The Secret of Xicalpan Chapter Three
Indy gets more than he bargained for with the discovery of his career
They were no more than half an hour's trek from the village when their guide, a young man whom Father Perez had introduced to them as Hernando, slowed his pace and finally stopped altogether, his face and entire body communicating his reluctance to go any further. Indy, using the interruption as a chance to rest his back, swung his field pack off his shoulders and laid it on the ground beside his feet. He cocked an interrogatory eyebrow at the frightened looking youth, in a gesture with a universal meaning: what's the matter?
Fernando glanced nervously at the jungle ahead. "Please, Señor, " he said in Spanish. "I beg you not to go any further."
"Are we close?" Indy asked, in his own halting Spanish.
The boy nodded. "Straight ahead - not too far now. Please, Señor, it is an evil place."
Indy sighed, too close to his goal to be impatient with the young man. Clearly, when the missionary Friars stamped out a religion, they did a thorough job of it. No doubt Hernando saw the sacred place of his ancestors as a haunt of the devil. Jones couldn't blame him for wanting to steer clear of it.
He jerked his head back in the general direction of the village. "Go on back, Hernando," he said. "We can take care of ourselves."
An obvious flood of relief altered the youth's countenance, yet he lingered, seemingly hesitant to leave them. To indicate that there was no were no hard feelings, Indy reached into his pocket and held out a silver coin. It was a small amount to him, but it must have represented a great deal of wealth to Hernando.
The young man regarded them briefly, a look of fleeting sadness in his brown eyes. With a curious sort of dignity, he shook his head silently at Indy's outstretched hand. He turned and melted, wraith-like, into the jungle.
Indy shrugged at Esther, re-shouldered his pack, and the two of them moved on. They had little trouble finding their way, for a change in the quality of the light up ahead indicated a break in the jungle canopy. Some sort of clearing was near - how large or small they could not tell, but it was definitely there.
Indy, stepping around the trunk of a huge tree, was the first to set eyes on it, stopping dead in his tracks at the unexpected sight. "Jesus!"
Esther, detained by a jungle vine that had momentarily become wrapped around her ankle, heard Indy's gasp. Anxious to see what prompted her partner's reaction, she impatiently shook her boot free of the encumbrance, muttering one or two soft curses as she fought with the entangling creeper. She clambered over a large tree root which remained in her way, putting a hand on Indy's shoulder to steady herself as she climbed down. He was so enrapt by whatever he was staring at that he never noticed her touch. When she saw it, she drew in her breath softly and joined him in silence.
It lay before them in the wide clearing it held back from the encroaching jungle, its wide base still obscured in places by the last curling vestiges of the morning's mist. It was the classic, stepped Mayan pyramid, although without the customary temple on its flat apex, for in this instance, the upper third of the structure lay in ruins, its massive stone blocks tumbled by some forgotten cataclysm. A green mantle of vines, creepers, and assorted jungle vegetation covered it, softening the structure's sharp contours. There was an air of great antiquity about it.
It was some time before Esther remembered to breathe. From Father Perez's unenthusiastic response to their inquiries, she had and Indy had not expected to find very much - a few scattered fragments of pottery or a crude alter at best - but this! Even if they found nothing to link it with her statue, the site was an important find all in itself. From this moment, their professional reputations were made for life.
Tearing her eyes away from the sight, she turned to look at Indy, who was still standing motionless at her side, his face transfixed once again with that particular expression halfway between love and lust. As little as a day earlier, Esther would have found his distraction, his single-minded tuning out of all extraneous things, including herself, painful, but the events of the previous night, far from making things worse she had feared, had exorcised her twin demons of rejection and frustrated jealousy. Whatever her feelings for Indiana Jones may have been, they had evolved into something gentler, no longer a thorn in her side, and Indy's other loves - whatever or whomever they might be - no longer had the power to hurt her. Esther felt marvelously free. She could take Indiana Jones and probably would, she told herself, whenever their paths crossed in the future, or she could leave him; she no longer would have wanted to change him.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he finally said, turning to her.
She nodded and smiled. "I feel like it's Christmas morning and I've come downstairs to find that pony I've always wanted."
He chuckled at her imagery. His own was less elegant, "I was thinking that Dean Schuyler is going to pee himself for joy when we tell him about this." He headed off briefly in the direction of the pyramid, hoping his coarse flippancy had disguised how profoundly moved he was. Jones had been looking forward to a moment like this ever since he had cracked his trip first textbook back in Archeology 101 - no, he thought, even earlier done that - since the day when, as a boy of eight, he had cut his toe on a flint arrowhead in a freshly plowed field near his home and had taken it away with him to become one of his boyhood treasures.
His mood businesslike now, he stared up at the structure's summit, at the jumble of stones that seemed to hang precariously from the pyramid's sloping side, where they had slid during the earthquake long ago. With a professionally appraising eye, he planned out their strategy for digging out and restoring the pyramid; no doubt there were things of interest buried in that rubble. What else would careful excavation of the surrounding jungle reveal?
