Explorers_Beyond The Horizon

by C J Paget

  “Thank you for those kind words,” Darryl said. “This way, please.”

  Darryl led his guests and the camera crew into his thousand square foot living room.

  “Oh, it’s so grand,” Crissy said.

  Glass walls provided panoramic views of gently rolling hills patched with vineyards and clumps of eucalyptus. In each corner a fifteen-foot column loomed in the form of a Toltec warrior hewn from red stone, filed, pointed teeth bared in ritual aggression. Several large Mayan stelae—great, intricately carved stone slabs—randomly dotted the floor. A circular, freestanding fireplace dominated the room, surmounted by a metal chimney with an immaculate, white cone. A small fire burned in the fireplace.

  “If you’ll be seated,” Darryl said.

  The guests sat in a semi-circle of white armchairs near the fireplace.

  Darryl clapped his hands.

  “Our ceremony has begun. When I announced this event, I promised one of the most remarkable finds in history. Not being one to speak at length, I’ll tell you what it is.”

  He waited, motionless, maintaining eye contact with the crowd. They were on seats’ edge.

  “Written proof of the Singularity. Those who know the term can grasp the importance. I’ve spent decades in Central America on la ruta Maya searching for the arcane knowledge this incredibly advanced people possessed. Some past discoveries have even won some fame, most notably my theories on Olmec airships. Last winter, while in the obscure ruins of Xunantunich, I found…”

  With a showman’s flair, Darryl reached into an exhibit box. He pulled a glass case out and held it high for the camera. Inside were folded leaves made from frayed paper, yellow with age and stitched together with gut, covered with curious, faded hieroglyphs and figures of seated gods.

  “The Codex Daxtonicus.”

  “Simply astounding,” Wooton said. “Dr. Daxton, please explain your find to our viewers.”

  “The first genuine Mayan book discovered in hundreds of years. No pathetic forgery, this is the real item with paper made from fig bark. I found it in a cave whose dry, cool air miraculously preserved this document, a communication from the Mayans directly to us.”

  There were more appreciative intakes of breath.

  “Have you translated it, Dr. Daxton?” Herb Swinton asked.

  “Yes. After studying the glyphs, I’m prepared to conduct a ceremony unperformed for centuries. I’ll chant a prayer to that date in the near future we regard with dread and awe: December 21, 2012.”

  The guests burst into applause again. Darryl motioned for silence.

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but, please, behave as you would at any religious ceremony. Maintain a reverent hush.”

  Darryl stirred the fire with a poker until it blazed vigorously. He threw copal and chicle resin onto the flames. Gray smoke drifted upward, efficiently vented by the chimney. A sweet pine scent filled the room. Darryl held up a stingray spine. On a low table, he placed a glyph-covered slip of paper in a bowl.

  “As the Mayans shed blood to invoke their ancestors, so I give mine to raise their powerful spirits. May they enlighten us,” he said.

  He jabbed the spine into his left wrist, just enough to draw blood. Crissy Swinton turned pale and clutched Herb’s arm. Darryl wondered how she would have reacted if he drew blood from his pierced foreskin in the real Mayan tradition. When the paper was saturated, Darryl deftly bandaged his wound. He picked up the one clean edge and dropped the paper into the fire. The smoke turned black, the scent bitter.

  “I will read the Codex.”

  He donned surgical gloves, opened the glass case, and took out the book. Darryl perched half-moon reading glasses on the tip of his nose and chanted. Proto-Ch’ortian syllables tripped awkwardly from his tongue, archaic even when the first pyramids were built at Tikal. The smoke grew, billowed too fast even for the modern chimney, and wrapped Darryl in greasy, black coils. The cameraman put a filter on the lens.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Darryl said. “Look into the smoke for the spirit vision.”

  An enormous trunk shot forth from the fireplace, a curving spiral of massive muscle, not scaled, but feathered, except for patches of raw skin.

  “Herb,” Crissy screamed.

  Two giant, gleaming snake eyes topped the apparition’s head. Malarial yellow, full of baleful malice, they focused on Darryl alone. For once at a loss for words, Darryl squealed in terror. The feathered Vision Serpent bent low over Darryl, flayed skin oozing lymph and blood. Jaws split wide, baring foot-long fangs, only to peel back, further and further, into two long arabesques. A warrior emerged from the Serpent’s dark mouth, face covered by a grinning skull mask. A long arm reached out for Darryl.

