by Zach Neal
There were delighted chuckles.
“Take a look, boy.”
Harry pointed.
The natives were clustered, where they had cut and hacked and pulled away more brush, more vines, more pickers and thorns and dead and dying litter.
There were stones…square stones fitted tightly together.
His jaw dropped.
Harry’s chin lifted, and Jeremy looked up, following the rise of the green wall before him…
Dear God.
Whatever it was, it was big.
Very, very big.
Harry was beaming.
“You know what I think? This might just be one part of a larger complex—” Harry was telling anyone who would listen. “This is a major temple.”
Most of them weren’t listening.
Mister Day was all over him, drops of sweat hanging on the end of his nose and staining his bush shirt under the armpits.
“Here. Bring the axe, wonderful, wonderful…”
Apparently he was to stand on the end, cap tipped back, axe over the right shoulder, foot up on a boulder, and looking like the proper woodsman.
For some reason, the last thing Mister O’Dell had said to him rattled around in his mind.
“What a lovely bunch of coconuts.”
***
“Doctor. Doctor.” Mister Syrmes’ excited voice came down from above. “Up here.”
Upon Jeremy and a native being sent back to the camp for more workers and more tools, Syrmes and even Melody O’Dell, grief-stricken as she now appeared to be, had tagged along on the return. For her, it was probably better than being left alone with the camp virtually deserted.
Jeremy hadn’t seen too many women in trousers, and she was decidedly cute in boots and a bush jacket and wide-brimmed hat.
Syrmes was all over the place.
“What have you got?” Squinting against the hard light of midday, Uncle Harry bellowed through cupped hands.
“It’s an opening. I’m sure of it. Bring up some machetes.”
They had eight or ten workmen on the site, most of them converging on the area of excitement.
For the natives, it was a welcome break from the back-breaking labour of clearing brush and some pretty gnarly old trees, hundreds of years old, growing from cracks and crevices in the stones. The workmen also knew they were searching for a temple, and must have had a smidgeon of curiosity.
Each stone was a good three feet tall, and six or seven feet wide. Getting up there took a bit of clambering, which was almost easier when a person had roots and branches to grab onto.
Jeremy beat his uncle to the spot, being fifteen years younger.
“Well.”
Puffing and gasping, his uncle made it up to the level just below where Mister Syrmes stood.
Looking down, Jeremy could see Mister Smith patrolling around the edge of what was becoming a clearing, with Mrs. O’Dell shading her eyes and looking up to where they were.
Turning back, Mister Syrmes beckoned impatiently. There was just enough room to squeeze in, but it wasn’t his dig and it wasn’t his expedition—
“Here, get this out of the way, boy.” This was what Jeremy thought was genuine ironwood—all too familiar from his axe-work, but clearly the machetes weren’t going to be up to it.
It was either than or a related species. Fifteen feet tall and stunted by growing out of the rock like that.
“Right.” Clambering up one more notch, he took his stance and began taking the thing down.
There was a pleasant pain in each shoulder, every muscle really, but he still had this much in him—
The axe merely bounced off it the first shot, leaving a thin green line in the smooth grey bark.
This would take a while.
“Shit.”
“Jeremy.”
There were appreciative chuckles.
Whack.
(…take a deep breath and focus.)
Whack.
Whack.
This was going to take a while.
Sure enough, there was more darkness and an empty space in behind it, once he’d taken a few of the smaller branches out of the way.
His uncle turned.
“Mr. Day.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Take a couple of the natives. Go back to camp and bring back every torch that you can find.”
“Right.” With a nod and one last look at their entrance, he was carefully lowering himself down again.
Axe bit wood and Jeremy kept going.
Act Two
Ten or twenty minutes had passed.
“Are we ready?”
Uncle Harry and one other, Mister Day, would go in first. While some ancient temples had special killing-traps to dissuade grave robbers, this was relatively unknown in the Americas.
With an unsealed entrance like that, it did not appear to be a burial chamber. Aztecs buried their dead beside the temple, disposed of their ashes out in the country or even on a mountaintop. The Mayans of the classic period did build tombs and burial complexes, but they looked nothing like this.
What they had was still something of a mystery according to Harry. The sweat was beginning to dry, and for that Jeremy was grateful.
Snapping on their biggest light, his uncle carefully examined the way and then gingerly stepped down. He flashed a grin as Mister Day took yet another picture with the small (and very expensive) camera hanging around his neck.
“Right. In we go.”
Their voices could clearly be heard as they descended what looked like some roughly-cut stairs.
There was complete silence. It struck Jeremy that for all the hundreds of bird and animal calls in the jungle, you hardly ever saw them—
Then his uncle was calling out for Mister Smith and more lights.
***
“What’s going on?” The voice was plaintive, tinged with sadness, but perhaps also a bit of boredom.
Jeremy looked down to Melody, tragic in her beauty and aloneness from his vantage point.
“I don’t know.”
