El Nigromante

A sci-fi short story about a neurosurgeon's Faustian bargain with a Mexican cartel, which leads him down a path of horror.

Whenever the cartel calls, it’s always a mistake. Not a mistake that they’ve called, but a mistake that someone who shouldn’t be dead is dead. These are the mistakes that I fix for them. I turn death back into life. I save people from the cold hands of fate.

“El Nigromante, I need your help,” Javier says.

A young boy in Puebla city had given me the name, El Nigromante, while watching me work on his father. His dead father opened his eyes and spoke and the boy muttered the words, El Nigromante, the necromancer. Since then, the name has stuck to me just like the smell of blood, never washing off.

My real name is Dr. Allan Fishcher. For most of my life, before I lost my medical license, I’d worked as a neurosurgeon. At eight years old, I watched my mother, Elena, die in a car accident. When I saw her in the morgue, while her body had been crushed beyond recognition, her face looked no different than I remembered it. Her brain, I later learned, had been completely unharmed. I’d pressed my palm against the cold glass separating us, certain that if I only prayed hard enough, she would open her eyes again. But of course, she didn’t. She remained where she was, still and cold. I swore to myself I’d never let myself feel so powerless again. But now, even though I could easily save my mother, I wonder what she’d think of what I’ve become.

I was at my lowest when Victor reached out to me. He’d heard the stories about me in the news. He knew what I’d done. “Your career doesn’t have to end here,” he told me. “I can help you continue your research. I can make you very rich, too.” When I agreed to his deal, I imagined myself back in a research lab, experimenting with corpses. Not working alongside men like Javier in roach-infested hotel rooms and dirty garages.

“Arnaldo isn’t breathing anymore,” Javier says. I hear the fear in his voice.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I’m not sure.”

“You were beating him?”

“A little, but I wasn’t too rough with him. I electrocuted him a bit, too.”

“Where are you?”

“Tijuana.” He gives me the address of a hotel in the Zona Norte. “Can you get here soon?”

“I’m leaving now.”

Most of the men I work with are animals. Cruel, boorish thugs. Javier, though, is different. He sends his money to his poor mother every month. He recites Pablo Neruda poetry while he tortures people. I tolerate him. It could be worse. I could be working with Jose again, listening to him blather on about football and the World Cup and the Champions League.

I’m moving too slowly, though. I need to move fast. Death doesn’t wait.

I get my bag from my office and fill it with everything I need for the operation. An extracorporeal membrane oxygenation system. A perfusate solution I’ve constructed from a complex blend oxygen carriers, glucose, electrolytes, and neuroprotective compounds. Then a few scalpels, of course. A wad of bandages to soak up the blood. A perfusion chamber in case we need to move Arnaldo’s head.

I put on a clean suit and hurry downstairs to my car. I drive towards the Mexican border. An arbitrary line, no different than the line between life and death, where one world ends and another begins.

Driving in the rain, I think of Daniel Everett, the wealthy philanthropist who'd funded my research in the early years. The medical board called me a monster for keeping him alive after his transplant failed, but how else could I have learned what I’d done wrong? If I’d just let him die, I would have never been able to perfect the procedure.

I see the border ahead of me. I take control of my body and calm my nerves. I can’t show any signs of fear. The border guards have been trained to sniff it out. Thankfully, it’s late. Nearly midnight. There aren’t many others waiting to cross. Once I reach the gate, I hand the guard my passport.

“Where are you headed tonight, doctor?” he asks me.

“Clinica 20,” I lie. “I have a meeting with some colleagues early tomorrow morning.”

He waves me through. I let my body relax. I’ll need all my strength for the operation.

I drive a little farther and then call Javier.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I tell him. “Make sure Arnaldo’s clothes are off. There’s no time to waste.”

Victor has been searching for Arnaldo and his father for years. Arnaldo’s father, Diego Morales, is the head of the rival Obsidian Cartel. Arnaldo serves as his father’s right hand.

The Zafiros Cartel and the Obsidians have been at war for decades. The war started over drug territories, but it’s become something else. The Obsidians see themselves as the future. They’re college educated, and they’ve embraced technology and American business models. They know the Zafiros’ violence is costing them billions. The Zafiros’ maintain their power through violence, though. Without it, their entire organization falls apart.

