Lemuria

by Burt Clinchandhill

  “We were talking about pheromones. Yes, I know it’s never been proven, and I don’t know if it’s pheromones, but back home, we did some tests, and we’re sure something’s happening.” Jennifer pushed her hair back from her face.

  “What kind of tests?” Mulder asked.

  “Well, for example, I was in a room and presented with random people. While monitored by an EEG machine, I was to have casual conversations with them about any topic we agreed to.”

  “To what end?” Mulder asked, frowning.

  “They informed me later that the people I was confronted with weren’t just randomly chosen. Each of them had a recent past that created a specific emotion in them. For instance, there was a woman who had recently lost her husband in a car accident; she was filled with grief. Another had recently won millions of dollars in a lottery, and yet another was a new mother. A dozen different people, with different emotions. All the people were forbidden to talk about their unique situation, so I wouldn’t know through conversation what it was. Afterward, I was asked what I felt, which was then mapped to the EEG brain scan.”

  “And?”

  “And....” Jennifer paused for a moment. “Let’s just say the jury is still out. I’m absolutely sure I feel things, feel them differently than I did before, but defining these emotions is something different. Anyway, we agreed to do this test every other week, so we can compare the outcome.”

  “Sounds like a good way to determine progress.” Mulder put his finger to his mouth, put his face next to Jennifer’s and whispered, “You need to be real quiet now. Follow me.” He pointed toward the end of a grassy hill. He duck-walked up to the edge of the hill, where he lay down flat on his belly. Jennifer followed him and lay down next to him. The shabono materialized about two hundred feet away.

  “Wow,” Jennifer whispered.

  Mulder took a small spyglass from his pocket, extended it and put it to his eye. For a minute, he looked left and right, smiling. “Here.” He gave Jennifer the spyglass.

  Jennifer turned a wheel, focusing the image until her face lit up.

  On one side of the shabono, a young mother breastfed her baby. Opposite her, a man sharpened what looked like a spear, with a piece of metal or stone she couldn’t define. Another woman put something in a clay oven with a big open fire beneath it. In the center of the shabono, a group of children loudly laughed, playing soccer with a ball that appeared to be woven from cane or some sort of bamboo.

  On the right side, a group of men sat in a small circle, talking with each other, an image she recognized from tribes in Africa. She also noticed the women were concentrated on one side of the shabono, and the men on the other. On the right, just outside the shabono—on the edge of the clearing and the rainforest—a large piece of dirt was converted into a vegetable garden, where apparently the older children worked the land.

  Jennifer lay there for almost ten minutes before taking the spyglass down. “Fascinating. Absolutely astounding.”

  Mulder nodded his head downhill.

  “Okay,” Jenifer confirmed, and they carefully slid downhill again.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Mulder asked.

  “It absolutely is. I could lay there and watch them all day.”

  “I know.” Mulder recognized the feeling. “I remember the first time I looked through the spyglass in the same spot you were. I must have lay there for over an hour. It’s like watching a documentary on the History Channel.”

  “It is,” Jennifer agreed. “But aren’t you afraid that you might disturb this unique ecological system?”

  “Shall we?” Mulder pointed away and started walking again. “Not really.” He sounded firm. “We do everything to stay out of their way, and I believe that they do everything to stay out of ours.”

  “So, they know you’re here?”

  “We think so, but there’s never been any kind of direct confrontation, so we’re not sure.”

  “But aren’t you afraid of the observer effect, that whatever you study, you also change?”

  “There’s no evidence to substantiate that theory, and most certainly, we didn’t notice any change of behavior in the subjects that we’re observing.”

  “People,” Jennifer snapped.

  “Sorry?”

  “You said ‘subjects.’”

  “Forgive me. I guess that’s the scientist in me. People, of course.” Mulder gave a small bow.

