“Nina,” Sam conceded.
“Nina,” Purdue affirmed.
The next morning yielded a considerably calm ocean. It was shortly after 8 a.m. when Vincent appeared from the trawler’s cockpit after his morning checks. He found his partner, Dave Purdue, and Sam Cleave chatting over breakfast toast in hand.
“Are we diving or are we going to fuck about, my friends?” Vincent chuckled. “I’m taking the nylon straps down there to secure her for the pull-up.”
“Good God, man, slow down!” Sam teased playfully. His color was returning and he looked relaxed under his newly groomed beard. It was becoming, in a rugged sort of way that paired well with Sam’s already lavish dark locks. He was certainly attractive enough to pull off most variations of the image. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“She’s first priority, Vincent,” Purdue assured him, “so you will rekindle your relationship soon enough.”
“I just don’t like to keep a lady waiting, is all,” Vincent tilted his head and winked at them. Sam had to ask something he’d neglected to clarify the day before.
“Vincent, tell me, how does the lady’s statue fit with your prayer stick? How is she working with that relic of yours to fulfill the prophecy?” Both Sam and Purdue were of the opinion that Vincent did not know because he chose to give an ambiguous answer. But in truth, he still didn’t trust them enough to disclose such valuable information.
“I have not had time to examine her yet, boys, so only once I get to study her features will I be able to ascertain the exact method,” he said, spinning the bullshit he was most comfortable with. The two Scots nodded along, looking pleased with his vague answer. “Now!” he clapped his hands loudly. “Shall we get things going?”
“Aye,” Sam cheered. “Finally I’m getting to test my underwater gear.”
“Are you going to be able to handle a big camera while the currents twist around you?” Vincent asked Sam.
“Easily,” Sam answered, whipping out a small, high-definition diving camera. “I have my Nauticam handy. Look at this.” Sam’s little video camera fitted into a casing he fixed around his neck like a dog collar. “Hands-free. And it films everything I see and experience in HD wide-angle brilliance.”
Purdue studied the features of the camera as it was secured to Sam’s neck, looking comical as he was craning his neck over the journalist like a curious pelican, pecking at the strap with pinching fingers.
“That is impressive,” Vincent and Purdue remarked in unison.
“I would have to borrow this sometime, Sam, when I go cave diving in the Yucatán again,” Purdue insisted cordially.
“Sure,” Sam said. “Now please, get off me before the men get the wrong idea about our friendship.”
Vincent laughed heartily as they sauntered to the stairwell. Yapping about underwater capture technology, they descended to the lower deck to put on their diving suits.
When they finally sank into the pristine Alboran waters, Vincent could hardly contain himself. He waved at Sam’s lens just before he propelled his body deeper down into the darker hues of the sea to return to the golden woman who waited in the German steel-plated tomb. Purdue and Sam followed suit, each holding their tools, like hooks and straps, to facilitate the hoist of their respective assets.
Again, the ghastly moan of the current rushing through the mouth of the opened hatch chilled the men’s blood with its gaping darkness. It was only the three of them for now. The other divers in Vincent’s crew would join them after the signal. They waited for Vincent to confirm that the find was ready to be brought up by means of hydraulic arms extended from the gunwales of the trawler. For this, the captain of the Cóncord had a sonar device, which pinged into their own radar system as a signal.
Once down in the galley among the stacks of petrified skeletons baring teeth and hair from their Nazi uniforms, Sam got to remove his mask for a grand exclamation.
“Oh sweet Jesus!”
“My thoughts exactly at the time, old boy,” Purdue chuckled.
“Fucking hell, Purdue. What in God’s name do you want to do with all these grisly bastards? I mean, Christ, there must be over five hundred corpses here! What the fuck happened here?” he ranted on and on in disbelief of what his eyes presented him. No amount of cussing could justify how horrified Sam was by it all.
