The Visitor 32

The Legend of the Serangappi, Part 1:

The Visitor

ONE

"It is time."

The man with the golden cowl looked knowingly at the dark figures of the several individuals gathered together with him. He lit the torch he was carrying, which was the signal for his companions to do the same. The light of the nine flames flickered sinisterly on the walls of the room, illuminating a monstrously ornate door set in the side of the cave: it was a shadow play suggestive of the horrors of the distant past, and also of the horrors very soon to come.

"Is the oracle present?" said the man with the golden cowl.

"Yes, I am here," said a previously unnoticed figure, hidden in the darkness of the room. She stepped forward into the circle of light cast by the torches of the nine. Once in the center she removed her robe, and met the even stares of each the nine individually, holding their gaze for the space of second, a second that stretched into eternity as each beheld the full meaning of the ritual that was before them.

"Are you prepared?" asked the man with the golden cowl, fixing his gaze on her. The oracle smiled, and gestured for him to approach her. Removing his robe, he came towards her, the light from the flame throwing eerie contrasts onto his muscular body. His erect cock swayed with each step he took, marking his strides like a pendulum counting the seconds left until the Rising. "I'm prepared. Are you?" she asked. Then, glancing at his tumescence, she added with a hint of amusement, "Apparently so."

Without waiting for a reply from him, she lowered herself down onto her knees. The man's penis twitched with anticipation, as the woman took in its full length and girth with her eyes. A tiny drop of liquid was forming out of the slit of his head, and glistened as it caught the reflections of the surrounding torches. With a firm grasp, the woman encased the base of the man's shaft in her hand, moving it slowly up and down his length, from the base of his cock to just below his head. She could hear each motion of her hand reflected in the man's breathing, and as she slid her hand over his now very moist head, a sharp intake of breath in his part affirmed her suspicion that the sensations he was experiencing were quite pleasurable on his part. She continued to massage the full length of his erection with her right hand, while her left moved down the length of her now parted robe to reach her own moist sex. She let out an almost involuntary gasp of pleasure as her finger parted her lips and discovered her clit, and as she began to rub it, she found our own cycle of breathing began to match that of the man standing before her.

The temptation of the cock before her was simply too much temptation to pass up, and with hardly any warning, she greedily engulfed the full length of the man's cock with her mouth. The feeling of his strength and firmness in her mouth pushed her excitement up to ever higher levels, and the increasingly frenzied motion of her lips and tongue over the cock in her mouth were matched by the increasingly frenzied motion of her hand as she rubbed herself to higher and higher levels of ecstasy. Nor was she the only one to experience the bliss of rising levels of excitement. With each pass her lips made over the crest of his head, with each pass of her tongue under the tip of his increasingly sensitive cock, he let out a moan of pleasure, and twitched over so slightly on his thighs. Grasping the back of her head, he guided her in the motions and frequency that excited him most, and his desire for her increased even more, if that was possible, as she removed her other hand from its explorations of her pussy to grasp and fondle his balls. The warmth of her pussy that remained on her hand was enough to nearly push him over the edge right than and there. But a climax now would have ruined everything for which they had been working.

The flickering light from the torches cast eerie shadows over the two as they engaged in their carnal activity, at one and the same time illuminating and obscuring the action at the center of the circle. She had two hands on his cock now, stroking and sucking in unison as the fervor of their union grew and grew. Placing his hands on her shoulders, the man pushed her away and stepped back at the same time. Then, in a single fluid motion he hooked both his arms around her legs and lifted her straight up into the air, settling her onto his cock as she grabbed his neck with both her arms, and hooked her legs around his hips for support. Despite his clear intentions, however, she chose to delay the instant of consummation for a few moments longer, moving her hips so that the head of his cock didn't quite penetrate between her lips, but instead rubbed her pussy slowly up and down the length of his shaft. Then, when she could resist the temptation no longer, she shifted subtly, taking the full length of his erection inside of her.

