“‘Jack!! Are you all right??’
“I felt Grandpa’s strong hands lift me up. I wiped the mud from my face and out of my mouth while I looked over my shoulder. Whatever had stalked me was now gone. Only the ugly elm tree loomed above the fence line a short distance away.
“‘What in the hell just happened??’ Grandpa demanded.
“‘I-I don’t really know,’ I replied, determined not to alarm him further. ‘I felt something crawl on my back and it scared the holy crap out of me, Grandpa. Sorry about that!’ I tried to force the biggest smile I could muster to sell this. He smiled in return, but something in his eyes told me he wasn’t completely buying it this time.
“‘Come on, son,’ he told me. ‘Let’s go inside and get you cleaned up. I believe I’ve got the fixings here to make a salad big enough for all of us if you and Jeremy decide to have some after all.’
“The two of us left the garden and headed back to the house. Once we returned to the back porch, we left our muddied shoes there and went on inside. It felt considerably warmer in the kitchen than it did earlier, despite the hard-working floor fans. Grandpa placed the bucket of vegetables in the sink and told me he was going to get cleaned up. We agreed to meet in the living room once I finished taking a shower, but before I started up the stairs, he stopped me and said he had something important to tell me first.
“‘Son, you’ve been through quite a bit these past few days,’ he said. ‘But, there are some things you need to know. Number one, I’ll always love you no matter what happens or what you do—that’s the most important. Number two, I’m as proud as anybody could be that you’re my grandson. Most folks couldn’t survive what you’ve gone through, but I was already proud of you anyway. You’re a good kid. Number three, and this is the last thing, Jack. I know a hell of a lot more than you think I do and you’re not near as good a liar as you think you’ve become. Now, go on and get cleaned up and I’ll see you down here in awhile.’ He watched me walk to the top of the stairs before walking back to his own bedroom.
“I was pleased that the upstairs’ spookiness continued to have little affect on me. But now I worried about Genovene’s whereabouts. I kept imagining her jumping out from the shadows, and prayed fervently that she wasn’t somewhere in the house.
“I quickly showered and put on some clean clothes, and then headed back downstairs to the living room. According to the mantel clock, it was a few minutes after four in the afternoon. Jeremy wasn’t due home with the pizzas for another two hours. Grandpa stood on his stepladder near the front corner of the room, reaching for a dust-covered photo album that’d been barely visible atop the bookshelf. He looked over at me while hoisting the heavy book down from its resting-place. I’d never even noticed it before.
“‘Hey, son,’ he called over to me. ‘Do you feel better now?’
“‘Yeah, Grandpa, much better,’ I told him. ‘What’ve you got there?’
“‘Oh, just a very old picture album,’ he explained. ‘I thought it might be kind of fun for you and Jeremy to thumb through this tonight.’ He stepped off the ladder and carried the old and dusty book over to the dining room table, where it landed with a thick thump as he laid it down.
“I decided to follow him into the dining room, where I found him carefully dusting off the book’s cover. Once he was done, he left it near the center of the table, straightening the table’s embroidered tablecloth before moving into the kitchen.
“‘I want to finish getting my salad ready for dinner and let it chill in the ‘fridge,’ he said once he noticed I’d followed him from the dining room. ‘Why don’t you find out if the Braves are playing again today? If they are, I’ll get us a couple of sodas and we’ll watch the game together.’
“All right.’ I went into the living room and turned on the TV. Sure enough, the Atlanta Braves were playing. I remember it was the top of the second inning, and they were playing the San Diego Padres. I let Grandpa know this and sat down on the sofa. Once he joined me, we watched the game together until Jeremy showed up a couple of hours later with the pizzas.
“It was just after six o’clock when he got home, carrying our dinner in a protective carrier he’d purchased that afternoon. Grandpa allowed us to eat in the living room while we watched the remainder of the baseball game. It was extremely rare for him to do this, and perhaps the only time he’d ever suggested it himself. The mood was lighthearted, and my brother and I were excited to hear what Grandpa would soon tell us.
