Curses!

by Aaron Elkins

  She hugged him tightly, then stepped back. “What are you going to do?"

  "I don't know. I suppose the police ought to be told. I'll do it tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?" She looked at him disbelievingly.

  "Julie, we're in the middle of nowhere. The nearest cops who know what they're doing are the state police in Merida. Anyhow, there isn't any hurry. The note says to leave Yucatan or I'll die, right? Obviously, it can't mean for me to leave right now, this minute. How could I? I'm sure I've got a few days. It's only logical."

  "Yes, but I don't think you can assume whoever wrote this is logical."

  There he agreed with her. “Tell you what. Let's wait until the morning anyway. We'll talk to Abe about it at breakfast and take it from there."

  She started to disagree, then nodded and began to take off her watch. “Okay, you're right. I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill."

  * * * *

  "Note?” Abe said, his eyebrows sliding up.

  He reached for it over his breakfast plate of frutas frescas—sliced papaya, pineapple, and watermelon, along with an unpeeled little banana; and of course a few lime wedges. He patted first one pocket of his shirt, then the other, then his hip pockets.

  "They're hanging around your neck,” Gideon offered delicately.

  "I know, I know.” He propped his reading glasses on the end of his nose. “Of course around my neck. Where else should they be?"

  He studied the sheet for a long time. “I don't like it,” he said at last.

  "I'm not too wild about it myself,” Gideon said.

  Abe began to unpeel the banana. “I'll tell you what. I have to go into Merida this afternoon anyway, to the university library. I'll stop at the state police and give them this. We'll see what they have to say."

  That was fine with Gideon, who began to attend to his scrambled eggs and ham.

  Julie, who hadn't gotten used to the muddy brown eggs of Yucatan ("It's because of what they feed the chickens,” Worthy had told her darkly), was toying with her toast and coffee. “Abe, it has to be somebody from the crew, doesn't it?"

  "I'm sorry to say so, but it looks like it. Who else even knows Gideon is here? Who else knows about the curse?"

  "It was in the papers,” Gideon pointed out. “Garrison was on her way to a press conference in Mexico City, remember?"

  "Yesterday morning. You think somebody read about it in the newspapers and came running to Yucatan the same day to slip a note under your door? No, I'm afraid Julie's right."

  Gideon sighed and slid his plate away. “I suppose so.” He glanced at a table across the room where a few of the staff sat. Harvey gave him a cheerful wave. Preston smiled and nodded his leonine, empty head. “Which doesn't make me terrifically happy. But I still think it's just another dumb joke. Like the coati."

  "And the digging that was going on? That was also a joke, you think?"

  Gideon shook his head. He didn't know.

  "What do you think, Abe?” Julie asked.

  "Mm,” Abe said. He was looking carefully at the note again. “'Gideon Oliver, leave Yucatan or you will die,'” he read aloud slowly. “'This is not a joke. The Gods of Tlaloc.'” He looked sharply up at them. “Does this seem familiar to anybody else, or just to me?"

  "Not to me,” Julie said.

  But Gideon hesitated. When he'd first read it there had been a momentary glimmer of recognition, a feeling that he'd seen it before. He'd discounted it as a random association; it was not the world's most original death threat.

  "I don't think so, Abe,” he said.

  "Yeah,” Abe said after another moment of peering at it. “I'm probably imagining it.” He put a hand on Gideon's forearm. “Listen, Gideon, I'm sure you're right, it's just a joke, but all the same you'll be careful, yes? Why take chances?"

  "I'll be careful, Abe."

  Abe nodded and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Good.” He took a long last look at the letter, holding the glasses to his temples with his hands.

  "You're sure it doesn't look familiar?"

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 11

  * * * *

  The Hotel Mayaland is situated near a small secondary entrance to Chichen Itza. It sits on a quarter-mile-long spur of pavement that is little-used except by hotel guests walking to and from the ruins. At a little before eight-thirty on most nights, thirty or forty people from the hotel wander lazily along this pleasant path into Chichen Itza for the English-language sound-and-light show.

