• • • • •
“Pick him up again.”
The Captain of the marauders spat the words out in Spanish as he stepped away from the barely moving figure on the floor in front of him.
Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castillo de Sevilla wasn’t actually enjoying himself, not any longer. You could say he was not a happy man; if you could call him a man. He was more like a monster. Sweat was pouring off him from the effort he’d been putting into the torture of the current victim of his attention. He took a long drink of water and then wiped his hands and face as he looked back toward the two men who were just completing his order.
The last surviving member of the High-Council of Mayan Priests was on his knees being held up by his arms by two very large Conquistadors. The Spaniards had removed all of their armor. The heat of the jungle was just too unbearable to keep it on any longer than was necessary for actual combat. In front of the kneeling Priest was a pile of severed human tongues. There were over two-hundred and sixty tongues in the grotesque pile of lumpy fly-covered flesh.
Don Marco Fernando grabbed the translator, a frightened old Mayan man who himself looked like he had recently been the target of Don Marco Fernando’s wrath, and threw him in front of the Priest. The translator had been dragged along with the mercenary Conquistadors as they had been ravaging the Yucatan peninsula for the past several years. Everyone and everything that was not Spanish in origin was used and abused like cheap property. And that included the translator. The translator will not survive the end of the week. But Don Marco Fernando won’t care. He’ll just get another translator. He and his men have been on a holy dual quest. First, and foremost, was to find the rumored hoards of gold and gems these savages had been moving and hiding from him. And second, was the complete extermination of this vermin race of savages in this cursed and foul land of jungle and rot.
The Mayan culture was in its final throes. Don Marco Fernando was there to help it along its way to extinction.
“Ask this savage one more time where the gold is hidden,” Don Marco Fernando told the translator as he stood over him. “Ask him what was in the box that was carried into the big pyramid… and where did they hide it?” Then the Conquistador looked at the old man. “You get him to tell me, or I’ll make you pay for this trickery, you worthless cur. You told me this was where the Mayans keep their greatest treasure… but I’ve found nothing.”
The old Mayan translator quickly looked to the broken Priest. He spoke in the native Mayan tongue, but his voice was barely over a whisper.
“Please… tell him where you keep the gold. Give him whatever you have. He will not stop until he finds it.”
The last surviving member of the Mayan High-Council of Priests didn’t lift his head. He could barely focus on the pile of tongues in front of him; tongues of his friends and his relatives. He knew that his tongue would be joining that pile shortly, because he did not have the answer that the Conquistador was so desperately looking for. He did not know where there was any amount of gold to satisfy the greedy Spanish invaders.
The old man continued. “You must tell him what you hid in the pyramid. He knows of the Mayan treasure. Please… you’ve seen what he will do.” He glanced over at the pile of severed tongues on the floor. “No gold or treasure can be worth your life.”
The Priest did not raise his head, nor did he move.
The half-dead Priest knew that every piece of gold and gems had already been confiscated. There were no more stores of gold or precious stones anywhere on this mountaintop complex. But it was no use trying to explain that. It would only result in your tongue being separated from your head; possibly while you were still alive to see it.
As for the other treasure, he was sure the murderous Spaniards did not know of the precious stone tablet that held his God. And the treasure must have successfully been stored in the secret room, or else they would not still be asking for it. Which meant his God was safe. These beasts would not find and steal his God. And he would not betray his God, even at the risk of death and dismemberment. This final thought brought a flash of peace and serenity to the last surviving member of the Mayan High-Council of Priests.
But it didn’t last long.
Just as the half-dead man was about to let go and surrender to impending death, he heard the screams.
They were coming from a couple of rooms away. All of the young girls were gathered up by the foul Conquistadors after the massacre had subsided. They were held in a large group all night, like a corral of horses, just outside this set of rooms in the communal living quarters of the temple plaza. The group of girls were being held right next to the huge pile of bodies from Don Marcos Fernando’s tortuous tantrums. All night and all morning long, the stripped naked girls were led by small groups into the closest room to the trapped and frightened young Mayans. On the other side of the barricade, a line of half-naked Conquistadors extended out of the door to the room.
The scream pierced the air again. The Priest recognized this scream. The last surviving member of the Mayan High-Council of Priests heard his virgin baby girl, of only twelve, being raped by the filthy stinking long-haired men with metal skin. This was all he could stand. The last surviving member of the Mayan High-Council of Priests; the last man on Earth that knew the real reason the Maya were able to achieve all that they had achieved over the two millennia they had thrived; the last man who knew of the existence and location of the God in the Clear Rock; exploded up and charged the gruesome monster who had been torturing him for the last twenty minutes.
