Sacrifice

by Farris, John

  I was about to move again, with the desperate caution of the condemned, when a singsong, operatic voice from the terrace above me echoed around the plaza. It was an announcement, or exhortation, coming perhaps from the unseen figure in black. He spoke for almost a minute, or close to sixty violent pulse beats in my throat.

  Then the drumming resumed in the plaza. I had to look down. It wasn't what I expected: the dancing had begun again.

  Whatever he'd told them, they no longer seemed bothered by my presence, as if I were just a fly on the wall. That meant something. I wished I knew what.

  I tried to swallow; my mouth was too dry. I moved over to the other side of the stairway and continued climbing. At this height there were places where the layer of stucco had come off in patches, and I found no mortar at all between a few of the stepstones. I avoided putting all of my weight on any one step as I hauled myself higher. I kept an eye on the edge of the terrace for the black-robed man, but all I saw was swirling smoke and the figure of the crouched, looking-down jaguar on top of what Glen Hazen had called the major house. Now that I was this close to it, I realized just how enormous the jaguar was. If it had been carved from a single block of limestone, then it had to weigh at least a couple of tons. I wondered how the Maya workmen had raised it, and the carved stone roof lintel and facade of the house, in an age long before the invention of the block and tackle.

  At last, the terrace.

  There was a stone altar, flanked by tall braziers of burning incense, in front of the major house. And on the altar, the source of the blood I had been tracking through on my way up: the body of an eight-foot jaguar, so large it hung over both ends of the altar. Blood from its cut throat had drained down the slightly raked terrace to the steps. I could smell it, in spite of the strong odor of incense. On my knees, I unslung the Uzi from my back. There were torches on the terrace, adding more smoke than clarifying light to the scene. The doorway of the major house, less than six feet high, was a black void framed by representations of the mountain-monster.

  I'd never been superstitious, never read my horoscope in the papers, and the Methodist preachers I'd listened to in my youth seldom mentioned hell or the devil; it wasn't that kind of religion. But when I rose to my feet on the terrace my knees were shockingly weak and I thought of what 'Nica had said about lines of magnetic force, the migration of souls from their world to this one. I was shaking from cold and plain old primitive fear, not knowing what I was going to see next. Then I got my emotions under control and dialed up the rational mind. Gritted my teeth. If something was going to kill me here and now, it wouldn't be a household god or a cosmic thunderbolt.

  I was back on alert just in time to receive a brief warning, sense movement above me in the smoke, as if the stone Balam were stirring in preparation for an act of retribution for the slain brother-animal on the altar. A loose piece of stone fell, then by torchlight I saw the flicker of the hurled lance.

  The instinctive act is to throw up an arm when something's coming at you, and there's no time to get out of the way. I also managed to twist side-on to the trajectory of the lance, which turned out not to be such a good thing.

  The lance head was deflected by the Uzi in my hand, which slowed it down a little and probably kept it out of my armpit. It sliced into my right side instead, wedging between ribs and stopping. Otherwise it might have gone right through me. The lance still had enough force, like a hard karate kick, to knock me down. The Uzi went flying out of my hand, along with a piece of the shattered lance. About a foot and a half of the shaft was protruding from my side.

  He appeared beside the head of the Balam, still wearing the horned mask with the long snout and a mouthful of sharp teeth beneath it. He had taken off the robe. He was naked except for a breechclout, a pair of boots brightly twined around his lower legs like coral snakes, and shingled epaulets on both shoulders framing the jade of prestige which he wore on a chain around his neck. He was broad through the chest. But he looked a little fat to me.

  I was lying in blood with my left hand twisted under me, the broken shaft of lance sticking straight up. The Uzi had fallen a few feet away, unreachable in my condition. When you're hurt bad, you know. I knew; he knew.

  He climbed deliberately down the façade of the major house, showing me the jiggling cheeks of his nearly bare ass. There were plenty of carved handholds on the façade. Small pieces of stone fell with him. I wondered, in the part of my mind not preoccupied with pain and fear of dying, just how close to crumbling the entire pyramid was.

  He had the three-pronged instrument in his right hand, which he held up for me to see when his feet touched the terrace.

