All of a sudden the darkness parts like a curtain and a tall, robed figure steps out, bathed in a dull light. As my eyes adjust, I glimpse the being before me. The figure is at least eight feet tall. Beneath the scorched lace of its endless robe I can see a bone-thin body wrapped tightly in pale grey skin.Then I see its face; two orb-like eyes centred in a glistening, hairless head. Strange hieroglyphs are scattered about the face, ancient scars carved into the flesh. As I gape in horror the thing beckons me with outstretched hands.

Its fingers look sharp and menacing. As it glides closer I finally see they are not fingers at all, but rather the pointed ends of ancient quills. Bloody ink spills from each tip onto my lounge room floor.

My God, what are you? I hear myself say.

The thing smiles, revealing a toothless mouth, moist with the same foul ink.

“I am no god, Simon. I am no devil. I am purely an inspiration to lost souls. Only the privileged can bear my countenance.”

I sit rigid in my chair as the creature hovers around me, observing me with its hollow eyes. I dont want to look away from it, but the entrance from whence it came lures my gaze. Beyond the curtain of night I can make out a corridor with walls made of parchment, stained and marked with every written language on Earth and others I could never comprehend. The sound of scratching, multiplied a billion times over, echoes throughout the corridor and out into my home.

Abruptly the creature blocks my view and with a wave of his spindly hand the curtain is drawn. The room plunges back into darkness.

“No, Simon, not for you – not yet.”

I look back to where the creature is standing, but the darkness has blotted him out. All I hear is his voice.

“First you must master your words in this world before you can write them in mine.”

**************************************************

Chapter One
JERRY
Guatemala, Feb., 1983The smell was thick as sludge, and rancid. It forced an intake of breath when Jerry wanted to pinch his nostrils shut and run out of the hut.

He struggled to ignore it, but the stench dropped into his throat and lodged there. When he tried to swallow, he coughed instead.

“Agua?” He turned to the Mayan behind him. “Por favor?”

The man nodded while continuing to talk to his wife.

Jerry leaned into his arms into on the rough-hewn table and stared at the crucifixes on the wall.

There were five hand-carved wooden Messiahs in front of him, each more lurid than the last. One strained so far outwards from his cross that Jerry thought he looked like he could tear himself off and change religious history. Painted blood ran from the hands, feet and sides of all five, and hung in gobs from a number of wounded knees. It cascaded over one Christ’s body in vermilion stripes, ending in a single dangling blob at the bottom of the cross.

The murmur behind Jerry grew louder. He swiveled around. The couple dropped their eyes and lowered their voices simultaneously, as though performing a duet.

“Agua?” he pleaded, a hand to his throat.

“Si, Senor.” This time, the man shooed his wife behind a ragged curtain, then followed her out of sight.

Jerry concentrated on the pictures hanging on the wall, in front of him. There were colourful renditions of what he thought must be Mayan deities, interspersed with rumpled copies of paintings of Catholic saints. An abundance of spiritualities, where he himself had none.

He frowned at the uplifted eyes and sweet secretive smiles of the saints. Multicoloured woolen frames bordered each blissful face — —red, orange, bright yellow, the kind of blues and greens that oceans radiate and skies sometimes faintly reflect – —colours out of a child’s fantasy, woven together with tufts and tassels and thick, knotted fringes that infused the pictures with the kind of robust good cheer he’d come to admire in Latin Americans themselves.

His spirits lifted. But there was that unhealthy smell, and a filthy blanket hanging heavily over the doorway, blocking air and light.

He’d met the couple while riding the bus to the village of Panajachel, on the way back from the market in Chichicastenanga.

Baskets were everywhere, and lunches wrapped in banana leaves, redolent with spices. Chickens clucked on the seats beside their owners on the seats. The women’s feet were bare and dusty, the ribbons in their thick braids vibrant against the dark coils of their hair.
As Jerry admired both ribbons and braids, the woman in the seat directly across the aisle from Jerry him leaned forward and vomited in a thin stream onto the floor, then moaned and nestled back against her male companion.

The macho drivers and the hair-raising roads made travel sickness so common here that no one except Jerry reacted seemed perturbed. He sat forward in his seat, frowning at the ashen grey of the woman’s face alarming, a stark contrast to her blue, red and orange huipil, and the vivid rebozo clutched tightly to her mouth.

