The Shaman's Secret

by Natasha Narayan

  Waldo’s face flushed furiously. “Quiet!” he said. “Kit is better. We won’t listen to your filthy lies.”

  I wanted to tell Waldo to calm down, for I knew Baker was telling the truth. I was sick, dying. We had caught the same disease in the Himalayas. All three of us. Me, Kit Salter, and the twins Cecil and Cyril Baker. The brothers had drunk greedily from the sacred fountain in the mountain paradise of Shambala and it had turned to poison in their bodies. The water was a blessing for those who were ready for it, conferring immortality and eternal youth. For those who were not ready, it was a curse. Though I hadn’t drunk from the fountain, I too had become infected by the waters. I had breathed in tiny particles of moisture; I had ingested droplets of dew through my skin. Inside me there was a worm of disease. I was not as sick as the Bakers. But, make no mistake, I too was slowly decaying from the inside.

  The rot buried inside me had come to the surface in the temple in China when I had encountered the holy bones of the long-dead sage. The sacred Chinese bones and the Himalayan disease had fought for supremacy, each one claiming mastery of me, Kit Salter. They had clashed mightily inside my frail human body. I was not strong enough for this battle; the result of so much power churning inside me was that I had fallen into a deep coma—I slept unaware, for many months.

  Thankfully, the electricity had woken me from the coma. But the Himalayan bug still festered in me. I was living under a suspended sentence of death. I knew the truth of this. But, despite the fact they had seen me in a coma, my friends refused to accept it.

  “I ought to take you by the collar and throw you into the street,” Waldo said, jumping up and moving menacingly toward Cyril.

  “Bravo, Waldo,” Aunt Hilda said. “We aren’t afraid of you, Baker, or your thugs.”

  Cyril Baker cast a curious look at me, as if waiting for me to speak on his behalf. But I kept quiet.

  “Very well, I will not talk about your niece again,” he said to Aunt Hilda. “All I will say is that I see death plain and clear. It stalks me as I sleep. As I sit here. I know I will not live much longer. Weeks. Perhaps days. This knowledge has cleared my head.

  “I am a condemned man. I am going to hell where I—”

  “I’m not a vengeful person,” Rachel interrupted, “but for what you have done, hell seems pretty fair.”

  He looked her straight in the eye for a moment. “I don’t deny it. But—I am trying. I want to say sorry.”

  “Sorry!” Aunt Hilda said. “Easiest word in the language.”

  Baker rose from his armchair and stood before us. He was very thin, I could see. Such was his pallor that he looked closer to death than life. He had been ghastly-looking the very first time I had glimpsed him in London. But now he was for the grave, a walking ghost, despite his dyed black hair.

  “I come as you know from ordinary working stock. My father was a laborer, a simple country boy. He obtained a job in a great house as a footman. My brother, Cecil, and I sometimes used to sneak into the house. We weren’t let beyond the kitchen, but once, just once, we gave our father the slip and roamed about.

  “The Persian carpets, the crystal chandeliers, the shining mahogany tables, the oil paintings gleaming from the walls … Envy bloomed inside us, as well as determination. We made a vow. We would be rich.

  “We were clever boys, and moreover we dared to dream of a life beyond ‘our station.’ I don’t think we were bad when we began. But we were ruthless. And soon, yes, evil set into our hearts. I won’t bore you with how we made our fortune. There were crimes. We invested our profits in a little scheme to ship slaves from the Congo in Africa to the West Indies. That was very profitable, and soon we branched out—human flesh, opium, vice of all kinds. We were open-minded about our business opportunities. By the time we were forty Cecil and I were rich—fabulously, stinking rich.

  “But that was not enough for Cecil. He had to have more. We became great collectors. Financed expeditions around the whole empire searching for treasure. Ming vases, jade Buddhas, Tintoretto paintings. We might have been the greatest collectors in the history of the world. We weren’t bound by a single continent or style, you see. We became experts, seeking out the lovely and the rare from across the globe.”

  “This is making my stomach turn,” Aunt Hilda said. “What has all this to do with my niece Kit?”

