Vamos! Day of the Fucking Dead

Eddy and Fiona stared at me. I stared back. What the FUCK was that?!

My cellphone rang.

"¿Hola? Yeah Mom, we're fine. You felt that too? Yeah, we were... well, we had some friends down here, but they left real quick, sure. What, you too? Okay, we'll be up in just a minute. Yeah, we've got to, uh, pull ourselves together. What, five minutes, then? Right. Bye."

I looked at the naked, sweaty twins. "Weird shit going down. C'mon, we've got to get dressed. But don't rush. I think Mom and Dad need to, ah, pull themselves together, too." I chuckled. "We're not the only ones whose 'guests' left in a hurry."

Were Dad and Mom swingers? I had not seen any evidence of this back home, and the twins agreed. But on this trip, with the adults and we 'kids' in very separate rooms, well... sometimes we heard sounds from the folks' room, and we knew better than to barge in without calling first.

It was more like seven minutes before we got upstairs. We each took a quick shower first. No showering together -- it was too small. And no long showers, not just because Dad and Mom wanted us, but because the shower had an electric demand water heater hanging on the metal pipe just above the shower and it threatened to electrocute anyone staying too long or moving too clumsily. Ay yi yi.

Dad and Mom, wrapped in fresh cotton robes, looked as tousled and fast-rinsed as we kids did. The queen beds were rumpled and obviously hastily straightened. The room air carried a certain organic scent. Busted! The twins and I said nothing about it.

Dad looked worried. Mom looked flustered. "Are you okay?" Mom asked nervously.

"A bit shook up," I answered for us. The twins nodded. "That was weird. We were, ah, just hanging out, and all of a sudden it seemed like we were floating or something."

Not only "seemed like," of course, but I wasn't about to say more, not then.

Dad nodded. "Yes, it seemed like floating to us, too. That's the strangest I've ever felt. Did you hear any thunder or anything?" He went to a window overlooking the courtyard with mountains beyond under a three-quarter-moon clear night. "I don't see any storm clouds."

"What do you think happened?" Fiona asked. She normally turned to Eddy for answers. I guess he had no clue then either.

Dad shook his head. "Beats the fu-, er, the hell out of me. We were, uh, relaxing, and then there was some energy flow, and we were floating, and then we dropped gently. That energy flow may be the key, but I just don't know..."

We discussed this further with no mention of sex. We reached no conclusion except to say buenos noches, good-night. We crawled back into ominous beds.

We did not hang around Way-Way. We packed up early the next morning, hit a panadería for sweet pastries and coffee, and got the hell away from there.

Dad rolled the big top-down convertible over the mountains to grubby industrial Quetzaltenango, a name so chunky even Guatemalans don't like it; they call it Xela (SHAY-law). We stayed there a couple nights (without weird events) to explore the vicinity and then drove on. We passed 'Alaska', at 11,000 feet the highest point along the entire PanAm (Pan-American Highway), a sere zone of dry cornfields.

We rolled out to Chichicastenango and no, I have no idea what chichicas (CHEE-chee-kaws) are, nor why they're there. We stayed in clifftop Chichi a couple nights too. It's a strange place but at least we weren't abused by poltergeists or whatever.

Chichi is known for the largest indigenous market in the Americas. People come literally from around the world to Chichi's Wednesday and Sunday markets for local crafts to take home or resell. The market extends like a bloated spiderweb from the central plaza.. You want anything Mayan? Get it in Chichi.

We drove the excellent but sinuously twisty road from Chichi back to the PanAm and down into the huge volcanic caldera containing mile-high Lake Atitlan (AH-teet-lawn). The lake looks much like Lake Tahoe back home except for the smoking volcanos and Mayas in colorful traditional garb.

We stopped at the lake's main town, Panajachel (Paw-naw-haw-SHELL) or Pana, also known as Gringotenango because, well, this is where the Gringo and Euro tourists come, as well as middle- and upper-class Guatemalans looking for a lakeside resort.

We found a nice posada in the area where locals stay; no need to hang out at the high-rise hotel with yet more gringos.

Our airy rooms, with big windows giving tremendous views of the lake and its ring of volcanic peaks, were at opposite ends of the posada's second floor. We met at the front desk after stretching and unpacking.

"Do you have some ideas of what to do here?" Eddy asked Dad.

"Sure," he replied, "we have guidebooks and recent blogs. A couple kids are bicycling from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego right now and they blogged about riding through here just last week. They said it was pretty safe."