  He turned to flee, but was snatched up by his hair before he took a step. The warrior retracted into the serpent’s mouth and dragged Darryl along.

  “Nooo,” he howled.

  The serpent’s insanely distended jaws snapped shut. The sinuous trunk undulated downward, retreated into the fire. The serpent disappeared.

  * * * * *

  There was silence in the smoky room. Ashes covered the ruined white carpet. Speechless, the guests stared open-mouthed. Wooton recovered his verve first.

  “Got that, mate?” accent distinctly unposh now. “I mean you better have or I’ll bleeding well kill you, see if I don’t.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” the cameraman said. “What the hell was it?”

  “Ratings gold.”

  Wooton pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial.

  “Jeremy, did you see the feed? You’re absolutely ballocking right it’s fabulous. Here I had Daxton pegged for just another phony, charlatan wanker. David Copperfield’s got nothing in it. Just think of the share we’ll get with this.”

  The cell phone buzzed in response. Wooton looked around. “Where’s he at? I’ve absolutely no bloody idea, mate.”

  * * * * *

  Darryl walked a well-worn path. He pulled his L. L. Bean jacket tight. Even in the tropics, it was cold this early high up in the hills. The early morning sun barely lit his way. The air was clear, no humidity, the flora and fauna lush and abundant, the best the early dry season offered. In still-dark folds of green jungle, macaws and howler monkeys vied to greet the new-risen sun. A fair sized valley lay below, dotted with tiered pyramids and the battered remains of other monumental structures. This site was familiar, but which was it? He’d seen too many digs. Darryl wondered whether the Chief Archaeologist at this site might be one of the few on speaking terms with him.

  Darryl realized something was amiss when a mosquito as big as his head flew up, long wings humming, both compound eyes looking at him.

  The mosquito whined in Spanish. “Know where you’re going, gringo?”

  Oddly unperturbed, Darryl said, “Copan? Tikal?”

  The mosquito laughed, a high-pitched fluting, and said, “That’s no tourist trap. That’s Xibalba.”

  “The underworld? Don’t be silly. That’s just a dig, probably something U-Penn’s doing.”

  The mosquito laughed again. “Humans love delusion. Pull the corn silk from your nose. Smell.”

  Darryl breathed deeply. He doubled over like someone punched him, assailed by an awful stench, an ineffable compound of offal and human waste, rotted and grown diseased in the tropical sun.

  “Can’t argue with that,” the mosquito said. “Xibalba. You’ll meet the Lords of Death there at your request.”

  “My request? What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t you say the ancient words? The Ahaus aroused from millennia long sleep because you did. Praise and a sacrifice, however tiny, of human blood and incense’s pleasing scent.”

  Darryl stopped.

  “No. I’m not going where it stinks. My safari jacket will get dirty. You just buzz over to these Ahaus. Tell them I pass.”

  “Sorry, gringo, this invitation can’t be declined, not since you asked. You have to play by the rules like the Hero Twins.”

&nb
sp; “That’s a myth for primitive people.”

  “Not so fond of Mayans now, gringo?” The mosquito hovered near his nose. “Dismiss the tale at your peril. That’s your only guide. You’re less than civil, but I’ll still help you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you reach the council hall, I’ll nip the Ahaus. You’ll know who’s real to make obeisance to and what’s a straw dummy to ignore. But remember, “ she whined in parting, “play the game to leave Xibalba. And keep left.”

  The mosquito buzzed down the path. Darryl tramped on, chuckling. Dreams about digs periodically flitted through his sleep. He’d made finds that way. At this point, perhaps he might meet his first wife as a young and luscious graduate student, a recurring favorite in his dreamscape. Instead, he recoiled in horror.

  Ahead ran a narrow river, no stream of pure, blue water, but a channel filled with scorpions, a seething, stinging, frenzy of poisonous vermin. Darryl looked back. The path was gone, covered by trackless jungle. The only way was forward. He tucked his pants into his boot tops, laced them up tight, and waded into the scorpion river.

  Scorpions crushed under his feet with an audible crunch. More agile ones leaped up and nipped his thighs, but that only added extra pep to Darryl’s step. He tromped across the shallow arthropod creek, in a personal record for the fifty-meter dash.

