CHAPTER SIX: DREAMTIME - CONTINUED

I left the settlement in the chilly pre-dawn morning, heading blindly out into the mist shrouded highland jungle. I thought that a brisk hike would help me gain my composure and face the fact of my inevitable expulsion from the expedition.
I hadn’t gone far when a distinct rustle in the bush stopped me dead in my tracks. “Jaguar,” I thought as my heart skipped a beat.

Having come to the edge of a stream, I could have inadvertently come upon its watering hole. I froze, scanning the stream’s lush green embankment. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a fleeting dim glow through a thick tree stand. Squinting up my eyes, I tried to see what was lurking there.

Another rustle and the distant growl of a jaguar caused me to run into a waist-deep grass meadow behind me. The mist filled emptiness about me bore an enchanting landscape of a dark-faced pensive jungle. Suddenly, several glowing spheres of various sizes appeared, floating in mid-air. I stood transfixed with immobility. The thick mist faded as the iridescent geometrical orbs sharpen in form. There was a momentary blinding flash. When I could see again, a short old man stood before me in statuesque repose.

The grass blades dew glistened as the sunlight broke through the fog, a beam of its rays surrounding his appearance. I curiously eyed him, composed of pulsating luminous ethereal spheres that held his holographic existence. A hush had fallen about the whole jungle as if it was held in suspense of uncertainty.

The light about him was most intense at a yard’s length from his upper body. He glanced about the grass meadow filled with what seemed like billions of energy fields in the form of shimmering filaments. The luminous spheres expanded, engulfing me, as he pointed in a deliberate direction for me to follow him. I felt a rush of electrical current through my body. The dense fog that had retreated toward the edges of the jungle about us was surrounding us. The luminosity of the sphere engulfed him that contained an electromagnetic force I couldn’t resist.

At first, I trembled with every step I took, trying to keep up as he moved stealthy through what had become a dense fog. Such an impossible phenomenon was thrust upon me so unexpectedly. I was caught in terror of what had possessed me. The shape of impending danger was all about me as I moved into a territory I was unfamiliar with. This mysterious man’s presence was overpowering any of my fears.

Every distinct odor of the jungle filled my nostrils. My eyesight became crystal clear taking in a full 180-degree peripheral range. Each sound I heard about me, resonated as a voice speaking to me. My body felt electrified with sensory awareness. I wanted to get a sense of my location, but he showed no concern to stop. All I could tell was that we were climbing up a steep craggy mountainside in a thick vapor exhaled by the forest itself.

I was acutely aware of an earth breathing beneath my feet. With each step, I realized my movements were effortless. No longer was my heart pounding from exhaustion. No longer did I feel the fatigue in my muscles or gasping out-of-breath. His supernatural spell gave my body the ability to nimbly race. But the aboriginal sorcerer eluded me with the quickness of a cat, slowing just enough for me to catch up. It became a cat and mouse game.

As soon as I got with a few feet of him, he would shape shift in a bright blur spinning out of sight and reappearing a few hundred yards in front of me. I jumped after him. The sensation was incredible when I moved. Electrifying impulses surged through every muscle fiber, giving me the strength and agility beyond comprehension. On and on we went like this until we arrived at the entrance of a cave. It was then he stopped and turned to face me.

Finally, I got my first close look at him. He stood no higher than my breast. His piteous sight repulsed me. My blood ran cold as I realized his flesh was a mottled melanin and the irises of his eyes were clouded blind. A swarthy, withered face that hid behind dangling strands of long bleached matted hair enhanced his demur appearance. He appeared like a pathetic beast, an unlawful soul of the earth rather than the admirable sage I had witnessed in the grass meadow. He stood in a disguising pose, his murky eyes starring at me.

The old barefoot aborigine was perched on top of a heap of bones, fragments of which were strewed all about the darken cave’s entrance. Along one wall of the rock entrance was a row of human skulls. Their cranial foreheads were more flattened than modern skulls. Broken shards of clay incense burners were mixed about the debris making this an obvious ceremonial chamber. I was convinced I had been lead to the edge of my own destiny, whose passions appeared pitiless in the face of this abnormal entity standing before me.

Was I lost in the suggestiveness of my own dream, the nightmare of my own soul to be sacrificed by a wild savage tribe lost in the Maya Forest? I was not prepared for what came next. Out of the cave tramped a wretched looking mangy dog. It roamed around me uninhibited, its bony frame protruded through its skin, sniffing me as if approving my existence.

Believe me or not, I stood there in shock, as it completed its task, growling momentarily before giving an approving “yelp” and trotted off. You might think me mad at this point, but by heavens, I am telling you the ordeal that followed lead me to the inconceivable mysticism that Hornsby knew about.

The mangled bony white-flesh hand of the blind aborigine grasped my arm. His grip pulled on me. As I said before, my sensory awareness was acute. I felt I was moving outside of my body as we entered the limestone cavern, lit by the flicking flame of a small terracotta pot he mysteriously acquired in his hand.