The Inca Temple

by Preston W Child

  "To help us find our way back if it gets shifty down there," Coleman said as he disappeared into the ground.

  He poked his head out again.

  "Are you guys coming down or what?"

  Scarface nodded suddenly, moody. The other guy turned his head everywhere, Coleman thought he must be seeing a ghost in the fields.

  —

  The day was still young, so Coleman figured they'd make significant progress. They found the spot of rubble. He looked at the guys and said, "Well, amigos, here we are. Shall we?"

  Uzo brought his ax down hard on the stones, and stones fell apart. Coleman smiled elatedly. Maybe this would not take as long as he thought. After a bit of nervous contemplation of the writings on the wall, Reno, the guy with the scar, lowered his back and started digging. His head didn't stop turning on the swivel of his neck, however. Something about the signs on the wall seemed to spook the young man.

  Coleman checked his watch three hours later. It was past noon. The two men had dug a hole at the top of the stony earth. Patrick climbed up the mound to look through the hole, and to measure it.

  It was two feet wide from the base to the top of the ceiling and four feet wide. Coleman could slip through the crack into the darkness beyond. When he shone his powerful torch into the hole, he saw the grey wall of another hallway. Just a glimpse of it.

  The two men had stopped digging. They had started a rapid fire-exchange with the Spanish tongue.

  Necks strained forward, hands chopped the air, and a word kept bouncing around the conversation. Tesoro, le tesoro.

  "Guys, what's going?" he asked as he came down the mound.

  Their necks jacked at him, as though Coleman had just appeared from nowhere, or out of that hole they made in the hard rubble.

  "Come, on, let's keep digging," Patrick pointed up at the hole. "I need it to be bigger than that. I'm a big man, and I can't fit through that hole. Maybe you two can, but I'm way bigger than that hole, alright?"

  The one with the thick beard said, "We go for you, for the treasure."

  His head bobbed in excitement.

  "You go where?"

  "Inside there," Uzo repeated. "Me I go, my friend Reno, wait with you. I bring the treasure."

  Coleman laughed. "No, man. It doesn't work like that. The treasure isn't just lying around the hallways waiting for you. Besides, how'd you know there's treasure down there?"

  He looked up at the hole, his face clouded.

  "I'm sure the treasure's got booby traps all and whatnot, set to go off if you as much as breath the air in there," Patrick said softly.

  "Traps?"

  He looked at the one with the scar. "Yes, traps. You know anything about Inca treasure traps?"

  Reno shook his head obsequiously. His scar gave his face an otherworldly aspect. Patrick wanted to ask him how he came to have such a deep cut on his face. He let the moment go. Their tank tops were soaked with sweat even though it was cooler down there than up above.

  The two men resumed digging.

  —

  It was completely dark in the underground hallway when Patrick Coleman stopped his hired hands from further digging.

  He could barely see the face of his watch.

  "Come on, guys, we've gotta get out of here."

  "Okay, boss," said Uzo.

  Reno, with the scar, stared in subdued silence all the way back to town.

  —

  That night, Patrick Coleman got an email with a copy of the New York Times in his correspondence. Hot beer in his hand, feet in the open window, and a night without a stir of a breeze outside. New York had read his story. What did they think of it, he wondered.

  Uzo and Reno were waiting by the jeep in the morning with a picnic bag. Coleman believed it was a pretty good idea.

  "We finish digging today," Uzo said. His dark beard twitched.

  Reno grunted his agreement. They both wore their automobile works clothes. Reno threw a shovel with a long handle in the back of the truck. There was a pickax with a long wooden handle in the back as well.

  They stopped at a café where Coleman bought two packs of poorly made hamburgers and bacon, one for breakfast and the other for lunch.

  Reno said, "We sleep there and finish the job," as Coleman came out of the café.

  "What?"

  "Yes," said Uzo, "we stay and finish the job."

  He pointed at the medium packs of food. "That not enough for two days."