With every muscle in his body responding to his fury, the Priest threw up his arms and lunged toward the neck of Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla, who was only a few feet in front of him.
But he never reached him.
Although the Priest was able to pull his arms free from the loose grip of the Conquistadors who stood by his side, Don Marco Fernando reacted before the naked Priest could even blink. As the wide-eyed Priest looked down, he could see the thin blade of the Spanish steel sticking in through his stomach moments before he felt the first pain. The blade pierced all the way through him and stuck out his back about a foot.
The Priest had only seconds to live as he watched the evil grimace of Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla grow wider. Then Don Marco Fernando lifted the blade up with both hands and severed the spine of the last surviving member of the Mayan High-Council of Priests.
After holding the weight of the Priest on the sword for a few seconds, he pushed the man noiselessly off of his dull bloody blade. The Priest collapsed in a paralyzed heap on the floor as the Conquistador Commander cursed under his breath. The two Conquistadors who had been holding the Priest quickly reached down and grabbed his shoulders again and lifted him up. The man’s useless and paralyzed legs stayed limply attached to the floor, and his head rolled listlessly forward. One of the torturers pulled the Priest’s head back by the braided hair on his head. The Priest’s eyes rolled uselessly around in their sockets, but he was still barely alive.
Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla then walked up to the helpless and dying Priest. Without saying a word, he reached out and roughly pulled down the man’s jaw that was partially hanging open. Then he used a pair of iron pliers to grab his tongue and pull it unnaturally out of his head. Don Marco stepped around to the side, then used the same Spanish steel blade to sever the tongue of the quickly dying man.
He tossed the tongue on the pile and silently motioned his men. The two Conquistadors balanced the body of the Mayan Priest on his own stooped torso. One of them lifted up the hair of the tongueless man, straightening out his neck, while the other man stepped back. Then Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla spun around with his sword and swung it like a bat it into the neck of the Priest. But the blade only made it a little over halfway through, leaving the steel sword sticking out the side of the paralyzed man’s throat. Don Marco cursed as he pulled out the blade.
“Damn it to the fires of Hell… I despise this cursed wet land. You cannot even keep a blade sharp in all this wet foulness.”
As Don Marco inspected the blade of his sword, the marionette Conquistador let go of the Priest’s hair and his body collapsed back onto the floor. The head of the Priest flipped over and back, only connected by the piece of skin and muscle that Don Marco’s blade was too dull to cut through. The Priest’s head flopped against his shoulder and stared out from upside-down dead eyes as the final beats of his dying heart gushed blood up from the stump of his neck.
Don Marco Fernando walked away without looking back and handed the sword to another bloody Conquistador standing by the door.
“Have the blade sharpened before I return… And clean up this mess.”
Then Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla walked out of the room. Behind him, the two guards picked up the mutilated body of the last no-longer-surviving member of the Mayan High-Council of Priests and tossed him out the door of the room onto the pile of other bodies. Then they went and got another living victim from the few remaining in the plaza.
Conquistador Don Marco Fernando was now furious. He’d barely found any gold at all on his plundering trek through the Yucatan. He had decided that the Mayans must have been sending out warnings and moving the gold before he and his men arrived. This was supposed to be the most holy of the savage Mayan cities. He was sure this was where the savages hid the gold. He was certain of it. But he and his men had found nothing, yet. He would make all of the Mayans pay for not giving him the gold. He would make the old man translator pay, too. He was going to make everyone pay before it was all over. But right now, Don Marco Fernando was tired of killing and torturing. And he knew just what would pick up his spirits.
He headed toward the sound of the screams.
As Don Marco walked into the room, the screams got louder. On the other side of the makeshift bordello, he could see the line of his men stretching out the door into the plaza. All of them were drinking and getting ready for their part in the traditional raping of the girls. None of the armor that had protected the marauders were on the sweaty soldiers of fortune. Many of them barely had anything on at all. The heat in the huge room filled with blankets and tables and beds was nearly unbearable.
But the purpose was clear.
Don Marco Fernando elbowed his way into the dark torch-lit room. On the floor next to the side wall, were the bodies of two dead thirteen year old girls who had been raped and killed, then stacked on each other like firewood. There were many other girls nearby who were all being used by various Conquistadors on items that had been thrown around the room for that purpose. Four Conquistadors were using four girls on a stone table in front of Don Marco. The table banged against the wall in loud irregular thumps, as they viciously raped the girls. Every few minutes, the men would pick up the girls and throw them around, tossing their naked and catatonic bodies between each other like full-size dolls.
