Blinking several times to clear her vision, Maria kept her eyes on Pete’s face, which looked about as pale as the mayor’s. “So-o-o, was it a d-date?” Pete stuttered.
“Huh?” asked Maria. “Oh, the other night. Dinner. Rod.” Only words tumbled from her mouth. Complete sentences were too hard to form. All of her energy was being poured into trying not to see the ghost of Mayor Hayward.
Pete stumbled on his words too. The body was affecting him as well. “Rod’s a p-playboy. Trust me. Every woman in town has a crush on him. My sister tells me everything. I’m just worried about you.” Talking seemed to help him get his composure back.
While Pete rambled about Rod Thorton’s many faults, several more ghosts appeared in the room. One brushed past Pete. Its mouth was open, as if in a constant state of screaming, but it had no tongue. It had been severed, just like the fingers of the ghost standing next to it.
Maria wanted to scream at them to leave her alone, but she knew Pete wouldn’t understand.
“You’re too good for Rod, anyway. He’s a lawyer and those people have such low morals,” Pete concluded.
On the opposite side of the ghosts with mangled bodies appeared Maria’s Aztec ghost. He stood aloof, watching her with a fierce gaze. She had to make them all go away. If Dr. Roberts thought talking to them would help, she was willing. She’d tried it once in the bathroom and it had seemed effective … kind of. The problem was Pete was here and he’d think she was crazy if she started talking to thin air. She’d have to make him think she was talking to him.
“Why did you come here?” Maria asked the Aztec ghost.
Pete, of course, thought the question was directed at him. “Because you asked me to. And it’s my job.”
The Aztec pointed at Maria with his finger. He had come to see her.
“There must be another reason you came?” As she spoke, Maria glanced from her Aztec ghost back to Pete. She couldn’t let Pete know she was talking to anyone else but him.
This time Maria’s ghost pointed at the mayor.
Pete exhaled slowly and inched away from the mayor’s body. “You’re right. I’m here for another reason. I might as well tell you now. Maria, I know we work together, but I don’t see that’s any reason to not get to know each other on a more … personal basis. I’d like to know who you are. What you like to do. I’ve been trying to make some time to see you, but you’ve not been free. I wanted to come here to ask if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight.”
Work together. Personal basis. Dinner. Maria only heard random phrases of what Pete was saying. Her attention was elsewhere. The other ghosts in the room had evaporated, leaving only the dead mayor, who still waved his hand back and forth, and the Aztec ghost. Oh, and Pete.
“What is your name? Your full name?” Again, she looked at Pete but tilted her head toward the ghost in his large, feathery headdress and loin cloth.
Bewildered, Pete peered at her. “What does that have to do with dinner?”
Moving next to Pete’s side, the Aztec ghost forced his mouth to open. A low, guttural sound came out that resembled more of a dying animal wail than a name.
“Peter Ester Richins.” Pete was clearly embarrassed.
“Could you say that again?” asked Maria.
This time the ghost forced his mouth to move with his fingers. It was as if he hadn’t spoken in hundreds of years. Maria listened closely and heard an “a,” as in apple, along with a “c” followed by something that sounded like “lawn.”
“If you think my name is funny just say so,” Pete fumed. “You don’t need to make me say it again. I was named after my grandmother because my mother never had a girl baby. If you have issues with it, blame her.” His face had been a rainbow of colors in the last few minutes. It had gone from gray, to white, to pink and now crimson red.
“Acalan?”
The ghost bobbed his head up and down.
Pete threw up his hands in frustration. “What is that supposed to mean? Is that some code word for dorky?”
“What?” For the first time in the last few minutes, Maria actually listened to Pete. “What’s dorky?”
“My name.” He looked livid. “You think my name is dorky.”
“Why is Pete dorky?”
At that moment, Dr. Butler entered the room, saving Maria from anymore of Pete’s drama. “Did you find it?”
Pete and Maria looked at each other, and then both answered together, “Find what?”
“On the body.” Dr. Butler motioned to the corpse. “Did you find the marking?”
Maria had completely forgotten that the coroner had asked them to do that. She reddened around the ears. “I … I kind of forgot.”
Shaking her head, Dr. Butler said, “Ah, well, it was difficult for me to see at first anyway. Here, let me point it out.” She scooted some of the mayor’s hair out of the way. Behind the man’s ear, next to his hairline, was a tattoo. It was small, and Maria could hardly make it out.
Dr. Butler pulled an object out of nearby drawer. “It’s really quite detailed if you look closely at it. Here.”
Maria took the magnifying glass the doctor offered and placed it next to the ink drawing.
Peter gasped. “Isn’t that—?”
Maria made her own quiet exclamation of surprise. “It is.”
On the mayor’s white, almost translucent skin was the picture the archaeologist Ryker Jephson had so meticulously explained to Maria and Pete in the cave. It was the drawing of a reptile with its mouth wide open, and next to it was a double circle with four holes and a plus sign in the middle.
There was no mistake. It was drawn onto the man’s skin clear as day.
Cave of Gold.
What the crafty Aztecs would do … is dig a tunnel leading to the treasure trove and then flood the entrance by damning a stream and creating a lake. And to make sure no one gave away the hiding place, everyone who’d had a hand in the project would be killed. Ergo, the ghosts that haunt the area.
–Range Magazine. “Montezuma’s Revenge” by Richard Menzies, Fall Issue 1998.
Chapter 23
MARIA’S FIRST ASSUMPTION WAS that whoever killed the mayor had branded him with the glyph, like serial killers do to their victims on police television dramas. While she supposed that did happen in real life on rare occasions, she’d never come across it before.
