“We need to get to the end of The Corridor,” I said.
Quid drew a deep breath, let it out slowly then leaned in close to me and whispered, “That’s where we’re going.”
Looking deep into Party Boy’s moist white eyes, Rudy’s blood dried to his face like a mask, I accepted the canteen.
And drank.
* * *
The eyes change…become someone else’s…someone I don’t recognize. Above them, a colorful headdress, bright and vibrant against dark skin…
A shaman…somehow I know this man—if he is a man—is a shaman, a very powerful healer and mystic come to greet me…a talisman of quartz, animal bone, teeth and feathers hangs from his neck…
The desert is gone, replaced by the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen, a lush jungle, gorgeous natural hot springs, exotic sounds and smells and animals all around…it is like something from a dream…a wonderful and peaceful dream…
Small structures made of wood and loam, roofs made of reed, quiet and dark inside…
I feel like I’ve gone back in time thousands of years.
Native peoples lie on pallets inside the small houses…
The shaman looks at me like he knows me, like he’s been expecting me all along, but I am in the throes of something akin to deep sleep…not true sleep, but something…else.
The Aztecs…they…the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice… didn’t they?
I have crossed into a world not intended for the living. I can see that now, sense it, almost understand it, and yet…
I follow him into an empty hut where there is a concoction boiling in a pot. It smells awful…foul…but there is something in the steam that rises up from it that draws me to it at the same time.
An enormous thick snake is coiled in the shadowy corner of the hut…black eyes watching…
The shaman hands me a beautiful intricately-carved cup filled with the mixture. He tells me to drink it, that it will allow me to see and touch the ghosts of my past, my ancestors. He says it will feel like I’m dying myself, but to embrace the fear it will bring because it is just a purging, a cleansing…
Cold…I’m deathly cold…but it isn’t cold here, it’s hot, terribly hot and oppressive. There is a fire nearby, burning and crackling just beyond the hut, embers and sparks shooting up, spitting into the black sky…
Night…it has become night. I hadn’t realized it until just then but night had returned, the beautiful daylight was gone…and as I lay on a mat in the hut I hear odd sounds I can’t quite decipher. I listen…I try so hard to listen and finally hear, I hear the sounds of my own breath and…something more…
Movement…subtle movement…
The snake, slithering free of its coiled slumber…coming closer…
I don’t want it touching me, I don’t—no, get away, I—I don’t want it touching me!
But it does touch me, sliding up alongside my prone body like a long lost friend. I feel its incredible weight as it glides up over my chest, its black eye staring at me. I expect the snake to feel slimy and wet, but instead it is dry and smooth. Still, I want to scream, I—I need to scream so it will go away and leave me alone but I can’t, there’s no—there’s no sound anymore…except for my own breathing and…and...my pulse…yes, my pulse, pounding in my temples like its trying to punch its way out. And then something else comes to me from the night, a rushing sound, like water or a surging river but…no, it’s not a river…no, it’s…blood…my blood, the sound of it trekking through my veins, rushing through my body. I can feel it moving…hear it flowing…
Then I’m moving—flying—gliding through air and space and time…
Or am I only writhing on the mat, still trapped beneath that horrible snake? That’s it. Yes…
Words spill from my lips in a steady stream but—no—not words—they’re moans…screams…I’m screaming, crying, wailing because the night has come alive and taken me, snatched me away and…
It shows me things I don’t want to see…things I shouldn’t see, that I was never meant to see…things my mind cannot comprehend and—the snake—that awful snake continues to slide its huge body up onto mine, smothering me and—I can’t breathe—I can only take in short frantic little gasps of air and—it’s all wrong—there’s something wrong. Its eyes, those black eyes…like something dead and yet, within those eyes are the secrets of the universe, the answers to everything—I’m sure of it somehow—and I see it all and it makes sense but then it’s gone so fast and the snake’s body is merging with mine—no—absorbing into my flesh, bubbling and boiling like liquid. It runs over me in black sheets of blood and bile and vanishes into my pores, my skin swallowing it, drawing it in and changing me, dragging me back to my beginnings, my reptilian past right there in the pit of my stomach, the base of my throat, overflowing from my eyes and running across my face, into my mouth…
Taste, I…I can taste God.