Her gasp of ecstasy drowned out his moan of pleasure as the two came together in an unholy union. She held their position for a moment as her sex adjusted to the invading cock, as her body prepared to interact more fully with the ineffable fullness that found itself deep within her. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, she began to grind against him, caressing the length of his cock with the deepest parts of her pussy. She felt his warmth radiating off of his body, and could positively smell the arousal within him. He responded in turn, gently thrusting into her in time with her movements, picking up his speed as she picked up her own. Bending over, he placed on the smooth cold stone and, still erect and deep within her, began thrusting in and out of her with a furious vengeance. Her moans turned into gasps which turned into shouts of pleasure every time he buried himself within her. Their eyes met and locked together, inspiring him to work all the harder to bring about their moment of triumph.

The hushed anticipation of the onlookers increased in line with the bodily passion of the lovers, their knowledge of the significance of the consummation before them, of the unworldly horrors portended by the union now taking place, filling each and every one of them with awe and dread. With a final, decisive thrust he buried himself deep within her, shaking over and over again with each fresh burst of cum that shot out of him. Spent, he collapsed on her still quivering body, his ragged breaths a reminder of the shared intensity of only a few moments before. Then, with a massive, earth-shattering rumble, the door before them slowly opened, and an unearthly howling issued from deep within the opened room. As the howling grew in pitch and intensity, and with it came a sharp breeze that instantly put out the lights of the nine torches. The total blackness that now covered the cave was broken only by a red glow coming from the just-opened room, which grew in proportion to the eerie howling that filled every corner of the place. Just as the sound and the light grew to unbearable heights, to sounds and color to which no human ear was ever designed to listen, or human eye ever designed to see, both were gone in an instant. The only sound audible in the total silent blackness that surrounded all, was the slow, steadily scuffle of a massive body entering the room. Then, an impossible voice with the pitch of hell made itself heard on earth for the first time since history began.

"I have come."

TWO

Mark Weston entered his office not with a bang but a whimper. To call himself tired didn't even begin to cover the nature of his emotional state. He shrugged his briefcase off his shoulders, and it landed by the door, forgotten for the moment. After dropping the pile of books and papers he had been carrying all the way across campus on his desk, he unceremoniously collapsed into his office chair with a massive sigh. He closed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair, taking a few moments to collect his thoughts before inevitable onrush of students for office hours in the week before finals. "I can do this," he half-heartedly mumbled to himself, in a resigned effort to inspire himself emotionally for the ill-formed excuses, hazy questions, and self-entitled whining he so dreaded to deal with. Then, more forcefully, "I can do this. Can I do this? I can do this!"

He opened his eyes and swiveled in his chair to look out his fourth-story office window. The view, at least, was rather nice -- his window overlooked the immaculately cultivated university park, where a handful of people, students probably, were playing a game of that favorite pastime of college students everywhere, Ultimate Frisbee. Beyond the park and to his right stood the administrative building, and just over that you could see the tip of the golden arches of McDonald's, the only sign of the downtown district that could be seen from his office window. He swung back around to face the rest of his office, and looked about with more than a trace of disgust in his expression. "God, this room is ugly," he said. It seemed the university was willing to pour millions into maintaining a pristine outward appearance, but considered any effort to improve the interior design of its buildings a categorical waste of money.

"Not that it's my place to comment, but frankly I'm inclined to agree. The aesthetics of this place are appalling."

Mark wasn't aware anyone else had entered the room. He looked up sharply, and a saw an elderly gentleman standing a few feet before his desk, smiling benignly. The word 'wizened' jumped unbidden to his mind, nor would that word have been an entirely inapt description of his appearance. His look and bearing were peculiarly singular. He carried himself like a man of discretion and experience, and the expressions of his facial features suggested an active inner life, but one which the old man seemed at pains to avoid inadvertently giving any information about.

"Hello. Er, can I help you?" said Mark.

"I certainly hope you can! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Miles Fenwick," he said, offering his left hand in greeting.

Mark immediately reached out his right hand to acknowledge the gesture. "Oh, right." He quickly withdrew his hand and replaced it with his left as soon as he realized his mistake. "Mark Weston, adjunct professor of archaeology. What can I do for you?"

