The Hauntings of Scott Remington

by Robert B Marcus Jr

  It was clear that Bobbie was right. The rhododendron had been a warning. But who was after me? Who had tried to kill me? Obviously, the thugs were partially the mechanism, but who was giving them orders? I suspected it was Eve’s mother, but I somehow knew it was more complicated than that.

  As we ate dessert, I found a whirlpool of confusion in my mind. I chatted vacantly with Bobbie and her husband, wanting to talk to Eve, or even Carolyn. But they were on the other side of the table, and I didn’t want everyone else hearing our conversation.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In the night, dreams came again.

  I was seated on a rock. In front of me was a stone wall that surrounded a large stone platform upon which rested a dome-topped building. The wall was about ten feet high. I had a small flint chisel in my left hand, a large flint rock that I was using for a hammer in the other. I was inscribing something on the stone.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. Somehow, I’d known she’d show up.

  “Finishing my carving,” I replied without turning around.

  “Are you putting my name on the block?” she asked. “Or at least the name of my family?” She belonged to the Xiu family out of nearby Uxmal. My wife’s family, the Cocoms, had come primarily from Chichén Itzá, descendants of the divine king, Kukulkan.

  “Why should I?” I asked, continuing to chisel.

  “I was to be your wife. My father arranged it through our atanzahab. How could you forget me so fast?”

  “You weren’t my choice,” I said. “I am married to Ichika, the woman I love.” I felt her lean over my back to see what I was inscribing.

  “So, you are carving the name of that evil daughter you think is yours,” she said. “How do you know?”

  “She is mine,” I said.

  “Your woman has had many men, not just you. That daughter could belong to any of them, maybe even one of her Cocom brothers.”

  Closing my eyes, I remembered the day my daughter was born. Her little glistening eyes stared at me as if she recognized me. I was just an insignificant person, not a member of a prominent family such as the Cocoms or the Xiu. But she looked like me when she was born. She had to be mine.

  “Your family will destroy us,” I said loudly, still facing the stone, not her.

  “We will someday kill all the Cocoms,” she said. “Though you won’t last long enough for that to matter. You’re not even a Cocom. You’re not important.”

  A sudden pain flashed in my back and I could no longer move my legs. I fell over and saw her.

  Again.

  Her face was twisted in anger and determination.

  Now it was another day. I wasn’t sure where I was.

  I was lying on my back, but I couldn’t move. I stared up—at a ceiling. It looked familiar. My head wouldn’t turn. And I couldn’t feel anything. I seemed to be lying in complete darkness, though I could see the ceiling. It was a strange feeling, as though I was in eternal darkness, except for the glimpse of ceiling, focused more in my mind than in my eyes.

  Then I recognized it as the ceiling in my house. I had drawn a picture of my daughter in the middle. It wasn’t very good, of course; only I would ever realize that the drawing was my daughter. I could cut exquisite carvings into stone, but I couldn’t draw a straight line.

  I stared for a while, wishing I could move, listening as footsteps approached, gentle as raindrops.

  “Make him better,” I heard my daughter say.

  “We cannot,” said Ichika. “He has moved on to the Otherworld. But we will keep him as close to us as possible, and his spirit will hear us. We can love him, even though we can never talk to him again.”

  I was dead!

  I remembered pain from the knife that she had thrust into my back

  I was back in my house, lying dead on the floor. In the Mayan custom, I would be buried under the floor of my own house.

  My thoughts drifted for a while, but the gods had acted, and I would move on. To another life? I didn’t know.

  But unless I was reborn, I would lie under this floor forever.

  I heard scrapings beside me.

  They were digging my grave! Fear seized me, but I could do nothing.

  After an unknown length of time passed, I was rolled over, wrapped in a rough cloth, lifted gently, and lowered into the hole beside me.

  I heard and felt dirt being thrown slowly onto my body. But even when my face was covered, I wasn’t short of breath. Obviously, I wasn’t breathing.

  Now it was truly dark. I was completely covered with dirt. I could hear nothing, feel nothing. I lay there for an unknown time, then eased into a deeper darkness, beyond oblivion.

  I awoke sweating and screaming, trying to fling dirt off of me. I was back on the ship. I knew that. But where? I wasn’t in my bed.

  Memories attacked me. I could feel the knife again that she had jabbed into my back.

  Where had I been? The dreams were becoming more intense, more difficult to recover from.

  I glanced around and found myself lying in a rectangular flower bed, dirt all over me. I had apparently been deeper, but had thrashed my way out from where I had been buried.

  I crawled out of the flower bed, shaking off dirt like a dog shaking off water. Where was I?

  The only flower bed I’d seen on the ship was on the top deck, near one of the pools.

  A quick walk to my left confirmed my location.

  Since no one else was around at three in the morning, I took the elevator down to my floor and entered my room, almost expecting it to be trashed again.

