The Shadow Mask

by Lin Oliver

Crane never gave them a second look as I walked Jeremy and Trevor to the elevator.

  “I’m so sorry, guys,” I kept repeating to them as we waited for the elevator to come. But they didn’t say anything. It was Dmitri, not Klevko, who was working the elevator, and he took us to the street level. I walked them outside. There was still a ton of ice on the ground, but the sun was also shining.

  “You need a ride home, Trevor?” Jeremy asked. “I’ve got my car.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Jeremy,” Trevor said, then turned to me. “Leo, do what you have to do, but come home quick, and come back to us.”

  “Be safe,” Jeremy said.

  “I will,” I said as they walked away from me. I stayed outside and watched them until they turned the corner and were gone. Walking back into the building, I noticed that the faded words on the front that had formerly said CRANE’S MYSTERIES, had been repainted, and now read, LEGENDARY RATHBONE.

  I picked up my hard-won Zoom H4n from Crane, then went back to my room and shut the door. I concentrated on packing, trying to stay as busy as possible, telling myself every now and then that I would “start fresh” as soon I got back. I used Hollis’s computer to get my dad’s recordings of the Byong Ku villagers onto my iPod and took a phony dust jacket from one of my English books from school and put it over Marie Rathbone’s book, The Immortal Underground, and slipped it into my backpack, along with my dad’s travel journal. I packed a blank spiral notebook for me to use as a journal, in case I had thoughts or observations to record.

  Hollis and I both had packed only a small duffel bag and a backpack each, but Crane had so much luggage that he had to hire a deluxe van to take us to the airport. Dmitri and Klevko were coming along for the trip, too, but the thought of traveling in the same car as them was distasteful to Crane, so he made them take a cab.

  It was late afternoon when we left the warehouse and drove along the BQE, right next to the East River, across from Manhattan. I decided to distract myself with conversation.

  “So what’s the plan, Uncle Crane?” I asked him. He was in the back row and had it all to himself.

  “Please be more specific, Leo.”

  “You know, this all happened fast. What happens when we get to, what’s that city called again, in Borneo?”

  “Samarinda. Fear not, Leo. I have every detail exquisitely planned. First we’ll make a stop in Mumbai to fetch an associate of mine who will be helping us on our expedition. We’ll go through customs in Samarinda, then fly up to Tanjung Selor. All told, the flight should last just over twenty-five hours. Hope you boys brought a book.”

  “And when do we go on the yachts?” Hollis asked.

  “Very funny, Hollis. There’ll be no yachts. We’ll be traveling by long motorboats.”

  “Leo said there’d be yachts,” Hollis said, shooting me a critical look.

  “You’re like me, Hollis,” Crane said. “We require luxury. But don’t worry, we’ll be traveling in style. In Tanjung Selor, we’ll rendezvous with our entourage. I’ve arranged for a crew of more than twelve porters and valets to wait on us hand and foot. My rule: If you have to rough it, don’t.”

  He let out a big laugh, obviously appreciating his own humor. To my surprise, Hollis nodded and laughed, too.

  “From Tanjung Selor,” Crane went on, “we’ll travel up the Kayan River, through dense rain forests for several days. At night, my porters will set up camp with heated tents and real beds, and prepare a fresh meal.”

  “Not bad,” Hollis said.

  “I’m glad you approve, Hollis. Now if that’s all, I have many more preparations to make before we board,” he said, then returned his attention to his phone. For the rest of the ride, I played around with my new H4n, making weirdo voices into it and distorting them with one of the recorder’s million different effects. Of course, I had to listen with my headphones on because Crane didn’t appreciate my noises.

  We drove into a special gate at the airport where the private jet hangars were located, and drove up to a small jet waiting on the runway. It was a different jet than the one we took to Palmira, and I wondered how many planes Crane had in his stable.

  “You boys go ahead and board while they finish deicing the plane,” Crane said. “I have a few details to sort out with Klevko and Dmitri.”

  Hollis and I bounded from the van and dashed for the passenger boarding stairs. Hollis was hopping up and down at the prospect of a flight on our own luxury jet. Before we could board, one of the flight crew stopped us.

