Xavier runs along the train tracks back to Bagdad Beach. On the horizon the fighting looks like it died down. Only the sound of screaming and metal bending give away the fading sounds of the dawn battle. Among the bodies in piles Xavier comes across a large stockpile of weapons. The Borrachos seemed to fare the best. Looting the ruins of the Circus.
Xavier hopes that one of them particular has survived. The drunken priest Padre Tuti Arranga. He was never a bad priest but falling asleep and allowing your parish to burn down in a hurricane, when you were seen yelling and throwing bottles from the bell tower is never a way to stay in business. This and the fact it was a Comanche mission, where many of the wives of the most brutal raiders were housed to keep keep the peace.
He not only allowed the women the run of the place, to come and go freely, but was rumored to be trading them guns and whiskey in return for safe passage of his parishioners. A heavy transgression worthy of hanging, so Padre Tuti ended up living under bridges and blessing the wounded beside the road in exchange for the dying parties coins and any thing of value in their pockets and saddlebags.
Xavier looked beyond the Circus camp to the flooded town. On a roof he sees the cowardly priest has skirted the battle all together and has climbed a tree growing from the ruins above the waterline. High above the submerged graveyard masoleums he sways drunkenly with the gentle wind bending the laws of physics. His eyes are red and looks to have been crying, or more likely screaming obscenities in the direction of the battle. Xavier says, “Padre, I need your help. Can you perform an Exorcism?” The Priest smiles and replies, “Every day in this blasted place.”
As if on que a flock of two angry male Peacocks and five females begin to fight in the branches around him. Amused at first, turns to annoyance and terror at the canny birds peck at his pockets and fingers for a hand out. In the blink of the eye he is laying flat on his back 20 feet bellow his perch. Xavier asks, “Father, are you hurt?” The Priest lays contently with eyes closed. “I think I will lay here a while. Ask me again after dark.”
Arriving back at the former site of the Barstowe Circus, now rubble and smoldering logs with Padre Tuti. Xavier now needs the help of the most unlikely savior. Pancho Villa’s Northern Army. Xavier allows Carolota and Carmen to do the talking. Villa and his most seasoned killers flood out, crossing them selves and ready to march on hell its self. Villa has taken the presence of Ghouls and Vampires in Mexico as a personal affront.
In the battle at sunrise somehow he had missed the fact that a third of the hostiles were undead, now he pledges everlasting hostility and belligerence on the half of his, “Sweet sisters Dorotea and Rosita.” Who will either be rescued at the point of a sword or avenged.
Mexico has long been a superstitious country. Stories like this are not myths to many but a practical threat every child and lone traveler on the road at night must contend with. There are always half eaten bodies beside the road as feasts for coyotes. This doesn’t take supernatural interference. But when signs of surgical removal of specific organs such as eyes, the tongue, the spleen, the lungs, the ovaries or brain. There is always a thought that some kind of evil lurks among the reeds, in colonial cemeteries and forgotten swamps.
Many in the camp know of stories of “Brujas de la Canción,” who drag children off to be boiled in cauldrons, or bled dry on Satanic alters in moonlight. They fear ghosts of the wrongly executed and clutch their crossed when they must cross by churches and burial grounds. Tonight many of them will join the dead sooner than they had planned.
Villa although not educated beyond the most basic studies as a child, has a great vocabulary and wisdom of the world and every thing in it. He is self taught in the ways of the streets. He shunned title of President and preferred to continue revolution once the other forced established one of his one time friend and ally Huerta.
Pancho is a General not out of some esoteric hierarchy, but because if you live as a bandit and head of cutthroats engaged in war for years and you live long enough thats what you become. Pancho is not a crafty man, not manipulative or scheming. He is very loyal and lives by a creed of the streets. If you are loyal to him, he will die beside you, if not… you will die and become a cautionary tale about having plans and opinions different than his.
General Villa, on his chariot pulled by a Pride of Lions leads a mass of Horsemen into the swamp. Xavier, Carmen and Carolota climb down from horses. They watch and Pancho and Martiza set the Lions to swim towards the submerged town and graveyard beyond.
As the sun comes through the trees in majestic rays a brilliant peach colored sunset people flee from the growing shadows and vile entities seeking blood that rise from their subterranean coffins at dusk. Green and stained white buildings lean at odd angles. From the black water poke up blessed Virgin Mary statues, crosses and angels all take on a sinister visage, covered in moss and bird droppings. Eyes seeming to weep black streaks amongst the burials forgotten by centuries past.