I turn onto Coahuila Street. Neon lights glow above the beautiful women wiggling their bodies in front of the bars and the strip clubs. A few years earlier, these sidewalks would have been crowded with American tourists, but not many Americans are willing to come to Tijuana anymore. They’ve been scared off by the stories of kidnappings, executions, and torture. Only the poor, and the addicts, and the death dealers remain in city. Tijuana is rotting. The rot is spreading, too.

I park in front of the Hotel Cruza and then go up to Javier’s room. He answers the door shirtless. His body and face are covered with tattoos.

“Where is he?” I ask.

“In the bathroom.”

I find Arnaldo lying on the bathroom floor, next to the bathtub. Javier has taken his clothes off, like I’d asked him to. Arnaldo’s skin is covered with bruises and burn marks. On top of the toilet, I see a car battery connected to a pair of alligator clips.

“Were you trying to kill him?” I ask.

“He wasn’t screaming too much,” Javier says. “I thought his heart could take it.”

He drives me mad sometimes. He never thinks. He just acts.

I tear off the shower curtain and lay it on the ground. Then I get Javier to help me roll Arnaldo’s body on top of it.

I kneel on the floor, open my bag and take out my tools. Even though Javier and I have worked together for close to three years, he still flinches when he sees me work. He's murdered dozens of men. Strangled them, beaten them, burned them alive, and dismembered them with saws. Yet, as I raise my scalpel, he signs a cross over his chest and says a short prayer.

I disinfect Arnaldo’s neck and then inject an anticoagulant into his jugular vein. I pick up my bone saw and cut through his throat, severing the tendons and flesh while carefully preserving the vocal cords.

The bone saw vibrates against my palm. Once I reach the spine, the saw halts for a moment, its blade shrieking loudly until it finally snaps through the bone.

“Can I help you, Nigromante?” Javier asks.

“If I need something, I’ll tell you.”

He’s becoming even more nervous. Fidgeting. It’s not just my work that’s bothering him. He must be thinking about what will happen to him if Arnaldo stays dead. How Victor will punish him.

Blood begins to pool around my shoes. The metallic smell of the blood mixes with the stink of antiseptic. At first, the smell made me sick, but I’ve become used to it. Javier, though, is becoming paler.

But I’m nearly finished.

I attach the nanoscale delivery system to Arnaldo’s neck. I developed the system myself. A revolutionary method for cellular reconstruction that I perfected during countless operations performed in dirty bathrooms just like this. Microscopic robots—synthetic assemblies of graphene and biodegradable plastics—begin swimming through Arnaldo's dying tissues. They seek out the telltale signatures of cellular distress: elevated calcium levels, pH imbalances, the breakdown products of dying neurons. Wherever they find cellular damage, they repair it. Soon, with their help, the oxygen deprivation stops, cellular death reverses, neuroplasticity increases.

“Is everything working?” Javier asks.

“We’ll find out soon enough. Be patient.”

I keep working. The next part is the hardest part. It requires all the concentration I have.

My hands remain perfectly still as I separate the nerves and the veins in Arnaldo’s neck, carefully connecting them to the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation system. Sweat starts to drip from my forehead, but I wipe it away. The work requires extreme precision. Extremely delicacy. I’ve performed the procedure so many times, though, my hands perform the work on their own. Soon, all that’s left to do is to turn the oxygenation system on. But I hesitate to flip the switch. My thoughts go back to Daniel Everett and the mistake that led me down this path to hell.

Daniel was a wealthy investor whose body was being consumed by advanced muscular dystrophy. When he first visited my office, the disease had progressed so far that he couldn't even shake my hand. His fingers had already curled into permanent claws. I could sense his determination, though.

“I’ve followed your research, Dr. Fishcher,” he told me. “You're the only one who’s daring to think beyond conventional limitations."

