Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant (13 page)

Standing on the shore, safe from Aradia’s rage, Lana and Marcella watched as the small, greasy little man was sucked under. They stood and watched until the water became supple again, and Aradia’s face had traveled away from them.

Then they returned to their campsite and made love in Her name.

THE ZIGGURAT OF SKULLS

Joshua Dobson

Squatting in the center of the abandoned city deep in the heart of the jungle, the mountainous step pyramid dwarfs the surrounding vine-choked ruins. For some mysterious reason, the vines and banyan trees devouring the ruins refuse to so much as approach the cyclopean ziggurat, therefore the details of its construction are more apparent than those of the crumbling structures that encircle it. From a distance the massive pyramid appears to be constructed of small round stones of some many-hued, crystalline rock, but as the gargantuan temple looms nearer one can make out the eye sockets, the nasal cavities, the curving mandibles and rows of shining teeth they house.

Petrifaction has turned the skulls to crystal, (or rather petrifaction has replaced the original skulls with near perfect crystalline copies) supplanting the yellows, whites, and browns of aging bone with whirling rainbows of pink, red, blue, purple, yellow, and orange that glitter brilliantly in the glaring tropical sun.

The riot of brilliance that is the lower levels of the ziggurat of petrified skulls eventually gives way to the monochrome upper levels, stained the glistening reddish hue of the ordure deposited by the crown of carrion birds that halos the lightning lashed apex of the pyramid. (Though the horde of winged scavengers that endlessly circles the top of the temple of bones may seem immense it is merely the meager remnants of the once vast flock whose beaks flensed the flesh from the skulls.)

The ziggurat of skulls bears the marks, most in the form of scorches and burns, of repeated attempts to destroy it, but the attacks of the temple’s enemy or enemies were meaningless in the face of the pyramid’s vastness.

The fossilization of the skulls of the lower levels was the result of one such attack. Legend holds that forces hostile to the pyramid contrived to bury it. Reports vary as to whether this attempted entombment was to be accomplished by way of a torrential flood or an apocalyptic earthquake. However, all reports agree that the burial was a failure, the obscuring agent, whether water or earth, being volumetrically insufficient to swallow the immense ziggurat. Perhaps the forces hostile to the ziggurat realized the futility of their attempted entombment, and the flood waters receded, or perhaps the pyramid somehow dug itself free of the shallow grave endeavoring to devour it. Whatever the case, when the obscuring agent disappeared, it was found that the skulls had fossilized. There are some who say this petrifaction represents the temple growing stronger, armoring itself to gird against future hostilities. Others insist the petrifaction was the work of the pyramid’s enemies and was meant to stain the temple with brilliant hues such as poisonous organisms wear to advertise their lethality.

The fossilized skulls that make up the bottom step of the ziggurat were quarried from australopithecines, both robust (with their mohawk-like saggital crests) and smooth-domed graciles. Some of the skulls found here on the lower tiers represent species completely unknown to science. Whatever their species, all these apes had smaller brains than those of the species comprising the genus
Homo
and were therefore much easier for that which began construction of the pyramid to catch, with the result that the lowest tier of the ziggurat is by far the tallest of the thirteen steps, stretching hundreds of cubits into the air.

One who places their hand against the wall of fossilized australopithecus skulls at ground level will be able to dimly feel vibrations rumbling through the walls of the temple. Some say it’s just the bone wheel endlessly turning, some say it’s that which began construction of the pyramid snoring as it slumbers in a bottomless pit beneath the ziggurat of skulls.

The only access to the labyrinthine guts of the ziggurat is via a door at its apex and the only access to this solitary door is by way of a spiraling ramp that ascends the temple level by level from base to summit. (Though the upper levels are booby trapped, the architect who constructed these lower levels had no use for such trifles.)

