Chapter Nineteen #2
Angélica swallowed a groan of frustration. This tale was growing taller by the second. She took back the reins. “We don’t know what we heard. Only that there was the sound of something decent-sized moving through the brush over there.”
“Define ‘decent-sized,’ gatita,” her dad said, his cane creaking as he closed the distance between them.
“I don’t know, maybe …” She turned to Quint, grimacing. “It could have been something as large as a jaguar, I guess.”
He swiped at a fly circling, trying to join the conversation. “I’m leaning more toward something smaller with the way we scared it off so easily.”
“Did it make any sound?” Raul asked.
Angélica shook her head.
“Maybe we should go back to the wall,” Esteban whispered, fidgeting with his backpack strap. “Let Bronko and Raul hunt and kill it.”
“I don’t want to kill anything,” Raul shot back.
“I might,” Bronko said.
“We’re not going back.” Angélica looked beyond her father. “Where’s KuTu?”
The others turned to check.
“He was lagging behind some after we passed the butterfly mound,” her father answered.
Raul nodded. “I heard him say something in Mayan that sounded like he was going to talk to the butterflies, but I figured that was his way of saying he needed to … ah …” He frowned sheepishly at Daisy and then Angélica. “To urinate.”
“Should we wait for him?” Quint asked, thumbing further up the path. “Or trust that he’ll catch up and meet us at the ruins?”
Angélica used the collar of her shirt to wipe at the sweat rolling down toward her eye. “Let’s keep going. If he doesn’t show up in the next half hour, then maybe Bronko and Raul can try to track him down.” She looked at the two guards in turn. “Does that sound okay to you?”
They both nodded, but Bronko continued to frown in the direction from which they’d come. “How about I lead the rest of the way, Dr. García?” he said. “Just to be safe. And we all stay close together.”
She nodded. “That’s fine. It’s not much farther.”
And she was right, it wasn’t. A short time later, they came around a bend in the trail and there stood the crumbling ruins of the temple. Just beyond it was the single-story structure from where the bats had blasted in fire-hose fashion.
Upon arriving, Angélica suggested they pause to drink some water and unpack the tools they’d each brought along to record the details about the ancient structures and explore the area more thoroughly. Thankfully, the insects were behaving themselves for the time being.
Bronko and Raul didn’t wait long before leaving to check the perimeter for venomous snakes or any other potentially dangerous animals.
With all of the fruit decaying on the ground, Raul was concerned about this place being almost as big of a draw for local wildlife as the aguada.
Bronko just didn’t want any snakes sneaking up on them while they worked.
Quint started to work on clearing away the ferns and vines and branches hiding the carvings around the entryway of what he was now calling the “bat-cave,” while Esteban watched and waited with his charcoal and rice paper in hand.
His job today was to make more detailed rubbings of each section of the entrance so that they could lay the papers out on the table back in the mess tent later to try to make sense of the carvings.
Meanwhile, Angélica’s dad and Daisy would circle the collapsing, larger temple, tasked with looking for a possible entrance that might have caved in sometime during the last few centuries—or been walled in by looters for later plundering.
Daisy asked to borrow Quint’s camera, and after some basic instructions on how to point and shoot, they’d gone to work.
Angélica wanted to wait for everyone to return before exploring inside the single-story structure.
She’d head in with her dad and Quint first, and if all was fine and there was space for more bodies, she’d have Daisy join them.
If they needed to clear out any rubble or debris, Bronko and Raul—and hopefully KuTu if he arrived—would be called in, too.
Normally, an initial search and inspection mission would be done by only her and her father, plus maybe one other, like Fernando. But with this site’s unknown history and her mother’s warnings the other night, Angélica was using more caution and crew at each step in the reveal process.
While she waited, she hacked away some of the vegetation around the side of the single-story ruin, wanting an idea of the outer dimensions.
The underbrush grew more dense with every step, along with the population of ticks.
Several strangler figs with their arm-like roots trailing down were slowly trying to wrap the structure in their wooden web.
Anywhere there was a crack in the stone walls where a windblown spore could settle and sprout, tufts of ferns poked out.
Angélica stopped slashing through the vegetation and paused to stare up at the structure. She tried to picture it long ago, back before the jungle began devouring it, removing any evidence of man’s touch from the landscape.