I quickly realized he was as desperate as I was ambitious. He wanted to be the first living human to undergo a head transplant. To reattach his healthy brain to a new, healthy body. The hospital refused his request, but I didn’t. I told him we’d make history together. But I also glossed over the risks involved with the operation. I was too confident in myself and my abilities. I’d been researching the transplant procedure for so long, planning each step with precise detail, I didn’t think anything could go wrong. But then Daniel awoke in his new body and let out that awful, horrific scream. His scream still rings in my ears. I didn’t want to keep him suffering, but I needed to understand what had gone wrong with the procedure. I didn’t want his death to be for nothing. So, I kept him alive—screaming in agony despite the morphine I gave him—while I poked and prodded at the tissues in his neck. Before the medical board took my license away, they called me a monster. Looking back, they probably weren’t wrong. Maybe I am a monster. I don’t know why I did what I did. Compulsion. Arrogance. The reason doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.

I push the thoughts Daniel Everett out of my mind. I switch on the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation system. Arnaldo’s eyelids snap open. His pupils dilate. He coughs and then spits out a bit of blood.

Javier looks ill. “You really are the devil, Nigromante,” he says.

I tap my knuckles on Arnaldo’s forehead. He looks lost and confused. “Can you hear me, Arnaldo?” He moves his lips but the only sound that leaves out of his mouth is a pained wheeze.

I’ve heard a little about him. He’s intelligent. An economics degree from Wharton’s and an MBA from Stanford. If he’d stayed in the United States, he could have had a good life, but instead he’d returned home to help run the family business, wanting to please his father. That was his mistake, the one that drew him into this hell.

His eyes begin to focus. He looks around the room. Slowly, he’s figuring it out. Finally, he speaks.

“Nigromante…. What have you… done to me?”

“You know my name?”

“We’ve all heard… stories of… you….”

Hearing of my reputation makes me smile. I turn to Javier. “You can resume where you left off now.”

He hesitates to move closer to Arnaldo, though. He seems afraid. Terrified of a living head.

“Is something wrong?” I ask, enjoying his discomfort.

“I’m fine.”

He forces himself to move forward, not willing to show any weakness. He kneels next to Arnoldo and continues asking him questions, but Arnaldo refuses to speak.

Then Javier’s phone rings. He goes into the next room to answer it.

“Can we move him, Nigromante?” he asks me.

“Where?”

“Victor wants us to take him to the compound in El Rosario.”

“He’s in a very delicate state right now. It’s risky.”

“You can do it, though?”

“I can do anything, but I don’t like taking risks I don’t need to think.”

“Victors thinks The Obsidians are in the Zona Notre, looking for him.”

A sudden fear grips my chest. I start thinking about all the horrible things The Obsidians will do to me if they find me. I don’t argue with Javier anymore. I go to my car and take out the perfusion chamber I’ve brought with me. It’s typically used for organ preservation, but I’ve adapted it for neural tissue. For situations just like these.

I carefully place Arnaldo’s head inside the chamber. Then I follow Javier downstairs to his van, carrying the head in my arms. A few women see us, and they scream and run away. I can only image their thoughts, seeing a nightmare come to life.

Victor opens the van’s back doors. He throws my bag and tools inside and then tells me to get inside, too. I sit on the floor and place Arnaldo’s head next to me. Inside the perfusion chamber—through the cloudy, translucent plastic—I see Arnaldo looking back into my eyes.

“Is he all right?” Javier asks.

I check Arnaldo’s vital signs. “He’s fine, for now,” I say. “But we need to move quickly. He won’t stay alive in the perfusion chamber for long.”

“Just do what you can to make sure he doesn’t die again, or Victor won’t be happy with either of us.”

He won’t be happy with you, Javier. This is your mistake, not mine.

Victor starts the van. He drives to the Transpeninsular Highway and then heads south, towards Victor’s compound outside El Rosario. The rain pours on the van’s roof with a heavy, droning thud, drowning out the Mariachi music playing on the radio.

“Things are… going wrong….” Arnaldo says. “But I can… help you.”

“How can you help me? Look at yourself.”

“You have talents… Nigromante…. We could use a… man like you.”

“I’m sure you could.”

I glance out the back window. The highway is empty and dark. The emptiness makes me feel uneasy. Things are too quiet.

“Is he still okay?” Javier asks.

“Just drive faster.”

He shakes his head. "It’s too risky. If the police see us—” he trails off.

A car emerges from the darkness behind us. The light from its headlights fill the van. I duck and press my body against the metal floor. Javier slows and lets the car pass.

