As soon as the jeep stops, the heat begins in earnest. It washes through the small vehicle. It feels like being hit with a blast of steam. So hot that my skin stings unpleasantly and so humid I think my clothes might mildew off my body.

The guide gets out of the driver seat and looks ahead. The road is washed out ahead of us, all the earth swept away to expose a section of perhaps twenty feet that was paved with nothing but the underlying rocks. Boulders two or three feet in diameter with similar spaces in between. To our left the jungle rises impassably, a wall of vines and foliage. To our right is a steep drop of forty feet or more. At its base, more jungle on as far as the eye can see.

From the backseat, the Professor asks, “Why are we stopped? Can we not get further?”

I answered, “I don't know. Looks bad though. I'll check.”

I follow the guide out. It's even hotter with the midday sun beating down. Shielding my eyes, I approach our guide. After some seconds considering what to say, I eventually settle on, “*¿Podemos pasar… eso?*” I wave at the field of boulders where the road had been.

He doesn't answer right away. Instead, he takes a cigarette out of an inner pocket and lights it. As he smokes, he surveys the washout. His eyes dart from rock to rock, imagining our vehicle astride them, tires bouncing over the gaps in between. Finally, after the cigarette is burned down halfway, he turns to me and says, “*Sí.*”

“Bueno. So, uh, *¿vamos?*”

“Sí”

We return to the jeep. “He thinks we can get through,” I tell the Professor.

“Very well. Let's keep on then.”

The guide restarts the jeep and we roll forward. We creep, inch by inch, across the rocks. The guide twists the steering wheel back and forth and presses ever so lightly on the jeep's gas. Each nudge on the pedal turns into a lurch forward. I grip the door handle, my knuckles turning white as I imagine one of our tires slipping between the rocks, grounding us out thirty miles from the nearest settlement. The guide however seems unperturbed by this, his face showing no fear; only a single minded focus on the ground before us. The cigarette burns down in his mouth and ash drops into his lap.

A rock below us slips and the jeep pitches to the right, towards the drop off. I let out a cry and my fingers dig into the handle, but the guide keeps his head. His foot comes down on the gas and we accelerate forward, bouncing over several boulders. The bottom of the jeep scrapes against the rocks, but it pulls us away from the edge. And just in time. Behind us I see several rocks, at least one of which a tire had rested on, slide off the edge. Several seconds later I hear the percussive crack as they hit the bottom.

The guide doesn't look outwardly perturbed, but I see that he's bitten most of the way through the filter of his cigarette. I ask, “*¿Bien?*”

He just nods and we keep going. It's only a few more nudges on the gas pedal, a few more sickening lurches, and then we're on the far side, rutted dirt under our wheels. Without looking back, the guide accelerates. Wind rushes in through the open windows, taking away the worst of the heat and clearing the cigarette smoke. As the boulders disappear around a bend in the road, I realized that my heart is pounding and my shirt is drenched with sweat.

z

There are a couple smaller washouts a few miles further on. But they are not nearly as bad and the guide doesn't stop for them. Just keeps the jeep rolling over the exposed rocks. The road rises steadily, but gradually, upwards. On either side, the jungle is overgrowing the road. Vines and branches whip at the windshield as we drive.

The Professor hardly ever looks up. In the backseat he leafs through pages of notes, bright blue eyes flashing across the pages. From time to time he pulls distractedly on his thick gray beard and mutters to himself.

We pass the entire afternoon driving up the road. Even where the road isn't washed out, we hardly ever break fifteen miles an hour it is so rutted. At three, we get to a fork. To the right, the road drops back down. That one was still used by poachers and loggers from time to time. It's rutted and disintegrating, but the jungle is held, at least for the moment, at bay. To the left, is the road to Santa Gloria. It hasn't been driven in a while. Brush had begun to grow up between the hard packed ruts. A thin surface of moss has begun to form. Thin branches sometimes stretched clear across the road.

We turn left. Brush crunching under our wheels. Branches snapping on our windshield. From time to time now, we have to stop. The Guide and I exit, and with our machetes, clear out some particularly thick growth before we can keep driving.

Then, at around seven, we come around a bend. The sun has been obscured by the forest for some time, but here another cliff appears to our right, facing west, and slanting rays of light filter into the jeep through the dusty windshield. The guide stops the jeep again and gets out to look at our newest obstacle. I join him.