  Baker held up a trembling hand. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? My brother is pursuing her. He wants her dead—no … worse.”

  Aunt Hilda ignored this threat to me. “Your boasting—”

  “I am not boasting, just explaining. If you don’t understand my brother—well, how can you hope to resist him? I said we were the greatest collectors the world had ever seen. That’s gone, at least for me. I’ve given it all away!”

  “What?”

  “It’s gone. All gone. My half, at least. Pearls, paintings, gold, bonds.”

  “All your money?” Aunt Hilda asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Where? Where’s it gone?”

  “Hospitals, orphanages, ragged schools. I’m a regular do-gooder now. I’ve set up a fund right here in Chinatown. I am trying to say sorry. I know I can never make it right, not with the wrong I’ve done. But, hell, I’m trying.”

  “You expect us to believe you?” Waldo asked.

  “I can take you to the orphanage right here in Chinatown—”

  “Your brother,” Rachel interrupted. “You said he hates the idea of giving your money away.”

  Baker sighed. “Cecil has always been the leader. From the time we were boys, he led and I followed. He’s a stubborn soul. And now, well … he knows we’re damned. The elixir of life didn’t save us, nor the Book of Bones. Nothing has saved us. But he won’t give it all away. He won’t say sorry. He won’t beg for forgiveness. Cecil Baker would ride up to the gates of hell and try to make a deal with the devil.”

  There was silence after this as we all thought of Cecil Baker and his twin, Cyril, the supposedly reformed man who sat in front of us. Had he really shaken off evil? Could a soul so steeped in wickedness really change? But it was something Cyril had said earlier that was bothering me.

  “Why does your brother want me?” I asked him.

  Rachel let out a gasp. Cyril looked at me for a moment then his eyes moved uneasily away. He couldn’t look at me. Couldn’t answer my question straight.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said into the silence. “You’re thinking this is some kind of trick. Believe me, my brother hasn’t spoken to me since the day I announced I was giving all my money away. We’ve been inseparable since we were in breeches. Now he will not see me, or read my letters. He considers me a traitor.

  “This morning someone tried to knife me. If Rumbelow hadn’t fought him off, I would be dead.”

  “I’m mighty sorry for your family problems, but I don’t see how it is any of our concern,” Waldo said.

  “Don’t you see? My problems matter more than anything to you. Specially to Kit,” Cyril replied.

  I didn’t say a word as my name came out of his mouth like a bullet. Again he was claiming that I was in danger, but again he was being purposely vague about exactly what the danger was.

  Waldo flinched. “I thought we’d agreed to keep Kit out of it.”

  “This concerns Kit. It is life and death to her. You see, I know what my brother is planning.”

  “I don’t buy this threat-to-Kit business … You have always been fascinated with Kit. Don’t know why,” Waldo said, with a quick glance at me. “This feels like one more ruse.” He got up and took a step toward the door. “Sir, it is time for us to leave.”

  “Stop!” Cyril yelled. “You must believe me. You must come with me to Arizona.”

  “Arizona?”

  “The Grand Canyon. It is where my brother plans the ceremony. I don’t know exactly what, but—”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” Waldo said, moving closer to the door. “We’re going.”

  “Kit, look
at your left arm.” Cyril stood up to bar his way. “The soft spot above your elbow.”

  I looked down and gasped. A mark had appeared on my arm. A pattern of blotches, like birth marks or beauty spots bleeding together. But this was no pretty thing. It was a snake. A black snake speckled with brown blotches was curling toward my forearm.

  As I looked at the cursed thing in horror, Mr. Baker lifted his arm. White gloves covered his hands up to his wrists. He rolled up his left shirtsleeve to the elbow and we all saw the vile thing.

  A black snake, the mirror image of the one on my own arm.

  Chapter Seven

  I looked from my snake brand to Cecil’s markings and my head exploded with pain. Flaring lights burst before my eyes. I screamed. Everyone turned to look at me. Through a white glare I saw my father stuttering and Aunt Hilda goggling at me, her jaw hanging open.

  “Pull yourself together, Kit,” she snapped finally.

  I could hardly speak, the pain in my head was so intense. My tongue felt bloated and stuck to the back of my throat.

