Godhead
Page 25
The ocean was not visible from the house, but it was near enough that a large fire or an explosion should be visible. I was counting on someone stepping outside or glancing out the window and noticing. I had also been counting on speeding back to the shore in the dinghy.
Behind me the boat was erupting in spouts of flame, crackling and whoofing in the wind. The deck was a bier, the masts poles of heat and light. The fire was swallowing the boat. The Sea King sat bubbling and crisping on top of the water watching itself burn in the mirror of the sea.
I had to stop and tread water for a few minutes. I thought I had put a lot of distance between myself and the boat. Holding still made me nervous, made me think I could feel the brush of slick bodies around my ankles. I plunged forward again and kept going until there was nothing but the burn in my head and limbs, the relentless ocean licking my face, choking my nose and filling my mouth and eyes.
I was surprised when my knee hit the sandy bottom and a wave washed over the back of my head. I had been swimming over shallow water for some time splashing and thrashing when I could have walked. I went still and studied the shore. There was no one there. Maybe I was wrong and the flames weren’t visible at the house. Maybe the men were all drunk and winning money and hadn’t gone outside. I would have to wait until he discovered the boat. Just then, a concussive boom that was almost the drawing in of sound, exhaled into the sky, and filled the night with orange balls of fire, suns scattering across the waves.
I dragged myself out of the water and lay on the sand mesmerized by the flush and shine. My ears pulsed from the explosion. The gun was full of water. It was probably useless. That might be my lesson here that everything was for nothing. There was no purpose, no plan, no destiny; just accident, error, bad judgment, and blind luck. I leaned over to tie my shoe and a swath of light cut across the beach and illuminated me. Dante was standing no more than twenty feet away in the headlights of the Cadillac, flanked by men on either side.
I found my courage, or at least my will to survive. I raised the sodden gun and pointed it at him. It clicked uselessly. I turned and ran hurtling into the bushes pushing branches and vines out of my way, and running full tilt into the dark. I remembered walking blindfolded with Julián trying to feel the world around me with everything but my eyes. I smashed and clattered through the trees listening behind me until I could not resist turning around and looking back. I did not see anything. I listened and heard no one approaching. Dante had a peculiar grace sometimes but it was limited, I knew he could not come rushing through the wild toward me without making a racket and giving me a loud and ample warning. He could have sent in one of the men, men whose job was stealth and execution when they weren’t sailing the Sea King. The late Sea King.
I knew Dante. I knew he would want the pleasure of bringing me down himself. Why wasn’t he following? I stared behind me in the glimmer light. Of course. He didn’t have to barrel in after me. I was leaving a trail a mile wide. He could pursue me at his leisure.
The only advantage I had was that he did not know I wanted him to follow me.
The road intersected my path, but I avoided it wanting to leave clear markers. No, that was too obvious, he might figure out I was luring him. I circled back and took to the road, heading for the house, my fathers house, my house now. I made good time, familiar with my path, hoping he didn’t second guess me and get there before I did. I would wait for him in his lair. He wouldn’t be able to keep from coming for me. He would want to lay his hands on me, to make me hurt, and I would kill him when he tried.
By the time I reached the outer fields the car was cutting around the corner and coming directly at me. I kept running, unable to reach the house. I zigzagged across the charred fields, jumping over drainage ditches and smudgy stalks. I had almost made it to the edge of the land, when I miscalculated and slipped into a ditch. It was a deep one, eight or ten feet, for the run off from packing. I caught my hands around its edge and my legs skidded down into it hanging helplessly. I was momentarily disoriented. Then I heard the car bouncing across the fields.
Fueled by adrenaline and fear, I pulled myself up and clawed my way back onto solid ground. I could not find my gun and assumed that I must have dropped it in the ditch. I ran into the empacadora, feeling along the troughs and tables, until I wrapped my fingers around one of the sickle knives used for separating the bunches. I crept to the back of the building, to where the trucks were loaded with boxes on shipping days, crouching down and scuttling across the dirt floor, trying not to knock into anything. The headlights filled the shed with white exposing light. I dropped to my belly and inched my way toward the darkness of the trees.
Dante’s voice slid across the shadows, its gentle pitch and reasonable tone coated with slime. “Isabel!”
I froze. I knew he could not see me, but he knew I was there.
“Where do you want to die Isabel?”
I shivered into the ground.
“You just choose the spot and that’s where we’ll go.” There was an undisguised joy in his voice. This is exactly what he had intended all along, to drive me to the brink, to drive me to death either at my own hands or his. “I’ll even give you a head start. You just get going and I’ll meet you there.”
I had the eerie feeling he knew my intentions before I did, that he suggested my own ideas to me. The godhead’s prattle pitched to a whine, the shrill chirr of metal on metal, making it hard for me to make sense of anything. I had known all along where I wanted to lead Dante, I just hadn’t acknowledged it until his sinister challenge.
I continued my crawl into the bushes unsure if I should call his bluff and expose myself, or make my way hunched over and furtive. My instincts won out, and I reached the depths of the night darkened trees, where I stood and made my way on foot, picking up speed. I followed the familiar path through tangle and vine up the hill to the Mayan temple. It was a black bulk rising up to the stars. More than ever before, I felt the power of the place, the eons of memory, the passing of life and death. This was a place befitting an end.