She groaned again, loudly, and Jerry’s frown deepened. The man who, despite his healthy brown face, looked dull and pedestrian beside her in his faded T-shirt and polyester pants tied with string, pressed a hand to her forehead.

Jerry leaned across the narrow aisle, and spoke haltingly. — “The Senora is … ill? Sick?

“Yo soy … doctor,” he added when he saw the fear in the couple’s eyes. He hoped to reassure them; his Spanish was limited, and it was the best he could do. “From Canada. Don’t be afraid.”

He addressed the woman, punctuating his speech with hand gestures and smiles. “Do you have stomach pain? A headache? Where do you hurt?”

It was the husband who answered in a thin, uncertain voice, “No es nada, no es nada.”

Meanwhile, his wife fell silent and struggled to sit upright. She looked at Jerry through narrowed eyes, then turned to her husband and said something urgently to her husband, in a language Jerry assumed was Mayan.

The man replied in a rapid burst, shaking his head vigorously. She countered with something short and sharp that made him look down at his broad, dusty hands, still shaking his head, but more gently.

Again, the woman spoke to him. Jerry heard the word Canada but could understand nothing else. The man set his lips, frowning, then said to Jerry, “Canada…?”

Jerry nodded. “Si. From Canada.” He pointed to the maple leaf on his backpack.

The man frowned, obviously wrestling with the language. “You please…come to my home?” His forehead knotted.

Taken aback, Jerry stumbled for an answer. “I …ah …well, I don’t know …”

“Por favor.” The voice was now pleading. Both he the man and his wife were gazing fixedly at Jerry.

“For your wife?” Jerry said. “You need a local doctor. I’m not a … doctor for the body. I help with people’s … minds.” He tapped his forehead.

The man blinked, and said, “For … mind?” touching his own head.

“Si,” said Jerry.

The man’s face came alive. “We like … you … visit. You. Come. Visit?” He was pointing back and forth, to himself, to Jerry, agitated, eager.
Just for a visit? Jerry had found the Maya gracious and a little shy outside their marketplaces, but he was not convinced the “visit” would be other than a hard sell, or even something more sinister. The country was at war with itself, had been for decades. Being from Canada was a plus, he knew, better than being American in the eyes of the Indians, but even so …. What had excited the man about him being a “mind doctor”? Had he misunderstood?

Likely he’d interpreted Jerry’s words and gestures as meaning he could help with headaches, or head pain? Jerry wished he could tell him the man he’d said “doctor” only because his Spanish was bad and it seemed a way to offer reassurance.

He didn’t want to spurn their hospitality, though, if, in fact, that’s what it was. His Guatemalan friend Jacinta, who was half-Mayan, had told him it was an honour for a gringo to be a guest in a traditional Mayan home. He was due back in Toronto in less than a week, and had spent his time, apart from these trips on the local buses, at the usual tourist haunts, where the indigenous people were like props, or background music, he thought. Hospitality to a gringo in these troubled times was rare.

The irony of it. He wants my help as a doctor, when I came here hoping to learn from a Guatemalan shaman. A tour he’d hoped to take, on which he would meet shamans and be introduced to some of the psychotropic plants they used, had fallen through because of the political situation. His friend Jacinta knew an H’men, but told him it was impossible to arrange a meeting, even for a Canadian doctor, in the current climate.

He nodded curtly. “Yes. Gracias,” he said. “Is it far?”

“No far,” the man replied quickly, but his downward glance gave his words the lie, and again Jerry wondered what he was in for, and why.
They travelled for a while in silence, Jerry gazing absently out the back window at the stinking, grey scarf of diesel fumes trailing behind the bus.

Just outside Panajachel, the Mayan man waved his hands in the air excitedly and pointed to the front of the vehicle. Understanding they had arrived at their stop, Jerry gathered his things and followed the couple off the bus.

White, red, pink and blue houses reminded Jerry of the pastel candy hearts kids gave out on Valentine’s Day back home. Tiles of reddish-brown clay pipe curved on the rooftops, and fences of corrugated scrap metal divided one tiny yard from another.

The man pointed towards them, and Jerry assumed that was where the couple lived, “no far” after all.

