by J
“More? Like what?”
Max shrugged. “You know. Traditions. Legends. Stories.”
“Now you’re sounding Maya. Tell me one of your stories.”
“Well, every Boston kid knows about Babe Ruth and the Curse of the Bambino.”
“A curse? That sounds exciting.”
“It wasn’t. They sold a player named Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, their big rivals, and didn’t win the World Series again for eighty-six years.”
“Wow. And their fans stuck with them?”
“Of course. It was a tough time, but the Red Sox are heroes in Boston.”
“Lola smiled. “So the Maya have the Hero Twins. And you have your Red Sox.”
“I guess. You should come to a game with me. See them for yourself.”
“I’ll add it to my road trip list!”
They turned into another cemetery. Instead of little houses, this one had orderly rows of gravestones.
A soldier in a Civil War uniform was waiting for them. He took a seat and they headed through a gap in an old stone wall into the adjoining field.
Here, cannons lined their route.
They passed a visitor center all in darkness.
“It’s a battlefield,” whispered Max, reading the sign.
Lord 6-Dog looked around with interest. “I should like to know more about this place.”
But the carriage rolled on toward a stately two-story brick house. It had tall white pillars at the front and back, with a balcony running the length of the second floor.
“Is this another inn?” asked Lola. “Can you see any signs?”
The other passengers were alighting and walking toward a grassy slope behind the house.
“Cahokia!” said Thunderclaw, flapping his wings again.
“You mean Cahokia is over that hill?” Lola asked the bird.
“There is but one way to find out. You two stay here.” Lord 6-Dog leapt out of the carriage, bounded up the slope, and disappeared from sight.
“Sometimes,” said Max, “his bravery surprises me.”
“Maya kings led from the front,” Lola explained.
Max thought about her statement. “They must have gotten killed a lot.”
They both scanned the hilltop anxiously.
After what felt like forever, Lord 6-Dog appeared on top of the hill. He bounded back down the slope to them. His face looked grim.
“Bad news,” he said.
“What did you see?” asked Lola warily.
“A great river.”
“The Mississippi?”
“I know not its name. But there is no way forward except by water. The carriage passengers are boarding boats.”
“Boats? That’s what we need! Why is that bad news?” Lola asked.
“I am not a sailor. I am still sick to my stomach from thy submarine.”
“You’ll be fine,” Lola reassured him. “It can’t be far to St. Louis.”
“How far?” persisted Lord 6-Dog.
“I don’t know exactly,” admitted Lola. “But you’re a howler monkey. You’re really good at sleeping. Just pretend the motion of the boat is a breeze blowing through your tree in the jungle. We’ll wake you up when we get there.”
“What motion?” Lord 6-Dog looked like he might vomit on the spot.
The night air was pierced by the mournful blast of a steam whistle.
“Let’s go!” Lola began to run up the slope, then she stopped and looked back. “Are you coming, Thunderclaw?” she called.
The parrot landed on her shoulder, brushed his mangy feathers against her cheek, and took off again. “Cahokia!” he squawked as he wheeled in circles over her head. Then he flew back to the carriage and everything—the vehicle, the horses, the driver, the bird—evaporated like a morning mist.
“Good-bye!” Lola shouted after him. “Please thank Chan Kan for me!”
Behind them, the sun was beginning to rise.
In front of them, toward the river, the sky remained stubbornly dark.
They scrambled up the hill and stopped at the top. The hill, which was actually a man-made flood defense, sloped down sharply, ending in a mossy, slimy swamp. On the far side of the swamp was the mighty Mississippi. And stretching across the swamp, from the top of the hill to the water, was a modern metal dock where the ghostly passengers were now lined up to board a variety of ghostly river craft.
Max, Lola, and, reluctantly, Lord 6-Dog joined the line.
“St. Louis?” called Lola. “Are any of these boats going to St. Louis?”
The ghosts ignored her.
Down in the swamp, frogs croaked, cicadas buzzed, and swarms of mosquitoes zoomed in to attack. Max could see red eyes peering through the night.