The road had once passed close to the edge of the cliff. But now it is gone. Washed away in some rain storm in the year or more since anyone has driven this road. There is nothing but the thick wall of foliage on the left and a sheer rock face plunging down on the right. On the far side of the washout, the road continues, but for those thirty feet, there is nothing left.

From the backseat, the Professor squinting through the windshield shouts, “What's going on? Can we keep going?”

I turn to our Guide and am choosing verbs out of my limited vocabulary. But he didn't wait for the question. He shook his head and said, “*No puedo manajar mas lejo. Nos quedaremos aqui por la noche, y mañana, vamos a caminar.*”

I turn to the Professor, “Tomorrow, we're walking.”

q

That night, I dreamt that I walked through an endless maze of stone corridors. There was no light, so I could not see, but I knew that the ceiling was low. Too low for me to stand. My breaths echoed off the stone in strange ways. Several times, I thought I heard another breathing behind me, or to the side, but when I held my breath to listen, it stopped. It was just an echo I told myself. Nothing more.

H

Our guide wakes us before the sunrise. It still seems the dark of night to me, but in the jungle, I hear the howler monkeys, their strange throaty screeching muffled by the underbrush. So dawn must be close.

We pack by the light of our headlamps. Enough food for several days. Tents, stoves, bug spray and nets. The professor divides his notebooks amongst us. The guide and I take our machetes, and we begin.

We hack into the jungle to the left of the road, and then back down to the other side of the washout. By the time we reach the road, the sky is slate gray and we can see without our lamps. All around us, birds are waking, chattering with the joy of a new day.

On the other side of the washout, the road is badly overgrown. Vines from overhanging branches frequently block the way. The guide and I take turns to walk in the lead, cutting a trail through the dense thicket while the Professor follows. We move steadily, but the going is slow, and by lunch we are still not in Santa Gloria. We hang up our bug net in the shade and have a simple meal of canned meat on tortillas. I ask the guide, and he says at this rate we will reach Santa Gloria later today.

I relay this information to the Professor who simply nods. I ask, “Aren't you at all worried? It's still another day from Santa Gloria to our destination. We'll only have a few days of supplies left by then. And that's assuming that we can find it right away.”

He says, “Yes. We can leave and return if needed. There are plenty of supplies in the jeep.”

“I thought we'd be driving all the way to Santa Gloria.”

“I did as well. But sometimes plans have to change. This is your first time in the field. You'll get used to it eventually.”

“I've been on sites before. I interned in...”

“Yes I know. You've been Chitzen Itza. You've been to Palanque. But this is real. This is a whole city that no one's seen since pre-hispanic times. Not until last year. This is a clean, new site. If the reports can be trusted, this may be the find of the generation.”

“Can the reports be trusted? They were just a bunch of miners. They also reported that the road was passable to Santa Gloria.”

The Professor shrugs, “Maybe not. That's a risk we take.”

He turns away and begins scraping spam onto a new tortilla.

k

All through the afternoon, we hack through the jungle. My arm aches from swinging the machete, my back from the weight of my pack. My eyes sting from the sweat rolling off my forehead.

I am in the lead when the guide calls out. I don't hear what he says, so I turned around. He repeats, “*Mira.*”

I look where he's pointing. Not twenty feet away stands a low cinderblock building, vines crawling up it's sides. Beside it is another, and another. A whole line of them stretching away into the underbrush. I ask, “*¿Santa Gloria?*”

Our guide nods.

I shudder. I had known that the settlement was abandoned for two years. I could not have expected how fast the jungle would conceal it. In my imagination, the vines are rising from the earth like thin creeping fingers to drag any signs of human habitation back to the ground.

We hack out a path to the nearest building and pull on the door. It doesn't open. Rather, the thin rotted plywood it is made of breaks and crumples to the ground. Inside, the habitation is still dry and preserved. The roof and walls stand intact and nothing yet grows from the packed earth of the floor. Vines have however begun to creep through the cracks in the high windows, and a stench of mildew emanates from the cot in one corner. No other furniture remains.

I think of the man who had slept in that cot. The hope or desperation that drove him to this far outpost. How many years did he spend here? Returning, day after day, to the mine that never produced a tenth of the riches it had been said to hold. Was he one of the lucky few who got his hand on a nugget of yellow gold, or one of the countless others who left broken in spirit and fortune?

A

We drag the cot out and throw it into the jungle. We set netting over the doorway and lay our bedrolls out on the dry floor of the house. Our packs sit in the corner. The professor takes out the stove and begins to heat our dinner, while the guide and I leave to clear a path and dig a latrine.

