By Ann Charles
CHAPTER ONE
Mal Viento: Evil winds that strike a person and cause debilitation, sickness, or death.
Monday, March 15th
“It’s a curse.”
Angèlica Garcìa frowned at her father over her flashlight beam, wondering if the heat had fried his brain. “It’s not a curse, Dad.”
Go over it again, gatita.
And this time, use plain, old English.” Juan Garcìa reached
out and gently tweaked the tip of her nose. “Not all of us speak
Mayan in our sleep.”
Angèlica wiped away the sweat trailing
down her cheek and tilted the flashlight beam slightly away from the temple
wall, grazing the surface so the shadows added depth to the blocks of
Mayan glyphs. She pointed at the first set. “This shows Yum
Cimil, the Lord of Death. It says he rode in on the wind with a traveler.”
She moved to the next. “Here, the king is performing a sacrificial
ceremony, offering his blood for the life of his people. And in this one,
Yum Cimil has turned his back on the king’s sacrifice and
is devouring the village.”
“What about that last set?”
Juan asked.
“It shows the Lord of Death crouching
inside a temple. It says he ‘waits.’”
“Waits for what?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“Sounds like a curse to me.”
Angèlica directed the flashlight
at her father. He stared back at her, all traces of his usual grin absent.
His silver-haired sideburns glistened with sweat. She shook her head.
He couldn’t be serious. “You’re losing it.” She
pointed the beam back at the first glyph set. “Look here. The Lord
of Death rode in on the wind with the traveler. That means the evidence
we need is at this site. I just have to find it.” She skimmed her
fingers over the cool, chiseled stone and smiled at him. “I knew
Mom was right.”
“I still think it’s a curse,”
he said, mopping his brow. “You shouldn’t have read it out
loud.”
She growled in her throat. After thirty
years of digging in tombs and temples throughout the Yucatan and northern
Guatemala, how could he still believe in curses? “Be serious, Dad.
That Lord of Death Waiting glyph is just the Maya equivalent of a ghost
story.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “What makes
you so certain it’s not a curse?”
Angèlica rolled her eyes. She couldn’t
believe they were even having this discussion.
“Listen, young lady. I’ve been
on this earth—in temples just like this one—a lot longer than
you have. It’s time you—”
She crossed her arms over her chest, bracing
herself for the usual I’m-your-father speech.
He paused, glancing down at her arms then
back up into her face. “And now you’re giving me that
look,” he said and shook his head. “I don’t know why
I try to tell you anything. You never listen anyway. One of these days
you’re going to learn that I’m almost always right.”
Angèlica grinned. “Almost.”
“And that I—” Juan did
a double-take, and then patted her on the head. “You’re getting
more and more like your mother every day.”
She tilted her head and batted her eyelashes
several times. “You mean intelligent and beautiful?”
“No. Mouthy and ornery,” he
said with a wink. He pointed at the carvings on the wall. “Whether
you like it or not, this curse could mean trouble.”
Angèlica heard a nervous-sounding
groan from the shadows behind her father. She shined the flashlight over
Juan’s shoulder into the wide eyes of Estaban, a 19-year-old Maya
boy from Coba who had worked for her off and on over the last two years.
He must have finished recording the artifacts in the other chamber and
slipped into the room without her hearing him.
“Shit,” she said under her breath.
The last thing she needed right now were rumors spreading through camp
that an ancient curse had come back to life. She looked back at Juan.
“Dad, it’s not a curse.” Nudging her head toward her
Maya crewmember, she tried to inform her father of Estaban’s presence.
“It’s an artist showing a grim vision of the future.”
“Quit splitting hairs. It’s
a curse warning whoever sees it that death is just waiting for its next
meal—us,” Juan argued.
Estaban visibly quivered. This was going
from bad to hell in seconds. “Can we talk about this back in my
tent—ALONE?”
Juan stared at the glyphs and rubbed the
back of his neck. “If only Margaret were here—”
“If Mom were here, she’d say
you always were more superstitious than logical.” Angèlica
grabbed Juan’s arm. It was going to take physical persuasion to
get her father to leave the temple. She herded him and Estaban back toward
the exit—a hole in the wall just big enough to squeeze through.
