In the valley of Ek Balam

first person depiction, based off of true events.

We had been driving for several hours down the winding and twisting back roads in Sonora that no one now took because of the new ultra sleek highway that went around the jungle instead of cutting through it. Our destination; the beach, my wife and I at the time hadn’t been able to take any time off for several years, but we decided that we needed a small family vacation, so we packed the kids up into the truck and decided to head for the beach town of san carlos, we stopped in fronteras on the way, that place of many ancient and dead things that was founded before the first pilgrim stepped foot in america. My father and mother in law decided that they were going to head to the beach with us, and as My father in law was terrified of driving on the massive highway. He was an old school type of person who hated modern conveniences and had convinced himself that taking the back roads that he knew well, but were winding, twisting and often blocked by overgrown foliage was a better idea, we were passing through the little towns that dotted the long and twisting two lane road, passing through was terrifying in its own way as most of the time the local sicarios would follow you out of town to make sure you weren’t any kind of federales, we stopped in magdalena for food and were greeted by short dark eyed and dark haired locals that looked like they were straight out of the mayan empire. They didn’t want us there, they simply wanted our money. I was the only white man in the entire town, and the locals gave me stares aplenty so that I knew that was the case. Many of their faces said they wanted to rob or kill me, the only thing that kept me safe was the fact that I spoke spanish and I was with my wife and kids. We left the town around midnight, we decided not to stop again for fear of getting held up or robbed. So on we drove through the night. The darkness filled the air in a way I had never seen, there were no lights but the headlights of my father in laws car up ahead and our headlights, and the darkness swallowed them, my wife switched off driving with me, and even with the brights on there was a dark heavy impenetrable blanket of wet air that seemed to weigh the light down pulling it closer to the car and enveloping it. We were driving on a road that overlooked a hundred foot cliff face, there was no guardrail and one false move or slip was a steep drop straight into the jungle, we came to a small bridge that led to a blacked out town with no name, I don’t know if it was because we were driving at midnight, but the town seemed darker than the winding jungle road. We had to slow down as we traveled through the little pueblito as the roads weren’t paved and the houses were so close together the neighbors were sharing breathing room, many dark faces peered through windowless port holes at the strangers passing by in the night, it was totally silent, except for us. I rolled the windows down to catch some fresh air and soon we were back on the twisting road, I was holding my stomach in as the road became narrower and narrower, we came to a steep forty five degree incline in the road where the pavement gave way to dirt, and we climbed it going no more the ten miles an hour out of fear of flipping the truck, I have never held on for dear life harder than at that moment. But little did I know that things were about to get worse. In the dark green sea of the jungle, ancient and thriving with life we saw movement to the left of the car. “You know there are jaguars out here right?” my wife said. “No there aren't,” I replied sarcastically.  Then I saw it, and every muscle in my stomach and lower abdomen tightened to the point where I felt like I was going to s**t myself. It was a shadow made manifest of flesh and bone, blacker than night and moving faster than our truck, it seemed to melt across the shadows of the road and into the darkness on the other side. It seemed to disappear in the green darkness of the jungle, but in that instant I saw a creature ancient and hungry, teeth bared for a grim task, evolution had given it precedence and power over the creatures it prayed upon and this thing seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it. I felt a cold sweat break out over my back and forehead as the quesadilla I had eaten earlier came out of my stomach and lodged in my throat, it was a type of terror I had never felt before, but it was something ancient, a memory of being hunted and hunting. My palms began to sweat and I raised all of the windows because that creature, whatever it was, was moving faster than my eyes could see, and in my mind's eye I saw a short vision of it launching itself into my window and biting my neck, filling its insatiable hunger for blood. We drove