.
“No joke. Geez. This is taking those credit commercials a bit seriously. Who knew shopping was such a risky pursuit?”
It wasn’t like Amex was your trusty neighborhood loan shark, ready to break your legs at the first missed payment. They wouldn’t harass you unless you were an hour late with a payment. Who worked at 2 AM calling people for money? Bill collectors sucked.
“So that's how I ended up here. The rest, well that was a surprise. My crew, we found these records, and I was working on the translation and thought for sure I got something wrong.”
“And these records? They gave you the secret to life and death? Or do all you anthro-whatevers know the secrets to raising the dead? I thought that was just like a Jesus thing to do.”
Hmmm, while he was hunky in a nerdy sort of way, I don't think he could qualify as son of a god. The Rock on the other hand? Hummina hummina. There's a reason why that boy was cast as Hercules. Pardon my drool.
“I think I missed that class at the university. Sorry. No, these records. I don't know, it has no name, but it's like the American Book of the Dead. I did what it said and sure enough it worked. I had no idea...”
“But you thought, well I happen to have stumbled over a dead girl, let's give it a whirl? Who does that?”
“Uh, yeah…” The glasses went back up the nose. “It just sorta happened.”
Maybe it was just me, but it seemed a little farfetched. Okay, so my sudden death-life also seemed out there, but hey. “You just happened to have whatever it was you needed, an empty temple, chaos, and a dead girl? Seems like you were planning.”
“So, I went to Boy Scouts. You know the whole 'always be prepared' motto? Actually, it wasn't really like this ceremony called for much of anything out of the ordinary.”
“Only about a zillion candles?” I remembered how many candles burned in that room. Did he really expect me to believe he happened to walk about with a crate of candles? If so, he probably had one happy candle supplier.
“Well, I love it here, but it is Mexico. I don't know what the deal is with the wiring. I lose power regularly. Candles are a way of life for me.”
Summed up, I had before me one very nerdy dirt digger that stumbled upon a book detailing how to raise people from the dead. Maybe that was my cue to thank him for choosing to raise hot girls instead of an army of demon psychos bent on taking over the world.
The whole thing still just reeked of some kind of Twilight Zone episode. I kept waiting for the creepy dude in the suit to pop out of a corner. Maybe that one with the fallen stack of books as high as my waist.
“Okay, you happened upon a very dead me, and decided why not? What now? You have any more information?”
“That is why I wanted to come back here. Look, we only partially translated everything. And I think something happened because not a whole lot came after the details on raising the dead.”
He rifled through some papers at his feet before pulling out some notes resembling chicken scratch. I leaned over to look, but decided chicken scratch was overly kind. Perdue chickens made more legible markings than what laid before me. Amazingly enough, he continued on.
“See, I was making these notes as I went along. And I've just got some words here or there, and a whole lot of questions. But with time, I know I can figure it out. And then there's you. Like this passage here, it says something about after you raise someone, but pretty much that's all I have. You can probably fill in all these blanks.”
Wait... did he just raise me from the dead so he could have an easier time solving his little ancient mystery? That is most uncool. Sure, raise me cause I'm hot and you wanna party down with me. Don't raise me in some kind of creepy experiment.
“Look, I don't know what you think I can do-” I started.
“Oh no, no. I don't know that you can really do anything. At least not now. But just the fact that you are here and walking around and alive – uh…”
That's right, bozo. I'm not alive. I'm dead. Stupid earthquakes and stupid Mexico. The travel agent was never going to hear the end of this. Wonder who my parents used. Once I found a way back to the States, I planned some serious phone line burning.
“Look, here, Mister, I have no pulse. I think that classifies me as not alive. Thank you so much for the reminder.”
I was a little perturbed over the death thing. Almost as much as being trapped in this Godforsaken country with no purse, no id, and no credit cards.
“I'm really sorry. I didn't mean...” he trailed off, licking his lips. “And it's Jon.”
“I don't really care... what? What's Jon?”