I am tired, not paying good attention to the brush around me as I hack towards what looks like a good clearing. Suddenly, the guide cries out and shoves me aside. He brings his machete down in a savage chop on a vine to my right. It collapses to the ground, and only then I realized that it was not a vine at all, but a coral snake. The viper's head lies still on the forest floor, fangs bared viciously. The body though continues to writhe uncontrollably, red and black stripes rising and falling in mesmerizing spasms.

I realize that I've stopped breathing and take in a gasping breath. The guide simply says, “Cuidado”, and continues forward.

I stay and watch until the body lies still on the ground.

W

That night I dreamt of more tunnels. I stumbled through them, groping forward in search of an escape. I found that I couldn't breathe. I had forgotten how. But still, I would sometimes hear breathing echoing down some side corridor. Shallow rasping breaths.

Soon they were joined by footfalls. Quiet, but discernible in the silence of the tunnels. Whatever it was stalked the tunnels around me. Searching for something. I pressed up against one of the walls and felt glad for the breath I was holding. All through the night, the footsteps and the breathing echoed through the corridors around me, but never found where I stood.

p

We wait until after sunrise to leave. There is no more road to follow and the pace becomes slower yet. Our guide has been to the ancient city, he says. It is close to here, but not easy to find. He went once, when he was working in Santa Gloria at the commissary.

The miner who had found the city offered to lead them there in exchange for some rations. He had said that there were rare antiques there. They would surely be worth a small fortune to a collector. It was clear once they reached the city that there was no such thing. They entered a few of the temples and cracked open some tombs. The most they found were dusty bones. So the miner got nothing from the commissary, and the city was forgotten. Just a story to be passed around. Passed word of mouth for years until it reached the Professor in his office. An unassuming email from a long-time correspondent arriving in the depths of a dreary New England winter.

We take a southeasterly track, following our compass as near as we can. After nearly an hour of walking at a low upward grade, we come to a ridge-line. On its far side, the ground falls away steeply into a valley far below us. The guide leads us to a ravine and we begin to descend down its center. On either side of us rise cliffs of jagged limestone, but the guide always finds a way through, hacking through vines or scrambling down boulders as needed.

The descent is slow and takes several hours, but finally the ravine widens and the ground flattens out. We are finally on the floor of the canyon. From here the guide looks again at his compass and begins leading us close to due south. For forty-five minutes to an hour we clear a path this way until we hit marshy ground and have to turn back. We set a new course further to the east and try again. This time we progress for a full hour before the guide shakes his head. He says something in Spanish that I don't catch and points back the way we came.

“*¿Necesitamos regresar?*” I ask.

He nods.

“*¿Estamos Perdido?*” Are we lost?

He just shrugs and begins to walk back.

For the rest of the day we explore like this, cutting tracks through the dense jungle away from the base of the ravine. Finally, with the sun behind the ridge-line and the light growing dim we find a bit of flat ground to set up our camp.

Once everything is in place, tents set up and the stove heating water for dinner, we all fall into silence. The Professor flips through his notebooks. Searching perhaps for a clue as to the city's location. But he apparently finds nothing. The guide sits near the edge of the camp smoking cigarette after cigarette and glaring out into the darkening jungle. I keep an eye on the water, and when it boils mix up the unpalatable dehydrated food that we brought with us. After that I go to the tent and soon fall asleep.

9

That night, the rasping breath in my dream came from ahead of me. It did not move, and I knew with a startling certainty that it had found me. Now it sat in the dark, perhaps a dozen feet away and watched me.

For an instant, I thought that I would turn and run. But I knew that was madness. Whatever shared the tunnel with me knew I was here. This was its place, I was an interloper in these mazing passageways. But somehow I knew, in the inexplicable logic of dreams, that as long as I stood my ground, faced the rasping breaths, it would not attack me. But if I turned and ran, it would have no other choice.

I said to the darkness, “Hello.”

There was no answer.

I tried, “*¿Hola?*”

That was met with a laugh. Rasping like the breath. It was a laugh with no mirth. A laugh that sounded like a rake over gravel. Finally, a voice answered me, nearly a whisper, “If you wish to speak my tongue, it is a good deal older than that. But this language of yours will do as well as any.”

I asked, “Who are you?”

“Do you really wish to know?”

I hesitated.

The voice said, “If you want to know, come to me.”

“How,” I asked, “I cannot walk here.” As soon as I said it I knew it to be true.

“Then walk there. The way is the same.”

“What way.”

