fiction

The Sixfold eye
by Dion Fernandez

I dare not go near Luneta Hill anymore, regardless of the persuasions of my well-wishing colleagues. Those who might read this may think me crazy, and so many others may even have much more acute prejudices. I have carefully chosen my words in this testimony, though I doubt putting my experiences into writing would do justice to what I have witnessed, and to what I hope no one else would ever see while they still live.

We acquired Luneta Hill sometime around a decade ago due to its splendid location overlooking downtown Baguio City. From here one could get a fantastic view of Burnham Park, the Cathedral and bustling Session Road. Back then there was nothing on that hill but an abandoned park overgrown with weeds and grass, a wide moss-strewn expanse of gravel where a large building used to be, and scores of pine trees that gave an atmosphere of a placid yet uneasy calm over the place. I have heard of how Pines Hotel burned down in 1984, and how after the demolition of the ruins the place began to earn a fearsome notoriety of its own as a haven for drug addicts and "cultists." With the purchase of this viable estate my superiors at faraway Manila desired to turn the place into an economic success, which we of course would always assume in this country as the construction of a huge mall. Being the frugal yet gentle citizens they would be, the people of Baguio protested our plans; they would have most certainly succeeded in their resistance had it not been for the terrible earthquake of 1990. Somehow, I believe, such a lamentable disaster opened up something within quiet Luneta Hill: a gate to the infernal regions, perhaps, or a chasm that led to dark unfathomable bowels that contained nothing but horror and madness.

My history is a bit rusty, but from what I could recall Luneta Hill was almost a century ago the site of Baguio's first Sanitarium, which closed down when half its lunatic inmates suddenly escaped, screaming and grunting out into the terrified young city. When most of them were eventually rounded up and corralled at the Baguio Hospital, they voiced in unison their desire never to be brought back to Luneta Hill again, for fear of "the monster below," as one of them put it. Psychology was but a young science in those days, and as a result the inmates' testimonies were dismissed as nothing more than the rants of depraved madmen.

When the Americans built Pines Hotel not long before the War, right over the ruins of the Sanitarium, it became somewhat of a privilege to walk its grandiose halls, to sleep in its elegantly furnished rooms, and to play baccarat and poker in its luxurious casino. But with the mysterious fire of 1984, the opulence that was Pines Hotel had ceased to be, taking away with it Baguio's prestige as an international resort city.

As chief engineer I was given the order to inspect Luneta Hill's grounds before the groundbreaking of the mall. Other than the disintegrating ruins of Pines Hotel and the Sanitarium I found vestiges of centuries-old Igorot artifacts, and traces of a certain ochre-like substance that seemed to thinly yet discreetly blanket the entire site. On one corner of the hill I found what looked like a sunken altar, crafted it seems to be inconspicuous to others who would see it as such. Against my judgment that these fascinating discoveries be carefully removed from the site before construction of the mall started, my superiors, as I have known and experienced before, cared little for the remains of the past. What mattered to them was the future and only the future, and what fame and fortunes it promised to them in this quaint mountain city with its cool winds and hidden stories, some of which may never see the light of day again.

The City Council, various archaeologists, and concerned Baguio folk were furious, but I had my orders. After all, our company bought the land, and we had our own jurisdiction over this property; the laws of the land themselves proved this. Amid protests from seemingly all sectors of City society, my superiors finally gave the orders to construct the mall. With the sinister pine trees cut, and the smell of hot ochre pervading the air, I ordered the bulldozers to dig the massive structure's foundation.

All had gone relatively well for the next two or so months of construction. With the exception of a few work-related accidents we were right on track, and the workers themselves did a splendid job of digging a second foundation hole ahead of schedule. Nothing deterred our drive to build this mall, not even the Igorot natives who continued their colorful protests along Session Road, not even the notorious Wiccans and black-clad Goths of Baguio who as legion somehow breached our security and cast hexes and curses on our lot, accusing us of "desecration of sacred land." An elderly woman even approached us with despair on her face, fearful of the "supernatural forces" we might have released from deep beneath Luneta Hill, but we were undeterred in our determination to finish what we had started.