“My name. It's Jon. Jon Daniels. I realized I never told you.”
I bet now he expected a thank you card. 'Dear Mr. Daniels. Thank you ever so much for raising me from the dead. Bea.' Just what did one say when thanking someone for that? I felt confident Hallmark did not make a card for this kind of circumstance. And was I supposed to give him a gift? I wondered if not sucking all his blood out or eating his brains might fall into the realm of 'gift'.
“Jon? Your name is Jon?” He nodded and looked down at the notes in front of him. Insert awkward silence here. “Yeah. Things kind of just happened fast and then I realized, I didn't tell you my name. I really am sorry.”
I let my annoyance at the recent life events cool a bit. After all, it was not this guy's fault that a giant Aztec replica calendar fell on my head during an earthquake. That was my own bad luck and a lost hand at cards with Lady Luck. Darn her being like... lucky.
“Hey, you know. It's been kind of weird. I'm Bea.”
“Like the letter?”
“Don't get me started. Yeah, like the letter.”
Like I was gonna tell this guy my name was Bernadette? Hell, to the no. What kind of name was that anyway? Sometimes I hated my dad. There I was, this cute, innocent, defenseless baby. And he did that to me? Where was my mother, you ask? She was hopped up higher than a kite on baby-having meds. After giving birth to me she crashed like an eagle with two broken wings. While snoring away in the hospital, the nurse handed my dad the paperwork for naming me. He scrawled down Bernadette. Bernadette? Who, born in the last thirty-five years was named Bernadette?
My dad had a thing for Bernadette Peters. Lucky me. He waited till he could sneak it in and named me after the woman. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Bernadette Peters was a fine woman. But seriously? Worse yet, he liked to call me Bernie. What kind of name was Bernie for a woman? If anyone heard the name Bernie they thought of some kind of cigar-smoking, fifty-year-old pervert.
On the other side of things, like in Weekend at Bernie's, all the great parties happened after my death. I guess maybe dear old Dad had it right after all. I'd still rather be a Tiffany.
c
chapter five
After the exchange of names, we sat there for a few moments; staring at each other. That’s when I learned I totally dominated in a staring contest. Don’t even try. I’d beat you every time. Seems that the walking dead didn’t have as much need for blinking as the living folk. Fantastic!
Hey, I was the living dead in Mexico with no Amex or anything. I had to find my perks somewhere, right?
“What now?” I asked, breaking that awkward silence. “You did your mumbo-jumbo and now I’m here and you say you don’t know what else to do. I hate to ask…” Again. I hated to ask again. What was with this dork? “You really didn’t have much more of a plan than this?”
Shrug. He shrugged at me. Nice that he was nonchalant. Then again, he didn’t appear the sort that worried about things like missing luxuries from home. Or breathing.
“Just… no. I guess I shoulda figured this out better, huh?”
Okay, I’d never understood the term sheepish before that moment. The face he gave me? Definitely sheepish.
“So, your book just ends? Like with no ‘And we raised the dead and they ate us’ sort of thing?” I know it sounded obsessive, but really the thought of brains as a permanent diet s
eemed rather vomitlicious to me. I wanted to prepare myself for any sudden and intense cravings. If ever there was a clueless look, he gave it to me.
“Um, if the dead ate them, who’d write that down?” he asked.
Was he serious? I rethought that DVD collection. This guy obviously needed even more of a life than horror flicks. Who didn’t instinctively know that raised dead generally feasted happily on humans? Blood. Brain. Guts. Redrum! Redrum!
"Uh… ok, good point. So, partially translated incomplete book. Got that part of this crazy situation. What next?” I eyed the room again, wondering just how long I could not-live while he searched for a needle in a haystack. Scratch that, the needle would be easier to find.
He flipped to another page and studied it for a moment or two. I studied my nails, assessing the earthquake damage to my mani. Gah, I needed to get home and have these babies fixed. To say my polish was chipped would be like saying the bride of Frankenstein was having a bad hair day. What a shame. Jo just filed and polished my nails before I left on vacation.