“Once we were done eating, he told me and Jeremy to grab another soda from the kitchen and meet him in the dining room. We then waited for him at the table. Since spending time here was another rarity, usually reserved for special occasions, it only added to the intrigue that marked this evening’s event. Grandpa soon joined us carrying an ice-cold bottle of beer, which commanded the immediate attention of my brother.
“‘So, when did you buy the beer, Grandpa?’
“‘A couple of days ago,’ he replied, smiling in amusement at the wounded puppy look on Jeremy’s face. ‘The reason I got one out now is we’re running a little low on cold drinks, and I decided to save the rest of them for you two.’
“‘You know I’d rather have a beer!’ whined Jeremy. ‘Suppose I finish the soda I’ve got now and then helped myself to one. Would you really mind tonight if I did? That way, we could save the sodas for Jackie.’
“Grandpa frowned briefly, but it was replaced by an amused look on his face. ‘Yeah, I guess that’ll be all right,’ he sighed. ‘Just be sure to limit yourself to a couple... as in two, not four or five, son!’
“Jeremy grinned and promised he’d hold it to two beers. Grandpa then sat down at the head of the table, which was in front of a pair of large French-paned windows facing the backyard’s appliance-junk pile. I always assumed the God-awful view was his reason to keep the curtains and blinds almost always drawn shut, like they were that evening.
“‘It may take some time to do this, but I’ll try and keep it interesting,’ he said, smiling wanly as if he were having second thoughts about sharing his long-held secrets with us. ‘As I told y’all last night, this was not my first encounter with the golden object, or talisman as Genovene called it in your story last night, Jack. I’ve seen one just like it before, back when I was a child.
“‘I was a boy of about eight years old at the time, and I lived here in this very house, with my father, mother, and your Uncle Monty. My grandpa had died a few years earlier and Papa inherited the place even though grandma was still alive. She didn’t want to live in this big old house by herself, and as I’ve gotten older I can understand why.
“‘One day when I was playing by myself in the backyard, I stumbled across a shiny gold thing lying just inside the back gate, right where that stone sphere sits now. It glowed something fierce there on the ground, and I guess most any kid would’ve picked it up. I scooped it up and immediately slipped it inside my overalls’ pocket. I didn’t take a good look at it until later on when I was alone in the tool shed out back.
“‘Once I did finally get a good look at it, all of the strange designs and inscriptions on it made me dizzy, just like the one Jack picked up did to him. I mean, both objects were probably very similar if not identical to one another. Well, just then Monty snuck up behind me, so I stuffed it back into my pocket. He saw me do it, and since he was three years older, he bullied me to make me let him see it. I knew if I did that he’d keep it and I’d never get it back, so I got away from him and ran out of the tool shed. Even back then he could never catch me.’
“Grandpa paused for a moment. A dreamy, far away look was in his eyes as he reminisced. He laughed softly. ‘I ran around the backyard until I was far enough away from him,’ he said, ‘I vowed right then to give the damned thing to Lisa Ann Stratton as soon as I found an opportunity to do so. I had the biggest crush on her, and aside from picking flowers for her from my momma’s flower garden, I couldn’t do much else to show how I cared for her. This
was going to be my ticket to her heart. I just knew it.
“‘I made a beeline for her house, which is where Ben and Maggie Johnson now live—or used to, until yesterday. I squeezed through a narrow gap in the Stratton’s picket fence and ran to the backyard where Lisa Ann was playing with her poodle named Scratches. Animals have always taken a liking to me, except I suppose that critter we encountered today. It definitely worked to my advantage with Scratches. As soon as she saw me, she came running up wagging her tail and trying to lick me. I looked up at Lisa Ann as she watched us play, smiling that beautiful smile.
“‘I was finally able to break the ice with Lisa Ann on account of this, since she pretty much ignored the flowers and all, probably because she was a little older than me. To make sure I’d made a lasting impression, I pulled the golden object out of my pocket and handed it to her. It seemed to get brighter as she held it up close to her face, and the light made her braided blond hair and deep blue eyes look prettier than ever. She was quite impressed and ran inside her house to show it off to her parents.
