Restless Soul

by Alex Archer

  Then he spun away and strode toward Luartaro’s dropped backpack. He opened it and dumped the contents, then proceeded to stuff it with bejeweled and ivory trinkets. He tried to put the watermelon-size Buddha in, but couldn’t lift the statue.

  Luartaro put a hand on Annja’s shoulder. “I’m not sure you should stop him, you know,” he said quietly. “The authorities—”

  “Yes, we can call the authorities when we get out of here, and we can well report him. Maybe we should. But I don’t know.” Luartaro took a picture of Zakkarat still trying to lift the gold Buddha.

  “We should.” Her voice was softer and sad. She sympathized with Zakkarat. Here was an opportunity to live well. If she was in his position, would she do anything differently? “We should report him,” she said again.

  “We’ll have time to talk about it on the walk back to the resort…or the ride if we can find his Jeep. We’ll have to go into town, you know, to call people about this.”

  She nodded. “I…I’m not done here yet, Lu.”

  “And I wager you’ll not get Zakkarat out of here until he is so loaded down he can barely walk.” He took several more pictures of Zakkarat, who had finally given up on the Buddha and was taking instead a polished horn with monkey faces carved on it. “And best we take a good long look at as much as we can now in case the authorities don’t let us back in. We do have to tell the authorities about this.”

  “Yes, we do.” She returned to examining the treasure, glancing over her shoulder at Zakkarat and deciding that he could stuff as much as would fit in the pack, but he wasn’t leaving with it.

  She was pleased Luartaro thought as she did—that the Thai authorities had to be told about this place so it could be protected. But she was confident she would be allowed back in. She would be persuasive if she needed to be, and the promise of a television special or documentary always lured people into saying yes.

  “Coins!” She heard Zakkarat exclaim. “Old, gold ones.”

  Everything here is old, she thought, though admittedly some pieces in the treasure belonged to a more recent age than the ancient coffins. But some pieces were also likely older than the coffins.

  Was this what had troubled her? The treasure from different times and cultures colliding in this chamber? Had something foreshadowed her finding this place? And Zakkarat stealing? And where was the mysterious voice?

  The chill hadn’t left her. She retraced her steps around the chamber, looking past golden Buddhas and into niches that contained still more antiquities and crushed cigarettes and wrappers.

  Luartaro followed her. “Annja—”

  “What?” The word came out far sharper than she’d intended. “Sorry.”

  “There is something I saw earlier and wanted to talk to you—”

  “Saw what? Where? What did you—”

  “Not in here. I didn’t see it in here. It was when you were climbing the wall in the cavern, when the river rushed in and I had to use my flashlight because the lantern was lost…. I saw you had a sword, an old one. And you used it to cut through the dirt and—”

  So he had gotten a good look at her with the flashlight! It was dark, but he obviously had good eyesight.

  She shook her head. “A sword? You were mistaken.” Though she considered the lie necessary, it grated on her nonetheless. “I used a piton to cut through the dirt. I didn’t have a sword.”

  It was his turn to shake his head. “What I glimpsed was too long to be a simple piton. It was dark in the cavern, but I know what I saw. Where did you find a sword down here? And where is it now? I couldn’t see it well, but it looked old. You scold Zakkarat about taking things and yet—”

  “There is no sword, Lu. A sword wouldn’t have fit in my pack, and there certainly isn’t one here.” She spread her hands out to her sides and turned in front of him. “See? No sword.”

  Once more she touched Joan of Arc’s weapon with her mind. She hadn’t wanted Luartaro to learn about that part of her life.

  “Do you see a sword?” Her tone was light and teasing, hopefully convincing. “A trick of the light and the rain, Lu. It’s like I told you. I used a piton to dig through the dirt.”

  She walked to her pack and brought it near the coffins, not wanting Zakkarat to dump it out and stuff it with treasure.

  “No sword,” she repeated. Annja unzipped the bag and opened it so he could see it contained only pitons, a small hammer and some other small tools.