Except for the one currently screaming, all of the other girls were long past making any noise or putting up any fight. The two mutilated bodies against the wall were all the evidence the now quiet girls needed to know about what would happen to anyone that did not submissively go along. Don Marco Fernando walked up to the man who was raping the girl who was screaming. She was the only girl in the room making noise. She was hysterical.
Commander Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla yanked his soldier off the girl by the hair.
“What the hell is wrong with you.”
The girl was bent over the rough stone table on her belly and didn’t really know what just happened. She only knew the horrible smelly man just left her no-longer-virgin twelve year old body. Her screaming dropped to a whimpering cry. But before she could relax, Conquistador Don Marco slipped down his pants and grabbed the frightened brown-skinned Mayan girl by the waist.
“She doesn’t want it like an animal… She wants it like a good Christian.”
He flipped her over until she landed hard on her back. Then he grabbed her legs and began to enter her ripped and bloody crotch.
The frightened brown-skinned Mayan girl tried to use her arms to push the new smelly man off her. And she started screaming again. Don Marco pulled back his one mighty fist and smashed-in the face of the twelve year old girl. She immediately went unconscious from the impact, which shoved the bones of her nose into her young brain and broke out all of the front teeth in her upper jaw.
“And that’s how you stop that noise.”
Don Marco continued on with his business, now that his prey was no longer fighting. The unconscious little girl would drown on her own blood from the smashed-in teeth in her mouth before the Conquistador Captain finished.
After a few minutes, Don Marco Fernando got up off the now dead daughter of the last no-longer-surviving member of the Mayan High-Council of Priests. He pulled up his trousers, then walked toward the exit to the plaza.
As he made his way past one of the many tables and beds in the huge room, he recognized Franciscan Friar Antonio Miguel. Friar Antonio had accompanied Don Marco Fernando on his sea voyage to this wretched land. Friar Antonio was charged with converting these idiot savages into Christians.
“I see you’re well into your next convert Father.” Don Marco smiled at his own sick humor as he walked toward the door to the plaza.
Franciscan Friar Antonio Miguel was just a few feet away from his old friend Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla. Friar Antonio had just entered the young boy in front of him on the pile of blankets on the stone table, as the Conquistador Captain walked by.
“If it is God’s will, then I shall tame these savages one soul at a time.”
The Friar’s shoulders moved in time with the stroking of his bare waisted hips. In front of the rhythmically challenged man of God was a naked young boy of only eleven. The boy was tiny compared to the table the Friar had his unholy convert bent over. The boy’s small legs hung loosely over the edge of the stone table. They bounced back and forth as the Friar used his young body.
Quatze’s face was turned to the side, and his eye looked like it was hanging out of its socket. His head banged forward with each stroke of the monster behind the young boy. He was nearly in total shock now. The concussion from the shank of the Conquistador’s sword, right after he killed his cousin an hour earlier, had left him mostly in a daze and blind on one side.
He wasn’t thinking of his father any more. That was yesterday. The only thing he could think of right now was the Mayan God Itzamna. When the boys opened the Box yesterday in the pyramid, Quatze had seen the image of his God appear in his mind. It was as clear as if he had seen him with his eyes.
And then the image of a beautiful woman appeared in his mind. She smiled at Quatze and then he felt better.
Then the Head Priest stormed into the chamber and ran off with the Box. The good feeling left the boy and fear immediately replaced it. That was when he was thinking about his father and the mines where his family was still living. That was yesterday. It seemed liked forever to Quatze.
Now, as he endured this humiliation at the hands of these unholy beasts, he could only think of the beautiful woman and his God Itzamna. They would come to rescue him. He knew it. He would only have to wait. They would come; Quatze prayed.
But, they would not come and rescue the boy.
No one would come and rescue anyone.
The next day, on Don Marco Fernando’s orders, all the remaining natives were killed, even the children.
More than one of his men enjoyed this immensely.
When the massacre was complete, Don Marco had his men move each of the bodies deep into the big pyramid at the end of the plaza. He had searched in vain for the wooden box his men had reported one of the savages carried across the plaza and into the huge pyramid. In anger and retaliation, Don Marco ordered his men to do something that would have angered the God in the Clear Rock, if she had known. What he and his men did, would have
angered any god. It was godless and evil; as was Don Marco.
When he and his men finished their gruesome desecration, the vile and foul Conquistador Don Marco Fernando smiled at his ultimate act of inhuman cruelty to the Mayan people he so despised.
