The Deadly Curse of Toco-Rey

by Frank Peretti

  Dr. Basehart introduced them. “Dr. Cooper, Jay, Lila, this is Tomás Lopez, my assistant.” Tomás shook their hands, grinning a toothy grin, happy to be of service. “He’ll take you to see the Corys’ camp and answer any questions you have.”

  Tomás’s smile vanished, and he looked wide-eyed at his boss. “Señor Basehart . . . is that such a good idea?”

  Basehart became quite impatient. “Tomás, I will not have this discussion again with you! There is nothing to be afraid of!”

  “But—” Tomás got a cold glare from his boss and cut short his protest. “Muy bien.”

  Dr. Basehart told the Coopers, “When you return, I’ll show you the video tape the Corys made of their findings. It will give you an idea of what they were doing and possibly give you some clues to follow.”

  Dr. Cooper nodded. “I’ll definitely want to see that.”

  Tomás eyed the holster on Dr. Cooper’s hip. “Ah, you have a gun. That is good. Come with me.” Tomás stopped by his hut to grab a rifle and a machete, then he led the Coopers down the trail into the jungle. The thick vegetation closed in around them, making them stoop and push branches aside. The thick canopy overhead choked out the daylight.

  Tomás was upset. For several minutes he muttered to himself in Spanish, and then he shared his thoughts with the Coopers in English. “This is not a safe place! It is magic, you know. Bad magic. We should not even be here!”

  They journeyed farther into the deep jungle, surrounded by noisy birds and cicadas, until finally they saw a bluish glint ahead. Tomás slowed his pace and crouched as if sneaking up on something. The Coopers instinctively crouched as well and followed.

  “There,” Tomás whispered, gesturing toward a small clearing with his machete. From the edge of the clearing, they could see the ragged tent and blue tarpaulin lean-to, the camp where the Corys had been ambushed. “Before we go farther, I will warn you: You will see blood inside, and terror, and signs of Kachaka magic. The Corys came this far, and now they are dead.” He looked directly at them. “There is a curse on this place. If you go farther, you may end up dead too. So decide!”

  TWO

  The Coopers were cautious but not afraid. With firm resolve, they stepped into the clearing, moving carefully, observing every detail. Tomás followed behind, sticking close, eyes wary, the rifle and machete ready.

  The camp was a disaster area with camp chairs knocked over, the tent half collapsed, the camp stove overturned on the ground, food and supplies torn, scattered, and spilled everywhere. It had been a mess to begin with, and now scavenging animals had made it even worse.

  Jay found a small, thin reed stuck in a tree trunk near the tent. “Dad.”

  Jacob Cooper went over and examined it without touching it. “Poison dart.”

  Tomás nodded warily. “The Kachakas. They use poison darts and blowguns. The poison kills in seconds.”

  Lila noticed the overturned vase and scattered orchids. “I bet these orchids were beautiful before they wilted.”

  Tomás smiled crookedly. “Americans. They would pay lots of money for such flowers in their own country. Here, we see them everywhere.”

  “All the tools are still in place,” Dr. Cooper observed, checking the collection of shovels, picks, brush hooks, and metal detectors near a tree. He found a large wooden chest, eased the lid open, and whistled his amazement at the contents.

  Jay came to look. “What is it?”

  “Explosives,” said his father. “That always was Ben Cory’s style: Just blast away and get the treasure out, never mind the historical value of the site.” He closed the lid gently, with great respect for what the chest held. “Let’s have a look in that tent.”

  The tent had half-fallen. Dr. Cooper found a long stick near the firepit and stuck it into the tent to prop up the roof.

  “We’ll have to gather up all these notes,” he said, indicating the papers scattered on the floor. “We need to know everything the Corys knew.”

  “Careful!” Jay cautioned, pointing to another poison dart that poked through the tent.

  Lila picked up one of the sheets of note paper. It was heavy, sticky, and stained red. “Euuughh.”

  “I told you there would be blood,” said Tomás from outside where he nervously stood guard. “The Corys were slaughtered in this tent.”

  There was blood, all right, spattered on the floor of the tent, on the clothes, work boots, and gear. The Corys had died violently.