“‘Less than a minute later, her great uncle who’d been visiting their farm, came outside with the object in his hands. He walked down the back porch steps and right up to me. He was a tall, thin older gentleman who was dressed like a preacher in a black suit, with a wide-brimmed black hat and western-styled bow tie. His hair and trimmed beard were a brilliant white, which was a great contrast to his deeply lined, tanned skin.
“‘He stood there and sized me up—more like bore holes in me with his steel-blue eyes. ‘Where’d you get this?’, he asked me. I told him I found it in my backyard. He examined the talisman right there in front of me, moving it around in his hands as if he could read its inscriptions. After doing that for about a minute, he said, ‘So, you’re the chosen one. Isn’t that interesting’. I asked what he meant, but he shrugged his shoulders and said he hoped he was wrong about that. Now I was really confused. But he just stood there tapping the thing for another minute or so while he studied it some more.
“‘When the old man finished doing this, he looked at me again and asked, ‘What’s your name, boy?’. I told him ‘Marshall’, of course, and he said, ‘Well, Marshall, you need to return this thing to the very same spot you found it in’. I just stood there flabbergasted by what he told me. I guess he could sense my reluctance to take my gift back from Lisa Ann, because after holding on to it for another moment he said, ‘Very well. I’ll see to it that it’s properly disposed.’ He sized me up for another moment and then turned and walked back to the house, eyeing me one last time before going inside.
“Soon after that, Lisa Ann came back outside and we played together for a while longer. That day was the beginning of a great friendship between her and I that held strong till your grandma stole my heart away twelve years later.’
“‘Grandpa, what happened to your talisman?’ I asked, uninterested in hearing about his love life.
“‘Don’t worry, son. I’ll get to that,’ he replied. ‘But first thing’s first. That old man was known throughout the world as Dr. Nathaniel ‘Jack’ Stratton. I can’t even count how many of his stories I used to tell your mom when she was a little girl. I always figured she named you after him, Jack. He was an anthropologist, whose specialty was researching lost American civilizations, both in this continent and in South America. He was in his mid-seventies when I met him, though he was still strong and virile as any man half his age.’
“The gooseflesh crawled on my arms again and the faint hairs stood on end. I remembered the earthen old man’s words from when I hid in the garden in Genovene’s village. ‘Tell Marshall your namesake said hello’.
“I couldn’t remember if I told Grandpa and Jeremy about this encounter or not, but I sat enthralled at the dining room table for the next hour while Grandpa told us a few of Dr. Stratton’s more daring expeditions. I pictured a younger Dr. Stratton similar to Indiana Jones. Surprisingly, Jeremy found these stories interesting as well, although not nearly as much as I did. Once he lost interest, he started drumming his fingers beneath the table.
“‘Well, hell, I guess we’ve talked enough about Dr, Stratton’s exploits,’ said Grandpa, glancing at his wristwatch. ‘Sorry about that, Jeremy. I’ll try and stick closer to the stuff concerning us most this evening.
“‘Anyway, as time went on, Dr. Stratton taught Lisa Ann and me about the specific legends that dealt with the talisman, along with his own theories concerning its existence and purpose. He’d do this whenever he was in town, as he’d stay for a month at a time before heading back to his estate in Tennessee. Over the next few years, it turned out to be quite a bit of information.
“‘He believed the Inca, Mayan, and Aztec cultures, among others, were patterned after a much older one, for he found numerous references to a mythical golden city that required human sacrifice to survive. Surely y’all are familiar with the temples and sacrifice rituals of ancient Mexico and South America? You boys learned that in school, right?’
“We both agreed we had.
“‘Well, Dr. Stratton believed these civilizations imitated this earlier culture to try and obtain eternal life for their privileged members, such as priests, rulers, and aristocrats,’ Grandpa explained. ‘Obviously they weren’t successful in that, but they managed to amass an incredible fortune in gold over the years, perhaps thinking this would attract the gods’ favor.
