Key Weirder Read online

  The two boys were wearing nearly identical dirt-colored clothes and sitting on the ground side by side in the shade near the garden. They were quietly watching her as she came over and sat in front of them. She looked at the new boy sitting to the left of Henry and felt a sudden shiver of fear. Thinking she must surely be dreaming this time, Sara started to raise her hand up to count the fingers, but the new boy put his hand over hers. Henry gave her a serious look.

  “There is no need for this. It does not matter here if you are dreaming or not, it only matters that you can see him now.”

  The new boy was definitely Indian, about the same age and size as Henry, but with a rounder, flatter face and long black hair. His eyes were scaring her; they were even older eyes than Henry’s – ancient eyes. Sara couldn’t look away from the new boy’s eyes, she felt her body was afraid and wanted to flee.

  Just as she about to jump up and run for her life, the new boy smiled for the first time and started to chant real low. Henry picked up on it and started humming a tune that somehow went with what the other boy was chanting. Almost immediately she calmed down. Soon the strange tune had words, and the two boys ended up singing a funny song about a raccoon that liked to steal bird eggs, but was always falling out of trees.

  The song ended and Sara wondered at how she had gone from panic to laughing about the silly song in such a short time. Henry saw it when she started getting nervous again.

  “Please excuse my friend, Sara. He is really quite harmless.” To prove his point, Henry gave the other boy a good shove. Without moving his arms or legs, the boy fell over onto his side. The momentum rolled him further, until he was balancing on his head with his legs still crossed in a sitting position. Sara was spellbound at the acrobatic feat. “Although he is a bit of a show-off sometimes.”

  Henry gave the Indian boy another push. This time he rolled around on the ground, then partway up a tree trunk before rolling back and sitting up next to Henry.

  “Sara meet Newt, Newt this is Sara.”

  Newt sprang to his feet, bowed deeply, gently took Sara’s hand in his, and gave it a quick kiss before falling backwards and landing in a sitting position next to Henry.

  “His real name is Nutehamomoiki, but I just call him Newt for short.”

  The boy called Newt gave Sara a grin so big she thought he might be about to pull a muscle in his face.

  “I think Newt would like to tell you about his people, but sometimes he is a little shy and can’t seem to talk to strangers.”

  Newt nodded his head vigorously to agree with what Henry was saying, then made some grotesque contortions with his mouth like he was trying to talk but couldn’t. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble and was grunting and making terrible noises and looked truly to be trying as hard as he could to talk. Henry looked at his friend and rolled his eyes.

  “He’s like this sometimes. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

  Newt was grabbing at his lips and making horrible sounds. Sara didn’t know whether to laugh or run. The boy was giving her a pleading look, like he wanted her to help him. He kept struggling and pointed to his back and started to hiccup. His hiccups grew so strong that he was bouncing off the ground each time. Henry started to laugh. Newt was frantically pointing at his back and imploring Sara with his eyes to help him.

  “What is wrong with him? What does he want me to do?”

  The boy’s hiccups were becoming so violent he was coming off the ground almost a foot each time. Henry was holding his side and laughing.

  “I think he wants you to pound on his back, Sara. He seems to have something stuck inside that is keeping him from speaking.”

  Sara jumped up and ran behind the bouncing, hiccupping boy and gave him a good shot between the shoulder blades. The blow knocked the boy forward and he ended up balanced on his head in a sitting position again.

  Newt had stopped hiccupping and making noises, and stayed balanced on his head for several seconds before releasing a long, loud, fart.

  Henry was rolling on the ground laughing. Newt toppled down and started laughing just as hard. Sara wondered what the hell she had gotten herself into for a second, then started laughing herself.

  After the two boys had composed themselves and taken their places sitting on the ground, Henry gave Newt a stern look and turned to Sara.

  “My friend here does have a lot of things he would like to tell you, and show you.” Henry looked to his left and the other boy gave him a look of angelic innocence. “If he can control himself for a while that is.”

  Newt now looked determined, almost fierce. Sara felt safe with these two strange boys, but on guard. She decided to go for the big question.

  “What do you know about the Chacmools, Newt?”

  ♦

  Newt could talk all right, and once he got started he had a lot to say. Sara learned of his people, the People of the Chacmools.

  “In the first days there were several sets of the Golden Chacmools, and many of my people. My people spent countless generations perfecting lucid dreaming and their dreaming bodies. Since ancient times the parents would remove the small finger on the left hand of their babies at birth. It was a mark of my people, so that we could always identify one another. Dreaming bodies are always perfect replicas of the dreamer, except without any physical imperfections, so the dreaming bodies of my people had all their fingers.”

  Sara looked at Newt’s hands, and saw that he had all his fingers. She was amazed to see that Henry did also.

  “The Chacmool’s power was coveted and sometimes abused by others. Wars were fought. Over the centuries many peoples and nearly all of the Chacmools were destroyed or lost by the greed and ignorance of those seeking the Spirit Idol’s power.

  “My people were the guardians of the Chacmools. We traveled freely between the worlds of man and those of the spirits of the earth. As the greed of man took its toll on the Spirit Idols, my people also became fewer and less powerful. Those that survived to modern times were not much more than observers, with barely enough power to stay in the world of men for short periods of time.