But the man walked past the crowded dwellings, into the trees beyond.

Here it was all fat, leathery leaves, spiralling vines, and densely packed trees in a blind climb for the light. You couldn’t see the sky. The air glowed green through the foliage. Jerry tasted sweat on his lips, and swatted at the insects blurring his vision.

After about half an hour, the trees began to thin. Jerry followed the couple down a sharp incline, crackling through the dry underbrush, before heading up another steep slope, crowned again by trees.

The man glanced at Jerry’s weary face. “No far,” he said anxiously.

Jerry forced a smile, and kept walking. If the man’s sick wife could do it, so could he, he thought, though his stomach hurt as well as his head. So far, he had escaped an attack of turista, and he rather desperately hoped his luck wasn’t about to give out.

There were only small, scrubby bushes around them now, no trees. The brilliant sky was patterned with clouds, and he squinted up at them, grateful they were thick enough to join forces occasionally with the tangled trees to block the worst of the midday sun.

After a climb that made his legs ache and his heart thump in his chest, they reached the top of the hill, and, over the rise, was a house. Or at least, a dwelling — —patchwork walls, a doorway covered in a length of greasy-looking cloth, and a roof of what looked like warped bark, but was more likely corrugated cardboard.

These people have nothing at all. Jerry looked around him, rubbing his forehead hard with his thumb. Nothing.

Close to the hut’s doorway, a large wooden cross wrapped in a ratty swatch of lace leaned sideways at a rakish angle.

To the left of the cross lay a small vegetable patch, staked with tree branches, guarded by a tattered scarecrow made of potato sacks and old plastic bags. An assortment of squash sat in a broken basket nearby. Produce from the garden?

The air bore heavily down, and sweat rolled into the corners of Jerry’s eyes. The silence, punctuated only by the warm hum of insects, the static whir of their wings, began its own buzz inside his aching head.

“Home?” he said to the man beside him, his throat thick.

“Si.”

Jerry managed a sickly smile, then looked away.

The woman pulled aside the stained curtain, and ushered them inside.
And now, here in their small dark house, with his head pulsing, and the gory crucifixes seeming to throb in sympathy, he wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve and nervously licked his lips. Eerie thoughts took up lodging in his head. He thought suddenly of Caitlin, his longtime lover. If anything happened here, if he could not get away, she would sound the alarm. But he wasn’t due back for days yet, and besides, what good would it do?

The back of his throat tasted of salt. His stomach lurched. He put his face in his hands for a moment, and when he looked up, they were standing across from him, their shoulders touching, staring. The man’s eyes looked like they could ignite wood, Jerry thought; the woman’s were fearful.

She held a chipped cup out to him. It felt warm in his cradled hands; inside he saw a yellowish liquid. Tea? He drank greedily, emptying the cup before registering the mouldy aftertaste.

“We lose cinco … five … children, Senor.”

Jerry jerked his head up and gripped the mug more tightly.

The man was explaining something in an awkward blend of English, Spanish and what had to be his own dialect. Jerry couldn’t understand a word, until the man repeated in a soft voice, “We lose cinco children.”
Desperation was a fourth presence in the room now. Jerry looked at the woman with pity. She seemed too young to have so many children … The heat and darkness and smell …

“We have still one child.” The man clasped and unclasped his fingers, lowered his eyes. “Inez.” His lips trembled. When he looked up, he directed his gaze towards his wife, as if seeking her permission to go on.

She nodded almost imperceptibly, her own eyes furtive. When her husband began speaking again, she held a hand to her forehead.

“She ill, very ill,” the man was saying, and for a moment Jerry was confused. He thought the man was referring to his wife.

“Please. Come. Look at her. Por favor.”

“Of course. Though, you understand, I am not a –—”

The man shifted his feet and stammered, “Is no our fault…”

Jerry froze. That phrase or ones like it — —he’d heard them so many times on the Emergency wards — —”It’s not our fault.” “We didn’t mean to hurt him.” “She fell.”

Automatically, he murmured a soothing, “No, no, of course not,” all the while thinking, Oh God, have they done something awful to this child?

“Can you take me to her?” he said, swallowing to dislodge the unpleasant taste in his mouth. He pulled his thoughts together. This isn’t Canada, he cautioned himself. They’ve lost their children to disease or famine, not abuse, and they wouldn’t be so concerned about this girl if they didn’t love her.

