Pearced

by Ryder, H

  “This old thing isn't all bad.” Says Daniel, except we could use some air-con.” He complains wiping his arm across his forehead.

  “The windows open, and there's no roof, that’s air-conditioning.” I sulk. “You can’t beat a Landrover in my view, they never let you down.” Not exactly true, but the sound-bite is good.

  “You're amazing Tharie” Daniel tells me, obviously not used to being impressed.

  “Besides,” I continue like an enthusiastic toothy-smiling salesman, “I can work these things, it’s just like my car.” I look around me, “Well, not like exactly, but not unlike either.”

  “I’ve seen your car Tharie, it belongs in a museum.” Daniel laughs, but I'm secretly offended.

  Even Stan has to laugh, “sorry,” he adds quickly as we both look over, “Landrovers might look trashed, but underneath they are gems, and you can fix them with a hammer and some simple tools too, which is just as well” he glances over at me, “because those old ones quite often break down.” We continue our conversation as though there was nobody else about.

  “Not everything top of the range with a button for going down hills (for heaven’s sake), and brand new is better. And what's with all the tinted windows...you’re not famous!” I jest.

  “What’s wrong with my car, it's still Landrover” he tells me, “though it's never roved any land except tarmac.” He giggles.

  “You can find one on every continent; they’re as well developed as cockroaches.” I remind him.

  “You win, let’s get moving, we only have half a day before it gets dark, and I really don’t fancy being out here in the dark...even with you Tharie,” he adds quickly as I pout. I wink at him, take a deep slurp of water from my chrome bottle with a screw lid, add it to my backpack between our seats, I am not looking forward to hauling it on. I hate backpacks, if my Burberry was deep enough I’d have brought that, backpacks are synonymous with hairy armpits, cereal bars and Birkenstocks, Yuk! I shiver at the thought!

  Apologies to any of you who match this description, but this is my story....please pick up a Vogue next time you're out!

  Stopping in a opening at everyone’s request, a beautiful spot, we all have our phones out taking photos and group shots, like were on holiday. The scene is quite stunning and we’re finally having a tea break.

  Daniel has the map spread out on the series bonnet and he and the Professor are perusing the texts and routes. He has the translation of his tattoo imagery sealed in a clear plastic Ziploc pouch and they discuss a heading... “According to my directions...and I’m not even going to consult you on this matter Tharie, you’re rubbish at directions!” He kisses the end of my nose. “We head in a westish heading once the Prof. translates the standing stone and discovers its meaning. We're guessing it's a marker to lead us to another similar stone marker.”

  “Westish…?” I giggle, “That’s not even a real word!”

  “Fine,” he admits, I fake hurt, and points, that's better, toward that mountain.

  “Then when we get lost and no one finds our poor starving long dead bodies, clinging to each other, it’ll be your fault...westish!” I check the signal on the satellite phone Stan has procured for us, clearly not the rented kind, it's too new, too complicated, it's likely from an unknown military source, I do like intrigue in my story don't I?

  HXF collected canter.

  Certain Stan himself is from similar sources, I look over at him and he's checking all the equipment, again. Yep. Nigel cleans his glasses and Liza unties and reties her ponytail several times. We all have our coping mechanisms don't we?

  Free walk along the long side of the arena.

  Five almost complete strangers heading out for an adventure, a motley crew I’d have to admit. I look around at us all, but a more dedicated and knowledgeable bunch you couldn’t find.

  “This is incredible.” We hear the Professor calling. He has already reached the tall stone and is studying it's markings over his glasses as before. “It's a key to our destination, it's the missing link and gives us a slightly new heading, watch out here.”

  He gestures with his hand gripping the map tightly, “Might be a matter of hitting our target or being shy of it by about seventy miles.” He looks again at the stone's surface. “This is odd though.” he says.

  “Odd in what way Prof.” asks Liza.

  “It talks about walking in darkness, and only when I lay this section of your own tattoo over this part here, you see where these birds match up?” We didn’t notice it at first, but once we creep closer we can see clearly.

