The Hauntings of Scott Remington

by Robert B Marcus Jr

  Carolyn’s mother looked up from her menu. “You knew where the glyphs were and how to read them? That’s hard to believe.”

  “He could read the date on the stone as well,” Carolyn said. “About thirteen hundred or so.”

  “June 7, 1300,” I said. “Or 11.3.17.1.10 in Mayan.” There was no need to lie.

  “That would be a Mayan Long Count date. How could you possibly know how to read that?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, though that wasn’t quite true. “But I’m surprised you’ve even heard of the Mayan Long Count calendar.”

  “You’d be surprised at what I know,” Carolyn replied.

  I wanted to follow up on that comment, but the waiter arrived and we ordered. I was already drooling for the rib eye.

  “I don’t know how—and I know it makes no sense, but I remember carving her name into that wall,” I said after he left.

  “The Observatory is about seven hundred years old. And the date you found corresponds with that. How in the world could you possibly have carved Eme’s name and the date into that wall?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I know that I did. I remember clearly.”

  “But how?” Carolyn asked.

  I couldn’t answer, because I had no explanation. A couple of nights before, I had dreamed of carving Eme’s name in the wall, but I knew it had been more than a dream. I was remembering another life, another existence.

  And I knew there had been more than one. On the tour to Chichén Itzá the cenote had been familiar, as had everything else there. I remembered the jaguar throne.

  And I remembered her.

  But who was she?

  She had hunted me through the ages, trying to kill me. No, not just trying. She had been successful many times.

  We chatted while we ate, ignoring the mystery of what I’d found in Mayapán. I’d walked straight to a wall, moved a specific stone, and exposed Eme’s name written in Mayan hieroglyphics that had been covered up for seven hundred years.

  There was a band in the bar, so when her mother left with the car to go back to their house, Carolyn and I danced.

  “What do you think is going on?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I had no desire to tell her about my dreams.

  “The carving is hundreds of years old. Mayapán slowly became the center of Mayan culture about twelve hundred ad, after Chichén Itzá fell. It was abandoned in fourteen forty-one when the Xiu family Chief Ah Xupan led a revolt that burned and sacked Mayapán, killing all the Cocom family leaders except a few out of the country on business. When the Spaniards discovered Yucatán about a century later and stumbled upon Mayapán it was essentially abandoned. If you carved what you say you did, you’re a lot older than you look.”

  “I exercise a lot and keep in shape,” I replied with a smile.

  “And you also had to be in pretty good shape to wrestle with the stones in the wall at Mayapán, especially if you’re seven hundred years old.”

  Desperately wanting to tell her about my dreams, I pulled her a little closer instead. I somehow felt much more attracted to her than I had before. Not so much physically; it was a mental attraction, as though I knew her well.

  But I didn’t say a thing about the dreams. Maybe later.

  We danced for several hours, sitting for a drink every once in a while, but talking little.

  As time passed, we clutched each other tighter and tighter, and she was bringing back pleasant memories of a previous night on the ship. My mind said no, but my body ruled, and we took a taxi back to my hotel, where we ended up in my room, now clutching each other without clothes. This time Carolyn was still in my bed when morning came. I’d left the curtain open, so when the sun crept over the horizon, it shone straight into my room and into my eyes.

  My time sense kicked in. Six-thirty.

  “Thanks for last night,” Carolyn said, snuggling in behind me.

  “I know we had that night on the ship,” I said, “but in most ways this seemed like the first time.”

  “It felt very familiar to me,” she continued in a sleepy voice.

  Not knowing what to say, I hesitated.

  I lay there in the early morning, listening to her soft breathing as she returned to her slumber. I remembered my last dream. It seemed so far from a dream. I remembered every detail on the march from Mayapán to the little village where we had stopped as we headed for the Sacred Cenote. And the dream within the dream, that I was sleeping on a comfortable bed. Was it this life I was dreaming about?

  Which was the dream? Was the march from Mayapán a dream, or was I in a dream now? A part of me felt that my Mayan life was the real one, that this one was the dream.

  I suddenly realized that Carolyn’s breathing had stopped. I turned over to check on her.

  She was staring at me, eyes dark and opened wide, empty. A flash of a strange expression, almost like anger, darted across her face, then her face relaxed, her eyes closed again, and she was back asleep.

  I watched her for fifteen minutes. No further movement.

  But there was no way I could return to sleep.

  Carolyn’s mother picked us up in her SUV, then the three of us went over to St. Augustine Beach for a swim. It as low tide and the water was shallow, and we walked out a long way, until the water was up to our waists. There were fish everywhere. I put on the snorkeling mask I’d rented and swam into a little deeper water, where the clear water allowed a complete view of the fish swimming along the bottom. And a six-foot nurse shark that ignored us completely.

  Carolyn and I held hands as we drifted over the white bottom of the ocean’s floor. I felt close to her for maybe the first time, in spite of our evening pleasure jaunts.