Down below I could no longer see car lights. Dante would follow me on foot if he knew where I had gone. For a heartbeat I worried about Julián, whether Dante would seek his revenge there, devalue my life by destroying the only thing I had left. I did not think he had the patience for that anymore, or the interest. Pursuing me was the endgame.
I considered where to go, whether to lay in ambush or stand in the open. I did not want to corner myself in case things went badly, in case I wanted to run. My skin tingled and burned with impatience and energy. I was keyed and humming, a vibrating wire of nerves and strained senses.
I looked up at the temple, debated crawling into it, launching my attack from the inner sanctum, or continuing to the top. I emptied my mind and searched for the right answer. I was drawn upwards, to the open staging ground of the temple. Here, I would have a god’s eye view, and the advantage of being king of the mountain.
I climbed up the decrepit stairs feeling my way with my finger tips. In the dark with all perspective skewed and shaded I seemed to stand at a dizzying height, the land spread before me into obscurity while the stars whirled overhead, and I sat down to keep from getting vertigo.
I waited. It was possible that dawn would find me here tomorrow alone and alive with the chance to change my mind, to flee this awful responsibility and all the consequences of my actions, to leave Julián in peace. I almost began to wish for it, to pray it into being, but prayer had no place here on this pagan killing altar. I had left my God down below somewhere.
I heard him then huffing and puffing below snuffling around like a pig, trying to figure out where I had gone. It did not take him long. He gibbered as he climbed, but because of the labor of his breathing, I could not understand him until he had almost reached the top. “….not soft and easy like your father” unh unh unh “…challenging...”unh “…almost admire you for it.”
He pitched himself over the edge toward me, unconcerned a
bout any defenses I might have planned. He was so sure I was the victim, and of course I was. I had trapped myself after all. Only one of us would go down from here. His certainty might save him. In my terror I was beginning to falter.
In the end it was that terror that galvanized me, drove me to stand and lunge, leveling the sickle at his throat.
He stepped to the side, my blade slicing into his shoulder. He yowled and struck with the fluidity of a snake, bent my wrist backward until I cried out and dropped the weapon. He grabbed me by my hair, a woman’s vanity and weakness, forcing me to my knees, leveling my face with the ground. He kicked the sickle, I watched it slide over the edge, and then he dragged me there as well.
He meant to throw me off the temple to my death. Panic weakened and debilitated me, anesthetized my arms and legs, filled my mouth with saliva, made my stomach drop and roll. He pushed me the rest of the way to my belly without much effort, hanging my head into the blackness below.
“Look at that Isabel. Just like some of your ancestors, the ones that rutted with the slaves. You’ll die just like them. Your head will roll down this incline, and bounce along the grass, and you will slide away into the past just like they did. Tomorrow, my men will bring your precious padre up here and he’ll join you, but not until he knows what I did to you. He will know that God couldn’t save you, because He doesn’t exist. But I do.”
“Get away from her.”
I couldn’t turn my head. “Julián no!”
Dante said. “Wise words padre. You can’t win this one. You won’t kill me, not even to save her. You can’t, it’s a mortal sin.”
“I’m not a priest anymore,” Julián said. “Not here. Tonight I am just a man. A Mayan man and this is my temple”
Dante let me go abruptly, and just as quickly kicked me in the head, leaving me too stunned and addled to move right away.
He rose and faced Julián and the gun that he held leveled at him, the gun he did not know was useless. “And tomorrow Father, what will you be then?”
“Vindicated,” Julián said. “I see you clearly.”
I could see his face now, and he meant to pull the trigger. Julián would sacrifice his own soul, to save someone that did not deserve it.
In my boot the hummingbird dagger pulsed, thrummed into my flesh, my bones, into the raging juice of my ancient heart. The dead of a thousand years rose up and sang for vengeance in my veins. I was past -present-redeemer.
I was whole.
I reached down; the dagger homed into my hand and pulled me to my feet. I moved with the speed of the gods’ chariot, crossed the night sky in two strides to scoop and ring Dante’s throat.
And Julián screamed.
In that single stroke I freed myself and redeemed him.
I sank with Dante, dragged down by the pressure of the dagger I still held pressed into his flesh. I brought my lips to his ear. “Body and soul,” I whispered. “I won.”
I rolled him over the edge.
Down below the godhead was silent. Contented at last with blood.
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Author Bio
Jordan Alexander lives in Arizona with a very patient husband and their four children. She does most of her writing locked in the bathroom.
Her fascination with freedom, both personal and epic, is a recurring theme in her stories.
She has completed two novels and is working on several more.
For updates and information on new releases please follow her blog at:
http://jalexanderwrites.blogspot.com/
Table of Contents
Chapter One- Many Colors
Chapter Two- My Father’s House
Chapter Three- History
Chapter Four- The Cross We Bear
Chapter Five- La Madre
Chapter Six- Promised Land
Chapter Seven- Yield
Chapter Eight- Stones
Chapter Nine- Creation
Chapter Ten- Brimstone
Chapter Eleven- Walls
Chapter Twelve- Veils
Chapter Thirteen- Offerings and Altars
Chapter Fourteen- Swallowed
Chapter Fifteen- Plagues
Chapter Sixteen- Storm Brewing
Chapter Seventeen- Deluge
Chapter Eighteen- Body
Chapter Nineteen-Limbo
Chapter Twenty- Soul
Author Bio