  I coughed, and it was like being electrocuted; blood came up in my throat. I felt as if I were one lung short already. No way to know how much damage the wickedly serrated edges of the lance head had done inside the partly sawn-through ribcage. But any movement, even the shallow breaths I drew, brought more electric pain. Each successive jolt was the worst pain I'd felt in my life. I wasn't brave about it. I was crying, crying from rage and frustration, too.

  He came around the altar in a catwise crouch to tear my throat out with the three-pronged knife, and I made sure he was too close to miss before I willed myself to move; arching my back just enough to pull my left hand free and kill him with the Firestar I had managed not to lose.

  I did miss, with the first couple of rounds, aiming too high in my anxiety. Then I corrected as he tried to pull back and the next three whacked him hard, two on either side of the breastbone and another through the notch of his throat, and that one ripped out the back of his neck and sent him crashing down on top of his smashed mask. His outspread arms and legs shook as if he were trying to fly, to take off from the pyramid and soar away to the moon, and he seemed to be a long time quieting down.

  I didn't trust that he was dead. I held the gun on him, staring, sweat and tears in my eyes, spasms that seemed to have their source at the lancehead going through me like ocean waves as I tried to sit up. Then I knew he was dead, all right, and he smelled bad from emptied bowels, and I was damn sure I was never going to get on my feet again.

  But it wasn't Greg Walker lying there; it was Francisco Colon. So get on with it, Butterbaugh.

  The drumming had stopped again, with the echo around the plaza of the last shot fired. Five shots, wasn't it, or—that left—uhh. I couldn't remember. Three more bullets in the clip, maybe. There was always the Uzi, but even from where I was trying very hard to stand I could see that the long magazine had been seriously dented by the flying lance. Maybe it would still shoot, chances were it would jam. The hell with it.

  Now, I told myself, if you can stand up this high without passing out, you can probably straighten all the way. One lung's enough for anybody. Sharissa's waiting. Eleven-thirty yet? Get cracking.

  "Francisco!"

  A voice from the void—from a deep, hidden room, where, I supposed, the booming of gunfire also had been noted. Did he sound worried? The voice so distorted, as if in a well, I couldn't identify it as Greg Walker's voice, much less take a reading on his state of mind. And I still had a ringing in my ears from the Firestar, a reek of gunpowder in my nostrils stronger than the copal incense blanketing the terrace.

  (Hey, still on my feet. This isn't so tough. Just don't ask me to straighten up. I've got a lance in my side.)

  With my right hand I felt all around the wound. Oh-oh, a lot of blood on the outside, running down my leg. I nicked two of my fingers on the exposed edges of the lancehead. Just leave it alone. Let Doc Gùzman take it out, if I get that far.

  Swaying on my feet, I started to tremble. No way I was going to get that far.

  But I still had plenty to do, before all the life ran out and I was like the jaguar on the altar, drained slack and powerless and dusty-eyed in an ancient tomb.

  I shuffled over to the door of the major house. Dark in there, except for the glow of a torch beside a flight of stairs.

  "Francisco!" he called aga
in.

  More torches lighted the stairs to a passage below. There were ceremonial masks attached to the walls, affording handholds. My eyes were blurring. I knew I had to hurry, but each step took care and timing.

  A room below. Ceremonial robes and headdresses, stone braziers of incense, a lot of smoke I didn't need. Oh, God. More steps. Down and down and down.

  A lighted room with picture walls. A passageway, so long, so unfairly long. A brazen light shining through a smoky doorway. I had to remind myself not to breathe through my mouth, not to shuffle my feet. Not to be heard until—

  "Butterbaugh! I can't believe my eyes."

  He appeared in the doorway as if it were the apron of a stage, flickering light behind him. He wore a regal golden headdress, but no mask. His muscular naked body was painted a ghostly shell-white from his hairline to his toes. Perfect in form, bizarrely grinning, frightening to me even in my depleted, nothing-to-lose physical and emotional state.

  I raised the Firestar pistol, amazed at how steady I was. Although I had to lean heavily against the wall to keep from falling.

  "Where . . . is she?"

