My brain hurt. It was just too much to try to figure out right now.
“Don't worry about them. They'll just burn out. Let's just go. It's gonna be morning soon and we probably need to be long gone by now.”
This guy had a serious case of The Weirds going on. Then again, maybe the idea of whatever security busting our butts put him on edge. Mexican prison sounded like a bad place to be for anyone, alive or dead. I didn’t know what the typical punishment for ancient and wacky raise the dead sacrifices might be, but I imagined it wasn’t a good one. Weren't the people in these countries, like, really superstitious? We could be looking at a good old-fashioned burning at the stake. Yikes! Me and my Jimmy Choos didn't feel real flame retardant, so I followed him and high tailed it up a long hallway out of the Temple.
Standing at the precipice, I peered down into what should be the shadowy gloom of the middle of the night. Only it was not too shadowy or gloomy. Nifty night vision to the rescue! I always thought I had stellar vision, but this was fantastic. Yay for carrot eating as a teenager and adult. Go salads! Stay thin now, have great vision when dead. Healthy eating ad slogan for next year!
The steps leading down the side of the Temple were quite steep, but we clung to a chain running from top to bottom. From there we proceeded in silence to the base of the Temple and towards the nearby cover of trees. Once hidden in the safety of the tree line, we came to a halt.
He whispered to me, “Just follow me along the edge of the woods to my truck. Probably no one out here, but then again you never know. Looters like to take advantage of disasters.”
Looters? What the heck was there to loot in the middle of nowhere Mexico? That nasty stone table I woke up on? Somehow, I didn't think so.
The truck was a rusty pile of junk, just the sort of thing you would expect to see in Mexico. Crooked bumper, peeling paint, and cracked vinyl seats greeted us when he unlocked the doors. I climbed into the cab to ride shotgun, glad no one could see me. I liked my cars low, fast and sporty. This did not fit the bill. Then again, there was a reason for vehicles like this in Mexico.
He popped the truck into gear, and we bounced off in silence. Hasta la vista, ruins. We eventually hit a dirt road that I would barely consider a path for wild animals and bumped our way along that for a while. The sky turned lighter with pre-dawn, and that was probably the first time I ever saw the sun rise. Sober that is. Anyone that spent more than a few weeks at college pulled an all-nighter at some point. An all-nighter with your good friend Absolut. Or maybe a high from risking-overdose-levels of caffeine to stay awake cramming. Pick your poison.
At long last we parked at a ramshackle house. I did not know where we were, but what could I do? I mean, he was it for my ability to get around and ever possibly making it back home. With options that slim, my main crankiness wore off. It morphed into a sense of a gloom.
I didn't even have the energy to worry that he might be some homicidal maniac anymore. Sure, he could have chains in the house and be planning to trap me forever for goodness knows what nefarious reasons, but I somehow doubted it. He'd already had that chance, if I believed his story.
“Come in,” he said. “This is where I've been working and sleeping for the last eighteen months. Just excuse the mess.”
Boy he wasn't kidding about the mess. He swung the door open to the shack, and I realized the truck was far better off than what lay before me. There were books and papers stacked haphazardly on any horizontal surface and a sink full of aged dishes. That was what welcomed me from the neatest areas. I hoped the earthquake caused the worst parts of the room. I wanted to call in FEMA, Mexico or not. Then again, FEMA might have run in fear. This was worse than the video footage from Hurricane Katrina.
Little paths ran through the mess of clothes, papers, books, and objects. I picked my way through the room, hoping I wouldn't knock anything over. He came in behind me and locked the door.
“You could single handedly wipe out unemployment in this country. Ever think about hiring a few dozen people to clean this place up?” I asked. It was de-scust-ing.
“I know it looks bad. But I swear, there's a method to the madness. It’s awful, I start researching and then forget to do just about everything else. The mess sort of takes over and then...”
“And then what? Paper breeds like gerbils? Good grief. You are one man. What are you, some kind of hoarder?”