  Julie and Gideon decided to take in the show. Abe wasn't due back from Merida until ten o'clock, when they were to meet for coffee. The entrance to the grounds was a narrow opening in a chain-link fence erected across the road, guarded by a querulous, one-legged ticket-taker in a wheelchair. The fence itself was draped with tourist merchandise, mostly T-shirts with spurious Mayan motifs. In front of them the genuine Mayan vendors, three dark, round women in nightgownlike huipiles, huddled unobtrusively. By the weak light of a few bulbs wound through the fence, some thin children of eight or nine played a scuffling game of soccer with a miniature ball, calling to each other in Mayan and Spanish.

  Two slightly older boys with small palm-fiber baskets worked the incoming crowd, displaying a surprising English vocabulary.

  "Hello, mister, wanna buy a snake? What kind you want? I catch one special for you. With a stick."

  "Who'd want to buy a snake?” a chubby American boy of ten asked the harried-looking woman with him. A reasonable question, Gideon thought.

  "They catch them for a snake farm, Jared,” the woman told him. “They're not supposed to sell them to tourists, but they do."

  "There's no such thing as a snake farm,” the boy said with knowledgeable contempt.

  "Not that kind of farm. They extract the venom to use for snakebites. Isn't that interesting?"

  "You're full of baloney,” Jared said.

  There were no takers for the snakes, and no one seemed to be buying T-shirts either. The Mayan women slumped passively on low stools, hardly lifting their eyes from the ground.

  "Let's buy a couple,” Julie said. “T-shirts, I mean."

  Gideon nodded. “Let's."

  Julie liked one with a reproduction of a mural on it. Gideon pointed out that it was based—loosely—on one from Teotihuacan, not Chichen Itza, but she stuck with it anyway.

  "What about you?” she asked. “How about the one of that man all dressed in feathers?"

  "Quetzalcoatl? No, thanks, but, you know, I kind of like that one there, with that naked girl spread-eagled on the altar, ready to have her heart cut out. Very artistic."

  "You have to be joking. I hope you're joking."

  "No, I think it's very colorful. But, okay, I'll settle for the one with the picture of El Castillo."

  From the gate it was a leisurely five-minute walk to the site. There was a light bulb strung from a tree every fifty feet or so, enough—barely—to keep them from stumbling off the path and into the scrub but not so bright that they couldn't see the stars.

  They had taken the path to the site several days before, but that had been in the afternoon, and the ruins had come gradually into view through the branches. Now, however, at the end of the path the central plaza of Chichen Itza opened before them with throat-catching suddenness, chalky, vast, and silent in the starlight. El Castillo, the great, temple-topped central pyramid, loomed on their right, infinitely more overwhelming than it was in the daytime, a stupendous, bleakly gleaming tower of gray ice. Beyond it, obscured by a wispy night fog, was the blood-soaked Temple of the Warriors and its Thousand Columns. Ahead of them was the immense ball court, and all around, invisible but felt, the jungle, biding its time, waiting to swallow everything up again when the cycle of time decreed.

  It was enough to stop Julie in her tracks. “Oh, my,” she said quietly. “Will you look at that?"

  Gideon squeezed her hand, not above a slow, rolling shiver of emotion himself.

  To their left, thi
ngs were on a friendlier, more human scale. There was a long double row of battered, folding metal chairs set out on the grass, starkly but ineffectively lit by a single lamp behind. At one end of the rows was a wagon where soft drinks and candy were sold. Most of the chairs were already filled by people bussed in from Merida especially for the show, and the ground was littered with food wrappers and plastic cups, some of them probably left from the Spanish-language performance at seven.

  The only seats Gideon and Julie could find together were at the far end of the second row, next to Jared and the harried-looking woman.

  "Don't I get any candy or anything?” the boy was complaining as they sat down. “How about a Mars Bar?"

  The woman emitted a muttered groan under her breath but got up promptly.

  "And a Coke or something!” the boy yelled after her. Then he turned to Gideon and Julie. “That's my mother,” he announced. I live in Puerto Vallarta when I'm with her, but I spend the summers with my dad in Connecticut. They're divorced."