  Coleman nodded in admiration of his workmen. He went back in and purchased enough for two days, for him and for his two companions. It would be the last food Patrick Coleman ate on Earth.

  That afternoon, they walked down a narrow, hot corridor with blackened walls. That was about four hours after the two locals opened the hole into a small doorway that the white archeologist could walk into with a little bow.

  The floor was thick with dust, huge centipedes, and algae. Reno screamed when a centipede the length of a freight train crawled up his boot. Uzo squashed the insect with one swing of his shovel. Greenish goo splashed everywhere.

  Coleman shone his torch on the wall, attempting to read the signs on the wall. He got past a few words with the aid of his note, and that was all.

  "You guys know what these things mean?"

  Uzo shook his head. He looked at Reno with blank dark eyes. He said something in Spanish that Coleman didn't catch.

  Reno stepped back wide-eyed. Uzo advanced on him. He pelted Reno with more wrangling. But the other man seemed set, for whatever reason, on going back.

  "He says this place's cursed. Maldito!" Uzo told Coleman.

  Patrick grimaced. He looked at the troubled face of Reno.

  "Hey, what'd you mean, cursed?"

  "Malo ambiente. Bad vibe here," Reno whispered.

  Sweat beads had suddenly formed on his forehead. His grip tightened over the pickax he's been quarrying with all morning. Uzo, impatient, sighed and tugged at his partner. Reno would not move a step.

  Frustrated, Coleman said, "Alright, you know what, you don't have to come all the way. You can stay here if you like, I don't care. Just don't let the bogeyman catch you when you see him!"

  Reno's eyes brightened for a second.

  "El espantago!"

  Coleman asked, "El-what? What's he talking about now?"

  Uzo said, "He means the Bogeyman, El espantago, the taker of souls."

  "Taker of souls, huh?"

  "Yes, he comes in the night, and if it is the day, he makes the night come, makes it dark, like here now. That why Reno doesn't want to go on. He thinks it should not be dark like this."

  Coleman guffawed before he could hold himself. He bawled hard. When he'd settled down, and the two men seemed lighthearted, he repeated his suggestion that Reno should wait for them.

  Reno agreed and made himself comfortable in a corner free from crawling things and dark green plants that grow without light. He lighted a lamp and ate cracker biscuits.

  —

  One hour after, and a few winding turns through crypts and mazes that Coleman believed they could barely find their way out of, they stood facing a vault. A flight of steps went up beside the vault. Coleman checked the sketch in his book that he had copied from an old Peruvian history book. It matched. Those steps led up to old spas, and hot and cold water springs.

  He'd check those out later. First, how to get this big ass vault open, he thought.

  "What'd you think?" he asked Uzo.

  Coleman shone the torchlight on the vault. The lid was riddled with circuitous drawings and shapes. Some looked human, others half-human, part men and part animals.

  Coleman touched the figure of a man with a stomach so distended Patrick laughed at the incongruity of the gut relative to the other parts of the body. "Look at that, huh."

  “It is the Gerente,” Uzo said.

  Once again, Coleman noted there were no echoes.

  "The what?"

  "The manager of the whores."

  "Whores?"r />
  "Yes, rich people come here to hide from their esposa, their wives. They keep their gold here"—he pointed at the vault—"and fuck prostitutes up there."

  Coleman looked up the stairs that rose into the gloom back there. He felt his first pang of fear. For reasons he didn't understand, he had an uneasy urge to get away from the place, to run as fast as he could move his feet.

  "Here, hold this."

  Uzo took possession of the torchlight with trembling hands.

  Coleman ran his hands over the vault oval door. It was large, about seven feet in diameter. Black flaky dust fell as he touched the coarse surface of the metal. There were symbols on it; some looked vaguely familiar, similar to modern-day numbers. Others were the images of people kneeling, marching, or some other activities.

  Images of weapons formed a ring around the symbols. Each weapon had a symbol attached to it. There were axes, spears, arrows, and other weapons, projectiles that must have passed with the forgers of the metal itself.

  Coleman looked at the white face of Uzo.

