THE FIRE WITHIN

by Graham Watkins

It isn't easy to explain in just a few sentences what The Fire Within is actually about. The book is divided into three parts; in the first, the reader is introduced to six characters, all of whom are either living in or headed to New York City. All except one will find that they've won a dream vacation to a tropical paradise, but all is not as it seems; their lives are being manipulated by an enigmatic woman named Maria and by an incredibly old man, both working behind the scenes. The three most central characters in the drama that will be played out are John Goss, an physician who no longer practices medicine, Bertie North, a military career man who is a systems analyst and who is missing his left foot, and John's younger sister, Susan Hallsten. Susan and her husband, David, have made friends with a man who possesses psychic abilities, Danny Hudson--alone among the protagonists in not having received an invitation to the paradise the others are bound for. David Hallsten has been enamoured for a while with a young woman he's seen only at a distance, Kathryn Phillips--and he discovers that she too is coming along on this trip.

In the second part, these characters--and two more, Frank Wasserman and his wife Evelyn--are transported to an island off the coast of Mexico, an island that appears on no map. It does indeed seem to be a paradise, but the Americans who've been brought here all find themselves behaving in very strange ways. The locals seem to practise old ways, ways forgotten since the time of the Conquistadors, and there is an ancient and mysterious church here around which many of these odd behaviors circle. Finally, the Americans are invited to a ceremony, a performance; it turns out to be an ancient ceremony dedicating the growing crops, it becomes wild and orgiastic, and in the course of it, a young local girl is sacrificed by decapitation.

Cover of Polish language edition

The shocked Americans now want to leave but cannot, and their behavior becomes increasingly strange--especially after the locals hold an "election" to determine the ruler of the place, and visitor John Goss is named that ruler. Knowing well that John is lonely from the absence of his lover Nikki Keeler and jealous of his position, Bertie North sets a plan in motion, and plan to get the very moral John drunk and get him into bed with his sister, Susan. This plan is successful, and John, crushed, commits suicide by hurling himself into a pyre.

Events rapidly begin to run out of control, and soon enough Frank and Evelyn are offering their own lives in sacrifice as well, on a well-used stone beside the old church. The survivors, Danny, David, Susan, and Kathryn, told that John may still be alive, are led into an underground world by the woman from New York, Maria, who is soon revealed to be none other than John's lover Nikki Keeler; they find themselves in Mictlan, the Land of the Dead from Aztec myth.

In Part three, David, then Susan, and finally Kathryn, are all sacrificed in the Underworld. John, reborn there, endures a series of trials in Bertie's company; at last they fight, John in the guise of a great plumed serpent, Bertie in the form of a jaguar. John wins, and all the now-reborn Americans converge to have the fires of their lives relit by the old man, who is now known to be Xiuhtecuhtli, Aztec God of fire. The cycle of birth-sacrifice-rebirth for the others is complete, too; John now knows himself to be the latest incarnation of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, and Bertie is his brother and old rival Tezcatlipoca; the drama they have been playing through is yet another cycle in the great Quetzalcoatl myth of Mesoamerica, played exactly as it was played before, centuries ago. David Hallsten is Xipe Totec, Lord of the growing corn; his wife Susan is Xochiquetzal, goddess of love and flowers. Kathryn is Tlazolteotl, the goddess of lust and childbirth, the sin-eater; Frant Wasserman is the rain-god Tlaloc, and his wife Evelyn is Chalchihuitlicue, goddess of flowing water. Along with the pulque-goddess Mayahuel, the sorcerer-god Xolotl, the young-corn goddess Xilonen, and the physician-god Patecatl, they move back into the ordinary world, and they reveal their plan to the still-human Danny Hudson.

Their plan to end the world in the year 2011....

When The Fire Within was published, there was supposed to be a rather extensive appendix included, and it was not. You can read it by going here.