by Otto Schafer
She swung her stone tomahawk at a rat’s head, striking it hard across the snout. The rat screeched, scurrying back. But another rat attacked.
Next to her, Paul used his bare hands and booted feet while doing his best to avoid both teeth and claws.
Breanne swung again, and again another rat attacked. Between swings she held out the old wooden shield to block the lunging bites. Occasionally her counterstrikes found purchase, parting coarse brown hair to open flesh and elicit deafening squeals. Each time, Breanne yanked her hand back and produced her own frightened shriek. But she didn’t stop. She had to get to Garrett.
Garrett’s vision narrowed to a single point, then expanded to a beautiful single-track forest trail flying by him at fantastic speeds, speeds he had never reached before. His blood didn’t pulse, he didn’t sweat, and his muscles didn’t flex. The rest of his world slowed as his footfalls landed perfectly. Then the trail fell away, leaving him covered in dark grey shadows. The shadows were burning. For an instant, he thought he heard the shadows whisper to him. If his focus weren’t so pure, so absolute, in the moment, he would have thought it was only the wind in his ears. But it wasn’t. The shadows spoke to him. The sound was barely audible, but he heard it – a single word that was unfamiliar, and yet he understood it. It was an ancient word. It was a word of power – Sentheye.
Apep made another motion with his hand, commanding the flaming shadows to bring the burning boy to him.
Garrett felt his body being drawn toward Apep. He let his mind take control of the shadowy fire. The flames glowed a brilliant blue-green. He was consumed in their warmth. But they did not burn him. He didn’t know how, but the flames were his now. He told the shadows to stop dragging him. He stopped moving. Next, he imagined the flames and shadows forming into a ball, and they obeyed. The flaming shadows were reduced to the size of a basketball.
“What’s this?” Apep said with a look of amused interest.
Garrett held the ball of flames in his hands, his eyes suddenly going wide. He blinked. What now? What do I do now? His confidence began to wane as he felt his focus slip, and with it all control. The strange ball of flame suddenly felt like a wild animal in his hands. He knew it then. The Sentheye could sense his fear. Now the ball bucked terribly in his palms, stretching and lurching, the sphere becoming unstable. It was too hot! He had to get rid of it – now! Quickly he chucked the flaming shadow at Apep as if he were passing him the basketball in gym class.
Apep’s eyes went wide as the fireball streaked toward him. He tried to stop it with a word of power, “Mue—” But he had no time. He threw his hands up and dove for cover, launching himself from the slab.
Garrett ran forward as the fireball sailed across the chamber and imploded as it slammed into a distant wall. He looked down to Paul and Bre fighting the massive rats as Lilith backed Lenny across the chamber with a flurry of kicks. He was holding his own, but if he gave up any more ground, he was going to back right into the sleeping dragon. “Behind you, Len!” Garrett shouted.
Lenny glanced back, taking his eyes off Lilith for half a second.
Lilith spun into a crouch and swept Lenny’s feet from under him.
Lenny landed hard on his back, expelling all his air, the back of his head bouncing off the stone floor.
“Shit,” Garrett said, preparing to jump from the slab. But then Lilith turned, running toward the spot where Apep had fallen. Double shit, he thought, realizing they would both be coming for him now. Garrett drew his sword.
Lilith closed the gap.
Apep had already pulled himself to his feet and was climbing back onto the slab.
Garrett looked down at the giant and sucked in a deep breath. Now or never, he thought as he positioned himself to strike down with the sword.
“Stop him!” Apep screamed.
Lilith shouted the words and made the gestures. “Akdoe mue flah ak zae ozoz. Zaeshi ak ff esh!” Vines emerged from the slab at Garrett’s feet, but they stopped growing. Lilith frowned, forced to say the words again.
Garrett cocked the sword.
“Akdoe mue flah ak zae ozoz. Zaeshi ak ff esh!” This time she said the words with a more commanding tone and the vines obeyed, bursting forth and snaring Garrett’s arms and legs. He couldn’t move.