There were, however, certain nights when I decided to sleep in the construction site. My dreams would be filled with shadows emerging from pools of pitch black, watching me with eerily bright eyes, pulling me into a darkened world visited only by the insane. These dreams didn't visit me all the time, of course, but the fact they recurred with increasing viciousness meant something was wrong; or perhaps, something was about to happen.

It was three months into construction when I finally learned of the eldritch horror that slept beneath Luneta Hill. I was in my office, and I had just awoken from a sweaty nap filled with the same recurring dream of the shadows with their frightening eyes. No sooner had I woken up and drank a hot cup of coffee to calm my nerves when a laborer named Ramon distressfully barged in, calling me quickly to a construction sector where a worker fell off a beam and crashed into what looked like flat bedrock covered in a thick layer of ochre. Unfortunately for the worker he died on the spot, but now that I think of it, his demise was beside the point entirely. I immediately ordered the body to be whisked away when I reached the grisly scene, giving the workers in that sector the rest of the day off. Before I could let other workers clean up the place, however, I was moved to examine the spot where the laborer's body had impacted.

Underneath the mud-like consistency of ochre, the likes of which I have never seen before in such vast quantities, I caught a glimpse of what looked like a wide vein of some silvery metal etched unto the bedrock. Perhaps wisely not telling the others of my curious discovery, I decided not to explore this sector until later, under cover of deep night.

I contacted two more workers, including Ramon, to help me as night fell, and they both in turn confided in me that they would not speak a word of our expedition to anyone concerned. Armed only with an electric lamp, two shovels and sweaters to keep out Baguio's cold night, the three of us returned to the ochre pool at around ten in the evening. The yellowish-brown ochre had somehow hardened to the consistency of drying mud, so both workers had no problem digging away to reveal what lay hidden beneath. All throughout their digging, I could not help but feel some sort of pounding coming from deep beneath the ground where we stood, as if the dreaded heartbeat of the Earth itself was seeking release from its stone foundations.

In my years of living I had never seen anything such as what greeted us when the workers cleared away the drying ochre: etched on the hard bedrock underneath Luneta Hill was a huge glyph carved and laden in silver, surrounded by a circle no more than ten feet in diameter. Around this strange formation were crude carvings of hundreds of eyes, differing in shape and size. The glyph itself fascinated me, its design unlike any I have seen in Cordilleran or even Philippine culture. It was of six oblongs, three crisscrossing the rest, to form a rough cross made of intertwining knots. It had the semblance of an eye, greater than the swarm of carved lesser eyes wreathed around it, and it seemed to stare back at us from its limestone bed, plotting our inevitably unfortunate destinies.

Ramon, awestruck by such an astounding discovery, took the fluorescent lamp close to this bizarre glyph, and with a Swiss knife started scraping away the remaining bits of ochre that clung to the metal. He found nothing much of importance, but somehow the way the lamp cast shadows on the glyph urged me to satisfy my curiosity even more, even if it was mixed with a twinge of fear.

Surrounding the silver circle's knife-edge was a small notch, nearly invisible if no one else cared to look so intimately. Ramon himself would have noticed it were he not focused on cleaning away the ochre.

The glyph was a lid.

That moment, we dared not think if such a lid was meant to keep intruders out-or to keep something in. I have no love for the sinister, but exploration was human nature, and I was more than filled with excitement at the thought of uncovering this artifact. Reason, however, came to us three in a cautioned pause: we were very much ill-equipped to peer into whatever lay beneath this archaic lid. Our better judgment prevailed to keep the discovery secret from all except a sympathetic few.

Around half past one in the morning we decided to confide this unusual discovery to a number of my acquaintances. I had telephoned a most excellent archaeologist by the name of Dianna Buendia of the University of the Philippines, an expert in pre-Hispanic Cordilleran cultures. She was so excited that I assumed she immediately hopped on a bus to Baguio the minute I put down the phone after telling her of the glyph. It would not be necessary to name all of whom I shared the secret with, but here I would note Professor Frederick Tellas, a geodetic engineer from nearby Saint Louis University, and Army Captain Dale Mendez, who had volunteered to provide equipment and safety for us in whatever lay ahead. At my urgent behest all of these fine people were at the construction site the next evening; this, as I kept everyone off from the ochre pool for the whole day.

