“I’ll check with Rod in the morning about what time.” Maria yawned. “But for now I think I might try to get a little shuteye.”
Jim returned to the group playing cards, and Ryker pulled out a book to read with a spelunking light attached to his forehead.
Maria closed her eyes, listened to the crickets chirp, and fell into a deep, restful sleep. The best she’d had in a long, long time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Under the treasure sign . . . [was] a tunnel about four feet wide and seven feet tall that appeared to be handmade. Professional divers got seventy feet back in the tunnel. Their sonar equipment showed the tunnel was one hundred feet long and ended in a room eighty feet in diameter. Detectors registered heavy metal at the end of the tunnel.”
SOUTHERN UTAH NEWS, JUNE 27, 1990.
Maria rode in the front seat of Rod’s 4x4 Montero. He owned several vehicles. One to commute to work in—keeping in mind his office was a nine-minute walk from his home. Another car for freeway travel—a speedy Mazda Miata. And the Montero, used for all off-road adventures, for which the twelve-minute drive to Three Lakes qualified.
“Thanks for letting Ryker come,” said Maria as she fiddled with the switch to the glove compartment. “He’s excited to see the petroglyph. He’s also got this friend named Jim that I really want you to meet. He knows a lot about Aztecs, and ghosts, and stuff.”
Rod eyed her suspiciously. “What did you tell him?”
At that exact second the latch to the glove compartment accidently clicked open and the small door flipped down. A hand-written note addressed to “My Dearest Rodney” caught her attention. “What’s this?” She pulled it out of the compartment.
Rod peered at it, and his face turned pink. “You’re kidding. I can’t believe I still have that. Feel free to crumple it up and throw it away.”
“But what is it?” Maria’s mouth twitched in delight. There was no way Rod was getting out of this without some teasing.
Rod acted preoccupied with driving on the straight, smooth road ahead of him. Not a car was in sight. But by the way he gripped the steering wheel, he appeared to be racing in the Indy 500.
Maria patiently waited. He’d have to answer, eventually.
Rubbing the short, dark whiskers on his chin, Rod finally fessed up. “Okay, so Tara used to be into writing love notes—some weird fetish with a movie she watched as a kid, I think. Anyhow, I never could write one. It just wasn’t my thing. But she liked sending them to me anyway.”
“And this is one of her love letters?” Maria wondered how precisely her peripheral vision worked. Could she look at Rod, pretend to be talking to him, and read the note to herself at the same time? It was worth a shot.
“So . . . how far away . . . is the . . . petroglyph . . . from the . . . lakes,” she asked, the corner of her eyes straining to see the words on Tara’s letter.
“Knock it off,” said Rod. “If you want to read it just tell me. I don’t care. Tara and I are history. There never was much there.”
Maria knew what the grown up thing to do was—crumple the note in her hands and throw it into the backseat as if she didn’t care one little bit. But Maria wasn’t feeling very grown up. She began to read out loud:
My Dearest Rodney,
I can’t stop thinking about you. Work drags. My mind wanders. All I want is to get out of this town and run away with you to. . .
Maria stopped reading. Something about the note was familiar. Was it the handwriting? The paper? Maybe the wording?
“Too embarrassed to go on?” asked Rod, whose coloring had gone from pink to red. Purple was coming up next. “You’re just getting to the good part.”
Maria stared at the paper. Something had struck a chord. What had made her think of—
She snapped her fingers. Opening her purse, Maria pulled out the piece of paper someone had left on her front windshield after the funeral.
“What’s that?” asked Rod. “Did you get a love letter from Tara as well?” He laughed.
“Not exactly a love letter,” said Maria. “Want to hear it?”
“Absolutely.” Rod leaned back, looking much more comfortable than before.
“You might notice there’s a phrase in your letter that’s in mine too. This is what my note says.” Maria cleared her throat. “We know your lies. Get out of this town. No one wants you here.”
The brakes squealed and Maria lurched forward, her seatbelt pressing into her chest.