“Well it started with the first artifact I dug up. It's over there,” he said, pointing to a chipped pot on the end of one counter. “And so, then it just kind of went from there. Before I knew it, I had this.”
He spread his arms at the masterpiece of his mess. FYI, this was why God said Adam needed a woman. Could you imagine the pit Eden became in the short time under Adam's care? Anyone figure out why men can't organize anything? Born slobs. It was why I tried to keep men from sticking around my place long term. No way did I want to become some guy's maid.
“You couldn't, I don't know, get a notebook to put some of this paper in? There are really easy, and cheap things you can do. I'll bet you a taco that Lisa Frank has a low paying factory around here somewhere to make all that junk for pre-teen girls. Go raid it. Hit a salvage sale.”
“Lisa Frank? Gah, my sister lived for that stuff,” he chuckled, a sound low in his throat that sent a thrill up my spine.
“Get yourself some purple tiger notebook and boom, a little better organization. Though in this case, you might need a truck load.”
I watched as he pushed aside three textbooks so thick they made War and Peace look like a teen novella. It took an awful lot of work just so I could sit in chair. I wondered how that was gonna impact his precious organizational system straight out of Pigsty Living Quarterly.
The chair became host to my butt, and he turned his attention to his own sitting space. Maybe he should have thought about things like that before he went about resurrecting girls from the dead and inviting them back home. Sometimes men just didn't think ahead. It really should have been right there on his To-Do list. 'Clean house – check; raise girl from dead – check; get milk – oops forgot to get the milk!'.
Once seated across from me, he dropped a book onto the mountain between us that, at one time, resembled a coffee table. Currently it looked like Everest. The book, older than any I had ever seen, teetered on the pile precariously. He flipped to a place roughly three-quarters of the way into the book and pointed to a picture. Upside-down, I could not tell what was before me. It looked like some sort of bad drawing on a cave wall or something equally ancient and nonsensical.
“I don't get it. What is that?” I asked. Simple question.
“These drawings are found near the site where I found... the instructions...” he faltered. I jumped on it.
“You mean this is related to whatever you did? But how? I don't get it, I'm sorry.”
He sighed, more from weariness than anything else I thought. “It is. I think this shows someone performing the same ceremony. The next part of the story continued to a wall damaged by... well we don't know what. Might have been an earthquake, invading army, or just time. At any rate, this is the best we have.”
“What about whatever it was that you found on how to do whatever.” Oh yeah, that was clear and technical. So much for that A in English. His blank stare told me all I needed to know. He thought he resurrected a moron. “You know, wherever you got your instructions from. Surely it said something?”
Maybe it was just me, but if I was writing some sort of book about raising the dead, I would want to leave instructions. Something along the lines of: Becomes mindless zombie. Wants to eat brains. Becomes ruthless killer. Goes for the jugular. Turns to dust in sunlight. Don't feed after midnight. Will turn into evil monster. Things like that.
“Not really. It just said what to do and I did it and now here we are. It actually ended there.”
“Let me get this straight. You found some crazy dude's instructions on how to do weird voodoo crap. The last entry is, 'Dear diary, thi
s is how you raise someone from the dead.' Then there's nothing else. You didn't think maybe there was a reason?”
How stupid was this guy? He should have been glad I wasn't some sort of mindless freak or jumping his bones or goodness knows what else. There had to be a reason for no more information. Like the people got eaten by monsters from the forces of darkness or something. Hey, I was back from the dead. That sort of thing opens one's mind to a whole lot of options.
He cleared his throat and shifted his glasses back up his nose. “Well, no, I guess I didn't think about it. See, I found it, translated it, was trying to decide what it all meant, and then the earthquake happened. I figured why not and?”
“Let me guess. Now we're here,” I groaned. “What the hell do you do?”
Seriously, what did this crackerjack do? Obviously, nothing involving common sense. Or he lived too sheltered a life to realize these things might not want to be messed with. Natural order getting mucked up and all that.
