‍The Waters of Xibalba

by Tamsin Marischal

Dana watched her mother stride along the boardwalk that rose above the crystal waters of Cenote Xibalba. Meredith was pretending she hadn’t spotted Dana yet, but Dana knew her tells. From the white-knuckled death grip on her designer bag to the practiced photo-op smile deflating into a hard thin seam, Meredith prepared for battle. And who was Dana to disappoint her? The wrong twin, that’s who.

When Meredith waved, Dana stood up at the little umbrella table, and they embraced like a couple of gritty stiff emery boards. “Sorry. Call with my agent ran long.” Meredith’s voice carried. Heads turned, but their glances didn’t linger like they would have back in the day.

Dana suspected there had been no call, because cell reception around the cenote and resort was crap. Dana pivoted in a circle before reseating herself, announcing, “Meredith Selby, everyone. Author of A Wish on Cold Stars.” More heads turned this time, and Dana wondered if it was because they recognized her voice from her podcast and YouTube channel.

“I don’t know why you have to do that,” Meredith sighed.

A young man wearing a resort t-shirt sat two earthenware cups on their table. He bowed and backed away, smiling at Dana when she thanked him. The first sip revealed a taste of honey mixed with something that kicked. “Only following your lead. Should I have put in a plug for your writers’ seminar coming up in Valladolid instead?”

“Today I’m here to see you. Our schedules haven’t aligned in months. Tell me about the story you’re researching around this gorgeous ... sinkhole.”

Dana laughed, and Meredith joined in, both of them delighting in the spontaneous tension breaker. They were still laughing when two older women sidled over.

One of them gushed, “Hate to interrupt, but I wanted to say A Wish on Cold Stars is my favorite novel ever! I wish I had it here for you to sign!”

Meredith pulled a card from her bag and handed it to the woman. “You are too kind. Contact my publicist. Mention we met here and she’ll send you a signed copy,” Meredith delivered in a monotone, then rose, taking her drink with her. “Excuse me.”

Dana offered an apologetic smile to the women. Meredith craved attention, but when she received any, she acted like an ass. As Dana polished off her drink and left to follow Meredith, she overheard one fan murmur to the other, “They look so much alike. I bet she’s the daughter in the story! You know, the one who ...” Dana shoved her hands in her pockets to keep from flipping her the bird.

Maybe both the Selby women were conflicted jerks.

Dana saw Meredith leave the boardwalk and duck through a rounded doorway cut into the limestone cliff. She followed, amazed she hadn’t noticed it before. Light and sound from the outside dimmed more with each step down the narrow passageway. It opened into a cavern shielding a smaller pool than the one outside.

Her mother stood on a narrow stone ledge, staring down into the water. “So tell me about ‘She-bal-bah Say-noh-tay,’” she drawled. Meredith’s bag and pricey sandals lay discarded behind her along with the empty cup.

Dana’s gaze traveled up the lacy wings of rock that rose over the pool into a cathedral ceiling. “It roughly translates to the Well of the Underworld,” she said, trying not creep herself out listening to the words echo. “Ancient Mayans believed that these underwater caves led to portals between worlds.” And in this moment she believed in the otherness of this place. A ring of water glowed like topaz where sunlight struck it through a break in the rock, but all else was heavy with shadow and an abyssal, waiting quiet.

The waiter who had brought them the drinks emerged from between folds in the rock and walked towards them. “Sorry, we’re lost,” Dana called out, feeling like they had intruded on a sacred space.

“Only those who need to be here can find it,” he said, as if in response to her thoughts and not her words. His voice did not carry or echo, but sounded as warm and close as if he had whispered against her neck. He smiled, revealing jade stones embedded in his incisors that matched the piercings in his nostrils. “The spirits see you.”

He pointed down at a small object floating near the ledge. When neither Dana nor Meredith stirred, he crouched down and retrieved a book. When he handed it to Meredith, Dana recognized the cover.

Meredith cracked the spine and let the pages riffle back and forth. Despite having been in the water, they were dry. The familiar scents of ink, paper and grief drifted toward Dana.

“It’s like a suitcase that won’t shut,” Meredith murmured. “I packed in too many bad memories, bad feelings, so now it won’t close. It. Never. Closes.”

“Why does it cause you pain?” the man asked as he circled the women in intricate patterns of incense smoke that flowed from his fingertips.

“It ruined my life,” Dana answered, as shocked as her mother by what she said. She wondered what had been in that drink. As if running from the words still vibrating in the air, Meredith retreated to the far side. Dana looked for the entrance but didn’t see it.

“This book saved us from poverty, Dana.”

“You cashed in on Nicky’s death!”

“And you cash in on my fame when it suits you! Cold Stars is a Pulitzer Prize winner, not some gossip rag or AI clickbait.”

“Your fans believe otherwise. All my life I get their pitying side-eye. ‘She accidentally killed her brother. It’s all there in chapter twenty-eight!’”

“I did not write it that way! Have you even read the damn thing? Or do you just cherry-pick excerpts to rip apart on your podcast?”

“Why bother reading it when the movie is better!”

