by Greig Beck
“Good work.” Megan readied herself.
Matt grabbed her. “Hang on; Megan, please, it might be dangerous in there. I should go.”
Megan looked at him as though he had just grown a second head, and wrenched her arm from his. She stared at him, bristling. Matt stared back. After a few moments a small smile touched her lips, and she half bowed. “Sorry … I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to be my Sir Galahad.” She shrugged, and then quickly pulled him close for a kiss before pushing him back a step. “But I’m going.”
Matt bowed. “Then I’m going with you.”
Kurt lifted his light, squinting over their shoulders. “Looks roomy in there – I say we all go.”
Carla nodded. “Works for me – I want to take a look as well. Let’s grab the packs.” She spoke without looking up. “Everyone got their lights?”
John’s voice sounded at the rear. “No, but I’ll share yours if I may, Ms. Nero.”
Matt nudged Megan and leaned in close to her. “Old silver makes his move,” he whispered, jiggling his eyebrows.
John’s voice was serious. “Please be careful of the surrounding branches, and also of the thorns on the ground – we don’t have enough adrenalin if we get into trouble. One at a time … and slowly.”
*****
The small figure dropped from the trees and ran toward their camp, scooping up Max Steinberg’s knife and then racing, sometimes on four limbs, sometimes upright, to the mouth of the cave.
She skidded to a stop and got down low to peer inside, her face screwed up in terror. She lifted the knife and pointed. “Ba-ad … dan-ge-rus.”
She crawled closer, and pounded the ground. “Ma-tt.”
*****
Megan led them in on her hands and knees. Matt followed, having to crawl on his belly. Once they got under the vine and the stone overhang, it was immediately cooler, and larger. The cave quickly opened out into a good-sized room. The brown soil was slightly damp, churned … and littered with bones.
“Oh shit; do you think it’s a predator’s cave?” Megan backed up. “Spiders?”
Joop crouched and picked up a long thin bone – a rib – and examined it. “Unlikely; this bone is very old. Animals that are sick or at the end of their life tend to seek out dark, isolated places so they can die in peace.”
Their beams of light swung around the cavern. Megan scuffed her toe into the cave floor, exposing the metallic object that had originally caught her eye. She bent to pick it up, frowning as she pulled it from the soil. She hefted it in her hands, feeling the considerable weight.
“Wow.” It was a golden rod, decorated at one end with a grotesque face. “Well, this is what was glinting in here. More of the Inca gold?”
Kurt came in close, taking it from her and weighing it in his hands. “Mmm, nice, about ten pounds – two hundred grand’s worth, at least.”
Matt reached out to take it from the big man, but Kurt lifted his shoulder, deflecting him.
Matt shook his head. “That’s a priceless artifact, not just a lump of gold at seventeen hundred bucks an ounce.”
Kurt shrugged and let his arm drop, still clasping the rod.
Megan shone her flashlight around. “Look – more carvings.” Several beams of light followed hers.
“More advice from the Ndege?” Carla turned to Matt. “Please tell me it says: ‘this way out’.”
Matt’s mouth dropped open. He ran his fingertips in the grooves and along the carved images.
“No … not Ndege at all.” He pointed at some more of the images, beautiful and frightening in their realism and detail. “Far more ornate than the Ndege could ever produce, or copy. Far more … pure.”
“This is …” Matt smiled, his hand still resting on one of the raised images. “This is why I had so much trouble with the Ndege totem poles. There were always embedded elements that didn’t make sense. Now I see why.”
Matt pointed to a rounded female figure and turned, his eyes shining. “The Valdavian Venus.”
He stepped back to take in more of the carvings, and bumped into Megan. She grabbed his arm. “It’s beautiful, but Valdavian? That predates Incan and Aztec, by …”
He nodded. “By thousands of years, according to archeological records. People have been in South America for over fifteen thousand years. They were mostly small tribes, such as the El Inga, the Chivateros, and the El Abra, but the first real empire, the first great nation, was the Valdavians, about 3500 BC.” He pointed to the rounded figure. “I give you their queen – Valdavia.”
