by Gary Tenuta
She wrapped her fingers around the cup but the slight trembling of her hands betrayed her mask of confidence. That mask evaporated as she stared at the thick brown sludge inside the cup. Moving the cup slowly back and forth, the viscous substance rolled lazily from one side to the other, leaving a gritty trail along the inside edges of the container. The movement caused an equally disgusting smell to waft up into her nostrils. Her head jerked back in response.
The shaman offered a sympathetic grin. “It’s best if you can take it all down at once.” He slid the bucket closer to her side. “Just remember why you are here.”
CHAPTER 55
Ravenwood sucked in a deep breath.
In a desperate effort to force herself over this initial hump and take the plunge into a world from which she might not return––except in the form of a mindless shell––she conjured up a vision in her mind. She imagined herself as one of the last remaining contestants on her favorite reality show, Survivor. This was her final challenge. The fate of the entire world was in her hands. If she failed, she’d be voted off the island, everyone would die, and she wasn’t about to let that happen.
The fantasy seemed like a reasonable motivator at the moment. Then she realized she couldn’t fool herself. Reality TV was more fantasy than reality. What she was about to do was real reality. No script. No lights. No cameras. No first-aid crew waiting on the sidelines. The real motivation was a madman in a hospital bed, thousands of miles away, and the threat of a global Armageddon well beyond the horrors of the apocalyptic visions of St. John.
She raised the cup, tilted her head back, closed her eyes, opened wide and let the horrid sludge slide down her quivering gullet. She gagged as she struggled to gulp it down. The putrid smell of the stuff was nothing compared to the taste, something between spoiled yogurt and fermented prunes.
The bitter assault on her senses caused her to shudder. She dropped the cup, grabbed the bucket and leaned into it, coughing and gagging in a rapid series of dry heaves. “Oh…Jee...sus…god.” The words sputtered out through bubbles of saliva oozing from the corners of her mouth. She tried to spit but it dribbled down her chin. Everything started spinning. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she teetered backward.
Tocho quickly moved behind her and broke her fall. He eased her down onto her back.
Tlacatecolotl dipped a cloth into a bowl of cool water and handed it to Tocho. Tocho gently wiped it across Ravenwood’s forehead and cleaned her face. “Are you okay? Hey, Ro? You still with us?”
She gave a nod. “I… think so.” Her voice was weak. Her head was reeling. For a moment she saw two Tochos but eventually they merged back into one. She struggled to sit up but she felt like a rag doll filled with a thousand pounds of sand.
Tocho eased her back down again. He took the blanket he’d had wrapped around himself, rolled it up and gently slipped it under her head. He shot a worried glance at Tlacatecolotl.
The Owl Man was looking on with approval. “This is good,” he said. “A raven with the heart of a warrior. Where she’s going, she’ll need it.”
***
Twenty minutes passed. Ravenwood remained on her back. The initial rush of nausea diminished to almost nothing. But something was wrong. She looked up at Tlacatecolotl. “Nothing’s happening,” she muttered with a confused look. “How long before it… Oh... Oh… Something’s… happening… Oh-h-h… Jesus…” An anxiety reflex rolled through her like an arctic wave causing her to shiver violently. A moment later, her body temperature rose as if she were in a sauna. Beads of sweat began to form on her brow. The thatched ceiling of the hut was turning clockwise, slowly at first, gradually gathering momentum like the carousel at Monkeyshine’s. She heard a woman’s voice… singing… softly… somewhere in the distance. Hush little baby, don’t say a word…Papa’s gonna buy you a mocking… “Momma?”
Tlacatecolotl produced a ceremonial rattle and began shaking it in a way that it made a continuous, hypnotic, hissing sound. He chanted softly in a high-pitched drone, invoking the spirits of the sacred ayahuasca. The ancient words filled the air, asking the spirits to guide the raven warrior on her journey, at least as far as they were able to go. He knew there would be a point beyond which they could not continue to travel with her and then she would be on her own.