Rod swore. The Montero swerved onto the shoulder and came to a jerking halt. He looked at Maria, eyes on fire. “And when, exactly, were you going to get around to telling me about this note? How long have you had it?” His tone was condescending, like Maria’s father often was. And it was something Maria detested.
Absolutely hated.
Why would Rod freak out over a little note like this? It was just a stupid threat. Not something she’d never seen before. “I would have never showed you this note if I hadn’t seen the similarities between yours and mine. Because other than that, my note has nothing to do with you.”
Rod pounded his hands onto the steering wheel. “But you should tell people about stuff like this. It’s dangerous. I could have done—”
“What, Rod?” Maria’s voice rose higher, even though she told herself to keep calm. “What could you have done? Call the police? Because guess what? I am the police. So don’t start treating me like I can’t handle a stupid note on my windshield. I admit I’ve had a hard week. A few hard weeks, actually. To be perfectly honest, the last two years of my life have sucked. But I am fine. I’m totally fine. And I’m always going to be just fine doing things the way I do them. I’m fine. Fine. Fine. I don’t need anybody!”
The quiet was as loud as it was in her cell in Tehran. It was the kind of quiet she hated.
Rod clenched his hands into fists and then released them. He did it a few more times until his breath steadied. “Okay, there are a couple of things going on here. First, you believe Tara wrote the threatening note to you. But I don’t understand why you think that.”
Exasperated, Maria corrected him. “I don’t believe Tara wrote both the notes or not. My point was that the exact phrase ‘get out of this town’ was in both letters. That’s all.”
“But that’s such a common phrase, and I can’t imagine . . .” Rod shook his head and flipped the keychain that dangled out of the ignition. “Second of all, I thought the two of us were becoming . . . close . . . and people who are . . . close . . . tell each other about threatening notes they receive. Am I not correct?”
“It wasn’t a big deal.” Maria wasn’t used to “checking in” with someone. That was the part about living on her own she’d always loved.
“Someone tried to run you off the road and then you get a nasty letter telling you to leave town. Those are both big deals.”
“In my world they’re not.” Maria would never apologize for not spilling her guts every time she scraped her knee. If Rod was looking for that in a woman, then he should move on.
“Fine, the death threats are a non-issue . . . to you.” Rod swallowed. “But to accuse Tara of doing them is ludicrous. The woman couldn’t hurt a flea. Or even threaten one. I know you two didn’t get off on the best foot, but that’s probably my fault. She really has some great qualities. You should get to know her better.”
The logical side of Maria’s brain insisted that Rod wasn’t defending Tara because he was in love with her. Maria’s emotional side, however, argued the exact opposite. He’s still got a thing for her. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t care. He’s playing you, girl. Get out while you can.
Maria’s “fun” Saturday outing was turning out to be not so much fun after all. “Rod, I’m not sure of anything at this point. With your permission, I will take both Tara’s letter to you as well as the threat I got to a few handwriting experts and see what they say. What do you think?”
Rod grabbed the love letter from Tara and ripped off the top two inches where
the words “My Dearest Rodney” were written. He handed the rest of it back to Maria. “You have my permission.”
The rest of the drive to Three Lakes was nothing short of miserable. Rod stared straight ahead and Maria looked out the passenger window, as if the scenery was so mesmerizing she couldn’t take her eyes off of it.
Rod had a key to the chain link fence that surrounded the main access to the lakes, which were not much larger than oversized ponds. He used the key to let them through the fence and then parked the Montero next to one of the red rock cliffs. Up close, the water looked less murky than it did from the road, but it was still no crystal clear mountain lake either. Clumps of algae floated on top, and only someone who was color blind would ever consider describing the water as blue.
A hefty metal cable, attached to the side of an adjoining cliff that had a ledge sticking out from it as if it were a diving board, stretched at a downward angle over one of the lakes. It descended until it ran through a group of trees where it leveled off and ended.
