At the End of the World

by Mark Macpherson

  Hamish surprised Arthur’s look of distrust and disbelief before Arthur turned back to the stream of smoke. They both saw the shape as it stepped out of the mouth of the Vision Serpent.

  The figure was not a replica of Hamish, it was a replica of Jim.

  It was Harry.

  Chapter 14

  Yax K’in smiled grimly, without satisfaction, as the figure of Harry emerged from the Vision Serpent. The ceremony had worked, despite the haste. He studied Harry critically as if he was a specimen.

  The smoke from the Vision Serpent wreathed Harry, giving him a ghost-like appearance, blurring the edges of his body. The smoke flowed in his wake like a cape. He ignored everyone but the young woman who had summoned him. He was not Harry at that moment, a wise old creature stared at Pep’Em Ha with Jim’s eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said softly like a sigh. He placed his hand under her chin and lifted her head so she was forced to look at him. Jim’s replica terrified her. She strained to see the original Jim out from the corner of her eyes. The apparition was of her own making, she believed, out of her pain, shock and fear.

  Harry smiled. She returned his smile despite her fear and the ache in her mouth. Harry, somehow, had forced joy upon her.

  Harry pushed Jim’s hand away. He threw away the blood soaked bandages and placed his hand on the messy and bloody flesh of her tongue. The smoke that clung to him flowed down his arm and into her mouth. Her wound melted and merged and healed.

  Harry became distinct as the smoke left him. He shook his head as if he had been frightened awake while sleep walking. His eyes grew wide, he did not know where he was. He flicked his head from side to side in panic. The people and objects before him made no sense. He recognized the person holding Pep’Em Ha. He tightened his eyes as if he was trying to focus but could not believe what his brain told him.

  ‘Jim?’ Harry said incredulously. He crumpled in a faint.

  Hamish caught Harry and held him tight like he was, again, his infant grandson. Hamish’s eyes glistened and his mouth shook. He did not believe what he held in his arms but like a vivid, returned memory he would fight to not let it fade.

  Harry regained consciousness almost immediately. The close, concerned face of his grandfather was momentarily incomprehensible to him.

  ‘Granddad?’ Harry said.

  Hamish hugged Harry to him, squeezing him hard.

  ‘OK, granddad,’ Harry said as the breath was squashed from him. ‘I’m all right.’

  Hamish let Harry go, a little, so that he could see his face again.

  ‘Where’s your father Harry?’ Hamish asked in a voice that shook with desperation. He hoped that his joy at a returned grandson, real or not, could be complemented by the resurrection of his son.

  ‘Dad? How would I know?’

  Harry recognized another face. ‘Uncle Arthur?’

  Harry struggled and shrugged off his grandfather.

  ‘Where is dad?’ he asked with a rising panic. ‘Jim? Where is everyone? Where are we?’ He twisted his body to and fro as he tried to make sense of his location.

  ‘You’re dead,’ Jim said in a dispassionate monotone. He had one arm around Pep’Em Ha’s shoulder.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mom and Dad are dead,’ Jim said viciously and clearly. The apparition was not his brother. It was a tormenting figment. He was terse as if testing the humanness of the creature before him.

  ‘What? How?’ Harry spluttered. He believed his brother. ‘When?’ The trauma of discovery was too much, even for a young man among strangers and he began to cry. Jim watched the display for a moment and then let his eyes fall to the ground in embarrassment. It was no apparition. Jim wrapped his arms around his twin brother. Pep’Em Ha’s blood as well as his own smeared over Harry’s shoulder. Harry sobbed into his brother. Hamish tried to encircle them both with his arms.

  Michelle tore her eyes away from the reunited family and crouched next to Pep’Em Ha. She examined her mouth. There was blood everywhere, it had coagulated inside her mouth, around her lips and lower face and it covered her clothes but her tongue was whole.

  ‘Can you talk?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘Yes. There’s no pain,’ Pep’Em Ha said, although speech was difficult with the blood remaining in her mouth.

