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Huitzilopochtli Night's chill breath whispered across the woodland and licked
the pines with ice and flicked snow throughout until they looked like
tombstones rising in the moonlight. Two hikers, packs on backs, made their way through the ankle-deep
snow, stopped to observe and rest less than fifty feet from an old
weather-beaten house. The two-story structure creaked in the wind. The moon
draped shadows like gaunt, clutching fingers across it. The female hiker, long red hair appearing strawberry in the
moonlight, snow resting in it like powdered sugar, said, "That's the
place, Kevin." She shifted her pack for comfort. "Creepy enough," Kevin said. "You know, Dag,
you get some crazy notions. How long's this shack been in your family?" "It's not exactly a shack, Kevin. Old, yes. But a shack?
No. There was a house here on this site before the Civil War. Not this one, but
a house. I believe this one was built in the early 1900s, but don't quote me on
that. But, you don't like the view, so let's get inside. It's cold." Kevin smiled, pushed at his unruly brown hair with a gloved
hand. "You're the one that wanted to rough it a little. So don't say it's
cold. 'Any fool can hike in the springtime,' you said. 'Where's your sense of
adventure?' Remember?" "I remember," Dag said. "I wasn't cold then. I
meant it would be more exciting." "The word's cold, not exciting." "All right. If you want to go home, there's the trail
... somewhere beneath the snow." "You've got me trapped," Kevin said grinning.
"Guess I'll have to go through with it." "Thought you might, tenderfoot. Besides," Dag said,
showing him a narrow smile, "I thought we might be able to think of
something to do besides sleep. Something to wile away the time, help us forget
the cold." Kevin looked curious. "You brought cards?" Dag slapped his shoulder playfully. Her gloved hand popped up
flecks of snow from his thick flannel coat. "Silly. C'mon. The snow is
nearly to our butts." Laughing they trudged toward the house. The wind picked up, blew a gusty popsicle wind against them,
chewed through their clothes and pricked their flesh with goose bumps. The house, a cold, gray corpse, capped and slashed with
white, rattled its termite-riddled bones. When they were on the long encircling porch, Kevin said,
"This is the damnedest snowstorm I've seen for this part of the country.
It's really getting deep out there." He slung his pack off his shoulder.
"This porch go all the way around?" "All the way," Dag said, and she removed a key from
her jeans pocket. "You keep this old joint locked?" "For what good it does. It's been in the family for
years. Some pretty nice antiques in here. That's why all the windows are
boarded up. Even have an old Edison in here with those big thick
platter-looking records." "What a treat." "No sense of history," Dag said, and she unlocked
the door. It was as dark as the sea bottom inside. "Charming," Kevin said, and he took out his
flashlight. They went inside, Kevin led with the light, slashed at clinging cobwebs
and swirling dust. "Damn," Dag said as she thrashed cobwebs from her
face and hair. "You're supposed to knock them out of the way, not on
me!" "Pardon me, Masser Dag ... God, but it's dark in here,
and cold as a polar bear's foot." "It's the high ceilings that do it," Dag said.
"Hard as hell to heat." Dag slipped off her pack and frame, leaned them against the
wall; Kevin, who had been carrying his in his hand, tossed it next to Dag's
pack. Dag bent over her pack and removed a Coleman and a handful of
candles. She lit the candles, and with Kevin guiding her with the flashlight,
placed them about the room in a circle. They lit the candles on the old
fireplace mantle last. "Don't throw out a lot of light, do they?" Kevin
said. "Reddi Kilowatt they're not," Dag agreed. "And they smell funny." "Cheap." "Tell you what," Kevin said. "I'll go out and
see if I can scrape up a bit of firewood. Provided I can find something that
isn't snow covered." "There's a little shed out back. Used to be a pump
house. There's some wood there. Some of it might be rotten, but it'll do for
tonight, throw off a little light and heat." "Sounds like my best bet." "Yep." "You coming?" "No, I'll stay here and make sure these cheap candles
don't go out." "Don't talk to any ghost while I'm gone." "Don't even say that, Kevin." "Hey, sweetheart. This was your idea." "Don't remind me. Go on before I tag along in your
shoes." Kevin kissed her on the forehead, said, "Right
back." He went outside and around to the old pump house. The wind
howled through the pines like a dying wolf. The fire crackled pleasantly. Kevin and Dag sat together,
Kevin's flannel jacket draped over their knees. Strobe shadows and orange-red
glints filled their faces. "Not so bad, huh?" Dag said resting her head on
Kevin's shoulder. "Well, the rooming isn't great, but it isn't as bad as
the food." "Last time I ever buy Spain." "This old house," said Kevin, "didn't you say
something at school about it being haunted?" "No. I said there was an old legend about it. Not
exactly a haunting. No ghost. Let's don't talk about it. I'd forgotten about
it." "Crying out loud. You talk me into this and won't even
tell me the ghost story that goes with it?" "It's a silly story." "It'll entertain me." "Roll out those bedrolls and I'll entertain you!" Kevin laughed, took Dag's hand. "Come on, tell me." Dag sighed, lifted her head from his shoulder. "It's
just a bunch of nonsense. It'll give you nightmares. Worse yet, it'll give me
nightmares and I'm the one that thought up this screwy idea." "The cold does take some of the charm out." "Uh huh." "Very well. You talked me into this, so that puts you on
the spot. Dag, spill the story." "All right, but it's screwy. My grandfather, who owned
this house last, was as rich as they come. He could do what he damned well
pleased. He pleased to explore the world, and did. Down in South America he
found Huitzilopochtli, or so he claimed." "Who?" "Huitzilopochtli. Let me tell you a bit of the
background behind that. It helps for understanding the story." "Are you making this up?" Dag held up her hand. "Girl Scout's honor. This is for
the family legend. I've heard it all my life. I was interested in it enough to
do some reading on it. There really isn't much about Huitzilopochtli, or
witchy-wolves, as the Spanish called him. As far as I can tell the
witchy-wolves stuff had nothing to do with werewolves and that sort of thing.