His train of thought was broken by a shout from Esther. "Indy, come here. I found something!" Her voice held an unmistakable note of excitement.
When he reached her side, he found her crouched down and peering into a large opening in the pyramid's base. "I was looking at this frieze when I saw the door lintel," she said, without looking up.
"A door in the base," Indy mused, examining it more closely. "That's atypical in a Mayan construction of this kind."
"To say the least," Esther agreed. "But we came here looking for something out of the ordinary. Do you think…?"
Indy replied slowly. "Maybe. We ought to go in and have a look in any case."
He paused, looking up at the bulk of the pyramid above them. A particularly wicked looking rock fall could be seen right above the place where they crouched, and Jones wasn't about to enter that mysterious, beckoning doorway until he had made sure that the stones weren't about to come falling down and trap them inside.
He motioned Esther away. "Stand back for a minute while I check this out," he cautioned, making sure she was well out of the way before beginning a careful climb up the pyramid's side. He moved cautiously, less the least vibration disturb the stones' fragile balance, bringing the whole mess down on him. But when he got closer, it became apparent that his worries had been groundless. A network of thick vines held the stones firmly in place, perhaps having been there since the time of the earthquake, holding back the full force of the slide. Indy tested the strength of the vines and felt satisfied. He and Esther could enter safely.
Esther stood waiting for him when he came back down. He rummaged through the field pack, removing two flashlights and handing one to her. As he poised himself to enter the doorway, a new thought crossed his mind, making him hesitate.
She had seen the doubt cross his face. "What's the matter now?"
Jones felt reluctant to answer, not wanting to leave himself open to her teasing. "I was just thinking that it looks like a damn good place for snakes, that's all," he admitted.
She grinned back sheepishly. "Funny - I was just thinking it looks like a damn good place for spiders."
They stared at each other for a moment, and then burst into simultaneous laughter. It's back, Indy thought, watching Esther's face; that beautiful sunburst smile. For what it was worth, he was glad of this recaptured easiness between them.
"C'mon, let's go," he chuckled, crawling inside.
They slid down a small dirt slope. The drop was longer than they had expected. When they had gotten to their feet and brushed themselves off, they found to their surprise that they were not enclosed by man-made walls but by rough limestone, as if the huge pyramid had purposely been built over a pre-existing limestone cave.
Of course! Indy thought. The a geological conditions in the Yucatan Peninsula were conducive to the formation of caves and sinkholes - the sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza stood testimony to the fact and to the tendency of the ancient people of the area to regard holes in the ground as holy spots. But this cave was clean and empty - no sign of habitation, human or animal, were about. Certainly there was nothing to explain why the ancient builders should have enclosed it with such care.
Indy switched off his flashlight. The natural light coming in through the mouth of the cave showed plainly enough that there was nothing to be seen. Esther, too, was looking around with an air of disappointment. Indy was about to suggest that they go back outside when he noticed a cool, moist draft blowing against his cheek.
He looked at Esther with reviving hope. "I know," she said, "I've just felt it too."
The source of the draft, when they had carefully traced it down proved to be a fissure hidden behind an outcropping of the cave's wall. Indy stuck his light inside. A passage widened out immediately on the other side of the opening. By turning sideways, Indy could just manage to slip through, while Esther held the pack for him, passing it through to him once he was on the other side. She followed after with no trouble.
They found themselves in a natural tunnel, a fissure formed by the action of water seeping through the limestone, which plunged down into the earth as far as their flashlight beams could reach. Here, they found heartening evidence of the hand of man. In places, the passageway had been widened by chiseling the rock away, and where the tunnel floor sloped too steeply, steps and handholds had been carved into the rock. The steps were worn and the handholds polished smooth as if by centuries' traffic of human hands and feet.
Down they went into the subterranean darkness, with the passageway corkscrewing and turning back upon itself in its descent. After a while, Indy calculated that they must be at that point at least a hundred feet below ground, and still they had not reached the level of the groundwater. Perhaps, Jones surmised, there was some hydrostatic anomaly such as an underground river or lake affecting the water table in the immediate area. And still the tunnel plunged downward.
Abruptly the passageway ended, widening out into a small rock chamber about thirty feet across. On three sides, the underground room was bounded by rock walls; on the fourth, the floor of the chamber ended in a sheer drop off to some kind of well or pit. It was plain that the room had been used as some kind of temple, for although the cave had been left largely in its natural state, various carvings and statuary lined the walls and a large stone altar stood poised at the very lip of the pit. It was obvious to the two archaeologists educated eyes that none of the artifacts were of previously known Mayan workmanship. They had found what they had come looking for.
