Daytime was a blur of sickly brightness against a dimly seen wall. Nights seemed everlasting and were terrifyingly devoid of every other sound, except those he made. Rough-hewn bowls contained bits of meat, fat and shreds of vegetables, which he found upon waking, never seeing who brought the food. And the innumerable times he’d pounded against the cell door, against the walls, hours spent screaming with his face pressed to the narrow slot.
Once the cell door rattled when someone outside unlocked the door. His eyes had opened in time to see the shape entering—robed, a cowl framing a shadowed face, tall and swift. He could only manage a squeak of fear before a cold, long-fingered hand clamped over his mouth.
“You are Chosen,” the robed man whispered, his Spanish laced with a strange accent Manolo hadn’t heard before. “You and the others. The Ones Below are stirring, and they cannot be allowed to wake. We must offer blood. Such is the cycle, such is the way.” The hand clamped even harder and he whispered, seemingly to the air, “This we offer, so that You may ever sleep.”
Manolo understood the words, but not what was being said, and it terrified him. The hand lifted away. The man retreated.
The door closed and was locked again.
***
There was nothing in the room with which to occupy Manolo’s mind. Even the conch sat forgotten in a corner. Manolo stopped remembering the cycles of day and night. At times he screamed his throat raw—other times he mumbled nonsense words, trying to voice the thoughts in his mind with words he had never been taught. Time passed, broken sporadically by visits from the strange, robed man. Manolo grew taller.
Puberty was terrifying and painful, a process which he hadn’t been prepared for. For a while he thought he was becoming some kind of monster. When his voice broke he sat in a corner of the room, crying, wondering if his body could change enough so that his mother and father wouldn’t recognize him if they ever saw each other again.
Did they miss him, too? Did they remember him?
Eventually he stopped calling out to them, too.
***
After a long while Manolo stopped talking to himself. He had come to hate the sound of his voice.
He took to sleeping most of the day, and he ate less. Not out of any need to rebel, but because the lack of movement simply made him less hungry.
It may have gone on too long, this not eating, because Manolo eventually received another visit. Not from the robed man, but from a broad-shouldered, hard-faced, silent man and his smaller companion. They wore denims and black shirts with sturdy boots. The big man held Manolo still, while the smaller man forced food down his throat.
He tried to explain to them that he would eat but he had forgotten some of the words he had known. They forced him to chew and swallow and ignored his tears. Afterward, remembering the sounds he made when being force fed, he thought he was becoming an animal of some kind.
Maybe that was what they wanted—to see if re-making a person into an animal was possible.
Manolo was woken that following day by the lash of a whip across his bare back. The big man continued until it seemed that the world was pain, pain, pain.
He was whipped every day after that.
***
Manolo eventually learned to wake before they came. He stood against the wall, face pressed to the narrow slot, focusing on the only hint of freedom he knew as the whip began to lash his back. Eventually the pain changed into something else—a way for him to travel inward, deep into himself where his remaining memories hid and the pain lessened.
The pain became his ally.
When he no longer cried out as the whip struck him, the blows stopped falling. Later that night he was visited again by the robed man. The guard with him held a small video camera. He was surprised that he remembered what it was.
The robed man’s voice issued from the shadowed cowl. “You have learned your first lesson as Chosen. Your remaining existence will be divided between the glory of pain and the craving of it. You are a simple animal now, but you have an important part to play.”
Once again the words had meaning which he understood, even though he had forgotten how to shape most of the sounds with his lips.
The robed man paused, as if waiting for an answer.
After a spell of intense silence, he nodded, turned and left the room. The big man set the camera down, drew the whip off the ring on his belt and stepped forward.
***
On the day that everything changed, two men entered his cell. One carried the video camera and whip, the other carried a bag.
Manolo’s eyes lingered on the bag for a long moment, curious.
One of them zipped open the bag and upended it— old, dirty clothing fell onto the cell’s grimy floor.
The guard tossed the empty bag aside and gestured for Manolo to approach. He did, and kept as still as possible as the guards proceeded to dress him.
His skin wasn’t used to the feel of clothing against it. Though he itched terribly he didn’t dare move. When the guards were done he stood in the center of the cell, unsure of what to do.
They each seized an arm and pulled him along with them, out of the cell. Panic seized Manolo—he snarled and tried to pull himself free but they were stronger.
Manolo never saw that cell again.
***
Manolo had forgotten that the robed man had mentioned other Chosen—others like him. When the guards dragged him to the chamber and tossed him to the ground, the first sound that came to him was the soft murmur of movement.
Manolo looked up, reeling as too-bright light speared into his head, and he couldn’t help moaning through clenched, aching teeth.
It took a while for the vague blobs before him to resolve into knowable detail, and when he understood what he understood the sight of it, a surge of fear thrilled through him.
This new room was large, and the ceiling high. Four cameras jutted from the four corners of the room, moving left to right and back again. Four long, thin lights blazed white from the center of the ceiling.
The room was filled with people.