  "I can't believe my eyes," he said again. The pupils of those eyes were huge; he must also have had trouble focusing. From the deathly stiffness of his grin it seemed to me that he was slightly drunk, or drugged by conceit, by the empowerment that his theatrical stature lent to him. And—never to forget it—he was also, by any reasonable standards, insane. "Come in, C.G."

  I flashed back then, to the house on Thornhill Road in Sky Valley, Greg Walker on his veranda in the jasmine-drenched summer night, his head bandaged in a flesh-colored turban.

  "I'll know for sure when I start jogging again if I'm going to be a hundred percent. Would you like to come in, Sergeant? Sharissa's not home."

  "Like . . . hell she's not home! Don't fuck with me, Walker! This is a nine-millimeter pistol. There are three shots left. You want them all in the face?"

  He looked a little startled, and spoke quietly.

  "You're not going to shoot me, C.G."

  "What makes . . ." I started coughing. But I held the automatic steady in two hands, and his face, though blurred, remained in my sights.

  "For one thing, I'd say you're bleeding to death from that lance in your side. You probably don't have the strength to pull the trigger. Did you kill Francisco?"

  "Yes. Where's Sharissa?"

  "Inside." He seemed momentarily unsure of what to do with me, or himself. "I'm going to back up now. No sudden moves. You can come in."

  It occurred to me that he wasn't all that confident I wouldn't be capable of shooting him. I knew I ought to do it—no more talk, just kill him. But I hadn't seen Sharissa yet. And if he was lying, and she wasn't in that room behind him, if he'd hidden her somewhere until the hour of the sacrifice, whether he was dead or not I might not have the time to find her on my own.

  I had given up being concerned about the loss of blood. I was bloody all over, inside and out. I would know, I told myself; just before the last mortal weakness, I would have enough warning to kill him first. If bullets were enough to do the job.

  He backed slowly away from me, frowning, his black-rimmed eyes fixed blandly on my face. He might have been thinking, I walled him up, and he got out. I sent Francisco, and Francisco's dead. Maybe it's worthwhile not to take old Butterbaugh too lightly.

  With a turn of his head, looking backwards as if at a vision of Sharissa coming down a flight of stairs wearing the corsage I'd sent ahead, he said, "Here she is, C.G."

  He had backed well away from the entrance. It was another richly ornamented, smoke-blackened room, with a centuries-old blood-stained slab of altar on which too many young people had died. The altar, featuring a fresco of gnomelike creatures squatting or sitting crosslegged, all of them looking to their right, exuded a stifling evil. Sharissa lay there now, on her back, wearing only a filmy white shift that covered her from her fragile-looking collarbones to her knees; but the insides of the globes of her breasts were revealed. Her hair was brushed and shining by torchlight. Her eyes were closed, darkly purpled, and looked sealed.

  I groaned at the sight of her. Greg had circled the altar, light on his feet like one of the dancers in the plaza, careful not to turn his back to me. He placed a whitewashed hand lightly and tenderly between Sharissa's breasts.

  "No, no," he said. "Don't you see? She's breathing. She's only asleep." His expression changed without really softening, to a rapture made obscene by the stark fierceness of his makeup, and raised his hand to stroke her dry forehead.

  I thought I saw her eyelids flutter at his touch, and the concerns of a dream tighten the corners of her pale lips. He saw it, too. He shook his head slightly, as if any movement at all distressed him, somehow disturbed a perfection he demanded of this moment.

  "God . . . damn you, get away from her!"

  His bland, unfocused gaze.

  "C.G., I have to admire you. Such incredible spirit. I haven't met many men like you, in my lifetimes. But you have to be realistic now. From the look of things, you're mortally wounded. I can't help you. This is as far as you go. Oh, you might get off one shot. You might . . . injure me. But you won't kill me. And you won't change what must happen here tonight. Look, I want you to see something. Because . . . maybe you've wondered, how does he know when it's time? Let me show you."