“A-ha! This is what I wanted.” He pointed at something in his book as he pushed it towards my face, but I couldn’t make out anything on the page. Was this more of his untranslated stuff? It looked like more chicken scratch to me. My blank stare obviously clued him in. He cleared his throat and pushed on. “See, it talks about this reanimating. But the following bit seems not like a warning but like maybe a… prophecy almost. Like a warning, but a prophecy? That’s part of what I wasn’t sure about.”
“You weren’t sure about it, and you…”
“Well, it didn’t seem like it was anything drastic. No end of the world or anything. It just seemed to be more of… I don’t know how to explain it. The language is difficult. It could be the recipe for a tamale for all I know.”
Nothing drastic, just a warning prophecy thing? This got more confusing the longer I talked to Jon. He could provoke a serious migraine.
“Okay, I really just don’t get it. You need to explain better or something.” Maybe if I was more direct he might get the picture.
“Well, see, here it says something about power and a warning.” Sure, it did. Whatever he was pointing to looked like a bunch of nothing to me. He moved his hand to something else on his page. “And here it says something about dead.”
“You got power plus warning plus dead? Nothing in the middle?”
Sure, seemed like he skipped a bunch of scratch in his jumping around. Then again it could be like one of those old Godzilla movies where the Japanese dude’s mouth moved for like three minutes and all the dubbing said was “Help!”
“Well, that’s the problem. Either it’s something I don’t know how to translate or it’s missing part of the words. Translating is really hard to begin with just because of syntax structure and…”
Uh oh. Jon-boy was bordering on the edge of tune-out time again.
I didn’t need gobbledegook about foreign languages. I took Spanish in school and got out being able to carry on a great conversation at… Taco Bell. Uno taco por favor!
My glazed eyes must have clued him in again. Sometimes he was quick on the uptake, other times not. Guess I got lucky that time. “Um, I know it’s really confusing. I thought the warning dealt with the power involved.”
“Power? You said it didn’t take much and if this is from some old Aztec group of people. What kind of power?” I didn’t see any electric sockets in the Temple of Doom back there. Wasn’t that why he used those candles?
“Well, that kind of confused me. I don’t know what it meant. I think it meant some kind of will power or stamina. The length of time it took, wow. By the time I was done, I felt exhausted. But then you woke up and well, I think I’m on pure adrenaline now.”
He did say a day and a half passed between the quake and that moment. How much of that time did he spend playing witchdoctor? He probably needed a siesta sooner rather than later. I looked over at him, but he didn’t look any worse for wear. In fact, he looked yummy, and not in a next meal kind of way.
Jon licked his lips before continuing. “As a kid, I dreamt of being in one of these civilizations. Wondering how cool it would be to actually be able to go back and be in them. I would read the stories and try to picture myself there. I read all of this and just wanted to try it.”
Oh great, somebody had on their King of the Aztecs under-roos today. Goodie for me.
Guess I should be grateful this guy had a hard-on the size of Texas for some ancient civilization since it meant I got a second shot at life on this ball of rock. Did I really need some half-crazy guy to accomplish this?
“So, are you playing that you’re living like eight zillion years ago during the earthquake or what?”
“The Aztec civilization is not that old. They reached their peak only about five hundred years ago.”
“Oh, I guess there’s old and then there’s ancient?” I wasn’t sure about other people, but five hundred years seemed rather ancient to me. Then again, I thought thirty was ancient which was why I refused to acknowledge my own age.
“I suppose. I love all these old cultures. Even Egypt and Greece interest me. I just prefer this side of the world.”
He didn’t need to. I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. His gushing sounded like a schoolboy with his first crush. He wasn’t kidding around; he really dug this stuff. Pun intended.
“I get that, I guess. We all have our passions.” Mine were more couture. Bring on the Fendi and Vuitton and I would sound just like Jon. Okay, there’s no would about it. Just the thought made me want to dance in place.
