prologue of my novel...raw and unedited so that you might see how i usually write without the expertise of those that shape its final look...
A blinding fork of lighting ignited across the midnight skies, a deafening clap of thunder immediately at its wake.
The frail window crashed a few inches where their feet lay.
The boy’s eyes bulged out and shuddered closer to the shivering form of his mother, clutching at the damp threadbare fabric that served as a shared blanket for them. The woman’s hand struggled to pull him closer to share the absent warmth that their closeness could barely create; their combined breath coming out as faint mist from red tinged noses, frigid from the cold. He could barely contain his fear, but still he labored to keep an air of being a man, and not the frail, impoverished barely grown boy that he obviously was.
From outside, the wind blew the rains through the gaps created by the fallen window. The howling storm a cacophony of shrieks and rumblings of thunder immediately after the blinding flashes of lightning. From not far away, another tree crashed from the onslaught of the winds, a scream from a nameless animal on its wake.
The boy shut his eyes closed and wished for everything to be a dream – more like a nightmare.
Outside was a study on darkness. The fields that surrounded the small hut where the mother and son lay huddled, a mass of swaying, soaked crops of rice; their number obviously ruined. Had there been eyes to see the downpour, only multiple shades of black could be seen - pitch, murky and smoky gray. Not that any living creature could have stayed outside for nature’s onslaught.
Another tree crashed from the woods behind the hut.
The boy opened frightened eyes and peered into the darkness. From what little he could see, he imagined shadows playing where only gloominess could be seen, if there was even anything to be glimpsed at. He whimpered and pulled his mother’s hand closer, now forgetting his self projected image of being mature, hugging them and willing himself to find comfort and assurance that he was not alone. He could hear his mother’s ragged breath, like she was struggling to control the fear that was assaulting her, if only to show him her strength that he might again find his own courage within his young heart. But something felt wrong to the boy, there was an unevenness to the heartbeat that was echoing loudly within his mother’s chest.
“Mmmaammaa?”
He whispered, but he could barely make out the words of the reply. He could not make out words above the din of the rainstorm, the woman’s mutterings much too faint to hear. Yet, somehow, he could sense that his mother was writhing in pain.
“Mama?”
He repeated louder and this time he could almost make out the words. It sounded like…
And his eyes flew open and gazed blindly into his mother’s agonized face. Fear gripped his chest and stole his breath as the enormity of what his mother’s words implied.
The baby was coming!
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Something was restless within the confines of the fiery cave.
From one of the corner shadows, a hanging bat fell and hardly was able to flap its veined wings to cling back to where it was sheltered upside down before the tremors that bothered its slumber started once more. Unable to go back to rest, it peered into the red tinged chamber with blind eyes, ears upright and listening to the scraping sounds that relentlessly filled the cavern.
Far down below, the furnace of churning molten rocks flowed in a river of fire.
A dark horned silhouette stopped. The scraping sound of dragging claws stilled.
All became silent except for the faint sound of the bat’s heart which felt like a reverberating boom of thunder. That and the boiling thud of lava.
Suddenly, a demonic laugh pierced the stillness; loud, maniacal and demented. It was pleased. It was very pleased.
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He stumbled on a fallen tree branch.
Oblivious to the sheets of rain that continue to pour down from the heavens, the boy picked himself up from the mud and trudged on running as rainwater soaked every inch of his being. All around him the storm has never shown any sign of abating and it maintained its harsh attack to everything that dared hamper its wild frolic.
The boy did not even notice the slight trickle of blood that mixed with the muck that covered his knees from where he skinned himself from the fall. He never felt the sting that should have assaulted his senses.
He ran.
Passing twists and turns following an almost hidden path among the trees of the woods behind his house, he continued running, afraid to even slow down even when some parts of the trail were overgrown with wild growth and obstacled by fallen debris and dead forest animals.
After some time he made a sharp left and was on a better worn dirt road. Obviously used and kept clean, or, it would have been had it not been for the leaves and fallen pieces of branches – gifts from the storm.
He almost sighed with relief. Further on, he could barely see the flickering light of a lighted candle behind closed windows. Probably, whoever was there had more sense that he and his mother did to have had a candle stay lit amidst the ruthless gust of wind. It was impossible but he never questioned - knowing who lived there.
He could scarcely lift his clenched fist to knock. But the adrenaline that rushed through his veins brought about by fear and the run lent him the energy to feebly lift his hands to the door – it burst open from inside.
“I knew you were coming”, said the voice from the silhouette that framed the open doorway, shielding from him the interior of the hut.
The boy just stood there looking, barely nodding and in a voice, tiny and inaudible from fear-swollen throat whispered –
“Help”
“Please”
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“Push, Mercedes, push!”
The shaman’s voice commanded.
From the shadows in the corner, the boy watched with torment, unable to stop the tears flowing from his glazy eyes; ignorant to the fever that was slowly creeping into his tired shivering body, still wet from the rains. His eyes glued to the blood streaked legs of his mother, writhing in pain and soaked not from the rain but from sweat running in rivulets across her pain filled face.
Mercedes pushed. Pushed and gripped her hands on the crimson stained sheets that surrounded her. She pushed with her hips, with her chest and she pushed with the strained heart therein. She pushed and felt the head of the first baby slide into the waiting arms of the old crone that her son fetched from the heart of the woods.
“You have a daughter.”
But she could hardly hear the healer as the next spasms of childbirth came. There was another baby.
The other woman placed the newborn to too gently on the mat beside her. Faced the mother and continued to help in an even pain filled attempt to free another child from her womb. Mercedes screamed in agony.
The boy could do nothing but watch, frozen stone solid in fear for his mother.
“I can see the head Mercedes, push will all your might.”
There was a slight movement where the first baby was placed. In the boy’s mind he formed the question why there was no sound coming from his sister at all. Neither cry nor even the slightest whimper that came with a newborn baby, he remembered the sound of a newly born calf that he was able to witness when their sow bore it. He expected a sound, even a tiny human baby sound. He inched closer and peered into the darkness, struggling for a glimpse of his sibling and gawked in mute terror.
The baby’s skin was rippling. Like something was crawling beneath the skin, something alive and moved underneath the smooth pale skin of the child. The shaman, helping his mother deliver yet another offspring was unmindful to the horror that the boy was witness of. The girl’s skin was darkening, spots of undistinguishable color spotted and spread; the limbs elongating and sticking into the shuddering torso, the head lengthening like clay being formed into something else. It took only a moment, but by then the child was no more, in its place was a slithering serpent the color of a newly emerged leaf.
“It’s a boy Merce…,” but she never finished what she was about to say as she saw the snake where the other child had been.
The boy was frozen mute.
The shaman watched in silent horror as the snake slithered towards the open window into the darkness of the storm outside, the new baby’s cry, the boy’s, shattering the silence, drowning out the howl of the winds outside.
No one was minding Mercedes as she lay sprawled on the makeshift bed of soaked and bloody sheets. Not even when she convulsed, like a tremor was shaking her. Nobody noticed as she gripped the sheets beside her once more and screamed.
Right at that moment, the storm abated.
