Story of a Ghost Town
Page 5
Whispering, we decide to run as fast as possible to reach the car and go away. Dark is on our side, they shouldn’t see us, almost till a certain point. We surely will take them by surprise.
We begin to hear noises and there are shadows moving in the old town. Still a few minutes and we could be blocked again by theme from both sides, with no more way out. Then that scream from behind us:
‹‹...iiiiiii...eeee...››
They’ve certainly notice us!
It doesn’t matter, we are ready, we count with fingers...one...two...three...GO!
Seeing those beings just from afar would have avoided some recurrent nightmare...
We get out from the bush one after the other, I’m the last one. My friend already gone, now it’s my turn. I get out but I fell because of a root (or I think so). I fortunately put my hands ahead, but anyway my right knee bumps on a rock. It really hurts but I remain silent, not a sound from my mouth. My first thought is to look the reaction of those around the fire. They didn’t hear me, they are intent listening to the standing man that is speaking in the incomprehensible gruesome language.
I hear steps and the scream again, this time clearly, coming from behind me:
‹‹kiiiimeeeeeen››
I manage to get up, the knee is less bad than what I thought, maybe it’ll be worst later, but it’s becoming hot and I feel tingling to the shin. It’s probably bleeding, but I have to run. My comrades already reached the first fence. They’re running along it, on the opposite side of the fires. Stronger voices behind me. I have to run faster!
The cantilene ends in the same way the waves crash on the shores. All is silent...
Somebody begins to turn toward my friends, but they are running as trains. Even if they have seen them, they are already beyond the curve of the road leading to the cross. The main problem is mine because I’ve lost a lot of time when I fell, I try to reach them, anyway.
Those beings saw me, some are running toward me, an object nearly against my head, maybe a stone. I believe they’re doped (of course I don’t know which is the drug) but surely they’re not completely lucid. Their reactions are very slow, and of course, that’s better for us. The voice behind me is now very clear:
‹‹WI’INIK KIMEEEEN››
I too reach the first fence and there there’s a stench to take off your breath. The rest of an animal (I believe a sheep) lies in the immediate nearby the entrance. It’s decapitated and a good portion of the chest is missing. Now I’m sure they are true animals... what they used to cover their heads and the blood were real. All these thoughts while I’m running, of course. I’m at the second fence... what I suddenly hear at my right side is a chain noise, a hoarse...noises growing as I run, hoping my knee resist. As soon as I turn my eyes I notice a black shadow that quickly approaches me. It’s a big dog, angry as if I kicked it. Probably it was woke up by my companions, and now its furious eyes only see me. Running, I reach the fence that delimits the road and I nearly bump against it. To fall in that moment wouldn’t be the best thing. I hear its furious barking, almost a shout, shot directly in my head. Fortunately the chain that tieds it is short enough to let the passage of a man.
‹‹WI’INIK KIMEEEEN›› I clearly hear.
I’m on the curve right now, after this I will be in front of the cross...what else I’m going to find there? Fires.
I see them as soon as I’m over the curve. One is nearby the cross, gives it an even more grotesque aspect. Somebody made a little altar, something to keep curious away, deliberately made to scare. Yes, because around the base on which stands the cross there are sticks planted in the ground with parts of animals on the top. Another fire is aside the road, but nobody is there. And here too there is an altar made in the same way.
I continue to run because behind me I hear shouts and barking dogs. Certainly they’re still pursuing me, but I don’t bother, I just want to reach my comrades that I see from afar enlightened by one of the fires that we saw extinguished at the beginning of that bloody journey. They turned toward me to see where I was. -This means that the situation over there is quite- I think.
I finally reach them, we run the last few meters together, get over the gate, run toward the car, get in it. I turn the engine, put the reverse to make the maneuver and........BAM!!!!
Directly on the hood and it covers with blood the entire windshield! I jump and the engine switches off.
I turn it on again and turn on the windshield wipers to clean it from the blood and the pieces of flesh. Meantime I turn to see who may have launched that thing. Somebody is on the rock that delimits the old town. He shouts against us, we couldn’t see him before because he is completely in the dark and alone.
I quickly continue the maneuver, the carcass still on the hood, but it doesn’t matter, we just want to go away, finally away.
A riot, a rumor and a scream: ‹‹WI’INIK KIMEEEEEEN›› behind us.
For a moment I can see the shouting person a dozen meters away, with the usual cloth around the hips. This time he’s not wearing the beast’s head, but an animal’s skin worn as a poncho. Behind him a large group of menacing figures, enlightened by the fires. A multitude of those bloody beings that run toward us brandishing I don’t know what kind of tools.
I don’t care and take the road with the street lamps. We are safe! The nightmare is finished.
Apart from some screams and some curses we didn’t exchange any word yet.
