The Periodic Adventures of Señor 105: Book 004
“Señor 105 and the Secret Santa”
or
“El Santa, el barbudo de plata”
By Stuart Douglas
Señor 105 and the Secret Santa
December 2012
Copyright © Stuart Douglas 2012
Señor 105 © Cody Quijano-Schell
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All characters in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is wholly co-incidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding, cover or e-book other than which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
The Northern Andean Highlands, Peru, c. 500BC
Señor 105 thought he knew every village and town between his home and the banks of the Suchiate River to the south, but the collection of huts he could see wavering and shimmering in front of him was entirely new. He felt Pitch’s breath against his face as the demon turned to whisper in his ear.
‘What do you think? A trifle unusual, wouldn’t you say?’ he asked and as he spoke 105 could feel doors opening inside his head, allowing a bitterly cold wind to scour him from within.
‘A little,’ 105 admitted, keeping every sign of pain from his voice. Remember who you are. Remember what you come from.
His head felt hollow yet filled to bursting with something intangible, in the same way a starving man might feel the emptiness in his stomach as something other than a simple absence. A bruise was spreading just beneath his heart, a reminder of Pitch’s earlier rage. 105 wondered if he were hallucinating the sensation of blood running like a waterfall inside his skin. Still, he stood upright and controlled his breathing as best he could.
Whatever happened he would not give Pitch any more satisfaction than he absolutely must.
He rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers down the reassuring smoothness of his mask. Remember who you are, he thought. Remember those who came before you. Pushing away his fatigue, mentally willing the toxins to leave his bloodstream, 105’s vision cleared and he began to make out more and more detail in the village. To one side, someone crouched beside a fire pit, feeding small twigs into the flames. Over there, a dog pushed its nose under a blanket and sniffed noisily at whatever lay covered beneath. Closer by, a flap opened in the doorway of a larger central building, and a hairy figure emerged into the cool dusk air, scratching furiously at its long beard.
Nick! 105 almost shouted, but caught himself just in time and changed the greeting into a cough which caused his ribs to ache anew and the bruise to blossom like a time-lapse flower inside his chest. Best to give nothing away to Pitch, no matter how he might be acting at the moment. Besides, now he looked closer, he could see he was wrong. That couldn’t be Nick, even though the resemblance was striking. As the hairy man moved around the village he was illuminated by first the fire, and then the rays of the dying sun. He was naked, save for a cloak which he wrapped around himself while 105 watched, then belted with what looked like a complete snake skin. His hair was long and unkempt, clearly never brushed, and appeared to be the same white/grey colour as his beard. He was short - 105 guessed about five foot three or four – but heavily, almost freakishly, muscled like a super-hero from an American comic strip.
His circuit of the village complete, the man ducked back into his hut.
‘Pay attention, this is rather a good bit…’ Pitch murmured in his ear. 105 was surprised to realise he had forgotten all about the demon. The man he had been watching was possessed of a power which made everything else seem unimportant. He needed no prompting to pay close attention to this man.
The flap in the hut opened again, and the man re-appeared. In one hand he held the antler of an animal; in the other, he held a drum. He walked in a straight line from his hut into the clearing in front of it. He turned round and shivered, the air around his body shimmering and refracting the last rays of light coming from the setting sun. He turned again and faced the village, presenting his back to 105, and began to strike the drum with the antler.
BOOM!
As the sound radiated out from the drum, 105 could feel the heavy beat deep in the pit of his belly, like taking a car over an unexpected dip in the road. He turned to ask Pitch what was happening, but the demon had disappeared at some point, leaving the masked wrestler alone on the edge of the village. No matter. He needed Pitch to transport him back to his own time, but for the moment he was content to watch the events unfolding in front of him.
Again the drum sounded, dragging his attention back to the clearing, where a small crowd of villagers had gathered round a fire which flickered and popped, providing the only light against the darkness of the starless night sky. Hairy Man struck the drum a third time, then placed it carefully on the ground at his feet. He lifted his head back and shouted something into the air, a painful, guttural sound, with an echo of splintering bone and tearing flesh in it.
From the hut, a second figure stumbled out. A sack made from the head of some form of big cat had been pulled over his head and secured beneath his chin. His hands were tied tight behind his back, pulling his shoulders up and back, turning his silhouette alien in the firelight. As he walked forward, one villager put out a foot and tripped him. Immediately, Hairy Man took two steps forward and back-handed the villager across the face, sending him sprawling. He gave out another angry, wordless bark and two men rushed forward and helped the prisoner to his feet, pulling him into place directly in front of the fire.
There was something in the air now; 105 could feel it - A taste of ozone in the mouth, but also a hint of burning on the breeze. He was reminded of a bull-fight he had once attended. Here the crowd was smaller and nobody was pretending that the spectacle before them was sport, but still…there would death in this circle and blood in the dirt before long. His instincts were telling him to stand, to intervene, but he could no more get to his feet than he could fly. With terrific effort he managed to whisper ‘Pitch?’ but there was no reply.
He watched, helpless, as the hairy man pulled the jaguar-faced sack from the prisoner’s head.
The face thus exposed was heavily bearded, with long matted hair and thick eyebrows, leaving only a pale letterbox of skin visible. The man’s mouth was wrong, somehow, though 105 could not put his finger on the problem.
Until the man spoke.
The sound which came out of the man’s mouth was not quite human, made up of half-formed words and noises which he felt he should understand but which remained stubbornly just short of comprehension. Blood ran freely down the man’s chin and across his chest. It pooled at the loincloth which was the man’s only clothing, then ran sideways along his waistband, a bloody belt holding the man together. 105 wondered if perhaps he had had his tongue cut out.
Whatever had happened to him and whatever it was he had said, it was immediately apparent that it had angered Hairy Man, who poked him in the chest and hissed something at him which 105 could not make out. It seemed to be an accusation. The captive man shook his head vigorously, which only angered Hairy Man all the more. With an angry shrug, he rubbed the sack which he held in his prisoner’s face, then pulled it back over the man’s head. He gestured to the crowd and one man stepped forward, holding a large bunch of jagged leaves, which he handed to Hairy Man. To 105’s surprise Hairy Man began to whip this newcomer with the leaves, the sharp thorns catching on h
is skin and drawing blood. Even more surprising, with each blow and each tiny red droplet of blood, the dust on the ground began to swirl and dance, twisting itself into ever stranger shapes, before budding off, one then another, until ten small dust tornadoes vibrated in place, surrounding Hairy Man.
Even with his head covered, the captive man knew that something was happening, though how he could tell, 105 had no idea. As he watched, the dust devils solidified, lengthening slightly, tendrils of dust extending from each corner while a larger one extruded from the centre of the tornado’s apex. Like stars, thought 105. Or dolls.
With a soft ‘phut’ sound each ball of dust was suddenly recognisable as a small, naked human shape. 105 wondered for a moment if they were children, if this was how these people reproduced. But as their soft frames hardened, as nose and eyes appeared above wide mouths full of sharp teeth, and fingers grew out from palms with nails extended cruelly from their tips, 105 realised what they really were.
Weapons.
He had no time to recoil, never mind intervene, before the ten dust devils launched themselves on the captive man, ripping and tearing and chewing on his still living flesh. And all the while Hairy Man and the other villagers