BURN IN HADES (5 page)

He sat there and swallowed his food hard. His stomach settled and relaxed. He licked his fingers then wiped his mouth and hands on his bib.

The center squal leapt into the air and crashed onto the opposite end of the table flipping bowls and sending pottery crashing to the floor. The other two squals held back, purposely blocking the main corridor.

The squal crawled along the table and finally reached him. With its hand-like foot, it grabbed the barbot breast and tossed it backwards. The other two squals leaned to the side to dodge it.

Cross snatched the barbot wing off the table and lurched back, nudging his throne. The chair legs screeched across the floor sending an echo bouncing off the walls.

He swung the wing like a baseball bat. The squal leaned back and he missed. His second swing swiped clean over the squals head as it ducked the blow. He faked a third swing. The squal dodged out of the way of the phony swing and when it recoiled, Cross smacked the squal in the head. As it twisted in the air, spit flew from its foamy mouth. It flopped to the floor. The other two squals scrambled around either side of the table just as he wanted them to.

Cross leapt onto the table and sprinted across it. A claw wrapped around his ankle. He crashed to the table, knocking over centerpieces.

One squal shoved the other. “Do not damage the head!”

“It already has-sss a hole in it.”

They shoved each other. Cross grabbed the lit candle and jammed it in the closest squal’s face. It hissed as the layer of skin covering the top half of its face melted. Stringy skin dripped down its chin until its veil was gone, uncovering two empty pits of eye sockets. The calabash fell off the table and rolled across the floor.

“Fresh fruit?” said the other squal and chased after the rolling calabash.

That wasn’t one of the uses Cross had anticipated using the fruit for, but it would work. He jumped off the table and landed near the first squal he had thumped with barbot wing. It was dazed and pulling itself to its clawed feet.

“How about a second helping?” Cross whopped the dazed squal again with the wing. He took a step toward the cooking area to retrieve his blade and halted.

The other two squals were blocking the doorway. The one squal was still eating the calabash while his melted-face companion was gathering itself off the floor.

The wing would have to make do as a weapon for now. He sprinted through the main hall, turned down a couple corridors, and headed for the rear where Bolon-Hunahpu had last sensed Gimlet. The nails of the squal’s feet scrapped the floor behind him. He raced past several rooms, tipping over statues to slow the squals down.

At the end of the hall, the gloomy orange haze from the flaming sky poured into the window between the animal hides. He aimed for the window and flung himself through it, grabbing the animal hide on his way out, clutching it. He swung. His shoulder slammed into the stone wall. The animal hide ripped, and he plummeted two stories to the ground.

He jumped to his feet and checked around for Gimlet. She was nowhere to be found. That’s what he got for not tying her up and giving her freedom to roam. Last time he’d be nice.

“Gimlet!” he called out into the vacant grounds, turning his head every which way in search of his pet cornurus. Skullface had said he would draw Gimlet over to the ball court.

A squal vaulted through the window he had just jumped through. Cross dashed down the lane of statues and cut around the palace.

The melted-faced squal met him in the courtyard. It had cut him off by going through the palace. The two squals approached cautiously from front and behind.

Cross turned sideways so that he could keep an eye on them both.

“You’re the mo-sss-st sss-stubborn sss-soul,” said the squal on his right. “When you sss-set your mind to sss-something, it is-sss sss-set.”

“I’m not worth all this trouble.” Cross stepped backwards. “Just go back and tell your clan someone else already captured me before you got to me.”

The melted-faced squal to his left stepped forward. “Your beautiful mind is-sss worth the trouble. And even if it were not, we are forbidden to return without you.”

“Then, I guess I’m going to have to burn you all like I did the last one.”

The melted-faced squal stepped closer. “There are three of us-sss this-sss time. How do you sss-suppose you’re going to take us-sss all?”

“That’s a surprise.”

It was so much of a surprise, not even Cross knew exactly how he was going to do it yet. His best option was to make it to the blade house. But the blade house was several houses away and the path to it was blocked by the squal in front of him.

The dome shaped Bat Aviary towered right next to him. He could lose the squals in there and then make his way to the blade house.

Cross sprinted through the alley of stone-carved bats leading up to the aviary. The squals chased. He slammed the iron aviary door behind him.

The squals bashed the solid door from the other side. It cracked open just enough for them to slash their claws through. They ripped his shirt sleeve, trying to grab him and pull him out.

Chapter 3 - Ebony Bird

Cross shouldered the iron aviary door with all his might
. Finally, the squals snatched their arms back. The door closed. He slid the latch in place, locking the door, and backed away. He drew in a shaky breath. The squals would never give up.

A narrow wooden bridge wound from the entrance through a jungle of dead trees and vines. It was elevated above the forest floor which was filled with boulders and a few hazy ponds, bubbling. It would be a bone breaking jump down. The canopy of the trees rose even higher, but barely touched the top of the dome shaped fencing of aviary.

He spotted a wooden shack at the other end of the bridge in the center of the aviary. He had never been inside the aviary, let alone that shack. There had to be a way out somewhere on the other side of that shack. Most of the other houses of Xibalbá had back doors.

The iron door banged. The squals were throwing their bodies against it without any regard to their health. Either they were going to break through the gate or end up breaking their own bones, possibly both.

The canopy above wisped. Shrieks and flapping noises exploded throughout the aviary. Bats swooped down and swarmed out of their cave-like roosts below.

Cross rushed across the bridge. Bats half his size snapped their fangs at him and snatched with their talons. He ducked them, sprinting toward the shack.

Halfway across the bridge, a bat swooped in front of him. He swung the barbot wing and knocked it out of the air. It spiraled to the forest floor several feet below the bridge and splashed into a pond.