Ravenwood’s glassy eyes glistened in the firelight as she stared at the spinning carousel ceiling.
The Owl Man leaned over and touched two fingers to her forehead. He traced out an invisible sign of protection upon her brow and when he withdrew his hand, her eyes were closed. She was set adrift into a sea of darkness.
CHAPTER 56
Ravenwood’s etheric body drifted weightlessly, descending further and further down into the dimensionless void. The feeling was at first pleasant, intoxicating. Am I dreaming…? Abruptly, the pleasantness turned to terror as another possibility crept in. Am I dead…?
Then she heard something, a familiar but muffled sound, coming from somewhere near by. She strained to identify the sound but it seemed to be gradually fading into the distance. Then, just before it was completely gone, she recognized it. The shaman’s rattle. At that moment she remembered what had happened, where she was and why she was there.
A sudden movement captured her attention. A shapeless, luminescence was appearing out of nowhere. She watched as it coalesced into a glowing white orb the size of a soccer ball. Then another and another, until nine of them were present. The floating globes of light moved in unison to within an arm’s reach and somehow she knew they were the Guides, the ayahuasca spirits, each a representative of the Bolontiku, the nine gods of the ancient Maya. In spite of her better judgment, but lured by her sense of fascination, she reached out to touch one but it instantly moved away, retreating into the darkness. Then, just as quickly, it returned. In the next instant, the orbs had her surrounded and the energy they transmitted was palpable.
Suddenly, she realized she and the orbs were moving, as a single unit, downward through the ocean of darkness toward the nine formidable realms of the Underworld.
***
Ravenwood’s consciousness spiraled like a whirlwind out of control. The Bolontiku were transporting her through the first eight of the nine levels of the Underworld at a furious pace. The speed of the descent was an act of mercy, bypassing the terrors that would otherwise have tormented and tested her each step of the way.
A seemingly endless barrage of images, fantastical and terrorizing, swirled past her in a dizzying array. Pulsating colors washed over her in waves and then spiraled away into the eternal blackness. Grotesque, unnamable creatures sailed by. Giant serpents hissed at her with darting tongues, their gaping mouths revealing treacherous, gleaming fangs. Tangled hordes of humans, naked and wailing, limbs flailing, reached out for her with pleading eyes before some invisible force violently pulled them back and whisked them away like leaves in a storm. Her senses were on fire, her mind barely able to withstand the surreal assault. Further and further into the nightmare she descended like an elevator in an uncontrolled freefall to Hell. Then, suddenly, a dead stop.
***
Tocho jumped as Ravenwood’s physical body jerked suddenly and lurched from the floor. Her back arched upward, then relaxed.
With panic in his eyes, he turned to Tlacatecolotl. “Jesus! What the hell was that? Is she all right?”
Tlacatecolotl gave a knowing nod. “She has reached the mid-point of the eighth level.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the spirit guides will go no further. At the bottom of the eighth level she will find the Gate to Mitnal, the ninth and final level, the realm of the dead, ruled by Hunhau, the Lord of the Demons.”
Tocho shook his head slowly. “I never should have brought her here.”
“You think you had a choice?”
***
The orbs now morphed together into a single unit as they telepathically communicated to Ravenwood.
Your higher self will guide you now.
Trust it. When you return, we will come to guide you back to your world.
The orb pulsated brightly as she heard the final words of her mystical spirit guides: Ka xi’ik teech utsil. Then they were gone.
She assumed they had wished her ‘good luck’.
CHAPTER 57
Tortured screams of human souls echoed throughout the darkness as Ravenwood made her final descent. She knew her own soul could be devoured at any moment by any one of the endless streams of demonic figures swirling around her. She was caught in the current of a virtual whirlwind of terror, the demons whipping around her, taunting her, reaching for her, their hideous laughter rising to shattering crescendos. It was a nightmare beyond anything she had imagined and she was locked in with no way out, no way back to the light, without the ayahuasca spirits to guide her.