"Well, Dr. Weston, you'd help me out immensely if you'd be willing to take a look at this manuscript of mine."

Inwardly, Mark cringed. While he'd never experienced such an instance firsthand, his colleagues had been full of horror stories about the unremitting insistence of various cranks and charlatans that they and they alone held a secret to one of the great mysteries of ancient civilizations. A fellow student from his graduate studies had been approached with a solution to the Linear A script of the Minoan civilization, and a colleague of his at another university had been offered the secret of the final resting place of the jewels of the tsarinas. Both had asked exorbitant sums for their information, and both had had decidedly questionable authority for their claims at best.

"Manuscript, huh? Well, if you've got it with you, I'll take a look." Even if this whole thing was a hoax, as it undoubtedly was, it at least gave him a good reason to put off meeting with students for a few minutes longer. Miles withdrew a steel box from his briefcase and, taking a seat in front of Mark's desk, placed the box on top of his desk and began fiddling with the combination locks that held the box secure.

"What I'm about to show," said Miles, "is something very few people have ever seen before."

"I'm sure."

"I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice, Dr. Weston. I suppose I can't blame you, as I'm sure in your experience few good things have ever come from strange men entering your office claiming to possess immense, unheard of treasures." One lock popped open. "Nevertheless, you would do well to suspend your disbelief in this particular instance, since I assure you that what you are about to see here is absolutely and one-hundred-percent the, uh, 'real deal' as they say." The other lock popped open. Miles lifted the lid and turned the box around so Mark could have a direct view of its contents. Inside was a heavily weighted but yellowed almost to the point of gray piece of paper.

"I suppose this is the manuscript you mentioned?" asked Mark.

"Indeed," said Miles. "Although that is not the only item you will find in that box. If you will kindly put these on," he offered a box of latex gloves that he appeared to have withdrawn from his briefcase as well, "and remove the manuscript from the box, you will also find a handful of trinkets, gewgaws really, that I believe will prove to be immensely helpful in your quest to come."

"My quest?" said Mark.

"Your quest. Come, come, take a look at the manuscript and tell if I'm, uh, 'shitting' you."

Gingerly, Mark lifted up the piece of paper by a small corner. Either the paper was considerably old, or this was a masterfully orchestrated hoax. With considerable patience and care, he removed the paper from its resting place and laid it on the last clear spot remaining on his desk. Beneath the paper there were indeed a few other 'trinkets' as Miles had suggested there would be, resting in slots cut out of the thick, black foam that covered the inside of the box. What appeared to be a small, cult idol occupied the far left slot. In the middle was a metallic cylinder, made perhaps of copper. In the far right slot lay an L-shaped device made of what seemed to be neither metal nor plastic, whose function Mark could only guess, and haphazardly at that.

"I'll explain the paraphernalia in a moment. For now, unfold that manuscript, and provide me with your professional opinion, if you please."

Mark lifted up the box and placed it on the floor by his desk in order to make enough room on the exceedingly cluttered surface to comfortably unfold the paper. When that wasn't enough, he grabbed a stack of books and student papers, and shoved them onto the edge of a nearby bookshelf. The new center of gravity of the bookshelf nearly caused it to topple over, but Mark carefully held the bookshelf in place, and it soon regained its balance. Turning back to the desk, he unfolded the paper with a mix of awe and disdain. Awe for the possibilities that this document might indicate should the man who called himself Miles Fenwick be telling the truth. Disdain for the man who sat in front of him should he prove to be yet another impostor, and even more disdain for himself that he was even listening to the absurd ramblings of a manifest quack.

The two were interrupted by a quick knock on the still-open door.

"Uh, Dr. Weston? Do you have office hours now?" A student of his poked his head into the room. "Oh, I'm sorry!" he said, catching sight of Miles in the room as well.

"I'll be just a moment," Mark assured the student, walking across the room to shut the door behind the undergraduate.