Other Chosen.
They were dressed as he was, their skins pale amid patches of dirt and grime, their eyes wide, while some gibbered fearfully. They all had snarled hair, long or curled, and they stood apart from each other. Scared of each other.
After a moment Manolo scrabbled back onto his haunches, every muscle tensed, fighting the urge to run because a part of him knew there was nowhere to run to. When he turned he saw that the door was closed. He was trapped in here with them.
He scuttled into the closest corner, panting his fear and bewilderment. His entire world had changed.
Sudden movement caught his attention—a thin, wiry man with protruding teeth accidently touched the elbow of the person closest to him. That person flinched away with a cry, knocking someone else off their feet.
More screams. More lurching movement, which quickly became shoving as those who were closest allowed their fear to take over. And then everyone erupted into violence; screams became snarls, fists fell and swung with brutal intention, knees rose and feet stomped.
Some flinched away from the fight, shoving away anyone close enough. While Manolo felt an urge to join in the violence he realised he wouldn’t last long against them all. Some of the fallen stopped moving, tears in their clothing revealing ragged gashes in their flesh. Red water flowed from the injuries and the smell of it caught at the back of his throat. It didn’t smell like the water he had been brought day after day.
Others lay twitching; their heads stomped into a messy pulp. He glimpsed a lone eye, separated from a head. Those who stumbled and slid in the red water left footprints as they limped away.
The red water flowed towards a small hole in the center of the floor.
Manolo focused on one of the fallen during a moment of silence, watched with fascination as the eyes blinked rapidly and then abruptly stilled. The chest deflated and a last exhalation sounded.
His eyes moved to the others and he noticed that some were still moving—weakly, haltingly. But still moving.
A word blossomed in his mind, strange and alien, a remnant of a life he hardly remembered anymore.
Alive.
Manolo uncurled from the corner, rose slowly and then moved forward. As he approached the dying and the injured he noticed how the torch-light made sharp dazzles in the thick red water.
Not water. Blood.
The word sounded right. He remembered that the robed man had used the word.
Manolo stopped beside one of the injured and looked down. Red bubbles inflated and popped between his blood-smeared lips. A bite-wound in the man’s throat was leaking blood in steady spurts and he made gurgling, choking sounds as he trembled. His hand rose, wavered, the fingers curling and uncurling with a need he couldn’t put words to.
Alive. Blood.
No, there was something else, a different sound with a different meaning, connected to the blood-sound.
That was what he had to do, what they all had to do. What had already begun.
Manolo went down on his knees and trapped the dying man’s head between his hands. He gripped the snarled, dirty hair, lifted, and then slammed the head down. And again. Again. A hand clutched at him, scrabbling, nails scoring trails through the dirt on his skin.
Drops of blood sprayed and spattered with each impact until the back of the man’s head broke open. The man stopped moving. One eye sank slightly into his head.
Dead. Yes, that was the word. That was what they had to do here. The injured had to be made dead because they were weak. They couldn’t be allowed to get up.
If they were, he might be the next to fall. He didn’t want to be made dead.
Releasing the corpse’s head, he turned, looking for the next person, and then moved over, ignoring the wordless plea that struck his ears.
***
The dead were dragged out by two guards.
He could feel eyes on him and there was a sense that something important had changed. He couldn’t put words to it.
He had changed.
The door opened again and the robed man stepped into the room, followed by three guards. The man had pushed his hood back and Manolo saw that his face was thin, his eyes protruding, his lips pressed together in a pale line. He had no eyebrows, no facial hair. His tongue darted out periodically to lick his lips.
“Those of you who remain, you Chosen, will now leave this place.” He turned to survey them, slowly, as if looking for something in their eyes and faces. “Not all of you will survive the journey, but those who do will be offered. Such is the cycle, such is the way.”
He turned on his heel and left the room as the guards began to herd them out.
He was the first to be taken up a nearby flight of steps, down a long stretch of corridor, and out of the building that had been his cage for most of his life.
***
Manolo was at the head of the group of Chosen as they were hurried down the streets and boulevards of the village, a truck filled with guards following them. He wept when he saw the great blue bowl of sky overhead. He smelled the scents of food he had forgotten existed and his stomach rumbled and cramped. This place was different to the one who had lived in with his parents. Nothing looked familiar.
Many people had gathered to watch the sacrificial procession.
They were silent at first, but gradually a strange sound rose from them. He saw that their lips were moving and that their eyes were closed. The guards kept urging them on, ignoring what was happening, intent, focused.
The meaning of the words became clear, the phrase he had heard so many times in the language he remembered so little of: “Such is the cycle, such is the way.”
Buildings of different sizes and heights surrounded them; this place was larger than he had ever imagined. Knowing that it had existed beyond the slot in his cell wall and seeing it now stole his breath.
Eventually the group came to a tall, wide door set into a wall that reached toward the sky.
The wall stretched away to the left and right, surrounding the village.
