Votamba's Son By Jon Hartling Published by Jon and Heather Hartling at Smashwords Copyright 2011 Jon Hartling Discover other titles by Jon Hartling at Smashwords.com Smashwords Edition, License Notes Thank you for downloading this free e-book. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thanks you for your support. You want to know why that land isn’t cleared yet? It’s because the stupid ojetes we had working the job ran away and won’t come back -- and even being paid two hundred pesos a day! And now that they’ve been talking about what happened, you can bet there’s no way any of the locals are going to work for us at any price. We’ll have to bring in labor from a different state, where they have different superstitions. Because, you know, you’re not going to find one of those fools that isn’t superstitious somehow. But we can go north, maybe to Chihuahua or Durango, and find some men who worry about desert demons instead of tree demons. What really happened? I can’t tell you; I wasn’t there. All I can tell you is the story that they told me. What’s for sure is that the foreman we had out there -- you know, Jorge? -- he’s gone, and there’s no trace of him. The loggers all say he’s dead or worse than dead; and that must be true or he would’ve come out of the jungle by now. Jorge was a hard man, muy fuerte, didn’t take shit from anyone. It’s not so easy to replace someone like him. You don’t mind if I take a little tequila, do you? Good. I tell stories better with tequila. Anyway, this is what they say. Last week the loggers had worked their way about halfway up the slope and were making good progress, doing just fine. Then they came to this one big tree, and there was a man leaning up against it. He was one of the Tojolabals by the look of him, short and thin and really old, wearing the traditional costume. The loggers say he looked like he’d been standing there forever, like he’d grown up with the tree. Right away, too, a lot of them say they could tell he had dark power about him, magia negra they said, like he was a shaman or medicine man they didn’t want to fuck with. Of course, all Jorge was seeing was a protestor: some guy who didn’t agree with the rest of his tribe that they’d be better off if we cut down a few trees and brought in a bit of civilization. You know, like it would kill them to have so much as a goddamn paved road. But the guy was old, alone, unarmed. So Jorge went up to him -- being as polite as Jorge could be, you see -- and asked him what the hell he was doing. The old man, he said some things Jorge couldn’t understand. So they called up the translator. And then I guess they went back and forth for a while. Jorge started shouting. The translator threw up his hands and walked away, like the old man wasn’t speaking Tojolabal either -- they were getting nowhere. So Jorge, finally he was like, “Whatever, let’s just move this guy out of the way.” But then, all of a sudden, the old man spoke up loud and clear in perfect Spanish. A lot of the loggers heard what he said, too. He told them, “You are in danger here. This tree is sacred to Votamba, and one of Votamba’s sons lives in it. Keep your saws far away, or a terrible fate will befall you.” Who’s Votamba? I don’t know; maybe some kind of demon. See, the thing is that all the locals down there know about Votamba -- you can tell they know, because you say “Votamba” and they make the sign of the cross and beg you not to say it again -- but it’s hell trying to get anything out of them. After a lot of prodding, all I know is that they call Votamba the Dark Man of the Dawn; they say his children are ogres twenty meters tall; and they fear the east wind because it might bring his esporas -- you know, his spores? Like he’s some kind of giant mushroom? But that’s it. Just a moment -- don’t mind me -- this is good tequila. Well, I don’t care if you got it from a gas station for fifty pesos. Doesn’t have to be expensive to be good. So anyway, when the old man mentioned Votamba, a lot of the loggers backed off. You know, turned miedica, like they wanted no part of that. And Jorge, he was like, what the fuck? He yelled at the old man, “Look, I don’t give a shit about your fairy tales. We’re going through here, and this tree is coming down.” The old man said nothing, just stood there. So Jorge called a couple of his guys up, the ones who weren’t acting like pussies, and told them to remove the old man. They went up and took him by the arms and pulled him away from the tree. I guess he let them take him without any fuss -- he was just skin and bones anyway, not like he could have fought them. But he was looking back at Jorge with a terrible look… you know, kind of like a hungry coyote. So Jorge said, “Okay, let’s cut this tree down already and keep moving.” But no one wanted