Beside this new find, the discovery of the pyramid above paled into insignificance. They entered the chamber slowly, with awestruck silence, each play of their flashlight beams over the uneven walls revealing new treasures. Clearly the site had been in use for a very long time, for the wall decorations ranged from rough prehistoric line drawings scored into the limestone rock to delicate, precisely carved friezes. The statuary, too, varied in technique from crude to sophisticated. Indy saw, in a chiseled wall niche, what might have been the twin to Esther's statue.
The stone altar, however, dominated the room and was the prize of the collection. It was not the most sophisticated work of art in the cave, but it was roughly, boldly carved, with a primitive vitality that overshadowed the other, more technically advanced pieces. Indy approached it to get a better look, shuddering involuntarily when he identified the nature of the rites depicted in the carvings on the altar's sides. Even discounting the scientific objectivity to which he'd been trained, he had thought that his experiences in life had inured him to the extremes of nastiness the human mind could invent, but the obscene acts pictured here were a quantum leap in depravity. An old-fashioned word sprang unbidden into his mind: Abomination. Indy consoled himself with the thought that the pictures must have depicted largely fantasy; the grotesque creatures shown participating in the foul rituals could have existed only in the realms of warped imaginings. Even without the graphic evidence of the carvings, the uses to which the altar had been put were plain; rusty, reddish stains on its top and down its sides provided mute witness to past atrocities.
Gratefully, Indy looked away from the altar, turning his attention to the pit just beyond it. He stepped carefully to the drop-off and shone his light over the side. The thin beam penetrated the abyss for perhaps thirty feet before being swallowed up by the gloom; no bottom was in sight. Indy toyed with the idea of tossing in one of the many rocks that lay scattered about the floor of the chamber to satisfy his idle curiosity about the depth of the pit, but he decided against it. In the long run, the placement of even the most insignificant object in the cave could provide priceless evidence, and Jones resolved to disturb nothing unnecessarily. This was not one of the quick, hit and run archaeological operations he'd been engaged in lately and felt less and less proud of, likening them in the privacy of his own mind to grave robbing. This find was an incredible importance, perhaps the biggest of his entire career, and it would be done strictly by the book.
He turned back from the edge of the pit to find Esther studying the altar, and he felt brief, irrational flash of uneasiness at the thought of her seeing the vileness depicted. Trying to ignore it, he told himself that she was a trained scholar herself and would most likely resent his misplaced chivalry. Nevertheless, the thought remained: he would have liked to spare her the sight.
She looked up at him, clearly as revolted as he had been. "Come on," he said, "let's get to work. You start on that wall, I'll start on this one, and we'll meet in the middle."
Taking out his notebook and beginning at the spot where the wall intersected the pit, Indy began to move clockwise around the chamber, collecting the preliminary notes and information that would serve as the basis for their funding for the actual dig. With such a wealth of things to be seen at the site, Indy thought, there should be little trouble on that score. He made a quick thumbnail sketch of each object he came to, noting its dimensions and relationship to the other articles in the room. Before securing the site as best they could, he and Esther would carry away one or two of the smaller objects: a little something to whet the appetite of whoever held the purse strings.
Jones didn't know how long they had been at their work when he heard a sound wildly out of place in a rock cavern many feet below the ground. As one, he and Esther stopped what they were doing and paused to listen. There - he had heard it again, and this time he identified it as the plaintive bleat of a goat.
"Turn off your light," he whispered. Esther complied, as he hit the off switch on his own. At first they were in total darkness, then they made out a dim flickering coming from the tunnel to see the surface: the dancing light of reed torches.
Something - he didn't know what - set off alarm bells in Indy's mind. He didn't stop to analyze it. "Get down!" he hissed. "Out of sight."
He remembered a fairly large crack in the wall just to his left and ducked into it. Esther, not so lucky, could find only a large boulder to crouch behind which provided much less cover.
This was really ridiculous, Indy told himself as he wriggled back into his hidden hiding space, hoping that he would be out of the light. It was probably just Hernando, having regained his courage and coming to look for them - maybe even bringing Father Perez. And it was going to be embarrassing when he had to step out into the light, like some foolish kid who'd been caught playing hide and seek.
"Yes, and if that's true," said another voice from his mind, "then why have they brought a goat?" He decided to stay put.
He felt glad of his decision when the newcomers entered the chamber. In the flickering torchlight, Indy recognized the faces of Juan Chrysostomo and two slightly younger village men whose names he didn't know. One carried a little white goat, trussed up and helpless, over his shoulder. Each had on everyday clothing, but all of them wore an expression of solemnity that gave their coarse homespun garments the air of priestly vestments.