By the time he finally settled down enough to film the ghastly collection of bodies, Vincent had secured his ancient golden relic. Purdue and Sam, however, still had some serious work to do. Samples would not be enough. In the name of honor Purdue decided to excavate every last body laboriously to return them to their own government. Of course, that would only be organized by Purdue’s people after he had the mummies examined. The putrefaction of these men was a very strange phenomenon that he simply had to lay claim to in order to record the peculiar nature of the find, along with the reputation of the legendary marine region.
“Right, I’m going out to signal Marius and Henry,” Vincent announced as he passed the other two in their makeshift morgue.
“Alright, Skipper!” Sam cried. “I’ll just stay here with my insane colleague, sifting for more creepy shit through all these delightful dead people. Have fun now! I know I won’t.”
Purdue sighed. “I’ll give you a bonus for emotional injury.”
“Ta,” Sam replied.
“You bitch like a teenager,” Purdue muttered as he dragged a papery seaman onto the casket edge. “The good thing is that they are quite light in weight, so they’re not difficult to handle.”
“That’s true. I feel so much happier that they don’t weigh a lot,” Sam teased.
“All jokes aside,” Purdue said, “could you please go up into the wet for me, Sam? I left the blowtorch at the entrance of the hatch, and I have to melt these locks quickly.”
“Gladly,” Sam answered. “Even the heart-stopping moan of that entrance hatch is preferable to this body pit.”
Sam had been gone for less than five minutes before he surfaced through the flooded drain entrance again.
“Damn, that was quick,” Purdue chuckled, but Sam was not laughing. His face was white as a sheet as he tried to form words.
Purdue ran toward him, just as Sam lifted Vincent’s limp body up from the dark pool where the chasm in his throat had colored the blue to dark red.
“Oh my God! What happened?” Purdue exclaimed.
“I don’t know!” Sam finally managed to force. “I came out of the lower level and there he was, floating as if he had drowned! But then I saw the blood! Look, somebody cut his hose and severed the valve lines to his cylinder. Look, serrated incisions.”
“Diving knife,” Purdue guessed. “Jesus. Vincent!”
“At once the skipper of the trawler inhaled a monstrous tuft of air, making for a hideous death rattle through the scarlet fountain that welled from his neck. He pounded his chest, his voice impotent from the injury.
“What is it?” Sam asked. Again, Vincent glared at them while hitting his chest with his last strength. With his hair tucked into his neoprene hood, his bulging turquoise eyes were prominent enough to linger in Sam’s memory for good.
The dying man kept slamming his own chest, and just before he died, he mouthed, ‘melt her down.’
24
The Martyr
Solar Eclipse Imminent: 71%
Dr. Sabian stood half behind Javier Mantara, prompting the young man’s actions with a conducted electrical weapon, a device much like a Taser pressed to his short rib, which by now had become quite prominent. Javier was suffering all the symptoms of anorexia and advanced dehydration, yet he was consuming food and drink like everyone else. He knew by instinct that the Santero had something to do with his current condition, but how to reverse it, he did not know.
It terrified Javier that the evil old man could control his physiology without even touching him, but he dared not back down or show fear. His sister’s welfare was everything, as was her safety from both Sabian and the police, and h
e did not intend to waver in the face of tribulation.
“I’m so sorry, Madi,” Javier uttered blandly, but the quiver of his brow attested to his intense emotion in betraying her. Nonetheless, Madalina rushed to embrace her brother. Instantly, her tears reappeared as she wept on his neck. “My God, what have I done to you? I’m the one who should be sorry, Javier. I love you. I love you. Now look at you! Because of me, because I could not listen to you.”
Raul and Sabian eyed one another like age-old acquaintances while the siblings sobbed in each others’ arms. “This is not your fault,” Javier whispered to his sister, while a waitress interrupted Sabian’s subliminal engagement with the child to ask if he would like a menu. Politely, Dr. Sabian accepted the offer and took his seat next to Raul as if nothing was amiss.