“You’re scared… Nigromante?” Arnaldo asks.

“I’m not scared of anything.”

“Not even… of this?”

“Becoming a head? I don’t need to fear that. Nobody else in the world can do what I do.”

Javier turns down the music and calls his mother. Tells her that he’ll be home late. We’re running for our lives and that’s what he thinks about. Making sure his mother doesn’t stay up late worrying about him.

Another car appears behind us. It looks like the police. Fear grips my chest again. Javier slows the van. I hope the officer will pass, but he doesn’t. He slows, too and continues driving fifty feet behind us.

“What does he want?” I ask.

“He’s playing a game, maybe” Javier says. “I ignore him.”

I try to, but then the officer turns his lights on. His siren starts wailing.

“Put your foot on the gas,” I say, my heart racing. “You can outrun him.”

“Not in this van,” Javier says. “Just stay in the back, out of sight. I’ll handle this. Is there any way you can keep Arnaldo quiet?”

I adjust the dial controlling the air flowing through Arnaldo’s vocal cords. Javier pulls over to the side of the road. He puts his right hand on the handle of his gun.

The police officer parks behind us and then walks over to Javier door. I press myself against the side of the van, hiding in the darkness. The rain pounds down on the van’s metal roof.

“License,” the officer says. Javier hands it to him. “Where are you headed?”

“El Rosario.”

“It’s not very safe to be out on the highway tonight.” He peers into the back of the van. I don’t think he sees me. “What do you have back there?”

Javier takes a few thousand pesos from his pocket and hands it to the officer. “I need to get going. Just take this money and leave me alone.”

The officer stares at the money, but he doesn’t take it. Rain rolls down his face. The blue and red lights from his car flicker across his body.

“You work for Victor Ramirez?” he asks.

“It’s none of your business who I work for.”

“Have you seen this man recently?” He shows Javier a picture.

“I have no idea who that is.”

I see Javier begin to raise his gun. Before he can fire, though, the officer has put a bullet through his head. The gunshot drowns in a roar of thunder.

Javier slumps over the steering wheel. Blood pours from his skull, dripping onto his lap.

Stay calm, Allen. Don’t panic. You can figure this out.

The officer hasn’t noticed me yet. He picks up his radio. “I just killed one of Victor’s men not far from El Rosario. Arnaldo must be around here somewhere.”

He grabs Javier’s shoulders and tries to pull his body from the van, but he struggles to move the dead weight. I see my opportunity. I take my gun from my bag. I realize I’ve never used it before. Why not? I’ve never needed to. I’m not a killer. But what else can I do? The situation has forced my hand.

I move forward until I have a clear shot. The officer still hasn’t noticed me. I aim my gun at him and pull the trigger, again and again, until I’ve emptied the magazine. The gunshots echo through the van, exploding like firecrackers in my head. The officer falls backwards, onto the pavement, the rain washing away his blood.

Stay calm, Allan. Control your nerves. This is not different than surgery.

I leave the van, the rain falling against my face, and make my way over to the officer’s body. The picture he’d shown Javier is a picture of Arnaldo. I tear the badge off his jacket. It’s real. Not a fake. He’s an officer on The Obsidians’ payroll then. The realization I’ve killed a police officer chills my skin. Killing a police officer is no small thing. By morning, every police officer in Mexico will be looking for me.

My mind races. What am I going to do? How will I escape? Before my thoughts can run too far, though, I calm them. Regain my composure. First, before I do anything else, I need to deliver Arnaldo’s head. If I help Victor, he will help me. He always does.

I shove Javier’s body out of the van. I wipe his blood off the steering wheel and then put Arnaldo’s head on the passenger seat next to me. I see his lips moving. He wants to talk to me. I let the air flow through his vocal cords again.

“My friends… h-here… s-soon….” His voice has become hoarser. He talks like a corpse. “Help me.… I’ll h-help you.”

“You can’t help me.”

I start the van and keep driving towards El Rosario.

So much death, Allan? And for what? The dream of a future where all of us live to old age. All of our friends and loved ones.

“Money…” Arnaldo gasps, “M-money….”

“I don’t need your money. I’ve never cared about material things.”

“P-p-please….”