for several more minutes before another horror appeared, a deer, covered in blood and with a panicked look on its face, jumped in front of our truck, it stood in the headlights braying. It looked as though it was pleading for mercy. But nature in its infinite indifference has none, my wife honked the horn and it plodded out of the way, still to this day the image of its eyes in the light,glassy and crazed, and far too human like haunts me in my sleep. We saw the shadow in the brush, seemingly keeping speed with our truck. “Can you go faster?” I asked. “Not unless you want to go over that edge” she replied, and I knew that would be worse than plodding through the darkness on this hellishly winding road. Once again the darkness enveloped us, pulling the headlights into nothingness as though it had an intelligence of its own. Once again we saw the deer, running through the brush, the shadow leaping from darkness to darkness, building anticipation for this ancient ritual of death that has been occurring since before the arrival of man, then the deer stopped running just a short distance ahead of our car, and I swear it looked me dead in the eye, a look of horror if i’ve ever seen one filling its glassy gaze, as the jaguar leapt onto its back sinking its teeth deep into the creatures throat and dragging it deep into the brush. I had seen something I felt that I wasn’t supposed to see, the dance of death private and ubiquitous, the jaguar fulfilling its need and the deer fulfilling its role in the food chain, but it seemed much more than that to me. I couldn’t get it out of my head for the entire weekend, the whole sequence had seemed unreal to me, the jaguar haunting my dreams, and the dead glassy human look of the deer coming to me every time I closed my eyes. It wasn’t simply that the jaguar was hunting the deer for food, it was literally like a big cat, toying with its food, chasing it down, biting it, then letting it go, and repeating this sequence until the deer got tired and gave up, ending the chase. The jaguar's eyes filled to the brim with some kind of inhuman hatred that I could never, and would never understand. I tried to let it go, but every time I slept while we were in San Carlos I couldn’t help but see the face of that monster, glistening with blood, four inch fangs white as ivory sinking into the neck of the deer with no remorse. I couldn’t wait to drink. To clear my head of this. I swam deep into the ocean in the hopes that I could cleanse myself of that unholy sight I had seen. But still I couldn't rid myself of the image of that horrible inhuman visage. “Ek balam,  the mayan god of the dead,runs Xibalba,” the bartender said. I was drinking with my wife at a little hole in the wall eating mariscos and drinking tequila and I told him my story, and apparently I looked worse than I thought because he handed me the whole bottle of tequila. “He looks like a black jaguar, but he sometimes comes as a man to collect the souls of the dead, these days no one believes in him so he prowls the sonoran jungle hunting for prey to eat” the bartender said, and threw his head back and chuckled to himself. The only thing that was missing was a “Pinche gringo” but I couldn’t tell from his tone of voice whether he was serious or not.  I sat with a mouth full of ceviche thinking, contemplating, but not too hard because as I had learned at this point in my life everything in Mexico relates back to the supernatural somehow. 

We rented a small apartment for six days that was facing an open field that seemed to lead directly into the jungle. The walls were made of concrete but the fact that we were so exposed after what I had seen made me feel extremely uneasy. Every night I slept I was awoken by the sound of growling, and in my dreams I was being chased by the jaguar, every night, the dream evolved becoming more and more detailed as we stayed longer. The first night I saw the jaguar, and it saw me, and that was it. I was standing in a small clearing surrounded by jungle and I woke up in a cold sweat. “I saw the jaguar in my dream last night” I casually said to my wife. “Is this stupid cat all were going to talk about on this trip?” she replied. I decided that for her sake if I had more dreams I would keep it to myself. But the next night it got worse, I was in the jungle, running, and I could feel the darkness of the jungle enveloping me, and the heat of the jaguars breath at my neck, no matter how hard I ran it was above me, in the canopy of the trees, I couldn’t escape it. The taste of fear and copper filled my mouth, and I woke up screaming, the room was pitch black and I raced to the bathroom, stubbing my toe on the steel bed frame. I shut the door, and rinsed my mouth out. My heart was racing and I had bitten through my tongue. I didn’t want to wake my wife