“Si.” The man steadied himself for a moment against the table. “Come,” he said, and headed out the door. His wife followed him through the entranceway, with Jerry close behind.

They led him in the direction of a small stand of trees beyond the market garden.

As they approached, scrabbling noises and low moaning, almost a mooing sound, made Jerry’s chest constrict.

A little farther into the trees sat a box.

A patchwork wooden rectangle, about Jerry’s height, about three-quarters that in width. No windows. Jerry thought of shipping crates, of luggage trunks, and shuddered. The door was tied shut with a length of rusted chain and a metal padlock. Oh, God , no. He licked his top lip, drew in a slow breath, hoping to quiet the beating of his heart, now loud enough to interfere with his hearing.

The thumping from the hut was interspersed with grunts. He shut his eyes as the man fiddled with the lock. When he opened them, the door, too, was open.

“The score is three to two in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. The Philadelphia Phillies have a man on first, but honestly folks, I think this game is over. The Phillies have just not been able to pull it together this World Series, and now with all of these injuries, who could the Phillies possibly put in to bat? It looks like this hometown team is running out of options. I hate to say this, but I think the dream of winning this year’s World Series is now over for this team. Wait a minute… is that Nate Rocks approaching the plate? He hasn’t been off the bench all season. Surely, the Phillies have someone more experienced they can use. Even Nate looks confused, as he steps up to the plate. I don’t know about this. Here comes the first pitch … swing … and a miss. Second pitch … ooh, a 95 mph fastball … and that’s strike two. The Philadelphia crowd of 45,000 is silent, as we wait for the third pitch … the pitch that determines this year’s world champions. The pitcher looks around, winds up, and … CRACK – that ball is OUT OF HERE! I don’t believe it, folks! Nate Rocks has hit a home run, and the Philadelphia Phillies have won the World Series!!!”

The Phillies rush out of the dugout, running toward me, as I cross home plate. They pile on top of me. Thunderous cheers of enthusiastic fans echo through the stadium. I can barely breathe. I feel a hand reach out to me.

“You did it, Nate! You did it!” The Phillies’ first baseman yells.  He pulls me to my feet.

Two other players help hoist me up over their shoulders. I wave to the crowd in victory. The players parade me around the bases, and the crowd begins chanting:

“Nate!”

“Nate!”

“Nate!”

“Nathan! For the fourth time – dinner is ready!”

“Huh?” I ask.

Mom is standing in my bedroom doorway, hands on her hips, staring at me, as I sit on my floor among a sea of colored pencils.

“I said dinner is ready. And for goodness sake Nathan Michael Rockledge, clean up this mess!”

“Okay, Mom,” I say. Mom turns around and heads down the steps.

I look back at my drawing. “Not too shabby,” I note, staring at the cartoon. I pick up a pencil and finish drawing myself holding the World Series trophy. Okay, so maybe I made my red hair not quite so bright, took out the freckles and added a few muscles to my scrawny body, but I still think it looks like me. I gather all of my colored pencils and scraps of paper off my carpet and throw them into my desk drawer.

“Nathan, Mom told me to tell you to stop picking your nose and get your butt down to dinner.”

I turn around see my older sister, Abby, standing in the hallway outside my bedroom. Abby is thirteen and is always complaining about something. Plus, she thinks she knows everything. Really, the only thing she knows is how to be annoying.

“Stop it, Abby, she didn’t say that!” I close up my sketchpad and follow her down the stairs.

“What were you drawing anyway?” she asks, as we head into the kitchen.

“None of your business.” I take my seat at the table, where Dad has already started eating.

“Some stupid comic probably,” Abby comments. She sits down across the table from me.

“All right, that’s enough,” Mom says. She puts a plate filled with spaghetti and meatballs in front of me. “Now eat your dinner, Nathan.”

“Yeah, eat your dinner,” Abby says. She swiftly kicks me from under the table.

I stick my tongue out at Abby and take a bite of my dinner. I wonder if meatballs are supposed to be crunchy? I take a big gulp of my milk to help wash down the crispy meat, as I prepare myself for a forkful of gummy pasta.