And now tears…tears of joy…overwhelming joy I didn’t believe possible until just then…I—my Lord, my—my precious Lord, I—save me…
Fever…I have a fever, I can feel my skin burning, my blood like hot wax in my veins, it’s—this is killing me—but—not quickly…slowly…I’m dying…slowly…
Every religious symbol from my childhood appears before me, floating in freefall as I tumble through a long and narrow pit of fire. The cross…the lamb… the blood…and then my birth, I—I’m born and…I watch my childhood and my adulthood all playing out before me so quickly, so violently quickly—surrounding and engulfing me until I am part of it and it is part of me.
One…it’s all one…
I know God in that moment, in that split-second of clarity, and the universe explodes before me. In all its glory and magnificent power, it rises in oceans of fire, unfolding before my eyes and surging like lava, filling my senses, devouring me in an infinite panorama of brilliant sight and sound and touch…
The dead watch me from dark peripheral corners, silent and sullen…
I cannot see them, but they’re there. Things crawl under their flesh, so many spiders scurrying beneath bed sheets…and behind them a monstrous creature shrouded in shadow stands watching too.
For a moment I’m back in the motel room in Tijuana…on that horribly filthy bed, made filthier now by me, looking up at the cracked and stained ceiling and lying in a pool of my own sweat and urine. Drunk…hopeless…ashamed…
In the corner, Jamie sits in a chair grinning at me like the Cheshire Cat.
A needle dangles from his arm and his veins leak blood and pus onto the floor, where Gillian—my sweet baby—kneels before him, her head in his lap…
My screams tear the night in two; send me hurtling through dark curtains, from one theater of evil to another…
A dead man lies facedown in the mud…But it’s not a man at all, is it.
Cries of help ignored and unanswered echo through space, joined by the countless whispers of angels and demons both…
Leads me to a bird’s-eye view of gentle ocean surf lapping shoreline, a small town tucked along the coast…New Bethany…home…discovered and settled hundreds of years ago by an old sea captain by the name of William Bethany, but it wasn’t named for him like so many believe…I’ve been to the historical society, I’ve read the records…he said he’d found God there, in the beautiful raw land it had been then. He’d found God…and more than a little of the Devil. It was a place for second chances, rebirth and redemption, and if you couldn’t find it there then maybe it was a place for damnation, one last bit of beauty before the darkness took you. He didn’t name the town after himself, he named it after Bethany in the Bible, the town where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
Night…rain…the field…
That was no normal rain that night…
Deliverance, atonement and damnation all flow through me like the wind on which I soar, carry me toward life, or perhaps certain death, mindful that there is far less distance between the two than many would have m
e believe…
Gone…I’m gone from there…
We walk…I’m walking. I think I’m walking, I can feel my legs moving and things slip past me on either side, giving the illusion of movement, but I can’t make out what these things are and I don’t know what they want and…
Lights…beautiful lights in the night skies…fire…there’s fire too, bursts of it, trails of it shooting through the darkness and then vanishing in the wink of an eye. Turning…I see lights turning and falling in the distance—like on a Ferris Wheel—I can feel the colors…taste them…hear, I—I can hear the colors as they move…they make such strange and pretty sounds, I…It’s raining. Is it raining? I can’t see the rain but I feel it tickling me. I can smell it.
Quid smiles at me, his eyes like those of a feral animal, his bright blond hair dirty and sweaty. When he moves he leaves trails that arc and bend through the air before descending to the sand at our feet…like multicolored snowflakes...