Behind him, the squals burst through the iron door, knocking it off is hinges. A swarm of bats flew out the door, while others attacked the squals, lifting some of the pressure off Cross. Not nearly enough though.

A bat wrapped its talons around the barbot wing. The wing snapped in half. Another bat slammed into his back, sinking its talons into his flesh. The force sent him tumbling into the dark shack. He rolled around trying to get the creature off his back and writhed in pain.

“Off of him.” A squal snatched the bat off Cross. Some of the skin on his back ripped away along with it. Cross arched his back in agony.

Both squals tussled with the bat. The lower jaw on one of the squal’s dangled. Cross must’ve broken it when he bashed it with the wing back in the palace.

The bat latched its talons onto the slack jawed squal’s chin and ripped its lower jaw right off its face. Black blood gushed out of its neck. It collapsed, hissing.

The squal with the melted face, whom Cross had stabbed with the lit candles, slapped the bat against the floor repeatedly until it quit flapping and shrieking.

Melty-face then stepped over Slackjaw, who was lying on the senseless floor, and reached out to Cross as if it honestly cared about his wellbeing. “They did not injure you did they?”

Cross backed away on his bottom, scanning the one room shack for an exit. A door was directly on the opposite side of the shack only a few feet away.

“You’re only delaying the inevitable,” said Melty-face.

“That’s the point,” said Cross.

“We will have your memories-sss. You cannot run forever.”

“I don’t plan to.”

“Yes-sss. We know all about your plan to go to paradise and drink from the River Lethe. Quite ambitious-sss. But you’ll never breach the great wall. The guards of the A’raf will annihilate you on sss-sight. And that does-sss no sss-soul any good. At least if you come with us-sss, you’ll be giving back to the community. Your memories-sss will help all of the damned. You’ll be a hero. The Man Who Remembers-sss will, himself, be remembered as-sss a sss-savior.”

Cross sprang to his feet, raced through the shack and out the back door. He slammed the wooden door behind him. It was much weaker than the iron door at the entrance and it was rotting away. He braced it shut with his back.

The bridge continued from the rear of the shack and led to the other side of the aviary where there was a rear exit.

Oddly, the squal hadn’t yet tried to break down the door like they had done with the entrance. Cross peeked through a crack in the door. Slackjaw’s body remained on the floor still bleeding to second death, but Metly-face was nowhere inside the shack.

The squal must’ve circled around to the rear exit and was planning to meet him in the back of the aviary. There would be a squal waiting for him outside either door. Squals were tricky that way.

Maybe there was a hole in the fencing at the top of the aviary that he could slip through. If not, he could make one. Everything in Xibalbá was ancient and falling apart. With some brute force he could break through. He could sneak through the top and then slide down the side of the aviary. The squals wouldn’t expect that.

He climbed onto the bridge railing and vaulted over to a tree. He scaled high enough up that he could see the entire aviary below. No sign of any of the squals and most of the bats had flown the coop.

Melty-face entered the aviary through the rear entrance just as Cross had suspected it would. The squal stopped at the edge of the bridge where it met the shack, turning its head side to side, searching.

Cross grabbed the wired fencing above him and shook it, trying to find a weakness. Vines were wrapped tightly around the wiring, giving the fence extra strength. It wouldn’t budge.

The tree limb he was standing on snapped. He tumbled. His chest slapped a limb. He hugged it, preventing himself from falling further.

“Come down from there,” said Melty-face, pleading with its clawed hands. “You’ll fall and damage that beautiful mind.” The squal scrambled up the tree.

Cross wished he had a gun so he could threaten to blow his own brains out. That would make the squals back off.

He swung a leg over the limb, and regained his footing. The squal drew closer. A vine swung down and slapped Cross in his face. It hung directly from the top of the aviary where he had been jostling the wiring. He must’ve loosened it. He pulled it taught to see if it could hold his weight. It held.

He thanked the Great Goddess for such a blessing and kissed the vine. He wrapped the vine around his arm and flung himself outward just out of the reach of the squals swiping claws. He sailed above the aviary peacefully, and then his momentum slowed; he swung back toward the welcoming arms of Melty-face.

He lifted his legs as high as he could over Melty-face’s outstretched arms and swung pass the squal, then over the roof of the shack. He was too high to jump onto it without breaking bones.

With nowhere to land safely, he was just a naked pendulum, and his clock was ticking. At the peak of the swing, the vine jolted as though on the verge of snapping. The wiring at the top was buckling and lowered him down a drop, now at the perfect height for the squal to grab him easily.

Melty-face waited patiently on its perch. Cross bunched his knees to his chest and kicked off of Melty-face’s body. The squal clawed at his legs, shredding his pants and skin.

Cross sailed over the bridge, looking for somewhere he could jump before the wiring gave way. Melty-face leapt onto his vine. It snapped. They plummeted.

Branches broke his fall on the way down and nearly broke one of his ribs. He plowed into the bridge on his shoulder and debris showered him. Melty-face next to him was staggering to its feet, jostling broken shards of bone from the barbot wing.

Cross kicked the squal in the head. It keeled over onto its back. He snatched up the dagger sized shard of bone and plunged it into the flailing squal’s chest.

The miserable spirit withered into the black ash-like state of second death, crusty and hard on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside. It was now stiff and frozen in the position it burned, arms and legs curled like a dead spider. That didn’t always happen when spirits burned, but the contorted appearance always gave him the willies.

Cross dropped the bone and crossed himself.
The Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone.

“You did that to yourself,” he said to the charred spirit. “Told you to leave me alone.” He wiped its black blood off his hands and onto his shirt.