The laughter again, only briefly, and then, “You are all so lost in this world. You act like it's not all one. Look in your hands.”

I did, and found I was holding my compass. I could not see it through the darkness, but somehow, I could tell its bearing. I held it before me and let the needle stabilize. I set the bearing towards the speaker.

The voice asked, “What is the way?”

I replied, “One hundred four. Well East of Southeast.”

The voice said no more.

d

I do not tell them of my dream the next morning. I do not know what to make of it. While we are preparing for the day's trek I set my compass to one hundred and four degrees. In that way is jungle. The same as every other direction.

The guide chooses another bearing, once again South of Southeast, and we once again trek into the forest. Once again we go until it's clear we have gone wrong, and once again we return. We do this twice more in the morning, and lunch is a silent affair, each of us in our own world of frustrations.

The guide hardly eats and then is back with a machete in his hand hacking distractedly at vines.

I ask the Professor, “How long do we keep at this?”

“As long as it takes. Or until we run out of supplies.”

We finish our meals. I take out my compass and point it again to one hundred and four degrees. I say, “I'm going to try this way.”

“The guide...”

“Has led us in circles for a day and a half. I'll try this way. Follow him if you like.”

As I head out of camp, the guide shouts something at me. I pay him no mind and begin to hack through the brush. I feel a hot tangle of emotions rise up in me. Frustration with the hours of slashing fruitlessly through the jungle, certain deep in my being that we were going the wrong way. Shame when I realize that my bearing, my one hundred and four degrees, are merely the digits imprinted on me by a dream the night before. But also, rising above those, an excitement I can't explain. A delirious soaring of my heart with every step I take. I feel like a hound on a scent, driven forward by primeval forces I did not know lived in me.

I charge forward for what seems like hours. But when I stop, gasping for breath, my right arm burning from the exertion of swinging the machete, I see that only twenty minutes have passed. To my surprise, I find that the guide is following closely, and the Professor several steps behind him.

The guide comes up and says something to me that I don't understand. When I don't answer, he taps on his compass. I gasp, “*Ciento cuatro.*”

He continues forward, at a pace that seems more sustainable. The Professor approaches me, “Where are we going.”

“One hundred and four degrees by the compass.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” I say. Unable to admit that I received that heading in a dream the night before.

“Will we find the city there?”

For a long time I remain silent. Finally I say, “Yes.”

I'm surprised that he seems to accept this answer. He gestures to where the guide is continuing the path through the jungle, “Then let's go.”

We follow for some time. When the guide becomes tired I take the lead again. I try to keep a measured pace, but find it hard. That drive still burns in me and I hack through the vines and branches until my arm is aching and my breathing is once again ragged.

But then I swing my machete, and it hits something solid. The unexpected impact stuns me. I release the machete and it falls to the ground silently, cushioned by the vegetation. Behind me, the guide asks if I'm alright and I nod.

I pick up the machete again, and prod at the brush I had tried to hack through. I find that it's actually vines growing thickly on a boulder. The rock seems to stand a bit taller than me and nearly spherical. I see now that on the far side of the boulder, a hill rises up suddenly. The Professor walks up to my side. I say “Just a boulder. Surprised me, but we can go around.”

He says, “Strange place for a boulder, so far from the cliff like this.” He gestures to the hill ahead of us, “And strange place for a hill, here on the flatlands.”

“What are you saying?”

He takes out a knife and begins to cut vines away from the rock, “Help me clear this off.” I join him, slicing away foliage with the machete, and after a minute, so does the guide. It's quick work to slice away the vines. Slightly harder to drag them aside where they tangle in the underbrush. But it takes us less than ten minutes to clear the plants and get a view of the stone underneath.

It was, as I thought, a large boulder. But denuded of its coverings, I see now that it's been intricately carved. A double row of teeth near the bottom. Two slits above those: a nose. And midway up it's surface, a pair of deep set round holes for the eyes. It is I realize, a sculpture of a skull, nearly eight feet tall, carved into a solid block of limestone. It leans to the left, sinking into the soft forest floor, but is otherwise remarkably well preserved.

The Professor nods, apparently unsurprised by our find. He says, “So we've found it.”

I ask, “The city? This is just a single carved rock.”

He points past the skull, to the hill beyond, and I realize his meaning. I remember the buildings of Santa Gloria, abandoned for only a few years and already being overtaken by the creeping jungle. No city could sit here for centuries without being buried. This isn't a hill before us. It's a temple. A pyramid rising from the flatlands. The Professor takes the lead now, taking long strides up the side of the pyramid.