  A few minutes passed in silence as they followed a path through the rainforest, and came to a clearing. Jennifer took a good long look before she was sure. They had come from a different direction, but this was definitely the clearing she visited last night. Now, they neared the rock face from the left.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mulder pointed up. “I mean, the rays of sunlight coming through the trees.”

  “It is, indeed. And how about that?” Jennifer pointed toward the rocks.

  “Those are ancient caves,” Mulder explained. “There’s some nice rupestral artwork near the entrance. You want to take a look?”

  “Sure,” Jennifer agreed.

  They crossed the clearing, and Mulder removed a flashlight from his pocket.

  Jennifer followed suit.

  “You came prepared,” Mulder remarked.

  “You never know.” Jennifer smiled as she entered the cave.

  “Here.” Mulder pointed his flashlight to cave drawings on the wall.

  “Wow,” Jennifer uttered, while she searched the walls with her flashlight. “How far does this go?”

  “I’m not sure. You can check it out if you like.”

  Jennifer followed the corridor until she came to the cavern she visited last night. This time it was completely empty. No tables, no flashlights, not a single sign of civilization. She checked out the cavern with her flashlight, until she came to the corridor on the other side. Then she looked at Mulder.

  “Go ahead.” Mulder pointed the way.

  Jennifer crossed the room and went into the hallway. Not knowing what to expect, she cautiously shone her flashlight into the first room she came across. Nothing. Empty again. Not a trace of anything she saw last night.

  How can this be? What had happened between last night and today, and why? She decided to check one more cavern. It, too, was empty except for a wooden table.

  “Modern furniture for such an ancient cave,” she called out to Mulder, who stayed a bit behind.

  “What?” Mulder came up and pointed his flashlight into the room. “Ahem. I see what you mean. I’m afraid this piece of old furniture was left here by no one less than modern man himself. In the beginning, when we came here, almost two years ago now, we set up camp inside the caves. But we quickly abandoned that idea.”

  “Why?” Jennifer asked.

  “First of all, there was the humidity that meddled with our equipment, and the transmitters from our drones could not penetrate the cave walls so....”

  “So, you moved to the old mission,” Jennifer finished.

  Mulder nodded. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready,” Jennifer replied. She followed Mulder outside but stopped again at the first room in the corridor where a large, wrinkled piece of paper on the ground caught her eye. “One moment,” she called out as she picked it up.

  “What’s that?” Mulder asked.

  “I have no idea. A piece of paper, and I’m curious.”

  Mulder walked back to her. As she unfolded it, she noticed it was a copy of Haeckel’s ‘Hypothetical Sketch of the Monophyletic Origin,’ she had seen hanging on the wall the night before.

  “You know it?” Mulder asked.

  “I’ve seen it before. It’s just a copy of an old world map.” She tossed it on the floor again.

  “Must have been left behind when they cleared the caves.”

  “That must be it,” Jennifer agreed, and the two cleared the caves and found their way back to the camp.

  “So, what do you think of our little operation?” Mulder asked.

  “It
looks really well organized. I’m curious about your findings.”

  “I’m happy to share those with you. Give me some time, and I’ll have them set up a computer for you with some structured data for you to sift through.”

  “Yeah, sure, that would be great.”

  “In the meantime, enjoy the scenery. If you like, you can take the path that way. You’ll end up at the river bank where we arrived.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that. Oh, and one more thing. Can you please check if the phones are working?”

  “I will,” Mulder agreed. “But I’m pretty sure that they’re not. I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you.” Jennifer smiled as Mulder turned and walked away. He’s not going to let me make that call any time soon, she thought. What have I gotten myself into? I need a plan.

  Chapter 22 – The Flying Spaghetti Monster

  South Bantam, Java, Indonesia, The Present

  “All right, there are three power modes.” Kadek pointed to the display on the KTM’s steering wheel. “Just put it in two, and you’ll be fine for the ride. There’s no clutch or gears, so just use the grip to control the throttle and go. Now put your helmets on and follow me.” Completely silent, Kadek drove his bike to the edge of the lot and stopped at the beginning of the trail that led into the tea fields. When he looked back, Ignatowski was already stopping behind him.