"Of course we're going anywhere dangerous, right, honey?" Mom asked.

"From what I read, the biggest danger here is mudslides after hurricanes, and maybe a volcanic eruption. But let's poke around town for the rest of today. Tomorrow, we'll take a boat tour around the lake, see the traditional villages. C'mon, let's hit the cobbles now."

We walked adobe-walled block-cobbled streets past a zillion craft and food vendors, inviting eateries, drinkeries, and hostelries, cheap Internet cafes, street artists, aimless dogs and international travelers, and alert cops. Motorbikes and golf-cart tricycle taxis swarmed the narrow roads; locals and visitors on foot jammed the lanes. The town was vibrantly alive.

We poked through shops of paintings and pottery and baskets and carvings.

"¿Quanto cuesta? How much?" That was the all-important question.

Many vendors spoke some English (and German and French and Japanese -- they knew how to extract money from visitors) but some had thick Mayan accents that made their English or Spanish a mystery. We found the universal translator: a pocket calculator. You punch in an offer. The seller punches a counter-offer. We haggle via keypad till everyone is happy.

"You're buying that crap?" Fiona pointed at a volcano painting I was considering. "Look how sloppy the lines are! If you offer more than eight quetzales" (about one USA dollar) "you're a fool."

"It looks okay from a distance," I grumped. I was a fool; I paid ten quetzales.

I went into a vendor's plaza with Mom and Dad; the twins took off down a side street. "Keep your phones on," Dad reminded them.

The Chichi market was all-enveloping; the goods on sale in smaller Pana were more concentrated and priced a bit higher, but we didn't need to walk as far to see as much good stuff. Eye-dazzling beauty was dense here.

"Look at these great knives!" Eddy said as he and Fiona returned from their expedition. "Just twenty Q each and the handle carvings are great!" Each held a Crocodile-Dundee-sized weapon that looked appropriate for summoning and dismembering demons. "And for another two Q we got a whetstone. Gonna keep these suckers razor-sharp."

I shuddered. I do not normally get psychic twinges or whatever but something about those knives was weird -- maybe the red and green glowing eyes. Forty-two queztales for a thaumaturgical toolkit? Yow.

We dined at an open-air seafood eatery by the lake and showed off our purchases: jewelry, rollup art, fairly small artifacts. Hint: Avoid the restaurants with shills out front trying to lure suckers inside. Food and prices are better elsewhere.

After dinner came the usual age-segregated entertainment, late into the evening. The twins and I didn't find any suitable late-night candidates so we crawled in bed together. I rather like lying on my back with Ed humping between my legs and Fi sitting on my face. We feel so close.

There are three ways to get around Lake Atitlan's deep volcanic caldera. Some of the villages are linked to the outside world by roads. Little chugging "tour boats" stop at a few of the more scenic villages. All other transport, except fishing-folk working from hand-carved canoes, moves by "shark boats" or lanchas: long, narrow, overpowered, and bouncy. They looked like fun.

Dad bought us all-day tour-boat tickets for a bit more comfort. The boat stopped in the smaller villages for a half-hour and the larger ones for one to two hours, long enough to support the vendors swarming for tourist cash.

San Pedro Atitlan was up a huge slope from the dock. The main attractions there were cheap Internet cafes and really cheap language schools, about forty dollars American per week for classes, lodging, and food. This is where broke gringos and feral folk come to learn idiomatic Spanish or Mayan languages. Cannabis was cheap and plentiful here too -- something else to attract feral gringos.

San Antonio Atitlan was a modest town of craftsfolk and crafty women wearing clothes of a disarmingly innocent but distinctive pattern: tight woven purple bands on their huipiles (blouses) and rusty wide-banded ankle-length skirts. They also wore similar arrogant, predatory expressions. San Antonio women had a reputation for being relentless, the sharks of Guatemala.

Our longest stop was at the far corner of the lake in Santiago Atitlan. We walked up the steep roadway from pier to plaza past a plethora of vendors selling the usual blindingly beautiful crafts. We stopped for cold sodas at a refreshment stand by the town's central plaza. A young Maya boy just hitting puberty approached us.

"Hello," he said in good English, "you have never been here in Santiago before, have you?" He did not wait for our nods.

"You know what to see here? I will show you. Something most outsiders do not see. Come, I will take you to Maximón's holy house. Just give me two Q. My name is Esteban."

