The Sirens of Oak Creek

by Robert Louis DeMayo

  I crawled into my sleeping bag and listened to the evening while I tried to sleep. An owl called to the waxing moon, and the conversation lulled me to sleep.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Act II

  1987

  (August)

  Blackbird singing in the dead of night. No, not a blackbird—most likely a nighthawk, or a nightjar. But it’s something that’s feeding on insects under the starlight.

  And they’re not bats; I can hear feathers ruffling above my tent when they buzz by. Such a soft sound to awaken to.

  One of the birds calls out, “Poor will… poor will”.

  Crickets and cicadas cry out loudly too, it’s a beautiful night, but beneath their chorus I hear scuffling outside the tent. I sit up.

  I unzip my tent enough to peek out and see three sets of luminous yellow eyes staring back at me.

  They’re perched by the entrance to the professor’s tent.

  I blink my eyes, questioning my sanity.

  And then I realize they are ringtails. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see pointed ears floating over a small body—no bigger than a housecat. They look like a cross between a fox and a racoon.

  Unexpectedly, one of their long black and white tails pops up and waves at me.

  I smile—they’re like desert lemurs. And as I grasp they are munching on DeNiza’s supplies, a slight giggle slips out.

  When I climb out of the tent, they scatter, their black and white tails bobbing like glow sticks.

  A waning moon has crept into the sky, rising long after sunset; but only now is it gazing down into our canyon—Itzel canyon.

  I step into its glow to be bathed in a thin layer of silver moonlight.

  Far off, a family of coyotes sings to the night, or maybe to the moon. There is a longing in their cries that I identify with.

  Suddenly, something buzzes past my head—scaring the wits out of me for a quick second—and lands a few feet away. A large raven stands looking at me, defiantly.

  “I remember you,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “You owe me for the parking lot.”

  It hops around, making strange gurgling noises, and gives me another blank stare.

  I eye it for a minute and then say, “Don’t plan on getting any treats from me if you scare me again.”

  It tilts its head sideways, and finally flaps its way to the side of the canyon—about thirty feet away. It seems strange that the raven would be moving after sunset, and I follow.

  I find the bird on the slope of the canyon wall, by the base of a large rock, hopping around.

  It disappears into a shadow and doesn’t return.

  I wait a solid minute, then scramble up a scree of loose rock to reach the shadow, and when I do, I see a narrow chute leading upward.

  It looks about thirty feet long, and the other end is flooded with soft moonshine.

  I take in a long breath of the cool night air, trying to calm my nerves, and ascend.

  I emerged into a box canyon, aglow in spectral moonlight. I felt like I must certainly be in a dream. There was no wind; it was dead silent, and time seemed to have stopped. Only the moonbeams flowed, casting disturbing shadows everywhere.

  A glimmer reflected off something metallic by the wall, and I headed that way, toward an old adobe ruin and a firepit. Each of my steps echoed loudly off the high walls.

  By the crumbling ruin sat a Spanish helmet. It was set on a large flat rock, as if on display. I reached to touch it but stopped mid-way when I heard a woman singing.

  I froze, completely motionless. My heart was pounding. I was barely breathing.

  The song held me in a trance. I tried in vain to determine where it came from.

  It was my mother’s song. I recognized the melody, and hearing it now made me remember aspects of it that I’d forgotten.

  Like the sense of peace that filled me as I listened. I felt my mother’s love and the life that thrived in the little box canyon. A nearby stand of cliff rose was blossoming, and the white petals gathered in what to me suddenly were communities.

  Their sweet, heavy scent made me dizzy from twenty feet away.

  Even the stars seemed conscious—looking down at me—as they pulsed on the firmament.

  We were all one.

  And then it was gone. The singing stopped.

  “No!” I shouted, the loudness of my own voice jolting me.

  I quickly left the ruin and walked further back into the box canyon. It lay in heavy shadow, the moonlight eclipsed by the high walls. I took a few tentative steps into the gloom and a dark chill crept over me.

  Someone was standing there.

  At the base of the cliff I could make out what looked like a withered man with one arm stretched above him in a writhing gesture of agony, or perhaps warning. I blinked my eyes and stared hard until I realized I was looking at the twisted remains of a charred juniper. Old Saan would have called that one a medicine tree and she would probably have claimed that a powerful spirit must reside within it.

  I’ve always prided myself on the fact that I didn’t fear many things. Throughout my life I was calm when many of my friends wanted to run. It was curiosity that drove me more than courage. If someone told me there was a monster in a cave, or a ghost in an abandoned house, I would have to check it out.

  And it always turned out that the truth wasn’t something to fear. I never once found a monster, or a ghost.

  But this specter of a twisted dying man, crafted from burnt and sand-worn juniper in the moonlit-shadowed canyon, spooked me to the core. I didn’t think I could explore any further without the light of day on my side.

  As I climbed backward down through the tunnel, my eyes never left the canyon. Part of me felt if I turned away the twisted juniper man would uproot and follow me.

  When I got back to my tent, I zipped it up tight, and silently crawled deep into my sleeping bag.

  And only when my heart had slowed, and my breathing was back to normal, did I again think about the song, and who—or what—the singer may have been.