Then, in the midst of it all, she saw something else, something emerging from out of a billowing gray haze. The amorphous shape was twisting, curling in on itself like a thick smoke. Slowly, it morphed into a living likeness of her own mother.
Ravenwood stared in shock at the familiar figure. The woman was holding a grotesquely deformed newborn baby girl to her naked breast. The infant was covered in blood, mucus dripping from its creamy, scaly skin. The thing’s umbilical cord whipped back and forth like the tail of an angry serpent.
This is your precious baby.
It was her mother’s voice speaking tenderly, lovingly.
Here, my dear, would you like to hold her for a while?
Ravenwood recoiled as the mother image thrust the disgusting thing toward her. The infant’s large eyes flew open, its tiny hands reached out. It squeeled. Momma…
Ravenwood turned away, horrified. When she looked again, she saw the baby was beautiful, exactly as she had always pictured it. My baby.
Instinctively, she reached out, longing to hold the precious child in her own arms. Then she stopped short as the distant voice of her higher self told her it wasn’t real. She withdrew, reluctantly, hesitating. But the child she’d so desperately wanted, lost at birth, was here, now, in front of her––within arm’s reach. Her maternal instinct struggled against her better judgment. Her soul cried out. Dear God! Don’t do this to me!
***
Tocho took the moist cloth and wiped away the tears streaming down Ravenwood’s face. He turned to Tlacatecolotl. “Can’t we stop this? She’s suffering, for god’s sake. Look at her!”
The shaman shook his head. “There is no way to bring her back. She understood that.”
“But––”
Tlacatecolotl took Tocho’s hand and placed it on Ravenwood’s chest. “The heart of a warrior,” he said. “Never underestimate it.” He looked Tocho in the eyes. “Especially this one.”
***
Ignoring the distant warning from her higher self, Ravenwood reached out to receive the child. It let out a piercing screech the instant she touched it. Squirming and wriggling around madly, it morphed into a repulsive creature, a ganglion, with a dozen scaly tentacles twitching and thrashing about. Ravenwood quickly released the creature and it flew back into the arms of the mother image.
The mother image laughed and bellowed. “It hates you! Your own child hates you!” The words came spitting out of her mouth with a vicious sting and a perverse sense of glee.
An intense emotional pain ripped through Ravenwood’s heart. But it also caused her higher self to light up and take hold of the situation.
Remember, they feed on your fear. Release it. Trust in yourself. Embrace the love you have for that child you never knew. That love is your shield. Remember what you have learned over the years. This is why you are here. Your knowledge is your weapon. Use it now.
Ravenwood absorbed the guidance. A surge of empowerment took over and the renewed connection to her higher self was causing something else to happen. A faint light was forming, boring a tunnel through the immense darkness.
Peering into it, she thought she saw something, something that triggered a brief jolt of fear. The light momentarily dimmed in response to her reaction. She pushed back against the fear, the light brightened, and she looked once more. In the distance, at the end of the tunnel, she could see it––the Gate.
CHAPTER 58
The infamous Gate looked much as she had expected from her studies and from the stories she had heard as a child. It was a nearly invisible translucent veil, undulating like a mirage that seemed to stretch upward and downward, right and left, without end. This was the Gate that separated the rest of the Underworld––and all other worlds and realms within worlds––from the Ninth Level, the cavernous catacombs of the most destructive demonic forces, the lair of the most treacherous creatures, the very heart and soul of Baphomet, and the ancient origins of the purest evil. This is what she had risked her life, her sanity, her soul, to see.
Though chilled with an uneasy excitement and a heightened sense of apprehension, she dared to get closer. She had to see for certain what––if anything––might be waiting just on the other side of the Gate.
With a great deal of caution, she entered the tunnel of light. Oddly, the light seemed to have substance. Moving through it was like pushing through invisible Jell-O.