The first petrified
Homo habilis
skull appears halfway up the second tier of the titan ziggurat.
Homo erectus
and
Home ergaster
begin to appear towards the bottom of the fourth step.
Homo heidelbergensis/Homo rhodesiensis
occupy the fifth step and the lower portion of the sixth. The ziggurat of skulls was a little over six and a half stories high when the first Neanderthals fell prey to the mysterious architect that constructed the lower levels.

The tremors that tremble through the temple steadily increase in intensity as one nears the middle of the pyramid. Here, in the center of the sixth step, the shuddering vibrations are so forceful they sometimes knock climbers from the narrow spiraling causeway that ascends the ziggurat. One need not place their hand against the wall of Neanderthal skulls to feel the wheel in the center of the temple rumbling as it revolves; one can feel it in their bones.

The shudders lessen as one ascends higher up the ziggurat to the seventh step, near the top of which, the first
Homo sapien
skull quarried for the pyramid grins out at the empty sky.

Numerous rumors hold the ziggurat’s mysterious architect responsible for the extinction of a good number of the species represented amidst the skulls that form the walls of the temple. Other innuendos attribute creations as well as extinctions to that which built the lower levels of the ziggurat of skulls. Proponents of this theory insist that many of the species whose skulls we tread upon as we climb the ziggurat were created (or at least modified) within the osseous walls of the temple before the architect released them into the world as one might release game into a game park. Even those who refuse to believe the architect created humanity will concede that the mysterious builder may have provided a nudge here and there along the path of evolution.

The transition from species to species in the masonry of the ziggurat is not clean and definite with the appearance of one species precluding the later appearance of earlier more primitive species. However it’s clear that who or whatever built the lower, pre-human levels of the ziggurat loved
Homo sapiens
from its first taste of them. And this love was not unrequited.

Homo sapiens
were unlike any previous quarry the architect had hunted. Whereas previous species of hominids had fought tooth and nail (as the many chipped and/or broken teeth of the skulls attest) against the subsuming of their skulls into the temple,
Homo sapiens
(some of them anyway) willingly submitted themselves to the power of the ziggurat and its mysterious architect, becoming thralls of the pyramid before which they prostrated themselves.

Somewhere around this time, the ruinous city that surrounds the temple sprang up.

At some point something happened, something terrible no doubt. This is as precise a statement as one can honestly make about the matter. Some insist the mysterious enemy or enemies who constantly tried to thwart the architect of the lower levels succeeded in launching an assault of unprecedented fury that resulted in the wounding or maiming of that which built the lower steps of the ziggurat. And then there are those, and I count myself among them, who believe that the worship inflicted on the architect by man left the mysterious builder, fat and lazy, pampered and weak. (Some say it was this weakness that allowed the hostile forces to wound the architect.)

For whatever reason, the architect was forced to retreat from the world. Some say it went back from whence it came. Others insist it is still here only sleeping, waiting and dreaming beneath the ziggurat of skulls in a pit whose mouth its servitors sealed with a gate made of bones. And there are others still who claim that which built the lower levels was killed in the last assault launched by it enemies. ("There is no god but the wheel" proponents of this theory are often heard to insist.)

When that which built the lower levels ran away, went to sleep, or died, responsibility for the ziggurat fell to its human servants. Exactly how tall the ziggurat was when construction duties passed from the hands of the mysterious architect (if hands it had) to those of man is not known.

Many experts contend that the levels of the ziggurat stained red by the waste of the carrion birds are precisely those that were raised by the hand of man. The carrion birds, some insist, came only after man took over management of the temple; birds, like all other forms of life save man, shunned the ziggurat of skulls when that which began its creation was still in residence (and/or awake.)

The blanket of bird droppings may or may not be exclusive to the manmade steps, but it’s well known that the booby traps (which begin atop the ninth step) are most certainly confined to the human-authored portions of the pyramid.