The windshield wipers squeak as they wipe the rain away. On the radio, Javier’s mariachi music plays. I turn up the volume, drowning out Arnaldo’s voice.

“P-p-please….”

Headlights appear in my rearview mirror. I grip the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles whiting. Is this the end? No, it can’t be.

Up ahead, through the rain, I see a quiet, forgotten motel. In front of it, glowing in neon, is a vacancy sign. I’ll rest there for the night and call Victor. He’ll help me figure this whole mess out.

I take the next exit and make my way towards the motel. I park near the main office and go inside. An older woman sits at the reception desk.

“How can I help you?” she asks.

“I need a room for the night.”

“I have a few. Would you rather stay closer to the office and the vending machines?”

“I don’t care.”

I glance over my shoulder. My van is still the only car in the parking lot. Its headlights burn brightly in the darkness.

The woman hands me the key for room number 4.

“Thank you,” I say.

I get back in the van and park it farther away from the road. Out of sight. Then I take Arnaldo’s head into the room.

The room is even filthier than I imagined it. Dried blood splattered on the wallpaper. Dust covered carpets. Spider webs in the ceiling corners. A few cockroaches crawling on the bed.

I place Arnaldo’s head next to the TV and then check his vital signs. His blood pressure is dropping. If I don’t get his head attached to a new body, he won’t be alive much longer.

“How do you feel, Arnaldo?” I ask.

“H-h-hurts.”

“What is your father’s name?”

“H-h-hurts…. G-God… H-help….”

I worry he’s losing his brain function. I inject more nanobots into his spine, hoping they’ll preserve his brain tissue a little longer. Long enough for me to get his head onto another body.

Suddenly, the motel room fills with light. Another car has driven into the parking lot. I go to the window and peer through the blinds. I’m relieved to see a woman and a young child get out of the car.

“K-k-kill… m-m-m-me….” Arnaldo says.

“I’m to deliver you to Victor.”

“K-k-k-kill…..”

Outside, the thunders roars again. For a moment, the room’s lights flicker. The rain keeps pounding on the windows.

I sit on the bed and turn on the TV. On the news, the reporter is talking about two bodies found on the highway. One of them, a policeman. The other, a known gang member. Christ, what a mess.

“K-k-k-kill…..”

“Enough!” I yell.

I think of Daniel Everett again. How he screamed, lashing around on the operating table as I prodded at the nerve endings in his neck, begging me: “Kill me! Kill me!” How many times have I heard that now? Too many times.

Maybe I should have killed Daniel. Put him out of his misery. Am I really as bad as they say I am? Or am I just a misunderstood genius, discarded by his peers. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, Dr. William T. G. Morton, Dr. Allan Fishcher.

My phone rings. It startles me. Snaps me out of my trance. It’s Victor.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“A hotel near Ensenada.”

“Is Javier with you?”

“Javier’s dead.”

He pauses a moment. “What happened?”

“It’s a mess. This whole thing has turned into a giant mess.” I begin to tell him the story, but he cuts me off.

“There’s no time,” he says. “Give me your address, and I’ll send a few of my men to pick you up.”

I give my address, and he ends the call.

I go to the bathroom. Seeig my reflection in the mirror, I realize I’m covered in blood. I try to wash the blood off, but it’s no use. It’s congealed to my skin.

Arnaldo lets out a horrific shreik. I run over to him. Blood is dripping from his eyes, running down his cheeks. This is bad. This is very, very bad.

The motel room fills with light again. Another car has driven into the parking lot. A look through the blinds and see a Jeep parked near my room. Two men are inside it. They must be Victor’s men. They’ve arrived even faster than I thought they would.

One of them men gets out and knocks on my door. I look through the peephole, but I don’t recognize him. I can’t make out his face in the darkness.

“Who is it?” I ask.

“Is that you, Nigromante?”

“You work for Victor?”

“Yes. Is Arnaldo, okay?”

“He’s in very bad shape. He doesn’t have much time left.”

I open the door. The man steps inside. He’s large. Six foot four, three hundred pounds, a shaved head and a handlebar mustache, heavily tattooed. When he seeks Arnaldo’s head next to the TV, the cold expression on his face fades. Like Javier, the sight of a living head makes him shrink inside of himself.

