This time the snake slithered past him. He could feel the roughness of its skin kissing his.
Sabir tried to turn his head to follow the snake’s progress, but he was unable to move. It was then that he realized that his skull was being held in a vice.
He corrected his eye-line and stared to his front. He instantly knew what he was looking at. It was the exact same scene described by Akbal Coatl, the chief guardian of the sacred books, in Mani, in the run-up to the burning of the Maya relics.
Sabir tried to shout. To break through the reality he now found himself in, and back to the reality he felt he should be inhabiting. But his words were eaten – no sound came out of his mouth.
He remembered then that time was a spiral. Wasn’t that what both the Maya and Nostradamus believed? That at any given moment, granted the right conditions, you could encounter time past, or even time future, in time present? The poet, T.S. Eliot, had taken the idea and run with it in the ‘Burnt Norton’ section of his Four Quartets:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
The words repeated and repeated themselves in your brain.
You were clearly going crazy. A Spanish soldier was approaching you. He held a garrotte in his hands.
The soldier turned towards a friar dressed in the dark-brown habit of a Franciscan Minorite. Friar de Landa. It couldn’t be anybody else. The man’s face was smooth and blameless – the face of someone who knows that whatever they do, whatever outrage they choose to commit, is, by godly implication, the right thing. Beside him a man you also recognized was busy scribbling onto a vellum sheet, supported on a lectern. You knew this man well – he was a member of your family. For a moment you resented him. What was he doing, hobnobbing with the Spaniards? He should be out here, with you, suffering for his beliefs.
Then you remembered. He had taken an oath. You had administered it yourself. In this oath he had undertaken to protect two sacred items – the last remaining copy of the sacred codex, designed by the priests as the final back-up to the library revealed to Friar de Landa by the terminal folly of Nachi Cocom – and the thirteenth crystal skull, the so-called ‘singing skull’, without which the twelve remaining skulls of wisdom might not speak. To fulfil his task, Akbal Coatl had agreed to placate – even to become one with – the Spaniards. This he was clearly doing to the best of his ability.
The Spanish soldier wired the garrotte in place over your forehead. The snake was close behind you too. He was whispering in your ear.
You knew now that the snake was the Vision Serpent. The Serpent who only appeared to those whose eyes were no longer sufficiently acute to view the reality about to encompass them.
The first turn of the garrotte was made. You shrieked in pain. You could feel the blood starting from your forehead.
The Vision Serpent whispered the first of the seven secrets to you.
Then came the second turn. Your eyes clouded. Your ears began to hum with the pressure of the cordeles. Four turns. That was the maximum you had ever heard inflicted. You would be able to withstand that much. You were a strong man. You would be scarred, yes. Badly scarred. But you would live.
The Vision Serpent whispered the second of the seven secrets to you.
When they turned the garrotte for the fifth time, you no longer knew or cared what they were asking you to say. You could feel the cordeles knotting against the bones of your skull. Blood clouded your vision. Pain was your only reality. You could feel the teeth breaking off in your mouth as you ground your jaws together in a vain attempt to loosen the pressure.
The Vision Serpent whispered the fifth of the seven secrets to you.
With the seventh turn, your eyes burst out of their sockets and fell onto your cheeks. This you could see. For you were seeing through the eyes of the Vision Serpent. You were dead and you were alive at the same time. Your skull was cracking under the pressure of the garrotte. Your brain was compressed inside the cordeles, which were binding it as in a vice.
You were dead. No man could survive seven turns of the garrotte.
The Vision Serpent whispered the seventh of the seven secrets to you.
‘He is still alive, sir. Shall we tighten the garrotte another turn so that his skull breaks in two?’
‘No. Let him live. As a lesson to the other chiefs.’
At first, when they untied the garrotte, it was found impossible to free it from your skull. The cordeles had ground so far inwards that they and your skull had become one.
You were dead. You felt nothing.
You could see the soldiers still, but only via the eyes of the Vision Serpent. One soldier cut the membranes that supported what remained of your out-spurted eyes. Another cut the cordeles and ripped them from your forehead, just as you would rip a congealed bandage from an infected wound.
You were lifted. You saw this clearly. Lifted by four men and a woman. Your head lolled backwards. You could see the blood rushing from your wounds.
You were dead. No man could survive what you had endured.
Then the pain came. And with it the final whispers of the Vision Serpent. The final sighting of yourself through the Vision Serpent’s eyes.
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Sabir opened his eyes. He was blind. He closed them again.
It had all been true then. They had taken his eyes. He felt consumed by the darkness. He screamed.
Hands took hold of his body. He was carried out of the touj and into the open air.
Sabir threw his forearms across his face. It was dark. All was darkness. He could not bear to acknowledge his blindness.
Ixtab leaned forwards and rested her hands on his. ‘Try to open your eyes again,’ she said. ‘You will see. You are not blind. Trust me.’
‘No. No. I can’t.’
‘Open your eyes.’
Sabir was placed gently on the ground. He could smell the odour of the dust. Smell the bodies of those around him. He could identify each by their smell.
‘Where is Lamia? I need her.’
‘Open your eyes, Adam.’