The Mayan did not react to their heated barbs flying over the cool water, but stood with his head and arms thrown back, swaying. Dana was mesmerized by his tattoos that in the low light and hazy smoke all but writhed over his skin in time to his chanting.

Meredith’s shoulders sagged and she bowed her head. “Dana, I only wanted to write a good story. I never imagined it would be interpreted as memoir.”

“Why, because you aged the children in the novel, and put them on a big ranch instead of in a tiny rent house? Decided the son should fall from a horse that the daughter whipped into a frenzy instead of pushing him in front of that. That. Oh, fuck. How is that here?” Dana’s voice shook.

Meredith looked up as the battered front end of a vintage Cadillac broke the surface of the pool like a blood-splattered shark. A rusty tricycle was twisted around its dented chrome grille like prey caught in its teeth.

Meredith stumbled over to the man. “I don’t know who put you up to this cruel stunt, but I will sue this town, this resort, and your B-movie shaman ass until I find the sick person stalking us!”

He stopped chanting and studied her with unblinking oil-black eyes. “This is but the symbol of your pain that you lay before the gods. It will guide you on your healing quest. What do you offer as payment?”

Meredith ripped pages from the book, wadded them into balls, and threw them into the water. “Fine! You want a confession? I wish I’d never written that infernal book. I wish I had never looked away. I’d give it all back for the chance ... ” She choked back the rest with a sob and dropped the book.

“Me too,” Dana whispered. “Anything to change it.”

“All. Anything. A worthy sacrifice.” He gently took each of them by the hand and led them out to the bright ring of water where the Cadillac grille floated. He set their hands on it. “Do not let go, or you will be lost. There are many doors, many worlds below. Not all are for you. Even if you find what heals your souls, you will not return to this world as it is. Blessings upon you.”

The Caddy grille dived, pulling them under with it like a rollercoaster out of control. After the feelings of terror sweeping through her ebbed, after an eon or a millisecond, Dana realized she wasn’t drowning as they drifted down past glowing reefs carved with alien symbols. She felt eyes upon her, both malevolent and benign, and discovered she had no breath to scream either.

Meredith did not look around but kept her eyes shut as she clung to the twisted metal, so she was the first to realize the Caddy grille was shrinking even as a light bloomed above them. They swam toward it. The closer they got, the more rapidly it and the grille shrank until Dana feared they would be abandoned to the dark. She grasped her mother’s arm and drove them through the ring like a spear.

Dana’s face broke through and she gasped, blinking in sunlight too bright after the cavern’s darkness. She felt her mother behind her and turned. They sat in a kiddie pool in their old front yard.

The weedy grass, dying flowers and peeling paint on the sagging front porch looked beautiful to Dana, but not as beautiful as Nick. He ran from one end of the porch to the other, a tablecloth tied around his neck and a cowboy hat set back on his dark curls, narrating the story he acted out.

Meredith whispered, “Are we dead too?”

Dana grabbed the rubbery edge of the inflatable pool and rolled over it, expelling water with her. Meredith followed. “We’re breathing. It’s humid. Something just bit my arm. We’re really here.” We’ve always been here, Dana thought. We’ve never moved past it.

“Nicky?” Dana called, lullaby soft so not to startle him, but he didn’t turn.

Nick had spotted their neighbor rolling a tricycle up the driveway. He jumped from the porch and greeted him with a jubilant shout. Rusty flakes drifted from the trike to the broken concrete like dirty snow.

“It’s old Mr. Jones,” Dana murmured, thinking he didn’t look quite as old as she remembered. “I haven’t thought about him in like ... ever. What happened to him?” She never thought about how he must have felt after the accident. Until now, she had never really acknowledged anyone’s grief and guilt but her own. Jones. The Caddy driver. Meredith. She shook her head as if to fling her selfishness away.

They watched Mr. Jones come to the porch, talking to someone behind the screen door. “It was in the lot I bought at an auction. I thought after a tune up and new paint, it would be just the thing for the twins, Merey.”

Meredith spat, “Get that thing out of my sight!” Only Dana heard her. Jones moved closer to a younger Meredith now standing on the front porch, fanning herself with a notebook as she stuck a pen behind her ear.

“Bert, how thoughtful! What do you say, kids?”

Dana heard their excited peeps as they danced around the dodgy trike. She turned away from her younger self looming in her peripheral vision and watched Nick grasp the wobbly handlebar and roll it up and down the walk. Then came the words that had peppered Dana’s nightmares for decades. “Push me, Day-ah. Push!”

In contrast, Meredith could not look away from her younger self, a scowl twisting her face as she mocked her. “Stop flapping that notebook like you’re flirting at a damn cotillion. Tell them they can’t ride it until it’s fixed. Then take it to the dump.” When no one reacted to her, Meredith groaned, “We are dead, and this is Hell.”

Dana watched her mother chastising the oblivious laughing couple and realized that in all the years of her celebrity and fame, Meredith had never dated anyone, and lived alone in her mansion. Had she sacrificed romance after flirting away the last moments of her son’s life, or did she give up the one man she wanted because of what happened?

“Day-ah, push!”