Coming to a ruined gothic church showing signs of fire and violent wind. Inside the roof has fallen in, stained glass windows long gone. At the knave, the floor has fallen into the crypts bellow. The Villaista’s faction makes torches and follow the hungry Lions that seem to intuitively understand friend from foe, and are eager for a fight. Every one of the people seem to pause to look at the dying light once more, kiss a crucifix, saying prayers and checking rifles are fully loaded.
The Crypts are larger than the town would have led to believe, vaulted ceilings and great distances contained within. The Soldiers fan out in every direction, laughing at the echoes, at the acoustics while they sing Corrido” into the booming distance of forgotten hallways. The depths of the Tomb answers with laughter of an especially cruel and shrill sort. Soldiers go running with a war cry and the same stimuli give pause to Xavier and his Sisters Carolota and Carmen. They look to each other for reassurance and then to the sound of crickets coming from the entrance.
From the same direction the soldiers ran, the Lions come running back whimpering. They know this is a bad sign of whats to come. They owe Pancho Villas Northern Army more than to cower at the first hint of dismay.
Collecting their courage they proceed into the distant recesses of this dank crypt. Lions slink behind them in an unsure gait. Coming to a junction of different paths, they decide that nothing would be worse than separating but Carolota and Carmen think that if each one of them takes 2 Lions they will be able to overcome any lurking foe.
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Sounds of wounded men come hauntingly from within, drawing up feelings of dread from base of the spine. Xavier with an Alpha Male Lion and a Female who seem more interested in each other than fighting run ahead into the dark. Xavier alone cringes each time his foot crunches a leaf or disturbs a husked bramble. He feels itchy, spiderwebs stick to his face and splinters fill his collar and sleeves. Buzzing in his ears driving him mad all the while his heart beating grows thunderous. The dark is so oppressive he imagines red glows and flashes of light he knows are lack of stimuli filling his optic nerve. Transmuting brain enzymes and electrical charges into outlandish hallucinations.
He hears a hum but can’t tell if it is behind or ahead. Coming to a jumble of bodies he checks for signs of life. There is none. But further down he sees something that makes him feel better. There under an overturned chariot is the General Pancho Villa, wounded from the fall but unmolested by Vampiric interference. As he reaches Pancho, the hum becomes a resounding mantra, invoking poltergeists and crawling things of all kinds to emanate a deeply hostile spiritual presence the farther they travel. Out of torch light, shadow creatures and phantom eyes watch them. Scratching and fluttering of wings follow their footsteps just out of sight.
Carolota and her two Female Lions have a fast friendship, looking at each other with friendly eyes and playing games of who can walk faster and turn around and alert. Carolota thinks of all that has happened. She doesn’t understand all the details but she thinks that Dorotea has been withdrawn, and sometimes talking to herself as if there is another world before her. She hopes that whatever is going on they can go back to normal when this is over. She sees bats lining the ceiling and thinks she hears what must be the language of spiders and moths. She thinks she hears female voices moaning from the grave, but she softly it must be her imagination.
Elsewhere Carmen has two Male Lions that march forward with machismo as her protectors. Looking back to be sure she is watching as they scour the edges of the hall for doorways and alcoves too dark for human eyes. Carmen hears whispers that the Lions don’t, she is troubled and wants to go back. The Lions however march forth into pools of darkness beyond her torchlight can penetrate. The top of her scalp feels like its contorting under its own spasms, under her breasts and between her thighs feels uncomfortable from swamp water and coarse military fabric rubbing her skin raw.
Deep in the bowels of the Crypt is a chamber where Dorotea and Esma have been taken. Rosita is somewhere with Barstowe and his Dead Girls. Ozma still in Dorotea’s body awakens her mother. Esma has injured her spine. Struggling to lift her self from the ground. Ozma helps her and says, “How do we get out of here?” Esma shakes her head as if talking is more than she can muster. As soon as they touched hands horrible Witches seize them and drag them to some deeper terrors in the darkness. In a place like this any hiss, cackle or laughter feels like a slap across your soul, like the throbbing head during a fever or ear infection. A panic riddled skull being struck with a fist or being shouted at the moment you open your eyes after oversleeping.
Coming to an open room Xavier and General Villa limp forth into an area that has fallen in revealing moon light. There is two collapsed tunnels and one where Carmen and her Lion accomplices emerge. Villa is glad to see her, but before there can be any happy reunion there is a scream from the other tunnel. They all cringe, the material of the universe contorting around them like the gloved hands of a mugger on a moonless night.
Running they come face to face with the Dead Girls feeding on dying Soldiers. Remembering the effectiveness of pieces of wood they all lament at once that they have forgotten to bring stakes, so bullets with have to make due.
Shots ring out. Being hit, the Dead Girls don’t seem to have any feeling of pain. But instinctively flee, possibly based on some remembrance of the human fear of mortal wounds and guns. The Soldiers have already bled beyond saving and are going through their last death throws, involuntary muscle spasms.
