Suddenly she was there. I didn’t know where she came from, but she was beside me and alone.
“This is where Quetzalcoatl landed,” she said. “His official Mayan name was Kukulkan.”
I could only stare at her.
She turned toward me, and the full force of those emerald eyes hit me. They fixed on me and held me captive. My breathing stopped and I was hers. If she had asked me to step off the cliff, I wouldn’t have hesitated.
“Do you know who he was?”
“The Feathered Serpent,” I managed to croak. My voice began to return. “But he wasn’t feathered or a serpent, of course, merely a white man with blond hair who arrived from the sea.”
“That’s one tradition,” she said. Her voice was calm and unemotional, with no praise and no derision.
“I know he came to Yucatán, but the books don’t say where.”
Her eyes turned back to the sea. “It was here,” she said softly. “Below us at this very spot. But he was nothing exotic, merely the leader of the Cocom family. And the thinking now is that he came from northern Mexico.”
I started to laugh, but the conviction in her voice silenced me. “How do you know that?”
She didn’t answer. Somehow I had expected that. Instead, she changed the subject. “It was dangerous to take my daughter swimming at Vacation Cays.”
“I didn’t take her. She went alone. I just watched her, because no one else was. She asked me to go with her, but I turned her down.”
“That’s not what my mother’s men said.”
“They lied.”
She glanced at me. “Be careful,” she said.
“I can take care of myself.”
At these words she turned again toward me and fixed her eyes on mine. For the first time, I could read something in those infinite eyes that I had never seen before—concern. She was worried about me. She knew I had killed her mother’s thug and she was worried about me. My heart speeded up. Now I was worried about me as well. But my worry had nothing to do with her mother’s goons.
As I continued to look into her eyes, I saw something deeper. I couldn’t identify it, had no idea what it was, but whatever it was increased my worry.
“I can only do so much,” she said. Then she began to walk away.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Can we talk again sometime?”
A look of infinite sorrow swept over her. She almost staggered with its arrival and she shook her head. “No, that is not possible.” Her firm, confident voice was gone, replaced by a soft quiver. “Please don’t ever ask that again. And don’t talk to my daughter again.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer, merely shook her head.
“I feel somehow that I know you, that I’ve met you before.”
This time she almost smiled. “That’s a pretty trite and overused come-on,” she said. “Though it won’t do you any good, I was hoping you would be more creative than that.”
“It’s the truth,” I said. “You do seem familiar to me.”
“How is that possible? We just met a couple of days ago.” She turned and walked away.
Then she was gone, lost in a throng of tourists at the base of the Primary Temple. I could still feel her presence.
What had she been trying to tell me? Warn me, obviously, but that wasn’t all. There was more. Quetzalcoatl? That had been an odd comment that I didn’t understand at all. Quetzalcoatl landed here? How could she possibly know that? Of course, she couldn’t. That was impossible.
Besides, he was merely the leader of the Cocom family, according to more recent discoveries.
I walked to my right, away from the temple. Here the brush thickened along the ridge before I even realized it, lost in thought as I was.
I heard the rustle behind me. I whirled and caught the small, wiry thug as he jumped for me. It wasn’t much of a problem to toss him against a small tree. It was a problem to do the same with the large man who appeared to my left brandishing a large stick. I twisted and managed to catch the branch on my arm, sending shards of pain racing into my shoulder. I gasped but didn’t have time to concentrate on my pain. Not with the third thug arriving. I whirled and kicked, catching the new one on the chin, crumbling him to the ground. I grabbed the stick out of the second man’s hand, and he staggered backward. Where was the cliff? It couldn’t be too far away. I swung the stick at him, but he was already tumbling down the path, disappearing quickly.
All three were gone.
I was a little disappointed at how easy they had been to neutralize. I’d expected them to attack me as I went down the hill—it was an obvious place—but I’d thought they would be tougher foes.
I climbed up to the top of the path, found a small stone bench overlooking the water, and sat down.
Facing the glow of the water that stretched to the horizon, I let my eyes drift shut as I tried to imagine what Tulum had been like 500 years ago.
I suddenly felt as though I was a different person. I opened my eyes to find myself immersed in a thick darkness similar to the one before my last dream.
CHAPTER SIX
Shortly, the darkness cleared, replaced by early evening moonlight.
I was still on top of the small cliff in Tulum, feeling as though I were naked. I looked down and I was wearing what appeared to be a leather loincloth. And a straw hat. I felt different, shorter, with stubby arms and legs, maybe a hundred pounds lighter, and my skin was darker, something I knew even in the gathering evening.
I was surrounded by armed men in embroidered cotton armor, their heads covered with golden-feathered helmets. Small green jewels embedded in the helmets gleamed.
What was going on?
Who was I?
When was I?
Voices intruded into my world occasionally. I couldn’t understand any of them. Meaningless words.