We climb for a long while. The ground below us is loose and the footing is treacherous. Many times I slip and have to grasp at the underbrush to arrest my fall. Here and there I see bits of the pyramid protruding from beneath. Stepped stone crumbling in the elements. Mostly, the entirety of the temple is covered with a thick layer of loam and trees.

We rise above the canopy of trees that grow from the flatlands and still the temple rises up. As we climb, the layer of earth gets thinner. More and more the temple itself protrudes. The trees become shrubs and finally, near the summit, just vines. Then we are at the pyramid's wide top, where larger trees have taken up root, a small patch of forest high above the rest.

From this vantage we look out. To the west, the line of cliffs rise, steep and jagged, stretching out to the horizon in either direction. But to the East is only more forest, sprawling and flat all the way across the Yucatan Peninsula. But near to us, not so flat. I see one hill protruding sharply from the forest. Then another, and another. Dozens of them, stretching out in a line to the south of us. More temples I realize. A whole city.

Then, from within the small patch of trees atop the temple, I hear the Professor cry out excitedly and go to see what he has found.

g

Not much of the altar still stands. It seems that it was once split into three sections, each containing a ritual chamber. Two of them have collapsed, thick trees rooted into the heap of rubble that mark where they once stood. The third chamber though has not yet fully succumbed to the elements. Two walls support a small corner of stone roof. On one of the walls I can see what seems to be a very faded relief. Perhaps a corner of a pictogram. But what has caused the Professor to call out is below.

The collapsed roof lies all on the floor, except in the very center of the former ritual chamber. There, a hole descends into the pyramid. For a moment I think that the Professor has fallen, that the cry I had taken for excitement was actually alarm as he plunged through the floor. But then his head pops out of the hole, “Come quick,” he says, “You have your headlamp on you. Yes?”

I follow him into the hole. It is a bit of a squeeze at the top, but quickly widens once I'm past the rubble littering the entrance. It descends steeply for a bit more than ten feet and then levels off. Standing on level ground, I take out my headlamp and switch it on. I gasp.

Before me is the tunnel from my dream. Though I've never seen it before now, I know that without question. The Professor turns to me. I tell him, “It's nothing.”

We wait for the guide, who takes out his own flashlight, and then the Professor says, “Let us go. A tunnel like this could lead to something very interesting.”

I say, “Shouldn't we wait. At least run a line from the surface so we don't get lost.”

He squints down the tunnel. “Little chance of that,” he says, “Don't see any branches. If we get to one we can turn back then. But for now, I want to know what's ahead.”

We begin down the tunnel. I'm preoccupied by memories of this tunnel from my dream. Remembering how it twisted and turned, spawning a million branches in every way. A maze impossible to navigate. But here under the pyramid, I found the Professor to be correct. The tunnel descends in a clockwise spiral that widens steadily the lower we go, as though we are following the contour of a smaller pyramid within the larger one we had climbed.

The descent goes on and on. When I check my watch, I was alarmed to discover that we've been walking for over an hour. Turn after turn of the tunnel we are greeted by more of the same: a low stone archway of gray limestone over our heads. So low that I find myself walking stooped, my back aching. But still we press on.

Until finally, we come to an archway decorated with bas-reliefs too faded to decipher. Here, the tunnel deviates from its gentle spiral near the surface of the pyramid and dives towards its heart. The way becomes quite steep, the gently sloping floor breaking into a worn staircase. But thankfully, the ceiling is slightly higher, so that I can finally stand erect. After fewer than a hundred steps, we reach the end of the tunnel.

The walls and ceiling of hewn stone is replaced abruptly by the smooth walls of a natural cavern. The steps continue, hewn now into natural rock. Stalagmites hang from the ceiling, casting eerie shadows in the beams of our flashlights. As ancient as the pyramid was, this cave is many times older, a hollow in the earth carved out the course of a million years.

The steps lead to a platform of stone, a square area at the foot of the stairs that has been leveled and cleared of debris. On the right of the platform, a statue is carved directly into the wall. It is of a man with a jaguar's head. The lower jaw has cracked off and lies at the statue's feet along with a collection of fragmented offerings. On the left, a bas-relief stands a full eight feet tall and half again as wide, Mayan glyphs stretch down its face.

