Chapter 5 BREAKING THE NIGHT

"My friend Richard, I forgot to tell you that in another part of the village next to that forest, some old friends met because of a dreadful crime. As I recall, they greeted each other more or less like this:

"Hello, Detective Das."

"Hello Marco, Mark, or Mark Linen! What a pleasant surprise and what a coincidence to meet you at a crime scene."

"Of course, it's been a long time since we've met."

"Yes, it's the truth; I've been assigned other types of cases; I've had to take some serial killers out of circulation."

"Sometimes demons take over bodies or minds, or sometimes they are on the loose."

"I forgot that everything supernatural surrounds the great Marcos. Even with his youthful appearance, even though the first time I saw you I was just a young man, and now that I am close to retirement, you look the same, you should share with me the potion or the spell."

"To be the best detective in the country, you need more inference. That's nothing out of this world; just eat healthy, sleep well, don't stress about anything, and do fun exercise. Don't punish or belittle yourself. But what would you know about that? You stick to bad drinks like a limpet. Your stomach knows no limits when it comes to sweets and fatty foods, and your shiny bald head shows that you complicate yourself a lot and stress over nothing.

"Yes, it's true. At one time, I had problems that felt like a mammoth's footprint. Now, looking back, I know it wasn't that bad. A boss used to tell me "Worry when you can't get it up", and that's happening to me, but I don't even worry about it anymore."

"You are very eloquent, Das; I don't know why you smell funny, like broken elephant plates."

"What a comparison! Do you know what happened here?"

"Yes, very easy, they broke up the night."

"Ha-ha-ha-ha, you mean the man cup-chocolate."

"You know what happened, so why do you ask?"

"I believed it until I saw you; your presence adds a touch of uneasiness; it makes one cautious with the obvious."

"Das, you're still getting complicated, like that time at the central hospital."

"Marco, that's something that every day that goes by, I consider that I don't pass, just like in kindergarten."

"Are you crazy? I still remember how you were crying with fright, like a scared child."

"I got dirt in my eye, or maybe a toxic gas; it irritated my eyes and made me hallucinate."

"Yes, and how do you explain how you wet your pants?"

"Maybe I got water or steam, or maybe I had prostate problems."

"Well, there are no chemicals or steam in a kindergarten, and I would believe you know about the prostate, but back then you were twenty-five years old."

"Well, you are very difficult; we'd better have a drink to celebrate this meeting; in fact, let's have a little bottle of that stuff that looks like liquid gold to break up this night."

"You know I don't drink when I work."

"And when I don't, you don't either."

"You, on the other hand, only drink when you do not sleep."

"Marco, nodding his head, said, I still don't know what that thing from kindergarten was."

"That was a licanthrope, better known as a werewolf; you knew it; that's why you bought those silver bullets."

"Yes, they still make fun of me at headquarters because someone told me the story, I even had to go to the psychologist many times; that's why I guess I didn't pass; in fact, I exchanged those silver bullets for drinks."

"Well, they wouldn't have been of much use to you either."

"Marco, although my biggest doubt is if, in fact, that bug was the bad guy. I don't think so, it looked as if it was looking for something that belonged to it. That's what was bothering me, so much so that I continued investigating that garden, discovering that children were abused there. The hardest thing was to control myself and not kill those so-called teachers. They thought that by doing those abominations, they were purifying their souls, so suddenly the wolf was not the monster."

"Maybe, but I don't like talking to monsters."

"Possibly, Marco, you are a racist ox; you don't consider that there can be good beings or that they behave badly because there are people like you who shoot without asking questions."

"Das, anything is possible, although all the horrors I have seen caused by those creatures leave me with no desire to even greet them."

"Ok, Mark, you have your reasons. By the way, I am right about the sword, Dármela."

"Please, Das, tell me, what do you know? Finding it is my primary mission."

"Ok, but first tell me what that thing is and why you care so much about it."

"It's a very bad object, one of those that Saladin Bass forged twenty thousand years ago."

"How did he produce it when there was no technology."

"Detect if you know that robots are not needed to produce weapons."

"I know, Marco, but they would have to melt it."

"Look, Das, metallurgy is very old; even some very good techniques have been lost in time, and others, like Saladin's, have been buried by my forefathers."

"Well, I suppose that just as there are unsolved crimes throughout history, there are many forgotten stories. And there are things that the people should not know about; as long as they can barely meet their basic needs, they are happy, and life is hard enough to make it even more difficult for them."

"Well, Mark, but tell me about the sword."

"Das, it turns out that Saladin Bass was a kind of king with many resources who became obsessed with magic in all its colors. Then he came up with the idea of melting steel by pouring human sacrifices in the molten iron broth; besides, when forging weapons, they tempered them with plasma instead of oils, and they marinated them with spells and witchcraft."