The view vanished, and now at times a void surrounded me, without form and substance, blinking in and out of existence, always returning me to the cliff at Tulum. At times my hat was replaced by a crown. At those times a mob of people surrounded me, well behaved, waiting for something. Vague shapes, men also dressed in loincloths, women in white cotton dresses. A few people wore more elaborate robes, but the warriors always wore the armor and strange helmets.
Now we were no longer standing on the cliff but were climbing the narrow stairs to the top of the temple at the top of the cliff, wailing as we climbed.
At the top of the steps awaited an old, wrinkled face, a face worn by the passage of many years. The face dipped into my mind. Words slipped out of his mouth, not words I was meant to understand—I knew that—but words trying to make me better. Better than what? What was wrong with me?
Then I noticed that he was holding a black obsidian knife with a wooden handle. And I knew what he was saying.
The face was always followed by long periods of darkness before patches of light came again. Eventually memories came, memories of her, then memories of a fight.
And another old man at the top of the temple steps, also holding a black knife, this one slightly longer.
And pain in my chest as I gasped for air.
And before that, memories of death, for I was one who had dealt many the same hand that was now being dealt to me, in a different time, a different place. My mind fled from those dreams and strange memories.
And always there was a little girl beside me, one that I loved and tried to protect—my daughter, I knew. I remembered failing again and again.
Then another chase as I ran with her. Something hit me in the back of the head.
I was
flying through the air.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sky was dark when the oblivion in my mind cleared. A thick glow of stars swept across the heavens to my right, probably the Milky Way, uncontaminated by city lights.
I was lying in a pile of sand on the beach. The back of my head throbbed, and every few minutes a sharp pain sliced through my skull as my consciousness recovered. I rubbed the site of the ache, feeling a stickiness that shouldn’t have been there.
Blood, no doubt.
Glancing up at the top of the cliff, I could imagine what had happened. The cliff wasn’t a sheer drop, but a steep slant. My downward trip was part tumble, part fall. On the way down, my head had glanced against one of the many limestone rocks, then I had rendezvoused with the sand.
I was lucky to be alive.
They probably thought I wasn’t, or they would have come down to investigate and finish me off.
But who were they? Who had hit me in the head and thrown me off the cliff? Another thug from the ship? Or maybe one I’d knocked down earlier had recovered fast.
Someone in my dreams? How could that be—if those were only dreams?
A cold shiver came over me, though the temperature was over eighty degrees, even at night.
There was no one immediately near me, but I could hear people splashing in the waves not too far away, even though it was dark. Probably from one of the many beachfront hotels in Tulum. I tried to stand, unsuccessfully, tumbling back to the ground with a wave of dizziness and nausea.
Trying again, I finally succeeded in climbing to my feet. The nausea washed over me again, but I fought it off better this time, banishing the feeling into the sand.
I looked up at the cliff once more.
I walked along the beach until I stumbled upon the narrow pathway to the top. I took it, staggering up with a great deal of effort, almost tumbling backward at least five times.
Finally, gasping for breath, I arrived at the top of the cliff.
Lights gleamed over the open courtyard of the Castillo, the largest building of the ruins. The lights flickered and my mind did too. Shadows danced around me. One small misty shadow turned and beckoned, signaling me to follow her up the stairs to the top of the temple. How in the world I knew the figure was a she, I didn’t know, since I was following nothing but a dark shadow. For a moment, I wondered if she was even real, but I followed her anyway, climbing the narrow steps, somehow knowing that it was the right thing to do.
The walls of the temple were no longer old and dirty, but a shiny white. As I neared the top, I could see that the walls of the room at the apex were red, the color of blood. The floor was red as well, and shiny. Painted on the wall in front of me was the picture of a seated king wearing blue feathers and holding a scepter, which appeared to be covered in blood. Suddenly the picture disappeared, and I fell to the stone floor of the room, the walls around me again dirty and old.
Morning rushed in with a flash of light. I raised my eyelids and found the bright glow of the sun staring at me from the top edge of the eastern horizon. The waves whispered in from the Caribbean Sea, with a soft sigh at the end of each run.
The beach was empty at 6:15 in the morning. I was still lying on the top of the temple, but there was no trace of the red floor I’d seen the night before. Or the image of the feathered king on the wall behind me when I turned to look. How much of last night had been real? Anything but the fall? And had I tripped in the darkness and tumbled down the cliff, or had someone hit me in the head and thrown me off?
Had Eve actually talked to me about Quetzalcoatl? Or had that been a dream also?
My head felt as though it was being squeezed in a vise. Streaks of light darted across my vision as I stared out at the sea, followed by stabs of pain in my head.
I tried to move. Every muscle and bone in my body screamed at me to stop, so I did.
I lay on the stone in surrender for an hour, summoning the courage and strength to rise only when people started to appear in the courtyard below.