  "That's too bad,” Julie said.

  "That's okay, I don't mind,” he said tolerantly. “Did you ever see this show before? We saw it last night. It's awesome. It freaked my mother out of her pants."

  "That's nice,” Julie said after a brief pause.

  "Especially the part about the sacrifices. That's really gross. I'll tell you when they're gonna do that part."

  "That's all right,” Gideon said. “You don't have to bother."

  "Oh, that's okay. I'll tell you when to hold your ears too. The music gets pretty loud."

  Gideon glanced around, hoping that there might after all be another pair of empty seats they'd missed, but they were all filled now.

  "You know what a man in our hotel calls this place?” the boy said, giggling. “Chicken Pizza.” He wriggled with amusement.

  The woman came back with a bottle of Coca-Cola and a candy bar. The bottle was accepted without comment, but not the bar.

  "Snickers?” he said with outraged disbelief. “You brought me a Snickers?"

  "Jared,” she said tiredly, “this is Mexico. They don't have all the same candy here. What's wrong with Snickers? Snickers are good. I like Snickers."

  "I do too,” Gideon said, rooting for the underdog.

  The single light behind them went out. From a loudspeaker a horn began to wail a weird, lonely melody. The crowd hushed, except for Jared, who was not finished with his mother.

  "You know I hate Snickers."

  "This,” Gideon muttered to Julie, “is what comes of naming a kid ‘Jared.’”

  "Jared,” his mother said, “it's made by the same company that makes Mars Bars. Look at the wrapper."

  Jared did not find this logic persuasive. “I hate them."

  "Jared, how can we work this out?"

  "We can't,” he said,

  "Jared—"

  Gideon grabbed Julie's hand and together they ran off through the darkness toward the ball court a hundred feet away. “We can sit on the steps,” he whispered. “The view will be better anyway."

  The tlachtli of Chichen Itza is the most impressive ball court of ancient Mexico, consisting of an enormous open space 545 feet long ("almost the length of two football fields,” as American guidebooks endlessly point out) and 225 feet across, enclosed by two thick, high, parallel ramparts, each one with a stone ring set about 25 feet above the ground. Here the Maya had played their ceremonial game of pok-a-tok, in which competing teams tried to heave a hard rubber ball through one of the rings. Depending on whom you believed, the successful competitors either got to keep their heads or they cheerfully gave them up and went as heroes to live forever with the gods.

  At the south end of one of these walls—the one nearest the folding chairs—is a flight of stone steps to the top. Julie and Gideon made for them and sat down on the lowest one as the plaintive melody died lingeringly away.

  "Welcome,” boomed an accented, echoing voice, “to the lost and mysterious world of the ancient Maya. Tonight you will learn of the early days of our fathers and forefathers, the days before the foreigners came, the days of the sacred places: of Zubinche and Timozon, of Zizal and Cumcanul, and of the great city known as the Mouth of the Well of the Itzas...CHICHEN ITZA!"

  The slow, cadenced words slid away into the jungle on the moist breeze, and they were left in black silence.

  Then, louder, the voice echoed once more. "Behold," it boomed, "behold the wonders of our ancestors!"

  A crash of drums, and the Castillo leaped abruptly out at them like a colossal faceted crystal, drenched in flaming light, seemingly glowing from within. The grand stone staircase was a deep sapphire blue, the massive bulk of the pyramid a paler, under-the-sea turquoise. The Temple of Kukulcan on top was parrot green, its interior—seen through the rectangular entryway—a boiling, riveting crimson. The stars, the jungle, the rest of the structures vanished against this brilliance, as if a huge backdrop of black velvet had been rung down.

  At the sight there was a distant, collective gasp from the rows of spectators, and Julie impulsively clutched Gideon's hand.

  "I'm not sure,” she said, “but I think this may be freaking me out of my pants."

  Gideon laughed. He himself had felt another slow chill riffle up between his shoulders and stir the hairs at the back of his neck. This was accompanied by a mild sense of guilt. Professional anthropologists were not supposed to get goose bumps from hokey, overloud extravaganzas consisting of bogus music, sham history, and meaningless colored lights.