  Jacob Cooper kept his tone calm and even. “Lila, I think we need one more set of eyes and ears outside. We don’t need any surprises.”

  Lila welcomed the idea. Her face pale, she quickly ducked outside.

  Dr. Cooper drew a deep breath and spoke to Jay. “Let’s do it.”

  He and Jay began gathering up the notes, drawings, charts, and maps from the tent floor, separating them from the shirts, socks, bottles, and boxes lying everywhere.

  Jay spotted a small notebook partially hidden under some wadded up rags. He reached for it then jerked his hand away, his heart racing. “Dad!”

  Dr. Cooper’s hand went to his gun. “What is it?”

  Lila poked her head in. “What is it?”

  Jay backed away from the pile. “There’s something under those rags.”

  The rags were wiggling and heaving.

  Lila stifled a cry of fear, pressing her hand over her mouth as Tomás stuck his head into the tent. “Qué pasa?”

  “I think we’ve got a snake in here,” said Dr. Cooper. “Stand back.” He found a piece of broken tent rod and extended it toward the rags, prodding them slightly. The motion stopped. He slowly lifted the rags.

  They saw a fluttering, a flash of dull yellow and heard a tiny, shrill scream!

  Lila screamed as well, and Jay and Dr. Cooper ducked. A strange, fluttering, flapping shape shot from the rags and began banging and slapping against the walls of the tent like a trapped bird.

  Tomás hollered, “Get back! Get back!” and plunged into the tent, swinging his machete. The thing continued to fly, land, leap, bump against the tent, and flutter over their heads. Lila jumped away from the tent; Jay and his father dropped to the floor. Tomás kept swinging.

  SPLAT! The machete finally made contact and the animal landed on the tent floor, fluttering like a wounded bird, flopping about like a fish.

  Jay and Dr. Cooper got to their feet. Tomás stood over the thing, machete only inches from it, venting his supercharged emotions in rapid, coarse Spanish. They started to approach.

  Tomás shot his hand out toward them. “Stay back! Wait!”

  The thing finally stopped flopping and Tomás relaxed, breathing in deep breaths of relief. He beckoned to them, and they approached as Lila stuck her head back into the tent, eyes wide with curiosity.

  Tomás pointed at the thing. “Caracol volante. We call them carvies. A flying slug.”

  “A what?” Jay exclaimed, still trembling a bit.

  “Amazing!” added Dr. Cooper, bending for a closer look. “I’ve heard such tall tales about them! I never thought they were real!”

  “They are not seen very often,” said Tomás. “They are rare and only come out at night.” There at Tomás’s feet, a loathsome little creature lay dead. It looked like a big garden slug, about six inches long, with a yellowish, slimy hide. But instead of feelers, it had tiny, black ratlike eyes. On either side of its soft, gooey body, glistening skin extended outward to form winglike fins, much like those of a stingray. Tomás used the tip of his machete to snag a fin and extend it to show the Coopers.

  Lila came in and peered over everyone’s shoulder. “Wow . . .”

  “Not a slug, actually,” Dr. Cooper explained to his kids. “But it is a member of the mollusk family— and one of the strangest.”

  “Don’t touch it!” Tomás warned. “The slime is deadly poison, the same the Kachakas use to tip their darts.” He glanced quickly around the tent. “See? There is slime on the tent fabric and on some of the clothes. Be very c
areful. It will burn through your skin and kill you.”

  Without having to be told, they all backed carefully out of the tent and then checked their clothes for any traces of slime.

  “Most of it has dried up, which is good,” said Tomás. “It has to be fresh to burn through your skin.”

  “What was that thing doing in there?” Dr. Cooper wondered.

  “It was probably attracted by the blood. Carvies are flesh eaters: They feed on dead animals, blood, meat of any kind. There were probably others in the tent last night. This one decided to sleep under the rags.”

  Jay shook his head. “So that’s one more thing to worry about—besides the biting insects, the poisonous snakes, and the hostile natives.”

  “How far away is the Kachaka village?” asked Dr. Cooper.