“Crocodiles,” said Lord 6-Dog.
“Alligators,” said Max. “You don’t get crocodiles this far north.”
“As a mere Central American primate, I beg thy forgiveness for my ignorance. It looks like a crocodile to me.”
“I read it in the guidebook on the sub,” said Max. “Alligators have wider snouts.”
“Remind me, when the beasts attack, to measure the girth of their snouts.”
“Please stop squabbling and help me find a boat,” said Lola.
“If I never see another boat, it will be too soon,” muttered Lord 6-Dog.
A mist, green as the algae in the swamp, rose off the river.
Another blast of a steam whistle. This time it sounded much closer.
They were alone on the dock now.
Out of the mist, glowing pale green, emerged a Mississippi steamboat. No smoke came from its twin smokestacks, and the great paddlewheel turning in its stern made no waves in the water. As it pulled alongside the dock, they saw its name: Phantom Queen.
It looked old.
Historic, even.
Out of the mist, glowing pale green, emerged a Mississippi steamboat.
It had three decks. The lower one housed the engine room (great pistons were visible through the windows), while the upper two (which had picturesque verandas running all around) seemed to be for passengers.
But the vessel was deserted. There was no sign of a crew, no pilot in the wheelhouse, no captain barking orders through a megaphone.
As they watched, the boat docked and a front gangplank lowered itself silently down.
“Here we go,” said Lola.
Max surveyed the shimmering ghost ship dubiously. “Are we sure about this?”
“Is there not another way?” agreed Lord 6-Dog.
“Come on, you two! What’s the matter? Thunderclaw wouldn’t trick us.”
“But how do you know this is the right boat?”
Lola pointed at a small chalkboard on an easel. “It says so right there.”
She marched across the gangplank and onto the boat. The other two followed her less confidently, but there was no time for second thoughts. The moment their feet touched the deck, the gangplank was raised and the Phantom Queen began to pick up speed.
Lord 6-Dog groaned. “I must find a bed.”
“Let’s explore,” suggested Lola.
“I can’t believe you’re okay with this,” said Max.
“We’re headed to Cahokia, aren’t we?” she called to him as she ran up the stairs to the upper decks. “We might as well enjoy ourselves. I’ve never been on a cruise before.”
“Wait!” shouted Max. “We should stick together!”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you ever seen a scary movie? They always split up and get picked off, one by one.”
“Come on, then! I want to look around.”
It was as if the boat had been abandoned in a hurry a hundred years before. There were old-fashioned clothes hanging in the cabins. Books moldered in the library. Sheet music lay open on a piano. The tables in the dining saloon were grandly laid with three settings of silverware for every place. Only the diners were missing.
“Do you think there’s any food?” asked Max.
“There’s no one to cook it,” Lola pointed out.
Lord 6-Dog leaned against an open window. He didn’t look good. “How canst thou even think about food?”
“You can’t be seasick. This thing is like a hovercraft. We’re just gliding over the surface.” Max pointed to the river. “Look, no waves. It doesn’t even feel like we’re moving. It’s the smoothest ride ever.” But one look at Lord 6-Dog’s face told Max that the mere idea of water transport was enough to make him feel ill.
“Let’s find him somewhere to sleep,” said Lola. “Those cabins are too musty.”
At the bow of the ship, out on the veranda, they found some reclining wooden steamer chairs. They tucked Lord 6-Dog up and sat down next to him.
“We’re moving fast,” said Lola. “It’s all a blur out there.”
Max tried to make out the banks of the river, but they were engulfed in swirling mists and darkness. A strange orange glow, like the promise of sunrise, tinged the edges of the sky.
“It’s been a long night,” he said. “Shouldn’t it be getting light?”
“I think it’s a ghost ship thing,” said Lola. “It’s always midnight on this boat.”
“Great,” said Max sarcastically.
“Relax,” she told him. “Try to get some sleep.”
But neither of them shut their eyes.
Sometimes strange objects rushed past in the water: oak barrels, refrigerators, a department store mannequin, a dead pig.