“But look at you! Clearly the stress of my actions, my terrible actions and my disappearance have caused you to neglect yourself,” Madalina persisted, wailing softly with her face tucked into his bosom. Javier stroked his sister’s crown and hushed her. Perhaps it was better if he had shared his ludicrous theory with her, if only to lighten her burden of guilt for his condition. It was so far-fetched that he doubted that she would even consider it a consolation, but he said it anyway.
“Madi, I am under a terrible spell, a curse that is bedeviling my brain to detach from my body,” he whispered in her ear. “Are you listening to me?” He hissed angrily into her hair that covered her ear to impress upon her the seriousness of his accusation. “Sabian is responsible for this. I don’t know how, but he is causing my body not to recognize nourishment.”
“You are as crazy as I am,” she said, holding his gaunt face in her hands. “Honey, that is impossible.”
Javier did not have time to persuade her, and he was immensely fatigued from the trip. “Let me prove it to you.”
“How?” she asked under her breath.
“What happens when I eat peanuts?” he asked her.
“Jesus! Are you insane? You’ll die from the allergic reaction, Javier! What are you trying to do? Your throat will swell up and you’ll die if you do that!” she cried, unable to understand why her brother would put his life at risk for such a trivial remark about his bodyweight. “Okay, okay,” she panted, feigning concurrence, “I believe you! I believe you about Sabian, okay? Just, don’t, you don’t have to prove anything. I believe you.”
“Just sit down,” her brother replied indifferently. He knew when she was bluffing. There was not a grain of belief in her that he was not crazy and she was a terrible liar.
“Hola, doctor,” Madalina greeted. She eyed her therapist but said nothing else.
“Madalina,” he nodded cordially, but she could detect no judgment on his face for absconding from his treatment a short while before the incident in the motel.
Javier sat down and looked at the child. “You are a very good boy,” he said slowly. The difficulty of speaking increased every day, but Javier managed with hard whispers.
“I am a very good boy,” the child answered him with a smile. Javier smiled, “And what is your name?”
“Raul,” the boy replied. “Are you a martyr?”
Madalina gasped. Sabian’s prying eyes grew wide. Javier felt his heart sink, but he reacted with curiosity while he hid his dreadful assumptions about his illness. “Why do you think I am a martyr?”
“You look like one,” Raul informed him. “When I was in Romania during the religious festival last year, I saw many pictures painted on the walls of churches. It was all pictures of men who looked like you, and they looked very sad. The priest called them martyrs.”
“Well, I sure feel like one,” Javier answered down the middle, resisting a leer at the psychologist next to the boy in the booth. “I’ll tell you what, Raul. Do you eat peanuts?”
“No,” Madalina yelped suddenly.
“I love peanuts, Madi,” the boy frowned. “Please? Please can I have some?”
“Sí, over there on the bar counter they have bowls of peanuts,” Javier struggled to smile at Raul. “Why don’t you go and get us some?”
Raul jumped up cheerfully and made for the bar on the other side of the room. Sabian and the siblings stared at one another. They could discuss nothing yet, because the child would be back shortly. The awkward silence was thankfully filled with a group of Australian tourists coming in through the main doors with quite a lot to say about the interior décor and how steep the ramp road up to the Castillo de Sax was.
Madalina could feel pearls of sweat form on her brow as she thought of what her brother was about to do. Why would he commit suicide right in front of her? Was this some sort of punishment, she wondered. There was, of course, no way that she would let him go through with it. Sabian knew nothing. Only Madalina and her brother knew that Javier was allergic to nuts, among other things.
Raul came back with a bowl of peanuts in his hand and an ashtray in the other. “They won’t let me take two, but they said I could split it by using the empty ashtray,” he giggled. He looked at Javier. “I take the ashtray! You can have the bowl!”
“No problem.” Javier winced in an attempt to smile at Raul.
Madalina’s eyes stretched, bloodshot and wet as she fought inside herself whether to trust her brother or interrupt the preposterous intention.
“What’s going on?” Dr. Sabian suddenly asked as Raul tucked into his meager snack.