  Darryl was almost relieved until he saw the next obstacle, another river, this one deep and wide. Yet no water flowed here either. Instead, blood coursed in a steady, powerful flow, hot, foul and black. Darryl clamped his mouth and nostrils tightly shut with one hand and jumped into the gore. The viscous blood clung to him, seeped into his clothes and weighed him down, pulled at his arms and legs as he tried to stroke and kick to the other side.

  Darryl crawled onto the opposite bank’s slippery mud. He vomited great quantities of blood. His hair was a matted mess. He was a disgraceful, filthy wreck. Even in this degraded state, after the two worst experiences in his life, Darryl wasn’t particularly surprised when he reached the bank’s top. Another river, twice as wide and deep as the last, was filled to the brim with slow-moving, foul-smelling pus, the purulent eruptions of a trillion festering carbuncles.

  He regarded his ruined clothes. “Not much to lose anyway.”

  Although even more disgusting than blood, the pus proved easier to ford, somewhat like dog-paddling through warm, rotting porridge. Nonetheless, when Darryl emerged, he frantically, uselessly scraped at the clinging filth, mad with disgust. Any hope of water and a chance to get clean lay ahead. On the dirt path, Darryl grimaced every time his feet squelched in the pus and blood that trickled into his boots.

  He came to a crossroads marked with carved stone tablets.

  “Hail,” the stone to his right said, a dwarf with a cigar and a jade-studded turban. “This way to Xibalba.”

  “No,” the next one said, a monkey with a deer head cap. “The way lies here.”

  “They both lie,” a third said, a caiman with a jeweled snout plug. “Xibalba is here.”

  All three shouted at once to drown one another out. Darryl looked around in desperation, uncertain where to turn. The leftmost marker, a jaguar with baleful emerald eyes, was silent. Darryl remembered the mosquito and headed for that path.

  “No,” the jaguar snarled. “This is the wrong path. The dwarf was right.”

  Darryl ignored him. When he reached Xibalba, he found no tidy ruins, but a holocaust. The fecal stench and putrid flesh was overpowering. On a lifeless plain covered with bones and headless bodies, a rotted half-skeleton, stomach bloated from parasites and starvation, extended his hands in greeting. Another, squint eyed and tattooed, crawled out from his conch shell to curiously stare. A third, toothless, lips sunken, face horribly wizened with square eyes, pointed silently to the great stone hall that lay in the plain’s center.

  The hall topped a three-tiered pyramid. The sharply sloped roof was supported by massive corbel arches. The grim edifice was decorated with writhing dragons, huge skulls, and bas-reliefs of tortured captives. Darryl climbed the high stairs with trembling legs, terrified by what might lie ahead.

  A majordomo, a resplendent corpse in a high blue bonnet and matching turquoise ear flares, bowed low. “Worshipful lord, this unworthy servant greets you. My masters, the Ahaus, await, eager to meet such a great lord, come to visit all the way from the crocodile’s back.”

  The majordomo exhaled a visible cloud of ghastly breath. Darryl recoiled and hurried past him into the dark, vast hall. Numerous bats hung from the thatched roof. The stone floor was liberally flecked with guano. Darryl wrinkled his nose at the pungent stench. On a stone platform, draped with finely woven cloths and animal skins, numerous figures sat cross-legged. Faces covered by elaborate masks or anthropomorphic animal heads, they sat immobile as mannequins at a wax museum.

  Darryl was once again at a loss, but was reassured by a mosquito’s familiar whine. One figure suddenly flinched, a skeleton with a Muan Bird headdress, wings arched high over his skull.

  Darryl went to him. “Hi, I’m Dr. Darryl Daxton. Could you tell me how to get out of here and maybe clean up a little? I’m usually not this…”

  “Silence,” the skeleton said. “Bow before One Death, first Ahau of Xibalba.”

  Intimidated, Darryl cringed.

  “Better,” One Death said. He removed a skull mask to reveal his own skeleton face. A small blue flame burned in each eye socket.

  “My lords, the mortal has seen through our charade. Remove your masks and properly greet him.”

  The Lords of Death removed their rabbit heads and jaguar masks. They were the grimmest bunch Darryl had ever seen, a dozen seated nightmares: six pairs, each with their own appalling trait.

