Deity

by Theresa Danley

  “Lori! LORI!”

  Peet groped the darkness but there was no getting around the collapsed earth and limestone. More rock fell in the wake of the collapse, clipping Peet on the shoulder and pelting his face with dirt. The ground rumbled violently beneath his feet. There was the deafening, eerie whoosh of an earthen avalanche.

  Chac grabbed his arm in an inescapable grip. Against his will, Peet was flung back toward the hole. “Get out of here!” Chac ordered.

  “But Lori—”

  “There’s no time!”

  Chac frantically ushered Peet into the hole. There was no turning back. With Chac hot on his heels, Peet belly-crawled his way out of the cave. The sunlight would have been blinding had it not been for the tree canopy filtering it into tiny specks on the choking vegetation. A tangle of twigs and leaves greeted Peet on the other side of the hole. It was a barrier as nearly impassible as the stone seal they’d just blown a hole through but that didn’t deter Chac who continued to claw along Peet’s legs as though determined to be the first to get through.

  Until the ground fell out from under them.

  Like the ripple of an earthquake, the ground dissolved beneath Peet, starting first at his feet and then immediately giving out at his knees and then his hips. Tangled within the brush, Peet didn’t even realize the earth had given way beneath his chest until he suddenly found himself dangling over the edge of a giant sinkhole, held only by the vegetation that had snared him.

  His arms burned as the very limbs that had saved him now threatened to cut his circulation off. But it wasn’t just his weight that tested the endurance of the jungle roots. It wasn’t until Peet vainly attempted to pull himself up that he realized Chac was still with him, dangling with an iron grip around his ankles.

  The plants began to give from the thin soil. Peet clawed for a more solid grip but Chac’s weight was pulling him down. Straining with everything he had, Peet desperately clung to the limestone ledge as a jolt of pain shot through his right wrist.

  “Do something, Chac!” he groaned. “I can’t hold on much longer!”

  * * * *

  Chac could hardly see through the blood and dirt running in his eyes. His head throbbed where he’d been clipped with the final collapse and now he dangled with flecks of sunlight above a pool of water that had just devoured the remains of the cavern’s ceiling ten meters below. His burnt forearm seared with pain, his own flesh bright and angry, but the agony didn’t stop there. Pain coursed up the entire length of his arm right up to his shoulder which had been dislocated from a falling rock - his arm now held in place by straining muscle and tendon.

  He cleared his watery eyes of dirt on a bicep and suddenly realized their precarious situation. The cavern had collapsed completely, leaving a tremendous hole, a cenote, in which he was now suspended over at the end of Peet’s legs. The walls of the cenote were abruptly vertical, as though a giant drill had just bore a fresh hole in the earth. If they fell into the water below, there’d be no climbing back out.

  There was no escape, and Peet’s strength was giving out fast.

  “Chac,” Peet howled desperately.

  There was no time to think. Chac had to move fast. He had to…let go.

  “Chac!”

  With a deep breath, Chac plunged into the water. The liquid echo of his descent flooded his ears. He kicked for the surface and with the first stroke of his arms he felt a pop as his shoulder relocated itself.

  When he surfaced again, he found Peet pulling himself over the lip of the cenote, anxiously looking down at him and tenderly cradling his right wrist. “You all right?” the professor called down.

  “I’m fine,” Chac replied. “There’s a rope in the back of my jeep—”

  Peet needed no further prompting. He immediately sprang to his feet and disappeared through the brush. Chac took a deep breath and dove back under.

  The water was murky, gritty. He could hardly see. He hadn’t gone far when the darkness closed around him again - a grim, haunting darkness. Every nerve fought to return to the surface, to forever rid himself of the crushing darkness, but Lori was still down there and she needed him.

  With no light and no air, Chac could only grope the turbid water until his lungs pained him for oxygen. Twice he went down and twice he resurfaced half dizzy, empty-handed and having gotten nowhere near the bottom of the pool. By then Peet had returned with the rope, secured it around a tree and left its length dangling into the cenote. Before Chac could object, the man leaped back into the cenote and together they searched the silty water until they were too exhausted to search any longer.

