, as I said, but backward. They thought they could manipulate me. They were wrong. I demanded nearly all their money, beat them if they misbehaved, fucked them more often than their clients. But there was nothing they could do about it. I was like a boulder on top of a slope—once pushed, I couldn’t be stopped.

“My biggest problem was money. It clung to me and I couldn’t get rid of it. By the time I was fourteen, I had more than I knew what to do with. I had no interest in cash but I knew that others would kill me for it if I just sat on what I had. I hid wads under stones around the city. Many would be stolen, or I’d forget where I left them. I didn’t care. It was only money. I could get more whenever I wanted. I knew nothing of banks and business. I’d learned to speak—just about—but I still couldn’t read or write.

“Because it was expected, I invested in guns, drugs and whores. I opened brothels, established drug factories, traded weapons. Everything I touched turned to gold. Success hounded my every move. I took over gangs, killed their leaders, won men’s allegiance even though I didn’t care for it. I was growing into a force, attracting attention, lawless and otherwise, but I was still a wild beast. My temper was getting out of hand. I fought nonstop, attacking every possible target with a fury born of frustration and self-hatred. I was spinning into an abyss of my own making. An early grave beckoned. I’d fostered powerful enemies and taken no steps to appease them, to hold the gangsters at bay, to win over the money men. Everything was poised to crash down around me.

“And then I created Leonora.”

He was back to the mystery at last, and I was glad. I could have listened to his story all day and night any other time, but now I was growing impatient. I couldn’t see how it tied in with the Ayuamarcans or my not being human.

“I needed a mentor,” he said. “I recognized that, even though I knew little else. I believed I could
do
something if I had the right teacher. I had to learn to express myself clearly, read, plan, act meaningfully. I was amassing a fortune and I needed to know what to do with it. Men were stepping forward, offering their advice and services, but I couldn’t tell the pearls from the parasites.

“One night in bed I thought of what I needed—a woman who could mother me, who’d love and care for me more than life itself, who’d never grow impatient, who would be wise and knowing. She’d know how to deal with money, where to invest it, which men to listen to, who to trust. With her help I’d formulate ideas, plans, dreams. She would nurture and direct me.

“As I lay on the verge of sleep, thinking of such a woman, I saw faces, then naked people. They floated through my mind like ghosts. Hundreds, maybe thousands. I searched for a friendly face, panning from one to the other. Finally I settled on a handsome woman, kind and wise in appearance. I thought this was the type of woman I’d choose if I could. She
seemed right
.

“As I studied her, I idly wondered what she might be called. Something exotic, surely. Leonora, I decided. Leonora… Shankar. I don’t know where the name came from. It just popped into my head. A fitting name for what would have been a fitting mentor. If she’d existed.

“I fell asleep thinking of her, all the things she’d teach me, what I could do with the help of such a woman. The next day, walking at random, I found a shop.” He paused and his fingers drummed the window. “Or I was led to it more probably. It was nothing to look at, tucked away in a dirty side street. There was no name or sign hanging outside. The window was full of puppets. They were pretty. I moved closer and pressed my nose against the glass like a street urchin. Then, with a shock, I recognized the face I’d been dreaming of the night before. My brain churned. As I tried to make sense of it, a man emerged from the shop and bade me enter. I was wary, but then I saw another man inside, taking down the puppet I’d been staring at. My curiosity got the better of me and I went in.

“The man who’d welcomed me shut the door, put up the
closed
sign and led me to the rear of the shop. In a dark room with strange symbols scrawled on every wall, two more men waited. Both were blind, dressed in robes, and spoke in a foreign language. They performed a ceremony I couldn’t understand and involved me in it. I went along with them because, once again, it
seemed right
—it was as if I was still dreaming.

“The blind men linked hands with me and chanted. They drew blood from their fingers and mine, mixed it and daubed the face of the puppet. Then they handed me the puppet and led me back to the street. I took it home, clutched to my chest, bewildered and dazed. Ifelt fear whenever I studied the puppet. I wanted to throw it away. But I couldn’t. It fascinated and held me. So I kept it by my side and went to sleep with it that night.

“The next morning, when I awoke, Leonora was at the door. She smiled, told me to go to the bathroom and freshen up, not to come back until I was spotless. Strict from the start, Mr. Raimi. Exactly what I needed.”

He stopped. I began to shout, to demand he quit the nonsense games and deliver the truth. But my protestations died in my throat as he faced me. His expression was… I can’t explain. Maybe he was like an Egyptian who’d chased Moses and gotten caught between the walls of the Red Sea, torn between marvel and terror as the water fell upon him.

“Leonora was marvelous,” he said. “All that my dream had predicted and more. She took me to a hotel, locked me in for six months and educated me. She taught me how to read, write, think and speak. We shot through books like wildfire. She’d pick out the main points, drum them into me, then discard them. She introduced me to the great thinkers and planners, the wondrous architects of the mind. We devoured books on economics, the military, politics, science, history. I didn’t learn everything. There’s only so much you can cram into six months, no matter how fast you work. But everything I now know stems from that time in the hotel. My life since has been a pursuit of ideas I was first introduced to then.

“With Leonora’s patronage, I wasn’t long slicing through the fabric of the city’s underbelly. Soon I was lord of my patch. I expanded swiftly, surely, cruelly. I bought the best men in every field, bribed, bullied or blackmailed them. Leonora told me we didn’t need to know everything about our business, but we needed people who did, who we could control, who’d do the hard graft and leave us free to dream and plan.

