by J; P Voelkel
He ran upstairs, taking care not to step on the small lizard that basked on the landing halfway up. The door of his room was closed and, from inside, he could hear the throb of a vacuum cleaner.
Ha! He had Zia cornered. She’d have to answer his questions this time.
“Zia!” he cried, flinging open the door. “I need to ask you—”
Max stopped dead. He had never seen his room this tidy. His new bed had already been delivered and was made up with plump pillows and his old Red Sox comforter. His gleaming machete hung back on the wall. There was no sign that the putative massacre had ever taken place. Zia had even sorted all his video games and CDs and stacked them alphabetically. For the first time in living history, there was not one crusty sock under Max’s bed or one old gum wrapper on the floor.
Best of all, there was the pile of Maya books prominently displayed on his desk. Luckily for Max, the linguistically challenged housekeeper had obviously not understood the instruction to get rid of them.
Zia switched off the vacuum and turned to look at him.
This in itself was an unusual occurrence. Zia usually shuffled around, head down, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. She was always sniffing and wiping away tears—due, his mother said, to a dust-mite allergy.
Then something extraordinary happened: Zia smiled at him.
He had never, ever seen her smile before. She held out her arms to indicate the newly clean room, her long black braid swinging behind her.
“It looks great!” said Max. “Thank you!”
Zia beamed.
Perhaps he could take advantage of her good mood.
“Zia,” he said, “remember when you gave me that ticket to San Xavier? You said they wanted me to go there. Who were they? Who told you to buy the ticket? Who paid for it?”
Still smiling, Zia unplugged the vacuum cleaner and carried it out of the room.
It was as if she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. He knew her English wasn’t great, but she must have understood something. To give no reaction at all was just weird.
Not for the first time, Max wondered if Zia was a bit simple.
Well, if she wouldn’t help him, he still had work to do. The encroaching rainforest outside his door told him that the Death Lords were on their way. If he was going to play them at their own game, he needed to learn as much as he could about their world.
With the new album from his favorite band, the Plague Rats, playing on his laptop, he checked the room for snakes, selected the thickest book on the Maya, and stretched out on his new bed.
It was comfortable.
Had they gone for the memory foam? He couldn’t remember. He burrowed deeper into the welcoming folds of bedding and soon fell asleep.
He slept all afternoon.
When he opened his eyes, his room was dark.
He heard a voice—two voices—calling his name.
His parents were home.
He just had time to leap off the bed, grab all the Maya books and hide them in his closet, and throw himself innocently back onto the bed, before they walked into his room.
Their faces reminded Max of people on a home-makeover show who’ve just had their blindfolds removed. They oohed and aahed over every detail.
“I hope you’ll keep it this way,” said his mother. She was wearing her flowery apron, Max noted. She must have put it on as soon as she came home.
“No more machetes at midnight,” added his father.
They both chuckled.
Max looked from one to the other in disbelief.
“That’s it?” he said. “You’re going to make a joke out of it and pretend everything’s back to normal?”
His mother nodded happily.
“I wish it wasn’t happening, too, Mom, but we can’t just ignore it.”
“Ignore what?” replied his mother.
“Oh, come on!” erupted Max. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice all the vines and butterflies on your way upstairs? This house is turning into a rainforest!”
His mother’s bright smile faded.
“Don’t exaggerate, Max,” said his father.
A toucan flew into the room and circled it, looking for food. Finding nothing, it croaked in protest and flew out again.
Max’s mother stifled a sob.
“Now, now, Carla,” said his father. “We’re in a trough of low pressure. I’ll buy a dehumidifier tomorrow.”
“That’s not the answer—” began Max, but his father hadn’t finished.
“While I’m at the store,” he continued, “why don’t I get one of those big-screen TVs? If it’s going to rain all summer, Max could teach me to play his video games. What was that one you’ve been wanting—Hellhounds 3-D, wasn’t it?”
Max shuddered. Since he’d crashed Ah Pukuh’s party in the Black Pyramid and the host had set actual hellhounds on him, he’d lost interest in that particular game.
“It’s only raining on our house,” Max pointed out. “I don’t understand why you’re both in denial. I know it must have been horrible in Xibalba, but you can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I made a deal with the Lords of Death to get you out. I did it for you! And now I need your help. The house is turning into a rainforest because they’re coming to claim whatever it is they want in return. They’re evil and vicious and untrustworthy. Lola said they’ll stop at nothing to get what they want. You’ve got to help me!”
Max’s parents looked uncomfortable but said nothing.
There was a faint clatter of saucepans downstairs, and a musty aroma, like boiling dishcloths, wafted up from the kitchen.
“Mmm,” said Max’s father, grateful for the distraction, “something smells good. What gastronomic delights are you cooking up for us tonight, Carla?”
Max’s mother smiled, her happy-housewife persona restored. “Zia is teaching me to make something special. I should go down—ciao, boys!”
When she’d gone, Max’s father sat down on the bed.
“Go easy on your mother, Max,” he said. “She’s taking this very hard. She’s convinced we suffered some sort of mass hallucination in San Xavier. She just wants to forget about it. She hates it when you talk about the Lords of Death.”
