Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

There was something else that unsettled him: his cousin Imelda in her white dresses of ancient provenance, her black hair pulled back. She was very beautiful. He was not blind to her charms. In fact, he was very aware of them. When they sat in wicker chairs in the interior garden of the hacienda, sipping cold glasses of tamarind water, he’d turn his head and look at the sweat sliding down her long graceful neck. Or he’d watch her in the library, as she read an old book, her full lips silently mouthing a word. Desire cut deep and he had to remind himself that Natalia waited for him in Mexico City.

Day after day, night after night.

The seventh night he finally stopped pacing and went downstairs in a vain quest for ice (he should have known better). Instead he found Imelda sitting in the Blue Room listening to an ancient gramophone, ghostly music, some melody he had not heard before. All strings and loneliness.

She sat in her father’s chair, fanning herself. The fan had belonged to their grandmother, he recognized it. It had one small break at the shoulder of the right guard and the paper lining was split in several spots, but it was still a thing of beauty.

As was Imelda.

She looked up at him as he stood in the doorway hesitating, not knowing if he should step in.

“I didn’t wake you with the music, did I?” she asked.

“I was up,” he muttered.

She wore a green robe instead of her customary white. It was embroidered with images of leaping frogs, Chaac’s messengers.

He felt awkward in her presence, an interloper.

“You hate it here, don’t you?”

“It’s very different from the city,” he offered.

“What is so interesting about the city that you don’t want to stay in La Ceiba?”

“I have a life there.”

“You had a life here before you left. You were happy.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been happy here the past few days, have you not? Swimming in the cenote, talking to me, dining on your favorite dishes.”

“Yes,” he said, exasperated. “Imelda, you are dear to me, but I will not do what your father asks of me. I don’t belong here anymore in this old house. Christ, nobody does. You should come to the city with me, that’s what you should do.”

“To the city?”

“Yes! You could go to university, meet people. You are cooped up in this place with only silly legends and stories for company.”

“They are not silly legends,” she said.

Imelda closed her fan and put it aside. She rose, looking him straight in the eye.

“It is our legacy.”

She walked toward Eduardo, shrugging out of her robe. She was naked beneath. She raised her hands, holding her hair up, and turned around, revealing her back to him. A trail of . . . scales, it looked like scales, some skin imperfection, some mark . . . ran down Imelda’s spine, a delicate tessellation that ended at her buttocks. She looked at him over her shoulder with disdain.

“Is this some skin condition? Do you know of an ointment that will fix it?”

Eduardo extended a hand, his fingertips brushing her spine. Imelda shivered and he pulled his hand back, as quick as if he’d touched an open flame.

“You were the brave one when we were children,” she said casually, letting her hair fall upon her back again, as if she were not nude in front of him. Perfect and nude.

He could not think what to say.

She walked out of the room and he willed himself to remain anchored to that spot, to not follow her.

Mario knocked on his door early the next morning. Zacarias, he said, was going to the cenote. Eduardo knew which one he meant. There could be no other: the old ceremonial one, the place he’d heard about in whispers as a child, where the elders tossed gold and jade into the water once a year. The Mayans thought the cenotes were portals to the realm of the dead, Xibalba, but his family called it by another name, Y’ha-nthlei, and the cenote was Yliah’he . It had no meaning in Mayan, this was an older language, the elders had told them. A language from before the Conquest, before the great pyramids that rose upon the limestone bedrock of Yucatán. Much of the knowledge had been lost through the years, but some true names and words remained. Yliah’he.

Eduardo dressed slowly, dreading the trip. The mirror, weary with age, reflected his tired face. He had barely slept, the image of Imelda seared into his mind.

Mario, Aunt Celeste, and Zacarias rode in the automobile while Eduardo and Imelda went on horse behind them. The car moved very slowly, following an old road that was by some small miracle well kept.

They traveled in silence, Eduardo gripping the reins tightly, wanting to turn back. But he realized this was inevitable, Zacarias would not listen to reason and Eduardo was exhausted, blasted by the heat and the lack of sleep and the sharp pangs of desire. He would not protest.

The car stopped. They had reached Yliah’he.

Mario stood by the car and helped Zacarias out, but he would go no further. He handed Aunt Celeste an antiquated oil lantern to light the way down the steep, wet stairs leading to the cave. Imelda helped Zacarias walk. Eduardo followed last, watching his footing.

They managed to reach a ledge that led down to the water’s edge and Eduardo looked up.

A circular opening at the top of the cenote let in the sunlight, illuminating the water. There were very complex cave systems in Yucatán, and he had the feeling Yliah’he’s undulating water connected to incredibly deep, long rivers.

“Eduardo, help me,” Imelda said.

He took hold of Zacarias left arm and Imelda held the right one. Together they walked into the cool water, heading towards the circle of light. Small white fish, blind from living in darkness for generations, brushed against his feet. The white ladies, they called the fish. He remembered catching them together with Imelda in other cenotes, both of them giggling at the strange creature’s broad snout, its translucent dorsal fin.

Once they had reached their destination Imelda took off the heavy golden necklace she had been wearing and placed it in her father’s hands. Then she kissed him on the cheek and pulled Eduardo with her, back towards the ledge where Aunt Celeste was waiting.

“Are we going to leave him there, just by himself?” Eduardo whispered.

“Hush,” she said.

He did not know what he had expected, but it had not been . . . this. He’d heard the Mayans had sacrificed children to the rain god Chaac, that they wrapped them in ceremonial robes and stabbed them with a flint knife. Somehow the idea of the knife had lingered in his mind, sacrifice. Wrists slit. But was their uncle simply going to stand in the water and starve to death? Would he attempt to drown himself?

What horrid game was this and how had he convinced himself to play it? He ought to have called for a doctor when he first arrived.

They climbed up the ledge and Eduardo turned to Imelda, his voice harsh.

“This is insane.”

There was the splash of water as the necklace the old man had been holding slipped from his fingers.

“We need to get him back in the car right this instant,” he told her.

“No,” she replied, her arms crossed against her chest.

A rumbling distant noise, like the sound of thunder, echoed through the cave. All of a sudden there was a golden light in the water. It did not come from above, but from below. Not the sun’s glow. Something else. He blinked and stared and stepped forward to try and get a better, but Imelda grabbed his arm, holding him back.

A curtain of water rose before his astonished eyes, taller than a man. Water that was light . . . or light and water. It was blinding; he was forced to look away. The rumbling grew and grew, like the moaning of some strange beast.