They were all down there now, except for the natives. Some of them had gone back to a desultory job of clearing more vegetation from the front elevation from what was beginning to look like a terraced, pyramidal structure. It was incredibly steep, which set it apart from the relatively gentle slopes around it. It could easily have been mistaken for another volcanic plug, he supposed.
She was alone down there, although there were a couple of native boys nearby, and she was probably nervous of snakes, or big cats or whatever.
He couldn’t really blame her for that. They’d heard the gruff bark of what Smith said was a jaguar, not too far away and keeping them up half the night with its growls. The smaller creatures were just as bad in terms of alien noises.
He decided to have a look for himself, although archaeology had never really interested him. It occurred to him that it wasn’t always digging in the dirt in some sort of grid pattern with trowels, brushes, and knives, all blackened bits of pottery and burnt bones.
Coming to the bottom of a short flight of steps, the room was relatively well-lit by the flashlights.
He stopped dead upon seeing it.
“Ah. Jeremy. Nephew. I’m not sure if you should be seeing this—”
Jeremy almost lost his breakfast, the sight bad enough but the smell so much worse in the confined space.
It was…it was…
The altar, for surely that’s what it was, was a big flat slab. The rest was carved in the body of a jaguar, its head sticking up incongruously from the left side, turned to face the entrance. The legs had been carefully cut and polished at the bottom end into feet, holes drilled all over it representing the animal’s spots. At one time it might have been painted and some faint vestiges of colour still remained…
Reality sank in and one had to acknowledge it.
There was a dead man up on the altar, flat on his back, chest torn open, exposing blackened flesh and blood. His head was missing, and i
t was God-awful.
Blood had spilled and fallen on the floor, littered with dead leaves and a layer of silt from the rains pooling up inside before leaking away through the cracks. One corner still held a dank pool, possibly an inch deep of black muck with a little water on top.
The ceiling was low and plain.
The walls were covered with more barbaric carvings, all garish, the sun, stars and heavenly objects, animals, spirits and demons. They were carved in high relief in the native stone which must have been quarried in the highlands above.
Jeremy couldn’t look away. As much as he wanted to—
The head definitely appeared to be missing, although those were surely Mister O’Dell’s rather bronzed and hairy knees, his shorts, his socks and shoes—what was left of the shirt.
“What—what?”
Gerald Day cleared his throat.
“Mister O’Dell, one must presume.”
So much for electric eels, then.
“Gentlemen? Doctor Fawcett? What’s happening?” It was still bright, and hot, and sunny out there.
It was a different world out there.
They heard her voice, looking at each other in silent consternation. It sounded like she was climbing up towards the entrance, calling out for some help or reassurance.
His uncle’s face was pale, eyes black and staring in the dim light.
“Jeremy—please, don’t let her see this.”
“Oh, my God. No—no, Uncle Harry.” Tearing his eyes from the horrible sight, Jeremy turned and nipped back up the stairs to head her off before she got there.
He was just stepping out of the door when a whoop went up from below that practically made him jump out of his skin.
***
Treasure.
The effect that it had on men, himself included, and even the lady, was amazing.
They stared, fixated, Mister Syrmes having dragged a dirty, mildewed knapsack out from under a pile of leaves and dead branches in the far corner. He opened it and dumped it on the ground.
Their faces were dumbfounded—there were bracelets, hoop earrings, necklaces, upper arm bands, chains, loose gems of emerald and ruby, sapphire and nameless others. The most stunning work was a death mask. Parts of it were missing but it was crafted out of gold, brass or copper wire, and dozens of small pieces of jade. The wide, staring eyes and other stylistic features indicated the Jaguar god again.
Unnoticed by the others, and it had proven impossible to keep Melody out of the chamber—her eyes still drawn to her husband as all else ignored her, Mister Syrmes had drawn back. With Kevin Smith leaning in, eyes agleam at all of the loot—no one was really thinking yet, he drew a revolver from inside the rear of his jacket.
He coughed, politely at first, then louder upon being totally ignored.
They turned upon his insistent tone.
“Mister Syrmes. What is the meaning of this?” His uncle’s face was pale, with two red splotches of anger high on his cheekbones.
Smith, staring, found himself confronted with a pistol two inches from the tip of his nose.
“Give me the rifle—very, very slowly, Mister Smith.”
Face bleak, Kevin unslung it and handed it over, held horizontally, muzzle pointing well away from anyone else. An accidental discharge would ricochet any number of times in a stone chamber.
“Yeah. Sure. No problem—what’s up, Mister Syrmes.”
Syrmes lowered the pistol and fired two shots into Kevin Smith’s chest. He fell back, hitting his head hard on the leg of the altar. He lay there, twitching, staring at Syrmes with shock and incomprehension before losing blood pressure and any sort of body control and slumping into immobility.
Syrmes quickly put the rifle over his shoulder before anyone thought to move. He waved the pistol.
“Put the stuff back in the bag—you.” Mrs. O’Dell’s hands were shaking, and she was afraid to turn her back on him.
Syrmes jerked the pistol.
“You. Over in the far corner.”
The men hastened to comply, splashing into the black muck. Outside, native voices chattered but Syrmes appeared unconcerned.
