Ann looked over to Sarina and then to Jack and was about to say something when Sarina began sobbing then turned and stormed out of the room and shouted, “I HATE YOU, ANN!”
“Sarina, SARINA!” Ann shouted as she ran out of the room. “Dad,” pleaded Ann. “Sarina just wanted …”
“To what, SHARE A STOrY ABOUT HOW SHE FEELS?!”
“I think she just wants you to notice her and misses you. And she is furious with me. Can’t you see that she is re-directing her anger with you towards me, as if this was all my fault!”
“Ann …” Jack sat back in his chair and pondered Ann’s comment for a moment. He looked over to the door where Sarina had just stormed out. His expression turned icy, like he was possessed.
“I don’t have time for this.” He said as he turned back to his work as if Sarina had never come into the room. “Look at this Ann!” Jack stared at the document, which revealed new information. At the beginning of each segment the calendar described moments in history with astonishingly accuracy. Adolph Hitler was born at the beginning of one of the tuns in the eighth segment. In another, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Jack was indeed impressed and began to focus more on the calendar and less on the Nazi’s invade and destroy history. He began working late into the night putting aside the needs of his family once again. It was clear that Jack had forgotten Dana’s advice and was choosing his work as his priority and not his family.
Ann looked past the open door where Sarina had stormed out and had become painfully aware of her father’s priority, which was his work and not his family. Ann loved her father and wanted so much to please him; however, being the eldest child, she felt a sense of responsibility to hold the family together. She did not like the way Jack was treating Sarina. She tried talking with Sarina, but it had become difficult to encourage Sarina to open her heart, especially because Sarina, subconsciously, blamed the sister that she loved for the rift Sarina had with her dad. She would never be the golden child; that was Ann. Ann was beginning to resent her father and his work. Her own work in the community helped her to stay centered and relieved some of the stress that was building inside her.
Ann was a saint to her family and community. She was involved in volunteer programs in her town and helped with the local homeless shelters. She also was involved in social activism and was a member of the local chapter of the Sociology Club on campus. Their members work towards an alternative, socially just society by raising awareness of issues related to poverty, social injustice, and sustainability. She enjoyed her life in Idaho and helping her father was fun, but, as time went on, Ann became concerned about her father’s obsession. She told her mother how he seemed consumed by it and how poorly he was treating Sarina who was distancing herself from Ann more and more. In Jack’s zeal to understand everything about the ancient Mayan culture, he began coming home later and later and sometimes not at all without a word as to where he was or what he was doing.
He stayed at his office and pored over government documents tying together the threads of the Mayan people and other ancient cultures. There were references to the similarities of the great pyramids of Egypt and those of the Mayan and Aztec people. He read reports regarding the seemingly peaceful movement in Peru by the Inca people. How was it, he wondered, that a single colony of people known as the Inca were able to peacefully extinguish over 250 dialects in Peru and convert an entire country over to the Quechua language? What did they know? He wondered.
The ancient peoples of Earth also seemed to know the workings of our solar system and how the planets rotated around the sun and how they moved in retrograde as our own Earth moved in her orbit. How were these ancient Mayan people, who lived sometime around 2000 B.C.E., able to know this fact when our own western culture believed differently even into the early 17th century C.E. and later? Many cultures understood the physics of the solar system but the modern theory of heliocentrism was popularized by Galileo in the 1660s. For revealing what the ancients apparently knew millennia before, he was swiftly tried by the Inquisition and found vehemently guilty of heresy. Galileo was forced to recant his findings and spent the rest of his life under house arrest for attempting to “enlighten” late Renaissance Europe and the Pope that the Earth indeed rotated around the Sun. Jack knew that these discoveries were all connected but he was not yet sure how.
Ann and her mother were concerned that Jack was spiraling downward and needed some help. Ann’s mother pleaded with him to abandon this obsession and insisted he was possessed by something that was evil and unearthly.
Ann knew more than anyone about his research. And so when she stumbled onto more information they both had overlooked—information critically important to Jack’s work—Ann made a fateful decision. She knew enough to realize the importance of the information she held, but because she so wanted their family to be whole once more, Ann decided to keep the information she had found away from her father. The information outlined a sort of plan. The Nazis had discovered fragmented information roughly translated from the ancient Mayan language, but it wasn’t complete. The documents she found told of a re-visitation from a distant planet that orbited the Sun, but what was not clear was who or what beings, if any, might be visiting or when. Still, Ann believed that his information was somehow important to her father who seemed to be puzzled about an event in the future involving beings from another world. Ann tucked this document away in an attempt to protect her father who, she felt, was in some sort of trouble or was going insane. She would read more about aliens and other worlds later.
Ann began confiding in her sister, Sarina, about her feelings about their father. Ann was worried that he was losing his mind. Ann also thought she heard her father talking to someone late one night when he thought no one else was in ear shot. Ann hoped that by sharing her concerns Sarina might be able to open up and tell her why she had become so distant.
