Chapter Fourteen
Hot Thoughts from a Good Demon
Another day of beating back the jungle.
Two miserable, long, hot days. And I mean fucking hot.
Like standing next to a demon’s sphincter sort of hot.
A bad demon that is, fresh out of Hell, with bigger teeth than me. And longer nails. Probably a lot uglier, too.
But I might reek more after sweating all damned day.
Speaking of Hell, Angélica told me that the Maya Underworld shouldn’t be equated to the conventional perception that Christianity has of the Devil’s fiery man-cave.
That the Maya believe Xibalba is an actual place where the dead had to go after a non-violent death, no matter if they were good or bad, rich or poor, or somewhere in between.
Those who died in battle, or in some other violent way, won a get-out-of-Xibalba-free pass and could head straight to the thirteen heavens.
Teodoro once talked about Xibalba being “telluric energy,” which I read means energy relating to Earth itself. It has to do with the low-frequency electric currents that naturally travel through the ocean and under the ground—basically, anywhere near the planet’s surface.
Where was I going with this?
Oh, yeah. It’s fucking hot.
Everyone is getting cranky.
Dr. Fernel’s obsessive tendencies seem to be spreading. Or maybe it’s just a compulsion to hurry up and find the pot of gold here so we can all return to air-conditioned civilization and cold drinks.
On another note, there are a dozen vultures circling overhead today. I’m afraid to ask Angélica if the number twelve has special meaning to the Maya, as in yet another sign of impending doom.
Or death.
Maybe I’m dead and just don’t know it yet. My heart probably gave out from the heat and humidity.
Maybe I’m Kimi, the death god sidekick, and I keep hanging around someone here at the dig site because I’m their spirit pal.
Or maybe we’re all dead and trapped here at this damned dig site for eternity. Our skulls will be added to the pile outside of the wall as a forewarning for future …
“Mr. Parker?” Fernel called through the trees, his voice instantly stopping the happy chatter of the birds in the tree canopies. “Mr. Parker, Dr. García needs your help.”
Jesus, how many times today had he told Fernel to drop the formalities and call him by his first name?
“Coming!” Quint hollered back, closing his field notebook and stuffing it in his backpack next to his camera.
He rose from the long-ago fallen tree he’d been using for a bench seat during his break, swatting at a cloud of gnats hovering mid-air.
Keeping an eye out for slithering troublemakers, he trekked back along the path through the slashed vegetation he’d mowed down with his machete to the location where he’d left Juan with Fernel and his LIDAR map.
Only they weren’t there.
He backtracked a little farther and then paused to listen for the two men.
The bramble of scrub bushes rustled off to his right, and the sound of twigs and leaves crunching underfoot followed.
What were they doing over there?
Quint checked around for a path through the tangle of thorny branches and pokey yucca leaves, finding none. Maybe they’d veered off course somewhere else and were moving parallel to his route.
He took several steps off the cut path, attempting to thread his way through the bramble without getting scratched or stabbed, only to run into what looked like a hedgerow of gnarled and spine-covered vegetation.
Damn it! It was too hot for this shit.
Why had they gone off trail?
He stopped and wiped his face with his shirt sleeve. Trying to peer through Mother Nature’s blockade, he listened again for sounds from Juan and Fernel.
Why were the birds still silent?
He looked up through the trees, catching sight of a couple of vultures circling in the patches of blue sky visible through the leaves.
Branches rattled and snapped on the other side of the brambly barricade. Whoever was over there was close.
Quint eased forward, stepping lightly, trying again to see in between the brambles.
He heard the sound of a whispering voice. Or was it voices? It was hard to tell for sure.
What the hell were they doing? Had Fernel found something worth whispering about?
Had Juan spotted an animal nearby? A snake?
A big rat? A javelina—no, how would it get over the wall?
A large cat could probably climb it, though.
Or climb a nearby tree and leap onto the top of the wall.
A jaguar on the hunt would explain why the birds had suddenly zipped their beaks.
Shit. Was he being hunted right now by a cat?
His heart banged against his ribcage, striving to shoulder its way out and back to camp.
Wait! Cats don’t whisper, bonehead.
He gulped and inched back a step anyway. “Juan?” he said in a quiet voice.
The whispering stopped.
So did the rustling sounds.
Quint reversed several more steps, holding his machete out in front of him in case something came lunging out of the brush at him.