  But it was not. Still, I was leaving a trail of dirt behind me, so I opened the balcony doors, dumped my clothes on the deck, and took a long shower, then put on my pajamas and went over to my computer. I looked up old Mayan cities in Yucatán. Chichén Itzá was of course the most famous, but there were plenty of others. Uxmal, Tulum, Mayapán—that was the one that had stirred a feeling of anxiety in me! I stared at the picture of the old temple at Mayapán and the ruins of the surrounding buildings, particularly one very familiar wall, then pulled up the ship’s website and bought a ticket to the tour of Mayapán later that day.

  It was four am. A little overwhelmed by everything, I crawled back into bed but was afraid to sleep. Almost every time I did, a horrible dream assaulted me, digging deep into my brain, then lingering afterward in my subconscious, haunting me with some kind of evil aggression. And now I was apparently sleepwalking! How else could I have ended up in the flower bed at the top of the ship?

  But finally, absolute exhaustion conquered me, and I passed out.

  I was standing in a throng of warriors and priests on the colonnaded center of our city, near the domed building. My mother stood next to me, old and withered, though she had barely reached two katuns in age. My father had been killed in a battle during the last winter season, so there were only the two of us.

  A stern priest stood across from us, beside the most decorated column, the one giving allegiance to the Xiu family, which had recently invaded us from the city of Uxmal.

  “He is your atanzahab, who will pick your bride,” said the priest. It was near the time for me to settle down and become a father, but first I had to be given a wife. It was not my choice. My family picked an atanzahab, an elder who took that responsibility. He would meet with other families of our ranking and join with them to find me a bride. I was nervous about the whole ritual. I had friends who’d had wives chosen for them, only to hate them and not be happy at all.

  “You are lucky, my boy.” The atanzahab spoke gruffly.

  “Your family are only jaguars,” he went on,
“not the lowest, but far from the most esteemed in our city. But many men and boys were killed last winter in our war, so young men your age are not common. I have found you a daughter of the Xiu, named Raxka, just come from Uxmal. She is a cousin of the great one there, so you should be proud to take her as your wife. It is now time for you to meet her.”

  He turned and waved to a man across the room dressed like himself. Both wore lavish outfits with large feathered headdresses, jade jewelry, and clothing made from the skin of a jaguar. The second man motioned, and the crowd parted to reveal a young woman in a white cotton dress, with golden feathers decorating the front of the garment. Her hair was dark but not black, and when she neared, I could see that her eyes were dark but not black as well. She stepped forward, haughty in her approach, not looking in my direction at all, as though I were not worth her time or effort. She had an expression of scorn on her face, as if I was the last person in the world she would like to meet, but she came to me. We took hands and pledged our devotion to be married in the summer.

  But I could tell that she was no more eager to say the words than was I.

  I met the bus at the end of the pier at seven-thirty, barely awake.

  Carolyn was not on the bus, but Eve and Eme were. None of her thugs were visible, probably because they had no idea I was going on the tour. Last night at dinner I’m sure they’d heard me say I would be staying on the ship today. The tour to Mayapán was not very well known, so only about twenty people were on the bus.

  The bus wandered through the Yucatán countryside, hemp farms and stubby forests as usual, with a mountain of unexplored ruins decorating a field every few miles. Very few of the Mayan sites had been reconstructed. Most buildings, even at more pursued sites like Chichén Itzá, remained nothing more than piles of stones and weeds.

  Mayapán was closer to Mérida than Chichén Itzá. It was less popular with tourists, so there was parking close to the middle of the complex, and tourists were still allowed to walk and climb on the ruins. Mayapán was a four-square-kilometer city surrounded by a stone fence over five miles long. After Chichén Itzá fell, Mayapán became the last great Mayan city in the northern highlands, still ruling Yucatán when the Spanish invaded, though even then it was fading. Chichén Itzá had been controlled by the Cocom family, while the Xiu family eventually took over Mayapán, maybe even slaughtering all the Cocoms who had moved there after Chichén Itzá fell.

  The minute we parked and left the bus, I spotted the Observatory across the central plaza and started walking in that direction. To my right was the Castillo, a smaller, less reconstructed version of the primary temple at Chichén Itzá, but it was also built under the direction of Kukulkan, the divine king who was also a Cocom family member who fled Chichén Itzá with many of his nobles after the city fell.

  To my surprise, Eve and Eme followed closely, but said nothing to me.

  Somehow, I instinctively knew where I wanted to go, though I had no idea why. I made my way to the base of the Observatory, turned left, and walked down to the end of the wall supporting the stone platform on which the building rested. I strode to the corner, which had of course been rebuilt, and bent down looking for a particular stone, a carving of the Rain God, Chaac. What had once been a tall pillar celebrating him was now just scattered blocks piled on the platform.

  The stone I wanted had been the second from the bottom, but I didn’t see it now.