  The tranquility of the next morning was shattered by a scream. I sat up just in time to see DeNiza bursting through the half-zipped entrance of his tent like he was escaping from a horde of hellish demons.

  I figured it was just another nightmare until he kicked free of his sleeping bag and started pointing.

  “There’s something in my bag,” he shrieked. He shook his leg, and then touched his calf.

  “I think it bit me,” he added.

  I lifted the sleeping bag and shook it.

  A rattlesnake hit the ground and slithered away.

  DeNiza cried, “There, I told you.”

  I grabbed my pack and fetched a small medical kit.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to zip up your tent at night?” I calmly asked.

  I pointed at his leg. “Take off your pants. Let me look.” DeNiza took them off; there was a single perforation.

  “There is only one puncture,” I said, “it looks like it was a glancing blow.” I handed him his pants. “You might get lucky, but we should start back right away, regardless.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” DeNiza snapped. “I am not going anywhere. My treasure is here! I can feel it.”

  I sighed. “You stupid man. If you really got bit, this expedition is over. If you can’t walk, you’re stranded. I can’t carry you back.”

  He started shouting. “I am not leaving! Go if you want—I don’t need your help!”

  I said, “There’s nothing here for you.”

  DeNiza stared at me for a long minute. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, “You’re hiding something.”

  I said nothing. I tried to control my eyes, but still my gaze momentarily turned toward the scree and the tunnel.

  DeNiza noticed it.

  He started heading in that direction.

  When he reached the talus slope, he could clearly see a set of fresh footprints that led to and then from the tunnel.

 
He turned. “Is this why you want me to leave?”

  He took a step toward me, his face contorted in anger.

  “You found something!” he screamed and raised his arm as if to strike. But something stopped him.

  He quickly glanced at his tent—at the open backpack.

  Instead, he angrily jabbed his finger at me.

  “You have no right to it!” he hissed. “You abnegated any at the start.”

  Then he stumbled up the hill and under the rock.

  I waited a few seconds and followed.

  Chapter Sixty-two

  By the time I emerged into the box canyon, DeNiza had forgotten his anger—at least temporarily—and was staring around in awe. “This is it,” he said reverently as he surveyed the box canyon.

  “My treasure is here. I have done it!”

  I looked around suspiciously, lost in my own world. Was this my mother’s place? I kept asking myself.

  Aside from the ruined adobe structure and a bunch of old pots, there wasn’t much else in the canyon. I stared at the twisted juniper that had scared me the night before and found it far less daunting in the stark and honest light of day.

  At the far end of the canyon—the area obscured by shadow the night before—a lifeless pine had dropped off the plateau. Beneath it, a mass of rotted logs, branches and leaves had piled against the cliff.

  It appeared to be a dead end as the walls all ran straight up.

  DeNiza approached the ruins and spotted the Spanish helmet. He picked it up and displayed it to me. He had that manic look of pride on his face again.

  “My ancestor,” he whispered, his face pale and clammy.

  He quickly searched the ruin, then he walked the small canyon’s perimeter, peering into cracks and crevices in the walls. A mortared wall with a cracked door indicated a Sinaguan grainery, and he stuck his head inside the crack, then pulled it out with a grimace. After he’d completed two loops he began to limp.

  He was heaving, when I convinced him to sit down.

  He glared at me, “You knew it was here!”

  I ignored his words, “You’re gonna need a doctor.”

  DeNiza sneered at me, “You just want me to leave so you can get my treasure.”

  I looked around but didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t trust you,” he snarled.

  “Yeah, you made that clear,” I said, but he remained quiet as I approached him.

  “Lie back,” I said, and nodded at a gold ring he wore on his right hand. “Take that off before your hands swell up.”

  He did, still watching me, his eyes cold and focused.

  “There’s snakeweed here,” I said. “If it turns out you were envenomated I can make a poultice to put on the bite, that might help.”

  He was sarcastic in his reply. “Look who’s suddenly an Indian. Did your mother raise you as a medicine woman? Wouldn’t have been your father—not with a white name like Decker.”

  I stood up and walked away a few steps.

  “Let it rot off,” I retorted. “I don’t care.”

  “That’s what I thought,” replied DeNiza. “You would like me to die so you can have it all. Finally, you are speaking veridically.”

  I was annoyed with him and said, “How much treasure can you carry out with one leg anyway?”

  DeNiza became serious. “Maybe you should make the poultice.”

  I shook my head. “It would be pointless—if you are snake-bit, this expedition is about to become epic. If you weren’t envenomated, then you’ll be fine. We just need to wait.”

  DeNiza sat with his back to the wall and watched me set my tent up. I’d made two trips down into Itzel Canyon to retrieve my gear and was now going to wait until I was convinced he was okay.

  Unfortunately, he seemed to be fine. Two hours had passed since he’d kicked the snake out of his bag, and aside from being slightly hysterical, he wasn´t showing any symptoms.

  But he fidgeted constantly.

  “Relax, Carlos,” I said, “you’re still a day ahead of schedule. Tomorrow is August fifteenth. Wasn’t that your big plan, to rediscover the treasure on the harmonic convergence?”