Quickly looking around the cavern, one of the men uttered a terse, Spanish expletive, earning a reproving glance from Juan Chrysostomo. Undaunted, he continued: "No sign of them. I knew that fool Hernando was too much of a coward to come anywhere near here. No doubt he is busy leading the strangers around in circles in the jungle even now "
"In that case, my friend, Hernando is not such a fool, after all," Juan Chrysostomo chided, "for he would surely have shared their fate. You must be more patient. I too find it sad that our people have shunned the old ways and only we three are left to carry on the ancient devotion; but remember, even in the Elder days, the chosen ones did not go willingly. It is a great shame, though - the American and his woman would have made a fitting gift for the Great Old One." He paused and sighed, obviously regretting the lost opportunity. "It is well that we bought brought an alternative offering."
They moved into the cave, the two men setting their torches into carbon receptacles in the wall. Juan Chrysostomo picked up the goat, which began once more to struggle and bleat, carrying it to the altar and laying it down reverently. One of the men handed him a knife, a common machete, but from the way the blade glinted brightly in the torch light, it could be seen that the weapon had been honed to an exquisite degree of sharpness. It was all too plain what was about to happen next.
"Oh, Jesus!" Indy thought. "An alternative offering" In one awful moment, the fate of the villagers who supposedly been lost in the jungle had been revealed to him. At least one a year, Father Perez had said - a hunter, a young girl… a child - never to be seen again.
Juan Chrysostomo took the struggling goat by the jaw and bent its head back, slicing the little animal's throat as calmly as if he had been peeling a banana.
Jones clamped his back teeth together hard. "I'm not going to be sick," he told himself firmly. "I refuse to be sick."
As the goat's blood splashed out onto the crude altar, Indy began to castigate himself for the carelessness, the stupidity, which had led him into his present predicament. "It's a definite flaw in your character, Jones," he thought. Just as, when in the throes of passion for some women or other, he bulled on ahead recklessly with no regard for the consequences, he had allowed his elation over the new discovery to blind him to the danger signals. There had been no curtain of vines covering the doorway, no animal droppings or even bat guano in the entrance cave - evidence of continued human use of the temple. His foolishness was mitigated somewhat by the fact that, as much as he had hoped to do so, he hadn't really expected to be lucky enough to find definitely traces of the Elder religion he and Esther had come searching for; so by what stretch of the imagination could he have foreseen finding that religion still being actively practiced?
Well, Indy thought disgustedly, there was nothing to be done now except keep quiet and wait for Juan Chrysostomo and his men to finish their grisly business and go away. Despite the fact that he was armed, Indy had no wish to provoke a confrontation with these three obviously violent individuals who seem to have had no doubt that they could have overcome the three of them - Indy, Ester and Hernando - with no trouble. What effect this new development would have on the future of the dig - Jones doubted that Juan Chrysostomo and his henchmen would take kindly to the desecration of their temple and the exposure of their nefarious practices to Father Perez - he put off thinking about it until later.
Juan Chrysostomo raised the goat high and began to speak, slowly and softly at first, then more loudly as his chant increased in fervor, his deep voice echoing eerily from the walls of the limestone chamber. At first, Indy had trouble understanding the speech, until he suddenly realized that he was hearing an extinct dialect of the Mayan tongue. Then subtly, the tones and inflections of the speech began to change, becoming harsh and guttural, as if the speaker were drifting back into an even more ancient liturgy, older than time itself, in a language not fashioned for human throats. It was speech Indy had never thought to hear spoken by any living man, words he had thought existed only in print on cheap pulp paper and in the fertile imaginations of certain writers: "Ph'nglui mglw'naft Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl ftagn." Jones shuddered. Such sounds seem to profane the very air that carried them.
At last, Juan Chrysostomo ceased his chanting. Laying the still twitching body of the goat gently down on the altar, he bowed his head for a moment, then turned and, with his men following silently, headed for the door.
Strange, Indy thought, watching from the darkness of his hiding place; they were leaving the body of the goat where it was. He would have thought from the convenient placement of the altar that the sacrifice would be rolled into the pit at the end of the ceremony. He quickly suppressed the awful picture that leapt into his mind of the grisly debris that must lie at the bottom of the pit. Perhaps someone returned to the temple at a later date to clear the altar for the next rite; surely he and Esther had found no traces of the previous offering when they had come upon the cavern.
Dismissing the irrelevant thought, Jones was relieved to see that Juan Chrysostomo and his party were finally leaving. After a safe interval, he and Esther would gladly quit the accursed place too. He wondered how she was doing over on her side of the room, and he cast a glance at the boulder behind which she was hiding. He froze at what he saw. His field pack lay beside the entrance, partially obscured by a rock. It had been completely in shadow when the party from the village had entered, but they could not fail to notice it on their way back out. And just a yard away was something else they would discover once their suspicions were aroused: the toe of Esther's boot, just a fraction of an inch of it visible beyond the edge of her concealing boulder. There was no way to warn her.