A cheap price for a guide, I thought. Then I remembered that the daily wage for most laborers is eight or ten queztales. Guiding was easier than fieldwork. The kid could make a good living this way. His peasant whites were clean.

He led us down more adobe-walled cobbled streets past plazuelas and mercados and barrios and told us what to expect.

"Some people here venerate the evil saint Maximón or some call him St Simón," Esteban said, picking his way through a narrow street of torn-up cobbles. "Well, he's not really evil, but he's a real pain in the ass, and he's the patron saint of fuckups, and we're all fuckups. And he's not really a saint, more like a lazy god you don't want mad at you. So people offer him stuff: rum, cigars, money. He's always smoking and drinking, and so are his followers."

"So if we want to get in good with this Maximón guy, we should get drunk?" Eddy asked.

Dad knuckled his head. "Don't be a smartass, kid. You're not joining any religions here. Wait till we get home. Then you can be a Scientologist or Mormon or Pastafarian or whatever you want."

"Does Maximón have priests?" Fiona asked.

"Well, not priests exactly," Esteban replied, "but attendents to collect the offerings, sure. When Maximón is happy, the attendents are happy."

"Are they only guys?" Fiona pressed. "Is there maybe a nuns' corps, too? And temple prostitutes?"

Mom slapped at Fiona's arm. "Now quit that, young lady. You are NOT going to sign up to do ANYTHING for this Maximón."

Esteban looked serious. "I'm sorry, I cannot say anything about women and Maximón. It's not my place to talk. Anyway, here we are. Speak softly now."

He led us to an ordinary-looking house with the usual whitewashed walls and red-clay-tile roof at the edge of a terrace. The black rough-hewn wood door was wide open. The inside was dark, lit only by a few guttering candles. I smelled heavy scents of burning incense and weeds, and strong waves of alcohol and body sweat and... unpleasant organic odors. Low chanting music played from a boombox.

My eyes adjusted to the dimness. I saw an effigy in a rough throne, human-sized but like its legs were cut off at the knees, dressed in a rough black suit and wide-brimmed black hat, dark glasses over its eyes, a smoking cigar in its mouth. This was Maximón!

"Maximón's legs are like that," Esteban whispered, "because when the men were out working in the fields, Maximón was fucking their wives, and when the men got back, they cut off his legs. But they didn't kill him. We don't kill gods here."

Attendants wearing not-so-clean peasant whites sat beside the god. Well, they slumped more than sat. I looked around the low, wide, dark room and saw many men slumped or leaning against the walls. All looked pissed-out-of-their-heads drunk. Some women in dull garb stood in a corner but quickly ducked through a doorway when they saw us.

A very weird feeling filled me; I saw the twins shudder, too, and even Mom and Dad twitched. Maximón! Back in Way-Way, when that mystic bolt flashed through us and lifted us into the air, the local kids were muttering about Maximón when they ran off. What is this?

We soaked up the ambience rather quickly. Esteban led us back to the plaza; we hired a donkey cart to haul us down to the pier; we caught the boat for the last leg of our Lake Atitlan tour. We did not talk much.

Nothing strange happened during our few days in and around Pana. The twins and I brought home some Italians one night and Madrid Spaniards the next. We heard voices in local Spanish from our folks' room but could not tell much else.

Our next stop was Antigua Guatemala, the old cultural capital of Central America, a small colonial city in a lovely valley ringed by smoking volcanos.

Architecture in La Antigua (the Old One) is low and thick to survive the many earthquakes. International travelers flock here; food and drink are nearly diverse as in San Francisco, California, twenty times its size, and much less expensive here. Full-immersion language schools seem to be a major industry but those in San Pedro Atitlan cost less.

La Antigua was dressing-up for the three-day All Souls Day festival, the local Hallowe'en. The Mayas call it Hanal Pixan or "food of the souls". The deceased are permitted to visit loved ones, to chat and eat together and express love, the guidebooks said. Express love? Like, with sex?

Hallowe'en day, October 31st, is Dia de las Brujas, Day of the Witches. It is not sex-exclusive; brujos (sorcerers) abound also. And the streets seemed filled with witchcraft -- much just for show, of course, but I had these feelings...