“It’s a zip line,” said Rod, who had noticed Maria looking at the contraption. “A very fun one, as a matter of fact.” The frustration from their earlier conversation seeped through his words. “My uncle said he’d meet us—”
Just then a small group of people exited from the door to the motor home Maria had seen parked at Three Lakes ever since she’d moved to town. In the group were Rod’s uncle Rex, Ryker, Jim, and . . . Tara.
“What’s she doing here?” grumbled Rod.
“Great,” muttered Maria. It was looking like the day wasn’t going to get any better very soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The first diver went down, and he got back there sixty feet and he started screaming his head off over the intercom “Get me out! Get me out! There are eerie figures all around me. I’m being choked. I can’t breathe. Get me out!”
RANGE MAGAZINE. “MONTEZUMA’S REVENGE” BY RICHARD MENZIES, FALL ISSUE 1998.
The group gathered around a picnic table set up under the shade of a tall family of quaking aspen trees. Fifty feet further north was the trailhead. As it turned out, Tara had bumped into Ryker at the local café, when he was getting his morning coffee. They’d got to talking, and Tara had convinced him that as the director of tourism she should accompany such a prestigious academic dignitary to Three Lakes.
Uncle Rex, dressed in his denim overalls and cowboy boots, hadn’t seemed to mind the extra company. In fact, he loved the attention. As he retold the story of finding the Aztec petroglyph and of the subsequent “cursed” dives into the lake, his arms became animated, waving back and forth like he was hoping to take flight.
“Rod was there, weren’t you, son?” Uncle Rex asked.
“I was.”
“You know what I mean, then. There is something in that water watching over the caves. And that something wanted us out of the lake. Course, when we’re not diving for the gold the ghosts leave us alone just fine. But anyone who’s here for the gold, well, they’d better beware.”
Tara rolled her eyes. She was turned so Rod’s uncle couldn’t see her, but Maria could. “It’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy if you ask me, Rex. The dives went badly because you all thought they would.”
Uncle Rex looked at her. “And who might you be again?”
It was an awkward question, but the flirty director of tourism didn’t seem to mind. “Tara? Tara Crane. Rod and I are . . . good friends. Aren’t we Rod?”
Without much enthusiasm, Rod agreed.
Undeterred from his opinion, Uncle Rex’s chin wobbled as he described to Tara the bruising he’d seen around one of the diver’s necks. “I saw it with my own eyes. Another one of the divers had been beaten with a spear.”
Tara didn’t appear convinced, but at least she had the good manners to back off her mocking of the elderly gentleman. She was a guest on his land.
“Are you guys ready to go up and take a look at the water trap petroglyph? It doesn’t take too long to get there, but I’d like to get back before the heat really sets in. I’m getting too old for this kind of stuff anymore,” Rod’s uncle said.
Everyone heartily welcomed the invite, and Uncle Rex walked them to the trail base. “We’ll follow this path about a quarter of a mile up and then make a sharp turn heading east. We’ll see the glyph way up there on that ledge.” He pointed to a looming canyon wall decorated on top with juniper and spruce trees.
As the group set out, everyone paired up without actually trying to. Rex and Ryker in front, followed by Rod and Tara second; Jim and Maria drew up the end of the party. As usual, Jim had hardly said two words. But his eyes spoke for him. His irises were large, his gaze intense, and his mouth clenched. Something, or someone, was bothering him.
Watching Tara repeatedly stumble on the path, which then caused her to bump into Rod’s steady shoulder, drove Maria insane. What she really wanted to do, instead of hiking to another petroglyph, was to take a ride on the zip line she’d seen earlier. The fight with Rod had created a lot of pent up adrenaline. The zip line would be a great way to use it up.
“Rex,” she asked from the back of the group, “does your zip line still work? It looks like the best way to get there is along the bottom half of this same trail.”