Dr. Butler’s next statement shattered that hypothesis. “It’s an old tattoo. He’s had it since he was a teenager. He got it before it was the ‘in’ thing to cover oneself with strange markings like they do nowadays. I must admit, if people had my job and saw what bodies looked like after the skin loses its elasticity, there would undoubtedly be fewer tattoos.”
Pete self-consciously rubbed the colorful picture of a rose he sported on his forearm.
“Why do you think it’s there?” Maria asked Dr. Butler.
“I have no idea. I was going to ask you the very same question,” answered Dr. Butler.
“I don’t have any idea.” Maria glanced at Pete. “I think I need another visit to the cave.”
*
Functioning completely on fumes, Maria hiked out to the cave, arriving there two hours after her visit to the coroner’s office. She needed answers about the mayor’s tattoo and about Acalan, the Aztec ghost she kept seeing. She hoped Ryker might shed some light on both subjects.
Unfortunately, he too was baffled by the tattoo on the back of the mayor’s neck. Maria had snapped a photograph of it to show him.
“So you’ve never heard of a group or guild or some kind of society with tattoos like that?” Maria asked.
The excavation crew had finished dinner and some, along with Ryker, were warming themselves around the campfire. Maria had laid her sleeping bag on the ground next to the blaze and was snuggled up inside of it.
“No,” said Ryker. “I haven’t, but I’m not as familiar with modern Indian lore as I should be. There is someone here, however, who might know more.” Ryker put both ha
nds around his mouth and shouted at a group playing cards by the electric lanterns. “Jim, can you come over here for a minute?”
Turning back to Maria, Ryker said, “Jim is a freelance consultant whom I often bring on digs like these. He has no degree in archaeology that I know of, but he’s an expert on Native Americans, both modern and historical. He’s saved my hide several times.”
Jim approached the fire, his hands shoved into his pockets, a beanie cap on his head, and hiking boots that looked so old they may have been ancient artifacts themselves. He was older than the other members of the crew. The wrinkle lines in Jim’s face were evidence he was pushing at least fifty.
“Hey, Jim,” said Ryker. “I was just telling my good friend Maria here about the time you saved me thousands of dollars.”
He shrugged. “You paid me to do it. I get a job done.”
“Thousands, huh? What happened?” The warmth from Maria’s sleeping bag soothed her tense muscles after the last hectic forty-eight hours.
“I was doing a project for the Arizona state government. They were building a power plant and had hired me to do an archaeological sweep of the land. They didn’t want to start building and then have to stop the project because of some unknown Native American burial ground they might disturb. That happens all the time in the four corners area. They were paying me a lot of money to ensure them the land had a clean bill of health, so to speak.”
Jim squatted down in front of the fire. His eyes were darker than even Maria’s, and his hair was jet black.
“I spent weeks scouring the site and didn’t find a single trace of Native American presence. I was about to give the contractor the go-ahead, when I had the thought to hire Jim to come out and confirm my conclusion. He came out and walked around with a handful of neon orange flags. The project site was big, fifteen acres or so. Every so often Jim would stick one of those flags in the ground and then keep on moving.”
Jim had little reaction to what Ryker was saying. Maria found the quiet man intriguing.
“He spent most of the day on site,” continued Ryker. “When he got back, he told me I should dig under the flags. I did as I was told. Sure enough, I found Native American remains under eleven of the fifteen flags he’d placed. It was unbelievable.”
During the entire story, Jim hadn’t moved a muscle. His eyes hadn’t even seemed to blink. There was a stillness to him that was disconcerting.
“How’d you do it?” asked Maria. “What’s your secret, Jim?”
“No secret.” Jim picked up a twig off the dirt and threw it into the fire. “I just know.”
Ryker handed Jim the picture of the mayor’s tattoo along with a flashlight so he could see it better. “Have you ever seen others with a tattoo like this?”
Jim studied it a minute. “The symbols are Aztec. But, I’ve never seen them used by Native Mob or any other Native American gang I know of. I can’t help you.”
“It’s okay.” Maria knew it had been a shot in the dark. “I figured it didn’t hurt to ask.” She was about to thank them and hole up in her sleeping bag when she realized this Jim fellow might know something about this Acalan ghost that kept visiting her. He did seem to know an awful lot. But to talk about it in front of Ryker was humiliating. Then again, this wasn’t about her former professor. This was about getting answers. For her and for Rod.
“Jim, have you seen any strange people around here? And by strange I mean they’re dressed like Aztecs and shimmer?”
Ryker laughed.
Jim didn’t.
“What if I told you I have a friend,” said Maria, “who says there are ghosts in this area and in the Three Lakes area as well. What would you tell him? That he’s crazy?”
“Not at all.” Jim kicked at the dirt. “The spirits of those with jobs still on earth often stay close to the place where they took their last breath.”
Ryker grew quiet.
“Is it possible one of these ghosts could actually have a name?” Maria knew she must sound insane to her former professor, but she didn’t care. This was for her. For Rod. And for the two Aztec ghosts that haunted them.
“A name like what?” Jim asked.
“Acalan.”
Jim scratched his head. “That is an Aztec name. It means canoe. It was quite popular—five hundred years ago.”
Maria had heard enough. Her decapitated ghosts may not be real, but she was realizing there was a strong possibility that Acalan was. Rod needed to talk to Jim. It’d probably go a long way toward helping Rod feel like he wasn’t completely crazy either.
“Hey,” Maria said, “if either of you guys are interested, I’m going to Three Lakes tomorrow with Rod Thorton. His uncle owns the place. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you came along. There’s supposed to be an Aztec water trap petroglyph nearby.”
“I’d love to come,” answered Ryker. “How about you, Jim?”
“Sure.” His face remained expressionless but not in a mean way. It was more matter-of-fact.
“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.
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.
Chapter 24
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.”
Robbed of Soul: Legends of Treasure Book 1 Page 18