"Ah yes," said Miles. "Students. The bane of teachers everywhere. Wouldn't it be nice if you never had to teach? Just do research every day? Pity students are always getting in the way of really useful work." He said the last with a sardonic raise of his eyebrow. "I'll wager they didn't figure much into your original idea of what a life in the ivory tower must look like."

"I'll admit it's a bit more tedious than I expected," Mark said by way of acknowledgement. "But every once in a while you meet a student who makes it all worth it."

"Do you indeed?" said Miles. "Or is that just what you're supposed to say?"

Mark ignored the question, and focused his attention on the now unfolded paper, or 'manuscript' as Miles insisted on calling it, that lay unfolded on his desk. It appeared to be a map of some sort, perhaps of eighteenth-century Mexico, though of where precisely Mark couldn't immediately say, let alone what its purpose might have been. "It's a map," he said, partly to change the subject, and partly to ask an indirect question.

"A very important map, one I wouldn't dare show to anyone but you."

"And what is it about me that makes me so very special in your eyes?"

"You even need to ask me that?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I do. I'm an adjunct professor at a no-name university with no significant publications to my name and, considering with the teaching load I have to put up with, there's no reason to expect that that's about to change anytime soon.""And that, my friend -- I hope I may call you by that familiar appellation -- is precisely why you're so important to my project. A more famous scholar than you likely wouldn't give me the time of day. I'm not incorrect in supposing that your frankly surprising degree of cooperation is due in no small degree from a disinclination on your part to participate in the charade known as office hours, no?"

Mark's grunt was sufficient validation of Miles' claim.

"Precisely. I need a man of ability who's willing to listen to me. Clearly, you're willing to listen to me, and I really don't care how prosaic your motives may be. And, although I doubt you believe it yourself, you really are a man of ability. More so than you could possibly imagine at this point."

"Your vote of confidence is appreciated, but I'm afraid it's ultimately misplaced."

"Your protestations only confirm my initial estimate of your character. Nevertheless, it's not my goal here overcome your protestations. Something much, much larger is at stake."

"I'm sure," said Mark, with a bit more condescension than he would have liked leaking into his voice. "Now why exactly is this so-called map on my desk."

"You haven't recognized it?" said Miles. "That, Dr. Weston, is a map of the Serangappi civilization, in what is now the southwestern part of the United States, as it was around 7,000 BCE. I believe that people group is a specialty of yours, no?"

"Er, the myths surrounding the Serangappi civilization is a specialty of mine, yes. But that's exactly what it is, a myth. A series of stories about how Native American civilization, at least in the southwest United States, came to be. Every culture has them. Like Atlantis, in Plato's Timaeus. They provide an aesthetically and psychologically satisfying explanation for why things are the way they are, while subtly building up political and ideological support for the culturally dominant factions, which usually take the form of the priesthood, the warrior classes, and the ruling elite in general."

Miles laughed, a gentle laugh of infinite knowledge, tempered with the mild dismissal of the knowledgeable towards those who know less than they think they do. "I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the, what did you say, 'myth' of Atlantis. There are 'strangers things under heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophies,' my dear Dr. Weston. But the fate of the Atlanteans does not concern us at this moment. It is the fate of the Serangappi that does, and let me assure you, Dr. Weston, that the Serangappi was very, very real."

"True, most legend is based in fact to some degree or another, so it's entirely possible, and eve likely that there really was a Serangappi civilization that formed the basis for the inspiration of the myths. But whatever might have been the original historical conditions of the Serangappi, the original culture can at most be only tangentially related to the stories we now have about them."

"And why, I ask you, must that be the case?"

"Common sense!" Another knock at the door interrupted him. He stood and walked across the office, and opened the door. "I'll be with you in a moment," he told the young woman who stood just outside. He closed the door, and turned back to address Miles Fenwick and his absurd suggestions. "According to legend, they were charged by the gods with the 'preservation of humanity.' Their powers were supposed to border on the infinite, and they were the sole bulkhead between the physico-temporal plane and the ancient gods of chaos. As I'm sure you can tell, the myth has decidedly Freudian overtones, a hearkening back to a 'primal father' to provide a sense of personal and cultural security in precarious times."