He opened his arms wide. “This writing … these messages, they start as Valdavian, then change – they seem to have been embellished by a dozen different cultures and writing styles.” He moved from place to place, tapping different glyphs, symbols, and images, and naming each. “Aymara, Cajamarca, Paltas, Camanas, Aztec, Inca, and so many more.” He snorted. “It seems this place was only ever hidden from us.”
He rested his hand on a pictoglyph of an angry face, tongue lolling, with either vines or coiled snakes in its hair. “The royal seal of Atahualpa, last great Incan ruler, and his warning.” He laughed softly. “Basically, it says, ‘touch my shit and you die’.”
A screech from the darkness made Kurt swear and Joop drop his flashlight. Matt’s head snapped around so quickly he actually heard it crunch before the sting of pain flared in his vertebrae. “Ow … what the hell was that?”
Beams focussed along the walls, fixing on another passageway leading farther into the heart of the crater cliffs.
Megan’s voice was tight in the darkness. “I think … it was Steinberg’s bird.”
John grabbed Carla’s arm, guiding her flashlight beam back to the bones. “Joop, you did say these bones were old, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean something hasn’t taken up residence in here … and dragged the fresh ones away,” he responded.
Kurt snorted. “Fucking great – no weapons, no way out, and now we can’t even claim a single cave as our own.” He turned momentarily back to the entrance before swinging back to the dark interior. “We still need to take a look.”
Matt grinned. “Concern for the bird, or a bit of gold fever kicking in there, big fella?”
Kurt shrugged. “We still need to find a way out.” He raised an eyebrow. “But don’t forget, I’m out of a job now.”
He headed off into an antechamber, and the group followed, flashlights sweeping every corner of the narrowing tunnel. The walls now had a single glyph carved every few dozen feet – the seal of the Incan king, obliterating all words or messages that had gone before.
“Wow, these guys sure knew how to keep a secret. I bet they …” Megan’s mouth clamped shut. The next chamber in the cave was strewn with human skeletons. Each looked to have been dumped in the cavern, rather than carefully lain, as in a crypt.
The ground around the skeletons looked churned, as though it had been heavily raked by several sharp-pronged instruments. Matt walked in amongst the bones and knelt, lifting a crescent-shaped plate of gold on a heavy chain.
“Priests.”
“What were they doing in here?” Carla knelt beside one of the skulls.
John pulled some putrid rags from a carved alcove in the wall. “Maybe guarding this.” When the cloud of dust settled, the fantastical objects shone in the combined glare of their flashlights – delicate birds, chains of gold, exquisite statuettes, and tablets with ornate raised symbols.
Matt walked to the alcove. “The gold of the Incas, removed and hidden from the Spanish Gold Eaters. It was thought to have been lost, or just a legend, never to have existed at all.”
“They brought it here, and then died with their secret,” said Carla, lifting her light. “This place is huge – there must be mountains of the stuff.”
“That’s good … that’s very good.” Matt nodded, looking around the cave.
Megan muscled in beside him. “Now who’s got gold fever?”
Matt smiled. �
��No, no, don’t you see? If the gold rod you found weighed about ten pounds, then this stuff must weigh …”
“Tons,” Kurt finished.
“Exactly – and I can’t see how this number of men, or even ten times this number, could have brought that much gold in through the pond. There was no technology then to float, winch, or drag it, so …”
Carla turned. “So, there must be another way in … and out.”
“Exactly,” Matt said.
“Really? Then why are they still here?” Megan asked.
John had been kneeling by one of the skulls. He spoke without turning away from the bones. “Maybe I can answer that.” He lifted the skull, staring into its hollow sockets. “I don’t think these chaps simply died of deprivation or exposure. I think they were killed.” He flipped the skull around, and then turned. “Does anyone have a spare flashlight?”