  “It was one of my people, the People of the Chacmools, who helped a shaman hide one of the Idols from the Spanish, the same Idol that a man named Charlie Spider had bought at a small village market over two hundred years later.”

  Sara asked how many sets of the Chacmools were left, and the strange Indian boy held up one finger. She was almost afraid to ask – she felt she already knew the answer – but she asked how many People of the Chacmools were left. There was sadness in the eyes of both boys as Newt again held up one finger.

  ♦

  Sara followed the two boys as they walked through the wilderness. They showed her wild birds and animals that she never would have noticed on her own. She saw wild boar, several more deer, and large white birds looking for an easy meal along the edge of the water while trying to avoid becoming a meal themselves for a hungry alligator. There were little snakes and turtles by the water, and songbirds in the trees.

  The boys showed her how to walk so that she wouldn’t disturb the Earth Mother as she traveled upon her surface. It was difficult at first to concentrate on holding her fingers a certain way while not looking just at what was directly in front of her, but at everything in her field of vision. After a while, though, she was able to move almost as silently through the woods as her young guides.

  Newt mimicked someone stumbling through the woods looking up at the trees and stepping on a snake and messing his pants. His pantomime was so perfect and his look of horror at stepping on a snake so hilarious that they had to stop for several minutes until their laughter subsided before they continued on.

  Though Sara had learned about wild plants and their uses when she was in tracker school, there were many types of vegetation here that she had never seen before. The boys would stop from time to time to point out a plant that was good to eat, a vine to drink clear water from, or a tree with bark that could be made into medicine. All th
e plants, animals and insects, the sun, sky and breeze seemed to flow together for Sara in a way that she had never experienced. Everything seemed to move in an entirely predictable way, and the sounds of the wilderness were almost like a long soothing melody. There was so much to know, so much to learn. Sara became overwhelmed and dizzy. She had to rest.

  When she sat down on the ground she immediately felt better. She looked for the boys, but saw only Henry. He was sitting close by, where she had seen him before by the little garden. She then noticed it was nearly dark and the mosquitoes were getting bad again.

  “Where has Newt gone?”

  Henry looked to his left and shrugged his shoulders. He gave Sara a wink.

  “Let’s get a few vegetables for some soup. Maybe he will come to the cabin later.” Henry stood and stretched like he had been sitting for a long time. Sara stood and realized that even though she had just sat down, for some reason she felt as though she had been sitting for hours.

  Henry was digging up some little carrots and potatoes from the sandy soil. He handed them to Sara to put in her bag for the trip back to the cabin. She noticed in the dim light that the boy was again missing the small finger on his left hand.

  ♦

  After they had eaten their fill of the delicious soup in the little cabin, Sara sat on the mat and Henry took his usual place nearby along the wall. The constant buzz of mosquitoes that covered the screens and the occasional call of a night bird were the only sounds. A small fire in the cooking stove cast long gray shadows through the room.

  “Where has Newt gone Henry? I wanted to ask him more about the Chacmools.”

  Henry looked to his left and winked.

  “He is still here. If you want to see him, just let your thoughts go to sleep, and stay awake. Understand?”

  Sara was anxious, and a little apprehensive, to see and talk to the phantom boy again. She had trouble quieting her mind, but finally the familiar calm came and slowly washed her thoughts away. Everything became clearer, and she could see inside the cabin as though it were daylight. She could see everything in the room in minute detail, almost as though magnified.

  Henry was sitting on his spot, still with a big smile and those old man’s eyes. Instinctively, Sara brought her hand up to check her fingers. As soon as she did, something black flew in front of her just missing her face. She yelped and jumped back, hitting her head against the wall behind her.

  There were two boys now, both rolling on the floor overcome with spasms of laughter. Henry sat up and was wiping away tears.

  “I’m sorry Sara, Newt gets a little carried away with his tricks sometimes. You’ll have to forgive him, he doesn’t get many chances to clown around with others.”

  Sara was rubbing the back of her head. She had really gotten a good whack and it hurt. It came to her that if Newt wasn’t always clowning around, she probably wouldn’t be able to be around him. As awesome as he had been out in the wilderness during the day, he seemed to be even more powerful at night. The air around Newt seemed to almost glow with energy like an electrical charge.

  Sara tried to fight it, but she could feel her fear building. It was beyond any sort of rational thing, it was more a primal feeling. Her body’s warning systems were at full alert.

  The two boys sat side by side, staring at her. Their eyes were like pools of black liquid. Sara’s mind filled with raw terror and she could feel a scream coming from deep inside her. Newt was suddenly in front of her, grabbing her head in his hands and turning it to the left. Something in her neck popped, and she wasn’t in the little cabin out in the Everglades swamp anymore.

  ♦

  It was an immense room with a very high ceiling. Everything seemed to be made of white stone, and the huge room was brightly lit, though Sara didn’t notice the source of the light. In the center of the room were several large men who appeared to be guards, with sword-like weapons and long spears. They wore brightly colored robes and fierce-looking masks shaped like a jaguar’s head. There was a raised area like a large bed, which seemed to be what the men were guarding. Someone was lying on the bed.