“But, but—”
“It’s pretty simple, Doctor. You’ve been had.” Her voice was strong and bitter. “We—we have been had.”
Jeremy tore his eyes from Kevin who had finally stopped moving. There really was such a thing as a death rattle.
“In the corner, boy. I don’t have to leave you alive—” He smiled. “It’s just that I only have so many bullets.”
With the exception of one or two gemstones that might have fallen off the altar and rolled into corners, Melody was done.
Wordlessly, Syrmes beckoned.
At arm’s length she offered the knapsack, but he shook his head.
“No. You carry it.”
“Damn you. I’m not going with you.”
“Yes, you are. Otherwise I will shoot you.”
“Argh.”
Not bothering to sling it on her back, heavy as it was with all of that gold, Melody O’Dell stepped disdainfully past Mister Syrmes and began climbing the steep stairs. The heavy bag scraped on the stairs. It was almost more than she could manage.
“Gentlemen. I wish I could tell you what a pleasure it has been.”
“You’ll hang for this, Mister Syrmes.”
Those cold, dead eyes locked on Jeremy’s.
“Actually—I rather doubt that, young man. If you gentlemen come after us, I will kill Mrs. O’Dell without hesitation.” He smiled that death’s head smile. “Put that in your little pipe and smoke it. Boy.”
Backing up the stairs, the light from above dimmed and then brightened. Their voices were right there, and then fading away.
They were gone.
Uncle Harry put a hand on his shoulder.
“Steady, lad. We’ll wait here for a bit—although I’m thinking this might somehow account for what happened to Mister O’Dell.”
Gerald and Jeremy and the Doctor stood there, listening, thinking, trying not to look at the bodies of Mister O’Dell and Mister Smith.
One of them, at least, was still warm.
“What—what do you mean?”
“Syrmes was alone in camp. Mrs. O’Dell was sleeping. We were out in the bush. Syrmes just…took a walk. I suppose we all did at one point or another .It would have been easy enough to catch O’Dell—knock him on the head with a rock. This beheading, is easy enough to fake, if one wasn’t squeamish…he might have killed you as well.” There was a catch in his uncle’s voice.
The heart and the head could have been tossed in the creek, where the flesh would have been quickly stripped off by scavengers. It was all for shock value, according to Uncle Harry.
One big distraction at the psychological moment.
“What are you saying, Doctor Fawcett?” Mister Day was pale, still in shock but in control of his emotions.
Finally, Uncle Harry let out a big breath and looked on the faces of the dead, shaking his head and uttering one or two quiet curses.
“It’s just like the lady said. I’m afraid we’ve been had, er, gentlemen.”
“What—what’s he going to do, Uncle Harry?”
“Hmn. I reckon he’ll grab the cash box. That’s the key to controlling the work party. He’ll strike camp, and head back down the river. With Paolo interpreting, he’ll be able to take as many of the natives as will go along with him, one would think—”
***
For no particular reason, the ocelot chose that moment to come into the temple. Spotting Jeremy straight away, it headed for him with happy eyes and mouth open.
“Hey, little friend.”
“Oh, Jesus. What, are you back again?” Technically, Mister Day had other things to think about.
“I don’t know, but it’s a nice animal.”
Kneeling, Jeremy buried his face in the thing’s neck as it purred and swiped at his eyes and tried to bite him any which way it could.
“Uncle Harr
y.”
“Yes, lad?”
“Are we going to get out of this?”
The older men exchanged a long look.
Mister Day spoke first.
“Of course we are, Jeremy.” He snorted. “You’re bloody well right, we are.”
Uncle Harry just nodded, thinking furiously.
***
They were still a quarter mile from camp when there came the sounds of gunfire.
“Damn. That didn’t take him too long.”
Day shook his head.
“He can’t be shooting them all.”
“We have no idea of what’s happening.”
“Uncle Harry. Maybe we should get off the trail.”
Standing there in thought, Harry sort of sunk into himself. Whatever it was, they had no way of stopping it.
There was nothing to do but wait.
The sound of a boat motor starting up came, the throttle roared after a time and it would seem that they were away.
“Right. Cautiously, lads. Let’s not just go running in there.” No coward, Uncle Harry was just being sensible.
It took a few minutes of walking, hot and sweaty and with the heart pounding. Breath seemed a bit ragged in the throat to Jeremy.
Mrs. O’Dell was standing there waiting for them at the end of the trail.
She waved when she saw them.
“Don’t worry. He’s gone.”
They had struck a couple of the tents.
Some of the food was missing and a good number of their jerry-cans of fresh water.
“Gerald.”
“Sir?”
“Check around and see if he’s left us any weapons—is there anyone else here, Melody?”
“No. He took all the natives with him. And the boy—Paolo.”
“What was the shooting?”
“The boat.” She pointed to the edge of the jungle with the creek and the landing area beyond.
“Of course! The boat. Come along, Jeremy.”
***
Syrmes had been unable to sink the second boat, although he’d holed it a good dozen times.