  “Ready?” Bishop asked as Lindsey put her arms around him.

  “Ready,” she called out.

  “Hang on.” Bishop turned the throttle, and the bike sped up toward the other two. Kadek throttled up, steering his bike onto the path, still moist from the morning dew. In silence, the three bikes found their way through the tea fields, and after a minute or two, they left the plantation and drove into the jungle up the foothill of the Kendeng mountains. Kadek skillfully swerved his bike around trees, sometimes missing them by mere inches. When he looked behind him, he noticed the others falling behind, so he slowed down a bit. Ignatowski swiftly closed in again, followed by Bishop. Ignatowski waved his hand, and Kadek sped up again. For the next ten minutes, the bikes left tire tracks on and off the path as the trail snaked uphill. A shed in the distance neared, and when Kadek reached it, he raised a hand and stopped his bike. The others promptly joined him. He took off his helmet. “This is it for now. We can park the bikes here.”

  On the left and right, a row of traditional Sundanese houses called sulah nyanda—made of wooden frames covered with woven bamboo walls and a gable-roofed structure—flanked a narrow dirt road. In front of each house, family members, uninterrupted, continued their daily businesses—doing laundry, peeling rice, or smoking a traditional Bima pipe—not giving any notice to the strangers.

  “They act as if they don’t see us,” Lindsey remarked.

  “That’s okay,” Kadek explained. “They’re really friendly,” he said as a young boy, no more than ten years old, took his hand.

  “The outer Baduy?” Bishop asked.

  Kadek nodded. “We will now be taken to the village elder. She will speak to us. The others are not allowed to talk to us directly.” They passed a few houses before stopping. On a porch made of bamboo branches and covered with woven wicker palm leaves, an old, wrinkled woman sat in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe.

  “Please wait,” Kadek said as he walked toward the woman.

  “Apparently, we’re not very popular,” Ignatowski remarked, looking around as Kadek addressed the woman in a Sundanese dialect.

  “You can say that again,” Lindsey corroborated.

  “Usually, the kids are all over you,” Bishop added.

  “Please,” Kadek called out. “Mr. Bishop.” He waved, and Bishop walked up to him. “Can I have your phone with the picture of the young woman?”

  “Sure.” Bishop took out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and the image of Jennifer appeared. “Here you are.”

  Kadek showed the image to the old woman, who took the phone and shouted something into the sulah nyanda behind her. A young boy exited the house, and the old woman addressed him, holding up Bishop’s phone. The boy took the phone, spoke a few words, and ran off into the streets.

  “My phone?” Bishop urged the boy.

  “No worries,” Kadek assured him. “It will be okay.”

  Ignatowski couldn’t contain his laughter. “Amazing. Here we are ten thousand miles from home with one of the last isolated living tribes in the world, primitively living without any electricity, and look who gets his cell phone stolen.” He kept laughing.

  “I assure you it will be all right,” Kadek told Bishop again. “Just wait.”

  Feeling somewhat uneasy, they waited in silence for almost ten minutes, before the boy returned to the village elder. In suspense, they listened to what the boy had to say and watched the grand gestures his arms were making while he spoke. Then the woman called Kadek back and handed him the phone again. In a few sentences, she seemed to instruct him and waved him away.

  “And?” Bishop asked, as he joined them again.

  “The woman has been here,” Kadek spoke.

  Surprised and shocked, they talked at once.

  “When was she here?”

  “Is she still here?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Was she okay?”

  “Please, let me explain.” Kadek waved both arms in front of them. “Please.” It took a moment for everybody to stop talking. “She was here some time ago. She couldn’t be more exact than that. A village member saw her accompanied by a group of men and women, and overheard them saying they were planning on entering the land of the Arca Domas.”

  “Arca Domas?” Bishop asked.