Party Boy’s there too, his tattoos moving and gliding across his body the way the man’s scars had moved…
He seems not to notice…
He leads us toward the strange lights. It is cooler here, but darker.
I want to leave this place and go home. This is wrong, it’s—this isn’t safe at all, and I’m afraid, I’m so afraid, I—I’ve never been this afraid. I can’t breathe. I’ve forgotten how to do that, how—how do you do that? How do you breathe when you’re frightened, when things are crawling from the darkness to hurt you? Why do I have to keep reminding myself to breathe? Concentrate…I have to concentrate or I won’t breathe, but I’m so frightened because I know what’s coming, I know…
I’m going to die. I’m so afraid I might just die, and I don’t want to see this anymore, I don’t want this, I—
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares…
Jamie?
No…Martin…it’s Martin and…
Tell me your dreams…tell me your nightmares…
I dream of fire…skies devoured by it…burning…dying… purified by flames.
I dream of the dead.
He’s watching us you know. Right now, he’s watching, listening to every word we say.
They’re all gonna die out there…
God weeps…I can feel His tears against my skin…
The desert returns…my mind returns…
But neither are the same.
* * *
My worst dreams have always involved water: vast oceans, fog-covered lakes, savage downpours of relentless rain. They seldom make much sense or feature anything beyond the expected trappings of such nightmares—drowning or being stranded, helpless and alone, the unknown lurking beneath my slowly kicking feet—and yet they terrify me like no others. For many people fire is horrifying, the idea of burning or being trapped in a fury of flames. But I never feared fire. It’s water that scared me. Being swallowed by it and left to those things that live within it.
There was no water there, only sand and dirt and rocks. I could feel the desert terrain beneath me again, yet I emerged from my dreams, my visions and nightmares like a swimmer rising through murky water, kicking and cutting the current as I steadily drifted up toward the surface and the promise of light, desperate to find my way, panicked and unable to breathe until I’d finally broken through. Gasping for air, I choked and began to cough, my muscles going rigid as if in seizure. I could feel my arms straight out in front of me, stiff and paralyzed, while my legs tingled like thousands of insects had crept out through my pores then scurried away. The coughing grew so violent my lungs ached, a crippling pain slammed the back of my head and I tasted blood in my mouth.
“You’re all right,” I heard someone say. “Just stay quiet. Try not to make noise, OK? Be still for a minute. Breathe.”
I recognized the voice as Quid’s, and as my vision slowly returned to me, I was able to make out his face. Hovering over me, his eyes were glassy and his face a bit pale, but his bright blond hair was a beacon in the darkness.
Behind him, fire…skies of fire…flames rising high into the night sky…
Life is war, a voice in my mind whispered, war as illusion, as a dream.
Amidst a haze of narcotics, alcohol and madness, I rose through the cloudy darkness, crept closer to the skies of fire and found myself laying on my back against the side of a steep hill so high it nearly qualified as a mountain. Above us, though it was much later than last I’d seen it, the same brilliant moon shone down, allowing me to see quite a distance from this height. Our camp was gone, a memory. Apparently we’d returned to the Corridor at some point in the night, driven on then stopped and crawled up this enormous rise, but I had no memory of any of that. At the foot of the hill, quite a distance away, I could just barely make out the battered Land Rover. It looked small, like a toy. The fire was coming from behind me, from the far side of the summit, accompanied by a sinister layer of smoke skulking through the darkness and blanketing the area like an unnatural fog.
And then I heard the moans, the distant screams, the faint cries.
“Martin.” My mouth was dry; my throat coarse and sore, like I’d screamed it raw. “He—He’s here.”
Quid brought a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
The headache remained but the coughing had ceased. I swallowed and tasted another hint of blood. My nose had been bleeding. Wiping away as much as I could from my nostrils and lips with the back of my hand, I hacked up a blood clot from my nasal cavity, spat it into the dirt and looked at Quid worriedly.