  He shrugged. “I guess you’re right. Sorry. It was really dark, after all. I suppose I could have been seeing things.”

  “And I’d like to see a few more of these things before we have to leave,” she said, glad he had given in to her lie. And before I stop Zakkarat from hauling priceless pieces out of here, she thought. But she wasn’t going to squander the minutes to argue with the Thai man at that moment.

  Annja turned away from Luartaro and went back to examining the coffins. My answer must be here, she thought. Why can’t I see it? Why can’t I hear—

  Free me.

  7

  Annja did her best to shut out the sounds around her—the rain coming down and pelting against the pool in the center of the chamber, Zakkarat babbling away in Thai and Luartaro pacing and talking and taking photograph upon photograph.

  Annja wanted to leave this place and make sure Zakkarat took nothing—at least nothing of significance or that could bring trouble upon him later. A few trinkets or some gold coins, she truly could not begrudge him that.

  “But it’s not yet time to leave,” she said sternly. “Not just—”

  Free me.

  She stood in front of the middle coffin and stared at the contents. Her eyes drifted to a particular piece, one of the covered bowls she’d glanced at earlier. This time she felt drawn to it.

  “That’s it.” Annja somehow felt a connection to the bowl, and in realizing it, the chilling sensation that had gripped her vanished and she almost felt a sense of peace.

  She’d told the men not to touch anything—not that Zakkarat listened. Now she was going against her own advice, but she had to! The voice wouldn’t allow her to wait any longer.

  She set the flashlight on the edge of the coffin, angled so it highlighted the bowl. But what is it?

  On closer inspection she saw it wasn’t really a bowl. She moved some of the other things away from it. The container was a dull white, polished and covered with flowing symbols that might be letters, but it was no language that she recognized.

  She took a picture, thinking she knew people on the archaeological networks that might help translate it. She took more pictures from different angles and then returned to it, seeing a thumb-size dark brown splotch.

  “More dried blood.”

  She drew in a deep breath. The air was fresher here than in any other chamber they’d been in, but there were traces of old things in it—the teak and the treasure…and now that she was alert to it, she was sure she could smell blood.

  She took another deep breath and picked up the scents of the jungle and the rain.

  Finally, she leaned forward, fingers gently folding around the container, chastising herself for doing this without gloves but not able to stop herself.

  The moment her fingertips touched the surface, images flashed through her mind. The jungle. Rain coming down. Flowered vines twisting in the wind. The black gaping maw of…of… What? A tomb? Men. White men with green-and-black paint smeared on their cheeks, dirt smeared on their hands, their expressions transforming from joy and excitement to being twisted by fear. Pain. Then eyes closed in death and pale skin flecked with blood.

  She shuddered and nearly pulled back, but her need to know what it meant was stronger than her discomfort.

  Free me.

  “This is it,” she said more firmly. “This place in the mountains and this…thing.”

  Something about the container had led her there, had touched her through the teak coffins and the mountain range when she and Luartaro were at Tham Lod and
worried at her enough to pull her through chambers and twisting tunnels filled with the rising river. “But what is it?”

  She drew the bowl toward her and held it directly in front of the flashlight. The light played across the surface, and she stumbled. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she almost dropped the thing in her hands.

  The container was a skull.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, breathed deeply and evenly, and steadied her hands until she could open her eyes and examine the object.

  The top part of a skull had been fashioned into a bowl, the jaw removed. It looked as if it had been polished, then engraved with symbols or letters. Some sort of dye had been applied to make the symbols stand out.

  No, not dye. Blood.

  The etchings were inlaid with blood like a jeweler might inlay gold or a souvenir maker might inlay cloisonné. The lid was ceramic. It was shaped vaguely like a parasol and had a little nub in the center to grasp to open.

  Annja set the container on the floor between her feet, brought the flashlight down and tried to remove the lid. It didn’t budge, but the images flashed again, more intensely. Dirty, tired faces transformed by excitement, then fear. The jungle all around them.