  “Yes, we do see.” Liza adds, flicking her pony. (That's hair, not small horse of course).

  “It talks about 'under the great mountain', walking in darkness.”

  The Professor looks up at all of us. My brain is not happy about the sound of that at all, and an ache begins to bloom up there.

  “That's why no one ever found the hiding place before you see?” He pushes his glasses further over his nose and continues reading the hieroglyphs as before. Almost forgetting there's people with him hanging on his words like there's nothing more important.

  “Prof.?” I say, “We don't all see, perhaps you could explain it for us.” I check my watch, its 8am, we are ahead of schedule, we planned at least an hour at the stone to understand its meanings, we have only needed 20 minutes.

  “Yes of course, well without the information inked on Daniels body anyone reading this would get a heading but the key would be missing don't you see?” We all looked at each-other. “What we're looking for isn't on the ground.” He straightens up as if speaking to a lecture hall of students, “it's underneath it!”

  Suddenly we do see, a wave of uneasiness sweeps over me, I don’t like the sound of underground at all, my brain was right, it usually is, bloody hell.

  TC: “Mum, it's hot in Peru” true story. Bloody hell, underground.

  Mummy.

  EC: “What did you expect, silly girl?” I can always trust her to make me feel good about myself.

  TC: “Thanks Mum” true story.

  EC: “Be safe Catharine” I will.

  I re-join the conversation, hoping all the chat about going underground is finished...“a vast cavern it says, twenty men tall, leading under the mountain, which must be that one behind us.” Bloody hell again.

  Did I free walk along the long side of the arena HK?

  Liza can sense I’m on high alert, she knows exactly why. “So, it's a huge airy space then?” She asks for my benefit, stroking my arm affectionately.

  “Yes, Dr Cartier, I believe that's what I said.” He huffs, he doesn't like having to repeat himself, but Liza just winks at me, I kind-of feel better. Slightly relieved to learn there's to be no potholing antics or squeezing through rocks, or even worse the Poseidon adventure!! Who could forget Shelley Winters and having to hold her breath underwater to swim to freedom....I was getting myself all tight in the chest.

  Change rein across the arena diagonally KXM.

  What had Dr Shrink told me to do? Big gulps of air slowly and puff it all out through my lips, rinse and repeat. It is working. Daniel looks at me oddly “you OK?” I snap the band around my wrist, feeling instantly better, he runs his fingers through the front of his floppy hair, taming it back into a quiff, that’s his mechanism.

  I nod emphatically, “Hope so.” I take his warm hand, and feel instantly better. I wish in an instant we were alone. Stop it! I tell myself, were in company, I snap the band again, my wrist is beginning to smart, there'll be a red mark later if I dwell on the underground visit.

  “So, we head that-away,” Daniel points our new slightly new heading.

  “Let’s see how far we get in the car.” I venture. Everyone agrees though they all look like it’ll be unlikely to get very far. Red flag to a bull, and determined to prove them wrong, having a car somehow gives us added courage. And we all get back in. Last to arrive is the Professor, he has taken hundreds of digital photos of the stone, every piece of carvi
ng every detail, image and marking have been recorded.

  “Well?” answering a question none of us has even asked him, “we may need to recall some of this imagery,” but we were all wondering. The Landy creeps through the forest, making a path where none has existed for hundreds of years, at the speed of a walk.

  “Everyone OK?” I ask to the crew. They all mumble an affirmative and we carry on, Liza is handing out the KitKats. Oi! Where's mine? Daniel has programmed our new destination or rather our start point into the GPS Stan has given him. It's not a commercial model but a military one. I am amazed anything works out here at all. He readjusts my steering to match the new heading and where possible I comply, but there are many obstacles in the forest and it's a juggling match between moving forward at all then getting back on track. Our trusty car keeps going. And we head toward the base of the mountain. We stop after about an hour as we reach the edge of the tree line, and I pass around the peanut butter sandwiches and flask of hot dark tea much to everyone’s delight. They are all hungry enough not to tease me about more peanut butter sandwiches. We chatter as we eat and learn that Stan was in the SAS and was married once but not any-more, we don’t press him on this, He begins to look uncomfortable, checking the batteries in his torch for the fiftieth time in an hour.