  “Not feeling well. Going back … hotel. Lie down,” I managed.

  “I’ll go with you,” Rachel said.

  “No.”

  “I’ll go,” Waldo said. “She needs a man with her.”

  “I will accompany Kit home, no arguments,” my father said. “In fact, I think we should all leave right away.”

  “Please, don’t be alarmed. I felt it too when I saw the mark for the first time. Please, I can explain.” Cyril Baker bobbed up in front of the door, trying to hold us back. “I need to tell you about my brother’s plans. I need to tell you about the tablet.”

  My father’s face was unusually stern. He was desperate to be out of this luxurious little prison, desperate to have me back in safety. But Mr. Baker was equally desperate. Maniacally, he babbled on about conspiracy and treasure, while my father and friends tried to leave.

  I sat back and listened, though my mind was clouded by terror and I could not take my eyes from the snake on my arm. Why had I not seen it before? Had it just appeared? Was this ugly brand a symbol of my damnation?

  That was the most terrifying thing. I could not get the thought out of my mind that Mr. Baker and I bore the brand of the snake for the same reason. We both carried a cursed bug inside us. Was this now slithering out of our insides? Had it appeared on our skin to show our leprous condition to the world?

  It had to be. The snakes on our arms had to be linked to the canker in our souls, the disease eating at our guts. Why else would Cyril and I share the same brand? If that was the case, I was truly damned. The snake was the poison I had been infected with in the mountains of India, now made a horrible fleshy reality. I had strayed where I shouldn’t—been trapped by my curiosity time and again. True, I had become entangled in the Bakers’ foul web, but my own hot-headed pride had played its part in my doom.

  The snake was the sign of all this, branded on my own soft flesh.

  Back at the boarding house I slept for several hours and awoke feeling wearier than before. A glance at my arm told me that the snake had slept too—it hadn’t vanished as I’d hoped. I had a large window with a comfortable ledge on which to perch. Down below, a curious mixture of people paraded the streets of San Francisco. There were the fine ladies, wearing the latest fashions from New York and Paris, some with ridiculously large bustles, as if they had grown two bottoms. Then there were the toughs in red checked shirts, blue trousers tucked into their boots. Miners and cowboys mingled with the best of San Francisco high society. This was a true frontier town, the sort where anything goes.

  As I watched I tried to ignore the tension in my mind, which was building up to a screaming headache.

  Drearily I went over the conversation with Cyril. He had talked more after he’d shown us the brand of the snake on his arm. Everyone, my aunt and Waldo included, had grown quiet at the sight. Cyril had told us he believed that all the objects the Bakers had sought were linked in “lines of power.”

  There were five such objects the Bakers knew about, though they believed more were scattered around the world. The first one they had acquired and kept in their castle, an ancient Celtic amulet. But then I’d turned up on their trail and things had begun to go wrong. They’d been thwarted in their desire to seize the oldest book in the world, the Egyptian writing of Ptah Hotep. They had not managed to bring back a bottle of the elixir of life from the Himalayas. Finally, the bones of Bodhidharma from the caves above the Shaolin temple in China had eluded them.

  The Bakers believed that they had identified one last object. The most holy, ancient and powerful of them all. It was a marble tablet, inscribed with ancient hieroglyphs, eerie stick figures and writing, the meaning of which was lost in the mists of time. Some believed that this tablet was Anasazi, belonging to the “ancient ones,” a lost tribe who had lived in the desert of Arizona many thousands of years ago. The Hopi Indians, who were rumored to have the tablet, believed it had been given to them by their god when the tribe emerged from the womb of the world in the Grand Canyon.

  The Bakers had learned about the existence of this tablet from their network of informers. Cecil Baker had become obsessed. He wanted to know everything about it, so for years he had studied shamanism, the magical priestly rites of the Indians. For an outsider, he had becoming very powerful. So powerful that these days Cecil could walk barefoot over hot coals or lie naked on an iceberg. He was all but a shaman himself.