  She could smell the sickening scent of the thick-petaled flowers. She could feel the tiresome rain that had pattered against the men’s faces.

  Who were they?

  When were they?

  She felt their excitement at discovering something, though she couldn’t see what it was. She shared their surprise when thunder boomed and felt it turn to fear when it was followed by a rat-a-tat-tat that was not part of the storm. And she took their last, dying breaths with them.

  She released the breath she hadn’t even been aware she was holding and was grateful for the air that filled her lungs. Grateful that she was still alive.

  The images of the men’s faces swirled around her like the thick morning fog on a riverbank, and then dissipated, leaving her numb.

  Free me.

  Whatever was inside the skull container wanted out. She could almost feel it thrumming beneath the bone bowl.

  But should she let it out? Running her finger around the edge of the lid, she felt a hard waxy substance, like a seal. She wanted to pry at it with her nails. But something held her back.

  If she was going to open it, she should take the bowl with her and open it later when Zakkarat and Luartaro were not around. No use jeopardizing them further.

  Free me.

  She had witnessed some extraordinary things since she’d come into possession of the sword. She truly didn’t know what might happen if she pried open the strange container.

  She squatted in front of it and dug her fingernails into the wax, clawing at it even as she told herself she should open it later. The same way she’d told herself she should have come out here by herself.

  Maybe Roux would have one more thing to lecture her about. But she wasn’t going to wait. She couldn’t wait.

  Something was demanding she open the bowl now, an inner voice that had nothing to do with the one saying, “Free me.”

  “Now, not later,” she told herself. She’d not wormed her way through the tunnels and risked the rising river to wait.

  The waxy material broke loose and crumbled in her fingers. She held it in front of the flashlight. It was clay, dried by the years.

  The lid shifted. She hesitated for just the barest fraction of a second, and then swiftly plucked it off.

  Something threw her backward. Pressure slammed into her chest, like so much compressed air, and shoved. Something she couldn’t see.

  Images flashed through her mind. The paint-smeared faces beaded with sweat and the rain, visages filled with a mix of wonder and horror and finally relief.

  She heard the rat-a-tat-tat. Her mind wanted it to be rain, but she knew in her gut it wasn’t. There were shouts in a language she couldn’t understand, a voice thick with a Southern accent shouting.

  “Annja? Annja!”

  She blinked. Reality slammed back into her mind, shutting out the voices.

  Luartaro was standing over her, holding out his hand. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded and picked herself up without his help. “I’m fine. Just slipped.” Another lie to Luartaro.

  “Find something interesting?”

  She looked down at the skull bowl, but she didn’t touch it again. “Just this. It has dog tags in it.”

  “Odd place for dog tags, but then this is an odd place for golden Buddhas and crumpled cigarette packs.” He took a few pictures of the bowl, and then one just of her. “I’d like to send some pictures of this to the university where I teach. Never saw anything like it.” He took several more pictures of the bowl. “I’d like to get that translated. I don’t recognize the script.”

  When Luartaro turned to take more pictures of the rest of the treasure, Annja gingerly touched the bowl, poised to jerk her hand back if anything happened. The voices were gone, as were the impressions of the men’s painted faces. She picked up the bowl, cradling it carefully in her hands.

  The dog tags were coated with dried blood, and more dried blood covered the bottom of the bowl. The blood had been at least an inch thick when it was poured in. Her stomach knotted at the sight. She stirred the tags with her finger and read the names. Some of them were difficult to make out, the caked blood so thick. But she flecked it off with her fingernails. Thomsen, Gary A., Baptist; Everett, Timothy J., Catholic; Moore, Gordon A., Lutheran; Winn, Edgar B., Baptist; Mitchell, Samuel R., Baptist; Farrar, Harold B., Methodist; Collins, Robert B., Catholic; Wallem, Otis H., Methodist; Seger, James A., Jewish; Duncan, Ralph G., Lutheran. There were also blood types and social security numbers on each tag, nothing to indicate rank or home city, and USA to stand for United States Army.