  The ruins of my past seemed far away. Was this why I had come here? Did we have a future? I still wasn’t sure, but it looked more promising.

  We walked along the sand north to the Beach Bistro, ate a great Italian meal, and returned to the hotel.

  Carolyn was more talkative that night.

  “Do you understand what is going on?” she asked me as we snuggled in bed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were mugged in Progresso. Is someone after you?”

  “Maybe.” I replied.

  “Who? And why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you know more than you’re letting on.”

  That was true, of course, but I wasn’t about to let anyone know my crazy thinking—that I was being chased through time by a madwoman.

  I was sleeping on sand. A throng of bodies lay around me, some snoring loudly, some breathing more quietly. In the middle of the throng was a fire, with several holcan stationed next to its flickering flames.

  Where was Raxka?

  Where was my daughter?

  Where was Ichika?

  Worrying about my family prevented sleep from coming easily for the rest of the night, even though I was exhausted. Dawn arrived quickly, first a faint glow to the southeast, then light exploded above the horizon. The slight cool of the evening evaporated in only a few minutes, replaced by the swelter of the usual Yucatán summer day

  A holcan walked up and prodded me with his spear, but not hard enough to generate any further wound. As I stood up, I checked the one in my stomach from the day before; there was no blood, just a scab.

  Another jug of water was passed around, but still no food. Hunger was grabbing my stomach, right below the wound, and I wasn’t sure which one hurt worse.

  We began to march.

  The day grew hotte
r as we pounded along the road. Villages came and went, forests replaced fields of maize, and twice we passed a tiny cenote, where the holcan allowed us to fill a wooden bucket with water and drink from it. I drank until my stomach stopped complaining, though I knew my hunger spasms would quickly return. But at least I wasn’t thirsty anymore.

  As our march passed on into the afternoon, I found some purple berries hanging in a large cluster from a moderate-sized tree. After a day without anything to eat, they tasted as good as anything I’d ever swallowed. Most of my companions were too tired to notice the berries, but a few grabbed a handful. Of course, if we stayed too long at any one spot, the holcan would prod us along.

  The evening came, far too slowly after we’d marched all day. Again, we found a small clearing to huddle down in. Again, a jug of water was passed around and we were all allowed a sip, but again there was no food. I saw a couple of chickens running loose, as well as an iguana crawling through the bushes, but when a couple other prisoners started to go after them, the holcan stopped them. Eating was obviously hopeless for tonight, but from what I knew, Chichén Itzá was about a two-day march from Mayapán. We’d been walking for a day and a half, so we should get to our destination by late morning.

  I slept soundly, without waking at all. Exhaustion does that.

  A couple of times in the middle of the night, I drifted into a lighter sleep and felt I was on that comfortable, very soft bed again, but the feeling disappeared quickly as I fell deeper into sleep, and when the morning came and a holcan roused me by sticking a spear in my stomach near my previous wound, I snapped awake, finding myself on the same hard ground.

  What was I seeing in my dreams? I’d never in my entire life seen or felt a bed like the one in my dreams. Even the gods couldn’t make anything that soft and comfortable.

  We must have been close to Chichén Itzá, because the holcan pushed us into motion quickly, and earlier than the previous morning. The sun was only a glow on the horizon when we left.

  The population was denser here. In the larger villages we passed through, the temples were crumbling, the stones broken and scattered all over the ground, weeds beginning to cover the ruins, though surrounding the piles of stone were many huts where the people lived.

  What had happened to our people?

  Late in the morning I could see a very high structure in the distance. The Temple of Kukulkan!

  As we approached, the land surrounding the Temple began to possess more and more ruins. Remnants of houses filled the fields, some just piles of stone, the others charred and burned. Occasionally, one of the few huts left was occupied, with an active field of maize or another crop around it. The Temple was now towering above us, its previously perfect steps now crumbling in spots.

  It was hard to understand why such a wonderful city would be abandoned after being conquered. It had been a glorious city, according to Ichika and her mother, ruling Yucatán for a long time. The history of the city went back hundreds of tuns, ruled at first by a divine king after it became the capital of the region, then taken over by the Cocom family, which finally was attacked by the Xiu family, after which that family moved primarily to Mayapán and established that city as the subsequent capital. This was the history I had been told growing up, which I learned more about from Ichika after our marriage.

  She, and her family, often talked about moving back here and rebuilding this city. Looking at the size of the ruins, would that even be possible? Mayapán had more citizens, but this was a larger city as far as temples and other large buildings. It would be hard to rebuild.

  We moved ever closer to the Temple, then around it to the right. Further to the right was a concrete platform on which rested hundreds of stone columns. I had been here once before, on a trip to the Sacred Cenote, and was told that it had been where the Council had met and commanded the region.

  Walking past the platform with the columns, we soon came to the pathway to the Sacred Cenote.