to be the one to do it. Jorge got pissed then. He started calling his workers sons of putas, telling them he’d get them all fired if they didn’t grow some cojones. But in the end he went and got a chainsaw himself, and he cut that tree down. Now this is one thing they all say: they all say the tree screamed. No, I’m not fucking kidding. They say it moaned first, like a man sick with fever, when the saw first bit the bark. But when Jorge cut deeper, that tree started really screaming, screaming even louder than the chainsaw. Jorge, he just kept going like he didn’t notice; but the workers say they don’t know how he couldn’t notice, because they were afraid of going deaf. The tree’s screaming -- they say that it shook the sky. That it sounded like something out of hell. One of them told me it was maybe like a bunch of angry hornets, if they were buzzing around in the mouth of a shrieking cat. What? What are you talking about? No, I’m not shaking. Why the fuck would I be shaking? I’m drinking tequila, not coffee. But I will have another shot here… Oh, don’t look at me like that, like you’re mi madre. I’m not some lightweight, not going to drink myself under your hardwood desk. You want to hear the rest of the story or not? Okay. So finally the tree fell, and the screaming stopped, and it was quiet. And the loggers were kind of, you know, holding their breath to see what would happen. But it was just quiet. Jorge turned back to them, and he said, “Okay, that’s that; now get the fuck back to work.” But then there was some shouting and confusion, because the old man had disappeared. You know, like into thin air? I don’t know. Maybe what really happened was that all the idiots were distracted by the goddamn screaming tree and the old guy just slipped away into the jungle. But that would mean that the tree was actually screaming. So you want to make sense out of this, you’re kind of between a roca and a hard place, see? I’m just telling you what I was told. Anyway, the workers went a little farther up the slope, cut a few more trees. But the sky was getting wicked. A storm was coming in from the east. This part is for sure true, because the weather radar in Mexico City confirmed it: big storm out of nowhere. So they pulled out and made their way back down to the camp. The storm came, and it kind of settled over them for a while before moving on. Lots of wind, thunder and lightning, but hardly any rain. A couple guys who went out in it said the air was gritty, like the wind was blowing a lot of dust and dirt around. Weird weather for a rain forest, right? And the loggers were all like, “Oh, we’re in deep caca now, this is the breath of Votamba, he’s going to get us.” I’m betting Jorge, you know… I think at that point, he was wishing he was a capitan in the old Red Army, so he could shoot one of those fucking cowards and get the rest to fall back in line. But he wasn’t scared of nothing himself. Like I said: hard man to replace. Okay, fine, so my hand is shaking. Maybe I’m sick, eh? Maybe I’ve got the goddamn flu. So maybe I just go home when I’m done talking to you and sleep for a week. Fuck, whatever. My throat is dry. Can I finish here? Gracias. So by the time the storm was done it was getting dark, and they couldn’t go out again ‘til the next day. Fine. Next morning came, Jorge was at them right away to move their asses, to get back up the slope and make up for lost time. There was a thick fog, though, so they’d have to be careful. Well, they got back up to where they’d been the day before, and they saw that the strange tree they’d cut down was gone. No trace of it. The stump was still there, though, and get this: the old man was back. He was standing in the middle of the stump, waiting for them. And he was naked, too. Yeah. Fucking naked. You want to know how big they said his dick was? No, I’m joking. They didn’t tell me about his goddamn dick. We hire cowards, not maricones. Fuck, look at me. Why am I shaking so bad? More tequila, that’s what I need -- just a little more. Right. Okay then. So as soon as they saw the old man again, most of the loggers just about pissed themselves. Just froze in their tracks. And Jorge, he had it up to here. He stormed right up to that old man, yelling at him, “Your tree is gone! Get the fuck out of here!” Old man didn’t budge, didn’t speak. Jorge said, “You don’t move yourself, I will move you.” Old man just smiled. So Jorge, he climbed up on that tree trunk. And he grabbed a hold of that old man. The loggers who were closest, they said it looked like Jorge was trying to pull him off the stump, but he couldn’t move him. Like, all of a sudden that little old man was made of steel. They say, too, that it looked like the old man’s feet were -- how the fuck did they say -- like his feet were part of the stump