  "These symbols." He gestured at the vault. "You seen them before?"

  Uzo shook his head.

  "You, by any chance, know what they mean?"

  "Uh uh." He shook his head again.

  Coleman gazed at him long before walking away from the vault. He checked his watch in the glare of the torch. It was after 5 pm. He wasn't hungry; he craved beer instead. Of all the things he could have brought with him, he had forgotten beer. He rubbed dirty hands in his hair.

  When he turned around, Uzo was standing by the vault, touching a spot beside it on the wall.

  Coleman asked, "What did you find?"

  "There is something here."

  He focused the torchlight on the spot on the wall. An out-of-sync block lay with the others. It was much smaller, recessed into the wall around it. Coleman had missed it because he wasn't holding the light; he had missed it, too, because of the mass of algae on the wall there.

  "Gimme that."

  Coleman looked closer. He peeled off the algae there; a symbol was on the block. Unlike a typical key, though, it had a large, ragged square blade. The bow was smaller, and there was no hole in it.

  He looked at Uzo. "Is this a key?"

  "It is."

  "But there's no hole here anywhere where a key could go in…" He searched by feeling around the wall.

  "It is not that type of key."

  He looked at Uzo and then back at the symbol. Uzo placed his hand on the block. He pushed. Nothing happened.

  "Oh, how do you know to do that?"

  Uzo said, "In Peru, we have that symbol on the elevator door. It says to push, not open with a key."

  So Coleman applied more pressure. After a while, he gave up trying. Perhaps age had done something to the fittings in there, and the block needed some encouragement.

  "Get me the hammer."

  Uzo froze. He stammered, "B…but you can't just—"

  "Uzo, get the hammer."

  Coleman stood with his legs apart and his arms on his waist, like a man appraising a virgin piece of real estate, valuing it. He would strike a credible copy of Indiana Jones if he had a hat perched on his head and a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth.

  Uzo, with his black beard, his bumbling manner was so much like Captain Haddock was past the stage of amusement a long time ago, around the time they arrived through the hole up there. Now he wished he had stayed with Reno. He, in fact, would like to go back to his friend just then but the white crazy—he thought all white men were mad for going to places colored people never wanted to—man was now his burden. At least, Uzo felt, without his guidance, the man would die out here under the earth.

  He showed Coleman the hammer. Coleman went to the small block in the wall furiously the first time. After the third hit, he checked what he'd done.

  "The light, Uzo."

  Uzo brought the torchlight near.

  "What the fuck…"

  Coleman could have been hitting somewhere else all this time for all they knew. The block was just as pristine like before Coleman went to work on it.

  He brought light closer to see. "You've got to be kidding me, look at that." He rubbed the surface. It didn't have the gritty feel of concrete. It almost felt like plastic.

  Now he tapped the hammer on the block, just hard enough, so the block and his wrist felt the impact, but light enough so he could hear the peculiar thump. "It isn't concrete," he whispered.

  He looked at Uzo.

  "I'm tired, do you want to get some rest?"

  Uzo gazed around the dark. The torch back in his hand cast a circle of white light around them as the light on a stage.

  "Here?"

  "Yeah, where else you wanna go?"

  The young man sighed. They settled on tepid hamburgers. The bacon was already going bad on account of the humidity. "You know, it is easy to get sick down here," Coleman said through a filled mouth. "All the germs and stuff. You could die faster too, and decompose even faster."

  "It is the demon, Reno says."

  Coleman closed his eyes. Exhaustion was taking hold. His eyes had gained weight in his face; they threatened to shut themselves. He shook his head. Peasants, he thought.

  "There is no demon, Uzo. It's just us."

  As he slipped into slumber, he muttered again, "Just us."

  —

  Patrick Coleman had no idea what time it was when he woke. He had a dream, but he recalled nothing from it either. His eyes rolled at the pitch blackness.

  "Uzo," he whispered.

  His heart plodded madly against his ribcage. A light hit his eyes, and he was blinded momentarily.