“Oh yes, it works,” he called back. “People use it all the time. You just need to hold on tight to the grip and be careful at the bottom to jump off if you think you’re coming in too fast. If you do fall, you should be fine. You’ll just get wet in the lake. I haven’t had anyone die yet.” He laughed at his own joke.
“I’d like to try it out. I could meet you on top of the ridge in a few minutes. I’m sort of an adrenaline junkie, and it looks like a good rush.”
“Don’t mind at all,” Rod’s uncle answered.
As the group headed east, Maria turned and hiked westward, to the diving board ledge where the zip line began. It probably wasn’t more than thirty-five feet in the air, though from the top the height seemed greater.
The zip line grip consisted of black handlebars that looked like they’d been hijacked from an old bicycle. Nothing about the zip line looked professionally engineered, which made the thought of trying it even better. More of a risk. More adrenaline.
She grabbed the handlebar tightly with both hands and pushed off the ledge. The desert air turned cool as it hurried past her cheeks and forehead. The quiet sound of the canyon was interrupted for a moment with a car’s roaring engine on the highway, which was only several hundred yards from where Maria flew through the air.
The excitement of the initial take off had waned. Now, the contentment of flying settled in, and Maria looked around at the rustic rock formations created over billions of years. They were spectacular.
Something pinched her fingers. At first she ignored it. Her grip was strong and it only had to hold her another twenty seconds or so. However, a sharp pain in both of her index fingers forced her to look up.
There, balanced on one of the handlebars was a stout, chubby, naked Aztec soldier with a golden armband around one bicep. This was not Maria’s Aztec ghost. The sneer on his face made that clear. Horrified, Maria realized the pain she was sensing was coming from the ghost prying her hands off of the handle.
“No,” she screamed. “Stop it.”
The ghost laughed. It was a rancid squeal, not a belly chuckle like Maria envisioned most men his size made. But more importantly, why was he trying to get her hands off of the handle? Maria looked down and saw the deepest part of the swampy lake below her.
She tried to squeeze the finger indentations on the old bike handle even harder, but no matter what she tried, her fingers were losing their grip. First her index fingers were off the bar, next both middle fingers. Her ring fingers and pinkies didn’t have the strength to hold her body, and she dropped down, gravity taking her quickly and effectively into the middle of the greenish lake.
“Ahhh!” Water splashed around her. Thankfully, the entry into the lake had been painless. She�
�d made sure to keep her legs down and straight, avoiding the regrettable belly flop.
Her body sank deep into the water. A blast of cold enveloped her. The further she fell, the chillier it became. The muscles in her lungs were the first to seize. Next it was her abdomen. The cold pressed in and her mind immediately thought of the sun-warmed sand on the shore. It would feel wonderful once she returned to the surface and got out of this frigid water.
Her legs kicked forcefully as she used her arms to push herself upward. Before her face could break the surface, however, where she could renew her oxygen supply, a strong grip pulled her back down into the deep. Maria opened her eyes and looked down.
The Aztec ghost she’d encountered on the zip line had his hand cinched around her ankle. The figure didn’t swim, but he stood in the water, as if land or lake made no difference. He appeared even larger. Water-logged. A creature from some low-budget Sci-Fi Channel original.
Maria fought back, pushing and kicking with her free leg, but nothing fazed her captor. She couldn’t “talk back” to this ghost, because words were useless underwater. Besides that, this ghost had substance. She felt him just as she had felt Acalan. This “thing” that held fast to her leg wasn’t going anywhere. He had one plan in mind, and that was to drown her.
He was succeeding. Maria’s lungs were on fire. She had kept her airways closed, not wanting to take in water. But now her mind begged her to open them. Begged her for oxygen.
Maria’s racing thoughts slowed. Her need for survival subdued. Her arms felt heavy. She had legs made out of lead. All it would take was for her to open her mouth, to let the water rush inside, and the discomfort would go away. Everything would disappear. Her memories of Tehran. The ghosts that haunted her. And the beating of her heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Paranormal Mystery Boxset Books 1-3: Legends of Treasure Page 19