  Arthur passed her water to rinse her mouth. Michelle smoothed Pep’Em Ha’s hair in a mothering motion and then began to wipe and clean her face with a damp cloth.

  Yax K’in wobbled on his feet and fell hard into a sitting position. He was emptied of life. It had all been for nothing. The blood-letting ceremony had failed after all. He lifted his head, to again observe Harry and Jim. What had gone wrong? Any of a myriad of things, he thought. The haste and lack of ritual or the badly mended god-pot. Paramount in his mind was his own unworthiness. He would have to find the error, before the ceremony was repeated. He shook himself. No, he thought angrily and with conviction, it won’t be repeated. There would be no further suffering. Hachakyum’s plan had failed upon execution. He let his head fall into his hands. He would have to think. He would have to try to understand.

  There had to be another way.

  Chapter 15

  Harry was taken, in a distraught state, to the hut shared by Jim and Hamish. They put him into Jim’s hammock and he fell immediately asleep. Hamish pulled out the chair that was drawn into the little work table. He placed it next to the hammock and sat beside his grandson. Nothing else mattered. He would be there when Harry woke.

  Hamish believed the miracle of the resurrection of his grandson. His eyes told him a truth he wanted to see. He did not question how it could have happened, as if doubt would cause his grandson to disappear. Hamish’s world was restricted to Harry’s rhythmic breathing. Nothing else mattered, not his loss of Kate and, now, her unreasonable demands, not his anger, embarrassment and frustration from Roberto’s police, not the pain of the injury to his head, not his confused and befuddled mind, and not even, for the moment, the death of his son.

  Jim watched Hamish watching Harry for a long time until he remembered Pep’Em Ha. He quietly told his grandfather that he was leaving in search of her. Hamish nodded his head but did not take his eyes off Harry.

  Pep’Em Ha was lying in a hammock in her father’s hut. Her face was clear of the evidence of her attack. Yax K’in sat, on the floor, next to her, replicating the scene of careful attention in Hamish’s hut. He was smoking a cigar. The blood streaked paper had not been moved, neither had the mended god-pot of Hachakyum. Pep’Em Ha’s mother sat, like a silent but angry protector, on the other side of the hammock. Her face was drawn with worry.

  She blamed herself, her lack of oversight, for Pep’Em Ha’s injury. Her daughter and Jim had come to her the night before, worried about Yax K’in’s behavior at Yaxchilan. She had reassured Pep’Em Ha that her father was sound and no danger to himself nor to others. She had been proved wrong. She should have known better.

  Yax K’in had harmed his daughter before.

  Pep’Em Ha slept lightly. She woke momentarily when Jim entered, smiled at him and then fell back into sleep. Jim watched her rhythmic breathing, which replicated the movement of his resurrected brother. He wondered if her torture had been worthwhile. She was healed and sleeping, she appeared physically unharmed, so her sacrifice possibly was justified, he thought. But, he would never have agreed to her harm if he had been asked beforehand, not even to return his brother.

  Jim was angry with Yax K’in. The sight of him sitting, much as he did at any other time, next to his daughter after being the cause of such pain made Jim clench his fists. He would not strike the old man, but he wished him injury by some means other than his own. Yax K’in did not invite Jim to sit and because he was not asked, Jim sat down heavily.

  ‘How could you?’ Jim whispered at Yax K’in, trying to be quiet and angry.

  Yax K’in glanced at Jim then back at Pep’Em Ha.

  ‘Do you love my daughter?’ Yax K’in returned Jim’s question w
ith another.

  Jim was surprised by the query. He made sure Pep’Em Ha was sleeping and said as quietly as he could, ‘Yes.’

  ‘There are many stories where harming a loved one is asked for by others. If you love my daughter then you may understand some of my anguish. In your Bible there is the story of the father who is asked to harm his son.’

