Todd Pitts - The Serpent Passage

The leader reached into his pocket and threw some powder into the air. “Chunbesah… kuxtal… kimil,” he chanted in a deep voice, raised the dagger high, and buried it into the man’s chest.

William winced at the sight of blood spurting forth, and he could almost feel the man’s pain through his agonizing screech.

The captive’s body convulsed like a fish pulled from the water, before going limp. A devil-man stepped forward and lopped off the guy’s head with a heavy stone axe. The leader displayed the head to the crowd, and he dropped it into a wicker basket held by one of his masked assistants.

The zebra-painted escorts dragged the headless body back down the stairway; the corpse thumped hard against each step.

William swallowed against the nausea, feeling a strong urge to vomit after what he had just witnessed.

The five executioners resumed their positions at the top of the steps, waiting for their next victim. A young boy, no more than thirteen years old, came into view. He did not put up any resistance to the men who held his rope.

“Oh no,” William muttered.

Betty put her hand over William’s mouth, with a warning look in her eyes.

The boy turned to face the crowd, and he raised his arms to the heavens. A loud collective gasp resonated, amidst some isolated cries from the women below. The boy lied back on the altar, and the four devil-men held his limbs to the stone slab.

Anger began to build within William, the likes of which he had never felt before. He pictured his younger cousin, about to be killed short by a gang of murdering psychos. Yet he had to be quiet. He had to let it pass. The sooner it ended, the sooner he and Betty could slip out.

The leader tossed up another handful of powder and chanted, “Chunbesah… kuxtal… kimil.” He raised the dagger above his head.

“Stop!” William yelled, as he bolted from the shadows and shoved the leader away from the boy, causing him to stumble backwards several steps to the edge of the stairway. William caught eye-contact with the leader through the eye-holes of his boar mask, and he could see his startled reaction. The leader took another step backwards, tripped, and toppled down the steep stairway, his mask flying off along the way.

The entire assembly seemed frozen in silence; it was as though time had stopped. William felt the attention of a thousand eyes fixed upon him.

Betty ran to his side, eliciting a gasp from all those assembled when they saw her.

The men in devil masks released their hold on the young prisoner and backed away from William, moving several steps below the upper platform.

“What did you do?” Betty asked. She looked at the leader sprawled out at the bottom of the steps.

“I had to stop it. I didn’t mean to…” William followed Betty’s stare below. “Oh God… is he… is he dead?”

“Uh… yeah!” Betty said with a certainty on her face. She kneeled beside the boy on the bloody alter. “Are you okay?”

William noticed that the other devil men also kneeled the moment she did. He shifted his attention to the boy. After exchanging eye contact for several seconds, the boy stood atop the altar; a giant smile spread across his face. For a moment, William thought he had braces, but then he realized that there were small gems embedded in his teeth that sparkled in the moonlight.

The boy turned to gaze across the crowd gathered below. He nodded, seeming pleased when he saw the dead man at the bottom of the steps. He clasped his hands together and raised them to the sky. “Ts’oysah!” he called out, his voice echoing through the valley.

The people below chanted in unison, “Ts’oysah… Ts’oysah… Ts’oysah…” He opened his hands to the crowd, silencing everyone at once, and turned to face William again. The boy kneeled before him with his head touching the bloody altar.

Betty gasped. “William… look!” She pointed to the crowd below. They were also kneeling in the same manner. “They’re honoring you.”

It seemed unreal. William became light headed as the gore around him sank in, seeing the blood everywhere: all over the altar, on the boy’s skin, covering the devilmen, and splattered along the steps. He spotted the head in the basket at his feet; it stared back at him with a look of terror still frozen on its lifeless face. Everything turned dark, and William passed out right where he stood, falling to the ground with a heavy thump.

He saw Betty and the boy staring down at him from above, as he felt the sensation of floating down a lazy river that lulled him into a very deep sleep.

William slept for a long while. Vague memories of being forced to eat and drink intertwined in his dreams. He found himself at the edge of a lake. His father stood on the other side. He waved to him, but his dad didn’t see him. He yelled, but he didn’t hear him either. As he approached the water to swim across, a giant crocodile lunged out from the lake, roaring like a lion.

He snapped awake to the sound of a thunderclap, kicking his feet as he attempted to escape the beast from his nightmare.

“William,” Betty said, “you’re up!”

He looked in every direction until he found Betty at the foot of his bed. For a moment he wasn’t sure if it was really her, wearing a necklace of colorful sea shells, jade bracelets, earrings, and a silly looking feathered headdress.

“I know, I know, I look ridiculous, don’t I? But they insisted that I wear all this stuff,” she said.

“How long…”

“You’ve been out for a couple days… since that escapade on the pyramid. You came down with a bad fever from the infected cuts on your feet. They drugged you with something… you were pretty much out of it. You seemed to be getting better, so I figured they knew what they were doing.”

William looked down at his wrist to check the time, but his watch was gone.

“Don’t know what time it is for sure,” Betty said. “I’d guess it’s late morning.”

A heavy rain tapped on the roof with occasional thunderclaps in the distance. William sat up and stretched out the ache in his back from sleeping on such a firm bed; a stone rising, low to the ground, covered by thick layers of animal skins. “Where am I?” he asked.

“The palace of that little boy you saved. Would you believe that he is some kind of king here now?”

While trying to comprehend that idea, William scanned his surroundings like a sleepy bear coming out of hibernation. Small holes in the plaster wall allowed minimal light to enter from the outside, but a couple of lit torches kept the room illuminated. Beautiful artwork surrounded him. A Mayan wall painting of a half-man, half-jaguar creature caught his attention. Beside it, a tall statue of a Maize god stood in the corner of the room, facing William’s bed.

He tried to recall the events of the other night. “How could that boy be a king? They were about to kill him!”

Betty shrugged. “I know, weird, huh? That’s what I wondered too. It’s like you killed the wicked witch and then the kid you saved took charge. Maybe you can figure it out. I don’t understand anything they’re saying.”

William sighed, feeling guilty. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“Hey, he deserved it,” she said, reassuring him. “Besides, he took that last step back on his own… more of a lucky accident. Everyone here seems delighted about the sudden turn of events, from what I can tell. So don’t worry about that. We’re safe now.”

William detected a flowery smell, and he traced it to an incense burner drizzling out a small stream of smoke from a stone slab in the center of the room. “How did I get here?” he asked.

“You passed out up there like a cut-down tree. Kerplop! They carried you down here and cleaned you up-put some goop on your cuts.”