Then he had his men use their horses to pull over the walls and motif columns that separated the massive entrance to the wide stairs leading down into the pyramid from the main terrace. After that, the lower half of the pyramid was no longer accessible from the outside. The jungle would eventually seal off the rest of the pyramid. Don Marco Fernando wished he could topple the whole damn pyramid and every building on the complex.
But instead, Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla gave his men one last order.
“Burn it… burn it all.”
And they did. Everything flammable was torched. Everything else was destroyed by hand. And then he and his men packed up on their horses and left the burning and smoldering holy temple to rot in the jungle. It would be taken over entirely in only a few years, and it would not be relinquished by the green overgrowth for almost five centuries.
The God in the Clear Rock would wait patiently inside the secret room where the Royal Guards from the last sect of the great Mayan people who knew of her existence had so carefully hidden her.
She would wait.
Because the God in the Clear Rock knew that rescuers would come.
They always come.
So, she would wait.
The God in the Clear Rock would have to wait almost five hundred years to be rescued.
But five hundred years are nothing to a God…
• • •
Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla would soon leave the Yucatan with his band of raiding mercenaries. On Royal Spanish orders, he sailed to the South American continent looking for that hoard of gold he so desperately believed was out there waiting for him to find or steal. He was heading toward Incan territory when his troop was faced with crossing a large but slow moving river in the Amazon rainforest. He took off his armor to lighten the load on his horse and then pushed the reluctant animal into the water intending to drag a rope behind him and attach it to the other side.
He never made it to the other shore.
As his horse got to the chest deep point in the water, it reared up and tossed Don Marco out into the murky brown river. The dismounted Conquistador plunged down deep into the warm water and tried to pull his legs underneath him. He shoved his feet into the muddy bottom and lunged up toward the surface. When he got his head out of the water, he was facing downstream. He twisted around and then tried to stroke back toward the shore. But as soon as he got into a flat swimming position on the surface of the slowly moving river, a giant thirty-foot anaconda came up behind him from the muddy bottom. The snake was so large, it stayed coiled on the bottom of the ten foot deep river as it rapidly surged its monster head upward. It stretched opened its gigantic mouth, then grabbed both legs of the swimming man and swallowed him in one gulp.
The enormous snake didn’t bother to constrict Don Marco before he engulfed him, because the Conquistador had been kind enough to stretch out for the aquatic predator. All the anaconda had to do was come up from behind this odd pink monkey and scoop him into its open mouth. The gigantic snake’s momentum carried the slippery, wet body of the almost naked man deep into the belly of the water-borne monster.
Don Marco’s hands were both extended above his head when the snake enveloped his body from below in one swift lunge from its hiding place at the muddy bottom. The Spaniard had taken a breath as he lurched for the shore from the middle of the river, but it was the last one he would ever get. He had quickly closed his eyes when he saw the snake’s massive head and teeth scrape over his face, and he dared not open them now. Fully extended in a diving position, the slimy stomach muscles of the man-eating snake were squeezing too tightly for him to be able to pull down his arms or even bend his legs.
He was trapped in the belly of the giant anaconda like an animal stretched on a roasting spit.
The final breath that Conquistador Don Marco Fernando was holding in his constricted lungs would last him for almost two whole minutes. During which time he was aware he was inside the belly of a monster as it swam away from safety and assistance of his men. He could not even try to scream as he waited in terror for death. The digestive juices of the snake poured over his face and his eyes. He could feel as the burning liquid entered his nostrils and ears. Don Marco tried to tremble in fear and panic for what he knew was happening to him, but he couldn’t even do that. He did not even know what type of monster it was that had eaten him.
The only image his dying brain could come up with was that of a mythical dragon.
As the air in his lungs began to force its way out, he finally let go of his breath.
The snake instantly constricted its stomach tighter as the panicked, half-naked man released his last puff of air. Don Marco Fernando could no longer take a breath, even if he tried. The darkness closed in around Conquistador Don Marco Fernando Castilla de Sevilla.
But it didn’t close down fast enough to stop the terror in the bright final flashes of the murdering mercenary’s mind.
The giant snake would take five weeks to digest him.
Every single one of the raping and murdering men in the Conquistador’s company would die in this strange land. Franciscan Friar Antonio Miguel would die from complications of the candirú, formally known as Vandellia cirrhosa; an Amazonian fish that crawls up your penis and dies. Which, if untreated, leads to an excruciating and gruesomely painful death.
When the native Indians informed him of what his condition was and what would happen to him, Friar Antonio cut off his own penis in an attempt to stop the pain and save his life.
It didn’t work. He died holding his own severed penis.
Karma is a bitch.
The God in the Clear Rock Page 10