At the edge of the platform opposite the stairs is a pool of water. It is ten feet long and perhaps eight feet across to the far wall of the cavern. I shine my headlamp to see how deep the pool is, and there is no bottom. The cave stretches away underwater for as far as the beam of my light can penetrate. So not just a pool. A cenote. This water is connected by a system of caverns and underground rivers to the rest of the freshwater in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Behind me the Professor says, “This is exquisite. The find of the decade. The find of the century. Come take a look at this relief. The writing is nearly perfectly preserved. Incredible!”

I try to share his enthusiasm. But in the back of my mind I keep remembering my dreams from the nights before. I strain my ears listening for a rasping breath to be drawn from the darkness. The only sound though is an occasional drip of water falling into the cenote. The guide seems equally ill at ease. So confident walking through the jungle, he now casts the beam of his light about and squints into the darkness. He grips his machete tightly in his left hand.

The Professor has me copy down the symbols on the bas-relief in a notebook while he investigates the shrine. Some glyphs I recognize, but I'm unable to decipher the meaning. This is some variant different from the writing that I learned. More pictographic it seems. More ancient judging by the temple. The sound of the Professor carefully sifting through debris at the foot of the statue joins the periodic drips.

The guide's flashlight beam continues to make its rounds about the cavern. He lights a cigarette and sucks at it with quick, agitated breaths. Soon the cavern fills with gray smoke.

When I finish my transcription, I find the Professor standing by the edge of the cenote, gazing at its placid, dark surface. I say, “I've copied down the glyphs. Did you find anything of interest?”

“Pottery shards. Some crude ceremonial knives.”

“Anything that would be of interest,” I pause for a moment thinking of the right euphemism, “to our sponsor?”

His glance darts to the guide. Then he says, “We'll discuss that when we can have some time to ourselves.”

I let him leave the answer at that.

o

That night in my dreams I could see. There was no light source I could discern, but the maze of tunnels that I stand in is finally visible. As I thought, it is the same as the tunnel we walked through today. The same low, arched ceiling, the same slate gray, rough hewn limestone held together with ancient cement. But in my dream the tunnels branched and expanded in every direction. An impenetrable maze that went on forever.

The voice echoed through the tunnels, bouncing off stone and around passageways so I couldn't say what direction it came from. It said, “You came close today. A pity you could not have gone the whole way to the shrine. I would very much like to meet you.”

I thought of the carved altar we had found our way to. I said “We descended the stairs the whole way. We came to the shrine.”

The voice laughed. Rasping mirthless peels thundered through the passageways around me, reflecting and interfering until there is nothing but pure static ringing in my ear. Finally it subsided, and the voice said, “Child, you were at the threshold only. The shrine is on the other side.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, and received only more laughter in response.

When the outburst was finished, the voice said, “You should know that there will be a price for what you took.”

“I took nothing. I only copied down the glyphs from the shrine.”

I half expected more laughter. But the voice simply said, “True, you took nothing. But you did not come alone. To me it is of little consequence who took what. Either I will be paid and all is well. Or I will not be...”

Then the laughter came a third time.

I shouted over the cacophony, “What payment do you ask for.”

My answer is a long time in coming, “Meet me at the shrine. There we can discuss my payment.”

l

When I rise the next morning, I see that the Professor has already been awake for some time, poring over the glyphs I'd copied down the day before and taking copious notes on a pad of lined paper. I do not disturb him but instead help the guide prepare breakfast for the three of us. Only when the food is ready does the Professor look up from his task. And then only long enough to accept the proffered plate of rehydrated hash, and then return to work.

After breakfast the guide leaves us. He will fetch the remainder of our supplies from the jeep and return here. He seems to think the trip, now that he knows the lay of the land, should take no more than two days. We meanwhile intend to return to the temple.

I clean our dishes and tidy the camp a bit as I wait for the Professor to complete the translation. Finally, running out of ways to keep myself busy, I ask him, “What did you find yesterday?”

He says, “Find?”

“Yes, I asked if you found anything that would interest our sponsors. You said you'd tell me one the guide was gone. Well?”

He said, “Oh, yes,” and fished through his pack a moment before pulling out a small figurine and handing it to me.

It is the jet black of onyx and fits easily in my hand. I recognize it immediately as a smaller version of the carving at the altar we'd found the day before. A man with the head of a jaguar. I ask, “Is it valuable?”

He answers, “I'm sure there are collectors to whom it would be of interest. Could fetch a bit. Nowhere near enough to justify this trip on its own. But, I think there may be some good news on that front.”

I look at him expectantly, but he simply returns to the glyphs. Finally, seeing no answer is forthcoming, I take another pass through our campsite, and eventually settle down to clean my boots.