  Not from World War II. Dog tags then had serial numbers, not social security numbers. Somewhere she had picked up a bit of trivia about dog tags, and it had served her well during a session of Trivial Pursuit. Dog tags had been used by the military since 1906. The ones just prior to and around the early part of World War II listed the first name of the soldier, the middle initial, the surname, serial number, blood type, next of kin and address. From 1941 to 1943 they included immunizations such as tetanus, and the soldier’s religion. They dropped the address line in the latter part of the war. In 1959, dog tags switched from their rounded shape to rectangular.

  These were rectangular, so definitely post WWII, Annja decided.

  And not from the Korean War. If she remembered correctly, it was in 1965 that the dog tags changed again, to use social security numbers rather than serial numbers. So these dog tags were from 1965 to more recent times.

  Because of the images of the jungle, she doubted they were from Operation Desert Storm or any other Middle Eastern struggle. And while they could have come from soldiers serving at a base in the jungle recently, she somehow doubted it.

  The images had to be soldiers from the Vietnam War. The jungle and paint from the vision, and their location, made her fairly certain.

  She felt a sense of relief and an even greater sense of peace. She’d done whatever it was she was supposed to do simply by taking the lid off the skull bowl. She’d somehow freed the spirits.

  Had the soldiers the tags once belonged to been captured? Killed? Were they MIAs?

  Annja knew a soldier wore two tags on a chain; if he died one tag was removed and brought back with the men who discovered the body. Often the other was placed in his mouth so he could be identified when his body was returned home.

  Could she find records of these men?

  “We take nothing,” she’d told Luartaro and Zakkarat of the treasure chamber. But she was taking this bowl and the dog tags.

  In taking the skull she was taking a nightmare thing, not a glittering relic, and somehow that seemed to make it okay.

  Annja retrieved her pack, which Zakkarat was eyeing as if he was about to fill it. She removed the last few pitons, and pl
aced the bowl inside. It wouldn’t break, though the ceramic lid might. She had nothing to pad it with, so she cut off one of her pant legs from the knee down and used it to wrap the lid. It would suffice, and she would travel carefully.

  She took the dog tags out of the bowl, thinking that she should keep them separate from the skull.

  “What is it?” she asked again of the skull. She’d seen hundreds of artifacts through her years as an archaeologist. She was normally less judgmental of antiquities, but this piece seemed sinister. She would get to town—Mae Hong Son or Chiang Mai—by whatever means available and contact some of her internet resources as soon as possible.

  Then she would find a way to come back to this chamber with a camera crew, laptop computer, maybe some local archaeologists to help document everything. She remembered Zakkarat mentioning an archaeological team from Bangkok working in the range by Tham Lod Cave. Surely they would want to come here.

  They’d spirit everything off to museums. Document it all.

  Everything except the sinister bowl—that was for Annja to study.

  She noticed that Zakkarat, Luartaro or both of them working together had opened some of the larger crates. They seemed to be filled with a lot more packing material and more antiquities. Luartaro took a few pictures, nudged Zakkarat back and then resealed one of the crates.

  She briefly thought about searching for more skull bowls, but she’d heard no more voices in her head, and the chill that had gripped her earlier was gone.

  Instinct told her there were no more such bowls.

  She walked around the chamber, surveying the piles of treasure. Pieces stood out—embossments, vessels, jars, axes, rings, earrings. They were made of ceramic, gold, wood, stone and silver. Some things were impossibly smooth, like a river had worn away many of the imperfections and most of the details.

  “Whoever put this stuff here will be back for it,” Luartaro said. “Maybe they’re waiting for buyers, or for a way to transport it. This certainly is not the intended final destination.”

  “It’s all illegal,” Annja said. “Whatever is going on here is highly illegal. If this was an honest operation, these antiquities would be in a warehouse or someplace else, protected and dry—not in a damp cavern in the mountains that we found in desperation and by accident. There would be guards and security, maybe sensors and definitely cameras.”