"But the other time you told me that the witch that the police had brought was a fake, that there was no such thing."

"Well, it doesn't exist now, but it did exist. What happens is that some envoys have put an end to many bad things; however, sometimes nothing is absolute."

"Like my neighbor who got pregnant, with the husband who had a vasectomy operation."

"Of course, an operation can fail, or another neighbor can help."

"Ha-ha-ha-ha, Mark, at last I hear a joke, but you are dilating me; keep telling."

"Well, it is true that all the weapons that this Saladin made did not acquire powers or curses. Although some of them did, and they are very dangerous instruments. One of them is the sword Dármela, to melt this flaw, Bass sacrificed 66 people; besides that, it was covered by the incantations of a sorcerer called Botched, whom I suppose I destroyed.".

"You are confusing me again if you say that this happened thousands of years ago and you say that now you killed that wizard; maybe it was a descendant or someone with the same name."

"However you want to consider it, my dear Das, now is your time."

"All right, a month ago I was in the prison of Alcatras. There was a mafioso who said that he had very important information about some bombs that a madman had placed all over the city, which he would only share with me. I was considering that story. When talking to that guy, who did not look like a criminal but a drunk guy, about the cell, which was more luxurious than the best suite where I have stayed, and the exquisite dinner of lobster with a delicious drink, we talked about books and movies. Until we finished dessert, he confessed to me that it was a lie about the explosives. That he had read about it and that it was all orchestrated to tell me that the big boss, Don Josemara, had bought a farm in a jungle, where every night they observed a lady crying. They tried to grab her, but they ended up unconscious, both with bruises on their bodies. The boss took priests, spiritualists, shamans, and others, but none could until a fat old man arrived and unearthed an old box. Everyone thought it was the corpse of that frightful man, but the surprise was greater when they found only that object wrapped in parchment with strange symbols. The fat sorcerer ran away without even charging, shouting like crazy "The sword, Dármela". So far, he has given me his explanation. What he didn't tell me is why I had to receive that information. It is true that I have been looking for that instrument since you asked me for it. I just haven't dedicated much time to it and only with people I trust; that is to say, I haven't spread the gossip."

"It must be a message for me; we don't know how much reach this capo has or what he could be."

"Maybe it's a cacaineman."

"I've never met one of those hybrids."

"Marco, I remembered another question that sometimes keeps me awake at night: what was the bug in the central hospital?"

"I thought you knew; I saw how you crossed your fingers."

"Well, that's what I thought, and how did those half-human and half-beast individuals come about-are they products of zoophillia?"

"I don't think a human could copulate with a bat."

"Well, then what do you say, Mark?"

"Maybe they are products of sinful relationships or curses or diseases, or they are bugs from other dimensions, beings of darkness; maybe there is a completely different world that we refuse to see."

"I was told this once when I went to some people who claimed they levitated; however, I only saw them jumping like a frog. I was told that I had a blocked mental center that prevented me from seeing it. But there are things that one does not consider, and they happen. At least I did not think that a river could make one dizzy, and it happened to me, or that werewolf, I saw it very real; I did not see a man with a dog disguise or something like that."

"You're right, although maybe you didn't see things as they really were, like me; maybe I didn't see that the real monster was the director of that garden. I'm not to blame or to make excuses; what happens is that I was trained to destroy those beasts without question. The only time I did it was a blunder, once I tracked some lycanthropes that devastated some villages. I got to their burrow fighting against thousands of them, or I thought I did. At times, I felt I could not take it anymore. I tried to surrender, although the only option was to fight or end up in their clutches. One by one, I exterminated them. Except when I reached a small cave where one of them was giving milk to her cub, a beautiful black wolf cub with a white star on her forehead. The she-wolf roared at me, showing her long teeth, making me almost split her with my sword, I was restrained by the screeching of the cub. Then I walked away, leaving them there, in the middle of that massacre, in a red lake with hair. Years later, there were some murders near there, and they say they spotted a black werewolf with a white star on his forehead. I have tried to hunt him down, and every one of his murders is my fault for a moment of weakness. He is one of my burdens; someday I will hunt him down and make a jacket out of his jet fur."

"It's complicated, sometimes, knowing what is good or who is the real monster. Sometimes what you think is the right thing to do may not be; maybe we've had a blindfold and a carrot placed in front of our noses; maybe we all have some beast in us."

"Very wise words; at least rum makes you a philosopher."

"Lol, maybe I'm a drink-man, a drink-man."

"Ha-ha-ha-ha, at this point you're more drink than man.""