  “You may not enter the Sultan’s plane in such a hyperactive state,” he said in an accent I didn’t recognize.

  “The Sultan of Brunei?” Hollis asked. “You mean the richest man in the world?”

  “Yes. Now run around the tarmac and burn off your extra energy.”

  I looked back and saw Crane huddling with Klevko and Dmitri, while the flight crew was loading all of his two dozen bags onto a trolley.

  “We’ll be calm,” I said to the stern attendant. “Can we go on now?”

  He nodded.

  Hollis and I took the first half of the stairs at a brisk walk, but we ran the second half. Inside, it was nice, but not Sultan of Brunei nice. There were comfortable-looking leather seats, each with a little TV and plenty of legroom, but not as great as the plane we took last time.

  “I bet that’s where the deluxe part is,” Hollis said, pointing to a set of satin and gold double doors up the aisle. A man, dressed different than the rest of the crew, was standing by the doors.

  “Open sesame,” I said when we got to him. Then I noticed that he wore a sword under his coat.

  “This is the Sultan’s private domicile,” he said. “Please help yourself to any of the seats you see in servant’s class.”

  “Servant’s class?” Hollis said, eyeing me.

  “Oh well,” I said. “You have to admit, it’s still pretty nice.”

  As we found a couple of seats across the aisle from each other, Crane strode onto the plane, Dmitri and Klevko in tow.

  “Uncle Crane, do you actually know the Sultan of Brunei?” Hollis asked. “What’s he like? Does he really have 290 golden toilets?”

  “Indeed, he has 291, if you count the toilet on the plane,” Crane half answered Hollis, and handed me a giant pile of books and maps about Borneo. “Some light reading for your flight, Leo. I expect you to have this material mastered by the time we arrive. Now I’m off to my quarters.”

  He walked to the double doors, and the man with the sword bowed and let him through. I only got a fleeting glance in there, but I was nearly blinded by the gold chandelier and all the other gold stuff in there.

  “Did you see that?!” Hollis shouted. “We have to get back there.”

  But before I could answer him, good old Dmitri plopped himself down in the seat right next to me, cutting off my view of Hollis.

  “Are you serious, Dmitri? There’s a whole plane to choose from.”

  “I thought we could talk more on the plane, like friends.”

  “For twenty-five hours?”

  “I can help you with your research, Leo. The boss wants me to be your assistant on the trip.”

  I understood. After everything I’d done for him, Crane still didn’t trust me. “Dmitri, you can assist me when we get there. For now, man, just give me some space so I can stretch out.”

  “Okay, I’ll sit behind you.”

  Klevko sat behind Hollis, and Hollis gave me a look that said, “These guys are sticking to us like gum on a shoe.”

  But his apprehension was checked when one of the flight attendants passed by to give us our bags of goodies, with special socks, a grooming kit with a gold-plated comb and toothbrush, sleeping masks, and a golden coin with the Sultan’s face on it. I’m not sure which Hollis liked more, the grooming kit or the gold coin. He’s crazy for grooming kits and anything made of real gold.

  As we taxied for takeoff, I took a peek between the seats and found Dmitri staring right at me with those beady little
eyes.

  “Did you bring something to read, Dmitri?”

  “No.”

  “Want something?”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself. But do me a favor, will you? Don’t just stare at the back of my seat the whole time. It bothers me.”

  He didn’t answer. I dug through my bag for a long time, stealthily replacing my fake cover for Marie Rathbone’s book, The Immortal Underground, with a cover from Borneo: Her Customs and People. Hollis settled in to watch a movie, complaining that it had Malay subtitles. Klevko closed his eyes, and from his heavy breathing I could tell it wasn’t long before he’d be asleep. Dmitri continued to stare at me, taking his spying responsibilities much too seriously for my taste.

  And as the engines revved up and we took off into the sky above New York, I opened that weird old book and, in no time, was lost in the strange, twisted world of Marie Rathbone.