For her part, Esther, who had been forced to curl herself tightly into a ball with her head between her knees to stay out of the light, had been unable to see anything that was going on, but from hearing the goat's frantic bleating turns suddenly into a gurgling cry and listening to Juan Chrysostomo solemnly intoning his eerie chant, she had been able to deduce what was occurring. Unlike Indy, she hadn't bothered to waste her mental energy by engaging in useless recriminations; she had merely pulled her head further down and hoped that the ordeal would be over soon. When the chanting ceased and she heard the sound of footsteps heading for the tunnel, she had held herself as still as a frozen rabbit, scarcely daring to breathe, certain that the hammering of her heart was loud enough to echo boomingly throughout the tiny cavern. Even when silence had fallen, she remained motionless her eyes clamped tightly shut.
A hand suddenly clamped around her shoulder, sending waves of adrenaline surging through her system and making the tiny muscles along her spine begin to contract in crawling waves.
"Please," she prayed silently, "Let It be Indy. If it is, I'll kill him for scaring the hell out of me like this. But please let it be him!"
Slowly she looked up. It wasn't Indy.
"All right, Jones - just keep cool and try to think for once," Indy told himself grimly. He had watched tensely, hoping against hope, as the three men had approached the entrance to the tunnel, and he had mentally cursed as Juan Chrysostomo had stopped dead, pointed at the field pack, and silently motioned his men to replace their torches in the wall sconces. Moving stealthily, they had found Esther and hauled to her feet.
The two helpers stood to either side of her, each firmly grasping an arm, while Juan Chrysostomo, still carrying the bloodstained machete, faced her.
"Señora… How good it is to find you here," he purred . Even though the headman's back was to him, Indy could picture his feral, gloating smile.
"That's it!" Jones suddenly realized. "Something about that guy made me nervous, but I couldn't put my finger on it until just now. They're not a bit alike but -Juan Chrysostomo reminds me of that slimy bastard, Rene Belloq!"
"May I ask, Señora," the head man continued, "where your companion, Dr. Jones, is?"
Indy could see Esther's eyes darting nervously around the cavern, never, thank God, looking directly at where he was hidden. When she spoke, the fear in her voice sounded real. "He's right behind you. You better watch out." She managed to sound extremely unconvincing.
Juan Chrysostomo chuckled. "We are not so stupid as you seem to believe, Señora. You have just told us that Dr. Jones is nowhere near. Never fear, we will find him wherever he is. The honor of going to the Great Old One will not be yours alone."
Esther had given him the time to act, but how best, Indy wondered, to even out the depressing three to one odds? The pistol in his pocket could drop all three of his adversaries quickly enough, but he was reluctant to use it, fearful than an ill aimed slug could end up ricocheting around the cave, killing him or Esther instead of its intended target. He silently began to uncoil his bull whip.
Juan Chrysostomo gestured roughly towards the bloody altar with the hand that held the machete. Before his helpers could begin to drag Esther to it, Indy erupted from his hiding place.
"First things first," he told himself. The first whip-stroke caught Juan Chrysostomo around the wrist, jerking the machete out of his grasp and sending it sliding across the room. Before anyone had a chance to recover, the second stroke caught the arm of one of the men holding Esther. He let out a startled yelp and let go
With one arm free, Esther promptly pivoted and kneed her other captor in the groin with an almost professional smoothness. As the hapless fellow doubled over with a miserable grunt, she picked up a handy rock and finished him off with tap on the head.
"Remind me never to cross her," Indy thought, already hurtling across the cave, shouldering Juan Chrysostomo aside and decking the other villager, who was still staring stupidly at the reddening welt on his forearm, with a quick uppercut to the jaw.
He had time for a fleeting grin at Esther before Juan Juan Chrysostomo tackled him from behind. Down they went in a tangle of arms and legs, with Indy discovering to his dismay that, although the head man must have been several years older and quite a bit smaller he was possessed of a wiry strength and a nasty penchant for biting and eye gouging that made him a formidable opponent. Clearly, Juan Chrysostomo had never heard of The Marquis of Queensbury rules; he was playing for keeps and Indy found himself hard-pressed merely to hold his own.
Feeling two strong thumbs pressing dangerously close to his windpipe, Indy gave a desperate heave of his body and broke loose, throwing his adversary off and staggering to his feet. Undaunted the older man sprang after him, launching himself at the frantically back pedaling archaeologist with a murderous fury. To his absolute horror, Jones found himself being propelled backward toward the edge of the pit by his impetus. At as luck would have it, they both fell heavily against the stone altar and were brought up short, falling dazedly to the floor. However, the force of their blow toppled the altar off its base. It swayed and fell into the pit, carrying the corpse of the goat with it.
The altar was an object of incredible archaeological worth - and of a certain awful beauty - but Jones had no time to mourn its loss to science as he fought for his own existence. Juan Chrysostomo was reaching inexorably for his eyes and throat, and only the fact that Indy's arms were longer saved him as he held his opponent off with a straight armed grip.