  The Professor had never married “who'd want a crusty old Professor who practically lives in a museum, you think I look like this because I’m 74? I’ve looked like this since I was 30!” We all laugh so hard we send a group of tropical birds flying into the canopy above us. I chance a contact, will she be awake, what time is it at home? God knows. I check my Dad’s watch, surely with all these dials and knobs there’d be a setting to give me a multiple location world clock? It’s a peculiar looking time keeping device, if it only tells the time, I wonder what all the other settings are for? Dad never did satisfactorily explain it to us did He? Strange, because he loved to explain things. I miss him.

  TC: “Eating dinner in Peru, at least I think that’s where we are” better?

  EC: “Don’t forget fruit, your skin is already pale, you need healthy eating” why do I bother?

  TC: “Mum. I’m vegetarian, all I eat is fruit and vegetables” deep breaths, how many times.

  EC: “Keep forgetting, be careful” I will.

  TC: “Bye Mum” she’d love it here.

  Biting into crunchy Braeburn apples for dessert, and swigging more tea, we guess we're another forty-five minutes to the base of the mountain. “I can see another standing stone.” Stan calls from the back of the Landrover, he's standing on the back bumper holding some covert operations, high powered binoculars to his face. “And there’s three of them this time.” He steps down. “That way.” He gestures, and we all get back in the car. The route toward the stones is clear to see once we're out of the dense forest, I’m just adjusting my speed and trajectory according to the rocks, bushes and mounds of dense grasses, I call it a 'scrubbery'.

  “So, Doc, what else do you do when you're not searching the worlds for lost antiquities and languages?” Asks Liza, “We don’t talk much in the museum about our private lives.” She says, “It’s where the past is important and the present not so much.”

  Makes sense. Though I'd be very surprised if she didn't chat about Mousse, he is her first love, and if you ever meet him, you'd have to agree, he is quite something that horse.

  “Well the past is my life, I don’t really have time...” I sense there's more but keep quiet.

  “Oh, come on, there must be something.” We all giggle at Liza's tenacity at getting information out of her boss. He smiles as if he's reluctant to say, but he will.

  “Well I play chess,” not a surprise there, off come the glasses again as a distraction, “with an old university buddy of mine,” the handkerchief comes out of his pocket, he flicks it in the air to unfold it. “He teaches anthropology.” He wipes the surface of the lenses and returns them to his face, picking up the last piece of apple, “at Cambridge.” The professor tosses his apple core out onto the ground. “I read a lot of course,” we had assumed that of course, and all nod. To us all that pretty much goes without saying. But he's not finished, “and I love the music of Lonnie Donnigan.” We don't ask any-more, needless to say. Sometimes, it's just better to not know eh? That last fact stops us all from wondering any-more about each-other, some things are just better left unsaid! Ignorance being bliss after all, how could we have forgotten?

  And, not quite knowing how to follow that, we change the subject accordingly, until we reach the three new markers at the base of the mountain. “Clement weather we're having, what?” That sort of thing, most amusing. “More biscuits? That's the ticket.”

  Did he say he likes skiffle? We approach the three stones.

  More tea anyone?

  Chapter twenty-five, Friday:1november2013, the tea-break

  As we clamber out of the Wolf, our mood seems to alter to a more serious note, each element of the team with a specific job to do, focused on their specific part of the whole. Except me, I have no skills to bring this team driving the 4x4 notwithstanding. If we see some horses maybe I could help! So as support or ‘roadie’ as I jest, I offer a final tea before we stash one of our bags in the car to lighten our trekking burden. Passing around the KitKats I offer “we all set?” Taking a long refreshing gulp of tea Daniel speaks to us all.