  I was no longer alone.

  Beside me was Raxka.

  And she was holding my daughter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Your daughter must be sacrificed,” she said, holding the baby in her arms.

  “Do not harm the baby!” I said. “She has done nothing to you.”

  “She was born. That harms me. You were to be mine, yet you took another woman to have your child—you are evil, and your seed is evil.”

  We had reached the Sacred Cenote. My daughter began to cry, as if her little mind could sense the danger she was in. Raxka grabbed her by the feet and held her upside down over the water.

  “No, no, no, please!” I pleaded.

  “It is time.” Usually there was an elaborate ceremony when a person was sacrificed to Chaac, the Rain God, but today it was just Raxka. She mumbled a few words I couldn’t understand, then released my daughter.

  The cries seemed to last forever, followed by a small splash. The cries ended, and I could picture my little child in the water, gasping desperately to find air where there was none, not able to comprehend what was happening to her, lungs full of water, coughing, coughing . . . dying.

  I ran toward Raxka, seized her, and pulled her with me as I plunged over the edge of the cenote. I knew we would both die, but I didn’t care. Without my daughter, there was no point in living. But I would take Raxka with me. She, too, must die.

  The water was warm.

  And murky, darkening as my momentum carried me downward. I let go of Raxka.

  By the time my descent stopped, Raxka had drifted away from me. I felt no trace of her and complete darkness surrounded me. I had tumbled on the way down and landed on my back, which hurt as though I had been kicked by a donkey.

  Never having faced the necessity of surviving in water, I thrashed around, my feet kicking violently. To my surprise I soon found my head above the surface of the water and I was able to gasp a breath of air. I looked for my daughter but couldn’t find her.

  Panic set in. Where was she? How deep would an infant go?

  It didn’t matter. Before I could dive to look for her, a hand seized my ankle and pulled me down. I tried to take one more breath before I went under but inhaled only water. My lungs tried to hurl the water out, my body coughing and retching to no avail.

  Though I tried to kick to the top again, I couldn’t. Raxka was still hanging on, pulling me down.

  Just before darkness swallowed me, my hand encountered a rock.

  The side of the cenote! I pulled with all my might on a jagged crag in the rock and suddenly my head was above water again. I coughed out the debris in my lungs and took a deep breath between each spasm of coughing. With my death grip on the rock, I was able to kick my feet enough to dislodge Raxka’s hand from my ankle.

  Where was my daughter?

  There! She was floating a few feet away, so I grabbed her and dragged her over to the side of the cenote, where I continued to cling to the jagged rock while clutching her tightly.

  But now what?

  Vines hung down from the sides of the cenote. I tried to pull myself up but didn’t have the strength.

  But I couldn’t let my daughter die!

  I examined the rock wall.

  A small hole was visible in the side of the cenote about ten feet to my left. Calling up reserves I didn’t know I had, I used vines to pull myself over to the hole. It took a lot of effort, but I shoved my daughter into the hole, still not knowing whether she was dead or alive. I thought I saw her chest rise slightly as she lay on the floor of the hole.

  Still clutching the rocks at the entrance to the hole, I cleared a pile of debris out of the hole. It was bigger than I thought.

  I took
a few deep breaths, gathering strength, then pulled myself into the hole, where I lay on the floor, panting violently.

  I’m not sure how long I lay there, but finally I awoke from my daze enough to try to figure out where I was. The hole stretched into the rock wall of the cenote as far as I could see. Surprisingly, it wasn’t dark where the tunnel disappeared from my sight.

  There was enough room in the hole for me to crawl, so I crawled slowly forward until I could see that the small tunnel opened into another large cenote. A ten-foot slit in the roof of the cenote flooded it with sunlight, some of which spilled into the tunnel.

  I’d left my daughter behind me and now a noise erupted back there. I tried to turn but the tunnel was too narrow to succeed. I could, however, swivel my head enough to see the source of the sound.

  Raxka!

  She was viciously stabbing my daughter with her black obsidian knife.

  I hadn’t known whether my daughter had survived the water or not, but there was no possibility of her surviving Raxka’s attack. Nor could I turn around enough to challenge Raxka’s attack on my daughter or forthcoming attack on me. Having finished off my daughter, she was crawling toward me, knife in hand.

  I tried to crawl ahead into the more open cenote where I could meet her face to face but because of my exhaustion didn’t make it. I did manage to turn halfway around at the last minute before the first blow of her knife caught me.

  It slashed deep into my thigh. Agony seized me, overwhelming any chance I had of controlling my own muscles.

  Another stab—another spasm of agony—this time in my back. I could no longer move my legs at all. I tried to pull myself forward with just my hands, but moved only a short distance before another slash of agony erupted in my back, this time higher.

  Then another. And another.

  Darkness began to claim me, but knowing I was about to die, I still was able to jerk around in one final movement and hug my daughter’s dead body.