La Noche de la Chankla: Dientes del Fuego
Chapter 21
Deep within the gloom under the Silver Moon Church, within the caverns of Niflheim that lay below, transported there from another realm, seeking Ragnarok, seeking the end of times, Garmr sniffed the sacrifice. The young woman, blindfolded and stripped, exposed to the chill of death, cringed in horror as she heard the slavering minion, usurped from Hel by Surtr, draw closer. Congregants, who had brought the gift, watched with anticipation and chanted, waiting for her to be crushed in the jaws of the horrid canid, waiting for the shriek of her own end, the snapping of bones.
But the Hound of Niflheim, having inspected the offering, then, without warning, lurched and sprang, attacking the first torch-bearing congregant within reach, devouring him in a spray of blood and spilling of entrails. Garmr did not want an unclad virgin. He wanted Norse warriors, Vikings, as did his master, as in the days of yore, but there were none there to find, only the two legs, the congregants, lent the power of shape-shifting by their adopted father. So he took the male congregants, one by one, now shrieking their own ends, on knee praying to be spared. None were.
Shivering, the woman managed to free herself from her loose bonds and remove the blindfold. She did not look at the carnage around her but crawled away from the gruesome spectacle, deeper within the caves, towards a warm, red-orange glow in the distance, hoping it was the way out, the way to the desert sky. The nightmare behind her continuing to assault her ears, trembling with fear that the beast would reconsider and hunt her down.
Around a bend, she hoped for an egress, but, to her increasing dread, she did not find one. Instead, she found a scene that made her almost wish for the jaws of the monster to her rear. The heat of the fire in the cavern hit her as if she were crawling into an earthen kiln, and she was forced to draw back into the proceeding cave, into the chill, where, for some reason unbeknownst to her, the heat did not travel, as if there were an invisible curtain holding it back. Before her, low in the gaping hole, like an amphitheater for Death himself, were hundreds of people, like her unclad, but not like her, bearing the deformed visages of what looked like dogs - snouted, furred, red-eyed, and fanged, claws extending from their fingers, covered in scrawled symbols written in what had to be blood. They were dancing around a massive bonfire that licked the roof of the cavern, dancing with no music, no music she could hear, just screaming and moaning in an orgiastic circle, clawing and nipping at each other, some taking each other in carnal wantonness, some carrying axes and horn-shaped vessels covered in runes.
As she stared, fixated upon the demonic spectacle, the wall of the cave behind the revelers seemed to dance as well, moving with their projected shadows . But, as her eyes came into focus, she realized that it was not just the shadows of the devilish pack, and she fell into shock, a level of fear no human could long bear. She only saw it for a moment, as it moved from her sight into the deep shadows, the figure of a man, but a man whose form reached almost to the stalactites that framed the recess in which he stood, like a giant in the teeth of a yawning mouth.
Struggling to come to terms with the spectacle before her, a sudden feeling of heat fell upon her neck, as if the fire had found a way through the curtain, but, instead of warming her from the chill, it froze her. The breath of Garmr cloaked her from behind, and blood spotted her shoulder. As the understanding that her time was over dawned, she closed her eyes.
* * *
Javier’s eyes shot open. He had been there, in the cavern, in a dream, in the young woman’s mind, seeing through her eyes, viewing the savage dance of the Hounds of Garmr and having seen the menacing giant, like an animated mural in the recess. But the boy had not been present there in body. Surtr had not seen him. Trembling himself, trembling like Hueso beside him, like the web of a spider having caught its prey, and lost in pity for the trembling woman who had lent him her eyes, he reached for the light on his nightstand.
Hueso growled at the night, but Javi hushed him. Before him, at the edge of the bright aura from the lamp, stood a figure, ghastly pale and bearing torn flesh. It looked at him with black eyes, peering from an expressionless countenance. To his own surprise, the boy did not want to cry out. Instead, he felt a calmness enter him, and he knew that the ghostly form had come to him to tell him secrets, which he awaited. The name “Sergio Harkness” drifted into his mind, from where he did not know.