  Beside the pillar honoring Chaac were a series of round pillars, much cruder in construction than the square, perfectly carved blocks highlighting Chaac. My memory was jumbled as to what I was really looking for. I jiggled the exact corner block in the third row up. It tumbled to the ground. I had to hurry before someone stopped me.

  Behind this large block was another row of stones, with Mayan glyphs carved into them. I quickly pulled out another block so that I could read the glyphs.

  “What are you doing?” Eme asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied.

  But I took out my smartphone, turned on the camera and the flash app, and took a picture of the glyphs.

  I turned to look at Eme. She was staring in amazement at the glyphs that spelled out a girl’s name, accompanied by a date. I turned back to look at the carvings. It made no sense, but I knew what they said, even though I couldn’t read a word of Mayan hieroglyphics.

  I knew, of course, because I remembered carving them.

  Over seven hundred years before.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The bus returned us to Progresso two hours before the ship left.

  Eme sat next to me, with her mother across the aisle.

  We stared together at the picture on my smartphone. “How could you know what it says?” Eme asked.

  “I have no idea,” I replied. “I’ve never studied Mayan glyphs, or even seen them before I came on this cruise.”

  “But you’re right about the translation,” she said. “My mother taught me how to read some of them. It is my name. But why would it be there? And how would you know it was there? And how could you know the date written there in the Mayan Long Count calendar?” She was incredibly smart for a ten-year-old.

  I stared at the date in the picture carved below her name on the stone.

  11.3.17.1.10.

  June 7, 1300 on the Gregorian calendar. But how did I know that?

  Looking past Eme over to Eve, I saw that there was anger in her eyes, as if I’d told Eme something she wasn’t supposed to know.

  “I feel as though I was there before, and the entire area was familiar to me. And if I’d never been there before, how would I know where to find the hidden glyphs?”

  “How can that be?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I had no answer for her, and Eve avoided my eyes when I glanced across the aisle.

  Doctor Winkles was in his office when I returned to the ship. He was reading a book by Sir John Stephens describing his explorations in the 1800s as he became the first foreigner to wander through Yucatán after the Spanish had gone. He’d come upon Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and most of the other large cities, including Mayapán.

  He put the book down as I entered, motioning me to a chair.

  “Did you solve your psychiatric problems?” he asked.

  “No, I’m worse off than ever.” I filled him in.

  “It sounds as though your dreams are taking you back further into the past,” he said.

  “But why?”

  “Well, why is the woman trying so hard to kill you in every life?”

  “And succeeding, I think.” I paused. “I have no idea. Do you think the dreams are real?”

  “You mean, are they buried memories, perhaps from previous lives?”

  “Based on my dreams, it would be many previous lives.”

  “What do you think?”

  My mind refused to delve into the problem, trying hard to ignore its very existence. I didn’t believe in life after death and certainly not reincarnation variants. But neither could I think of any other explanation for my dreams. “I don’t know, but it also seems as though she is trying to kill my daughter as well.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “No. But I feel like two different identities. In my previous lives, I seem to be a loving husband and father, with my wife and daughter the most important people in my life. In this life, I’m something else.”

  “I have a feeling you won’t disclose your present occupation.”

  “I’m retired.”

  “Before that?”

  I shook my head. “All I will say is that I didn’t save lives.”

  Winkles’ eyebrows popped up. “Are your dreams of be
ing a happy husband and father making you wish you had taken a different path in this life?”

  Thinking for minute, I wondered if he was right, but said nothing.

  “Do you wish Eme was your daughter? You seem to be developing a good rapport with her.” He paused. “I can’t give you a lot of advice,” he continued, “because I truly have no explanation for what is going on. But clearly your dreams are taking you backward in time to a point where it all began.”

  I knew he was right. Maybe I would reach the beginning, finally able to comprehend why she was always trying to kill me. But was she trying to kill Eme as well in every life? What about this one? Eme wasn’t my daughter now.

  But if I knew how it had all begun, could I stop it? How do you stop something that’s probably not real but merely a series of dreams?

  Deciding I needed some souvenirs—well, at least a T-shirt of Progresso—I left the ship and took the bus at the end of the pier to the Plaza Nuevo in Progresso, knowing I had to be back on board in about an hour. I explored the area, watching carefully for any companions. There were a few tourist shops, selling T-shirts and the colorful Mayan shirts and dresses, and a market selling food, but mostly the street was lined with restaurants. The people were poor, that was obvious. Someone came up to me every five feet trying to sell me something. I usually couldn’t understand their English well enough to know what they were selling, but I could swear a couple mentioned children. I continually said no and walked on, but eventually tired of the contact and went into a restaurant and sat down.

  I wasn’t alone for long.

  Within a minute, three of the Wicked Witch’s thugs wandered into the restaurant and sat down in the corner.

  I didn’t leave, though I probably should have.

  “Margarita?” the Mexican waiter asked.

  “No. Coke,” I replied.