Note to me, buy this guy a whole lot of horror DVDs when I returned to civilization.
Sadly though, without this guy, life as I knew it would be kaput. I owed him big time for that, but boy was he ill prepared. Did he think it wasn't going to work or something? If not, how would he explain the dead chick he carried away? If it did work, what then? Ah, well, we saw that now, didn't we?
Some people just never learned to plan ahead. A hard lesson Fate decided to cram down our throats continuously over the next few days in each other’s company.
c
chapter four
I waited for an answer from my hapless savior hoping to learn more about him. He began his story, which thankfully only took about a million years in telling. Good thing I was already dead.
“Sorry to be so rude.” He looked down at his feet while pushing his glasses up his nose again.
Note to self, offer to buy him some contacts as a thank you.
“I really should have introduced myself. Things just happened too fast.”
Fast? You think?
Though I supposed Miss Manners lacked etiquette guidelines for properly hosting recently reanimated strangers. Someone should write her a letter. “I guess so. And you are probably right. I do need to know more about what is going on.”
So, I could admit when I was wrong. Sue me. Besides, with all my ID's and stuff missing, I couldn't do much of anything but listen to this guy anyway. I might as well hear it all. Every. Single. Detail.
He nodded. “I'm really sorry for the jolt. This probably isn't easy for you, having to take this all in.”
Goody, his plan was hedge, hedge, hedge. And people say women take forever to get to a point.
“Yeah. This sort of thing happens to me every day. It's really no biggie,” I droned. I rolled my eyes for effect, but he missed it.
“It all started when I arrived here. This is my first real thing on my own.”
“First real what?” Nudge, prod, poke.
“I'm an anthropologist…”
“An anthro-what?” What kind of job has a name no sane person can pronounce? Or tells you anything about what it is?
“Anthropologist. I study civilizations, people,” he clarified.
“What are you doing here in the middle of nowhere? No civilization here to study!” What was he studying? The society of trees? Dirt? It was just Mexico for crying out loud.
“Here? The Incan and the Aztecs and-”
“Oh. Yeah.” Duh, I was just in one of their temples getting the voodoo smacked into me. “You study them? Like, they are dead. Isn't that more, um, archeology?”
“That falls into anthropology. The societies of ancient America are fascinating. I grew up in Phoenix and I remember the first time I went to Montezuma's Castle. I wanted to know what it was like to live in those cliff dwellings.”
“What is that?” I asked with full confusion on my voice. Okay, so, I knew what Montezuma's Revenge was, which was why I smuggled a bottle of water off the boat with me in my Coach handbag. Dang. Another reason to mourn the loss. Clean water.
“It's a series of cliff dwellings between Phoenix and Flagstaff. You look up the cliff wall and you can see all the entrances to the different rooms. It was the most interesting thing I'd ever seen. I remember thinking it was the Indian version of a high-rise apartment.”
Indian high-rise apartments? Well that went against the wigwam's we learned about in elementary school. Kinda cool though. I never liked the idea of living in a tent. Go Indians in Arizona!
“And that brought you here?” I asked, looking around. “How? Phoenix has to be better than Mexico.” I really was not a fan of history in school and now that flaw bit me in the butt.
“It's all that’s here. I guess it's kind of a long story.”
“Hey, it isn't like you could bore to death with it. Already hit the dead mark, ya know?”
What could I say? The guy grew on me like a bad fungus. How he ended up in the resurrecting hot girls in earthquakes biz interested me. Maybe the reasons were a tad bit selfish considering who he chose for a guinea pig. Nothing wrong with that! An impish grin graced his face.
Oh dear.
“I went to Montezuma's Castle in sixth grade. Some cousins from back east had come to visit and we piled into the car, planning a trip to see the Grand Canyon. Why not? They didn't make it out very often. My parents pulled off at Montezuma's Castle cuz I guess we were rowdy. I remember my mom yelling at us to be quiet for what had to be a half hour before we pulled over.”
