Another hour passed when two men, dressed in khaki shirts and pants, emerged from the jungle, each equipped with machetes secured in leather scabbards tooled with intricate embossments and silver inlay. They greeted us with big smiles — one who flashed a full grill of silver teeth — and welcoming gestures. They embraced each of us and beckoned us to follow. They did not seem concerned that there was a barefoot woman with a baby clung to her and no rucksack. They greeted her with the same friendly manner and tickled Misty beneath her chin. The muddy path to the pools cut through the jungle, over exposed roots, under fallen trees, the men hacking through dense foliage as we followed close behind. There were large yellow and brown spiders patiently waiting in their webs just above head level. “Cuidado,” warned our guide, “venenosa.” We all ducked lower to avoid their bite. The path dropped steeply forcing us to slide in the mud on our rear ends, using our heels as breaks. The guides helped Dreamy and Misty descend which kept Dreamy’s white linen smock free from mud. The bottom dropped out onto a nestled valley and revealed three deep, crystal clear pools surrounded by a thick, mulchy carpet of emerald green moss. Two people stood by the first pool. The shaman was robed in a blanket made of macaw feathers, their face masked in a thick smear of adobe red mud. Their eyes were black as coal, no white to be seen. The other, a small, pale woman, wearing the same khaki shirt and pants as our guides, her black hair pulled back in a tight bun that stretched her forehead and eyebrows up toward her hairline. Her eyes were framed with black rimmed glasses with thick rose-tinted lenses. She was to be our interpreter. The shaman spoke in a dialect of Zapotec. Through the interpreter, we were told the Crystal Skull ceremony is held in harmony with the eighteen-year lunar cycle. Tonight, just before midnight, the full moon will shine through a small, rectangular portal, built into a fifteenhundred-year-old stone altar that sits atop the canyon, bridging the gentle stream feeding the pools below. The moonlight, so channeled, beaming down the canyon will catch a quartz crystal human skull sitting on another stone altar, illuminating our ceremony site, and bathing us in the moon’s healing light. My name is Micah Dorsey and I am possessed. The demon lives in my head and speaks to me constantly through every waking hour. His voice controls the narrative of how I experience the living world. He constantly shares his analyses of what I am experiencing through a lens of domesticated judgement, fear and insecurity. He sees everything as a threat. He tries to convince me that he is my friend and only wants to protect me, but I can’t live with him anymore! I no longer want to see the world through his dark filter. I want to trust the world, love the world, to be free of this prison of judgement, analysis and fear my demon has trapped me in. Either I gain freedom or I no longer want to live. The shaman lit the ceremonial fire with a yellow Bic lighter and began to heat the water for our tea. They unwrapped eight bundles made of broad green leaves. Inside were mushrooms, laid out like napping children, their long white stems topped with golden caps, the earth still clinging to their base. In front of each of us was a cup made of dried gourd. I was relieved to see that Dreamy was not going to partake in No. 143 this part of the ceremony. She was with Misty near the pool’s edge. Misty, splashing and padding about, was sticking her face just beneath the surface of the water blowing bubbles and emerging with peals of laughter. Witnessing her joy, our group felt joyous. The shaman removed the mushrooms from their bundle and placed them in our gourds, they then followed behind filling the vessels with boiling water. We waited until the shaman gave us the signal to drink the tea. My demon was screaming at me. Warning me of the danger. Pleading for me not to drink. I knew he was begging for his life as I sipped the hot tea and waited for the effects to kick in. I layed down in the pillowy moss, closed my eyes and saw eight-bit ravens flying and transforming into a giant serpent that circled the earth, moving at the pace of time holding eternity. Held in the soft moss, I heard the thrum of the earth. I felt the love of the trees. I, for the first time, felt safe, free of the constant nagging of my cynical demon. I felt mother nature healing me. Freeing me. Holding me. I luxuriated in this feeling and laid unmoving, never wanting this experience of unconditional love to end. A sudden intense light filtered pink behind my eyelids, jarring me from my trip. My eyes, dilated wide with psilocybin, seared against the light. My pupils snapped tight, their aperture constricting to take in the brightness of the moon radiating through the Crystal Skull. Struggling against the moss that had contoured to my body, I sat up as my vision adjusted. I began to take in the scene around me. The seven other ceremonialists were still cradled in the moss, eyes closed, tripping. The golden water of the first pool shined as brightly as the sun reflected off a mirror. Looking further down the valley I saw the shaman and the interpreter, whose rose-tinted glasses were sitting on another stone altar, casting a pink light over the second pool. Dreamy, holding the swaddle in her arms, stood beside the water. The shaman shook a rattle as they enchanted lyrics that reverberated off the surface of the water, surrounding me in a bath of frequency. The vibrations grew in intensity as the songs grew louder, the cadence faster. Dreamy stood still, held in the light of the moon, her smock blindingly white, her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. Lifting the bundle above her head, the rattle shaking faster and faster, she flung the swaddle into the pool. The bundle, weighted with a heavy silver belt beaded with jade and shells, sank fast. Bolting up I charged toward the water. My progress suppressed, like running in a dream as the moss attempted to swallow my feet. Reaching the pool’s edge — the shaman, interpreter and Dreamy nowhere to be seen — I dove in to retrieve the bundle, its white linen glowing like an iridescent cocoon at the bottom. I scooped it up, the wet linen and silver belt making it incredibly heavy and impossible to carry. Struggling with the clasp I released the belt. My breath waning, I began to swim toward the surface. The water, tinged pink, was so clear I could see the serrated edges of the swaying palm leaves in the canopy above. From below I felt something wrap around my ankle, tight like a balled fist. I was held in the middle depths, unable to free myself from a red vine attached to the bottom. In my panic the bundle loosened and three stones fell out descending quickly. The unbound linen undulated in the water like a phantom drifting off to other haunts. Drowning, I looked up once more to see the face of Misty, slightly submerged, blowing bubbles. The dark narrator finally silent.
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