A few racing heartbeats later, he’d made it back on the slashed trail. Sweat ran down his every thing and every part, clear down into his boots.
He glanced around, checking the shadows in the surrounding underbrush, his machete still at the ready.
“Juan,” he called out loud and clear. “Where are you?”
“Over here,” came a hearty response from his left, the opposite side from where he’d heard the whispering.
What the fuck? Had he gotten all turned around?
Quint swatted away a bee that seemed to have him confused for a flower. “Over where?”
“About twenty steps east of the path past a large ramon tree with one of my orange ribbons tied around it.”
Quint scoffed under his breath. Who could tell east from north here? There was simply the ground, the sky, and the jungle. Tomorrow, he was going to start carrying his own compass instead of relying on his map-carrying companions, who seemed to have trouble sticking behind the guy with the machete.
“I don’t have the compass, remember?” Quint said, but headed off trail in the direction of Juan’s voice, stepping carefully through the dead leaves, ferns, and moss.
Maybe Fernel had separated off from Juan to take a piss, and that was who he’d heard whispering back the other way.
After all, Quint had caught Fernel talking to himself back at camp.
Although, as thick as the vegetation was in this part of Site 5, Fernel had better be leaving some kind of marker on the ground or trees so he wouldn’t end up lost. Angélica would be good and growly if she had to switch the crew from searching for clues about this place’s past to scouring the site for signs of Fernel’s whereabouts.
But what was Juan thinking by going off path on his own? His daughter would have his hide if she knew he was taking such chances with all of the snakes Raul and Bronko claimed to have seen yesterday in this part of the site.
Quint saw an orange ribbon wrapped around a tree trunk up ahead. He rounded the ramon tree as instructed. Of course Juan had played it smart and left a marker so they could find their way back to the path. He just hoped Fernel had been as savvy as …
He saw Juan up ahead.
Dr. Fernel stood next to him.
Quint stopped. Fernel?
The two archaeologists were standing in front of a chin-level high mound of ferns and yucca plants and small bushes. Both were staring down at Fernel’s tablet with the LIDAR map on it.
Quint looked behind him. If both men were here, who had he heard whispering over there in the bushes? Had Angélica sent someone else from the crew to check on them?
Last Quint had seen her, she’d been heading toward the stairwell next to Structure II with Esteban, carrying a pack full of charcoal and rice paper sheets.
Since the forecast called for a dry, sunny day, she’d told Esteban at breakfast that they would both be collecting more charcoal rubbings of the stairwell.
Maybe Raul, Bronko, or KuTu were trying to find them. Jesus, he hoped there wasn’t an emergency with one of the other crew members.
But surely whoever he’d heard whispering would have heard him calling out and replied in turn instead of going silent.
Unless they had uninvited company at Site 5.
“Quint,” Juan called, waving him closer.
Okay, Juan first, and then the whisperer mystery.
He joined the two men. “I hear you need my help with something?” he said to Juan.
Juan’s eyes widened slightly. “How did you know that?”
Quint pointed at Fernel. “He called for me. Said you needed my help.”
“When did you call for Quint?” Juan asked Fernel.
“I didn’t.” Fernel looked up from the map, his face bright red with sweat beading his upper lip and trailing down his cheeks. “I’ve been right here with you the whole time.”
Quint sheathed his machete. “Are you two messing with me?”
“Not this time,” Juan said, appearing earnest. “What did Dr. Fernel say when he called for you?”
“He said, ‘Mr. Parker, Dr. García needs your help.’ And he said my name twice, so I don’t think I was hearing things.”
When both men continued to shake their heads, Quint glanced toward the main trail again. The whisperer …
Was someone playing a trick on him, pretending to be Fernel? Maybe Pedro?
No, it was too damned hot to play games, and Angélica had everyone scattered around the site in small groups, clearing vegetation, recording structural details for her dad, and searching for stelae or more caches.
Then what had he … There are too many whispers here, Kimi.
Daisy’s words replayed in his head, reminding him of her bizarre prophecy about the ancestors speaking to their guardian about death.
A chill finger-walked down his back, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
Had he actually heard the ancestors whispering in the bushes? If he’d chopped his way through the bramble, would he have run into the ghost of one of them?
Or had it been something worse hiding there? Waiting for him? Something that had played a part in the skulls piled up outside the wall?