“I might.” Kurt rummaged in his pack. “Here we go.” He tossed a small light to the doctor, who switched it on and went back to his examination. “I thought so; the bodies, they’ve been scored. See here at the base of this skull, I can just see a pre-mortem grinding or scraping, as if something sharp came together.” He carefully held the flashlight and brought his finger and thumb together, pincer-like.
He glanced up at the motionless group before shining his flashlight along the floor. “See here – strange, the patterning, looks like tire tracks.” He shrugged. “Hey, maybe it was just Steinberg’s prehistoric bird wandering about.”
Matt turned. The tracks John referred to were especially pronounced at the edges of the cave, the two-foot-wide tread-like pattern seeming to move around aimlessly.
“Hmm, maybe something the priests brought with them, like a wheelbarrow device for the gold.” Carla was examining the ground at her feet.
Matt shook his head slightly. “Unlikely. The new world civilizations never invented the wheel, so a wheelbarrow is out of the equation.”
Carla looked up. “Well, it looks sort of mechanical … and I doubt they carried that gold by hand.”
“Maybe.” John placed a couple of fingers into the tracks, measuring them.
The group stared down at the strange markings. Now that they’d been pointed out by the doctor, it was obvious that they were everywhere.
Matt broke the silence. “Whatever happened here occurred centuries ago.” He looked around uneasily, trying to convince himself as much as the group.
“Maybe something followed them in – then left after …” Carla motioned to the skull in John’s hand.
“Didn’t see these tracks near the entrance.” Kurt spoke over his shoulder as he sorted through the piles of golden objects. “Doesn’t matter. As Matt said, the party’s been over for hundreds of years.” He lifted the pieces, replacing some and selecting others to keep, dropping them into his sagging pack. He half turned. “You know, if we can keep this secret, we can all be as rich as kings – as old Atta-palpa himself. Whatever happened to him, anyway?” He winked and went back to his sorting.
Matt grunted. “Atahualpa, the last great king of the Incas – he was choked, beheaded, and burned by the Spanish after a mock trial. They said he was planning a rebellion, but in reality he was tortured and killed because he wouldn’t tell them where he had hidden the last Incan treasure.” Matt paused, raising his voice. “Oh, and by the way, if we don’t escape, I guarantee it’ll be our little secret too, Kurt.”
Megan shook her head. “It belongs to the Brazilian government, and I’m betting there’ll be claims from a number of other South American countries, too.”
“Hey, I won’t tell if you won’t,” Kurt grinned.
“Too late, someone already knows.” Matt raised his flashlight to the wall. A face like a devil, twisted in Incan fury, stared down at Kurt with a malevolence that matched the words inscribed below it. Matt spoke the warning. “Those who would seek the possessions of the mighty Incan people shall be torn asunder in this world, and in the underworld for eternity.”
“Okay, standard curse then.” Kurt pulled a face, and continued to arrange the pieces of gold into his own personal size and weight category. He paused. “Wanna hear a real curse? Try and grab a taxi when you’re in a hurry in New York. Now that’s a freakin’ curse.” He laughed and went back to his task.
Carla shone her light farther down one of the passages. “Well, we’re here, so we might as well have a good look around, and see if there’s any other way out.”
“If there is, it must be sealed. Otherwise we’d have had more species interaction between inside and out,” Joop said.
Carla nodded. “Sure, but still, let’s have a look.” She motioned with her flashlight beam. “Through there.” This time she led, and John took a few long strides to catch up with her. Matt, Megan, and Joop followed.
Matt paused, letting the others get ahead. He waited for the guide. “Come on.”
Kurt knelt, shutting his pack and hoisting it onto his back. He got slowly to his feet, the straps cutting deeply into his broad shoulders. The big man grimaced.
“You okay?” Matt asked, as Kurt walked carefully toward him.
“I got this,” he said, giving him a strained grin.
That’s determination, Matt thought as he stepped aside for him.