The sudden creak of the large door splitting down the middle and then opening slowly made the Chosen flinch. The open door revealed a dusty path stretching away and off into the distance; more sky, arching overhead, seemingly without end.
The guards marched them through and the group continued forward. The ground was uneven underfoot and when Manolo swung his head back he saw some of the Chosen stumble, but not fall.
To fall, Manolo knew, was to die.
***
They walked until the sky became darker and the air around them colder. Manolo shivered, huddling with the others for warmth, ignoring the chattering of teeth and soft whimpers around him. When he looked up he saw that the darkness had been pierced all over by countless, distant, flickering points of white light. His mouth opened in stunned amazement.
When Manolo finally came back to himself he saw that the rest of the Chosen were similarly captivated. This was the world.
That was the word. World.
It had been hidden from them, denied them, and now they were in it, walking across it, huddling beneath it.
***
Manolo looked around, not recognizing anything. He realized there was only one direction they could be moving in
They were moving toward The Ones Below.
Sometime later they were allowed to rest and the guards stood watch all around them. They wore thick jackets.
When the brightness of the sun began to spread across the sky, sending the darkness flooding away as if fearful, the guards roused the group of Chosen and prodded them into marching.
Manolo had never learned numbers and so didn’t know how much time passed. During one of the cycles of day and night one of the Chosen dropped to the ground, too exhausted or weak to move.
Manolo watched as the guards prodded the dust-stained bundle of rags and stick-like limbs, heard the pleading and naked need in the moans drifting toward him. The guard took out something black and pointed down at the Chosen, and Manolo flinched in shock as a loud bang reverberated through the air. A section of the man’s head exploded, spattering over the dirt. He was dead. Manolo wasn’t surprised.
The weak were being removed.
One of the other guards approached the body, carrying a jug. He caught the flowing blood in the cup, being careful and taking his time.
The guard then poured the blood into a large container which the guards transported on their truck.
And then the group continued on, leaving the dead man behind.
***
The guards brought out their whips again when the group slowed.
Most of the Chosen were staggering, mouths agape, lips cracked, wheezing. They continued to stagger even as the blows began to fall.
Manolo felt the whip’s kiss but only as distant vibrations that ebbed through his body. He was focused on his breathing, and on walking. Nothing else mattered.
Not even his thirst could pull him out of the daze he was in. His eyes remained locked on the horizon, locked on that place not yet visible.
The place where it would all end.
When they stopped in the evenings it was to collapse into exhaustion. The guards came round with jugs of water and measured out five sips to each of them. Most of the guards slept in the back of their truck and the Chosen slept on the naked ground. The next morning three more were dead.
The ritual from before was repeated, their blood collected and poured into the container.
When they resumed marching, the bodies were left behind.
***
Eventually they came to an area where the ground alternately rose and dipped—steeply in some places, gradually in others. He began to notice colors other than the drab browns and reds, colors that reminded him of what he had seen on all the chanting people outside the cells. Greens and blues dotted the surface, and a multitude of different scents began to pervade the air.<
br />
When they were eventually ordered to halt, the remaining Chosen swayed on their feet, eyes staring blankly. Manolo became aware that he had stopped walking. He took a reflexive step forward, then another. Wheezing air into his lungs to fuel his aching body, three words escaped his lips like a sigh:
“The Ones Below.”
He took another step and felt an increasing pressure around his elbow. It seemed to take an eternity to turn his head and look down, and he eventually understood that he was looking at a hand. Looking up he saw a man’s sweat-slicked, bearded face. Another eternity passed before he realised he was looking at one of the guards.
The man pulled him back, gently so that he didn’t stumble, and led him into the group of dazed Chosen. Manolo was close to collapse. Only force of will kept him upright.
The guard gestured and Manolo watched as a different guard poured the water from the jar out onto the ground. The Chosen stuttered forward, scrambling on hands and knees, clustering around the muddy patch in the ground. An ache trembled through him before he realised that his body was reacting; his first step forward became a lurch of desperate movement.
Water.
He reached the nearest of the Chosen, clamped his fingers around the back of the man’s neck and lifted him away, already focusing on the next Chosen. He grabbed an ankle and pulled, yanking the woman toward him. She twisted and grabbed his leg; he snarled and lifted it, pulling her arm along until she let go, and then stamped on her hand. The crackle of her fingers breaking was lost in the slurping and gurgling coming from the middle of the huddle. So was her scream of pain.
He tangled his fingers in the next Chosen’s filthy thatch of hair, pulled his head up, then gritted his teeth and twisted the head sharply to the left, cutting off the beginnings of a hoarse scream.
The woman’s hand clawed at his ankle. Manolo turned, stamped on the back of her head until she stopped moving, and searched for the next water-thief.
The attacker hit him from behind, smashing him off his feet. They struck the group of Chosen, flattening one into the dirt, someone else crying out in surprise and dismay. Manolo struggled against his attacker, pushing and shoving until he was on his back, and saw a circle of muddied, enraged faces staring down at him.
Tales from The Lake 3 Page 21