Some other connotation altogether. "The Aztec, as the Spanish called them, supposedly,
early in their history, found in a grotto an idol. This idol was
Huitzilopochtli, and through the idol a god lived. The god offered the Aztec
advice. It was a constant oracle if they would satisfy certain conditions. They
were to carry the idol with them like a banner and feed it on fresh hearts
ripped from the breast of recently sacrificed victims. This was part of the
Aztec preoccupation with human sacrifice, the satisfaction of
Huitzilopochtli." "And your uncle found Huitzilopochtli?" "So goes the legend. After the Spanish came and
destroyed the Aztec, the idol was hidden, and eventually when its keepers died
it was forgotten. Without human sacrifices it became nothing more than stone
again. "While exploring some ancient caves my uncle came upon
the idol. All this was recorded in his diary. What happened after the discovery
of the idol was also recorded, and when his diary was read it was determined he
claimed the idol made him a promise." "He claimed the idol made him a promise..." "The same promise it made the Aztec. He brought the idol
home with him. Here. Used it to make things better for himself than they were.
Not that he needed it. He was rich, remember? But you see, the neighbors
started missing." "I got it. He was killing them for
Huitzilopochtli." "On the dot. He kept a diary of it all. How he killed them
and flayed their skin to wear as a robe." "Yetch!" "In this very house he killed and cut the hearts out of
his victims. The diary goes into great detail. It tells how he fed them to the
idol, a small black statue not over six-inches high with a leering face,
ruby-red eyes, and one of its hands holding an upturned plate." "A plate?" "That's where the heart went, and once it was placed
there, still dripping blood, the statue would begin to come to life. The diary
tells how its eyes would be the first thing to reveal its life. Blood red they
would become, and then the statue, plate and all, would grow to the height of
eight feet." "Jesus, that's one tall tale. He was losing his
marbles!" "When the heart was devoured, the statue would return to
normal size." "And lifelessness?" "Right. Well, it was never entirely lifeless. Just
limited in mobility." "Why the skins? Why did he flay the victims?" "That was another part of the Aztec custom. To flay the
victims and wear the skin to impersonate a deity." "What happened to your grandfather?" "That's the interesting part. He went to prison. For one
night he was in the middle of one of his ceremonies when the law broke down the
door. They found grandfather wearing the unfortunate victim's skin. The body
was on the floor, it's chest torn open." "The idol?" "Nowhere to be found." "Then it was all in his mind?" "The victim's heart was never found either, and
according to legend, there were deep grooves dug in the wooden floor planks as
if by something heavy being dragged across it." "Huitzilopochtli making his escape." "The scrapes got smaller outside, and they said they
tracked the scrapes for some distance till they disappeared into a stream. They
dragged the stream a couple of times, but decided the current must have carried
it out to the river." "And your grandfather? You said he went to prison for
awhile." "He did. He began to age radically. You see he was 65
then and looked 40. He'd looked 40 ever since he found the idol. He claimed
that was part of his agreement with the god. Fresh hearts for eternal life and
youth. "He spent about six months in jail and looked 70 by the
end of that time, and then, by a stroke of luck he managed to escape." "They catch him?" "Never even saw him again. But legend goes that some folks
saw him, and that he was as young as before, and the story goes on to say that
when the heat died down he came back here, and off and on, it's been his
headquarters." "And the diary?" "The police took it, turned it over to the family
eventually. That's how we all know about it." "Grisly!" Dag nodded. "But you have to admit, eternal life is
quite a prize." "I suppose," Kevin agreed. That night they made love and Kevin could not remember it
ever being so passionate. Not even the first time when the thrill of sneaking
into her dorm room added to the pleasure. This was something else altogether.
Hot, unrestrained passion. When they were through he slept with Dag close in his arms,
her sweet breath tickling his flesh. It was the smell of the candles that first alerted him to
wakefulness, and then the sound of chanting. He blinked. Dag was gone. He raised up on one elbow, and
gasped. Before the fireplace, back turned, was a figure, and on the figure's
back was a tattered skin. Enough of it remained so that there was no doubt as
to what type of skin. It was human flesh. Through rips and rents in the skin
the flesh of another showed. It was from this figure the chanting came. And as Kevin watched, frozen, the figure turned. It was a man, about 40. But the eyes were much older, and
very wicked. Kevin found the courage to struggle out of his bedroll and to his
feet. The man moved toward him. Kevin could see that the face of
the skin was thrown back like a hood. The man reached up and took it, pulling
it down over his face. "Kevin." He turned quickly. Behind him, wearing the same ghoulish garb
as the old man, was Dag. "Dag ... What?" And then he noticed what was in her
hand and what set on the floor beside her. "Eternity is worth most anything," Dag said and she
lunged toward him with the obsidian knife. He had just enough time to scream before the old man grabbed
his hair and Dag planted the dagger in his chest. But before the blade ripped
his heart free, the thing that had been at Dag's feet, a little, black, grotesque
statuette, moved on stone legs and feet toward him. In one hand, balanced in
the middle of its palm, it held a black, obsidian plate. Empty. For now. "Huitzilopochtli"
was originally published in 1980 ... and don't ask me where it was originally published. It later appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent,
a collection of Lansdale's short stories published in a limited-edition
hardcover by Subterranean Press. "Huitzilopochtli" © 1980 Joe R.
Lansdale. Strap on your gear and hike on back here Thursday, March
14, for more Mojo excitement! |