  "I'm going to watch the rest from the top of the steps,” he told Julie. “Want to come?"

  She looked behind her at the narrow, rail-less flight of stone steps, steep even by Mayan standards. “Up those? In the dark? Are you kidding?"

  "Well, I think I'll go. The view should be terrific."

  "Be careful, will you?"

  He was, mounting gingerly on all fours and leaning his right side into the wall, as most visitors did even in the daytime. The staircase was at the very edge of the wall; on his left was a murderously sheer drop down to a broad stone platform. The scene from the top was everything he'd hoped, giving him a view of every building in the plaza as the show continued, the lights moving from one ruined structure to another. He settled down on the top step to watch, leaning back on his elbow, only half listening to the windy monologue.

  "...the terrible god Chac Mool, who received the dripping hearts freshly torn from the sacrificial victims..."

  The sonorous voice vibrated and soared as the lights picked out the expressionless face of the reclining Chac Mool figure atop the Temple of the Warriors and then moved to the grim Platform of the Skulls. “...whose heads were then impaled on this, the tzompantli, for the glory of the ancient gods."

  Gideon himself was sprawled at the side of one of the more famous structures of Chichen Itza: the Temple of the Jaguars, which the conquering Toltecs had superimposed on top of the existing rampart of the old ball court as a shrine to themselves. Inside, wall paintings showed their subjugation of the city. The entrance was a small portico facing into the ball court and away from the other structures, its heavy lintel supported in the dramatic Toltec manner by two snake-columns—thick stone pillars in the form of feathered serpents, with their fanged, three-foot-high heads as the bases and their upraised tails supporting the roof.

  At the edge of his sight Gideon could see the reflected lights playing over the fantastic heads of the snakes only a few feet away as the show progressed, so that they seemed to writhe and strain—a further agreeable titillation of his highly unprofessional goose bumps. All in all, he was enjoying the show a great deal.

  "And so at last we say farewell to these lost days of grandeur,” the voice intoned in its measured singsong. “Farewell to the Toltec and the Maya. to Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan. Farewell to...CHICHEN ITZA!"

  The brazen din of horns and drums swelled to an earsplitting finale and the entire western half of the complex jumped into eye-searing relief; blue, green, or
ange, red, gold, violet. A few feet from Gideon, half-seen, the great feathered serpents surged realistically from the shadows.

  He turned his head sharply. Had there been something else? Behind the columns, hadn't there just been some sort of movement, a...

  The music and floodlights went off abruptly, plunging everything into blackness and silence. He could see nothing. But someone was there, standing in the portico. Gideon tensed, straining to listen.

  "Who's there?” he said. "Quien es?"

  Nothing. Only the pulsating afterimages of the lights, the echoes of the horns. He stood perfectly still, waiting; blind and deaf.

  And then a chilling, smooth, chinking sound, metal against metal, soft and sinister. A chain? Someone shifting a heavy chain in his hand? There was a furtive scrape of shoe on pavement.

  Gideon had not yet stood up, but now he spun instinctively away from the intruder, rolling onto his right side, toward the edge of the wall. Something rammed heavily into his shoulder, the impact muffled by his own rolling movement. A foot—he thought it was a foot—caught him painfully behind the ear, then kicked again at his head.

  He twisted farther away, but he knew he was frighteningly close to the end of the wall. Sightless, he grabbed at the pavement with his left hand to steady himself, but it wasn't there; his arm dropped sickeningly down into nothing. He was at the very edge, sprawled on his belly, hanging over a sheer forty-foot drop to a ledge of stone. His fingers scrabbled down over the vertical surface, managing to find a rough outcropping to brace himself against. His other hand, the right, was jammed under his body. A foot dug into him again, this time over the kidneys, with nauseating force, and then yet again, thumping against his ribs, thrusting him onto his belly, urging him over the edge and onto the rocky terrace below.

  Gideon pressed himself into the stone pavement with all his strength, trying to keep from going over. He pushed down against the outcropping, jerked his right arm out from under him, and twisted onto his left side, facing the figure he still couldn't see.