Black Rain

Danielle shook her head. “No one was ever charged. Two boxes of items were recovered at Miami International just prior to being shipped out of the country, but neither the cradle nor the crystals were among them. It’s feared that the cradle may have been melted down for its rather marginal value as a precious metal and the crystals were probably sold for pennies or simply thrown away.”

McCarter sighed. Strangely enough he’d seen it before. Discoveries made and then lost, artifacts recovered after a thousand years only to be misplaced or destroyed by accidents. “At times, some hidden things seem to posses an almost sentient desire to remain that way,” he said.

Danielle smiled at him and put down the remote. “I couldn’t agree more.”

Susan closed her notebook. “I can’t believe no one saw this before. It’s so obvious, it’s crazy.”

McCarter stroked his chin, wondering if she meant crazy good or crazy bad. The only thing he knew for sure was that it no longer seemed crazy foolish. In fact, as he thought about it, he found himself genuinely excited, almost giddy at the possibility that they might be right. Stones with the names of the first humans in Mayan mythology, others with Tulan Zuyua’s descriptive name: Seven Caves. It certainly pointed toward something early in the Mayan culture. And even if the stones had been inaccurately morphed by the NRI’s computer program, the untouched golden cradle proved that Mayan writing was being performed in the Amazon. As Danielle had told him the night before, something was out there.

He allowed his gaze to return to the screen. The symbols carved in gold stared back at him and he thought of the contrast: Tulan Zuyua and Xibalba, a form of paradise and the very gates of hell. He couldn’t help but wonder which one they would find.

CHAPTER 10

Pale light from the risen moon filtered through gaps in the trees, illuminating the uneven ground. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to see by, enough for the young man, a member of the Nuree tribe, to track his prey.

He cut through the forest silently, following the scuffed trail of the animal he hunted—a large brown tapir, two hundred and fifty pounds. He trod cautiously, not willing to lose the chance that lay before him. It had been a long hunt and this animal was the first major game he’d seen in weeks. If it heard him it would race back to the river, where tapirs spent their days hiding and waiting for nightfall, when they foraged for food.

He moved carefully, pausing as he detected a new scent: smoke. Not the pleasant, woody scent of a good fire, but the stale, acrid smell of soot from a dead, burned-out blaze.

A minute later he came upon the source of that smell. In a small space between the trees, what looked like a compost heap smoldered; piles of leaves and branches and the fired remnants of dried fronds lay blackened and spent. A wisp of gray smoke lingered around it, hugging the mound like an apparition.

He stepped closer to the pile. The burned mess had been compromised, one side had fallen away and the top layer had slid off. Included in that layer was the body of a human being, burned beyond recognition. He looked over the blackened bones.

“Chokawa,” he mumbled in disgust, the Nuree word for the Chollokwan people, the strange tribe that bordered them at times, attacking anyone who entered their territory. His uncle feared these people—the Shadow Men, he called them—claiming they did evil things and begging him not to go this way.

The young man was less afraid, but at this strange site he paused. For a moment he thought about turning back, but his eyes fell upon the tapir’s trail once again and he chose to push on.

Minutes later, he came within earshot of the foraging creature. He stopped, seeing it for the first time, rooting through the undergrowth for a particular type of vegetation. He tensed his body, raised his spear and flung it forward.

The weapon flew straight, hitting the animal in the side. It squealed with pain and bolted into the forest. The hunter raced after it, trees and brush whipping by on either side of him. He tracked the fleeing creature by the sounds it made, the labored breathing, the grunting and the crunching foliage.

Up ahead he heard a sharp, sudden squeal. He assumed the tapir had fallen, but he arrived at the spot to find only his spear lying on the ground, soaked with blood and surrounded by tufts of dark fur. The animal was nowhere to be seen.

He wondered if it had shaken the spear loose and escaped, but its tracks simply ended. As if it had disappeared in midstride.

He picked up his fallen weapon, examining the tip to make sure it was intact. As he did, his ears caught a slight rustle coming from the bushes ahead of him. He was still, listening. In the quiet, he heard the sound of shallow breathing. He crept toward the shrubs, raised the spear above his head and drove it down with all his weight.