Under the Gaze of Ix Chel
by Dustin Smith
|
Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
March 25th
I focused on tightening my grip around Austin’s neck, and I leant back. Gravel cut into my scalp. But it barely registered. My legs wrapped around his midriff, and then I interlocked my ankles. He scratched at my arm, and my pulse pounded in my head as if counting down to some sinister climax. The red slits he’d made didn’t hurt. It was as if I were watching the struggle rather than partaking.
It would be over soon. I craned my neck to the side and glimpsed Austin’s face: purple, contorted, his mouth gasping for air that wouldn’t come. Only when he stopped fighting could I let him go, slither away and curl up next to a tree trunk. With the tip of his finger, Austin tried to pull in a pistol but only succeeded in sliding it a few centimetres farther away. I yanked his neck, pulling him away from the firearm just to be sure.
Beyond the marquee, the hole under the tree returned. Why am I telling you this? Because you’re the only thing I can be honest with. If I told anyone else, I’d be locked away in a prison or an asylum.
I’d never killed before. No, that’s a lie. Sorry. As a child, I poured boiling water on an ants’ nest that had erupted like a volcano in our garden. But Grandma had ordered me to do that; it wasn’t my choice. Also, I may have stabbed a few woodlice with toothpicks, but they don’t count. I was young, and I didn’t understand the ramifications.
Austin’s convulsions weakened to fidgets. I understood what I was doing to Austin. People are different from insects. We put them on pedestals, even when they don’t deserve it.
How much do you know about what happened during those two months in 2003? Not enough. Let me start with the ghosts.
February 28th
I didn’t believe in ghosts. Even though they shadowed my family.
I clambered out of my cheap, springy bed, covered in a greasy sweat. The air in Villa Nueva carried water like a sponge. But this was different; it felt wrong. My lower back throbbed because it always did after a night’s rest.
At the edge of my consciousness, as if something were lurking in my peripheral vision, I remembered a man tugging at my sheets. The moist blue duvet lay crumpled on the floor beside my bed. He had a round, tanned and stubbled face. Pudgy fingers clawed at my sheets. He wanted me to wake up. Wake up and what? Hurry? Hurry where and why?
Then, the fog lifted from my mind. I realised why I felt rancid and why my stomach was roiling. As we’d tussled, me half-asleep, assuming I was caught in a nightmare; him with desperate ferocity, I saw a chunk of his head was missing. Gore was pouring out of his cracked and jagged skull, which looked like a half-eaten boiled egg.
I stood, one hand pressed to my aching back. He wasn’t here now. Why? Because he was never here. You see why I can’t repeat this version of my story to my peers or the authorities. I’d sound like a madman.
March 2nd
I had one of my proudest moments in Villa Nueva. A middle-aged lady asked me for directions. Me, a lad from Kent. I finally belonged. Over six months, my skin had darkened to a rich, polished bronze. I had no clue where the Fifth Street Scotiabank was, and I apologised in passable Spanish: “Lo siento.”
It was only a two-and-a-half-hour bus journey to Juayabo. I’d been summoned to the ancient, derelict city because they’d discovered inscriptions. I wasn’t an expert; no postgraduate is, but I was reading ancient history at Columbia University, and the team was a member down. I jumped at the opportunity.
The fate of Juayabo’s inhabitants was an enigma. They were one of those many Mesoamerican societies that had built awe-inspiring cities that had stood for nearly a millennium. But a hundred years before the coming of Columbus, Juayabo was empty. The jungle had already reclaimed its previous domain by the arrival of the Spanish. Creepers swam along the stone streets.
Even though I was buzzing with the excitement of leaving the library behind and seeing something groundbreaking, the rumble of the coach’s engine and the cool breeze of the air conditioning had my head falling into my chest within the hour. I fought it three times before my notepad slipped from my hands onto my lap.
As I stretched, I bumped into somebody’s bony shoulder. “I’m sorry — lo siento.” A woman with lank hair was curled up, facing away from me in the next chair. She hadn’t been there before, and the bus hadn’t yet made its one-stop at the rickety gas station with a tourist trap shop attached.
Her pale hand reached out and caressed the back of my own. I yanked it away, abhorred at the invasion and its icy temperature.
“Lo siento,” she whispered with an accent I couldn’t place. The words were muted and muffled, as if her nose were full of snot.
I wanted to say de nada, but I didn’t mean it. She needed to move away! I retreated as close to the window as physics and decency would allow.
After an eternity, I asked in Spanish, then English, “Where are you going?” just to fill the space between and ease the awkwardness.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her voice sounded as fragile as a butterfly wing. “You?”
“Turrialba and then from there Juayab-”
Before I could finish the word, she spun to face me and grabbed my shoulder. “I don’t want to go there,” she spluttered. White froth gathered around her mouth. It drenched my face. I gagged not just at the spittle but at her grey, sallow skin, black bags under her cloudy green eyes and the whiff of mould. “Don’t take me there.”
I pushed her hand off my shoulder. “I’m not taking you anywhere!” I shrieked, but she was gone.
A man in a suit gave me long, unapproving glances, and some backpackers laughed. I stared through the window at the rainforest for the rest of the journey and wondered why I was unravelling.