In a whisper that would cause the heart of one surprised to stop, the spirit spoke, “A word … "
“What word?” Javier asked, a chill, like that of the cave, clutching at his skin, his breath coming from his open mouth as steam, as the call of a train echoed through the night outside.
“A word …” the spirit said again, the sound not seeming to emanate from it, but from the whole house. “A word to close the portal. A word to raise fear in the giant. A word to stop the end.”
“Can we kill him?” Javier shot out.
“No … " the spirit answered, dashing the boy’s hopes. “A word to stop him.”
“What word!?” Javi snapped. The chill and the frustration of the cryptic whispering had gotten to him, and, being young, he had let his emotion rule, the need for a definitive answer having welled up inside him. But the spirit was gone.
Hueso crawled upon Javi’s chest, wagging his tail and shivering. Covering his dog with his blanket, but leaving the face of the canine exposed, thereby creating the look of a little beige monk, a kind face, not distorted like a Hound’s, Javi checked his clock - 2:34 am. He wanted to go to Luna, to tell her what he’d seen, but he knew that she needed her rest. He knew that she bore the words, and, soon, she would need her energy to wield them. He wished that it had been Spider who had brought him the message, and then his thoughts turned to the young woman, who had succumbed to the jaws of the beast that scared him. He wished he didn’t have the power to see, that he had not taken the woman’s eyes without her permission. But he had seen the enemy, and it was, he decided, his job to relay the enigmatic whispers to his abuelita, to the bruja.
Against his wishes, sleep came for him again, and he drifted off wishing he had been able to save the woman from death, not the thoughts with which a 10 year old should have be burdened but his nonetheless.
* * *
“Javier. Time to get up!” Luna called from the hallway.
The bright sunlight streamed under the shade of his window, and the early morning’s journey and visit came to the forefront of his mind.
Luna was cooking desayuno, as she usually did, seemingly undisturbed by the mounting dangers surrounding them, or, at least, not allowing that impression to be given, and planning to continue Javi’s training that morning. The smell of huevos y tocino filled the little white house. As she scrambled the eggs, adding pepper and hot sauce, Javi greeted her with a question fro which she was unprepared.
“Abuela. Who is Sergio Harkness?”
She stopped moving the eggs around in the pan, letting them become too brown, and stood still for a moment, wondering what she should reveal to her nieto. “He is the man who was killed by the dogs in the desert, mijo. He belonged to the Silver Moon,” she answered, as if it were a fact that did not matter, and began to divide the comida onto plates.
“Abuela,” Javier continued, " I went to the caves underneath the church … and I saw them.”
A shiver climbed up Luna’s spine and, quickly laying a plate for Javi on the hand-carved table, she got onto her knees and grabbed his shoulders. “Mijo, you cannot go there. The evil will follow you back to us. You must not go there!”
“They did not see me. I was in someone else’s mind, a woman. They killed her. The monster. They’re coming for us, Abuela, hundreds of them … and the monsters.”
Luna grabbed her nieto tightly and held him to her as tightly as she could. “No, mijo. They are not coming for us. We are coming for them. All we need is … "
“A word?” Javi interrupted.
“Yes, mijo, a word… words of power. We must find it. Pero, how did you know?”
“The spirit told me.”
Disturbed by her grandson’s revelations, Luna decided to continue with her plans for the day, to train him. She gave Hueso a small plate of eggs and bacon, and then she sat with Javier at the table, filled with urgency and projecting the greatest air of confidence she could. But she was not confident. The power was unpredictable and she had yet to comprehend how to call it at will. They needed to know that the words would come when needed. Otherwise a confrontation with the enemy in the bowels of the Silver Moon was a mission of death. But she did not know if Javi were right. She did not know if they, the Hounds and their masters, interlopers into their world, would come first.
The bruja and her grandson ate their breakfast in silence.