“‘Now, like most folks, Lisa Ann and I found this stuff pretty hard to believe, especially after we made the mistake of telling other folks about it and they poked fun at us. Eventually Dr. Stratton proved there was far too much evidence to be ignored. He even showed us a large chest filled with books he kept at the Stratton farm, detailing similar legends of the Native North Americans. This included our own Mississippian Nations, who left behind some amazing ruins throughout the state similar in many ways to those of their distant Mexican and South American cousins.
“‘One notable legend I’ve always been fascinated by is one involving the ancient Incas of Peru. It’s a little gruesome, but fascinating nonetheless. These Indians believed the sacred city of gold was once located on a mountain called ‘Machu Picchu’ near the modern city of Lima. According to Dr. Stratton, only sacred virgins and the Inca priests that’d lead them to their sacrificial deaths were allowed in this city.
“‘The city itself was built on a ledge protruding from the mountain’s side, which overlooked a large valley. Inca tribes from all over gathered in this valley to celebrate their feasts and sacred ceremonies. At daybreak when these events took place, a large disk made of solid gold was rolled out to the very end of the ledge, and then angled so the sunlight hit it in such a way as to make the disk look like a huge fireball.
“‘When this fireball’s light was at its brightest, an anointed virgin was sacrificed before the vast crowd of people below by a high priest or priestess. After tearing out her heart and decapitating the head, the remaining torso would be tossed into the midst of the throng to do with as they pleased.’
“Grandpa paused here to make sure he hadn’t lost his audience. He hadn’t yet, so he continued. ‘Even though no one since has ever located the golden disk or the city it came from, other than the famous ruins located further up the mountain, a few periodicals over the years have reported the existence of a group of eclectic Indians who appear from time to time near the mountain’s base. These Indians usually disappear from sight whenever modern people come within striking distance of them. A few stories I’ve read tell how the locals in Lima claim people either end up dead or simply vanish if they venture too close to the ‘lost’ city. I can tell by the look on your face, Jack, there are similarities between this and what you encountered yesterday.’
“‘Yeah, there are,’ I agreed.
“‘There were other Dr. Stratton theories I found interesting as well. Like the idea the legendary city either moved from place to place, or that several such cities existed. He claimed he’d found plenty of evidence for thi
s later notion within the written histories and oral traditions of both North and South American Indians. From Argentina to Missouri, he said there were as many as twelve different locations. I recall last night, Jack, you mentioned seeing another distant tower like the one you were in yesterday.’
“I nodded that was true.
“‘Dr. Stratton would’ve been happy to have seen that, I’m sure. He had theorized the only way anybody would see the inside of one of these cities was to be invited. I remember he was very adamant about this, telling Lisa Ann and me that unless a person was given a sacred sign or mark, such as a talisman, they’d never get beyond the city’s gates. He’d always remind us of the strange symbols engraved upon the thing I found in my backyard, and how he’d felt all along it’d been given to me on purpose.’
“‘What happened to your talisman, Grandpa?’ I asked again.
“‘Son, I promise we’ll get to that in due time,’ he replied, chuckling at my unwavering persistence. ‘Suffice it to say for now it disappeared from Dr. Stratton’s room at his farm before he had a chance to dispose of it as he’d intended.’ Grandpa paused to take a long drink from his beer. ‘As I was saying,’ he continued, ‘his theories were quite interesting. But Lisa Ann and I remained a little skeptical, due to the ridicule we still endured from time to time.
“Our skepticism didn’t fade until he taught us about our own sordid local history. We learned much of Alabama and Mississippi had provided a home base of sorts for one of these golden cities. The earliest evidence for this comes from the sixteenth century in southern North America and the evil Spanish conqueror Ferdinand Desoto. You may or may not be aware that on his relentless search for gold and other treasures, Desoto came through Alabama, leaving a path of bloody destruction in his wake. You and I know the Indians around here didn’t have much gold, and that was pretty much the case throughout North America. Gold was only found in Mexico and South America at that time, as I mentioned earlier.
The Golden Talisman Page 29