Life Blood Part 35

Then I tripped over the rolled sleeping bag and sank to my knees there in the middle of the rain-swept plaza, soaked to the skin and so angry I was actually trembling. Up above me, Alan Dupre, king of two-timers, had switched off his landing lights, and a few moments later the hum of the Bell was swallowed by the night sounds of the forest--the high-pitched din of crickets, the piercing call of night birds, the ba.s.so groan of frogs celebrating the storm.

And something else, an eerie sense of the unnatural. I can't explain it. Even the night songs of the birds felt ominous, the primeval forest rea.s.serting its will. It was haunting, like nature's mockery of my desolation. I pounded the sleeping bag and felt . . . s.h.i.+t, how did I let this happen?

Get a grip. I finally stood up and looked around. Maybe when G.o.d wants to do you up right, She gives you what you want. You used Alan Dupre just like you intended: He got you here. But there's more to the plan of whoever's holding his puppet strings. So the thing now is, don't let yourself be manipulated any more. Get off your soggy b.u.t.t and start taking control of the situation. . . .

That was when I sighted a white form at the south, forested edge of the plaza. What! I ducked down, sure it was somebody lurking there, waiting to try to beat me to death as they had Sarah. Did Ramos intend to just murder me immediately?

But there was no getting away. If I could see them, they surely could see me. And where would I escape to anyway?

I dug my yellow plastic flashlight out of my backpack and my hand shaking, flicked it on. The beam, however, was just swallowed up in the rain. All right. I strapped on the pack and taking a deep breath, threw the rolled sleeping bag over my shoulder and headed across the slippery paving toward the white, which now glistened in the periodic sheets of distant lightning.

Meet them straight on. Try and bluff.

When I got closer, though, I realized what I was seeing was actually just the skin of a jaguar, bleached white, the head still on, fearsome teeth bared which had been hung beside the paved pathway. Thank G.o.d.

But then, playing my light over it, I thought, Bad sign. My first encounter at _Baalum_ is with a spooky, dead cat. It felt like a chilling omen of . . . I wasn't sure what.

I studied it a moment longer with my flashlight, s.h.i.+vering, then turned and headed quickly across the plaza toward the pyramid now barely visible in the rain. If there were jaguars, or G.o.d knows what else, around I figured I'd be safer up at the top.

When I reached the base and s.h.i.+ned my light up the steps, I saw they were steeper than I'd thought, but they also looked to be part of some meticulous restoration and brand-new, probably safe to climb. And there at the top was a stone hut, complete with what appeared to be a roof.

Good. If there hadn't been anything taller than it around I think I might have just climbed a tree.

On the way up I began trying to digest what the place really was. The pyramid was "fake". . . or was it? A hundred years ago the eccentric Brit archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans whimsically "reconstructed" the Palace of Minos on Crete with his own money, and it's still a tourist highlight. So why couldn't somebody do the same with a reclaimed Mayan pyramid in Central America? Still, this was different, had the feel of being somebody's crazed obsession.

As I topped the steps, I realized the building that crowned the pyramid was also a "restoration" like everything else, including a decorated wooden lintel above the door that looked to be newly lacquered. Bizarre.

I moved through the door and unloaded my gear, then extracted my water bottle, now half-empty, for a pull. Finally I unrolled Alan Dupre's sleeping bag on the (dry) stone floor, removed and spread out my wet clothes, peed off the edge, then took a new pair of underpants, jeans, and s.h.i.+rt out of my backpack, donned them, and uneasily crawled in. I was s.h.i.+vering--whether from the soaking rain or from fright, I didn't know--and my teeth were trying to chatter. Was I hidden away enough to be safe? I didn't know. All I did know was, I was in something deeper than I'd ever been in my life, and I had no idea how I was going to get out. And I was both scared to death and angry as h.e.l.l.

Sarah was here, though, I was certain. Like a sixth sense, I could feel her presence, out there somewhere in the rain. For a moment I was tempted to just plunge into the storm looking for her, but a split second's reflection told me that was the stupidest thing I could do.

Instead, I should try and get some rest, till the storm cleared, and keep periodic watch on the plaza in case somebody showed up. Then, the minute there was light, I'd hit the ground and go find her.