“We need to move quickly,” I say.

I picked up the perfusion chamber. The man leads be back to the Jeep and opens the back door. I see his friend in the passenger seat. I don’t recognize him, either.

“Get in,” the large man says.

I sit on the back seat and set Arnaldo’s head down next to me.

“Arnaldo’s brain tissues is deteriorating,” I say. “If I don’t get his head on a new body soon, he won’t remember anything anymore. He won’t be any use to Victor.”

The large man sits behind the steering wheel. He leaves the parking lot and drives back to the highway. Then he turns north, towards Tijuana.

“You’re taking me to Victor’s compound, yes?” I ask, but neither of them answer me.

I look outside at the fields. The sun is rising now. The sky is turning a bluish-gray. The rain has slowed, too. It falls much more gently now. I can barely hear it over the sounds of Arnaldo’s pained groans.

I see a sign for an El Rosario exit. For a moment, I relax, but then we drive past the exit.

“El Rosario is that way, isn’t it?” I ask.

The two men still won’t answer me.

“Who are you?” I ask. “What are your names?”

Silence.

Obsidians? But how did they find me? I lean forward.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

“Keep quiet,” the large man tells me.

Are they going to kill me, I wonder. Torture me? But if I die, so does Arnaldo.

“I was just following Victor’s orders,” I tell them, panicking. “But if you listen to me, Arnaldo doesn’t have to die. I can fix him. I’m the only one who can fix him.”

The man in the passenger seat points his gun at me. “Sit down and shut up.”

I sit back in my seat. I look down at Arnaldo. His eyes are bleeding even worse now. His face is covered with blood. He’s not groaning anymore.

The Jeep stops. The man with the gun puts a black bag over my head. Then we start driving again.

#

“Wake up, Nigromante.”

I feel strange. My head is throbbing. My body is numb. My vision blurred.

I rub my temples. It takes me a moment to realize that I don’t feel my fingers on my head. I don’t feel my arms, either. I don’t feel my limbs. My breath is stilted. When I breathe, I don’t draw air into my lungs. I draw it someplace else. Someplace that isn’t a part of my body.

Slowly, the room becomes clearer. Two men sit across from me. I recognize one of them. Arnaldo. Somehow, he’s been given a new body. Sitting next to him is an older man with grey hair, a grey beard, and a cruel face. The older man notices my eyes have opened, and he stands.

“Do you see what you’ve done to my son?” he asks me.

I try to speak, but even though my lips are moving, I don’t hear my words.

“Arnaldo, talk to him,” he says.

“You’re the man who hurt me,” Arnaldo tells me. His words are stilted. Drool drips from his lips.

“It was… Victor….” I say, finally managing to voice the words. “I didn’t… want… any of this.”

“It wasn’t your hands that took off my son’s head?” the old man, Diego Morales, yells.

I look downward. My body is gone. I’m on a table. My head is attached to some kind of crude medical device.

“What is this?” I ask.

“You’re not the only one who can bring the dead to life,” Deigo tells me, running his fingers over the machine with a cold familiarity. “Others have studied your work. Learned from it.”

“That’s not… possible…” Even saying those words, though, I see my own work in this machine, keeping me alive.

“Your procedure is not so difficult, really. The hardest part is practicing it. But thanks to you and your friends, my men have had lots of opportunities to practice.” He runs his hand over my hair, petting me like I were his dog. “I’m going to keep you alive for a long, long time, Nigromante. You and I are going to have lots of fun together.”

He turns a dial on the machine I’m connected to. My head swells with pressure until it feels like my eyeballs are going to explode. I scream like Daniel screamed on that operating table, as I poked and prodded his neck.

“Kill me....” I beg. The same words so many others had said to me. The words are just as meaningless now.

“You’ll have Lots of time to think about what you’ve done, Nigromante,” Diego says. “Lots of time to suffer like you’ve caused so many other to suffer.”

He turns the dial back. The pressure inside my skull lessens, but a dull, throbbing pain remains. Tears drip down my cheeks. Tears filled with specks of blood.

Is this really the end that fate has in store for me? The doctor who dedicated his life to curing death for those who die too young? Or is this just the price to pay for daring to become god?