now, swelled up like big batatas, his toes curving down into the wood like roots. And Jorge, he was pushing and pulling on the old man, getting all the more pissed that he couldn’t budge him; but maybe he finally got scared right at the end. At last the old man grabbed Jorge by the throat and lifted him up in the air. Like big old Jorge was just a sack of feathers. No shit. Well, see, they say the little old man wasn’t little anymore. That just like that he started growing, his legs shooting up like weeds. His face was changing too, getting big and… well, fuck, I’ve only got the word of one of the loggers on this. The others just would not talk; and even the one who did was in this daze, like he’d seen el Diablo. Guy said the old man’s face had become huge and flat and round, and it had, you know, the lines and growth rings of a tree in it. That his eyes were these terrible white lights, and his teeth were big and sharp as daggers. And that old man -- that ogre or demon or whatever the fuck he was -- just kept getting taller, his legs stretching and stretching; and he carried Jorge up into the fog out of sight. The men heard him scream -- he only screamed once, they say. Then there was this terrible loud snapping sound that rolled through the fog, and that was it. They all ditched their tools and ran for their fucking lives. There. That, you see, it why the land isn’t cleared yet. What? Wait -- you want me to… you want me to go back down there and have a look at the job site myself? No. Fuck you. No way in hell. Oh, you bet I’m scared. Yeah, I’m just a superstitious jackass like all those campesinos. Look, I thought maybe… maybe with the tequila I could get through this. And you would just say, “Fine, let’s bring in some new guys from up north and get back to work already.” But now I can’t, because… well, there’s more, okay? Yesterday I got a call from our man Miguel down in Palenque. A truck came to the hospital there loaded down with eight guys, all sick as hell. They couldn’t breathe, coughing up some brown sticky shit that smelled kind of sweet, like rancid honey -- had the doctors muy confundido. Goddamn it, let me finish! No, it’s not some fucking new tropical disease. Why do you think Miguel even heard about it? Those eight sick guys were all our loggers. They were all there when that weird storm hit, when Jorge disappeared. I talked to them, okay? When Jorge went missing, I personally talked to every fucking one of them just to make sure their stories lined up. God knows we can’t trust the police to do their jobs; and Jorge was the kind of foreman where you figured he might die in a mutiny. Chiapas Chainsaw Massacre, you know? Anyway, Miguel called me again earlier today. He said that now half the sick loggers are dead. They cut one open to see what his lungs looked like. Mother of God, I tell you… they found some kind of plant growing inside him. It was like some ugly, tarry little sapling. And he… he’d been kind of wheezing, whispering something before he died. Miguel told me he was saying, “Tell Monogordo to come back to the forest. Tell Monogordo to come meet Votamba’s new son.” Who’s Monogordo? It’s… it’s me. That was my nickname when I was a pudgy little shit who liked to climb trees: “fat monkey.” Which of course I never told anybody. Nobody knows Monogordo is me, except for you now -- and whatever is on that goddamn mountainside. So there’s no way I’m going back. You shouldn’t go either; that thing knows about us. For what it’s worth, I say we just cut our losses and pull out of there. Fuck it, what’s a few million pesos more or less? Well, it’s your call; you’re el jefe. But I’m having no part of it. Call me crazy; fire me if you have to. I know I wouldn’t have believed it myself ten days ago. But now I see there are still some places on Earth where man shouldn’t go waving his dick around like he’s God Almighty. There are places where roads and buildings just can’t be -- and we found one of them. ###### About the Author Jon Hartling had been writing aimlessly for many years before the stars aligned and he discovered his muse in the classic stories of H.P. Lovecraft. With the invaluable help of his wife Heather in an editorial and technical capacity, he began writing short stories of weird fiction. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife and children and dreams of one day owning a plush Cthulhu doll that’s wearing a Green Bay Packers jersey and helmet. His demented cat Nikki may or may not be head-butting him at this very moment. Connect with Me Online Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jon-Hartling/254634637884339 My Blog: http://jonhartling.blogspot.com Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JonHartling Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4556271.Jon_Hartling