March 3rd
It was a two-hour walk to the dig site or an eighty Quetzal cab ride, but I elected to centre myself. The team, including Austin, was coming to Turrialba for the weekend to pick up provisions and hit the bars.
Booze rarely passes my lips, and I avoid drugs. Why was I seeing things? Because I’m like my grandmother and mother. But they didn’t see... unsettling things. Their stories were comforting or a bit of a joke.
In the sixties, back in the UK, scientific research into the paranormal wasn’t a fringe pursuit. Great minds and institutions dedicated over a decade to see if humanity could predict the future.
Spoiler alert: they couldn’t. Except for three people, but this isn’t about them. You won’t be sending your favourite child to the Bristol Extra-Sensory Perception Academy any time soon. To fill an academy, you need more than three people per generation who can predict the future slightly better than a random test subject.
However, one study that emerged from this era burrowed its way into my memory. It found that people who live in remote areas are more likely to see or feel God and ghosts. Or at least attribute the peaks and troughs of their lives to the supernatural. Premonitions and forebodings become a part of their lives.
One islander, Grace, moved to Liverpool for twenty years and didn’t have a single strange occurrence. Then, the week she moved back to the Isle of Man, Grace saw her dead grandfather on a nearby hill, pointing back at the house, warning her of an incoming storm. She put her car keys down on the mantelpiece and decided not to go out that night. While she slept, a vicious storm felled twenty trees, killing two drivers. He’d saved her life.
I often thought of Grace as I walked through the rainforest alone.
The authors of that paper deduced that when people roam away from civilisation, belief in the paranormal becomes a comfort blanket, protecting their psyche from the harsh chaos of nature. But what if they had misconstrued the data?
On the night of Thursday, the 2nd, I tested my hypothesis by sleeping in the hostel dorm instead of getting my own room.
The ghosts didn’t visit.
So, I ask you, does the moon demand attention? If there is only one soul for miles, does she need them to stare at her greatness? Ix Chel, Vishnu, Thor, Marduk and countless others walked among their disciples. Then, the gods withdrew as populations grew and cities sprawled out, gobbling up green belts and smaller villages. Were the temple offerings enough to appease her and all the others? Or are they shy?
Or maybe they like to toy with us when we’re alone?
March 4th
Few people warm to me, just as I don’t warm to many people. I guess I don’t ooze huggable vibes. From the moment we met, I didn’t like Austin, but we were professionally amicable. My colleagues convinced the authorities of that.
Ryan, all bones and no muscles, more glasses than face, had a kind, cheeky smile. The sort of smile that said, “I know this is awkward, but we have to dance at the disco.”
Georgia amused me. She sounded like she’d escaped a Norfolk farm and was cosplaying as a researcher. Her ruddy cheeks didn’t help my fabrication of her past.
Peter was four seconds away from being handsome until he dispelled that mirage by speaking. He had an incessant habit of probing you for information solely to display his extraordinary intellect by adding greater depth to anything you mentioned. Eventually, I discovered he had no interest in cricket — neither did I — so that became my first port of call when he was near. I could bat him aside with that topic.
Then there was Austin. He didn’t even turn to greet me or nod to be introduced. Of course, that didn’t make me want to kill him. Killing him wasn’t a realistic option until March 25th. Funny how time can make wounds fester?
He was too busy staring at everyone else at the bar. He nodded without turning to face me when Ryan attempted to introduce us.
“Sorry about him,” Ryan winced as he pointed to Austin. “He’s been all sixes and sevens since Annie... tapped out.”
I’d read about Annie in the news. They’d found her dead in the jungle near Turrialba. The police hadn’t given a cause of death, and they weren’t looking for anyone connected. She’d committed suicide.
We were propping up the bar, sipping Imperial. Ryan filled his glass with ice, but I refrained, still finding the mix of ice and lager perturbing. “That’s completely understandable,” I lied. Pain doesn’t mean you can toss politeness out the window.
“So,” Ryan grimaced, “moving on. How’s your Mayan?”
“You found Mayan hieroglyphs?” I was surprised; Juayabo was not known to be a Mayan city.
“We found a ceremonial pot near Temple Mound Two. It instructs how to perform a dedication. It has some known Mayan phonetic signs, so it could be a new dialect.”
“Makes sense,” I said after a long nod. “The Maya would have had some influence in the region. Even if they did not control it. Across Guatemala, they spoke Yucatec. Is it definitely a Turrialban pot?” Just because the pot was found in Juayabo didn’t mean it was crafted there.
“In origin? We don’t know yet. We sent the samples to the lab only last week.”
The bar was on stilts over a placid river. There was a splash and giggling as a couple fully dressed jumped into the water. A topless, stringy teen with shoulder-length jet-black hair joined them. He cannonballed into the clear water. Without speaking, we moved away from the playful splashing and sat on some sofas near Peter and Georgia.
“What sort of dedication does it depict?” I asked.
“How to cave somebody’s head in with a cudgel. In the appropriate way, of course.”
“Appropriate way?” I scoffed.
“There’s a deity watching over the ritual. Which suggests there is a correct form of skull-cracking.”
Copyright © 2026 by Dustin Smith