  He walked around the end of the altar, slowly, claiming my full attention with the power of his eyes. In the smoky air he seemed to be vertically levitating. Then I saw that he had mounted a couple of steps hidden behind the altar. This brought his crowned head near the ceiling, which was decorated with what might have been a map of the stars, discs of many sizes in gold and silver, images of celestial deities. He gave me another glance, then reached up and moved a small lunar figure to one side.

  A shaft of light slanted into the room, falling on a corner of the altar about two feet from Sharissa's head.

  "The light of the full moon," he said. "Reflected by mirrors into this chamber. The shaft moves slowly across the altar as the moon rises to the moment of culmination of the eclipse. Notice the orientation of the altar. When the eclipse begins, the light will be centered on her forehead. I can't describe to you the energy that flows into the room at that time. Flows into her body. And out again, through her shed blood, through the beating heart I will be holding in my hands."

  "Why . . . a virgin?"

  He stepped down again. "The goddess of the moon, in her best form, is a virgin in all surviving religions and the mythologies of ancient peoples. The goddess is Artemis, or Diana, or Mary. For a few moments tonight, her name will be—Sharissa. She is worshipped because her blood is pure, her body uncontaminated by any man's seed. The purity of body and blood is the rejuvenating power of the ritual."

  What about Lilith? I thought, but I couldn't speak. I coughed again, wiped my mouth with the back of my free hand. The gun in my other hand was very, very heavy. He saw that. He glanced at the precise circle of reflected and magnified moonlight on the altar, creeping imperceptibly toward Sharissa. He looked back at me, his hands relaxed at his sides. He had time. He would wait patiently for me to pass out.

  "Tell me something," I said. "Did you kill Bobby Driscoll?"

  He nodded, as if it were a trivial thing. It had never occurred to me before this moment. Now I wondered why, when it was so obvious. The only enemy Bobby had in the world was the father who jealously coveted Bobby's girl. Who had a compulsive need to preserve her virginity.

  On the altar, Sharissa's outstretched hand trembled.

  Distracted by this movement, he glanced at her. "She shouldn't be—maybe I had better give her—"

  "You killed Bobby, because you were afraid they were about to become lovers? Is that it? She loved him, and she was vulnerable. That scared you. You conceived and raised her . . . for this day. You couldn't let some high school kid . . . cheat you out of your immortality."

  "I always trusted Sharissa," he said proudly. "It was
Bobby I couldn't trust. Because—"

  "Because you're a man, and you know. You know how easy it is . . . to persuade a sweet, innocent girl who's in desperate need of understanding and reassurance that sex is what she wants. Oh, man, yeah. It's . . . so easy. Even for a short, bowlegged nobody like me. Sometimes all you have to do . . . is be there. At the right time. When you're needed. Greg, you damn fool—you got the wrong guy."

  I had to laugh. And laughter put me on my knees, I couldn't hold the Firestar any longer. It made a blunt metallic sound hitting the stone floor.

  He moved a step closer to me. Torchlight glinted on the gold headdress he wore, gold of the gods. But at that moment he looked, despite his getup, pathetically human.

  "What are you saying, C.G.?"

  "Don't you know . . . Greg? You remember. I was Sharissa's best friend after Bobby died. Night after night . . . I was there for Sharissa. I was the one she turned to. And I was so crazy about her, God, I didn't have any scruples. It was easy, Greg. So goddamned . . . easy."

  "You're a lying son of a bitch! You never touched my daughter!"

  "It happened . . . only a day before the accident. That was the last day we played tennis. We played so many sets we were both nearly exhausted, then Sharissa . . . invited me home to have something to eat. You'd gone to Atlanta . . . the house was empty. We talked and talked. She didn't want me to leave. Somehow . . . she was seeing me differently, that day. She wanted to be held. I don't know . . . what was on her mind. She was in a dazed state. I think she desperately . . . needed to get away from the horror of Bobby's death. Far, far . . . away. We hadn't turned on any lights in the family room. You know, it's strange, but . . . there was a full moon that night, too. I know it was Bobby who had . . . prepared her, made it possible for me. Her eyes were closed, she smiled, she never tried to stop me. Afterward I think . . . she just blocked our lovemaking from her mind. It only happened once, but once . . . is all that's required. Your party's over, Greg. Sharissa's not a virgin."