  Sara looked around and found Newt standing next to her. She was no longer afraid of him, instead she felt great affection and trust towards him.

  Newt put his index finger to his lips to signal her to be quiet, then pointed to the bed where the figure was lying. Sara moved closer and could see it was a woman, lying on her back with a golden Chacmool by each ear, and another over her eyes. There was a shimmer of energy in the air around the woman similar to what she had experienced with Newt in the cabin.

  Something about the dark-haired woman caused Sara to look closer at her face. There was something across the woman’s mouth, a gold piece of cloth or a scarf. Sara looked at Newt, who gave an almost imperceptible nod towards the woman on the bed. She reached out and carefully lifted the cloth from the woman’s mouth. The woman was smiling, and Sara suddenly felt something was wrong. Before she could put the cloth back across the woman’s mouth, the woman grabbed Sara’s hand holding the cloth and held it with an incredibly strong grip. Sara tried to free herself as the woman’s other hand reached for the Chacmool that covered her eyes. Sara started to wail and frantically pulled to get away before the woman took the Idol away from her eyes. The Chacmool came away and the eyes opened, staring directly at Sara. The woman looked exactly like Carol. Sara screamed.

  ♦

  Everything was wet. Sara was sitting on the steps of the little cabin and the two boys were pouring buckets of water over her. She shook her head, then her whole body, like a dog drying itself off. A feeling of calm and strength came over her. She held up her hand.

  “Enough!”

  Newt had a bucket of water poised over her head. He shrugged, then poured the whole bucket over her head. Sara had been about to say something else and got a mouthful of swamp water. She sputtered and coughed, then pointed at Newt.

  “You!”

  She made a grab and just missed as the boy yelped and jumped away. Sara was on her feet and the chase was on. Henry fell back against the cabin laughing. It wasn’t a long chase since there was only a few square feet of wood planking surrounded by a few hundred acres of shallow water and swamp. Sara had Newt by the back of the collar, dragging him struggling and laughing back to the front of the cabin, where she grabbed a bucket of water and thoroughly soaked him.

  ♦

  Wearing dry clean clothes from her boat, Sara sat in the cabin with the two boys again. She wanted to ask about the vision of the Chacmools, but fell asleep on the mat.

  When she woke, both boys were still sitting there, just as they had been before she slept. It was late morning.

  “What was that place, Newt? And why was Carol there?”

  The boys continued to look at her without moving for several seconds. Although Sara trusted the boys explicitly, she still felt a little apprehensive with the two of them staring at her. Sometimes they didn’t seem like young boys at all.

  Newt took a deep breath and exhaled through his lips, making a strange sound.

  “Something happened there, Sara. I wanted you to see the Temple of the Chacmools, but I didn’t think you could pierce the dream.”

  Newt stared at Sara with his big black eyes. She stared back.

  “But what is that place? Is it a place that existed in the past? And what do you mean by ‘pierce the dream’?”

  Newt seemed to have something in his hand. He looked at the other boy before answering.

  “The place we went to doesn’t exist in what you would normally think of as time, it is just there as it has always been. There is always someone, usually a woman, on the Temple bed with the Chacmools.”

  Newt appeared nervous for the first time since she’d met him. His nervousness was contagious, and Sara was hanging on his every word.

  “You pierced the dream when you took the scarf from the face of the woman. I know of the person you call Carol, but I had never seen the face of anyone in the temple befor
e and was shocked myself to see her there. I have no idea what it means.

  “Everything changed when you pierced the dream. The guards were about to grab us both when Henry dragged you outside the cabin and poured water on you. You can scream really loud, you know.”

  Newt smiled and some of the tension was broken, but Sara was still on edge.

  “But it was just a dream, right? You said it was a dream!”

  Newt’s smile faded as he opened his hand.

  “Not a dream anymore.” he dropped a gold scarf on the floor in front of them. “You brought this back with you.”

  ∨ Key Weirder ∧

  49

  Carol

  Carol lounged in bed for a while thinking about the weird dream she’d been having before the roar of a navy jet taking off from the base nearby woke her up. She had strange dreams from time to time, but this one had been a real doozy.

  The events of the evening before started coming back to her as she lay there. The crazy parade in town, the rum, the music, and the guy who was manager of a motel there on the island. What was his name? André, that was it. A perfectly manicured finger absently worked its way up a nostril as the Head Witchette of the Spider Cult sighed and thought about the man that had been in her bed a few hours earlier.

  As she woke up a little more, Carol started remembering details of her wild night of uninhibited passion. There was a strange and rather unpleasant taste in her mouth, and Carol suddenly cringed at the memory of something she’d done. She jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. After gargling a large glassful of mouthwash, she spent several minutes thoroughly brushing her tongue.

  ♦

  After a relaxing lunch in the hotel restaurant, Carol allotted a few minutes of her time to wondering about Jeremy. She made sure not to give him too much money at a time so he wouldn’t hurt himself too badly, and took her credit card back after the fortune teller had been paid.