"Layla? Talk to me, Layla! Are you alright?! Layla!" Becca, clearly terrified, and not knowing what was going on, was doing her best to help Layla get her unsteady footing. She held the girl up and tried desperately to shake Layla by the shoulders vigorously to snap her out of whatever this strange trance was.
"I... I can hear them!"
"Hear them? Hear who?" Becca anxiously asked, not knowing what was going on.
"I hear them... they're crying out to me..." Layla was striving to keep her own mental faculties, as she could feel her will threatening to break entirely, "... oh God, there's so many... so many of them... buried here!..."
"Who?! Who's buried here?!"
"The bodies... the ones they sacrificed for... Him... oh God, what they did to them... it was so horrible!..."
"How... how the hell would you even know something like that?" All of the colors had drained out of Becca's face, and she was backing away from Layla's writhing body.
Layla grabbed her head in her hands, and frantically pivoted and stumbled, panning the space for the source of the cacophony. They seemed to be coming from all around. Pleading, calling out in countless individual voices, all clamoring to be heard. Layla's head was swimming, and as she spun around again, where a moment ago there was nothing, she now saw a lone figure operate out of nothing. A figure she knew, all too well. It was James.
He was pale and stood with an unnatural rigidity. His shirt was torn, and a large stain of blood was centered on his chest, where his heart would have been. His breathing was rapid and labored. And his eyes, locked on Layla's, shone with a look of fear and desperation that shook Layla to her core.
Layla looked over at Becca, who still had a look of concern solely fixed on her, but nothing else. "Becca, don't you see him over there?"
Becca panned her gaze to space where James stood, with a look of confusion and concern. "Who... Who are you talking about? Who's over where?"
Layla was stunned. If she was the only one who could see James, it meant only one thing. Her eyes dropped to her own feet, and her heart immediately sank, as she saw the freshly dug pile of dirt beneath her hiking boots. She grabbed her mouth and winced, to suppress a scream. She didn't have to dig this time. She knew who was buried there.
Once Layla regained her composure, her eyes fell back onto James, who gave a slight smirk, and nodded solemnly. He panned to a large stone object, wrapped in vines at the opposite end of the clearing. His eyes moved from the object, and down to Layla's pack, splayed open where she'd dropped it on the jungle floor. Layla followed James's gaze to the pack, and then back to him, where she found his eyes, once again locked on her, with glazed urgency. James nodded again, and without missing a beat, began to deliver a message to Layla. His voice was hoarse and distorted, and Layla found she had to strain to decipher it, and let each word sink in.
"Becca... Becca, I just need you to trust me on this... I'll explain everything, I promise, just..." Layla's said this, as her gaze never left James, and her legs trembled, as she strained to remain on her feet, "he... they want to give me a message... can you write this down?"
Becca scrambled through Layla's fallen pack, and retrieved her red notebook and a pencil, "okay, fine, whatever... go ahead!"
Layla stumbled forward, and braced herself on the massive stone, which she could now see was a pillar, inscribed with Mayan symbols and more terrifying images of Kukulkan, devouring victims and spreading terror. She pushed the images from her mind and listened closely to the words she was being told. "They said, 'she awakes, 12 baktun, 19 katun, 12 tun, 8 uinal, 15 k'in...'" Becca looked confused as if the girl were speaking in tongues. Layla chided, weakly, "just... write it down... I don't know either." She took a deep, quivering breath, before continuing, " and they said, 'the beast... is locked away, and must never be awakened... Must never be released'... they said, 'the citadel, the entrance to Xibalba lies through the gateway...'" she looked up at the identical stone pillar, hidden and obscured by vines, across from the one she was leaning against, "'this gateway... and directly to the west...'"
And then, suddenly and inexplicably, it was silent in the clearing once again. Layla shut her eyes and grabbed her head, as she felt the unpleasant feelings begin to subside, and the sounds of the living jungle once again flooded back in. When she opened her eyes, she found her and Becca to be once again alone. The terrible and foreboding visage of James was nowhere to be seen. Layla's trembling gaze fell back to the mound of freshly dug dirt a few meters away and knew that this nightmare was more than real, and far from over. She ran her fingers across the glyphs of the pillar, as the setting sun through the web of trees cast an orange glow across the stone.
Giving a weak smirk, Layla though solemnly to herself, Okay, James... I hear you. She gazed absentmindedly out past the gateway, into the mess of trackless jungle, as she directed her words back to an expectant, and confused Becca, "... that's where we have to go, Becca. To the west. To Chi Ubah Kan. That's where all of this can finally be over."
"Layla, look... I'm gonna ignore the fact of your secret psychic ability to speak to the dead... we'll dive into that and unpack after margaritas and karaoke and... wait, is that how you've been cheating at UNO?... sorry, doesn't matter right now, I know..." Becca, who was clearly still working through the shock of it all, had walked over to help brace Layla, and sit her down in the brushy, "but I'm not going