  The pages of the book were yellow, the corners worn and folded down from many years of use. It had obviously been read over and over, I assumed by Crane, but maybe by my dad, too. After all, the lady was his stepmother and he was probably curious about her ideas. The entire first page was underlined in red.

  I, Marie Rathbone, will now tell you a story of a fair and noble race of humans, the noblest that ever lived. My story is the result of many years of research and exploration, aided by my immortal and honorable guides, Castillo and Pontor.

  We are not the first civilization. Though we believe ourselves to be the highest and most wise civilization in all of recorded history, we are in fact a mere shadow of the glorious civilization that once lived on our Earth. This civilization was called the Boskops, and in their arts, culture, technology, and beauty, they surpassed even the wildest dreams of our wildest dreamers.

  The skeptic among you now asks: Where is the evidence? Surely such a great civilization would leave a mark? Yet, we already possess evidence for civilizations far older than “history” admits. Can we ignore Plato, the Greek philosopher who, in painstaking detail, described Atlantis, that ten-thousand-year-old city of wonder? Or the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, which describes seventy-thousand-year-old airplane battles?

  Oh, dear skeptic, I was once like you: blind to the truth.

  This very book that you hold in your hands documents my long journey from ardent skeptic to true believer. In it, I will lay out the true history of our planet. Of the Boskops who lived on a vast continent that has since sunk below the Indian and Pacific oceans. They lived and flourished from before the melting of the last ice age, from 40,000 BC, until 11,000 BC. At that time, half of this wondrous civilization left the planet Earth and ventured to the stars. The other half stayed behind and moved underground, into the Hollow Center of the Earth, where over thousands of years, they mastered their minds, and eventually developed perfect immortality.

  It is of this underground half of whom I now write….

  I looked up from Marie Rathbone’s book and rubbed my eyes. I had tried to keep reading, but from there she started mentioning words like ectoplasm and magic trumpets and spirit guides, and I couldn’t take it anymore. What kind of nut had my grandfather married?

  Thankfully, one of the flight attendants was serving dinner. I put the book down, grateful for the interruption.

  “You hungry, Hollis? Smells good, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’m starved. I can’t follow this movie. It’s all dubbed in Malay.”

  The flight attendant brought two steaming dishes of food and placed them on the tray tables in front of us.

  “What’s that?” Hollis asked her, picking up one of the plates to sniff it. His habit of smelling food before he tasted it used to drive our mom crazy.

  “Kolo mee,” the attendant said. “Very tasty. Noodles and pork.”

  Hollis grimaced. “You don’t happen to have any cheese-burgers up there, do you?”

  “If you’d like, sir, I’ll ask Chef to make you one right away,” she said. When she left, Hollis beamed at me.

  “Did you see that, Leo? They’ll make anything you want. Is this the life or what?”

  “I’ll eat Hollis’s if he doesn’t want it,” Dmitri said from behind me. “I will tell you what it is like in Crane’s room if you give me your food.”

  “Eat your own food, Dmitri. Don’t be such a pig,” I said.

  “My boy has a big appetite,” Klevko muttered, opening his eyes from his nap. “He cannot help himself.”

  After dinner, which was delicious, I tried to return to Marie Rathbone’s weird book, but every time I’d read a sentence my brain would fog up and I’d forget what I’d just read. We’d been in the air for a few hours, and I was getting sleepy. I reclined my seat all the way until it was practically flat, dimmed the lights, put on my headphones, and listened to my dad’s recording of the Byong Ku death dance.

  Like all my dad’s recordings, it started with an introduction. He was whispering over the crackle of fire and what sounded like a chorus of frogs.

  Kirk Lomax, November 7, the time is 8:45 p.m. I am seated by the fire outside of the longhouse. The village is mourning the death of an old man, whose name I’ve been unable to gather. His body has been placed in a traditional wooden coffin. Many young men wearing masks have begun to play a steady beat on various rocks and lithophones. I have heard enough music to know that they are preparing to begin a ritual ceremony. So, I’ve decided to shut up and let the recorder do the work.