Dana could no longer look away, and turned to witness little Dana push her brother into the street. But her four-year-old self poked at a bug with a stick, ignoring Nick as he wheeled the trike to the narrow sidewalk at the top of the hill. He popped down on the cracked plastic seat and tested the pedals. He crowed when he began to roll.

She hadn’t pushed him. Nicky’s last words mixed with the scene from the novel had muddied her memory. She was still reeling from the revelation when sunlight flashing off a chrome grille caught her eye. Dana watched the Caddy turn onto their street and roar toward them.

Nick jerked the handlebar and it came away in his hand, the rusted bolt snapping to pieces that bounced on the asphalt. Nick screamed, gripping the seat as the broken tricycle picked up speed and swerved into the middle of the street.

The driver’s head disappeared below the dash. According to the court transcripts Dana read of his plea bargain for a manslaughter charge, he had admitted he had been reaching for his phone that had fallen to the floorboard.

The younger Meredith froze when Nick screamed, her eyes wide and mouth slack with shock. Bert turned to run and fell.

Dana looked at her Meredith, wanting to give voice to the epiphanies welling like bright water within: That they surrounded themselves with ghosts they could not haunt or sway with their grief. This was their divine quest, and their sacrifice to make. But all she could do was run toward the speeding car, shrieking Nicky’s name like a battle cry.

Meredith blurred past her to throw herself between Nick and the car, sending him and his runaway trike spinning towards the gutter. Dana broke his fall and together they tumbled against the curb. The empty trike, nothing but three rubber wheels and a rusty bar, continued its roll down the hill.

The Caddy driver reared up in the seat and hit the brakes, his face an O of horror as Meredith’s hip struck the grille and she flipped over the hood, falling with a meaty thwack onto the street.

Dana whirled in flashes of jarring pain and flashing light, and then the spinning sky stilled. For a moment there was no sound but her heart booming in her ears. Then came the wailing.

Nick was crying. Dana crawled toward him and stared into his bewildered face. And he stared back, howling, “I falled!” over and over as tears mixed with the blood from a gash on his forehead rolled down his face.

He sees me. Why now?

Dana held his gaze as she sat up and ran shaking hands over his body. “Nicky? You okay?” She stroked his head, smiling down into his wailing face like he was a newborn.

Then Dana looked over and her smile faded. “Lie still, Nick,” Dana soothed. “I’m going to check on Mom.”

Dana staggered to her feet, ignoring her road rash stinging like hot needles but aware there was no sign of little Dana or the Meredith who lived on the hill. Bert Jones remained, talking to the Meredith lying broken in the street, who didn’t respond to him, but focused on Dana. The driver had exited the Caddy and paced by its open door, screaming into his phone.

As Dana knelt over her mother, it began to rain.

“Nicky?” Meredith croaked at Dana.

A torrential flood turned the street into a river. The Caddy floated away.

“You saved him! Mom?” Water rushed over Dana’s head in waves, but she held onto her mother’s hand until the force of it drove them apart.

***

Dana lay on cool stones and tried to remember where she was. She opened her eyes to spinning limestone walls and shut them again. Oh yeah.

Someone groaned beside her. “Mom?”

“I had the strangest dream. About the accident,” she mumbled.

“Me too. I dreamed that Nick - ”

“Can’t take you two anywhere. I told you to stay away from the fermented honey!” a baritone voice teased.

“Funny. We got lost.” Dana sat up, focusing her blurry gaze on Nick as he came to them on the ledge and knelt by their mother. For a second, he seemed to fade to shadow, as if he wasn’t there, then reappeared. Dana’s head stopped spinning.

“Thanks, sweetie. Hip’s a little stiff.” Meredith leaned against her son as he pulled her up. She rubbed at the old scar through her baggy shorts that Dana knew ran from hip to knee.

A frown crossed Nick’s face, and his twin sensed he was thinking about the day Mom got that scar. Yep, saving your silly ass. Always so much drama with you. Dana hadn’t thought about it in a long time.

As they moved toward the cavern exit, Dana thought she saw something move in the water. For a second, she imagined a man with jade teeth smiling at her from the jeweled spot in the center. A trick of the light. Or the fermented honey.

A crowd waited for them out on the boardwalk, waving phones and pens. “Can we get a pic?” a voice called out.

Dana glanced at her mother, then away, confused. Why did Dana think they wanted a selfie with a retired librarian? A voice echoed over the water, or maybe just in her head. I wish I’d never written that infernal book. I wish I had never looked away. I’d give it all back for the chance... It sounded like her mother’s voice, except for its angry, anguished tone. That wasn’t her.

Nick waved at the hopeful fan. “Sure thing. Just promise not to post it on social media until after the weekend,” Nick purred in his smooth movie-star voice. “I don’t get to see my sis or parents very often, so let’s keep it a secret between us for now.”

Dana and Meredith skirted the edge of the crowd engulfing Nick and headed to Bert, who had a table saved for them on the boardwalk. At the sound of excited squeals and Nick’s booming laughter, Dana nudged her mom and rolled her eyes. “Celebrities.”

Meredith snorted. “He can have it.”

Their laughter rang out over the water.