They continued on for another twenty minutes, just the sounds of their own breathing and shuffling in the enclosed space. The earthen floor of the tunnel was still strewn with dark bones. Looking up over their heads, Matt could see that the tunnel they were in was a jagged, torn pipe, around fifteen feet in diameter.
Joop noticed him looking. “It’s not a lava tube; not in a crater wall, anyway. More likely a result of seismic activity. South America is quite active – close to the circum-Pacific belt.”
Matt nodded. “I think I’ve heard of that. Any activity recently?”
“Unfortunately, yes. In 2010, an earthquake in Chile killed over five hundred people and is still regarded as the sixth-largest earthquake of all time.” Joop looked up at the ancient rips and tears in the rock. “That’s probably what happened here at some time in the distant past.”
After several more minutes, the walls started to glisten with moisture, and the tunnel was beginning to develop a noticeable slope.
“We must be below ground now.” Carla shone her flashlight on the wet wall. “Could be leakage from the pool we came through.”
“And it’s getting humid.” Megan wiped her brow. “I thought it was supposed to be cooler below ground.”
Matt reached out to touch the wall. “The stone is warm.” He wiped his hand. “It usually is cooler below ground. Joop and I were just talking about it. We’re right over where the South American tectonic plates are grinding up against each other. With that amount of friction and pressure, we’re probably experiencing some geothermic residue. This place is still geologically very active.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t decide to erupt,” Megan said.
Joop grunted. “It doesn’t need to do that to cause problems – just a tiny tremor could shake loose the water behind these walls, or allow a vent of lava to shoot to the surface, or simply close the passage while we’re in it.”
Megan turned to shine her light on his face. “Thanks, I feel much better now.”
Matt spoke from behind her. “You could always wait for us outside – just yell out if anything with more than two eyes decides to pay us a visit.”
The tunnel dropped another few dozen feet, then opened onto a broad, flat-floored chamber, once again piled with treasure – chairs of gold, birds, and a type of striped deer, the bands on its back filled with smoky jade. A jaguar with emerald eyes so green they seemed to blaze with life. Other small pieces were embedded with garnet and emeralds the size of a man’s thumb.
Kurt rushed forward, emptied his sagging pack, and began selecting gem-encrusted items to replace his less interesting pieces. Matt noticed that there were more bones in amongst the gold, and more of the strange Incan tire tracks.
“Look.” On some of the less-churned areas of the chamber floor, a new set of tracks could be seen. Matt recognized them as those of a small-clawed biped – an avian biped. They led into one of the smaller side chambers, and seemed to indicate that the bird was moving quickly.
“Seems to be following the other tracks,” Megan said.
“Hmm, really?” said John.
Matt barely heard the doctor; he was drawn to the far end of the cave. The jagged rock was smoother here – not naturally; it had been carved flat. There were pictoglyphs; another message – one he had read before. But this wasn’t in the language of the Ndege – it was ancient Incan.
“Let not the unclean pass back to the land of man.” He looked at Carla, the words now having obvious meaning.
“They knew. Even then, they knew. They probably had no idea about the mite, but they knew something in here was causing the horrific effects on their skin. The priests knew they needed to bathe in the pond before heading home.”
“It was a pretty effective curse.” Megan got down low to the ground and peered into one of the smaller side tunnels. “Well, it seems this is as far as we go. Not sure anyone could bring anything large through one of these.” She played her flashlight around inside.
“No.” Matt kept looking at the flat wall, rereading the glyphs, frowning in concentration as his gaze moved along the smooth surface, and then the edges. “No, no, they left through here.”
The team fell silent, their attention firmly on Matt, as he placed a hand on the smooth surface. “This is not a blank wall. Many of the early South American cultures were master stonemasons. And one thing they did well was … pivot stones.” He placed both hands against the warm stone and pushed.
Nothing happened. He moved along the ten-foot section, continuing to examine its edges, looking for clues to the direct point on which the massive stone would twist or flip. He looked over his shoulder at Joop. “Give me a hand here.”