My hideous recurring nightmare did not assail me during the previous night, thank the Fates. However, my dreams were filled with the same muffled pounding that I perceived earlier, the same pounding that seemed to come from somewhere deep underground. I awoke in a cold sweat, not to mention a slight migraine headache, as a cloudy sunrise greeted the new day.

When finally the skies were dark again, I guided the small assembly to the ochre pool and the glyph we uncovered. Dianna, her interest piqued, was quick to point out the universally accepted symbolism of the eye and its Bronze Age implications of guardianship, while Prof. Tellas noted the almost unnoticeable difference between the consistency of the circle-glyph with the surrounding bedrock: he had more than once suggested it could be a covering of some sort; a theory of his which I immediately affirmed. We tallied no further; the professor and the captain helped lift the heavy silver-lined lid from its ancient bed, revealing a well etched on one side with large intermittent notches that seemed to go down into depths so dark, even our lamps failed to find a bottom. It took no deep knowledge to understand that the notches formed a ladder-evidence that in ages forgotten, this well served as a passageway from the surface to Luneta Hill's hidden depths.

There was no need to discuss our next plan of action: everyone agreed that whatever unknown vistas lay hidden at the bottom of the well had to be explored. Captain Mendez fitted us with safety ropes and basic climbing gear, as Ramon situated a powerful flood light by the lip of the well, to serve as a guide for us back to the surface world.

We entered the well at around 9:30 pm, all eight of us extremely careful to hold on to the delicate stone ladder lest we fall into the endless depths that waited below. Throughout our descent countless eye glyphs, similar to the array on the bedrock, carved into the walls around the well and illuminated by torchlight, seemed to study our every move. Dianna was quick to point out that these eye-glyphs themselves seemed to have predated even the ancient Igorots who came to the high Cordilleras so many hundreds of years ago.

As we finally set foot at the base of the well, Prof. Tellas measured the depth of our descent: it was a little bit over half a mile into the bowels of Luneta Hill's limestone bedrock, deeper even than the hill's reservoir of underground water. We were so far down that we could barely see the pinpoint of light that was our flood lamp way above.

There was nothing remarkable about the natural chamber we found ourselves in, except for a few clay containers that Dianna surmised were funerary jars possessed of characteristics from the pre-Angkor period of the ancient Khmer, in present-day Cambodia. How these artifacts ever got to this place was a mystery, even to an expert such as her.

The others spotted a small tunnel by a corner nearby, not far from the base of the well, but it was only wide enough to accommodate one of us at a time. Beyond this gently descending passage we felt a rush of cold air, indicating a wide space ahead.

Absolutely nothing could have prepared any us for the sights that lay ahead, even with our flimsy lamps. Prof. Tellas was speechless, his eyes literally bulging as he took in the stygian view. The captain managed to keep his composure, but his eyes betrayed a mix of awe and fear.

We had emerged into an utterly enormous cave chamber dimly illuminated by bioluminescent fungi that clung to the walls-walls that, according to the awestruck Dianna, had been artificially augmented under the auspices of cultures long forgotten. It was as if the deeper we ventured into this darkened Tartarus long unseen by human eyes, the further back in time we were traveling, beyond even when reality had ceased and myth began. The floor beneath us was rather slick with primordial ooze, hiding shards of crumbling pottery, primitive metal implements, and what Capt. Mendez believed to be remnants of human bone tucked away in various dark corners. It was after our eyes adjusted to the dim supernaturalism of this subterranean world that we realized we were standing on a circular precipice, forming a natural amphitheater that looked down into what seemed to be an immense lake of dark water.