  “She’s been down too long,” Chac said as Peet fought for another breath to continue.

  “We can’t stop,” Peet said frantically. “I must have been close to the bottom that time.”

  Chac grabbed him as he started down again but Peet managed to fight him off.

  “Peet!” he barked as he caught him and pulled him back to the surface again. To his surprise, Peet swung a fist, just clipping him beneath the chin.

  “Get off!” Peet demanded. “You’re wasting time!”

  “There’s been too much time already,” Chac reasoned, imprisoning Peet’s fist with his own crushing grip. “She’s been down far too long.”

  Peet fought to free himself again, but this time Chac held firm. Slowly, he could see the realization slip across the professor’s face.

  “At this point you need to use your energy to save yourself,” Chac reasoned.

  Peet glanced at the rope—their only means of escape. Finally, with a reluctant nod, Peet swam to the edge of the cenote, grabbed the rope and began the arduous climb. When he finally reached the top, Chac began scaling the limestone himself, which was no easy task in a dripping wetsuit.

  Peet waited at the top, squatting and mournfully cradling his head at the edge of the cenote. Chac felt momentarily weak and breathless, and his arm demanded serious attention. Exhausted, he rested at the edge of the cenote, tasting the sweat and limestone that shed from his upper lip. He was too stunned for words. He could only gaze back down at the becalmed surface of the water, knowing all too well the terrorizing darkness beneath.

  Minutes passed. It could have been a full half hour. Chac was too numb to determine the difference. When he finally chanced a glance at Peet, the man had slumped onto his backside, his arms hunkered over his knees, his right hand swollen past his wrist. The professor was staring out through the thin stand of trees that lined a view to the ocean. The disorientating swim through the underground channel had not taken them deeper into the forest as Chac had expected, but instead brought them back toward the ocean which now delivered a welcoming breeze that kept the mosquitoes down.

  Through the trees Chac saw what held Peet’s undivided attention. In that moment he knew Peet’s thoughts, for out past the trees and beyond the beach and the sea, on the very edge of the horizon, he saw a white wedding cake peacefully drifting over a Scuba Blue sea. Chac was thinking it himself.

  Lori was gone.

  Mayaland

  Father Ruiz solemnly listened to Peet and Chac’s harrowing story. Just minutes ago he’d watched the haggard men return to the hotel room like two defeated Philistine warriors. He knew immediately that something was wrong. If Peet’s swollen wrist and Chac’s crudely bandaged arm wasn’t proof enough, the fact that they hadn’t bothered to change out of their tattered diving suits was. They gravely shuffled in, their wetsuits completely dry and peeled down from their sweat-gleaming torsos.

  With Peet now icing his wrist, Father Ruiz dabbed at the blood caked on Chac’s scalp, listening as the Mayan described their narrow escape from the collapsed cavern. Nobody said a word when he finished. They sat in silence, their thoughts trained on the giant elephant in the room—the absence of the one who didn’t return.

  Perhaps Father Ruiz was expected to utter the first words of condolences, but he let the silence linger. Time was what these men needed—time to sort out the trauma, to mou
rn their friend and to pray.

  “It should have been me,” Peet murmured beneath his breath. “I should be the one buried on the bottom of that well.”

  “Had Lori not pushed you out of the way you’d both be down there,” Chac reasoned.

  Peet spotted Lori’s necklace on the table near his elbow. He fingered the silver chain. “It would be easier if it had been me.”

  Father Ruiz recognized the ache in Peet’s eyes. It wasn’t simply an expression of remorse. There was regret there as well. He had seen it all too often from people who’d counted on tomorrow, who’d postponed for another day. These were the people who’d been slapped in the face with unfinished business and for some that left them vulnerable to guilt. For others, denial. For those who learned to live with it, a sense of healing began but for others, it created a toxic soup of emotional decay.