Standing was agony, but I had no choice. I staggered down the stairs, somehow managing not to fall. At the bottom, I walked to the entrance of the ruins, past the row of small shops with the eager vendors, where ten taxis already waited. Agreeing on a cheap price to Cancún International Airport, I climbed in and almost passed out immediately. Compared to where I’d spent the night, the worn seat was heaven.
Two hours later, the driver pulled in front of one of the busiest airports in the Caribbean. Millions of visitors each year poured through this terminal on the way to “Mondo Maya.”
Eight hours later, I was back on the ship.
There were no direct flights from Cancún to George Town on Grand Cayman, where the ship had docked next. I had to fly from Cancún to Houston, then to George Town.
I was tired when I arrived thirty minutes before the ship left. I showed my pass and re-boarded, returning quickly to my cabin. The workers at the entrance where I checked back in asked where I’d been, so I told them the truth—that I’d missed the return tour bus from Tulum.
As far as I could tell, no one had entered my room while I was gone, except for my steward, who had cleaned up well.
I took a quick shower, cleaned the dried blood off the back of my head, and changed to another set of casual clothes. I wanted to be the first arrival at dinner in order to watch the reactions of everyone else when they saw that I was still alive. Of course, the innocent ones wouldn’t know that I had almost been killed. The guilty ones would have to be surprised to see me.
As I sat at the ship’s table at dinner perusing the menu, the biggest, thickest thug entered, hesitating as he saw me in my seat, then rubbing the bandage on his right arm where I’d hit him with his own stick. But there was no other reaction, and ignoring me, he sat at the far end of the table on the other side. Quickly Eve and her family joined us, accompanied by her other two protectors, followed quickly by Carolyn and her mother, in addition to everyone else on my side of the table. Carolyn sat next to me. I could feel her eyes on me as I read the menu.
Though one of the thugs tried to prevent it, Eme ended up straight across from me. Kids that age are quick and she was determined.
“Where were you last night?” she demanded. Everyone but the injured thug glanced in my direction.
“The temple at Tulum fascinated me, so I walked up the stairs and stayed there.”
“Didn’t they make you leave?” she asked.
Carolyn glanced in my direction, curious for my reply.
“I made sure they didn’t find me,” I whispered across the table to Eme, as though it was a secret just for her. I’m sure everyone at the table heard me.
“You stayed at the temple all night?” Carolyn asked.
“I did. Took a taxi back to Cancún and flew here this morning.”
A strange look appeared in Carolyn’s eyes, a look I couldn’t identify. “Did you sense anything unusual at the temple?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve been to other Mayan sites and always felt like I was surrounded with the souls of Mayans hundreds of years dead.”
Having felt much the same way the night before, I lied to her. “You must be more sensitive to that kind of thing than I am.”
A glimpse of surprise flashed deep in her eyes, but she didn’t reply.
“My name is Mayan,” Eme said proudly. “It means joy—I’m named after a famous princess.”
“I thought you were Irish,” I told her. “Aren’t you from Dublin?”
“No, we’re from Mérida, silly.”
Her grandmother, whom I’d silently nicknamed the Wicked Witch
of the West, glared at her, but she paid no attention and went on.
“Our family has lived in Yucatán for over a thousand years. I think we lived in Tulum at one time, maybe the late fifteen hundreds, from what I know. Did you know that was one of the last Mayan cities before the Spanish invasion?”
The glare of her grandmother turned even harsher. Eve said nothing, but a sad look darted across her face and she glanced at me, then at Carolyn.
“Before the Mayans were the Olmecs,” said Carolyn. “They gave rise to all the civilizations in Middle America.”
“Everyone knows that,” Eme scoffed. “Our ancestors probably came from them.”
“Have you been to Chichén Itzá?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Hasn’t everybody? It’s famous. I think our family lived there too, hundreds of years ago.”
“I hear that the government doesn’t let tourists climb the temples anymore,” I said.
“I’ve been up there a thousand times,” Eme replied.
Everyone on her side of the table came to a stop in their meal, forks and spoons pausing in front of their faces or in their bowls, all the thugs as well as Eve’s mother. For once, I wasn’t the focus of their anger. Eve simply stared at her food.
Carolyn seemed to be bothered by the conversation also. She said nothing, but finished her meal, ordered coffee, then turned in my direction. “I hear there’s a dance in the top lounge. Would you like to come with me?”
That wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do tonight, but the way she was looking at me made me agree to her request. It had been a long time.
I avoided Eve’s eyes as we left, but I could feel them tracking me.
The music was gentle and the lounge at the top of the ship was chilly, so we clung to each other as we danced, at least partially to stay warmer. But it had been a long time since I’d held a woman. Even though we had talked and gone snorkeling together, I felt as though I was just beginning to know Carolyn.
The Hauntings of Scott Remington Page 5