“Dr. García!” Esteban called out. Something in his tone made her breath catch.
She headed back, brushing off ticks along the way.
When Angélica rounded the front of the ruin, she came upon Esteban and Quint frowning up at the longer stone that bridged the top of the entrance.
Without the ferns and brambles covering it, the carving there was visible through the layer of greenish black lichens.
Was that … She climbed the steps to take a closer look. The dank smell of stale dirt wafted out from inside the ruin’s entrance.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, staring up at the carving of an anthropomorphic sun with a skeleton-like face in the center.
Sunken eye sockets surrounded the protruding eyeballs.
An upside-down heart indicated the nose cavity, and rectangular teeth lined the upper and lower jaws.
Curled designs surrounded the top of the skull with thorny points sticking out in place of the sun’s rays.
“I believe so,” Quint said, not sounding any happier than she was to have come across this symbol.
“Es the missing college girl’s tattoo, no?” Esteban’s brow was scrunched. “Kinich Ahau. The sun god.”
“A version of him, maybe,” Angélica said, reaching up to touch the stone. It felt cool under her palm, the buildup of lichens making it scratchy.
“Was she ever found?” Esteban asked.
“I don’t think so.” Angélica exchanged a somber look with Quint.
Nor would she ever be.
The “girl” in question, Gertrude, had been working with them as a grad student intern at the last site.
Only they’d come to find out she was not really a student, but more a guard, watching for trouble of the supernatural sort.
Gertrude had glommed onto Quint during a ceremony to rid the place of a growing menace and then tried to use him as bait to save the crew from what she’d believed was certain death.
In the end, she’d been the one who’d fallen.
As far as everyone other than Quint and Angélica knew, including the authorities, the grad student had gone missing.
She was simply another non-local who’d either stolen Maya treasure and ran off with the goods, or she’d become lost and possibly killed.
It was well accepted that death happened in the jungle now and then, especially to tourists who roamed off the beaten path.
“That is sad.” Esteban shook his head. “She was kind.” He pointed his piece of charcoal at the skeletal sun. “But why would Kinich Ahau be here? You think she visited this place before she came to work at the last dig?”
“Maybe,” Angélica said. It was certainly a possibility. Other than Gertrude’s tattoo, this was the first time she’d seen that image at a Maya site.
Quint sighed sharply and left, heading over to the path.
Angélica thought about following him, but decided to take a closer look at the rubbing Esteban had been working on of the carving next to the opening that had been hidden before. She held up the paper, focusing on the negative space in addition to the actual raised portion of the carving.
No way.
She lowered the paper and stared at the actual stone.
But maybe so.
“You have a flashlight handy?” she asked Esteban.
He shuffled around in his pack and then pulled one out.
She clicked it on and angled the beam over the surface, trying to gain a clearer picture by studying the contours of the carving with the use of shadows. Unfortunately, it was too bright out for her flashlight trick. She needed to try it in the dark.
She handed the paper back to Esteban. “Keep rubbing over that block,” she instructed in his native tongue, smiling in spite of the tightness in her chest. “You’re doing good work.”
When he returned to his charcoal and paper, she joined Quint, who had taken up residence on a fallen log. His elbows rested on his knees as he stared at the ground between his feet.
“You okay?” She plucked some fern pieces from his hair.
He shrugged, squinting up at her. “Why is that weird-looking sun here at this site?” he asked quietly. “What in the hell does that mean on top of the butterflies and vultures?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think another one of those were-jaguar creeps is prowling in the dark inside that building, just waiting to take a bite out of one of us? Is that what Daisy’s messenger meant when she said something about more being sacrificed?”
“I don’t know.” She chewed on her lower lip, glancing at the carving Esteban was rubbing over with charcoal. If that was what she thought it was …
She turned back to find Quint watching her.
“What do you know, Angélica?”
She hesitated, frowning.
“Fuck, now what?”
She leaned over and whispered next to his ear. “That carving Esteban is working on—I think it’s a representation of Camazotz.”
“Who’s that?” He reached up and flicked something off her collar. “Some ancient king of Calakmul or one of the other Maya cities?”