  And Anthony Peet was definitely stewing.

  It was time to cut in. “Cast your worries upon the Lord and he will sustain you,” Father Ruiz said but his words sounded hollow and cliché. Or maybe they were just made awkward with Lori’s clothing and luggage still holding her presence in the room.

  Peet didn’t seem to hear them at all. His face had gone blank—a man consumed by his thoughts.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” he said. “Whoever set that bomb didn’t want anyone to know about that missing Kin piece.”

  Chac looked disturbed, suspicious. “And at the same time, Matt vanishes into thin air.”

  Peet shook his head. “No. It couldn’t have been Matt. You said yourself that his diving gear is still in his vehicle.”

  “Maybe somebody kidnapped Matt,” Father Ruiz offered. “Maybe he gave up the location of the artifact under duress.”

  “But nobody knew about the Kin piece, not even Matt,” Chac argued. “Hell, Matt and I were the only ones who knew the Calendar Deity even existed.”

  “Lori knew about it,” Peet said. “And so did—”

  There was a long pause. Peet’s face blanched.

  “Who?” Father Ruiz pressed. “Who else knew about that fresco?”

  Peet lifted his eyes in a semi-horrified state. “John.”

  Father Ruiz was taken aback. “John Friedman? Your father-in-law?”

  Peet was hesitant, shaking his head as though not quite believing the very idea that had entered his mind. “Lori said she asked John to show her the fresco, but John referred her to Matt instead. John had worked with Matt in the past. I have to assume Matt told him about the Calendar Deity and somehow Lori caught wind of it.”

  Silence fell between them as they all retreated to their own thoughts. Father Ruiz had plenty on his mind as he tried to read Chac’s stony face. Four people knew about that fresco. Two of them were missing and one was now dead. Whether Peet realized it or not, suspicion suddenly lay with Chac.

  And there’d been something about the Mayan that Father Ruiz distrusted from the start.

  “As the only remaining archaeologists who are aware of this fresco, I suggest the two of you be very careful from here on out,” he warned, fixing his gaze fully on Peet. “There’s something sinister about this whole situation.”

  Whether Peet read between the lines, Father Ruiz could not tell.

  “You’re right, Father,” Peet said, casting a look in Chac’s direction. “Something’s going on here and I’m afraid John and Matt are somehow caught up in the middle of it. We could be next.”

  Father Ruiz spotted Peet’s cell phone resting atop the television. He left Chac to tend to his own wounds and retrieved the phone.

  “There may be even more to this mystery, Profesor,” he said.

  Peet looked at him questioningly.

  “There is another artifact missing besides your fresco piece. Señor Espanoza sent you a picture of an artifact that has disappeared from the museum.”

  Peet shook his head. “I can’t worry about artifacts right now. I need to find a way to contact Lori’s family.”

  “He insisted that you see it,” Father Ruiz pressed, turning on the phone’s screen. “They discovered it missing from the archives just this morning. A security system check showed a breach in the archives the same night the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl was stolen. They believe the Effigy was taken to divert attention from the theft of this artifact.”

  Peet scowled. “That doesn’t make sense. What artifact could possibly be more valuable than the Effigy but wouldn’t have been missed until now?”

  Father Ruiz turned the phone over to him with the picture on its display. Peet took one look at it and then glanced back at him, confused. “A stone ball?”

  “That’s the picture he sent you.”

  Peet shook his head. “This is ridiculous. The Effigy is worth a fortune while this rock appears to have little more than archaeological value. The Effigy couldn’t have been used as a decoy for this.”

  That had been Father Ruiz’s initial assessment as well. From the moment he saw the picture flash over the phone’s display he thought surely the museum curator was mistaken. For a moment he considered that perhaps the stone ball had been taken to distract from the Effigy’s theft, but he immediately saw the problem with that reasoning. The ball had been stored away in the archives while the Effigy was on prominent public display. The Effigy was sure to be immediately missed while the stone ball might not be missed for days - as had been the case.

