Armando had a confused look on his face. “What does it do?”
“I will show you.” The Shaman removed a heart-shaped piece of wood with short legs from a pocket and set it on the board. It had a hole in it through which he could see a letter on the board beneath. “Place your fingertips on the planchette.”
Armando reached out for the planchette, then tentatively rested his fingertips on it.
“We can call forth many things through this board,” the Shaman said as he placed his fingertips on the other side of the planchette. “It is a portal of sorts. Certain words call certain... energies.” As he chanted, the letters on the board sizzled with faint red outlines.
Armando sat, eyes wide. He could feel the growing hum in the planchette. A desire to connect raced through him. “I want to call energies to help me destroy the Knife Cartel.”
The Shaman looked at him, stunned. Within moments, the boy had picked up the meaning of the board and how to invoke it. “There is an entity whose energy could empower you. But this demon must be handled a certain way.”
Armando looked confused. “A demon?”
“Does this bother you?” the Shaman asked.
Armando lowered his eyes, searching the reflection of the flames on the board for an answer. The planchette moved their hands to a word in the top corner. “Yes.”
“Good. It should bother you. Do not be reckless with these powers you seek,” the Shaman snapped.
Armando could only nod in acknowledgement.
The Shaman raised his chin and looked down his nose before continuing. “The myth of the pishtaco speaks of a boogeyman feared for his vicious nature, but it can be your ally.”
Armando’s eyes widened. “I know of the pishtaco, my mother used to say it is a monster that would take me if I wandered too far away from the village.”
“So the folklore says,” the Shaman replied. “But it is more than a monster. If intense enough, belief in folklore can conjure entities from within the mist and give them constructs to exist within.”
“I spent many days lost, far away from the village. I did not see any monsters,” the boy said.
“As a child, you were told only enough to scare you, to keep you from wandering off.” The Shaman adjusted his posture before continuing. “This monster, as you call it, and many others, can be accessed through the energies of La Luz Mala.”
Armando sat entranced. “What is that?”
“It is important you say the name,” the Shaman demanded, a low rumble in his voice.
“What is La Luz Mala?”
With a nod of approval, the Shaman continued, “La Luz Mala is the mist existing just above the ground. It surrounds us all and connects concentrations of spiritual energies across the lands like the roads and paths connect the villages. But that is not all. It also connects with the forbidden realm of the In Between. You see, myth can become a construct within which powerful energies can actualize themselves in the Earthly Realm, if given access to the mists of La Luz Mala.”
“What is a construct?” Armando asked.
“It is an idea. You see, the pishtaco is considered to be a myth, an idea that someone long ago imagined to keep children from wandering away from their homes at night. But these ideas and myths can take on an energy of their own if there is enough belief in them, enough telling of their story, over and over through the generations. As the myth gains momentum, it gathers the potential to become a construct, within which energy can manifest the myth. But the energy needs a connection to the construct, which exists within La Luz Mala. We can provide this connection by accessing one of the purgatories In Between.”
“What is the In Between?” Armando asked.
“You are about to find out.” The Shaman chanted, louder with each word, into the night. The letters on the board began to sizzle and pop red sparks. The planchette hummed but stayed over the word ‘yes’. Armando didn’t think he could move it if he tried, his fingers felt connected to it. A thickening cloud of mist gathering around them pulled his attention away from the board. Red sparks popped in the air between them. Armando felt a pull, a force of gravity, but to where he could not tell.
The Shaman repeated the chant, Armando looked up in amazement as a soundless dust devil spun around them, picking up bits of earth and debris, mixing with the sparks. The light of the fire gave the vortex a luminosity that made it feel alive. A third time, the Shaman chanted, and the energy surrounding them seized Armando. His head snapped back and his spine straightened, eyes closed, fingertips melded to the planchette in a red glow.
Then he went inward—to another place. After, he slowly opened his eyes, as if awakening from a deep sleep, and surveyed his surroundings. He stood on a blackened shore, smokey gray mountains behind him, small fires littered a monotone landscape as if a wild blaze of flames had just passed through. Dark liquid lapped on the shore and the sound made him step forward. It shimmered as the tar blackness of it undulated before him.
He saw movement in the liquid and locked eyes with something underneath. A twisted face glared at him from the temple of its eye. Not the two looking at him, but the one residing on its forehead. Having risen from the depths of this ancient Ocean of Tar, it seemed to be searching the surface, trying to figure out how to break through, how to return to the world in which it used to dwell. Drawn to the monstrous form, Armando knelt and reached a hand out, a finger touching the surface.
It vanished.
Armando stood.
From the depths of the darkness, a ragged boney hand, fingers more like claws, broke the surface and grabbed his arm. Armando pulled back, only to succeed in lifting the upper body of the monstrosity out of the Ocean of Tar. It had a lean, twisted red form streaked with black. Motion slowed. The claws sunk deeper, piercing Armando’s skin. The more he struggled, the deeper they set. A sensation of being caught in a trap gripped him. The boy cried out in pain, a slow moan. With his other hand, he pulled the long heavy knife, taken in the desert, from its sheath. His intention now set, motion began to speed up and with one swift swing in a long arc, he severed the arm. The monstrosity shrieked and fell back into the Ocean of Tar. Armando stumbled back, the severed hand still clutching him, bones clicking, squirming. Armando dropped the knife and pried boney fingers back one by one, finally tearing it from his arm. The hand fell to the ground flailing like a chicken with the head cut off before vanishing in a crimson mist of ash. Armando fell to his knees, holding his injured arm. The places where the claws had pierced him lit up with a red glow. Then the veins in his arm did the same as if some virus was quickly spreading through him. Within seconds, the crimson consumed him from within. He fell to his side, overwhelmed.
Armando’s eyes shot open, the Shaman over him, shaking his shoulders.
“Boy, wake up.”
Armando pushed away, smoke wafting off his clothing and hair, his skin hot, eyes unfocused for a second as he remembered. “I was somewhere else. A sea of black.”
“The Ocean of Tar, In Between,” the Shaman said, in an approving tone.
Armando’s eyes flicked down to his arm, which now appeared to be uninjured. “I saw something in the tar.”
The Shaman looked him in the eyes and saw flints of red. “You connected.”
“It grabbed my arm, then I—“
The Shaman interrupted him by lifting a hand. “Your experience is for you only. Do not tell it.”
Armando sat up, rubbing his arm. He felt an energy surging through and around him he had never felt before. “How do I use this?”
The Shaman nodded, eyes slitted. “I shall show you, poco hefe. I will also tell you more about La Luz Mala.”