  “My brother, Seven Death,” One Death said. Another grim skeleton extended a bony claw in haughty disdain. “Co-ruler of Xibalba. These other lords are my demons, sent by me to afflict mankind.”

  “I am Flying Scab.” He had a mass of black, clotted blood for a face and wings instead of ears. “I and Gathered Blood sicken people,” he said with a nod to a similar horror.

  “We make bodies swell,” an even worse monstrosity with a ruptured boil for a head bragged, next to another with skin of the most bilious, sickest green. “Pus Demon and Jaundice Demon.”

  “We lurk in unswept corners,” two more said in unison, a talking dustball and razor sharp piece of obsidian. “Sweepings Demon and Stabbing Demon. We stab you to death.”

  “And we make you die coughing blood while on a stroll,” another pair said. “Wing and Packstrap.”

  “When they’re done,” another demon said, a shrunken, wizened husk, “I, Bone Staff, with my brother Skull Staff, turn dead bodies into skeletons.”

  “Puny mortal,” One Death said, “you stand before the authors of all mankind’s miseries. Yet we are not without hospitality or manners. Despite your lowly status, made from mere earth and destined there to return, take the place of honor our servants have prepared.”

  A claw-footed, high dais adorned with jaguar heads stood opposite the Ahaus’ own platform. Darryl went to the dais and was about to sit down until his suspicions were aroused. He put his hand over the dais only to instantly snatch it away.

  “That’s red hot,” Darryl protested.

  The Lords of Death laughed. Flying Scab sipped chocolate from a flower-patterned glazed clay cup and said, “Truly, the mortal is perceptive.”

  Darryl shuddered. He’d come within a hair of being roasted alive.

  “Look. I’m tired of games. I know you’re very important, but could you please tell me how to leave?”

  “Respect your lords and masters,” Seven Death said.

  “A night in the Bat House would help him learn manners,” Pus Demon said.

  “Let it be so,” One Death agreed. “Majordomo.”

  “Yes, great lord.” The lackey was already by Darryl’s side. A withered hand grabbed Darryl’s arm.

  “Take this fine Ahau to th
e Bat House to pass the night in the comfort and luxury that befits his high station.”

  There was more laughter at One Death’s wit. The majordomo dragged Darryl off.

  “Stop. Let me go, you ugly freak.”

  Despite Darryl’s efforts, it was impossible to break away from the inhumanly strong living corpse.

  “The Bat House, mortal,” the majordomo chortled. “Don’t mind the bites, and hope you last the night.”

  The majordomo slung Darryl headfirst into a low-slung, long house and barred the door. The darkness at first was impenetrable, the only real sensation the sharp ammonia tang of guano in his nostrils. Gradually, as Darryl’s eyes became accustomed, he made out small black heaps huddled on the dirt floor. More dark shapes hung from the thatched roof’s low rafters. The only sound was the bats’ gentle snores.

  Darryl took a tentative step forward. He realized his mistake instantly when he knocked something over. The resounding crash woke every bat in the house.

  “Scrreeecchh. Scccrreecch. Scrreeechh.”

  Alarmed bat cries jabbed Darryl’s ears like icepicks. There was a scrabble of clawed feet on the floor. Darryl pulled his lighter out and flicked it. Miraculously, despite immersion in pus and blood, the lighter worked. At his feet lay a reed blowpipe, doubtless what he’d knocked over. In the small pool of light cast by the flame, wingless bats slowly circled, each a good twenty pounds with grotesquely huge ears and snout. They shrank back from the light and bared large fangs. Winged ones flew overhead. The moment the lighter went out, both kinds would attack, ravenous for his blood.

  Darryl racked his brain. How could he escape? He looked at the blowpipe and remembered the mosquito’s warning. Aware by now that dream logic prevailed in Xibalba, Darryl put the toe of a filth-encrusted boot to the blowpipe’s tip and pushed with all his might.

  Nothing happened.

  “Scrrreeeecchhh.”

  The lighter flickered. Darryl pushed harder, sweating copiously.

  “Scrrreeeecchhh.”

  The lighter went out. The wingless bats charged, arms outstretched to seize their prey. Winged ones flitted toward him, fanged mouths outstretched.