  “A sacred place where only the Pu’un may go to conduct his sacred rituals. It’s an area of worship and filled with megaliths to please the ancestral spirits and gods.”

  “Did they say if she left the area again?” Lindsey asked.

  “They didn’t know,” Kadek answered.

  “We’ll go there.” Bishop’s forehead creased.

  “As I told you before,” Kaded said, “I can take you to the path leading to it, but from there....”

  “Let’s go,” Bishop commanded, and within seconds they were back on their bikes and on their way. They’d traveled the muddy roads for a few minutes when Kadek raised his arm again and stopped.

  “You see the rooftops over the green?” he asked as he took his helmet off. “Over there.” He pointed some two hundred feet up the hill.

  “Sure,” Ignatowski agreed.

  “From here, that’s the line you should walk. It’s only a few minutes. About halfway to the village, you will reach the Arca Domas. You’ll recognize it when you get there. There’s little chance you will run into the Baduy or Pu’un during the daytime, but don’t wander too far beyond the Domas, or you might run into the locals.”

  “How do we recognize a local, and what do we do if we run into any?” Bishop asked.

  Kadek rubbed his chin. “Hide if you can, I guess, and if you are seen, well, um... I guess you better run and get back down here. I’ll be waiting here with the bikes and expect you to be back in an hour.”

  “I guess this is it. Let’s go.” Bishop pointed the way onto the path uphill.

  “Wish us luck,” Lindsey said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

  “Good luck,” Kadek called out after them as they started their walk onto the path.

  “That’s a pretty steep hill.” Ignatowski looked up the muddy trail.

  “We’ll get down faster should the need arise,” Bishop answered, grinning.

  “What do you think about those ghost stories?” Lindsey asked.

  “Who, me?” Bishop asked.

  “Well, both of you.”

  “I believe there are things that we cannot explain,” Ignatowski answered.

  “I also cannot explain David Copperfield when he walked through The Great Wall of China,” Bishop replied.

  “But that’s different,” Ignatowski repli
ed. “Copperfield himself would admit to it being a trick. I don’t know about Indonesia, but I heard about voodoo practices in Haiti that will run a chill or two down your spine.”

  “Just because we can’t explain it, doesn’t mean it’s magic.”

  “You’re probably right,” Lindsey said. “But still, I would try to avoid being a part of any of those magical rituals.”

  Ignatowski nodded. “My sentiments exactly. Wait.” He suddenly stopped. “Over there.” He pointed into the distance, where the left and right edge of the path was covered with dark slate. At the end of it, two pyramid-shaped monoliths rose some ten feet from the ground. “Amazing.”

  “This must be it,” Lindsey assumed.

  “We better whisper from now,” Bishop said softly.

  “Good idea,” Ignatowski agreed.

  As they approached the two pyramids in front of them, a field of large—some enormous—stones appeared. Most of the rocks—in the roughly one hundred-square-foot-clearing—were carved in simple geometrical shapes. In the center of the place, on a large, square, flat stone stood a five-foot-tall pyramid with the image of a chubby man carved into it. Behind it was a small field with over a dozen carved men, women and children—each about three feet tall—stacked onto each other, most of them without a head. The place was fully covered in slate. As they continued walking, with every step, the slate cracked beneath their feet.

  “Try to walk as softly as you can,” Bishop said.

  “Sure, like that’s easy,” Ignatowski mocked.

  “You feel that?” Lindsey asked.

  “I do,” Bishop confirmed. “It’s like a cold breeze.” He took a few steps back through the two pyramids onto the path again. “I don’t feel it here.”

  “Can we get going?” Lindsey asked. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Looks a little like a graveyard,” Ignatowski whispered. “There’s no sign of any civilization being here for, well, I don’t know how long.”

  “You’d say so,” Bishop answered. “But if she was here, as the locals suggested, she would have tried to leave another message, like in Peru. We should spread out and look for anything that stands out.”