"For God's sake, Esther - do something!" he yelled desperately.
"I'm trying, damn it!" she yelled back, dancing about in frustration on the edges of the fight, still brandishing her rock. Indy and Juan Chrysostomo were rolling about so violently that she had no opportunity to strike a blow without running an equal risk of braining her own friend.
Dimly, during the struggle, Indy was aware of the distant splash of the altar and the hollow boom of its landing echoing up from the depths. In one corner of his mind, he stopped to marvel at the incredible distance it must have fallen before reaching bottom. There, too, was confirmation of the existence of the underground river or lake whose presence he had guessed at earlier, a lake whose black subterranean waters had never been pierced by a ray of light.
The course of their struggle had carried the two halfway across the chamber, bringing them close to the place where the machete had come to rest, its blade glinting brightly in the light of the torches that still burned on the walls. The focus of the tussle changed, as each man fought to be the first to grab hold of the weapon.
As he wrestled with his wiry older adversary, Jones became aware of a new odor beginning to reach his nostrils, different from the smell of damp limestone, blood, and human sweat that had been there before. It was a strange unidentifiable odor, putrid and fishy, as if the impact of the heavy altar had stirred up the foul depths of the stagnant water far below. It was growing stronger. As nauseating as the smell was, Indy gave it little heed, but it seemed to have an effect on Juan Chrysostomo ; he suddenly tensed grew and nervous. Jones took advantage of his opponent's momentary distraction to put on a sudden burst of effort and break free of the man's grip. As he jumped to his feet, falling heavily forward onto his face only seconds later as Juan Chrysostomo grabbed him around the ankles, Indy's outstretched fingers were only inches from the handle of the machete, and he pulled himself painfully forward, straining against the backward drag to reach his goal.
Esther, seeing her opportunity at last, rushed in to his aid with her rock held at the ready, but she stopped short when she looked past one Juan Chrysostomo to the edge of the pit.
As Indy's fingers curled around the handle of the machete, three things happened in quick succession; he heard a sharp crack as the rock fell from Esther's nerveless hands and hit the floor of the cave; she uttered a dreadful long rasping cry - the scream of someone whose vocal cords have been paralyzed by terror; and Indy was suddenly jerked backward, sliding almost ten feet toward the dropoff.
"What the…?" he whispered, whipping his head around to see what happened. Surely Juan Chrysostomo couldn't have dragged him backwards in such rough Force.
He was just in time to see Juan Chrysostomo let go of his ankle and, with a drawn-out, high-pitched scream of his own, begin to claw frantically at something that was coiled tightly around his knees.
It came up from the pit, long, white, horribly boneless looking. It was like a snake, a Squid's tentacle, a pallid earthworm that had detached itself from the squirming mass of its fellows. It was Esther's statue come to life.
Jones uttered an inarticulate moan of negation far back in his throat and scrambled hastily backward. Even as he watched, more white tentacles were oozing up over the lip of the pit. The stench in the chamber had become overpowering.
Juan Chrysostomo was being dragged inexorably toward the edge of the pit, his fingernails scrabbling desperately for non-existent purchase on the rock floor, his face a frozen mask a stark terror. One final jerk took him over into the darkness, a horrible thin scream echoing after him.
Indy, who had come up against the far wall and was pressed tightly against it, felt tempted to stop his ears, fearing that they would have to listen to that awful sound all the way down. What actually happened was far worse. Juan Chrysostomo's scream was suddenly cut off long before he had time to hit bottom, as if something had snapped him up in midair.
The two Americans stared numbly after him for a moment. Then the sight of more pale tentacles boiling up from the pit galvanized Indy into action.
"The torch, Esther!" he yelled.
Quickly, she snatched the torch from the wall receptacle directly behind her and headed for the tunnel with no need for further prompting. Indy rushed after her, pausing instinctively to scoop up his whip from the place where it had lain since he had dropped it at the beginning of the fight.
At the entrance of the tunnel, he paused once more, remembering Juan Chrysostomo's two helpers, who still lay unconscious on the cavern floor. It was too late to do anything for them; already the floor was a seething mask of squirming tentacles. "Poor bastards," Indy muttered, but he wasn't about to engage in any heroics on their behalf - especially when he remembered the fate they had planned for him.
Then, out of the darkness of the pit, something else began to heave itself into view. Before he could do more than catch a vague glimpse of the dim outline, Indy shut his eyes tightly. With a soft whimper of cosmic disbelief, he whirled and pounded up the tunnel after Esther.
Upward they climbed, as fast as their shaking legs could carry them. It seemed as if they would never reach the surface. Finally, Esther, too winded to go on, came to a halt, leaning against the hard rock wall of the tunnel to catch her breath. She was about to speak when Indy held up his hand, motioning her to silence.
"Listen," he said softly.
