Authors: Brian Keene
Finally, Chalco came to a dead end. A double door, larger than the others, stood before him. He wondered what new horror waited on the other side. Behind him, around the corner, he heard the monster catching up. It snorted like a bull. Its breathing sounded like a geyser.
Closing his eyes, Chalco opened the door and stepped through. Wind brushed against his face. He opened his eyes, but it was too late.
He fell into darkness…
…and did not stop.
***
Back on the mountaintop, the doorway flickered and then vanished. Still perched on the agave plant and still in the form of a worm, Huitzilopochtli hung his head and cried. He had failed. Humanity was not ready for the knowledge tequila provided. Perhaps they never would be. They were too prideful, too worldly—too human.
He’d deceived his masters. Slipped away and hid inside this form, hoping to tip the scales in humanity’s favor—turn the tide of infinity. But he had failed. Soon, he would be found out. He could not hide forever, not even outside the Labyrinth.
As the sun began to set, Huitzilopochtli inched his way down the agave and onto the ground. The soil was cooler now. He crawled across it. A shadow fell over him. He had time to look up and then the bird plunged toward him. Wriggling beside the agave to avoid the flashing beak, he fell into Chalco’s discarded water skin, which had a few drops of tequila in the bottom. The worm struggled, and then became still.
Night descended. The wildlife returned to the mountain, and in Monte Alban, Quintox waited for Chalco to return home.
He never did.
But eventually, their father and uncles returned to Monte Alban. Death came with them. The worm’s prophecy came to pass.
And the doors were closed to humanity.
And that is why to this day, some people believe in the legend of tequila. They believe that tequila is a gift of the gods. That it will grant knowledge of the universe and open the doors of perception. And they also believe that eating the worm will allow them to visit an unseen world.
But they never do.
Instead they fall.
***
***
When you write for a living, you usually write every day. And while you (hopefully) never lose that sense of magic and wonder, it is easy to become bogged down in the process. There are deadlines and publisher demands. Editors and readers are eager to suggest what you should really be writing, especially if you want to get paid. And if your mortgage payment relies on that next sale, you tend to at least consider their suggestions. If you’re not careful, crafting stories can become more like work and less like fun.
So it’s always a treat when you get to try something different and explore new literary horizons. Just like in a relationship, experimentation can reinvigorate a writer’s muse.
That’s what this story was to me. An experiment—and great fun, as well. After reading Jack Ketchum’s masterful fable,
The
Transformed Mouse
, I fell in love with fables all over again and wondered if there were any new ones to tell. Luckily, I was thinking about this while drinking a bottle of tequila.
Tequila has no concrete history. There are a number of different theories as to how it came to be. If you don’t believe me, check the internet. Tequila and mezcal experts argue over the drink’s origins, what actually constitutes the drink, where the worm came from, etc. As an enthusiast, this seems like a shame to me. And since nobody can apparently agree on its true origin, I figured I’d make one up.
Thus, I wrote a fable detailing how the “drink of the gods” came to be, incorporating much of its trappings and mystique. It’s fiction, of course. Historians might point out things I got wrong. I suggest they have a shot and shut the fuck up. It’s my mythos and I can do what I want with it.
Indeed…my mythos—the ongoing Labyrinth saga, about which much was revealed here. The second half of this story is certainly not for the uninitiated. It is decidedly mythos heavy. There are references to various novels and stories, characters and villains. If you are indeed new to my works, then an explanation is probably in order. The Labyrinth is a dimensional shortcut between worlds, universes, and realities, and is only accessible to those who know how to open the doors. Glimpses of this mythos wind through everything I’ve ever written. Every novel, every novella, and every short story contains a hint of it. Yet, I’ve purposely tried to keep those links vague, so that new readers can also enjoy the stories and books. You shouldn’t have to read Terminal to understand Ghoul, or The Rising to enjoy Kill Whitey. And yet, for the hardcore fans, the folks who read everything I write, the mythos is there—and they love it. Indeed, they want more, as evidenced by the preponderance of threads on my message board and Facebook and Twitter in which people ask for more.
This was my gift to them. It’s a love letter to one of my favorite vices (tequila) and a thank you to some of my favorite people (my readers). I hope that you enjoyed it. This novella was first published as a beautiful limited edition hardcover by Bloodletting Press. It also appeared in my short story collection
Unhappy Endings
, which is now out-of-print.
BURYING BETSY
We buried Betsy on Saturday. We dug her up on Monday and let her come inside, but then on Wednesday, Daddy said we had to put her back in the ground again.
Before that, we’d only buried her about once a month. Betsy got upset when she found out she had to go back down so soon. She wanted to know why. Daddy said it was more dangerous now. Only way she’d be safe was to hide her down there below the dirt, where no one could get to her without a lot of trouble. Betsy cried a little when she climbed back into the box, but Daddy told her it would be okay. I cried a little, too, but didn’t let no one else see me do it.