“I may not be able to interpret glyphs as well as Mom could, but
I can get the gist of what they’re showing. I’m positive this
is not a curse.”
“I don’t know how you can be
so certain,” Juan said, sinking to the floor and easing head-first
through the hole.
Estaban slid through next. After his feet
disappeared from view, Angèlica squatted and peered through the
hole at her father. She breathed in some musty, dry dust, and coughed.
“Tell me, how can a piece of rock over a thousand years old contain
a force released simply by verbalizing the hieroglyphic inscription chiseled
there by a human?”
She dropped onto the hard-packed dirt floor
and scrambled through the hole. Estaban lent her a hand on the other side.
She nodded her thanks, stood, and brushed the dust off her tank top and
khaki pants.
Juan took the flashlight from her and led
the way through a narrow passageway. “Maybe I am too superstitious
for my own good.” He paused and looked back at Angèlica.
“But you know, bad things have happened at this site.” His
tone sounded ominous.
Shaking her head, she walked past her father
and snatched the flashlight out of his hand as she went. It wasn’t
the time, let alone the place, for this argument. She reached the ladder
and climbed to the main level. Juan followed, then Estaban.
After he stepped off the ladder, Estaban’s
gaze darted around the pitch-black corners of the room. “What bad
things, Dr. Garcìa?” the boy asked, his voice barely above
a whisper.
Angèlica shot her dad a now-look-what-you’ve-done
glare.
Juan cleared his throat. “Several
th—”
“Please, Dad. Don’t start with
that whole ‘something stole my maps of the Temple of the Water Witch,
filled my notebooks with gibberish scrawls, and left a sacrificed wild
turkey outside of my tent’ crap again.”
Juan shrugged, grabbing the flashlight back
from Angèlica. “Well, Miss Practical, all of that did happen.”
He turned on his heel and took several long strides toward the passage
that would lead them out into the night air. “But I’m not
talking about that stuff.”
“What then?” Angelica asked,
following his lead, wondering why she busted her ass every year to convince
the Mexican government to allow her to share a dig site with this man.
“I’m talking about Dr. Hughes,”
he said.
Angelica sighed.
“He’s been missing for twenty
years now, you know. And the last time anyone saw him was at this very
site.”
“Maybe Death ate him,” Estaban
added from behind her, sounding like an extra from a Boris Karloff film.
Juan glanced back at Angèlica and
smiled in victory. “My point exactly.”
Angelica contemplated banging her head against
the stone wall. “Honestly, you sound like a pair of delusional paranoids.”
Juan stopped ten feet from the moonlit entrance,
waiting for Angèlica to reach his side. Estaban pushed past both
of them, his shirt soaking wet and smelling like he’d sweated through
his deodorant hours ago. She watched him, noting his hurry to escape the
darkness.
“All I’m saying, Angèlica,
is that maybe you should think twice before being so quick to rule out
this cu—”
“Dr. Garcìa!” Estaban’s
high-pitched cry cut through the heavy air.
“What?” Angelica and Juan yelled
at the same time and rushed to where Estaban stood frozen in the temple
opening. Angèlica gasped at the sight in front of her.
Tree limbs smacked against each other, debris
tumbled across the ground, and tents buckled. Dust particles stung her
cheeks and arms as she stepped out into the wind. She shielded her face,
frowning. Where had this storm come from? An hour ago, the frogs were
croaking and the air had been still and thick enough to drink. She looked
up at the full moon. And why weren’t there any clouds?
Angèlica turned back to her father
just as Estaban yelled something to Juan that had him nodding in agreement.
“What?” Angelica moved closer to her father. “What did
he say?”
“Mal viento,” Juan
yelled and grabbed Angèlica’s arm, dragging her back into
the safety of the temple and out of the howling wind. “He says the
evil winds have come,” he rubbed his lower jaw, frowning.
“Evil winds, huh?” Angèlica
squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Must you insist upon terrorizing
my crew? Why—”
Estaban screamed in pain from somewhere
outside. Angèlica’s heart stopped for a second.
“I told you it was a curse,”
Juan grumbled and raced past her toward the entrance.
“Dammit!” she yelled, right on his heels as he ran out into the night. She leaned into the wind. “It’s not a curse!”
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