Janis collapsed to one knee, her hand outstretched.
“Focus, Lilith! Your human side is weak. You must not fail until I succeed!” Apep commanded furiously as he approached Garrett with a pointed finger. “Do you know why you are really here, Garrett?”
Garrett grappled with the vines as they snaked around his body. What happened to Coach was about to happen to him. He was panicking, fighting with all his strength, but he still had enough sense to know this wasn’t going to work.
He couldn’t fight the vines with his muscles, he had to fight them with his mind. He had touched Apep’s energy once and turned it. He desperately needed to do that now. He tried to take control of the energy, tried to find his focus, but the more he fought the more the vines squeezed, tightening around his wrist and ankles and compressing his already bruised ribs. Come on! he thought, but it was no use. He couldn’t grasp the power controlling the vines. He could feel the rawness of it all around him, like standing in an open field during a lightning storm, but he could no more reach out and grab hold than he could grab hold of a lightning bolt as it struck.
All he could think about was a sword to the gut.
Suddenly the roots entangled both arms, forcing them to spread, stretching them wide.
“You are untrained. You touch the Sentheye by accident, not by intention!” Apep pointed his bony index finger in Garrett’s face. “Now I think it is time you learned why you’re really here, boy!” The fingernail on Apep’s pointed finger grew long and sharp. He grabbed Garrett by the wrist and poked the black nail forcefully into his palm.
Garrett squeezed his eyes together tight as the nail bit deep, drawing blood.
Apep squeezed Garrett’s palm, ensuring a drop of blood spilled onto each God Stone, one by one. “Here is a question for you, Garrett. Why did those who claim to care most about you tell you to come here and destroy the old one?”
Garrett clenched his jaw, straining helplessly against the roots.
“I’ll tell you why. Because I couldn’t wake him without your blood.”
Garrett stopped struggling.
Apep smirked. “That’s right… Never could. Turek made sure of that. He tied his bloodline to the spell keeping the nephilbock asleep.” Apep paused, letting that sink in. “You were never supposed to stop me, Garrett. Your own mother sent you here to make sure I get what I need to open the portal. To make sure I get your blood. They want me to open the portal. That’s the prophecy, my boy, and this moment here and now is your only contribution.”
“You’re lying!” Garrett croaked.
“Your accusation lacks conviction, my boy. You know I speak the truth and now I will show you.”
Below the slab Garrett caught sight of Pete as he came around the corner and pulled up short at the sight of Janis.
“Janis, stop! Don’t do this! I know you care about me. I know somewhere inside what we had over this past week was real. Tell me it was real!”
Lilith stretched out a hand toward him.
Pete smiled.
But then Lilith pressed her lips together into a sneer and closed the hand into a tight fist. As she squeezed, so too did the roots squeeze around Garrett’s neck and torso, constricting ever tighter.
Garrett tried to groan but no sound came. It felt as though any second his ribs would start popping one by one like popcorn, and he would no longer be able to breathe.
Apep began reciting ageless words – words that Garrett somehow knew were the language of the gods. One by one the God Stones started to spin, suspended in the air, each glowing in oscillating, opaque colors before settling on a strange new color, a color Garrett couldn’t form words to describe and couldn’t look upon directly. He couldn’t
pull in a breath, and the edges of his vision began to close in.
Spreading his arms wide, Apep smiled. “Yes! The time has come!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the chamber walls. “Thank you, my boy! Thank you, Garrett!”
Darkness pressed in on Garrett as he fought to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. He looked down at the face of the giant as Apep’s voice, along with the shouts from Pete and battle cries from the rat fight, all faded into the background. The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was the giant’s large oblong eyelid as it popped open.
32
Sounds in the Dark
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Rural Chiapas State, Mexico
Grinding stone reverberated through Gabi’s feet as the platform continued its long descent into darkness.
“What is she talking about? What lower chamber?” Fredy asked, his voice unnerved.