  "Shit, Uzo! Fuck!"

  He covered his face and reached for the torch. Uzo was standing by the vault. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "I was watching for safety."

  It was a mumbled response. Patrick shined the torch on his face and saw he had been sleeping as well.

  "Okay, good guy. Watching for safety is good."

  Coleman went to the vault to see that he'd missed something earlier. Perhaps it had been in his dream that he saw someone standing at a black oval board. The man didn't seem familiar. But he was pointing way off the screen of his dream and telling Coleman, "See here and see here. You see what is here better by reading what’s on here."

  The man tapped at the oval board with the head of a hammer.

  When he looked closer, he saw that unique key among the symbols on the vault. It was beside a square shape, and the square shape had markings on it. Coleman rushed over the block that he'd been hammering.

  He looked closer and saw the weird markings. He went back to the vault again. He found another key; this one faced the opposite side. He found a block like the first one on the left side of the vault on the wall.

  Adrenaline rushed through him. He got his pocket knife and peeled away the algae there. Sure enough, there was a groove around the sides of the block. Good. Progress.

  "Uzo, come here…"

  Uzo came.

  "You are going to push this block."

  Coleman set the torch on its back on the ground so that the light formed a cone of white from it, illuminating the place. He went to the other block.

  "I'll count to three, alright. On my count, one, two, three! Go!"

  They both pushed, Uzo missing it only by a millisecond. The blocks were sucked into the wall, way in. Uzo gasped and staggered away, he tripped and fell on his butt. Coleman didn't even see him; he was panting too, but more out of relief than fear.

  A rumble occurred deep in the walls. The shaking crawled from there and vibrated across the floor, past Coleman's feet and on. The torchlight fell over; the arc of light danced around eerily.

  Some cold air hit his face, and he closed his eyes. "Aaah."

  The vault was open. Coleman picked the torch. Uzo picked himself up too. He dusted his work clothes, his face colored in the dark, flustered.

  Coleman stepped into the gloom i
nside the vault. A long hallway stretched before them. On either side were walls with holes in them. Each hole separated by a foot, rows and rows of them. Some were bigger than the others.

  Coleman barely noticed them.

  "No!"

  He looked at Uzo. The man was hanging back.

  "What, you coming or not? This is it, man."

  "No, it is not it. Traps are here. The demon set it."

  Exasperated, Coleman came to him. "Why did you come with me if you knew there was a demon?"

  "Reno, he says so."

  "Yeah, you believe him?"

  Uzo dropped his gaze. "I don't know. But I'm afraid."

  Coleman turned to the hallway. He spread his hands and his teeth. He looked like a human cross, his torch dangling from his hand and throwing the light about crazily. When the light flashed his way, it spooked poor Uzo even more.

  "Look, where's the demon? There are no demons! All the demons are out there; it's just you and I and this place. And don't forget there's enough hold to go around us both—"

  "And Reno?"

  "And Reno, of course. Now get up and let's go get some."

  —

  That hallway led to another at the end of the stretch. The men took that one, it went left, and then left again, and then it stopped at a heavy door. Like the vault, there were two blocks on both sides of it.

  "Does this strike you as simple, Uzo? Too simple?"

  Uzo only shrugged. Most of his fears seemed to have fizzled away in Coleman's kind spirit.

  The archeologist looked around again. Feelings of unease clutched around his feet.

  "Too simple."

  They did like before, pushed the blocks, and the door woke, like some giant that had gone to sleep for centuries but was now awoken by two little birds perched on its shoulders.

  Will the birds get squashed under the giant's feet?

  Coleman quickly saw that they might not be needing the torchlight.

  The yellow effulgence sipping through the sides of the receding door was enough to light their way through. That was thanks to the panoply of treasure in there. Coleman balked at the knees, too weak to bear the wonder that he beheld.

  He stumbled into the place. The chamber was built like an English hall. Gold-plated pillars held the high ceiling in place, grooves in the walls like modern-day shelves were filled with all shapes of gold.