“Sarina, I heard voices in dad’s study out in the garage about a week ago. I heard him speaking in a different language and the person he was talking to had a deep gruff voice and when I looked in, no one was there. I am afraid for him,” said Ann as she sat on her sister’s bed. “I don’t know what to do.”
Sarina listened not knowing what to say all the while resenting her sister. It was 1981 and Sarina was now seventeen, a senior in high school and not completely sure what any of this meant. Ann had just turned nineteen and was in college and very mature and honest about her feelings, which allowed her to see things with more clarity. Ann talked with her close friends, being careful about who she told about her father and her situation. Rumors had a way of spreading like wildfire with little regard for truth and confidentiality. Sarina was more of an introvert and preferred to figure things out on her own and felt safer keeping these issues about her father and family to herself; however, that safety came at the price of not always getting the full picture. Sarina focused more inward hoping to resolve the situation at hand and was frustrated and she still hated Ann for stealing her father away. The situation with Jack’s obsession was more than she knew how to handle.
Then everything poured out of Sarina and she began to sob uncontrollably. “Ann, I‘m … I’m scared about what’s happening to our family but I don’t know what to do about it either! You did this. Dad was fine until now. You took him over and left me behind and now look what you’ve done. IT’S NOT FAIR!” Sarina was practically screaming at Ann. “I just want everything back to normal! Why can’t we just be a normal family?” Sarina was in tears. “My body hurts from this and I don’t know why. It’s as if something dark is closing in around me! I wish it would stop!” Sarina clapped her hands over her ears as if to protect her hearing.
Ann was relieved that Sarina was finally able to share this with her and sighed while she held Sarina and said, “I know this is hard. Dad’s not been himself lately. A few of my friends are concerned but none of us were able to figure this out. We simply have no where to start. This research was fun and interesting at first but he
has been drawn into this by someone or something.”
Sarina pushed away from Ann still convinced all this was her fault. “What do you mean something?”
Ann was beginning to sense that something was controlling Jack but wasn’t sure just who or what. She was following Jack’s research and reading his papers when he wasn’t around. Jack had thought that he was concealing his work well enough, but Ann was too smart and knew how her dad functioned. She knew how he got and where he put important papers and was able to read a journal he was keeping when he wasn’t around. She read about the Mayan culture in his notes and saw names he had written down. Names that meant something to him as they appeared over and over again. One name was highlighted and traced over and over again in various places in his journal. It was Cum-Hau. Ann had read about this mythical god in some of Jack’s research papers and knew that he was a dark overlord in Mayan mythology and that he was the god of death and the underworld.
“Shhh ... ”Ann again pulled Sarina close as a gesture to protect and comfort her while looking around, realizing and then regretting what she had just said to Sarina. “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.” Ann was holding her own feelings in not wanting to upset her sister any more than she already was. She knew that Sarina was confused and somewhere inside Ann believed that Sarina knew all of this was not Ann’s fault. Even still, Ann was a feeling human being and her emotions were difficult to contain. She wanted to set the record straight with Sarina and let her know that their father was under some kind of spell or something and that somehow she was going to find out and make things right.
Downstairs, their parents were arguing again. These arguments were becoming more frequent and more intense. The police had been there a few times after neighbors called in a domestic disturbance. Jack never hit Mona, but something was indeed coming to a climax and, in a small Christian town, people listened and watched and judged with keen ears and eyes. If anything seemed unusual to this community, the locals knew about it quickly and wanted to put an end to it as soon as possible.
The knock at the door startled Ann, who was grasping her sister tightly by her side, still sitting on Sarina’s bed upstairs. Jack let the police in. Sarina and Ann slowly descended to the bottom of the stairs. The arguing was still alive and louder than ever and one of the police officers, a woman named Jennifer Banderas, took Jack and Mona into the kitchen to settle them down. The other officer turned to the bottom of the stairs in Ann and Sarina’s direction. His name was Riley Holden, a nineteen-year-old rookie on the police force who was about to celebrate his twentieth birthday. Ann reached out to him with terrified eyes. He saw the fear on her face as he touched her arm. Officer Holden felt an electrical pulse pass through him as he touched Ann. A tear ran down her cheek as she fought to hold back the sobs.
Officer Holden released his touch on Ann’s arm, who seemed to not notice the pulse. The moment felt like an eternity for Officer Holden as he stood there assuring these two innocent girls that everything was going to be okay, careful not to touch Ann’s arm again. He had never experienced any energetic pulse, or whatever it was, while touching anything other than a bare electric wire before.
“Girls,” he said awkwardly, attempting some form of composure, “I know this seems bad, but I know everything will be okay.” Officer Holden didn’t know what else to say. This family was in pieces and he had no experience concerning how to hold the pieces together. No real training at the academy covered this. So he was at a bit of a loss as to what to do.
“Officer Holden,” asked Sarina. “What’s happening?”
“I’m not sure but my partner is talking to your parents right now and maybe she can sort this out.” Officer Holden was nervously glancing in Officer Banderas’s direction wondering when she was going to finish and come over and help him out. A few more minutes passed and Officer Holden was staring at his hand, which still felt a slight sting from the electrical pulse he felt when he touched Ann’s arm. He was about to ask Ann if she felt it when Officer Banderas, Jack and Mona came into the room.