Sabir opened his eyes. It was still dark, but he was just able to make out the faces of those immediately surrounding him in the first suggestion of pre-dawn.
It was then that he knew that he was not blind. That he had merely been having a mimetic vision. Hacking sobs racked his body. In a sudden cognitive rush he remembered taking the datura. He remembered the ceremony. He remembered going to sleep. When he had recovered sufficiently to speak, he made a grab for Ixtab’s arm. ‘What did I do? What did I say?’
‘You told us many things.’
‘Did I tell you the seven secrets?’
‘The seven secrets?’
‘Yes. The seven secrets the Vision Serpent told me.’
There was a heavy silence. Sabir could almost smell the excitement emanating from his companions.
‘No. What are those secrets?’
Sabir sat up. ‘What did I tell you?’
Calque moved in closer. He crouched down beside Sabir. ‘You told us that the Third Antichrist was already living amongst us. That you knew his name and his condition, but that no one else must be allowed to know it. That if they did, the Corpus Maleficus would seize it from them in an effort to support the Antichrist and delay the return of the Devil.’
‘Christ Jesus. That’s it? That’s what I told you?’
‘Yes. You quoted Revelations to us too: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison; And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.”’
‘Yes. Yes. It’s what Achor Bale said to me when he had me imprisoned in the cesspit. “AND AFTER THAT HE MUST BE LOOSED A LITTLE SEASON.” The maniac thought he was stil
l protecting us all from the Devil, just like his de Bale ancestors had done for the kings of France.’
The Halach Uinic motioned to Ixtab. She crouched forwards and spoke to Sabir. ‘We do not understand this. How can the de Bales imagine they are protecting us all from a Devil they themselves seem busy conjuring up?’
Calque laid a hand on Sabir’s shoulder to stop him from responding. ‘Let me answer this. I’ve become something of an expert on the subject in recent months. The Devil-Antichrist question is a tricky one. In a nutshell, the Corpus believes that only by placating the Devil – that is, by supporting his earthly representative, the Third Antichrist (the first two Antichrists being Napoleon and Hitler, according to Nostradamus) – can the Devil be seduced into allowing the earth to follow its own devices. To run its own shop. Once the Devil himself is tempted to intervene – once he loses patience, in other words, with the machinations of his henchmen – we are doomed to Armageddon.’
Ixtab shook her head. ‘How can this be? Is there no way to stop it? Or does the Corpus think this is all preordained too?’
‘To the de Bales’ way of thinking, the only palpable threat to the Third Antichrist is via the Second Coming. Because the Antichrist is the evil mirror image of Christ – Christ’s dark shadow – the antimimon pneuma – the counterfeit spirit, or what have you, only a true representation of Christ – ergo the Son of God – ergo the Parousia – ergo the Second Coming – can possibly hope to overcome him. The Corpus Maleficus can’t afford to let that happen, because then they would have failed in their sworn duty. The crazy thing is that they think they are the goodies. That whatever they need to do to keep the Devil at bay is justified, within the greater scheme of things. That is their gage. The rest is irrelevant to them. The Devil is God’s evil brother – the Antichrist bears the exact same relationship to Christ. The one, in both cases, presupposes the existence of the other. The Antichrist is therefore Christ’s dark shadow or mirror image, and can only be overcome by his opposite number. And vice versa. You see? It’s simple, really.’
Ixtab shook her head. She glanced at the Halach Uinic. He met her gaze, then let his eyes fall to the ground.
Sabir made a grab for Ixtab’s hand. ‘What else did I say?’
‘You also spoke of your blood sister, Yola Samana. You told us that she had been made pregnant by her husband, Alexi Dufontaine, on a beach on the island of Corsica. But that her coming child was no normal child, but the one predicted by Nostradamus in his lost prophecies – the prophecies that you had read and then burned in order to keep them out of the hands of Achor Bale and the Corpus Maleficus. That this child was indeed the Parousia, which some call the Second Coming. That because of his background, and the cursed nomadic tribe from which he sprang, the child would grow up to be a representative of all faiths, both religious and secular – of all people, not simply the Christians – of all races, not simply the Aryan and the Semitic. That his birth was designed by God to bring the peoples of the world together, and not to separate them, just as Revelations had foretold. “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”’
‘Oh, God. I told you all that? But I swore not to tell.’
‘To whom did you swear?’
Sabir shook his head uncertainly. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. To myself, I suppose. Whoever I swore it to, in my delirium, is irrelevant. I owe Yola my protection. She is my blood sister. There are vows I have taken in front of her tribe. The more people who know of this thing, the more danger she stands in.’
The Halach Uinic smiled. ‘All is well then. No one here will abuse your trust. You told us because you had to pass on the message. The Vision Serpent made you do so. The cult of the Second Coming shall start here. When the time is ripe we will proclaim his name. And that will be on 21 December 2012. At the very end of the Cycle of the Nine Hells.’
‘Then you’ll be signing the child’s death warrant. I shouldn’t have spoken. You were wrong to give me the datura. I have betrayed my blood sister.’