As she neared the end of the tunnel, her senses were slammed by a powerful noise, a roaring, howling din of voices uttering unrecognizable words in a confusion of ancient languages. The chaotic clamor blasted against her with the unrelenting pressure of a gale-force wind and catapulted her backward.
Wincing against the onslaught, she managed to look up and was shocked to find herself staring into the faces of the Offspring of the Old Ones. She froze, fearing for her life.
CHAPTER 59
Ravenwood recognized portions of the writhing, grotesquely distorted bodies of the Offspring. They bore uncanny resemblances to the configurations of their sigils. She thought she had prepared well for this moment but the reality of it nearly severed the tenuous thread connecting her to her higher self. She knew that thread was struggling against the unbearable weight of impending insanity.
The Offspring were just behind the veil. They threw themselves at it with wild abandon, screaming, screeching, howling, lunging against it, pressing into the resilient, invisible barrier, the impressions of their forms briefly appearing as if molded into it, then springing back again. The veil stretched, pulled, barely resisting the chaotic assault. Hell was bursting at the seams.
***
Cowl’s hand twitched as the empty, silent cavern of his subconscious was suddenly shaken by the angry growl of Crowley’s voice.
“Damn it to hell,” the voice cursed.
Cowl was confused. “What is it?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“A disturbance in the order of things. I can feel it.”
“What kind of disturbance? What things? I don’t understand––”
“That’s right,” came Crowley’s retort. His tone was irate and condescending. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. But I feel it. God damn it to hell, I can feel it.”
***
Ravenwood stood frozen as she watched the frenzied, unrelenting attack upon the Gate. It seemed ready to give way to the assault at any moment. Was she the cause of this? Had she gone too far? Dear God, what have I done? Any moment now, the veil would be ripped open, torn to shreds by the mad forces of a Hell gone berserk. She braced for the onslaught. There was no escape. It was as good as over and the world she’d hoped to save was about to suffer a horror beyond all comprehension.
Helpless and alone, she could feel her consciousness fading, drifting. As the darkness slowly crept into her soul, squeezing out the last remnants of light, a series of images passed through her mind: Tocho… Man, I don’t know. I mean, you’d be risking your life. I don’t think you know what you’d be getting yourself into. The Owl Man… Journeying to the Underworld is something few have done. Some have not returned. That is, they returned but as an empty shell, their consciousn
ess trapped in a void from which it can never escape. Lieutenant Kane… What about you? Got any kids? The drawings of the sigils… Kutulu is special among the offspring. He is the most powerful of all the offspring because he holds within him all the magick and power that the other offspring can use against the humans here in the world of the living.
That final thought ignited a tiny spark.
She remembered.
Kutulu.
These demons can’t escape their captivity without the ninth member, the sleeping demon, Kutulu.
She remembered, only a magician in possession of The Keys Of The Gatekeeper could awaken and summon the sleeping demon.
The spark grew brighter.
Cowl may, indeed, have somehow acquired the mysterious book but if he’s still in a coma then he hasn’t used it yet. Besides, she reasoned, if he had used it, the demons would already be free. Clearly, they’re not. The Gate still holds. There’s still a chance to finish this.
As the inner light of her consciousness returned, the frantic activity of the demons suddenly subsided to a din of dull grumblings, confused cacklings, their contorted faces twisting into mystified expressions. They seemed confounded, bewildered by her sudden lack of fear.
With a sudden jolt of confidence, Ravenwood turned away from the Gate and retreated back into the tunnel of light, leaving the hideous things behind, stewing in their state of confusion.
She knew, now, it was all real. Not a shred of doubt remained. Now she could do what had to be done: Rye Cowl had to be destroyed.
***
On the floor of Tlacatecolotl’s hut, Ravenwood squirmed, her eyes fluttered open. Her voice was weak. “Tocho? Am I––?”