“You’re OK,” he whispered. “Trip like that shoots your blood pressure through the roof. You’re all right now. Clear your head.”
I rolled over, and though my head continued to pound and every muscle I had ached, I finally felt like I’d fully regained control of my body.
I saw Party Boy up ahead, lying on his stomach and peering over the top of the hill with a pair of night binoculars. Quid motioned for me to follow, and we crawled up alongside him quietly as we could.
I will never forget the things I saw in the gorge below. Never in my worst nightmares had I seen such carnage. Horrifying from a distance, unbelievable really, I could only imagine what such a hellish place would be like up close.
But I wouldn’t have to imagine long. Soon, I’d know.
Down there, amidst the evil and chaos, was the end.
Though I’d never feared fire until that moment, I’d come to understand just how terrifying it could be. The fires surrounding that old church below us were most certainly the flames of Hell.
And they were burning for me.
PART THREE
SEVENTEEN
I checked over the 10mms. One was empty. I tossed it aside and slid the other into the back of my belt. “You got me here,” I told the others, “your job’s done.”
Quid said. “You can’t go down there alone.”
“They won’t kill me. He won’t let them.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Relieved as I was to hear Quid was willing to accompany me, I needed to be careful about how I made my approach. Party Boy was more dangerous than Quid, but also unpredictable. The odds of him setting things off were much higher, and that was the last thing I wanted. The other problem was that he was still tripping, his eyes were off and with his blood mask he looked completely psychotic. “All right, Party, you stay here. Keep an eye on what’s happening.”
He did not look pleased. Or maybe he was just confused, his mind still jumbled.
“If all three of us are down there and something goes wrong we’re screwed,” I explained, not certain he could fully comprehend what I was saying. “You stay behind as backup and keep an eye on the Land Rover. If anything happens to it we’ll never get out of here.”
It took awhile, but he finally complied with a nod.
“Quid,” I said, “you come with me.”
The two of us scrambled to the s
ummit and crouched low. I looked back at Party Boy. “Don’t leave this position unless you have to, understand? If we’re not back by this time tomorrow then pick up and leave. We’ll probably already be dead. If that happens, you get the authorities out here one way or another.”
Below, an old stone church sat waiting, a crumbling bell tower at one end and the rest a long, relatively low building. It was surrounded by a haggard stone wall roughly waist-high. Parked on an angle and partially behind the church were two rundown vehicles: an SUV and a pickup truck, possibly the same one I’d seen in the video at Mrs. Doyle’s house. Before the church, littered with scrub brush, was an open stretch of ground at least one hundred yards in length. Beyond lay only desert and more darkness. Scattered in front of the church and throughout the grounds, a group of people numbering fifty or more stood in silent vigil, anticipating our arrival. In the moonlight and glow of nearby fires they looked pale as ghosts, their heads shaved completely clean—men and women both—bodies gaunt, clothing filthy and in many cases little more than tatters, their feet bare and faces blank, eyes ablaze like the possessed. The mere look of them made my skin crawl. But they were the least of it.
Quid racked the shotgun. “They’ve seen us.”
“Stay even as you can,” I said.
“You kidding me? This place makes Jonestown look like Club Med.”
“We’re not looking for a fight.”
“What are we looking for?”
“I’ll let you know when we find it.”
We started down the hill, moving purposefully but cautiously, unsure of what the crowd might do.
At the end of the compound closest to us, book-ended by a pair of burning torches, two long wooden stakes had been pushed into the ground like markers. Something had been impaled on the stakes but I couldn’t immediately make out what. When we got a bit closer I realized they were human bodies. Sans head, arms and legs, the torsos had been forced down onto the stakes neck first and left there like the rotting slabs of meat they were. Several feet away, a series of small fire pits had been dug and lighted, which illuminated the area fairly well. Between them and the church stood two crude wooden crosses nearly ten feet high, the nude dead bodies of men crucified to each. Their shaved heads indicated they’d probably once been members of the cult.
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