Skulls and Bones and All Things Ungodly – Welcome to the netherworld of shamans
Part I
Witness to a mystifying deed
It was a few minutes past the midnight hour. A pale yellow moon, full and round, cast its bewitching radiance over the sleeping city. A few mongrels were out on the streets howling away to glory. The group of half a dozen men were in high spirits, having spent the better part of the last two hours in a bar swigging down peg after peg of whiskey with soda and ice accompanied by tender legs of roasted chicken, skewers of well-done mutton barbeque and heaps of healthy green salad. They swayed and held on to each other as they made their way towards their neighborhood and they laughed uproariously for no rhyme or reason at sick jokes related incoherently by drunken men with slurred tongues. A little way ahead at the crossing the high spirited revelers turned left, laughing wildly at yet one more lewd joke, and then, as one, the whole group stopped dead in their tracks. The laughter froze on their faces; they stared ahead with terrified eyes at the fearful scene before them on the other crossroads some 50 meters ahead.
The small boy watched with attentive eyes, his mouth agape and his ears ringing with the hypnotic rhythm of the tantric mantra being recited in a sing song voice by the three shamans in one voice. The incomprehensible lyrics were accompanied by the precise tempo of hard slim bones beating rhythmically on parched skin stretched tightly across circular bony frames. The numerous bells on the felt belts hung around their scrawny torsos brought forth music in perfect cadence as the three gaunt bodies hopped up and down on their haunches with exact regularity.
Throughout all this frenzied activity, while the small boy’s eyes