“The one painted on the wall. We were trying to tell you, Sarah, but then all hell broke loose,” Itzel said.
Sarah blinked. “This is major!” She grabbed Fredy by the shoulders. “It’s major, Fredy.”
Gabi noticed movement near the edge of her vision and turned just in time to see a massive stone block moving upward, outside the circular platform. Quickly she spun around, noticing three more blocks moving upward past the platform. “Look!” she pointed.
“¡Dios mío! Counterweights!” Fredy said as he grabbed the lighting tripod from the floor and pointed it up.
They craned their heads upward, the spotlight revealing a large expanse of domed ceiling. It was as if they were descending from the roof of an ancient cathedral. They could see it now – they had descended out of an oculus centered in the dome above. The giant column Sarah had been inside of stretched up all the way to the top of the dome and into the center of the hole, like an oversized fireman’s pole.
Gabi stood, neck bent backward, studying the ceiling’s shape. The half-globed arc with the stone column was just like what she had uncovered on the wall painting. Then she heard a distant sound from way off in the darkness. What was that? It was barely audible over the soft rumbling of stone sliding on stone, but it was there. Looking at her mom told Gabi that Itzel had heard it too.
The others stood still, each straining to hear the sound again.
The hair stood up on the back of Gabi’s neck.
“What was that?” Itzel asked, pushing herself out of Andrés’s arms to meet his eyes.
Gabi’s father shook his head. “I don’t know, but it can’t be what it sounded like.” His curious unease twisted into fear as his brows furrowed.
It was María who finally said it. “It sounded like someone talking.”
“That’s ridiculous. No one could be down here,” Sarah said.
They looked out into the blackness, searching for the source of the mysterious sound, but beyond the platform was only darkness.
As they continued to descend, Gabi’s mind spun with possibilities. Are we alone? What if some race of giant things are living down here? What if the skulls were placed on the racks as a warning for them not to come back up? Then there was what she had seen on the wall under the pyramid. But that couldn’t have been real… there couldn’t be a—
With a bone-jarring thud, Gabi fell onto her bottom. The platform hadn’t slowed before touching down hard, pulling her back into the moment with a jolt. Just like the sudden start had knocked them off their feet, the sudden stop did the same. With the exception of a startled scream from María and grunts from the others, the chamber was eerily silent. They stood, brushing themselves off and taking in the scene around them.
They had settled at the bottom of a large domed cavern. As they shined their lights over the side of the platform, the first thing Gabi noticed was water – water everywhere. Their platform seemed to be an island. Fredy worked the tripod light, shining it across the expanse, searching for any clues of what this place was.
“Over here, Fredy, look.” Sarah was shining her headlamp at a stone pathway leading off the island across the water toward a wall. “Focus your light at that far wall!”
They all joined Sarah and Fredy. Fredy aimed the light across the stone pathway, following it to the wall, then searching along it.
That’s when they saw it. A giant arched opening was set into the left wall of the massive cavern, a couple hundred meters down the path.
“An adjacent room!” Andrés said.
The opening itself was enormous, but what was more amazing were the megalithic sculptures stretching up the entire height of the cavern on either side of the opening.
“That’s it! Do you see it?! Look, there are carvings, Fredy!” Sarah jumped off the circular platform onto the stone pathway.
“Sarah! Wait! There could be traps!” Fredy shouted. But it was too late – she was already on the path.
Suddenly they heard the sound again, coming from the direction of the opening. Everyone froze, including Sarah.
Gabi’s heart pounded in her throat as she squeezed her mother’s hand. There could be no denying it was a voice.
The voice thundered out across the water in a language Gabi didn’t recognize. She was still a bit of a novice in her language studies, but she would have at least recognized Hebrew, Lithuanian, Farsi, or a number of other languages, even if she couldn’t have understood them, but this was something completely unlike anything she had ever heard.
“Sarah! Come back,” Fredy urged.
Sarah’s eyes were flexed wide as she stood stone still, either trying to comprehend the strange language or frozen in fear – Gabi couldn’t tell which.