“Yeah, I suppose we do.” Aww, it was a Kodak moment. We could be kindred spirits. I saw it in his eyes. Obvious sign that bookworms were easy to please, socially speaking.
“So, go on. You partially translated this pile of chicken-scratch and…”
“I got stumped. I didn’t know what to do next. I thought that surely this sort of thing was more likely to be done someplace like a temple. You wouldn’t believe some of the things these people did.”
I shuddered. Travel Channel gave away enough I’d like to not believe, thank you very much.
“Totally agree with that one. I am addicted to the Travel Channel. Besides, I don’t know about you but if I was gonna be messing about with dead bodies, I wouldn’t want to do it in my living room. My coffee table probably couldn’t stand the weight and blood’s a pain in the ass to get out of carpet.”
He blanched. His skin was whiter than a bride’s dress on her wedding day. Since his skin was a natural looking tan from spending too much time outside, you can imagine the contrast.
“I don’t think they worried about things like blood in carpet,” he croaked.
Uh-oh…
Guess it was another clueless moment for him. How did someone miss out on such an obvious (and awesome, if I do say so myself) attempt at humor. Maybe if he got his head out of the dirt and spent time with humans that weren’t skeletal, it would help him pick up social cues better. Scratch the humor.
“Maybe not,” I continued. “But they did all sorts of weirdo human sacrifices and jazz, right? I’m thinking if you’ve got a guy wanting to raise the dead and a creepy Temple for sacrificing things -well it might make for a good place to do the raising the dead ceremony.”
“Exactly what I thought. I took my notes and I headed for the Temple. I thought maybe if I studied some of the things around there, I might find a clue to translating the rest of this passage. You see, some stuff is easy. You can figure out things like altar or temple or house. Where it gets hard is when there are things you simply can’t relate to because we just don’t have those sorts of things. It's like in a recipe. Maybe they want to use a red berry growing locally and then a particular fruit. Only since you haven’t a clue what’s what, you think it’s a root and some leaves.”
“Yikes. That’s way worse than just trying to convert from the metric system when measuring. I hate getting food ideas off of the net. I get t
hese recipes from the UK and I’m trying to figure out how to measure out grams of butter or something.”
Then again, I’m a terrible cook. I can’t really translate American recipes into something edible either.
“The Temple at Chichen Itza is the closest, and it seemed a likely spot. Though it’s a trek on foot. Maybe the people wouldn’t have used that Temple, but then again, maybe they would. I thought the most I’d lose was a day or two. If nothing came of it, oh well, I’d get back to work on things here. Maybe something more would turn up.”
And something did turn up, apparently. Me and a life-ending earthquake. I guess this guy figured it out though, since I was standing around very much not too dead- like. Kudos for him, his translations weren’t too far off. Unfortunately, there was a lot missing.
c
chapter six
I looked at him with growing annoyance. “And that’s when you ran into me, so to speak?”
“Well, I’d spent the morning inside the Temple. My team has an in, so we can get around when and where the tourists can’t. I wasn’t finding much, and I went to grab a bite to eat. All I had was granola bars and trail mix in my pack. That was when the earthquake hit.”
“And you just saw me over in the shops? Cuz I’ll tell you, they said we could take a tour of that Temple, but watching those people try to climb up the stairs? Didn’t look good for me or my Jimmy Choos. I bagged that thought and went straight for the shops. I figured I might find some sort of cool trinket or two to take home for people.”
He looked at my shoes again. “I don’t know how you’d have done climbing the stairs in those things. They aren’t very practical.”
Did he insult Choo? I bristled.
“Excuse me? Practical? Who wears practical shoes? Old women who’ve lost all sense of fashion? Nurses? I don’t think so. These are awesome shoes and they match my outfit. That's what matters!”
He looked me up and down. His gaze lingered over me in a way that sent a shiver up my spine. I sat up a little straighter, pushing the girls out a tad. He shifted in his chair and looked away. “I, um, didn’t notice. I really don’t know much about fashion.”
Juan of the Dead Page 4