  Tomás shrugged. “I have never been there. It’s somewhere beyond the ruins, I think. But the Kachakas claim all this land, and they aren’t happy that we’re here.” Tomás cocked his head toward the woods just beyond the camp. “The Corys have already learned that. Come this way.”

  They followed him into a small clearing. There, marked with crude wooden crosses, were three graves. “Ben Cory, John Cory, Brad Frederick,” said Tomás, pointing out each one. “Gone in one night, their treasure stolen.”

  Jacob Cooper had seen enough. “All right, let’s get these materials back to the compound and see if we can sort them out. And then we’ll watch a movie.”

  After hiking back to the compound, they ate a hurried dinner—roast pig cooked over the fire by Tomás’s coworkers—and then settled into their trailer to examine the notes left behind by the Corys. In the light of a gas lantern, Jay and Lila carefully cleaned, sorted, and stacked the materials, and Dr. Cooper laid them out in orderly fashion on the dinette table to study them.

  “Hmm . . . ,” he said, using a small flashlight to illuminate some hard-to-read areas. “I’m impressed. The Corys put a lot of time into mapping out the ruins. Look here: Toco-Rey was built on top of the ruins of a previous city, which was built on top of the ruins of a previous city, and so it goes. It’s only about a mile square and used to be walled like a fortress. It would have been easy for Kachi-Tochetin to hole up there for years and defend his loot from his enemies.”

  Lila spotted a dark, square shape someone had drawn near the map’s eastern edge. “I’ll bet that’s the burial temple Ben Cory wrote about.” She leafed through a pile of freshly scrubbed materials and pulled out a ragged-edged notebook. “Yeah, take a look at this.”

  Dr. Cooper quickly flipped through the notebook, then compared the scribblings and sketches with the map on the table. “Lila, you’re right on the money. It is the burial temple. Ben Cory guessed they’d find the treasure there. He figured since Kachi-Tochetin was such a gold-hound, the old king probably had himself buried with it.”

  Jay produced some smaller maps, roughly drawn with pencil and now faintly bloodstained. “I think these maps lay out the route they followed to get to the burial temple.”

  Dr. Cooper laid the maps out on the table and traced the route with his finger. “Looks like the same route José de Carlon took centuries ago: up the slope past the waterfall . . . across the swamp . . . through the main gates of the city . . . around the Pyramid of the Moon and due north up the Avenue of the Dead . . .”

  “Avenue of the Dead?” said Lila.

  “Sounds inviting,” quipped Jay.

  A knock on the screen door startled them. “Hello. How goes the battle?” It was Armond Basehart.

  “I’m encouraged,” replied Dr. Cooper. “The Corys kept a thorough record. We should be able to retrace their route first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Basehart was visibly pleased. “Good enough! Well, I have the Corys’ video ready. Come on over and have a look.”

  Outside Basehart’s trailer, Tomás yanked the starter rope on a portable gas generator. Inside the trailer, the electric lights came on and so did a ten-inch color television perched in Basehart’s tight little living room. Basehart had the Corys’ palm-sized video camera wired to the television, and after fumbling a little with various switches and buttons, finally got the tape rolling and a picture on the screen.

  The Coopers leaned forward as one person, gazing intently, and immediately recognized the Corys’ camp in the jungle. The camera jiggled, panning the camp, showing the tent, the campfire, the table and chairs. Even the vase of orchids was standing upright on the table, the orchids in much fresher condition. “And this is our tent, and over here we have the fire, and here’s our nice outdoor dining room . . .” went the cameraman’s prattle, the kind of silly stuff that always goes with home movies.

  Then a young man appeared from behind the tent, carrying some firewood. He was tall and thin, with a smile so wide and teeth so white it caught your eye. “And here’s Brad, doing the chores . . . ,” continued the narrator.

  Brad shot back, “Did you get a shot of the treasure?”

  “No,” the cameraman answered, “I’m doing establishing shots here.”

  Then came a voice from off-camera, “Well, get the camera over here, Ben. You’re wasting Mr. Stern’s time.”

  “Ehh, everybody’s gotta be a director.” The camera did a quick, blurry pan to the table near the firepit, and then it picked up the glimmer of gold— a lot of gold.

  “Will you look at that!” Jay exclaimed in a near whisper.