The sound came up from the tunnel below them, faintly at first, but growing louder. Plop, plop… Swish. Plop, plop,… Swish - the sound of something soft being dragged over rough stone. The foul, fishy smell, which had abated somewhat, again grew stronger.
They turned to stare at one another in wordless horror.
"Oh, Jesus…" Indy whispered, "it's coming after us."
The rest of their upward flight was an interminable nightmare, as they climbed frantically through the torch lit blackness with the sounds of pursuit drawing ever closer. At last, Esther gave a small sob of relief as she saw a thin crack of light up ahead: the narrow opening into the entrance cave.
Indy let Esther slip through first, standing with his back to the dark and tunnel, his skin crawling as he listened to the moist scraping noises, now close behind him. For one horrible moment, he thought he wouldn't be able to get back through the narrow opening himself, so violently was his chest heaving with the exertion of his climb, but he forced himself to exhale, popping out into the entrance cave like a cork from a bottle. Together they scrambled up the dirt slope to the doorway in the pyramid.
The mid-afternoon sun beat warmly down upon their shoulders. Only a few hours had passed since they had entered the pyramid, yet it seemed to Indy as if they had been underground for an entire lifetime. Almost instinctively, like cats seeking the safety of a high place, he and Esther began to clamber up the side of the pyramid. When they had gone a short way up, they turned to look back. Out of the half silted in doorway came the tip of a pale tentacle, groping after them like a blind earthworm.
It wasn't fair, Indy told himself as they climbed higher. Something of that size shouldn't have been able to fit its vast bulk into the tunnel, much less crawl through the tight opening to the outside. But he knew that was just wishful thinking. The brief glimpses he'd had of it told him that the creature was as boneless as a jellyfish, as amorphous as an amoeba; it could ooze through almost any opening seeking its prey. And when it found them…
Indy's shuddered. Already the tip of the tentacle was exploring upward from the base of the pyramid as if sniffing out their trail. Something would have to be done quickly, but he was damned if he knew what. He was armed with his pistol, his whip, the machete, which he had unconsciously clutched during the upward flight like a drowning man clinging to a straw. Against something that size, all of them would be as effective as peeing on a forest fire. Then he spied the rock fall above their heads, and an idea came to him.
Quickly bounding up the rest of the way, he began to hack at the network of vines that held the tumbled blocks in place. The vines were old and tough and Indy prayed that the machete would hold its edge until he had cut through them. Thankfully he saw that Esther had guessed his plan and had climbed up after him, positioning herself well out of the way.
"That's the last time I'll ever dismiss a warning as native superstition," he promised himself as he chopped away feverishly. No wonder the villagers had considered this an accursed spot - whether their fear arose from ancestral memory or from current suspicions. Indy wondered if the Xicalpan cult had been a unique local aberration or the last remaining trace of a heresy that had been widespread throughout the ancient Mayan civilization. He couldn't help thinking about the mystery of the Mayas' sudden decline, the people abandoning their cities at the height of their magnificence, leaving them to be swallowed up by the jungle as if… As if, he thought, they had developed a sudden fear of their palaces and temples.
With a mighty blow, he severed the last of the restraining vines, yet the fallen stone stayed stubbornly in place. He peered more closely at the jumbled pile and swore. Like a Chinese puzzle, one small rock fragment was jammed in such a position as to hold all the others back. It would be a simple task to lever it aside, but whoever did so would be crushed in the resulting slide.
Jones looked around nervously at the base of the pyramid. There was no time to vacillate; another tentacle had appeared and was feeling around blindly.
One thing remained to be tried. Indy took his whip and lashed it toward the tiny obstructing stone. It was a difficult maneuver with the stone fragment positioned as it was, and it took several frustrating tries before he got the tip of the whip securely around it. Then he pulled with all his might. Nothing happened; the stone was wedged more firmly than he had thought. A third tentacle had appeared at the bottom of the pyramid and the first two were snaking their way up the side. Indy redoubled his efforts, pulling until the muscles on his arms and necks stood out like taut wires stretched to the breaking point. Still there was no telltale grating of stone on stone, no sign of the pile breaking up. Just as Indy thought his heart would burst from the strain, he felt two hands grasp the whip handle in front of his own, another body straining beside him. Together they gave one last pull, and the tension in the whip released, sending them flying backward to land painfully on the hard stones. The jolt had made Indy shut his eyes; he was almost afraid to open them lest he see that the whip had come loose or worse, broken from the force of their tugging. But immediately he heard a low rumbling, and the pyramid began to shake as if the whole structure were about to tumble down. The roar became louder as the rock slide let loose, sending the heavy limestone blocks crashing to the ground.
When at last silence fell again, Indy lay back, letting his tortured breathing return to normal. Wiping the Limestone dust and little bits of dead vegetable matter from his eyes, he looked cautiously down at the hole in the pyramids base. No trace remained of it under the tons of shattered rock. Nor were there any signs left of the creature that had been pursuing them.