Other times, music drifted over from the shore. “Memphis,” guessed Max, when they caught a soulful snatch of blues.
“Memphis? As in Elvis Presley?” Lola jumped up and tried to see the shore. “His house, Graceland, was on my list!”
“Your road trip list?” Max squished a mosquito. “What else was on it?”
“The Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, San Francisco, Hollywood, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls … I want to see everything!”
“That’s going to be quite a road trip.”
“If I ever get my parents back.”
“We’re on our way to Cahokia, aren’t we? Your parents are as good as rescued.”
“I don’t know, Hoop. The more I think about it, the more I worry about what might be waiting for us at Cahokia.”
“Then stop thinking about it. There’s nothing we can do till we get there.”
Lola sighed. “You’re right. I think I’ll go look in the library. Find a book to take my mind off things.”
“Good idea. I’ll see if there’s any food on this boat.”
And so, forgetting his own advice about the inadvisability of splitting up, Max went one way on the ghost ship and Lola went another.
When he first heard the scream, Max was poking around in the galley, looking for something edible. He dropped the rusty tin of cherries he’d just found and ran out to the deck. “Lola! Monkey Girl! Are you all right?”
Lola screamed his name again and he headed in the direction of her voice. “Where are you?” he yelled. “What’s happened?”
As he turned a corner into the saloon, Lola barreled straight into him, giving them both the fright of their lives. (Well, maybe not quite the fright they’d gotten in the Grand Hotel Xibalba when they’d suddenly lost their superpowers in the middle of a turbocharged ball game against the Death Lords—but a really big fright nonetheless.)
Max was relieved and angry at the same time. “Why were you screaming like that?”
“Look at this!” Lola thrust an old photograph album at him. Her hands were shaking.
“Calm down.” Max brushed a half-finished card game off a tabletop and pulled out two chairs. “Here, sit. Show me.”
“It’s them!” cried Lola, flicking through the pages of the album. “Look at the faces!”
She showed him a sepia photograph of a mountainside.
“That’s Mount Rushmore,” he explained. “They’re presidents.”
“Look closer.”
Max did. And he saw that, carved into the rock were the heads of four Death Lords—the Demons of Pus, Jaundice, Filth, and Woe.
Lola turned the page and showed him a green-faced, diadem-wearing One Death grinning for the camera as he held aloft his torch on Liberty Island.
Next came various Death Lords larking around at the edge of the Grand Canyon, taking selfies in front of the Hollywood sign, looking tough at the Alamo, waving from a cable car in San Francisco, wearing rain ponchos on a boat at the foot of Niagara Falls.
The final photograph was of Ah Pukuh, bulging out of an Elvis Presley jumpsuit, as he posed with a guitar in front of a fur-clad sofa.
“My dad described that place to me,” said Lola. “It’s the Jungle Room at Graceland.” Her voice cracked. “I told you, it was on our list.”
Max tried to console her. “Don’t cry. You’ll get there soon, you’ll see.”
“I’m not crying,” said Lola indignantly. “I’m angry. The Death Lords are taunting me, don’t you see? All these places were on my list. I don’t know how this album got on this boat, but it’s proof that the Death Lords are playing with us. They’re laughing at us, Hoop.”
“Not necessarily,” reasoned Max. “Maybe they’re trying to encourage us, remind us of the good times ahead when all this is over.” He looked more closely at Ah Pukuh’s bloated, pockmarked face under its ludicrous black quiff. His pudgy lips were curled in a sneer. It didn’t look encouraging. But was it directed at them? Or was it just an Elvis impression?
“Do you think we’re nearly there?” asked Lola wearily.
Max peered into the gloom. “Who knows? I can’t see anything.”
Lola sighed. “I’m so tired. I can’t think straight.”
“It’s been a long day,” agreed Max. “Or night. Or week. Or however long we’ve been on this boat. I’ve lost track of time. I just want to see the sun again.”
“We should sleep,” suggested Lola.