  “Here’s just a preview of what we found,” said Ben the cameraman, zooming in for a close-up of incredible gold artifacts: an ornately engraved vase of gold at least two feet tall, several golden plates and cups, a necklace of gold and jewels, and at least a dozen golden figurines only a few inches tall.

  Hands entered the picture, holding another vase and wiping it down with a rag. “We found these in the tomb and carried them out through the tunnel. Everything is pretty dusty down there. We wore dust masks, but still came out of that place all dirty. No problem though. See here? It just takes a rag to clean the artifacts and they polish right up.”

  The camera zoomed back to show John Cory, a long-haired, bare-chested man. John set the vase down and picked up some of the small figures to show to the camera, wiping them some more with his rag. “We have here tiny figurines of a bird-god, possibly another form of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god.”

  Ben, from behind the camera, explained, “These were stationed all around the walls of the room like sentries, probably to guard the treasure from spirits of the dead, maybe even from living enemies—”

  John butted in, “There were other guards there too, but they weren’t much help.”

  Ben laughed. “No, they sure weren’t. We’re going to take the camera and some lights with us tomorrow. We should get some great shots of the treasure room and the tunnel—”

  “If we can get past the slugs,” Brad quipped, coming into the picture and turning some of the artifacts for better viewing.

  John agreed, “Yeah, the carvies can be a bit of a problem. They like the tunnels and underground areas just like bats like caves, but we’re dealing with it.”

  “We’ll retrace our route for you,” came Ben’s voice from off-camera, “which closely matches the route taken by José de Carlon more than four hundred years ago.”

  “The old guy was right about the treasure,” said Brad.

  “But wrong about the curse,” said John, indicating the treasure on the table. “I mean, here’s the treasure, and here we are, safe and sound.”

  “Okay,” said Ben, “let’s get this stuff into the tent.” Then, in a louder, announcer’s voice, “Stay tuned, folks, for tomorrow’s exciting venture into the burial temple of King Kachi-Tochetin!”

  The television screen went to snow.

  Dr. Basehart turned it off. “That’s it. They were ambushed and killed that very night. They never went back.”

  Dr. Cooper looked at his kids for their reaction.

  Lila was troubled. “Is the treasure worth it?”

  Her fa
ther reflected on the question. “Some people are greedy enough to take the risk. For others, . . .” He sighed. “Well, we should be willing to ask that question more than once on this trip.”

  “A tunnel,” said Jay. “We’re definitely looking for a tunnel.”

  “Perhaps the original tunnel dug by José de Carlon and his men,” Dr. Cooper said. “And apparently inhabited by more caracoles volantes. ”

  “Oh great!” Lila moaned.

  Dr. Basehart was quick to say, “But the Corys got around the carvies somehow. They got into the treasure room!”

  Dr. Cooper rose to his feet. “And so will we. Let’s call it a day and get some shut-eye. We’ll confront those poisonous slugs—”

  “And snakes,” added Lila.

  “And hostile natives with poison darts,” added Jay.

  “Tomorrow,” finished Dr. Cooper.

  THREE

  The night passed slowly, as any night filled with fear and foreboding will. Lila lay in a bed toward the back of the trailer, staring up at the ceiling, listening, thinking. Again and again she replayed the memory of the Corys’ blood-spattered tent and the poison darts they had found. Jay, lying very still in the bed across the trailer from her, listened carefully for the sound of footsteps stealing close to the trailer. As he peered out the narrow window, he hoped he wouldn’t see the glint of a killer’s eyes lingering in the bush. Dr. Cooper wasn’t lying down at all. He sat on his bed—the dinette folded down to make one—listening and watching.

  Draping a thin blanket around her shoulders, Lila got up and went to her father’s side. “Dad, you okay?”

  “So far,” he said softly. He put his arm around her, giving her a loving squeeze as he looked out the windows again. “It’s very quiet out there.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Me neither,” came Jay’s voice from his bed.

  “Which makes me wonder why everyone else can.”

  Lila bent down and peered out the window as well, seeing no activity, no lights, and hearing no sounds beyond the constant night chatter of the jungle. “Are they all asleep?”