  That begged the question, why? Why was the invaluable jade and turquoise Effigy left in the chapel while a plain ball of rock remained missing? What value did the thief see in the rock that couldn’t be found in the Effigy?

  “Did Espanoza say where the ball originally came from?” Peet asked.

  “He said it was found near the ruins of Izapa.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Let me see that,” Chac said, reaching for the phone. He studied the photograph with complete familiarity. “It’s a pillar ball,” he said. “It’s hard to gauge from the picture but it looks considerably smaller than the pillar balls typically found in Izapa.”

  “What significance do these pillar balls have?” Peet asked, standing to take a second look over Chac’s shoulder.

  “None that I know of. Nobody knows their exact purpose. Though I don’t recall any of Izapa’s pillar balls containing carvings like this one.”

  “The decoration isn’t very elaborate at that,” Father Ruiz observed. “What are those, wings wrapping around each side of the ball?”

  “Fingers,” Chac said plainly. “It looks to me like two hands are carved on each side of the ball, like prints left by someone who’d carried it between their hands.”

  Peet stepped away in thought. “Just like the Calendar Deity carrying a ball between his hands.”

  Father Ruiz was confused. “I fail to see the connection between this ball and my missing reliquary cross.”

  Chac snapped his head to attention. “A cross was stolen too?”

  Father Ruiz nodded. “About the same time the pillar ball was taken from the museum.”

  “Does any of this make sense to you?” Peet asked as Chac turned away.

  “No,” Chac retracted, already deep in thought. “I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

  Father Ruiz studied Chac carefully. Was he holding something back? Father Ruiz suddenly feared he’d said too much about the reliquary cross in front of the Mayan. Then again, there was more he himself needed to share.

  “There’s one more thing you should know about that pillar ball.”

  Peet waited. Chac too had turned back around.

  “That stone ball was found in 1995,” Father Ruiz continued. “The archaeologist who discovered it was Dr. John R. Friedman.”

  * * * *

  Peet couldn’t say his thoughts were swimming. Instead, they were stuck, mired down by the weight of confusion and circumstances that brought him no closer to John than the missing pillar ball John had discovered in Izapa seventeen years ago. Peet had started this search for John on a thread of ch
ance and so far it had gotten him only deeper into mystery. Already he’d lost Lori in a situation that could have just as easily taken his own life. The blatant danger involved with his mission was baffling, if not disturbing. Clearly he wasn’t on a simple case of artifact theft.

  Father Ruiz cleared his throat. “We should find John and Matt before they share Lori’s fate.”

  Peet shook his head again. There was too much to think about. Too much that had gone out of control. “I can’t,” he said. “Not with Lori still in the bottom of that cenote.”

  His stomach turned to the bitter taste of his own words. It was unbearable to think that his brightest student had drowned, or worse yet, had been crushed by a falling slab of limestone. His mind had gone numb to such realities, and instead, focused on the emptiness he felt.

  He turned back to Lori’s necklace and slipped it from the table, noting the tarnished silver. The Kokopelli pendent had been worn thin, reminding him that he’d never seen Lori without it. How many years had it dangled around her neck? What a cruel twist of fate that she left it behind for the dive that would take her life.

  The emotions stirred by that necklace were overwhelming. Peet closed his eyes against the penetrating ache. He gripped the cool pendent tightly, silently willing his palm to transmit her essence back to him.

  “We must let God take care of the dead, Profesor,” Father Ruiz pressed. Peet opened his eyes and realized the priest had been watching him. “Who knows how long it will take the search party to recover her body. In the meantime we must take care of the living.”

  “I can’t leave.”

  “The priest is right,” Chac interrupted. “We have two colleagues to find. You must go.”

  Peet choked with frustration. “Go where?”

  Neither John or Matt left any clues as to their whereabouts, and if they were being held hostage in some form or another, Peet couldn’t even begin to guess who their captors might be. Even if he knew that, what more could he do about it than to contact the authorities? He was out of his league with nowhere to begin.