  Daniel 'ah-em’s' for attention, he stands as if about to address a conference. “Thank you all for taking the time to help me figure this out,” he offers sincerely. “I need to know where this journey leads,” he looks nervously down at his hands, “I can't ask any of you to follow me.” He runs his fingers through his quiff, “it could be a dangerous trail, probably a bit late to say this.” His eyes searching us all in turn as if asking us all for an OK. “We have no idea what we’ll find if we find anything at all, but for me,” and he looks over at me earnestly, “I need to know.”

  “Are you kidding?” This from Nigel. We all mumble our own version of ‘we’re coming with you, we’ve come this far and few things are as scary as Tharie's driving!’ To which Daniel agrees emphatically nodding his head, voices overlapping and our spirits lifted as we talk over each other. Joking, none of us notice the noise until it becomes a loud hum, and we are enjoying chocolate, very few things trump that.

  My phone buzzes.

  EC: “Have you seen Henry? He’s not eating properly,” Jack Daniels and kebabs not classed as proper diet according to Mum?

  TC: “I’ll speak to him” and try to remember where he keeps his Jack stash at Mums.

  EC: “He leads an unhealthy life Catharine, you’re his Sister, tell him” here we go.

  TC: “He helps build the set Mum, that’s almost like going to the gym” I thought that was a good point.

  EC: “Hardly” clearly I am wrong.

  TC: “You worry too much” I regret it as soon as I press send.

  EC: “You’re my children, what is my job if I don’t worry about you?!” Wafer thin ice.

  TC: “See you when I’m home Mum” bloody hell.

  We sit finishing our well-earned rest, getting up the momentum to move finally, and the thrumming sound resumes. Flying low over us and quite slowly an old twin prop with one engines acoustic running slightly out of sync with the other. As a drummer, I notice rhythm. I’m suddenly trying to calculate how slow an aircraft can go and not fall out of the sky, it's slower than you think, but fail, and continue tracing its direction. Bernoulli's Theory I think. It appears to us that the pilot is checking out our small posse of travellers. Hoping we don’t look like serious antiquities robbers, or bandits, we begin our reconnaissance with just a slight feeling that somewhere, someone knows exactly where we are. Nobody appears nervous at all so this feeling is passed to me like the mood of a rider to her horse.

  That reminds me,

  TC: “Jinni, boys and cats OK?” Please say yes.

  JG: “All fine here, and you?” Phew.

  TC: “Will catch up when
I get home” she'll get a big hug too.

  The Professor is busy reading the standing stones his glasses are perched at the end of his nose, studying their markings and language. When the light aircraft flies over us again, it's banking wildly the tip of one wing very close to earth. The pilot must be very skilled, because straightening out he comes back round for a second time, but this time much, much lower. We all stop breathing for a time and stare in disbelief as the tiny plane begins a descent toward us. “Should we do something?” Liza asks to no one in particular, as the aircraft hits the ground to land in a soft bounce. Its marshmallow soft tyres kick up a huge cloud of dust and it has an impressive effect a film director would love. It shields the scene, adding drama and tenseness, with a new character emerging.

  “Stan?” From Liza

  It's what writers might call an exciting incident.

  “No, let’s wait and see what he wants first.” Replies Daniel. It’s then that I notice Stan has come beside us and has a hand on a gun holstered across his body inside his jacket. I look at Stan’s face and he’s unflinchingly looking at the craft hurtling toward us now finally on the ground as if he’s not noticed me standing there at all. I know that high alert focused look, Harry my horse does that too when he hears something he can’t see.

  The little plane comes slowly bobbing along on old bouncy shock absorbers, to a stop sideways no more than 10 metres from where we’re standing. And now we see it closely I’m surprised it is in any condition to get in the air at all. Rusty and dented, its cabin has one pilot and in the passenger section there is seating for six people at the rear. The vinyl is ripped and the whole craft is covered in a patina of filthy dust and oxidation. Stan stands down and relaxes and Daniel lets out the deep breath he’d been holding in his lungs. From the far side a tall man jumps from the plane, a young man judging by his posture and agility. He strides in long quick steps toward us in a cloud of dust that is just beginning to settle from his ungainly landing bathed in sunlight.