We gathered around the spot in the woods; me, Daddy, Betsy, and my older brother Billy. Betsy is six, I’m nine, and Billy is eleven. Betsy, Billy and Benny—that’s what Mom had named us. Daddy said she liked names that began with the letter ‘B’.
Betsy’s eyes were big and round as she lay down inside the wooden box. She clutched her water bottle and the little bag of cookies that Daddy had given her. The other hand held her stuffed bear. He was missing one eye and the seams had split on his head. He didn’t have a name.
We closed the lid, and Betsy whimpered inside the box.
“Please, Daddy,” she begged. “Can’t I just stay up this once?”
“We’ve been over this. It’s the only way to keep you safe. You know what could happen otherwise.”
“But it’s dark and it’s cold, and when I go potty, it makes a mess.”
Daddy shivered.
“Maybe we could let her stay up just this once,” Billy said. “Me and Benny can keep an eye on her.”
Daddy frowned. “You want your little sister to end up like the others? You know what can happen.”
Billy nodded, staring at the ground. I didn’t say anything. I probably couldn’t have anyway. There was a lump in my throat, and it grew as Betsy sobbed inside the box.
We sealed her up tight, and hammered the lid back on with some eight-penny nails. There was a small round hole in the lid. We fed a garden hose through the opening, so Betsy could breathe. Then Daddy got his caulk gun out of the shed and sealed the little crack between the hose and the lid, so that no dirt would fall down into the box. Finally, we each grabbed a rope and lowered the box down into the hole.
“Careful,” Daddy grunted. “Don’t jostle her.”
We shoveled the dirt back down on her. The hole was about eight feet deep, and even with the three of us it took a good forty minutes. Her cries got quieter as we filled the hole. Soon enough, we couldn’t hear her at all. We laid the big squares of sod over the fresh grave and tamped them down real good. Made sure the hose was sticking out at an angle, so rainwater wouldn’t rush inside it. When we were done, Daddy gathered some fallen branches and leaves and scattered them around. Then he stepped back, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his t-shirt, and nodded with approval.
“Looks good,” he said. “Somebody comes by, there’s no way they could tell she’s down there.”
He was right. Only thing that seemed odd was that piece of green garden hose, and even that kind of blended with the leaves. It looked just like a scrap, tossed aside and left to rot.
“And,” Daddy continued, “it will take a long time to dig her back up. It would wear anybody out.”
We walked back up to the house and got washed up for dinner. I had blisters on my hands from all the shoveling, and there was black dirt under my fingernails. It took a long time to get my hands clean, but I felt better once they were. Daddy and Billy were already sitting at the table when I came downstairs. I pulled out my seat. Betsy’s empty chair made me sad all over again.
Dinner was cornbread and beans. Daddy fixed them on the stove. They were okay, but not nearly as good as Mom’s used to be. Daddy’s cornbread crumbled too much, especially when you tried to spread butter on it. And his beans tasted kind of plain. Mom’s had been much better.
Mom had been gone a little over a year now. Didn’t seem that long some days, but then on others, it seemed like forever. Sometimes, I couldn’t remember what she looked like anymore. I’d get the picture album down from the hutch and stare at her photos to remind me how her face had been. And her eyes. Her smile. I hated that I couldn’t remember.
But I still remembered how her cornbread tasted. It was fine.
I missed her. We all did, especially Daddy, more and more these days.
After dinner, Billy and me washed the dishes while Daddy went outside to smoke. When he came back in, we watched the news. Daddy let us watch whatever we wanted to at night, up until our bedtime, but we always had to watch the news first. He said it was important that we knew about the world, and how things really were, especially since we didn’t go to school.
Just like every night, the news was more of the same; terrorism, wars, bombings, shootings, people in Washington hollering at each other—and the pedophiles. Always the pedophiles... A teenaged girl had been abducted behind a car wash in Chicago. Another was found dead and naked alongside the riverbank in Ashland, Kentucky. Two little boys were missing in Idaho, and the police said the suspect had a previous record. And our town was mentioned, too. The news lady talked about the twelve little girls who’d gone missing in the last year, and how they’d all been found dead and molested.
Molested...
it was a scary word.
Daddy said it was all part of the world we lived in now. Things weren’t like when he’d been a kid. There were pedophiles everywhere these days. They’d follow you home from school, get you at the church, or crawl through your bedroom window at night. They’d talk to you on the internet—trick you into thinking they were someone else, and then meet up with you. That’s why Daddy said none of us were allowed on the computer, and why he didn’t let us go to school. Child molesters could be anyone—teachers, priests, doctors, policemen, even parents.
Daddy said it was an urge, a sickness in their brain that made them do those things. He said even if they went to jail or saw a doctor, there weren’t no cure. When the urge was on them, there was no helping it. Unless they learned to control it, and even then, there weren’t no guarantees.
I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I lay there in the darkness and listened to Billy snoring beneath me. We had bunk beds, and it was a familiar sound—sort of comforting. One of those noises that you hear every night, the ones that tell you everything is okay—your big brother snoring, your little sister in the room across the hall, your Daddy’s footsteps as he tiptoes down the hall in the middle of the night.