Jack let out a sigh as the three walked towards the girls and Officer Holden and assured the officers this was to be their last visit to this house. Jack looked at Ann with sadness in his eyes mixed with a trace of fury. He glanced at Mona and Sarina and walked out the back door. He gently closed the door and disappeared into his workshop.
Sarina stared in Officer Banderas’s direction. The air was filled with a stale energy that they all felt. The two officers said there was nothing more to do. Officer Holden turned to leave and the last he saw of these two innocent girls, huddled close to their mom, were tear-filled eyes as he and Officer Banderas walked out the front door.
Meanwhile, Jack was putting all his research and a few personal belongings into his car. When he had finished loading his car, he opened the driver side door and paused. He walked back to the house and placed a small wrapped box on the back steps. He took one last glance toward the house where he had settled his family. Jack returned to his car and paused with his hand on the door handle.
“Jack,” someone called out.
Jack looked around.
“Jack, it’s me.”
Jack climbed in and turned the ignition key.
“Jack. It’s me, Cum-Hau. Are you coming? I need you.”
Jack felt Cum-Hau’s presence as he put the car in gear and drove down the street without another glance back. Mona sat and was watching through the front picture window as Jack drove down the street with Sarina resting her head on her lap. Ann walked out the back door, saw the gift, and picked it up. She was fighting back her tears as she unwrapped it and opened the box. “This authentic Mayan bracelet is for you, Ann. I found it a while back when I was in San Francisco and thought of you. It is a very special and so are you. It is special in ways that I don’t yet fully understand and perhaps again the same can be said about you. Thank you for all your dedication. I hope that someday you will understand why I had to leave. I love you, Dad.”
After two weeks and countless phone calls to his office and other friends, Ann, Mona, and Sarina assumed he was not returning home. Ann kept the Nazi document she had kept from Jack and the bracelet he had given her. It was a thick hand woven solid gold bracelet with two charms hanging from it. One had her name, “Ann,” the other her sister’s, “Sarina.” Ann loved her father. Even so and despite his kind words, she felt angry with the pain of her family being torn apart.
After a year or so, Ann became restless. Her mother used the church as comfort and found a new sense of belonging within its walls. Sarina still seemed to resent Ann for taking their dad away from her. Ann wanted to share her own feelings with Sarina about their dad but knew that Sarina needed the illusion that Jack was still her hero to help get her through the disappearance of her father. It was easier for Sarina to blame Ann than to face the truth, whatever it was. Ann would be turning twenty soon and was ready to leave the small community and venture out on her own. This was how Ann was dealing with her feelings about her dad and Sarina. Mona seemed to be coping in her own way. Ann and Mona had grown apart in a relatively short period of time and Mona was developing a new community of friends through her church. Ann was not a religious person so there was not much to keep her in this small town. So the day after Ann’s twentieth birthday, she packed her bags and left to find her own path in the world. It wasn’t a hard decision for Ann. Her family was torn apart and Ann carried a heavy weight of responsibility but she also knew she needed to leave. Ann had tried to reassure Sarina that this was the right thing for her to do, and she promised to write Sarina when she found a place to settle down. Ann thought Sarina would be happy to see her go but Sarina cried at the window when Ann left.
With Ann now gone, Sarina was left alone and turned towards her mother’s community for a sense of belonging. Sarina was confused about her feelings for Ann and getting involved in the church helped her deal with Ann’s departure.
Ann moved on and tried to leave behind the
memory of her father and his obsessions and the night he left his family, forever. Ann carried the key to a puzzle she was not able to fully understand. The bracelet was only a token of her father’s love. He wanted her to keep it close and never lose sight of it. “This will be important for you some day,” he said. “Keep it safe.”
Ann’s journey involved moving from city to city trying to focus on a life for herself. She kept in touch with her sister as best she could but left the connection with her mother behind. However, Ann was never able to fully leave behind her father’s work and attempted to fill in the gaps of the incomplete work Jack had started. She never really made any headway with any further research but it helped her pass the time and ease the pain of her fractured relationship with Sarina.
Ann found herself empty and unfulfilled throughout her life. Her family was separated and connection was difficult. She moved from relationship to relationship never truly happy. She called Sarina often in the early years but Sarina was still distant. Ann resorted to infrequent emails later in the ‘90s and then slowly discontinued her communications with her sister all together when Sarina stopped answering them.
Ann finally moved to San Francisco in early 2002 and settled into a life filled with hopelessness at the thought of ever solving the puzzle involving her father. Ann missed the deep connection with her father and longed to be with him again but so many years had passed.
Ann worked for a number of social justice and community outreach nonprofits, searching for a purpose. Ann’s love was the cosmos and her social justice positions were a way to use her talents to help fractured communities that were helping her to heal her own fractured life. These positions never fulfilled her deeper love of the possibility of life in outer space.
The Song_A mysterious tale of the Mayan spirit world and the Mayan calendar Page 4