I suppose nothing ever happens the way you plan. My mind was racing and my nerves were in the red, but I was so exhausted from the teeth-rattling trip in the Bell I couldn't really stay alert very long.

In spite of myself, I eventually drifted off into a dreamless doze, a victim of the narcotic song of wind in the giant Cebia trees and the insistent drumming of forest rain on the roof.

Chapter Twenty

I awoke as a sliver of sun flashed through the stone doorway of the room and forest birds erupted around me in celebration. As I pulled myself up and moved over to the opening, a quick tropical glare burned into my face. My G.o.d, the dawn was electric; it was the purest blue I'd ever seen, a swath of artist's cobalt. An azure radiance from the sky glistened off the rain forest leaves around me. Had I dreamed the stormy, haunted world of the night before?

When I looked down, everywhere below me was a bank of dense, pastel mist. Was the plaza really there or had I imagined it? I felt like the top of the pyramid was floating on a cloud.

"Babylon." That was what Sarah had called this place. Ancient and mysterious. I took a breath of the morning air and wondered what would draw her back here. Was _Baalum _the ultimate escape from her other life? Even so . . . why would she want to return after somebody had tried to murder her? What was waiting down there in the fog?

Turning back, I noticed that the room's inside walls were embossed with rows and rows of cla.s.sic Mayan glyphs, like little cartoon faces, all molded in newly set plaster. To my groggy sight they seemed playful, harmless little caricatures, though next to them were raised bas-reliefs of warriors in battle dress. It was both sublimely austere and eerie, even creepy.

I knelt down and rolled my sleeping bag, trying to clear my head. Then I stuffed my still-moist clothes into my backpack and thought about the river, the Rio Tigre, down somewhere at the back of the pyramid. And I felt my pulse rate edging up. The first thing I wanted to do was see it in the light of day. It had been Sarah's way out, the only thing I knew for sure she'd touched.

Get going and do it.

I headed through the rear door and down the back steps. When I reached the ground, the dense forest closed in around me, but I was certain the river lay dead ahead, through the tangle of trees. As I moved down a path that grew ever steeper, the canopy up above thickened, arching over me till it blotted out the pure blue of the sky. And the air was filled with nature sounds--birdcalls, trills, songs, and clacks, all mingled with the hum and buzz of insects. Then suddenly, from somewhere up in the canopy, a pack of screeching spider monkeys began flinging rotten mangos down in my direction. I also thought I heard the asthmatic, territorial roar of a giant howler monkey, the lord of the upper jungle. And what about snakes? I kept an eye on the vines and tendrils alongside the path, expecting any moment to stumble across a deadly fer-de-lance, a little red-and-black operator whose poison heads straight for your nervous system.

On the other hand, the birds, the forest birds, were everywhere, scarlet macaws and keel-billed toucans and darting flocks of Amazon parrots, brilliant and iridescent, their sweeping tails a psychedelic rainbow of green, yellow, red. Then the next thing I knew, the path I was on abruptly opened onto a mossy expanse of pea-soup green, surely the Rio Tigre, and . . .

My G.o.d, those dark-brown b.u.mps scattered everywhere . . . they're the eyes and snouts of . . . yes, crocodiles, lurking there in wait, hoping I'm dumb enough to wade in. Forget what Alan Dupre said. This is definitely not "Disneyland."

Then I glanced upstream and caught sight of a string of mahogany dugout canoes tied along the sh.o.r.e. They were huge, about fifteen feet long and three feet wide, and clearly designed to be crocodile-resistant.

They . . .

Wait a minute. Lou said Sarah was found in a dugout canoe that had drifted all the way down the Rio Tigre to where it joins the Usumacinta. One more clue she might have been here. Maybe I was closing in. _Yes!_

I glared back at the crocodiles' unblinking reptile eyes and tried to get my mind around the fact Sarah could have stood right where I was standing, or been set adrift from here in a coma, to float downstream.

Seeing that vision, I felt unbidden tears trailing down my cheeks. And the questions I had kept piling up. Was this the location of Alex G.o.ddard's "miracle" clinic? Why was _Baalum _such a high-security secret? What was the connection between this place and Sarah's ravaged mind and body? I wanted to know all of it, and by G.o.d I would.