  My dad was whispering in the same way he always did when he’d tell us a fantastic story at night. And with the main cabin lights off, his voice was so soothing that I fell asleep before the ceremony, hearing only the sound of distant drums in half-remembered dreams.

  We landed at one point, and in the shadows of the night, I saw a slim man get on the plane and head for the back. And, oh yeah, both Dmitri and Klevko wore sleeping caps the whole night.

  When I woke up the next time, I could tell it was daylight behind the windows, even though they were still closed. Hollis was up and pacing the aisles. He kept looking at the sliver of light below the Sultan’s private quarters.

  “I gotta get out of here!” he said. “I feel so cooped up.”

  “Calm yourself, bro,” I said. “We still have seven hours to go.”

  “Then I have to at least get in there,” he said, pointing behind the golden double doors.

  We walked up to the guard. I was feeling pretty caged in, too, and a little punchy.

  “Hey can we see your sword? What’s your name? Is it a special kind of sword?”

  “Can we just take a peek back there?” Hollis asked him, perfecting our overwhelm-with-questions strategy, but it was a no go.

  “You cannot see my sword. My name is Laclac. My sword is quite normal, yet it is exquisitely crafted. And neither of you may even glance in the private domicile.”

  “What about the guy I saw go in there in the middle of the night? Or was that a dream?” I asked.

  “Perhaps you dreamed something similar, boy. But yes, a man entered a few hours ago. A Mr. Singh, the gentleman from Mumbai.”

  We never did get a look back in Crane’s private quarters, but we bothered Laclac for the rest of the flight. I made sure to always keep one eye on Dmitri. I would never put it past him to dig through my bag. I caught him watching me a few times. Once he was straight-out looking at me.

  After a delicious breakfast of different sweet cakes and something called roti, a pancakelike concoction, we began our descent. I caught my first glimpse of land. It was green, really green, and cloudy. I’d read the first three pages of Borneo: Her Cultures and People, and it said that Borneo was primarily rain forest, one that was 130 million years old.

  “No skyscrapers,” Hollis said. “I bet there aren’t any ice-skating rinks, either.”

  We’d been cooped up so long that neither one of us was making much sense by then.

  Our runway, which was right next to the ocean, was surrounded by green grass. As we landed, I saw that there was a crowd of
people waiting on the runway, and the moment we came to a stop, they gathered around the plane.

  The flight attendant explained that this was Samarinda, and not our final destination. All of us had to pile out, haul our bags through customs, get our passports stamped, and then get back onto the plane. I caught a glimpse of Mr. Singh, a tall Indian man who looked distant and bored, but no one introduced us.

  Piling back onto the plane, we were told that it would be another hour flight to our final destination, Tanjung Selor. Once we were in flight, Hollis and I stared out the window. We saw no cities, no signs of civilization, just the vast green of the jungle, the brown earth, and the winding muddy rivers that crisscrossed it all.

  I had never felt farther away from home in my whole life.

  Our guide was there to meet us when we landed at the tiny strip of an airport in Tanjung Selor, a man named Dr. A. Haga. He spoke English and seemed nice enough, but Crane completely ignored him, telling him he should speak only to Klevko. Dr. A. Haga had arranged for another large van to take us to the port where we would pick up our boats and set out on our journey upriver. Our driver gunned it through the narrow, palm-tree-lined streets filled with motor scooters, as Klevko and Dr. Haga sat in front, arguing about money, and Crane and Mr. Singh pored over maps in the last row. Hollis and I still had not been officially introduced to Mr. Singh, and he showed no particular interest in making our acquaintance.

  The port was bustling. Steam was rising from the murky brown river crammed with small wooden boats. I had no idea what time it was, and as we climbed from the van, we were immediately surrounded by people selling wagon rides or freshly caught fish or private tours on one of the hundreds of small wooden boats in the brown water. All around the port, there were dozens and dozens of stalls selling artifacts, souvenirs, and even monkeys. The porters got busy taking our bags, mostly Crane’s, down to the waterfront.

  “Look, there are some yachts!” Hollis said, pointing to a few covered boats.

  “They stay close to the city,” Crane said. “Where we’re going, we need a more maneuverable craft.”