Up close gunshots do two things, especially in dark, closed spaces. One is ruin your hearing, making a screaming sound of silence after you tear an ear drum, pounding like physical violence when you feel weak and all you want is peace. The second is ruin your night vision, leaving streaks of light, strange colored spots in darkness rolling each time you blink your eyes. Offset images of any thing real that trails off like trying to look between the gaps of a thundering freight train at some starlit vista far beyond.
Running the way the Dead Girls went, they come to the smell of fire and sulfur. There is light dancing from portals beyond a flooded room in inches of rain water that smells stagnant, full of corruption and toxic miasmas. In darkness smells have shape and sound has ominous weight.
In their inner sanctum Three Witches sit on chairs of bones around a table spread out with candles and divination cards. Beyond in the withering light, their cauldron fire stinks of rot and pungent herbs. The room is scattered with the bluish bodies of half eaten children. Hollowed out skulls, husks of ribs separated from potato sacks of organs, pelvic bones tossed to dogs, a messy scene of torment, vivisection of the defenseless. Each witch has a hateful smiling face, filthy with soot, sweat and meat grease in this humid temple of despair. They wear stinking moth eaten funeral robes and pass a pipe of sharp smoke that burns the eyes, sucking rotten teeth and spitting sour blood into pails to collect for some foul fermentation recipe.
They sing a song in an unknown language, beyond them chained to the wall Esma. Clothes barely hanging on, covering nothing, ripped to shreds. Looking abused by claws and whips. From an ornate neoclassical golden bird cage just big enough for her to fit in a fetal position, Dorotea is covered in herbs and oils, suspended above a cooking fire that is just starting to catch, growing ever higher to threaten the passed out girl. The Lions take initiative and pounce on the Witches who are savaged in seconds. Xavier and Carmen run to Dorotea and Esma, helping to unchain them and stop when the cries of the Witches being attacked by Lions begins to resound with Dorotea’s voice.
Pausing to really focus on the fighting and looking again at the figures opposite, it is now young and vibrant women who look with lust in their eyes. Pancho is sold and begins to caress the voluptuous bodies while Xavier runs back to kick the Lions away from the bodies of Dorotea and Esma, but now he can’t be sure which is which. It is a trick by the Witches, they are Shape-shifters that can just as easily lure men to be killed in the night of passion with a knife in the base of the skull as a child kicks over a toy in a tantrum.
Looking back, Pancho is getting a little too friendly with Esma. He runs back to Pancho slapping his hand down, getting a glare of hate he knows he will answer for later. Carolota who has come from the other direction rushes to the wall where Esma is crumpled at the foot of some mechanization of dismemberment, the pressing issue is Dorotea who is in the process of being cooked alive in a golden cage.
Unchaining both of them, the rescuers look to each other for directions, this place and its evil aura saps any strength they have. A pressure is at work, making their eyes feel painfully swollen, their ears sting with a startling erratic pain each time their hearts beat. Dorotea and Esma go into convulsions, ululating passionate movements of some phantom dream-world lust. Nothing about it is alluring, a sickening and shameful feeling for the siblings, discarding clothing to cover the victims.
Looking back to the initial Lion attack, Xavier sees the Lions paralyzed, eyes glowing like rubes as spirits move about them in a last evil ritual. He sees women covered in ash and spider webs. Holding candles and skulls, spitting blood and eyes aflame. In a mirage of hot smoke, distorted in the infernal shimmer of funeral fires… he sees an image that haunts him. Snarling in a trance, breathing heavily, arms moving wildly in esoteric gestures. With a last malicious incantations they dissolve into something between bats and the blackest shadow. Leaving behind chipped bone and burst eyes of their corporal forms. He is sure this is what demons look like.
When he blinks, he is alone again. Another trick of the light. Betrayal of the imagination by eyes so tired the world seems to vibrate after 36 hours of no rest and drained of all adrenaline. One has died, and two are bleeding but able to be interrogated. Carmen looms over them with the butt of a rifle, “Who are you, why do you have my sister chained to the wall?” The last living witch laughs, drawing a strike from the Rifle to crush an eye socket.
One Witch still gasping and clawling, mutilated beyond recognition snarls. “Because the pequeña puta was sold to us and belongs with the witch Hecate who was once Persephone, now enthralled to the ancient Babylonian demon Lamashtu to be fed on forever in Hell. We can get rich off little shits like her…” The sentence of was punctuated with chipped teeth and choking as Carmen had heard enough and began to smash the Witches faces into pits of chipped bone one by one with the butt of her rifle. Nodding to the Lions to resume their meal of the Witches bodies.