  ‘I’m not a Christian, I’m not anything,’ Jim interrupted. He would disagree with Yax K’in without exception.

  Yax K’in nodded his head and grunted.

  ‘Since Pep’Em Ha’s birth, since the time her name became hers, this ceremony has been inevitable. Hachakyum himself commanded it when he told my first ancestor.’

  ‘You can’t know that!’ Jim exclaimed loudly and then lowered his head as if that might quieten his words, after he had spoken them. ‘How could anyone know that Pep’Em Ha would be born?’

  ‘We accept many things we do not understand. We apply judgement and we decide if those things are reasonable. You do not understand everything but you accept some things. True?’ Yax K’in continued immediately. ‘The stories I have been told, as they were told by Hachakyum himself, are true. I am like your scientist that cannot explain his wonders because you do not have the faculties to understand. The logic is flawless, Jim, I assure you of that. I would not have done what I have done, and Pep’Em Ha would not have let me, if it was not so. She understands. She will be a great t’o’ohil.’

  ‘How could anyone, years ago, know about Harry?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Ah! No-one did,’ Yax K’in said, triumphantly, as if he had received an expected question he could answer easily. ‘The return of your brother was not the expected result.’

  ‘Not expected? I reckon,’ Jim spoke in English, which Yax K’in did not understand.

  ‘So, it didn’t work?’ Jim said maliciously, reminding Yax K’in of Pep’Em Ha’s wasted mutilation.

  ‘It did not work,’ Yax K’in repeated, sadly.

  ‘What will happen to Harry? He’ll disappear? He might die? Again.’

  ‘No. He will not die.’

  ‘What does that mean? Everyone dies,’ Jim said, sneering.

  Yax K’in watched his daughter as she breathed slowly and rhythmically.

  ‘Not everyone dies,’ Yax K’in said, softly.

  ‘Whatever,’ Jim said, in English. He hated Yax K’in, his refusal to answer questions sensibly annoyed him.

  Jim stood abruptly. He towered over Yax K’in, clenched his fists again and wondered if he might be able to strike him but spun on his heels and left the hut.

  His anger dissipated immediately he was outside. He felt empty, bored and disappointed when he realized he had nowhere to go. His returned brother was sleeping, as was Pep’Em Ha. He had the choice of watching two people sleep. He became acutely embarrassed, guilty and angry. His anger was directed at himself. He wondered how he could be bored after the return of a dead twin brother and with a woman he had admitted he loved.

  Yax K’in scurried out of the hut and nearly ran into Jim. The old man was surprised by Jim’s presence and walked quickly away as if he was late and in a hurry.

  Jim thought about following but did not. He went into the hut and sat in the place he just left. Pep’Em Ha’s mother scowled at him, as if his presence was dangerous but he ignored her. While he thought of other things he watched Pep’Em Ha’s hammock swing in resonance with her slow breathing.

  Chapter 16

  Arthur and Michelle had left Yax K’in’s hut once Pep’Em Ha had been cleaned up. Her mother had taken over and pushed them out. She had been unsure who had been responsible for her daughter’s injury and, in the meantime, trusted no-one. They went back to Arthur’s hut, the hut they had once shared. It was the closest place of safety and security, it was like a home. They had not immediately talked of what they had seen, or thought they had seen. They attempted to make sense on their own, as if it was embarrassing to discuss such a ridiculous event. They sat at the outside table. The sun had climbed over the top of the jungle trees and beat down at them.

  ‘We have to discuss this,’ Michelle said. She did not know what there was to discuss but was angry with Arthur for not beginning the conversation. ‘What just happened?’ she asked, as if Arthur should know.

  Arthur was unsure of everything, like he had woken next to Michelle after a night of shared dreams. His world was soft and fragile and he did not know where the dream ended.

  ‘We need answers,’ Michelle said. She wanted Arthur to say something, anything. She wanted to touch him, to make sure he was solid and real.