This was the farthest I'd ever been from "civilization," though I was trying not to let that fact sink in too deeply. The water was green and full of small aquatic creations, but I managed to find a reasonably unmossy spot and--still keeping an eye on the leering crocodiles--splashed my face. It felt good, even if it was filthy. . . .

Okay, I'd seen enough of the river. I raised up and stretched. Time to go.

My hopes at war with my nerves, I turned my back on the sc.u.mmy, fetid Rio Tigre and headed back up the jungle trail toward the plaza.

When I got there, I was struck all over again by the vision of the pyramid. Something like it might have been here originally, but in any case it had been completely redone, with newly cut yellowish stones and white lime plaster, an exotic castle nestled in the green lap of the rain forest, rising above the square like a haunting presence. It must have been well over a hundred feet high, a stone wedding cake with a dozen steep tiers between the ground and the platform at the top, which also was square and roughly fifteen feet on the side.

Standing there gazing at it, I think I'd never felt more disoriented.

Sarah, Sarah, how could we both end up here, at the last outpost of the known world? But seeing is believing. I took a deep breath, then turned down the pathway toward the thatch-roofed huts.

Through the mist it was gradually becoming clear that _Baalum_ actually was a village, and a sizable one. The walkway led past a string of clearings, each with cl.u.s.ters of one-room huts built in the ancient, cla.s.sical style, with walls of mud over rows of vertical saplings, their roofs and porches peaked with yellow-green thatch weathering to browns and grays. The structures, outlined starkly against the towering green arbor of the forest above, were grouped around paved patios. It all was neat and meticulous, like a jungle Brigadoon. Although the effects of the storm were everywhere--blown thatch and bamboo--I still felt as if I'd fallen into a time warp where clocks had gone backward.

What . . . ?

Then I began to catch the outlines of people, as though they had materialized out of the pale fog. All pure Maya, short and brown, s.h.i.+ny black hair, they appeared to be just going about their daily lives. I was approaching a workshop area where, under a wide thatch shade, men with chipped-flint adzes were carving bowls, plows, various implements from mahogany and other rain forest woods. Next to them, potters were fas.h.i.+oning brown clay jugs. They all were wearing white loincloths and a large square cotton cloth knotted around their shoulders, their hair tied back in dense ponytails. It must have been how the Maya looked a thousand years ago.

Their earnestness reminded me of the villagers I once filmed in the Yucatan for the Discovery Channel--with one big difference: There I was the big-shot gringo; here I felt like a powerless time traveler. The sense of being lost in another age was as compelling as the "colonial"

mock-up at Williamsburg, but this was real and it was decidedly spooky.

Finally one of the men looked up and noticed me. Our eyes locked for an instant--it seemed like forever--and then he reached over and, in a way that seemed breathless, shook the man next to him, gesturing toward me.

Together they gazed back as though viewing a phantom, their brown faces intent, and then they turned and called out to the others, alerting them.

What are they going to do with me? I wondered with a sudden chill. A stranger here in their hideaway midst. Would they just turn on me?

Find some women. Get off the street.

I turned and headed as fast as I could down the cobblestone central path, till I saw a cl.u.s.ter of females on a whitewashed stone porch, long hair falling over their shoulders as they bent to their tasks beneath the thatch overhangs. Some were stirring rugged clay pots of corn soaking in lime; others were grinding the softened maize to tortilla thinness on wide granite platters. Behind them was another group that appeared to be part of a sewing commune, young wives busy at their back-strap looms, layering thread after thread of dyed cotton.

None of them was wearing a _huipil_--the traditional multicolored blouse I'd remembered from the waitresses in the restaurant. Instead, they all had on a kind of handloom-woven white s.h.i.+ft I'd never seen before.

Talk to them. Let them know you're no threat to anybody.

As I moved down the hard clay pathway toward them, two looked up and took notice. Their first reaction seemed to be alarm, as they tensed and stared. But then I tried a smile and it seemed to work. Their looks turned to puzzlement, then embarra.s.sed grins, as though they wanted to be friendly but weren't sure how to acknowledge my presence.