The street is completely in the dark, a sky that seems a huge diamond on a blue carpet.
From afar we can see the castle enlightened by the glowing fires.
I turn my head to the one who’s sitting near me....and they both shout:
‹‹CAREFUUUUUUUUUUUUUL!››
I soon turn toward the road, stopping at the same time, so the carcass flies away from the hood. If I hadn’t done so I would have invested her with the car. She was standing ...the lady that was with the big belly-man hours before. She was in the middle of the road. Patrolling, I believe.
We are petrified. She quietly begins to move toward us. We block the doors, leaving only a small opening at the window. I give a look at the mirror: I wouldn’t like to be reached by that angry crowd. She approaches and then flanks on my side...with wide open eyes she says:
‹‹I told you that you shouldn’t enter, didn’t I???››
Finally we manage to speak, and all three in union we say:
‹‹FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!››
I hurry up, we are going to the end of this very bad day.
The blue lights of the broken street lamps can only fascinate us. We no long ask any question, we don’t want to know anything at all. We just want to go back home.
The stones road ends. It begins the one unpaved and at the same time the road just made is swallowed up in the dark. We turn curious to give a look: we no more see street lamp lights, nor fire lights, only the deep darkness of a normal forgotten country road.
As though we had passed an obscure and damn invisible passage, or as if nothing had ever happened.
We all take a deep breath. Clear images of new memories flow in front of my eyes, as if I was living again and again the same film.
A wave of fresh, pungent air fills the car just widening the windows. Only in that moment I realize how much nauseous stink we had on; we let the air to take care of us, corroborating and purifying our skin as if it was water from a mountain’s water source.
Everyone, in its own way, contemplates the silent darkness that advances inexorably toward us, defecate by the Moon’s delicate light and the lights of the car.
This is the Laino Castello that I remember...If you happen to be in that area, go and see, and if you don’t believe in what has been told, stay there till the night. Do it at your own risk...and don’t come to tell me I didn’t warn you.
Farewell ghost town, never to see again!!!
August, 2015
Final Note
> One of the first things I did, apart from telling our absurde adventure ones we got home ,was to look for the meaning of the words that we had read near the tombstone, and to give meaning to those of the monotonous cantilene of those horrible beings, these last even with more difficulties because I had only mnemonic memories. Well, the search was useless...as if the language was non-existent.
When I almost lost the hopes, I published that phrases on a web site of experts in archeological symbols and old languages. I was contacted by a young researcher of the University of Studies “Oriental” in Naples, who was very interested to those words. He was so much so, that instead of answering me online, he asked to meet me personally because he wanted to figure out how I’d found them. I told him the story and he was really fascinated. Also because those words seemed to belong to an ancient Mayan stump, which is, to say the least, paradoxical. Surely another person, wouldn’t even believe in my story, nor, at least, in the discovery of those ancient phrases in that place. That young man, however, was concerned with the diffusion and fragmentation of archaic languages, and was interested in a particular way, to find connections between cultures and geographically distant places. To find something so concrete was as manna from heaven, to him.
The meaning of the incomprehensible phrase under the tombstone, which I had appropriately transcribed, made me also understand the “rule” of the ghost presence. In fact the meaning of “PAACH UTIA’AL LELA’ NOH KAAH” is “go away from our places”. Surely wrote from the rituals executors, because the language was the same of the bloody cantilene. Knowing this, I can only think that the ghost of the child disturbed the rituals of those beings, who tried in vain (maybe even trying to remove the tombstone) to keep her away. When Anna was possessed by the little girl’s spirit we were very much scared, but she just wanted to warn us about the danger and the risk we were taking staying there, and to tell us to run away.
As to the phrase repeatedly infused by the participant in the ceremony and to the worlds they shouted at us during the escape, once understood the idiom, for the researcher was fairly simple to perceive the exact formula of the language and, consequently, their meaning; that’s why I could manage to write them in the text.
It is likely that the translation of “NUIXIB YUUM K’IIN” was simply: “great priest”, a sort of invocation to the being who talked standing...this is the only explanation.
As for the sentence “WI’INIK KIMEN”, it is plausible that the meaning was “man to death”, that makes us suppose that their intention were anything but diplomatic.
It’s not been possible to understand the meaning of the red writing near the carcass: the signs were unintelligible and, consequently, the collectable informations.
He also asked me to accompany him in those places to make some researches, but frankly, I’m very hesitant, I hope he doesn’t offends.
I hope you’ll forgive the poor quality of the photos in the text, but I assure you that everything has been done to get the best result. Unfortunately the pictures were already damaged from the beginning and no better result was possible from that you could observe.
October 2016
INDEX
PRologUE................................................9
I - INAUSPICIOUS OMENS..........17
II- Interlud..........................................35
III - NuIxib yuum k’iin......................57
FINAL NOTE....................................91