Using a powerful searchlight that switched back and forth from normal light to ultraviolet light, Dianna discovered a series of hieroglyphs inscribed on a wall behind a rather curious array of boulders and broken ceramics that we all assumed to be an altar. She recognized the crude hieroglyphs as proto-Chinese, ancient beyond reckoning as she put it. Such inscriptions formed a mantra, a repeated series of cryptic words that Dianna could roughly conclude was a warning similar to what the pharaohs of distant Egypt used to ward their sand-strewn catacombs: "In depthless dreams the Sixfold Eye watches."

What happened next I remember only in fragments. Sometime during our explorations, the slick rock underfoot made Prof. Tellas lose his bearings and nearly slip, letting his lamp fall off the high precipice where we walked; hadn't it been for the captain's equipment and quick reflexes, he was most sure to have fallen into that blasphemous pool of dark water, along with the lamp that revealed the true horror of Dianna's hieroglyphs.

Somewhere beneath the inky depths of that lake, in a vicious trick of light that lasted for but a brief moment, we caught sight of something gargantuan-something alive.

The faint splash that indicated the impact of solid material into liquid was more than enough, but we were frozen in ecstatic fear. There was a growing sound all over us now, faint at first, then slowly reaching a crescendo so overwhelmingly loud and guttural. It was as if the very rocks around us had awakened from their slumber and given vent of their wrath at our intrusion. The inky waters below us began to ripple, then boil, then spew forth a horror so primordial, describing it in full detail would be an exercise in utter futility.

It began with a huge white slit that seemed to cut the lake in half, but within that slit was another slit, and another within that, as if we were witnessing the opening of a gigantic flower spawned by the collective racial memories of generations of madmen. When its six folds finally opened, one inside the other, we beheld a massive, putrid eye, hundreds of feet across that stared back at us from the Abyss.

We ran, away from this mad place, away from that hellish, living orb that slept away those unhallowed millennia and whose slumber we had disturbed. In depthless dreams the Sixfold Eye watches . I shut my own eyes, in vain trying to block out that overwhelming, maddening eye of the deep, that damned eye that has mocked me in my bouts of nightmares! I heard the screams, the maddening echoes, yet I ran. Back into the small chamber, back up that endless well, climbing that stone ladder back up from Hades into the world of the living.

Those who remained on the surface say they found me, as well as the others, mad with immeasurable fright, trying with all our energies to leave Luneta Hill at all costs. Injected tranquilizers were needed to calm us, and we all wallowed unconscious for three whole days afterwards.

I immediately ordered that blasted well to be resealed with the glyph, to be welded shut thrice over with steel, but as a precaution I begged my superiors that copies of the glyph be redesigned on the foundations of their mall. They know not of my purpose, but at the very least they conceded to my wishes, and thus my part is done. I have seen too much that night, so much so that my faculties could not contain all of them, or even accept the reality. Two weeks after our secret expedition into the dark gulfs of Luneta Hill, I submitted my resignation and fled Baguio, never to return.

As the others tell me now of the wonder that is the huge mall atop Luneta Hill, of how its wide balconies look out unto the mountains, of how its white lights lord over the central business district, of how its massive Teflon tent stands taller than the crimson spires of revered Baguio Cathedral itself, I could not help but shake my head in resignation of whatever lies beneath. It would have been wise for us lowlanders to have listened to the urgent pleas of the Igorot natives, of the frugal people of Baguio, of the numerous youths who wanted us out of Luneta Hill, and even of the voiceless ancients who crafted the stone lid; they in all likelihood know nothing of the Sixfold Eye, yet their very spirits were nevertheless attuned to the cyclopean entity that slept away the millennia under their beloved, beautiful City.

The Sixfold Eye itself sleeps again I suppose, away from humanity's encroaching grasp as it dreams away the years in its oily pool, awaiting a future time when once more its rest would be disturbed and it wreaks unspeakable madness over whoever sets sight on its primordial form. Me and my colleagues count ourselves as extremely lucky, but far from Baguio, far from the ancient, shamanic majesty of the Cordilleras, I have learned to respect the warning: In depthless dreams the Sixfold Eye watches . And although the nightmares do not visit me anymore, every night I shudder at the thought of the consequences of interrupting the depthless dreams of those that need not to be awakened.

back to fiction | home