I finish the right boot, cleaning away the mud and applying a layer of oil to its leather, when the Professor finally sets aside the glyphs with a satisfied smile. He looks to me and says, “Well, it's as I thought. Quite remarkable really. I've never heard of such a thing.”

I set the boots aside, “What?”

“It seems that pool at the base of the temple, it goes quite deep.”

I nod, “Yes. It goes deeper than my headlamp could penetrate. Must be a cenote.”

“Yes, exactly. Seems there's a whole network of caverns under the water. But not just under the water. According to these glyphs, there's another cavern like the one we were in yesterday. It's only accessible by swimming into the cenote and through a tunnel to the other side. It seems that the Maya thought that when you'd swam through there you got to the underworld. Could talk to the dead and other such things. Apparently in times of trouble, the king would swim through carrying offerings for the gods of the underworld.”

Words from my dream the night before return to me you were at the threshold only. The shrine is on the other side.

I ask, “Is there a shrine there? In the other cavern?”

The Professor looks at me, “Perhaps? These glyphs are very ancient. There are many I can't understand. If we want to know there's only one thing for it. It says that the ancient kings would dive to the other cavern, so it must be possible on a single breath. We'll get there that way.”

“Oh,” I say. I have a suspicion that when the Professor says we will dive through to the cavern, he's not including himself in the swimming. I ask, “Even assuming that the glyphs are right, how do we know the underwater tunnel hasn't collapsed in the intervening thousand or more years since there was a king here. Or the cavern itself for that matter? Wouldn't it be better to come back here another time. With scuba gear and real underwater lights so we can test the truth of what you've translated.”

The Professor picks up the small onyx figurine from where I set it down, and turns it over in his hand. “You knew going into this expedition that there was more to it than the archeological aspect. I need this trip to pay off. You need this trip to pay off. This figurine is old. It's very well preserved. Perhaps it could fetch two thousand dollars on the right black market. But after taking the… dealer fees into account, there's only a thousand, maybe a bit more, left over. That hardly covers the bribes that were needed to get here in the first place, to say nothing of the outfitting costs. Needless to say, our sponsors will not be happy. No, if we can't find anything else, then we won't be returning. With or without scuba gear. The next time someone comes here it will be a team. A full archeological dig with all the government oversight that entails. There will be no windfall for me, and without me, no career for you. So what'll it be. Are we going to swim, or are we going to go home empty handed?”

My dream from the night before flashes through my mind, ending as it did with a simple command, meet me at the shrine. It scares me. But there is an equal measure of the same driving energy that had pushed me through to the temple the day before. There is something at the shrine, something that makes me want to run away as fast as I can, but also draws me in inexorably.

Seeing my hesitation, the Professor says, “Well?”

“Let's go to the shrine,” I say.

“Very good.”

w

The pool lies dark and placid before me, and I find myself having second thoughts. The beam from my headlamp shows that below the water's surface, the cavern narrows and curves out of sight. A dark pit that may lead to another cavern. Or may lead to nothing but a dark twisting tunnel, with stalagmites to snarl on and be trapped forever below the surface. I find myself holding my breath involuntarily.

We have brought a rope, and the plan we worked out on the walk down is that I will swim with that tied to me. When I've used half my breath, I'll turn around and return along the line. If I get stuck, I'll tug on the line and the professor will pull me back. It seemed a good plan when we made it, but now, faced with the water, it seems hopelessly inadequate.

I strip to my underwear and tie the rope tightly around my waist. The Professor holds the other end loosely. For a moment, I consider backing out. But I know the Professor is right, we can't return from this expedition empty-handed. For both of our sakes. Anyway, I reason to myself, I'm just going to dive as far as I can. If I don't make it to the cavern, I just have to follow the line back. I wished I believed that.

My first dive I don't go far. I had held on to some hope that the second cavern would be very close, that the tunnel would rise just around the bend. But that hope is quickly dashed. I dive down to where the cavern curves out of sight, and stick my head around the corner. The headlamp, waterproof to ten meters I believe, is still working and illuminates the passage before me. As far as the beam of light goes, the tunnel slopes steadily down.

I return to the surface and tell the Professor what I saw. I half expect him to tell me not to try further. That it's too dangerous. But he just nods. I take a deep breath and dive again.

This time, I swim some way down the tunnel. Although swim isn't the right way to describe it. The tunnel is so narrow that I can have a hand on each side and push myself along. My ears start to hurt from the water pressure as I get lower. But ahead, in the beam of the flashlight, I can see the tunnel start to slope up again.