  Yet, despite all his mystical power, Cecil Baker was cursed. His magic was useless against the disease eating him from the inside, the brand of the snake on his arm. (Yes, like his brother and I, he was branded.) But he saw one way out. The Anasazi tablet. He believed that if he had the tablet he would be able to cheat the gates of hell. He would become immeasurably powerful. I asked many questions, but I wasn’t told exactly how this tablet would help Cecil trick his fate. But in some way, his brother was sure, Cecil believed this tablet would be his salvation.

  Cecil sought this relic in the Grand Canyon, a huge area of towering cliffs and gorges in the Arizona desert.

  His face contorting with desperation, Cyril Baker had told us he believed his brother had gone mad. He’d become obsessed, consumed by a lust for the tablet. He had hatched plans too dreadful even for his adoring twin to go along with. Cecil would use the tablet to make himself invincible—and into the bargain he would kill me.

  “Please, please believe me. We must stop my brother. We must find the tablet first or Cecil will be unstoppable,” Cyril had begged.

  “How?” we had asked. How could we find this legendary and fiercely guarded tablet in the Grand Canyon, a wilderness of cliffs? All Cyril had replied was that he had the same clues as his brother to its whereabouts. With our help, he could get there first.

  Now sitting at my bedroom window, with my head throbbing, I thought over Cyril’s story. On the face of it, there was no reason to trust him. He had always hated me. He had kidnapped me, shot at me, tricked me. I was supposed to believe in his sudden volte-face. Now he was acting as if all he wanted to do was save my life.

  Why were the Baker brothers so interested in me anyway? Right from the start of our involvement I had the impression they were focusing on me. This feeling was stronger than ever. Cyril had even hinted as much, saying his brother was fascinated by me. That he wanted me, Kit Salter, dead.

  Why me? I kept turning the question over in my mind. It had become a niggle, an itch that I had to scratch.

  Did we really have a chance to find the Anasazi tablet, with a madman after it?

  After I had turned our dilemma uselessly over in my head for some time, I went downstairs to the parlor. My friends, father and aunt were all there, arguing.

  Father wanted to stay here and rest. Waldo backed him up fiercely. He could not lead us into any more danger, he said. But the rest, including the cautious Rachel, surprisingly, argued that we had to find this thing lurking in the Grand Canyon. Rachel told me, in a private mo
ment, that she felt some terrible curse hanging over my head. Above all she wanted to “set me free.”

  In the end the argument was unresolved. Waldo, Isaac and Aunt Hilda were to set off once again, back to a slum area of the city. Mr. Baker had told them he would prove he’d become a different man. He was going to show them a couple of the charitable projects on which he had spent his dirty money. I wanted to go with them, but was ordered back to my room. For once I didn’t protest too much. Rachel was staying behind too. She was to be my jailor.

  So I went back to my room and lay down, while Rachel knitted in the corner. After a while, I slept. My dreams were full of twisting snakes: glistening black cobras, adders bright as blades of spring grass, pythons flickering toward me with their eyes glinting. Snakes, snakes and more snakes. I was stepping on a pile of them. A small grass snake detached itself from the heap and began crawling up my leg. “No!” I shouted in horror, backing away. But the thing was on me, wriggling wetly up my leg.

  I couldn’t shake it off.

  When I woke up, my hair was damp with sweat and the front of my blouse wet. Waldo was standing over me, his blond hair golden in the twilight.

  “Mr. Baker thinks we should move,” he said. “He thinks even another night here would be dangerous. He thinks his brother may know where we are.”

  I groaned. Waldo took a seat at the other end of the bedroom, as far away from me as possible. Rachel had vanished. Was it my imagination or had Waldo become distant since I’d recovered? He hardly ever looked me in the eye now. The ease in each other’s company, the fun we had teasing each other—that had gone.

  “Waldo,” I said, “have I done something to offend you?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “I don’t know. I think you’ve been … kind of … avoiding me.”

  Waldo flushed and looked down at his boots.

  “You get the funniest ideas,” he said, still not meeting my eye. He clearly didn’t want to talk about whatever it was that was bothering him. “Look, I want to talk about something real. This whole Baker thing—this Grand Canyon idea—it’s dangerous. Your father has asked me to have a serious talk with you.”