Esther picked herself up shakily, too unnerved to speak.
Indy was the first to break the silence. "Mushrooms," he said simply.
Esther turned him a blank stare. Indy wasn't usually given to non-sequiturs. "Mushrooms?" she said, totally nonplussed.
"Last night," he replied disjointedly. ""Father Perez served us mushrooms. There are certain kinds of mushrooms that can make you see things. You know - just like those cactus buttons the Indians use."
She nodded. "Peyote… Mescaline. But Indy - we ate those mushrooms last night. I've never heard of any substance that causes hallucinations nineteen hours after the fact!"
He took her face between his palms and looked at her meaningfully. "Esther," he said gently, "would you rather believe… that?" he gestured with his chin at the silent pile of rubble below.
Slowly she turned her head, looking downward along his line of sight. The scene looked oddly peaceful now, just the silent pile of shattered limestone blocks and rapidly settling dust. No concrete proof of their existence remained. Their notebooks, along with the field pack, had been abandoned in the newly sealed cave far below. Yet, Esther knew she would never be able to erase the sight of those blindly groping tentacles or the sound of Juan Chrysostomo's last scream from her mind. Although it fooled neither of them, Indy was offering a comforting fiction, a refuge for the mind whenever the nightmares got too bad.
At last she nodded slowly. "It must have been the mushrooms," she agreed with significant finality.
Together, they began to make their way down the side of the pyramid.
-O-
Epilogue: Marshall College, Connecticut, November 1931
Indiana Jones sat in his office, staring pensively out his window at the gray November day. A chill rain was falling, making the world outside look sodden and dead, so different from the bright fall day on which the whole adventure had begun. Indy thought back to his hopeful mood on that day two months past and shook his head.
"God's in his Heaven, and all's well with the world." That might be true, he thought sadly, but what strange alien god's were they, and what dark and eldritch places were their heavens - or their hells? Jones counted himself fortunate that he was a man of no particular faith, for if he had been, the events of the past two months would have blown that faith to smithereens.
If this had been one of the Mythos stories, he reflected wryly, it would have ended in true horrifying Lovecraftian fashion: Esther would have been dragged screaming down into the subterranean depths to meet God knows what unthinkable fate; he would have been found wandering dazed and witless in the jungle and would presently be a hopeless lunatic confined to some private asylum outside of witch-haunted Arkham, disturbing the other inmates' rest with his piercing nightly cries of "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu!"
Well, the outcome hadn't been that bad, but it had been bad enough. Immediately upon returning to Connecticut, Esther had resigned her curatorship and headed for the West Coast in an attempt to put a whole continent's width between herself and the statue that stood on Hartford Museum shelves. In the month that Indy had been gone, the lovely Miss Quaid had been pinned by the captain of the football team, a great hulking fellow, all blond hair, teeth, and mile-wide shoulders, who, campus rumor had it, required help in averaging his own test scores. It looked like a lonely semester for Professor Jones. And as for Dean Schuyler… Well, the Dean had been very unhappy at being told that Indy's "something big" had turned up a total washout. Jones was uncomfortably aware that he would have to come up with something in the very near future to restore the Dean's goodwill.
It was all extremely ironic, he thought. What would the Dean's reaction be to the news that the expedition had been successful beyond their wildest dreams? Of course, that could never be. Even the very existence of the ruined temple would have to be kept secret, for Indy couldn't stand the thought that someday someone might go there and dig around those ruins, disturbing what lay beneath.
A disquieting idea occurred to him. How many other old ruins throughout the world had things lurking in their nooks and crannies - dark things, older than time? He suppressed the thought firmly. It wouldn't do for an archaeologist to develop a phobia about looking under rocks.
He got up and began to pace the tiny room, stifling a nervous laugh. "Some expert on the occult you are, Jones," he told himself sardonically. "You get as hysterical as a school girl at the first hint that some of it might actually be true."
His mood had gotten out of hand. What he needed was something to take his mind off the whole business. Work - some nice, doll, boring, mundane work.
Jones remember that he had some archeology 101 test papers in his desk drawer waiting to be graded. Multiple choice - how much more boring could it get? He went back to his desk and sat down, pulling open the drawer. As he reached for the pile of test papers, his hand brushed against a small brightly colored magazine, the copy of Weird Tales that had lain there forgotten since September. He picked it up, regarding it with a barely disguised shudder. He shook his head firmly." Work!" he told himself.
The magazine hit the bottom of the metal wastebasket with an audible thunk.
* * * *
Author's note: This is a classic Raiders story, written over forty years ago and originally published in the print fanzine, Field Studies 1, 1983, owned and edited by Cheree Cargill. I don't recall if I had watched Temple of Doom at the time I wrote this. In the old days before the internet and personal computers, it could be as long as a year between having a story accepted and the time it actually saw print.