Ascending the lower levels of the ziggurat is merely grueling and tedious, but from here on up, the way is fraught with numerous perils. The air at these heights is so thin it’s hard for one to breathe. The lightning that lives in the clouds above the rain forest finds the pyramid irresistible and constantly licks at it, like a tongue compulsively probing a sore tooth. The raging gusts of wind that buffet these heights conspire with the slippery blanket of bird guano to hurl pilgrims over the side of the ziggurat. The road of bone that spirals up the ziggurat of skulls is miles wide in certain spots and no more than a guano-slicked ribbon of bones mere cubits wide in others. In certain spots, almost all of which cling to the dark side of the ziggurat, (eternally veiled in shadow due to the pyramid’s orientation relative to the sun) the tapering off of the road occurs quite suddenly. And then there are the booby traps. Stepping on the wrong bone can lead to one being dropped into an inescapable oubliette, crushed beneath huge balls of bone that roll down the ramp, skewered and/or slashed by blades and/or spikes that suddenly shoot from walls and/or floors, or killed in any number of ways by even stranger mechanisms.

In addition to the booby traps, the elaborate labyrinth of blood gutters that spirals down from the sacrificial altars atop the pyramid are everywhere in evidence on these upper steps. At certain places, if one places an ear against a wall of bone at just the right spot, one can feel the warmth within and hear the roaring blood rushing through the osseous walls. There are also fountains of a sort, where blood pours from the eye sockets and nostril cavities of the skulls only to be collected in other gutters that channel it back into the walls of bone to continue its descent to the heart of the temple.

The labyrinthine network of blood gutters and the immense wheel of bone which it serves are humanity’s greatest contribution to the ziggurat of skulls. (Unless one believes those who say humans didn’t really build the blood wheel, rather that its construction was already underway when the architect disappeared and humans merely completed their master’s work.)

At some point, the human servants of the ziggurat of skulls divided themselves into two castes. The primary responsibility of the higher 'priestly' caste was to perform the sacrifices in order to provide provender for the slumbering architect and skulls with which to grow the ziggurat. The duties of the lower 'slave' caste were to have their heads chopped off and to perform the menial labor associated with building new steps atop the ziggurat with the skulls of their brothers and sisters.

The skulls which were given willingly to the ziggurat are identifiable by the trepanation holes bored into their foreheads. Both slaves and priests drilled holes in their skulls (to allow that which built the lower levels to enter into them some claim.) The priests distinguished themselves from the slaves by way of binding the squishy soft, not yet fully formed skulls of their infants in order to elongate their craniums.

The thirteenth level of the ziggurat is built entirely from the deformed skulls of priests. There are conflicting theories regarding the meaning of this fact. One school of thought holds that some vague doom (perhaps brought about by the ancient and ever-scheming enemies of the ziggurat) befell the people of the city in the shadow of the pyramid. The priests, proponents of this theory insist, offered their skulls as sacrifices in an attempt to ward off the doom. Those who believe this hypothesis say the priests knew the doom was coming and built the elaborate mechanisms of the temple in preparation for a day when the humanoid servants of the pyramid would cease to exist. Adherents of a conflicting theory refuse to speculate on why the priests built the intricate network of clockwork gears (except perhaps to say they may have been bidden to do so by their slumbering master). But once the mechanisms were built, proponents of the latter theory insist, so impressed were the priests with their handiwork that they considered it the highest of honors to be devoured it. And then there are others still who insist the priests were somehow accidentally devoured by their machines. Yet another school of thought holds that a schism amongst the priests split them into two sects and bloody warfare erupted between those who remained loyal to the architect and those who, believing the architect dead, worshipped the wheel. (The wheel is older than the ziggurat that houses it, those who kneel before the wheel insist.) The internecine squabble theory is highly controversial in part because many people find the very notion of enmities between the wheel and the architect deeply and profoundly offensive. They are one in the same, or at least in close collusion with one another.

Whatever the cause, the priests are all long dead, and with them died whatever esoteric knowledge of the ziggurat and its enigmatic architect they may have possessed.