“Nothing,” Madalina answered evenly in a shivering tone. Her eyes did not leave her brother’s face for an instant as she watched him chew on two handfuls of peanuts. “I just cannot believe how sick my brother looks. I feel so guilty for leaving him.”
“You did what you had to,” Dr. Sabian comforted her just like he used to when memories of her abusive husband drove her into insomnia and panic attacks.
“I did not have to do anything, doctor,” she said, looking at the sly psychologist for the first time. “What about murder and kidnapping is not a choice? Doing what you have to do is normally reserved for survival and protection. Nothing I did to this boy’s caretaker or to him was something I had to do.”
“I am sure you had your reasons for feeling that you had to take him,” Dr. Sabian said in that annoying tone of arrogance he used to condescend. “Perhaps it was a need to feel powerful in a world where you were always the victim.”
“Oh fuck you, Sabian,” Javier suddenly blurted, spitting tiny fragments of peanut all over the table as he spoke. His lips had begun to grow thinner, unable to cover his teeth completely, and this made it difficult not to spit while he tried to talk. “Don’t vilify my sister for something she had absolutely no control over! You will not make her feel guilty for this! And especially that bullshit about needing to feel powerful. Spare me! You and I both know she is nothing like that. She took Raul to save him from an abusive bitch!” He leaned over the table and glowered hard into Sabian’s eyes with his discolored, milky irises. Dr. Sabian recoiled slightly from the hideous deadness of the young man’s angry eyes. Javier sneered. “She felt the need to do it because she was unknowingly turned into a minion for some insidious plot! Your sick ideals, you son of a bitch!”
“Oi mate, keep it down, will ya?” an Australian patron hollered from the bar.
Javier lifted an open palm in apology. “Thanks mate,” the tourist said and carried on talking to his friends. Javier whispered in Sabian’s face. “You are nothing but a fucking pedophile.”
“Javier,” Madalina reprimanded her brother. “Easy.”
In the same threatening position he had addressed Dr. Sabian, Javier turned to his sister. “Tell me, Madi, do you see anything unusual yet? I have scarfed handfuls of peanuts and look at me.” He leaned back and spread out his arms like a crucifix. “See? Do you see?”
She had to concede that his physical reaction to the nuts bore no resemblance to what normally happened when he consumed them. By now, his face would have ballooned, his eyes would have swollen shut, and he would have been fighting to breathe through a constricted w
indpipe. His lips would be blue and he would be wheezing, and here right in front of her, nothing. Madalina looked at her brother’s facial features. Much as they were distorted into a man she could hardly recognize, there was no sign of the telltale symptoms he was supposed to exhibit.
He was right. His brain did not know what his body was eating—or that his body was eating. The thought made her sick to her stomach and she held down a convulsion of nausea.
“Oi, inaquosum!” Dr. Sabian exclaimed. “Can you please stop upsetting your sister?”
But Madalina knew that her brother’s outlandish claim had to be true. She looked at Raul, who was slowly eating his nuts one by one, and wondered why she would have felt so compelled to take him. The boy looked up at her with his beautiful big dark eyes, but he did not smile. Quickly he looked to Sabian and back to Madalina, and something in his eyes changed. Madalina construed it as a realization, a change of mind somewhere in his innocent wisdom.
“You are helping the police, then?” she suddenly changed the conversation, sounding uncharacteristically strong as she directly addressed her former therapist. Without noticing, Dr. Sabian was now forced to comply with her requirements if he wished to uphold his charade.
“They called me in, of course, to be a character witness. They also asked for your sessions, which I was forced to surrender to them. I am here to help. The police have no idea I have come to see you, so you can relax, my dear.” In a darker tone he added, “Nobody knows where you, or the boy, is.”
“Just the way you want it, right?” Javier grunted, drinking down a half glass of water Madalina had abandoned when they first entered. Raul looked at the young man. “I am so sorry for you, Javier.”
Javier set the empty glass down and asked why. Raul replied, “You are the martyr.”
25
Enemy Waters
Solar Eclipse Imminent: 78%
The Inca Prophecy Page 14