“Mamá,” Gabi managed as she gave her mother’s hand a tug. “Please, we need to go.”
Andrés focused a light upward, looking for a rope from Manuel, but saw nothing. “Come on, Manuel.”
Across the chamber came another sound. A terrible screech that at first sounded like dying pigs. Gabi squinted her eyes and covered her ears. “Mamá, please!” she urged.
The screeching rose and fell strangely. “Andrés, listen to it,” Itzel said. “Those are words, not just screams. A second voice speaking to the other?”
Fredy set the light down and jumped down onto the path next to Sarah. “We need to get out of here!” he said, grabbing her by the wrist. Consumed by fear, he began forcefully pulling her back toward the platform, like she was a disobedient child being pulled from a playground.
Suddenly the screeching voice distorted into a violent roar so deep and loud it reminded Gabi of the black howler monkey.
Everyone instinctively covered their ears.
As the roar grew it became so loud that, even with their ears covered, it created a piercing pain. Gabi screamed – maybe everyone screamed – but nothing penetrated the incredible roar.
The ground began to pulse. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Gabi pressed her hands tight to her ears. She wanted so bad to shut her eyes up tight, but she forced herself to look. Sarah was still down on the path with Fredy, bathed in the glow of the tripod light. She could see Fredy’s lips moving, only he wasn’t speaking. His mouth moved, opening and shutting like a goldfish with no sound coming out. Finally finding words, he mouthed, “¡Ay, Dios mío!”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The booming grew closer until suddenly a figure burst through the opening in a panicked run. Beyond the shadowed figure, the room it emerged from began to glow.
Gabi knew what she was looking at, though what she was looking at was impossible. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. She was fixed like a stone.
The giant stood taller than a house, easily ten meters high. It was clothed in a tattered tunic and loincloth, with a headdress fixed atop its head. It was the statue from up above come to life. No, Gabi thought. This was even bigger. It held something in its right hand, but it was hidden in shadow. The giant paused for the briefest second, its head swinging left then right, before abruptly lunging, throwing itself against the wall in what appeare
d to be an attempt to take cover behind the carved monolith.
It’s true – what I saw on the wall under the pyramid, it’s all true! But that means not just the giant, but what comes next. Oh María Purísima, it was all painted right there on the wall!
Before anyone could register what they were seeing, the roar from beyond the opening reached a pinnacle, and the glow turned into flame. The flame poured from the room in a strange-colored liquid fire, lighting up the entire chamber in unnatural greenish-orange light.
Gabi stood paralyzed on the spot, ignoring the fire to stare at the giant, who stood facing them with his back against the wall. In the light, she caught a glimpse of its face. Only one eye?
The massive fireball continued through the chamber, rolling across the water, not stopping – and heading right for them.
Fredy let go of Sarah’s wrist, then pushed her off the stone path into the water. Sarah gasped, sucking in a breath as she plunged into the frigid liquid.
Gabi felt a shove from behind her as her father shouted something she couldn’t make out. She was falling now. She turned in time to see her father grab María and her mother’s hands as he leapt from the edge. The water was cold, and she wanted to gasp but she held her breath as she rolled onto her back. Near her, bodies crashed into the water. For a brief second everything was dark. Gabi kicked her legs and broke the surface, stealing only a single gasp of air before her vision filled with flames. She pushed herself under as far from the surface as she could get with a few quick waves of her palms. Then as if the sun itself had leapt out from hiding and rolled over them, everything exploded in fiery light.
Distorted flames glowed above them as the seconds passed. The ominous roar was now muffled under the water, but then a new sound replaced it as the water near the surface began to boil. They were trapped under fire.
Instinctively Gabi pushed herself even deeper. But as she looked for the others, she could see María was too close to the surface. Her father was there grabbing María by the ankle, pulling her down with a sudden desperate jerk, trying to get her away from the surface, away from the superheated water. María let out a gargled scream, releasing what little air she had as she began rubbing frantically at her arm.