up just to freak her out, so I stepped outside and grabbed a beer from the cooler to try and wind down. I put the tailgate of the truck down and sat, looking up at the stars calmed me for a moment, until I felt the hair on my neck stand up. There was something watching me, I feared that if I turned around I would see a massive black demon with glowing green eyes ready to pounce like in my dream, I turned around and it was just one of the many dogs that prowl the night in mexico looking for food, in a way their lives are more blessed than a dog with an owner in the united states, they’re truly free, and nobody messes with them because it's considered bad luck, I poured a little bit of beer on the cement driveway and the dog came and lapped it up “that's a good boy” I said in a hushed tone, I don’t know why I felt like being quiet the town around me practically bounced with the sound of reggaeton music, and banda being blared through massive speakers as it was summertime in San Carlos and most of the people here at the moment were tourists. “What’re you doing out here?” My wife asked, she walked to the tailgate and looked at me angry and groggy eyed. “I couldn’t sleep, that damn jaguar is still haunting my dreams, want a beer?” I said, handing her a bottle of Indio, a type of beer you can only get in Mexico that quickly became my favorite. It's dark and heady like Guinness but not as thick so you can still drink plenty of it. “You’ve got to let that go,” she said, taking a swig from the beer bottle. “I know I’m trying,” I said. But it didn’t matter how hard I tried to drink it, or smoke it away, the eyes of the predator haunted me, and seemed to be following me in my dreams, chasing me like I was prey, sometimes even into my waking hours. “I’m going back to bed, are you coming?” My wife asked. “In a minute” I said, chugging my beer and reaching for another. I finished my second beer and set about rolling a joint, I smoked and drank another beer and joined my wife. In my second dream of the night I didn’t see the jaguar, but I could feel its presence, I was running barefoot through an open patch of desert, a break in the jungle, I looked down and saw that I wasn’t wearing shoes, I felt it creeping in the distance but I couldn’t see anything, I lifted something in my right hand, I turned to look at it in the dream and I was hold a crude spear with an obsidian tip, and I noticed my skin was darker than usual as well. I turned and ran again, but it was like I was running in slow motion. I woke up and our room was extremely hot, and the floor was covered in water. I was gripping the side of the bed like the spear in my dream trying to lift it. “Our air conditioner broke last night” My wife said. She started placing towels all around the floor. “I can’t believe this s**t” My wife said, “Yeah it's unbelievable” I said in a dazed tone, I was still stuck in the jungle, I couldn’t wake up properly. “Here drink this” my wife said, handing me a michelada, at this point I just chugged it without thinking, hoping it would break me out of the surreality of what was happening.  “We gotta call the owner,” my wife said. “Ok, ok let me wake up first” I said. I walked outside, again hoping to clear my head in the sun, thinking maybe the heat would break the spell of the dream. The dog I had given beer the night before was sprawled out in front of our door, I went to nudge him out of the way, and I felt the weight of death in its body, its body was placed neatly on our doorstep, I rolled the poor creature over, and it had two bite marks about the circumference of my thumb on its neck, and its blood seemed to be drained as there was almost none on the concrete porch. I looked at it in disbelief, I felt like the dream had somehow carried over into the real world. “ooh, who would do such a thing? Poor dog” My wife walked out after me and saw the dog's body. “I don’t know” I could barely speak, I wanted to show her the bite marks, but I didn’t want to terrify her and ruin our vacation, I stood looking at the dog’s corpse rubbing my chin as though I would come to some ultimate conclusion. Nothing came to me except for one thing, I knew what I thought had done it, but I feared that telling my wife would send her into a rage as she was getting tired of hearing about that goddamn jaguar, my mind reeled as thoughts of this Jaguar god following us all the way to San Carlos just because I had seen its ancient and dark ritual, a thing no human was supposed to see danced in circles in my mind until I was dizzy from it.  “Can you get rid of that please before the kids wake up and see it?” my wife asked. “Sure” I said “Are you okay?” she asked. “Uhh, what do you think killed the dog?” I finally managed to ask, “I don’t know, there’s lots of coyotes around here” I Picked the dog up and walked it around the building to the trash, I examined its wounds, I don’t why, but I couldn’t stop myself, I stuck my thumb into one of the punctures to see how deep it went, and i couldn’t feel the bottom. “This wasn’t a coyote” I said to myself as I lowered the dog as respectfully as I could into the trash, not that there is much dignity in being buried in a landfill, but I supposed it’s better than rotting in the sun being eaten by other dogs. I walked back around and my wife was waiting by the door. “What took you so long?” she asked. “I was saying goodbye to my drinking buddy” I said in as jovial a tone as I could muster. But she could see that the playfulness and joy had drained from my face. “Look I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I feel like you’re becoming obsessed with something that you shouldn’t be, just let it go please, for me” she said. “Ok my love, I will” I said, and kissed her to reassure her that I would forget it. But like a tumor in the back of my brain I could feel the predator's eyes watching me as though I was prey, it was hunting me somehow, I was its next victim. I looked into the eyes of the jungle and it had stared back at me, it wanted me, I couldn’t stop myself. I looked at the patch of jungle that was off to the right of the apartment we were renting. “How deep do you think that goes?” I asked my wife, pointing to the dense foliage. “I don’t know, can we just leave it alone and go to the beach? I want to swim” I didn’t say anything. I just stood transfixed, staring at the jungle, I couldn’t break my eyes away, I felt something in that dark green brush watching me, I didn’t see anything, but somehow I could feel it. “I know it's in there” I said under my breath, in my head I could hear a buzzing sound like a crescendo of killer bees that have found a target. It blanketed my conscious thoughts and made me feel like I was in a dream again. “What was that?” my wife asked. “Nothing, let's go to the beach,” I said, still gazing wide eyed and unblinking at that patch of jungle. We got the kids and the cooler and jumped in the truck. The first beach we hit playa delfin was packed with other tourists and was unswimmable, so we packed up and left, the second beach we went too playa del mar, was slightly less packed and there were several palapas still available to set up under and get some shade, so we unpacked and my wife and I set about taking turns swimming past the breakthrough and body surfing back, both of us love the ocean and it was a great respite from the constant thoughts I was having about death and ancient jaguar gods. But night fell and as I swam closer to the shore the manta rays came out to feast on the small shellfish in the shallows, massive, and fairly calm the manta rays tried to nibble at my feet with their toothless mandibles, so we decided it was time to leave, my wife and I packed the kids up in the truck, headed to a restaurant. We drank and ate, I felt cleansed  for the moment, the salt water had dried leaving rivulets of white dry salt in my hair and on my shorts, we laughed and I finally felt like I had left the creature from the jungle behind and put it out of my psyche. That was, until I saw the painting on the wall behind us, the motif was a jungle, and in the trees was a black spotted leopard with a large elk or deer in its teeth. Its eyes were bright green, just like the one that had been hunting me in my dreams. The unreality of what was happening struck me and everything seemed to turn sideways, I couldn’t escape it, my wife rolled her eyes at the fact that this crudely drawn portrait brought my spirits down immediately. I ate my food in silence sinking more and more into a feeling of dread, I was collapsing in on myself, I felt like the deer I had seen, It was hunted until it couldn’t run anymore, and then it let the jaguar take it. “Are you okay?” My wife asked. I didn’t notice but I was staring fixedly ahead into nothingness, all I could see was the Jaguars eyes in my mind, The hunger in its fixed gaze pulling me in and hypnotizing me just like the deer I had seen on the road days earlier. We left the rest, and I was completely silent, I didn’t know what to say, or if I should say anything I felt reduced to a baser mental state, to a place in my mind where a darkness existed that I had never seen before, every shadow in the night crept out at me, and every gust of wind that shook a tree was another jaguar ready to pounce, I was going mad. That night I ate the last two grams of mushrooms we had brought with us before I fell asleep, I don’t know what compelled me to do it. I usually only like partaking in such things during waking hours so I can enjoy them. I fell into a dark sleep and found myself back in the jungle, deep inside of its warm embrace, I felt myself entranced