“Troublemaker, even then?” I held back on a snicker but arched my eyebrow.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he breathed through a small laugh. “We pull over so we can do the whole stretch your legs thing. I guess they thought that would help. Three boys in the back of a car? Yeah, not really. I just remember looking up at those cliff dwellings. They were... awe inspiring.”
“So, they made an impact, huh? More than the Grand Canyon?”
“Absolutely. We got home from the trip and I started reading everything I could. Fact, fiction, it didn't matter. That led me to other Native American tribes. At some point I ended up going south. The stories of the Aztecs and the Incas enthralled me. When I went to Arizona State, that's what I studied. I became an anthropologist and now here I am. It's fantastic. Like a dream come true.”
Wow. Someone that actually liked their job. Talk about rare. Well, sort of. I liked my job. Who wouldn't like a job where you got to shop all day on someone else's dime? The creation of personal shoppers was the best move stores ever made. I got paid to read up on all the latest trends, to peruse the stores, to buy things. It was a girl's dream come true!
The only thing wrong with it was I didn’t get to keep the stuff. Oh well. A small sacrifice. My Amex saw healthy usage, so it sure wasn't complaining.
Uh oh…he’s still talking…
Sure enough, his gushing over ancient artifacts continued. “I love the stories of these people. From Quetzalcoatl to cities of gold. The temples and all the things that went into their architecture. The savagery of their sports.”
Maybe I should have listened more to the tour guide. I just thought the Temple was a big huge building. Sure, totally magnificent considering people with no bulldozers or cranes or whatever built the thing. Hello, impressive back breaking labor? Yeah. What sports? Can you really get more savage than the Romans? To my savior’s credit, he made it sound interesting; I wanted to hear about it. I guess rebirth in an ancient temple did that to a person.
“Really? I had no idea. Like what?” I prompted.
“Oh, well the Temple for instance. These people, they were fascinated with astronomy. You came at the wrong time of year. In less than six months we'll see the spring equinox. It's quite the sight. The way the sun hits the stairs makes it look like a giant snake is descending them.”
“That's kinda creepy. Snakes are icky.” I suppressed a shudder. Me and lizards did not mix. Ever.
“It's from their mythology. Fascinating story
. I just find it amazing that they were able to build this temple to do that on the equinox. Their calendar system was far superior to ours.”
“I guess so. Our calendar system is kind of confusing sometimes. All these leap days and the millennium years and stuff. Holidays that shift around.”
“There's more,” he continued. “There's one step for every day of the year. These guys even figured out how long it took the Earth to go around the Sun. No telescopes, no computerized star charts. They may have been primitive in some respects, but they were very far advanced in others.”
“Geez. I was just impressed at how that temple stood there all these years. It must have killed them to build it all by hand or whatev.”
“It's one of the wonders of the world,” he explained. “I always thought so and now it's actually been named it. Man, that was a great day. My group here, we actually had a party when the word came out that Chichen Itza made the cut.”
“Hey I remember! People were emailing out cuz everyone could vote on it. I never heard the results.”
He grinned, a bit lopsidedly. “Well, here you are. You were just in one. The only thing I didn't like was that none of the ancient wonders made it.”
“Yeah weren't they like the pyramids in Egypt and um... Okay. That's the only one I really knew.”
“That's because the pyramids are about the only ones still remaining. Most of the others were destroyed completely or almost completely.”
“Well that's kind of sad,” I said in a total bummer kind of way.
“Yeah. I would give anything to see the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Lighthouse of Alexandria.” He looked wistful.
“At least you get to work here. I was too busy going shopping to pay attention to any of this other stuff. Guess that's my biggest weakness... shopping.”
“It did get you killed. That probably qualifies it for biggest weakness status,” he grinned. I decided I liked his grin and matched it with my own
Juan of the Dead Page 3