“How was school today, Nathan?” Dad asks cheerfully. One thing about my dad, he is always in a good mood. Sometimes I question if Abby was adopted – or maybe there was a mix-up at the hospital or something.

“Okay, I guess.” I look back down to my plate.

To be honest, today wasn’t one of my better days. Oh, it started out okay, I suppose, nothing spectacular. I woke up, threw on some random clothes, and went downstairs for breakfast. As usual, I met my best friend Tommy Jensen at the bus stop, just as it started to drizzle. My first thought, after being annoyed that we were standing out in the rain, was excitement over the fact that we would most likely have indoor recess. Believe me, I like recess just as much as the next kid does. I mean, who wouldn’t love being thrown outside for forty minutes of pure torture? Ten minutes of Tommy trying to talk me into playing kickball with the rest of the fourth graders, one minute to realize I am the last kid picked to be on a team, followed by twenty-nine minutes of praying the ball doesn’t come anywhere near me. When we have indoor recess, I don’t have to worry about any of that. I can just sit at my desk for forty minutes and draw cartoons. The rain had stopped by the time the bus reached school.

The good news was nobody wanted to play kickball during recess. The bad news was they chose football instead. Let’s just say things did not go so well and leave it at that.

After recess, we went right to lunch, where I discovered that Mom had packed me the remainder of last night’s dinner: Chicken Surprise. The surprise, it seemed, was that the meal tasted even worse the next day than it did the night before. Mom refuses to allow me to buy hot lunch. She says why waste money when she is able to pack me perfectly good lunches? I can’t wait until I am older like Abby. At least she gets to save up her babysitting money to buy her own lunches at school.

After lunch, Mrs. Dempsey announced that we would be starting a new science unit on energy and light. We would be working with partners. Each team would pick a project to work on, both in class and at home. Mrs. Dempsey usually lets us pick our own partners for science, but this time she stated she had assigned partners that we would be working with for the next two weeks. As soon as Mrs. Dempsey said the words, I closed my eyes and started silently concentrating as hard as I could:

“Please don’t let it be Lisa Crane, please don’t let it be Lisa Crane, please don’t let it be …”

“Nathan,” Mrs. Dempsey said, “you and Lisa will be working together.”

I could hear Tommy snickering under his breath. I looked over at him and shook my head. I turned back around to see Lisa standing right over my desk.

“Hi Nathan,” she said in her over-bubbly voice.

“Oh, hi.”

Lisa Crane and I have been in the same class since kindergarten. There is nothing wrong with Lisa, exactly – well except for the fact that she reports every second of every day back to her mother. Lisa’s mother, Marge, and my mother have been best friends for the last five years. Ever since Lisa reported to her mother that I got in trouble at school last year for falling asleep during math, I have spent a good portion of my life trying to stay away from Lisa Crane.

“So Nathan, I hear you and Lisa are science partners now,” Mom says. She sits down at the table.

“Uh, yeah.” Why am I not surprised that Mom already knows?

“Well, Marge says Lisa is really excited. She hasn’t stopped talking about it since she got home from school today.”

“I’ll bet,” I mumble under my breath.

“Science, huh?” Dad begins, “I loved science as a kid. Hey Nathan, did I ever tell you the story of the volcano your uncle Robert made for the school science fair?”

“Yeah, Dad, he put in two cups of baking soda instead of two tablespoons.”

“Uncle Robert poured in the vinegar and before we knew it, the judges were all covered in lava.” Dad bursts into laughter, as if this were the first time he was telling this story about his older brother, instead of the twentieth.

“Anyway, Lisa wants to get started on your project right away, so I invited her and Marge over on Saturday,” Mom informs me.

“But Mom, you know Tommy and I have plans to go see the new Captain Asteroid movie on Saturday!”

“So, see it on Sunday instead. Besides, you know schoolwork comes first. I think it will be fun to work with Lisa!”

“Yeah, Nathan,” Abby pipes in smirking, “think of how much fun you’ll have on your play date.”

I glare at Abby and continue to twirl my pasta on my fork, thinking of something I can say to convince Mom to cancel. I suppose she wouldn’t believe I have a rare and highly contagious disease that can only be cured by going to the movies on Saturday.

“Bill, how did your meeting go today?” Mom asks Dad, letting me know the conversation about my Saturday plans, is now over.