‘No, Adam. You told us because your unconscious mind sensed that you must share the secret you had stumbled on. That it would only be believed if it emerged under such circumstances. Such a secret is too much of a burden for any one man to carry.’
Sabir shook his head. ‘Wrong. I told you because I thought I was the chief whose eyes the Spaniards started out of his head with the garrotte – that I was about to die, in other words, and carry my secret to the grave with me. I dreamed that I was in the clearing with Friar de Landa. That I saw Akbal Coatl writing his record. That I saw the broken bodies of those the Friar had already tortured. When I was blinded, the Vision Serpent briefly lent me his eyes so that I could bear witness to what had occurred.’ Sabir ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘It’s all nonsense, of course. I wasn’t there. The drug was simply working on me. I was on a fucking trip, that’s all. And my unconscious mind grabbed hold of the first thing that suggested itself to me, which just happened to be the de Landa story. Under different circumstances it could just as easily have latched onto the storyline of a book I’d just been reading. Or a movie. Or something that had happened to me earlier that day in the street.’
‘You were that chief. You did see the Vision Serpent.’ The Halach Uinic was bending forwards at the waist. He was urging Sabir to believe him with his eyes.
‘Bullshit. How can that be possible?’
‘Because we were with you, Adam. All of us. We witnessed what happened to you. Ixtab was one of the ones who carried you from the square. As was I. As was the guardian, and the Chilan, and Calque. We all carried you out of there. We were chosen to share your vision. It was a communal one. As an acknowledged midwife, Ixtab was even told by the Franciscans to tend to your wounds so that you would not die. So that your torment could serve as an example to the other chiefs.’
Sabir looked uncertainly at the Halach Uinic. Then he gave a bitter laugh. ‘This is all madness. You all carried me out here, now, this minute. Not out of the square at Mani four hundred and fifty years ago. I don’t believe a word of it. Where was Lamia in all of this? I need to speak to her. I need to ask her something.’
The Halach Uinic stood up. He looked around himself in the darkness. ‘This is impossible, I am afraid. For Lamia has gone.’
95
Calque shrugged. ‘She was definitely here a few minutes ago. I saw her. We were in that place for more than four hours. It’s my guess that she’s gone to pay a visit to the bushes – and fast. That’s not something you particularly want to communicate to everybody when they’re carrying your boyfriend out in a dead faint.’
Sabir grimaced. ‘I’m tired. I don’t want to talk about this any more. Is it all right if we leave it to the morning? I’m going back to our lean-to. Lamia will be waiting for me there. I’m sure of it.’
‘You know how to find it?’
‘Yes. It’s starting to get light. Look.’ Sabir pointed to a vague luminescence in the eastern sky. ‘We’re right next to the tallest tree in the place. It’s virtually impossible to miss it.’
‘I’m coming with you.’ Calque stepped quickly to Sabir’s side.
‘What for? To hold my hand? To make sure I don’t get lost in the dark?’
‘I want to make sure that Lamia’s all right. That was an uncomfortable experience to witness back there. You were screaming, Sabir. Like they were really squeezing out your eyes.’
‘They were.’
‘But you just told us it was bullshit. Get your story right, man.’
In the dim light of the pre-dawn Sabir could just make out that Calque had his head cocked to one side, as if he were talking to someone with a particularly low IQ. This was a specialty of Calque’s. Something he’d clearly perfected over thirty years of questioning obstreperous – and often none-too-bright – suspect
s.
Sabir bitterly resented being on the receiving end of that particular look. Especially now, when he was feeling more than a little fragile. ‘Well maybe I was wrong. I can still feel pain there, for Christ’s sake. Like someone slammed a car door on my head. Then pulled it back and slammed it again for good measure.’
Calque sighed. ‘That happened years ago, Sabir. It’s been obvious to me for a long time. There has to be some rational explanation for the way you behave.’
The Halach Uinic raised his hand placatingly. He was keen to put as much distance between himself and the smart-talking ex-policeman as possible. ‘We all need some sleep. We’ll see you both in the morning. At breakfast. Much will have clarified itself by then, I am sure. And Ixtab will be able to explain the rest to you. How the datura works. Collective visions. Things like that.’
‘Well I’m glad somebody will be able to.’ Sabir’s head was about to burst. He felt desperately thirsty. He wanted to skulk off and drink a gallon of cold water, take three Advil, and then escape into Lamia’s arms. It was with considerable relief that he watched the silhouettes of the four figures disappearing into the murk.
As soon as they were safely gone, Calque grabbed Sabir by the shoulder and started hurrying him in the opposite direction.
‘What the heck’s the matter, Calque? Why are we in such a rush? You’re behaving mighty strangely all of a sudden.’
Calque hustled him towards the great tree. ‘Listen. I’m probably about to make the biggest mistake of my life. But just bear with me, Sabir. If you’ve ever felt one iota of friendship for me, then now is your chance to prove it.’
96
Lamia wasn’t waiting for them at the lean-to.
Sabir grabbed his head in both his hands in an effort to ward off his migraine. ‘She’s lost. It’s still dark as hell out there. And everyone’s asleep. There’s nobody to ask for directions. She’ll not have wanted to disturb anybody.’
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