by its colors and vivacious movements, it swooned and called to me, I had never before or never since felt an environment in my dreams that was as real, some of the environments in my waking life still to this day don’t feel that vivid or tangible, the mud squished between the toes of my bare feet, the air was hot and dense and humid and smelled of rotting vegetation, but for some reason this time I wasn’t afraid anymore I knew what I had to do, I gripped my spear in my right hand and walked a short distance to a watering hole and looked at my reflection, my face was totally different, my hair was black as were my eyes, and my skin was a dark mahogany, I looked down and saw that my body was naked save for a small loincloth, I drank of the water and felt the cool refreshing burst of life in me. I felt the jaguar stare into the top of my head, he was above me, but I didn’t run this time, I knelt down on one knee and bowed my head to the ground, in a false sign of fealty, the creature took the opportunity to pounce when I wasn’t looking. I grabbed my spear as it was midair and thrust upward into its belly, it couldn’t turn so it impaled itself. I saw the hatred and fear that it had instilled in its prey days earlier as the light went out in its eyes, the creature struggled reaching out wildly with its claws. It slashed my shoulder deeply,  I pulled my spear out and stuck it into the creature's heart, making a wide gash. The light in its eyes went out completely, I plunged my hand into its chest and pulled out its still beating heart. I looked at what I had done, never in my waking life or in my dreams had I ever felt so powerful and alive, and I knew what it was to hunt, and be hunted, I took a bite of its heart, feeling the warm blood filling my mouth the copper taste of it as it spilled over my chin, it was something dark, and primal, and ancient, and I had eaten, and partaken of it. I dropped the heart and skinned the jaguar, I felt myself glowing with an ancient power. And then I woke up; the day was cool, and clouds were setting low in the sky for rain. I walked out onto the patio and looked out at the clouds, rain was coming, the heat had broken. I looked over at the patch of jungle outside of our apartment and the trees and bushes swayed in the wind violently, but there were no more shadows, whatever it was, it was gone. My wife walked out after me; “Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m fine” I said, the feeling of being hunted was gone, and there was no more sense of being prey, now I was the predator. Later that night before we left, I can’t explain it, but I vomited up some blood, and chunks of what looked like raw meat, my wife said it was from my tongue still bleeding and the chunks were probably bad crab meat, whether that is true or not I'll never know. We left the beach, but this time we took the new highway. 

As we drove down the road, reaching speeds of 100 MPH and over I felt the ferocious animalistic feeling empty out of me and my physical body felt drained as though I had experienced the dreams with not just my mind, I’m sure someone more versed in metaphysics and philosophy would be able to explain what it is that I experienced, to qualify and quantify it into a small box that would easily fit in with the standard understanding and definition of consciousness, but I don’t seek to do that, all I know is as we got closer and closer to the border, leaving that jungle behind, my mind felt clear in a way I had never felt. I had killed my jaguar, I had slayed Ek Balam, even if it was just in my mind. Later that week when I returned to work, and back to the office, back to the droning sounds of copiers and printers, of idle chit chat about which sports team beat the other, I found it impossible to tune in, people remarked that I looked different, like I had more confidence, another thing that happened was I could no longer fake it, most people go through life with a smile plastered across their face that becomes a mask, and I had become one of them, I had fit myself into that neat little box, with the leased chevy and the mortgaged house, and the fake greetings and idle conversation with people I don’t like about things I don’t care about. All of the world around me seemed faker than the dream, I couldn’t let it go. “I’m quitting my job” I told my wife later that week. “And what are you going to do?” she asked. “I don’t know? write maybe,” I answered. She rolled her eyes, But I had always been able to bring food to the table and pay the bills, so I wasn’t just bullshitting. Sometimes when I dream, I find myself back in the jungle, but I found my place in the hunter prey paradigm, and I see the jaguar for what it is, not as an evil entity, but as a killer out of necessity, it does what it must to survive, as must all men.