Rendezvous with Hymera (12 page)

Well-knowing the reputation of the area, Colin had left the car in a bank’s secured parking lot, a
couple of blocks away from their destination.

Before
entering the slum, he muttered:

“Here starts the fun... Keep close to me.”

Clara clung harder to his hand, throwing around vigilant, cautious glances from behind the shaded lenses of the sunglasses she rarely took off.

Once again consulting the address, they headed to the middle entry of the respective building, as
dirty and sordid as the others, where a bunch of noisy kids were chasing one another, yelling more ferociously than a tribe of savages.

“This is it,” he said. “Second floor. Let’s go upstairs.”

They silently climbed the stairs enveloped in darkness, where the smell of urine mixed distastefully with the odor of fried fish, garbage and sweat. Colin took his cell phone out of his pocket, using it as a flashlight to see the two doors on the second floor.

One was simple, white, without any number or inscription. On the other door, covered with a
generous layer of grime and other substances, hardly identifiable, an inventive owner had written with a marker:
I’M HAMMER DICK. KNOCK AND YOU SHALL BE SCREWED
.

Clara drastically bit her lips, from where suppressed roars of laughter came out in the form of a strangled
hissing.

Grinning widely, Colin knocked firmly on the slimy door. After a few
seconds it opened, revealing a middle-aged guy, with an untidy beard that concealed his features, holder of multiple layers of fat, mostly hanging out in the form of a huge belly - what Clara used to call
a monument
raised in honor of the hero fallen a few inches below
.

The paunchy man looked at them with glassy eyes, reeking of cheap alcohol from a mile away.

“Who’re you?” he stammered. “What’d you want?”

Colin took the initiative.

“Hello. We’re looking for Eva. Eva Aris. Does she live around here?”

“That crazy broad?! No one knows anything ’bout her for months,” he muttered, scratching his
unkempt, greasy beard. “I think the neighbor from downstairs reported her missing to the cops... She lived here,” he indicated the opposite door with a hand so hairy it would have aroused the envy of any respectable gorilla.

“Weird woman, she didn’t talk to anybody, seemed to live on another planet...”

He focused his gaze on them with difficulty, the right eye looking more to his own nose than in their direction.

“What’s your business with her?”

“We’re distant relatives,” lied Colin. “Thanks for the information,” he said and started down the stairs dragging Clara after him.

He waited a few seconds, and after the fat man closed the door and a locking sound was heard
clearly, he fished in one pocket and took out a tool, which seemed to be a combination between a screwdriver, multifunctional pliers and a torture instrument.

“What are you doing with that?” she whispered slightly alarmed.

“Stay here,” he said, getting back up into the darkness.

Once he reached Eva’s door, he discretely lighted the lock with his phone and, using the magic tool
and his skillful hands, he rapidly unlocked the old, shaky latch. In two steps, he was near Clara again, pulling her up the stairs. They entered in the apartment unseen and unheard, closing the door behind them.

“Hold this steady for me,” he said handing her the phone and removed a roll of black tape from
his pocket, then stuck a piece on the viewfinder.

“So that no one can see the light from outside,” he explained, then felt along the wall until he
found the switch and turned on the lights.

“If anyone catches us in here, we’re busted,” she whispered. “How the hell did you get inside?! Oh,
wait, actually, I don’t wanna know. If we get arrested, I can honestly say I have no idea what I’m doing here!”

He laughed quietly. Together, they began to inspect the apartment. It was extremely small and
modest, but clean and tidy to the limit of obsession. Clara had a strange feeling of deja-vu studying the room, which served as a lobby, living area and kitchen. It was simply furnished with a sofa, two armchairs, a table and a few other paraphernalia. One corner of the room was decorated with a spider web woven with artistic craftsmanship; in its middle, the artist, an impressive specimen, stood motionless, with the predator’s infinite patience.

One wall was entirely covered with shelves loaded with books of all genres, universal literature
novels, dictionaries, encyclopedias, philosophy, science fiction, all arranged by categories and authors.

One title drew Clara’s attention, because that book was slightly crooked on the shelf. She inclined
her head and read the inscription on the book’s edge:
Le Yoga de l’Occident
,
Charles Kerneiz
. Then she noticed that the entire section was dedicated to literature having the subject Yoga.

“Hm, what a coincidence...”
she murmured, then said louder:

“Looks like Eva Aris was really
interested in yoga. I’m tempted to believe she also tried to practice certain exercises.”

Colin was just getting out of the bedroom.

“Look what I found,” he said, displaying the hand in which he held a massive silver bracelet.

Clara examined it carefully. It was beautifully made, in the shape of a serpent swallowing its tale. On
the inner side there was an inscription:
When the disciple is ready, the master will appear.

“Interesting,” she said. “Symbols and yoga proverbs... I was telling you I found a very wide
selection of books about yoga.”

So saying, she gently extracted from the shelf Charles Kerneiz’s book and gave it to Colin, who
began browsing through it, mindfully captivated.

“What a thing,” he whispered after reading a few excerpts here and there. “It says here repeatedly
that some exercises have incredibly dangerous follow-ups for those who are not prepared or adequately trained.”

“That’s right,” she intervened.