  ‘Do you really want answers?’ Arthur said. His face frowned but not in anger. ‘And what would be the questions?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anymore than you do,’ she said plaintively. ‘The pain inflicted on Pep’Em Ha worries me.’

  Michelle touched Arthur’s hand.

  ‘It was gruesome. Unnecessary,’ she said.

  Arthur spoke in a small voice, as if he was unsure that discussing Harry’s re-appearance was safe. ‘Yes. It was horrible. I don’t know about unnecessary.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked abruptly. She withdrew her hand.

  ‘It achieved a result. I can only assume that Yax K’in knew what he was doing,’ Arthur said.

  ‘We did see what we saw, didn’t we?’ Michelle asked quietly, afraid of the question.

  Arthur laughed. It a was small, stuttering, unconfident laugh that contained no humor. ‘I don’t know. Did we?’

  ‘This is all wrong. It isn’t possible unless there’s some delusion. I don’t know how that works. Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It has to be a hypnosis thing. Caused by something, by stress maybe...’ Michelle trailed off as her argument failed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said with exasperation. She let her head fall onto Arthur’s shoulder.

  ‘No, neither do I, Michelle.’ Arthur placed his arms around her shoulders and drew her close to him.

  There were two positive results, Arthur thought. The, apparent, return of Harry from the dead and Michelle’s anger with him had completely disappeared.

  Chapter 17

  Yax K’in silently appeared, like a specter, before Arthur and Michelle.

  ‘Please,’ he sounded almost pitiful. ‘I need your help. I need to understand my failure.’ Arthur prodded Michelle to lift her head.

  Michelle stood up but did not move from behind the table. She wondered if the old man was safe. He had to have changed to have hurt an innocent, own, child. She shuddered as she thought of Harry’s hand touching Pep’Em Ha’s mouth. He had been something to be afraid of at that moment but she doubted her memory. The shock of seeing Pep’Em Ha attacked, her heart wrenching scream of pain, the volume of blood, Michelle’s rising panic and the overpowering smell of the smoke had overloaded her senses. A distinct and rational memory was impossible. It would be tainted, it would be reconstructed. The logic of those minutes in Yax K’in’s hut became fuzzier as she recovered from the shock and surprise. And, she thought, the cause of it all had been Yax K’in.

  However, her compassion overwhelmed her as the small, unkempt, old man held out his hand to her. She thought he was pleading for forgiveness. Her charity began immediately, she lost her fear and her anger. She could never understand how he did that horrible thing to his daughter. His compulsion was beyond her understanding. He needed help and he was asking for it. She could not refuse.

  She smiled grimly as she navigated purposively around the table. She did what she had never done before. She ignored his proffered hand and enfolded the frail man in her arms as if she was the resurrected mother of the aged leader of the KulWinik.

  Yax K’in accepted Michelle’s embrace. He let the hug run its course. She let him go and, self consciously, backed away.

  ‘Thank you.’ Yax K’in said softly. ‘I need your skill,’ he said in a clear and steady voice. ‘Can you come with me now? Please?’

  The group of three followed the path P
ep’Em Ha had taken Jim to the KulWinik cave. Arthur and Yax K’in climbed the final rise, while Michelle ambled at their slower pace. Yax K’in did not rest until the group were in the third chamber, where the Mayan writing and drawings adorned the walls. He flashed his light, searching, until he saw the set of images that had interested Jim and Pep’Em Ha, the blood-letting rite of the kneeling woman with the bubble of the Vision Serpent hung over her head.

  ‘These drawings were made by my ancestors,’ Yax K’in said. ‘Many generations after Hachakyum lived among us, they were made against his directions. He forbade my ancestor to write his stories in any place other than the tomb you found, Arthur,’ he said without taking his eyes from the images. ‘However,’ Yax K’in shrugged his shoulders. ‘My ancestors wrote some of his instructions here. I cannot read them. The writing is lost to me, so, perhaps, Hachakyum was correct. We could not rely on writing to be remembered but the oral stories continue.’