Max shook his head. “Sleep on a ghost ship? Are you crazy?”
But he did.
And so did Lola.
What woke them was the sound of the ship’s whistle.
Lola groaned. “I think we’ve arrived.”
Max opened his eyes. He turned to Lord 6-Dog and saw that he was gone.
Beyond his empty chair, looming out of gray mist on the opposite bank, was a huge stainless steel arch. “St. Louis! We’re in St. Louis! This is it!”
Somewhere in the distance, a howler monkey roared.
“That’s Lord 6-Dog!” Lola put her hands to her mouth and roared back into the darkness.
A reply came almost instantly.
“He’s up there!” she cried. Max looked where she pointed and saw a little figure in striped pajamas, silhouetted against the glow of streetlights, sitting on top of an electricity pylon on the bank.
The riverboat had let its gangplank down against a rusty barge. Max and Lola walked across the barge to dry land, where Lord 6-Dog was running to meet them.
“I saw it! I saw Cahokia! It is a great city!”
“How far is it?” asked Max.
Lord 6-Dog stroked his hairy chin. “I would estimate three leagues due east.”
“How far is a league?”
“About three miles,” volunteered Lola sleepily.
“So nine miles? That’s a long walk,” protested Max.
“It is a wonder to me,” said Lord 6-Dog, “that thy legs do not atrophy from lack of use.”
Behind them, the gangplank lifted and the Phantom Queen melted into the dark, rippling water.
“You know when Cortez burned his boats?” said Lola.
“No,” said Max.
“He did it when he landed in Central America. So his crew couldn’t mutiny and sail back home. He burned their boats on the beach, so they had no choice but to go forward, no matter what terrors awaited them. That’s exactly how I feel right now.”
“Good to know,” said Max, his stomach lurching with fear.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
/> BLUE AND THE BIRDMAN
They walked along the grassy, litter-strewn bank, crossed some train tracks, and found themselves on a potholed road.
“Which way now?” asked Max.
“Due east,” said Lola. “Toward the sunrise.”
“That’s not helpful,” Max pointed out. “The sun hasn’t come up yet. East could be anywhere. We should ask someone.”
“No need. We can read the signs.”
“We’re not in the jungle anymore,” Max pointed out. “I know you’re good at tracking in the wild, but this is the city. We need a map.”
“Why?” asked Lola. “You can read the signs, too.”
She pointed at a group of illuminated billboards at the junction with the main road.
THIS WAY TO OLD CAHOKIA AND THE FESTIVAL OF THE SUN
YOU’LL HAVE MOUNDS OF FUN
AT OLD CAHOKIA!
OLD CAHOKIA
COME AND AD-MAYA IT!
Now that Max looked properly, he saw signs everywhere, all of them pointing to Cahokia—or Old Cahokia, as it seemed to be called now.
“ ‘Come and ad-Maya it’?” Lola made a face. “Who writes this stuff?”
Lord 6-Dog growled. He was staring angrily at a billboard that showed five smug-looking kids each holding a Jaguar Stone. The headline proclaimed:
HOLD HISTORY IN YOUR HANDS AT OLD CAHOKIA
“How dare they?” cried Lord 6-Dog. “The Jaguar Stones are the stones of kings, not the playthings of commoners. Those children are not even Maya.”
Max looked at the endless line of billboards stretching to the horizon. “It’s going to be a long walk,” he said.
A car horn honked behind him.
He turned to see a camper van with a big peace symbol painted on the side. “Need a lift?” asked the driver, a smiley-faced boy with dreadlocks.
“Are you going to Cahokia?” asked Max.
“Where else, man?”
Max and Lola nodded gratefully.
“No talking allowed,” Lola cautioned Lord 6-Dog in a whisper.
“Cute pajamas, dude!” yelled a voice from the van.
“Is biting allowed?” muttered Lord 6-Dog.
The door of the camper slid open and Max, Lola, and Lord 6-Dog found seats inside.
“Thank you very much,” said Lola to the driver. “Why are you going to Cahokia?”