“Then how did this book get published? Why does it describe in detail those exercises?

It’s like putting a weapon available for any profane!”

“It’s not quite like that,” she told him. “First of all, the one who experiments could only harm himself, because each one of those who aspire to obtain powers and abilities through yoga to harm another end up either destroying themselves, or are neutralized by other forces, superior and unknown, from this Universe.”

Seeing the bewilderment in his expression, she elaborated:

“You need a special psychological structure to reach a high level and to be able to do what people generally call
miracles
. I think Jesus was a great yoga practitioner... Walking on the water, which is a primary sort of levitation, the miraculous healings, resurrections of the dead and other things he did are clear proof. The biggest of all is his own resurrection and then his famous
ascent to Heaven
.

Colin was listening with his jaw dropped.

“If a priest could hear you, he would say your theory is a blasphemy!”

“Why?” she replied serenely. “Maybe narrow minds would believe that, but there isn’t anything
blasphemous about it. Yoga isn’t explicitly or bindingly subjected to any religion, and these practices based on meditation and enhancing one’s mental and spiritual power have been existing for centuries and can be identified in any culture. Even though they have a different name, the essence is the same though.”

And, as an after-thought, she added, returning to the initial subject, “There
are very few who have the time, patience and necessary tenacity to try at least a minimum of basic exercises, not to mention the advanced ones.”

“It appears Eva Aris was at least willing to try,” he said and, wanting to replace the book on the shelf, he
noticed the white corner of a paper sheet between the pages. He extracted a piece of paper on which it was written with round, regular letters, several words:
Lotus Street, No.7
.

“I wonder what this could be?” she asked loudly.

“Obviously, it’s an address, but it doesn’t seem familiar.”

“Maybe it’s from another town,” she suggested.

“Let’s go. We’ll ask around. Perhaps we’ll find out.”

Clara tucked the paper in her bag and, after a small h
esitation, also took the silver bracelet. Then, removing all traces of their clandestine presence, they left the apartment, and he quietly locked the door behind them.

After descending the stairs, Colin signaled Clara to stay behind him, and he glanced discreetly
through the almost opaque pane of the building’s front door. Near the corner of an opposite building was a group of three young men with foredoomed faces of criminals, smoking and swearing copiously for a reason known only to them. The one who seemed to be the
council’s
leader was a big guy, rugged and bearded, dressed in dirty jeans, a greasy tank top and a few hundred square inches of tattoos, mostly illustrating obscene pictures and anatomically difficult positions.

“This one looks like another version of the bearded dude we met upstairs, some thirty years younger
and thirty pounds lighter.”

“Yeah. It would be best to try and avoid them. I never enjoyed being alone against three,
especially this sort of bullies”

Clara’s jaw went slack.

“Do you mean you’ve been in this kind of situation before?”

He grinned.

“Back in college, I had an entourage of friends... not very well-behaved. My mother used to call them
hooligans
. Let’s just say I had two choices: learning to deal efficiently with this kind of thugs or face my folks when I came home with bruises and broken ribs. I suppose you can imagine which choice was easier to put into practice.”

She smiled, but wasn’t at all amused, picturing her lover’s face covered with blood and bruises. She
shuddered from head to toe.

“Let’s get out through the back,” she told Colin, grabbing his hand, and headed to a small door
placed behind the stairs, which she had noticed only due to the cracks that let inside some sunlight. “I prefer to go around the whole neighborhood rather than have a confrontation with those guys.”

Twilight, with splendid tones of colors and chilly shadows, had descended over the city. Colin and Clara had stopped a few hurried passers-by, but none of them could give any information about the existence or location of said address.

Eventually, tired and discouraged, they decided to put an end to their detecting work for the day.
Colin drove leisurely on a side street, where scattered lanterns formed abstract games of lights and shadows.

His painter’s eye and mind appreciated the artistic value of those images and, in different
circumstances, he would have stopped to photograph certain segments of the street landscape, trying then to reproduce them with a brush.

But it was late and he didn’t have any photographic equipment, so he resignedly directed his
attention to the roadway.

The only pedestrian strolling on the cracked pavement was an old lady who was walking slowly,
leaning on a cane, bent under the weight of years.

Cla
ra asked him without conviction:

“Shall we try again?”

Colin stopped the vehicle beside the old lady, and Clara got out.

“Excuse me,” she approached the woman who was watching her curiously, with kind eyes framed by
a network of wrinkles. “Could you tell me if there is in this city a
Lotus Street
? We need to find number 7.”

The old woman creased her for
ehead in concentration then the wrinkled face cleared suddenly.

“Yes, Miss, of course I know where it is. I go there all the time. Number 7 is
Saint Michael’s Church
.”

***

Following the woman’s directions, they navigated in darkness through the labyrinth of streets until
they reached their destination.

The church seemed impressive and imposing, not because of the building’s dimensions, but due to the
inexpressible feeling flooding them when they looked up to the narrow, tall windows and the beautifully executed frescoes decorating the church’s exterior. On the roof tower, a Christ with his face contorted under the pain of a whole world was looking hopeless at the sky, immortalized in an endless waiting, nailed on the cross that, from an ancient torture instrument had become, through an abject irony, the symbol of Christianity.