The twins brought Ramón and Cecilia to our room that night. I brought Marissa and 'Lupe. Our two queen beds were pretty full and the air got pretty sweaty. Eddy and Ramón stayed busy plugging holes. Ramón was some sort of fucking monster, like he was born with Viagra in his blood -- his long uncut cock NEVER went soft! And 'Lupe licked clits like a champion. She tasted pretty good to me, too.

Yes, once we all came simultaneously. No, there were no mystic bolts, no glowing eyes, no howling animals or winds, no levitation. But even when I was screaming with joy, I had a feeling, like eyes were watching us, evil eyes, hungry eyes. Have you ever climaxed with goosebumps?

The first day of November is officially Dia de Todos los Santos, All Saints Day, but here it is the day for communicating with the spirits of dead children, Dia de las Niños. How? With kites.

We drove to a town north of Guatemala City for the children's festival. Tens of thousands of people walked through the village past hundreds of vendors of foods, drinks, crafts, and kites.

We walked a mile to a hillside cemetery overlooking a long green valley.

Everyone flew kites to send messages of love to dead infants. DOMINO'S PIZZA staff passed out little kites for free. Groups had kites ten meters (thirty-three feet) across; teams of a dozen husky guys hauling cables ran across the cemetery to loft these huge kites into the air. Bright kites of all sizes between these extremes filled the clear sky.

Families set out picnics on the graves and mausoleums and charnal houses. Young kids walked through the crowds selling tacos, pizzas, sodas, beers, charms, and toys. Musicians played: fiddles, guitars, squeezeboxes, horns. This was the brightest and most glorious cacaphony I ever witnessed.

And damn, was I horny! I could feel energy surging through us all.

Eddy walked between Fiona and me, holding our hands, talking softly.

"Do you feel anything strange?" my little brother and lover asked in a whisper. "Weird vibes, hot surges, itchy blood, anything like that?"

"Nothing but," my little sister and fuckmate whipered back.

"Fucking right," I echoed. "Something here has me soaking. Y'know all those times I hit the restrooms today? That was to change panty liners." Fiona nodded, tight-lipped.

"And I don't think the hair on my neck has gone down since we got here," I continued. "Feels like lightning is about to strike but the sky is totally clear. Maybe it's some bruja stuff, fucking magic or something."

"Do you believe in magic?" Fiona hummed the old Lovin' Spoonful song that our folks played so much. "I never noticed any back north, but this is something else..."

We were back in our posada in La Antigua that night. Alone -- only ourselves, weirded out, no visitors. Ed fucked Fi and me very slowly and carefully. His cum and her juices had a strange spicy taste. Mine did, too. Our folks' room was on another floor so I don't know if the moans we heard came from there.

"The festival culminates with Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, on November 2nd," said the guidebook. Holy processions had flowed down La Antigua's side streets the prior two days. Not today. Today was for ghosts. Skeleton costumes walked the lanes. Ordinary people wore black armbands and avoided certain sites. The atmosphere felt heavy.

We tried to stay cheerful during the day; bright sunlight helped. But twilight was upon us when Dad took us to the kinkiest high-end place in town for dinner, Panza Verde. That means "green belly" and is the nickname for residents of La Antigua because they eat so much guacamole and other avocado dishes.

Panza Verde was still decorated for the dead. It felt eerie, like a little Disneyland ala Hannibal Lector. The food was great. The vibes were intense. None of us felt like clubbing afterwards. We retreated to our posada rooms.

The night was still and silent -- no honking horns or barking dogs or crowing roosters. The mile-high air was dense with tension. The twins and I snuggled close after nervous lovemaking. Eddy held Fiona and me protectively.

It happened at midnight.

Church bells tolled simultaneously throughout La Antigua. Cats and dogs howled. Doors shook and windows clattered. Oh fuck, was it another earthquake?

Noise rose in the background -- not howling or moaning, more like a ghostly chorus of faint screams that echoed from the stars overhead and rebounded off the city's whitewashed adobe walls and fear-frozen hearts. A chorus of the dead. A chorus of the damned.

We levitated.

Our blankets slipped off. Ed and Fi and I floated naked above our bed. Lights sparkled and corruscated in the corners of the room and bounced between the shining windowpanes and the door.

The door. The door that swung open on creaking hinges.

Mom and Dad slowly drifted through the open doorway. They floated a yard off the floor, naked, their eyes wide open and glowing, gleaming with an uncanny spectrum of colors I had never seen. I looked at Ed and Fi. Their eyes glowed too, set in faces with blank expressions. I wondered what I looked like just then.