  He snickered, “I do not give a damn about this convergence—my quest is far more ancient.”

  I laughed. “Really? Oh, please do tell.”

  My tent was up, and I began throwing my gear inside.

  He glared at me but couldn’t resist having an audience.

  “According to Shearer’s interpretation of Aztec cosmology,” he began, “the day Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico, April 22, 1519, was the beginning of nine hell cycles, each of 52 years.”

  I stood and grinned. “Oh, this just keeps getting better—nine hell cycles, really?”

  He nodded. “And guess when nine cycles of 52 end if you began in 1519?”

  He stared at me, until I finally muttered, “That would be 1987.”

  His confidence returned and swept his features as he said, “Precisely.”

  “And is that when we begin a new era?” I asked, cynically. “Another Age of Aquarius or something like that?”

  He scoffed. “Shearer would have you believe it would lead to the end of evils in the modern world—no more materialism, war, oppression or injustice.”

  I gave him a hard stare. “And what do you think?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “From 1987, there is still another twenty-five years left in the Mayan Long Count calendar, which ends in 2012. And when it terminates no one knows if the Mayans thought it would be the end of so-called history, or if it might simply be the beginning of another 5,125-year cycle.”

  “You sound as skeptical as me,” I said. “Why treat these dates so importantly?”

  He gave me a grin. “Because it was important to the Aztecs.”

  DeNiza, it turned out, was doing fine. But the heat was taking a toll. By ten the temperatures we were in the nineties, and before noon it had to be over a hundred. DeNiza had returned to Itzel Canyon and broke down his tent, then hauled it up the chute with his big back pack.

  He’d unpacked the duffle bags the night before, and it took him several more trips to carry the loose gear up into the box canyon. I didn’t help with any of it, and it pissed him off.

  Instead I got a low fire going in the pit by the ruins.

  Above us, I saw monsoon clouds hovering. A few had long strains of virga trailing, but the rain evaporated long before it reached the ground.

  DeNiza set a bag of provisions by the fire, and when I spotted tea in the mix, I boiled water in an old Sinaguan vessel. I made a cup for each of us, and when he saw that, he relaxed a little.

  He grabbed an avocado and knife from his stores, and sat near me, with his back to the shaded wall. He cut the avocado in two and gave me half.

  I accepted it and he smiled. “The word avocado comes from an Aztec word, ahuácatl, which means testicle.”

  “Not really the high-brow humor I would have expected from you, Professor,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Then you do not want to know what guacamole means.”

  A rare laugh escaped my lips and I sat against the wall next to him. The strip of coolness along the wall was the only place to hide from the brutal heat. Storm clouds occasionally floated over us, rumbling but casting no rain.

  DeNiza stumbled around the canyon every hour or so, but it only took a few minutes in the glaring sunlight to force him back against the wall.

  He glanced at a fence lizard clinging to the rock. “I feel like one of these creatures,” he said. “Hiding from the sun.”

  He sat down with a huff and focused his attention on the wall opposite us. He was quiet for a few minutes, when suddenly he jumped up and shouted, “Do you see that?”

  I looked up expectantly. “See what?”

  DeNiza leaned forward, awkwardly, peering through the heat to the other side of the box canyon. He walked straight to the wall and pointed. “Here! Look! There is a vertical line of holes drilled into this rock fa
ce.”

  I was skeptical. “Are you sure they’re man-made?”

  DeNiza was rapidly losing patience with me and snapped, “Of course they are. Look at the precision.”

  Each hole was about an inch wide, deeper than a finger, and two feet above the last.

  He proudly pointed to the holes. “This is a ladder.”

  I laughed. “Are you high? Where would it go to?”

  DeNiza replied, indignantly, “No, I am not high. I do not do drugs.” Then he nodded at the holes and added, “The ladder goes up. They must have put the treasure up there.”

  We both looked up the wall, but all we could see from the ground were fifty vertical feet. Further up, the cliff slanted back and out of sight.

  De Niza started to walk in circles, mumbling as he made his plan.

  “We will make pegs,” he said, “and place them in the holes, and climb.”

  I walked over to the wall and examined the holes, and then glanced all the way up. “You’re on your own, Carlos.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You are a coward.”

  I shook my head, “I don’t think the treasure is up there, and I’m not going near your so-called ladder.”

  He shrugged it off. “I do not need your help. You have no rights to this treasure anyway.”

  I sighed and replied, “You’re gonna break your damn neck.”

  DeNiza stormed off searching for sticks.

  When he had collected an armful, he grabbed a sharp knife from his pack, sat against the wall, and started making pegs.

  He was pretty worked up and made it a point of focusing his frustration on me. “You could have been famous,” said DeNiza.

  He chopped a long stick in half and added, “You could have been part of restoring my family honor.”

  He hacked at another stick.

  I looked at the distance up the cliff again. I didn’t bother to mention that nowhere in this expedition had he ever offered for me to be part of it—other than as a porter.

  It was fine by me, I wanted no part of his plans.

  “No, I’d rather just watch this,” I said.

  DeNiza stopped working and looked at me for a long time.