“Within two years I was a major force, buying up every policeman, killing competitors, bargaining with those more powerful than me. It was difficult at the time to see a day like this, when I could sit here and lord it over all. But I had my dreams and Leonora and, in time, my other Ayuamarcans. Within a decade I was king of the city. Five years later I was The Cardinal, feared by all, central to all, lord of all I surveyed.”

“But what about
me
? ” I demanded impatiently. “Conchita, Adrian, Y Tse and the Ayuamarca list? Where do we fit in? How?”

“Peace, Mr. Raimi,” he said. “We’re getting there. I’m rushing the story as fast as I can but there is much we have to cover. Now, as to where Leonora came from, I didn’t know. At the time I didn’t even pose the question. I thought she was connected with the mysterious store owners, my vision of her a mere coincidence. I didn’t think about it for the first year, not until I created my second human.

“I’ve gone through many competitors during my time. They rise and fall like waves, and I’m the beach on which they break. One of my foes back then was Elmer Chag. He operated a large sector of the city adjacent to my own. We fought regularly along a dividing strip of land. He was older than I, more powerful. He should have seen me off, and would have if he’d realized what a force I was growing into. Unfortunately for him, he found it hard to see past my dirty, manic exterior. Like so many others, he thought I’d burn out. So instead of throwing all he had at me, he held back and waited for me to crumple.

“My tactics were crude in the beginning. I resorted to bullying and torture wherever possible. It was the only way I knew—find an opponent’s weak spot and hit him hard. No room for finesse. But Chag had hardly any weak points. No family, no friends, no pets. There was nothing to hit. One night—lying in bed again—I cursed the fact that he had no relatives I could kidnap and use against him. A brother would have been perfect, one who’d grown up with him and battled by his side through the years, so close that he’d do anything he could to protect him. As I thought about it, the ghost faces came to me again. I scanned them with half an interested eye, found an appropriate, big brother sort of face, and put a name to it—Victor Chag. On that image I fell asleep.

“The next day, obeying a deep-rooted urge, I returned to the shop of puppets. I’d been there a couple of times since but it had always been closed and nobody knew anything of the owners. This time it was open and, as before, I was led to the back where a puppet resembling the fictional Victor Chag was chanted over and daubed with blood. Again I returned home, fearful, confused. The next morning, Elmer Chag had a brother.”

“You’re crazy,” I said softly.

He smiled. “Maybe. But if so, what are
you
, Mr. Raimi? A product of my madness?” I didn’t reply. I didn’t dare. “As far as everyone was concerned, Victor Chag was real. I knew Elmer was an orphan but everybody else thought Victor had always been there, that the brothers were a unit. Their knowledge of him was hazy. Nobody could describe Victor clearly, they didn’t know how he spoke, what he wore, if he was vicious or polite. But they knew that Elmer Chag had always had a brother. Victor was real. I was able to create people.”

He paused, hands clasped, eyes bright with magic or madness—I wasn’t sure which. “Leonora and Victor Chag had never been born. I made them. I conjured them out of nowhere, gave them limbs, tongues, personalities, roles. I didn’t know how. The uncertainty ate away at me, drove me to distraction and the point of true madness. I went back to the store but it was shut and I found no clues when I broke in. I asked Leonora but she knew nothing of the shop, puppets or blind men in robes. So, putting my doubts to one side, I kidnapped Victor Chag and used him to bring his brother down.”

“Elmer believed Victor was his brother?” I asked incredulously.

“Implicitly. When he was paying the ransom, I tried convincing him he was an only child.” The Cardinal chuckled drily. “He looked at me as if I was crazy. I experimented after that. I tried summoning the faces and found that I could, anytime I liked as long as I was on the verge of sleep. I’d make my choice, give the ghost a name and the next day the shop would be open and the blind men waiting. I stayed away a couple of times, having summoned a face, to see if anything would happen. It didn’t. I needed the puppets and the blind men to make the ghosts come alive.

“I explored further and found there were limitations.
This
drew my attention to the first.” He waved his bent little finger and smiled. “Nobody ever asks me about this. I bet you thought it was a natural defect or the result of an injury. Not so. It bends whenever I create somebody and stays bent as long as I keep them alive. With every person I create, it bends a little more.

“That was the first sign of my constraints. When I had eight people walking around, it was stretched virtually to the breaking point. I made a couple more and was in agony. I can comfortably keep seven Ayuamarcans on the go. Eight hurts. Nine is the endurable limit. It’s not just the pain—I could live with that. But they come apart if I make too many. They lose their minds, my control slips, people start to forget them. The reality unravels. I learned that quickly and have kept to the limits ever since, never giving in to the temptation to push myself to the extreme, to try for fifteen or twenty.

“Paperwork is a nuisance. The Ayuamarcans exist in human minds but not in print. They don’t come with birth certificates, credit cards or backgrounds. At first that didn’t matter. The people I was working with were beneath such legitimacies—crooks, thieves, rapists and murderers. I could get away with such discrepancies. Later, when Ibranched into less shadowy fields, it was trickier. But by that time Ihad the resources to forge the necessary documents. It’s a hard business. Creating an Ayuamarcan is the work of a lone night, but I have to spend months beforehand working on the papers. Public figures are the hardest. Mayors are a bitch. The lengths I have to go to in order to create solid backgrounds capable of standing up to the most rigid investigation…” He sighed with exasperation.