“But I owe them. I wish I didn’t, but I do. And if I don’t pay them back, they’ll drag you and Mom back to Xibalba. Do you believe me?”
“Suppose I did believe you. What then?”
A tapping at the window made them jump.
They turned to see a green macaw rapping at the glass with its beak, as if asking to come in. Behind, in the dripping backyard, a strangler fig was squeezing the life out of an apple tree.
“Chan Kan said the legions of hell are coming for me,” said Max. “He said that me and Lola—”
“Lola and I,” his father corrected him.
“—that Lola and I must work side by side, like the Hero Twins, to outwit the Lords of Death because the fate of the world is in our hands.”
“You must admit,” said his father, “it sounds a little far-fetched.”
“But the Internet’s obsessed with the Maya calendar and the end of the world. Search it, Dad, and you’ll see. There must be a gazillion Web sites. You can’t tell me that something isn’t going to happen.”
Max’s father shook his head. “How many times have I told you not to believe everything you read on the Internet? It’s all media hype. The End of the World Club, I call it. People trying to make money off other people’s fears. People who say that the end of the world is inevitable while they pump their big cars full of gas and eat three times their own body weight in junk food.”
“But there’s a rainforest in our house.…”
“Between you and me, son, I agree that things are a little strange around here. But whatever else is going on, the Maya did not predict the end of the world. Dead ends are not their style. They believed in recurring cycles.”
Max groaned. “That’s what I’m trapped in—a recurring cycle of doom.”
“It’s
called being a teenager.”
“That’s not funny, Dad. Most teenagers don’t have the ancient Maya Lords of Death on their backs.”
“And neither do you. Whatever happened in San Xavier is over now. To say that some allegorical characters from an ancient myth can turn up in Massachusetts is as ridiculous as saying that the Maya calendar predicted the end of the world.”
“But what about the rain? The vines? The bugs?”
“There must be a rational explanation. I’ll call someone to take a look at it.” He patted Max’s shoulder. “Now let’s go downstairs and see what your mother’s cooking up.”
The answer, it turned out, was tamales.
Hundreds of them.
Tamales on every kitchen counter, on every shelf in the refrigerator.
Max used to hate these greasy little corn dumplings steamed in corn husks, but since his stay in San Xavier (where tamales were pretty much the national dish), he’d learned not to be so picky.
“Why so many?” asked his father cautiously. “Are we expecting company?”
Carla laughed. “I think Zia is expecting someone.”
Max and his father looked at Zia, who was humming to herself as she scraped another termite nest off the back door.
You’d think a housekeeper would freak out over the current conditions, but Zia had never seemed happier.
Definitely insane, thought Max.
Chapter Two
UNREALITY TV
More volume, Dad!”
Frank Murphy jabbed happily at the remote. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he marveled. “The picture’s so lifelike. What did the salesman say it had again?”
“Orbital pixels,” said Max, staring straight ahead at the giant screen.
“Cool,” said his father.
Max shot him a sideways glance.
Cool? Since when did his ginger-bearded, shorts-wearing, archaeologist father start talking like that? He’d probably been watching too much TV.
They’d both been watching too much TV.
They’d been sitting there for hours, transfixed, hypnotized, watching anything and everything, ever since they’d brought home the new flat-screen beauty that afternoon.
The TV was like an anesthetic, numbing Max’s brain, stopping him from thinking. And frankly, it was a relief. He’d had enough of worrying about the Death Lords. All he wanted to know now was who would win the cooking challenge in Las Vegas.
His mother’s pleas to switch the TV off during dinner had gone unheard. His father had insisted on eating in front of it and made his wife cry by refusing her homemade pasta in favor of hot dogs and popcorn.
Now, Max noted guiltily, there was ketchup on the sofa and popcorn all over the floor.
Carla stuck her head around the living-room door.
“Good night,” she said frostily.
No answer.
She stalked into the room, took the remote control out of her husband’s hands, and turned off the TV.
The room seemed cold and empty without it.
“I said good night,” she repeated. “It’s getting late.”
“Just one more show,” begged Max. He clasped his hands together in supplication and gave her his sweetest smile.
She sighed. “At least, if you’re watching TV, you’re not reading about the Maya. One more show, bambino, then straight to bed. And no horror movies.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Frank Murphy looked at his wife hopefully.
“Not you,” she said, pulling him up off the sofa and pushing him out the door. “You have work tomorrow.”
“Good night,” Max called after them.
As he looked around for the remote, he heard the rain start again outside and went to close the window. In the darkness of the yard, an owl hooted, and somewhere thunder roared like a distant troop of howler monkeys.
For a moment, he had the strangest feeling that he was being watched. The hairs on his neck stood on end. If he turned around, would the Death Lords be standing behind him?
Were they here, in this room, right now?
Was this the moment he’d been dreading?
He took a deep breath and, tingling with fear, slowly looked behind him.
No one.
Just his mother’s collection of Maya figurines, lined up on the edges of their shelves, as if they’d shuffled out front and center to watch the new TV.
Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw a movement, a blur of white.
He spun around again.
It was a column of leaf-cutter ants carrying popcorn instead of leaves. Max watched them march their booty out to the hallway, where the new humidifier hummed bravely. Judging from the vine tendrils that snaked under the door and the tawny moths as big as Max’s hands that danced around the lamp, the machine was not yet winning its battle against the encroaching rainforest.
Max found the remote and clicked the TV back on.
It was a news bulletin.
“Good news for chocolate lovers,” the announcer was saying, “as growers in Central America report a record harvest of cocoa beans.…”
Max clicked through the channels.
Showbiz: “And now we preview With All My Heart, a zany blockbuster about human sacrifice.…”
Cooking: “For an easy supper, fillet your iguana, marinate in honey, and grill until crispy.…”
Sports: “You’re joining us live for tonight’s pitz match. For viewers not familiar with pitz, otherwise known as the Mesoamerican ballgame, it was the first team sport in history.…”
Nature: “The jaguar, lord of the Maya jungle, is a solitary animal, who hunts at night.…”
Shopping: “And here’s the perfect gift for all ages—a Make Your Own Chewing Gum kit containing real rainforest chicle from the sapodilla tree.…”
Makeovers: “So, Jessica, don’t you just love your new facial tattoos …?”
Cartoons: “Mwahahahaha,” laughed the obese, bulgy-eyed villain as two small children, a red-haired boy and a black-haired girl, were thrown to a pack of razor-toothed, salivating hounds.…
Max quickly clicked to the next channel.
A talk show.
A weird talk show.
The studio audience was applauding wildly as the house band, dressed as skeletons and bizarre half-animal, half-human monsters, played bongo drums and long wooden trumpets.
A cheery announcer’s voice declaimed off-screen: “And now, here he is, the one you’ve been waiting for …”
The screen went blank, the lights went off, and a warm, damp wind blew through the room.
Something with sharp claws and a scaly tail ran over Max’s bare foot.
He drew his legs up under him.
This was feeling very wrong.
He jabbed at the remote, but the TV was dead.
Calm down, it’s just a power outage, he told himself.
The high-pitched hum of the humidifier outside in the hallway, now buzzing furiously like a swarm of insects before a storm, told him it was not a power outage.
He knew what it was.
He knew there was someone in the room with him.
And he wanted to be anywhere but here.
There was a torturous sound, like nails scratching on chalkboard, coming from inside the TV. Then a crash of lightning split the screen and thunder boomed so loud, Max thought it might blow the speakers.
He considered making a run for it, but suddenly the distance between the sofa and the door seemed as wide as the endless rainforest.
A cold yellow fog poured out of the TV and rolled across the floor, filling the room with the sulfurous odor of decay.
A massive winged figure was rising out of the smoke, its vicious curved talons reaching for Max like a raptor seizing its prey.
Max pushed himself back into the sofa, shielding his head with a pillow. He closed his eyes tight.
He vowed never to open them again.
He heard a rustling noise, followed by a rasping, like a cat trying t
o spit up a hair ball or—Max’s stomach did a double flip—like an owl about to regurgitate a pellet of bones and fur.
He opened one eye.
Through the darkness, he looked into two unblinking round yellow orbs.
“Lord Muan?” he whispered.
Lord Muan was the messenger of the Death Lords. He had the head of an owl and the body of an old man. It was with Lord Muan on the Black Pyramid that Max had negotiated the release of his parents in return for, well, whatever the Death Lords wanted. At the time his plan had been to promise them anything and worry about it later.
His vicious curved talons reached for Max like a raptor seizing its prey.
Now later had arrived.
The Death Lords had sent their messenger to claim the prize.
And if what they wanted was his still-beating heart, he would have to give it to them.
“Muan’s gone,” said a voice. “I’m in charge of communications now. We’re sharpening up our image, ready for the new bak’tun. Muan was old-school with his endless hooting. Focus groups tell us they want today’s messengers from Xibalba to be ‘less long-winded, more service-oriented, and more ruthlessly efficient.’ ”
As this messenger stepped out from the shadows, Max saw he was much younger than Lord Muan. His owl face was less round and more rapacious. His winged cape was glossy brown where Muan’s had been silver. He wore a short feathered tunic. His human arms and legs were muscular, and on his feet he wore boots made of sewn-together rat pelts and laced with long rat tails.
“I am Lord Kuy. Shall we get down to business?”
Max nodded.
“Massimo Francis Sylvanus Murphy,” proclaimed Lord Kuy. “I come from their malevolent majesties, One Death, Seven Death, Blood Gatherer, Wing, Packstrap, Bone Scepter, Skull Scepter, Scab Stripper, and their heinous highnesses, the Demons of Woe, Pus, Jaundice, and Filth, to tell you it’s payback time.”
The smell of half-digested rodent on the owl-man’s breath almost made Max gag. “What do they want from me?” he whispered.
“First, let us recap; what do you want from them?”
“I want my parents to be permanently released from Xibalba … and Hermanjilio and Lucky Jim, too … and me. I want to be free again.”