As I push forward again, the tunnel narrows so that it brushes against me on either side. Suddenly, I'm gripped by a wave of claustrophobia, the walls seem to be closing in on me. All I want is a breath of fresh air. I get a mouthful of water instead. Whirling around, I scramble back the way I came, kicking hard back to the cavern with the professor. I surface gasping for breath and choking.

After I haul myself out I kneel for a moment breathing hard and coughing. Finally, once I've recovered enough to talk, the Professor asks, “Are you alright.”

“Yes, I just panicked I think. How long was I down there?”

“Not long. Twenty seconds maybe.”

“Damn. I know I can go longer.”

We had timed it on the way down. Even walking, I could hold my breath for over a minute. He asks, “Did you see anything?”

“Yes. Looks like the tunnel starts up again. But it gets narrower. I was scared of getting stuck.”

I'm now hoping, nearly praying, that he'll tell me not to try. That it was a good effort. Someday, someone will come here with scuba gear and find out what's at the end of the tunnel. But we've given it our best effort. All he says is, “You said you think you can go longer.”

I respond, “I know I can. Give me a minute to recover.”

On my third and final dive, I kick downward determinedly and slide quickly through the first half of the tunnel. After that, It does get narrower, jagged rock brushes against me, but it's easy enough to keep going. The cone of light ahead of me shows that the tunnel continues. I kick forward.

And then everything goes dark.

I don't know what went wrong. Perhaps the headlamp was less water proof than I'd remembered. Perhaps its power button brushed against a rock turning it off. Perhaps something else entirely. But for me the result is the same. Absolute darkness envelops me. I try to turn but just get hopelessly stuck in the narrow tunnel, cutting my hands and feet on the stone. I yank hard on the rope at my waist. Once. Twice.

For a moment, It seems like it will work. I can feel the rope pulling me back. It orients me and I can get unjammed. But then, the pulling stops. I feel the rope slip from around my waist and off into the darkness behind me. I grasp for it, but too late.

There's nothing now. No flashlight to show the way forward. No rope to lead the way back. I grope in the darkness around me and find nothing but the sharp edges of the wall in every direction. My lungs are burning. My head is reeling.

I find a direction that's free of obstructions and push forward. My body scrapes against the sharp rocks, but I don't care. I don't care if I'm going forward or back, I just want to go.

I try to breathe in. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it. I get nothing but water.

I look around in desperation. I get nothing but darkness.

And then, a deeper darkness closes in.

d

I don't know if it was a dream or not, what happened next. There are many reasons to believe it was. I saw things differently than I ever have waking. But at the same time I believe now, and I certainly believed then, that I was awake. Or perhaps I found a place where the boundary between waking and dreams was too thin for the distinction to hold meaning. At any rate, I won't dwell further on this, as I don't believe it to be of much importance.

I woke, or dreamed I woke, beside the shrine. At first I couldn't see, but as I lay in the dark, my eyes grew accustomed to it. It seemed that a dim light filtered in from somewhere high above. Too faint for me to say from where. I was surrounded by a sea of impenetrable darkness. Or not quite impenetrable. Out of the corners of my eyes I could make out shapes, vast pyramids hanging from the ceiling of the cavern thousands of feet above my head. In those glimpses, I could tell that the cavern stretched away for further than I could imagine, a whole city larger than the one above ground hung above me. But when I tried to focus my gaze, I saw nothing but darkness, and wondered if I imagined it all. The only thing I could see with certainty, an island of dim light, was the shrine before me.

It was old. It had been here long before the Spanish had arrived here, and even before the Maya. It may have been here in this cavern before the first men came down from the trees to the savannah. It was a stalagmite of enormous size, twenty feet high at least, and nearly thirty long. But more astonishing than its size was its shape. Somehow, the dripping of limestone upon this rock, eon after eon, had created a perfect likeness of the head of a jaguar, mouth open and roaring. Tufas ran like fur on its face, and within the mouth, stalactites hung like bared fangs. The ears were pressed back against its head. In the place of the eyes were two pits deep into the rock. They were as dark, an impossible, impenetrable, stygian dark that went past any mere absence of light. Those eyes ate the light that came near them, sucking it in. Seeming to almost glow with darkness.

I walked around the shrine once, seeing it from every angle, when a voice behind me said, “Magnificent. No?”

It was the voice from my dream. Rasping out of the darkness. I spun around, and for the first time came face to face with the god.

I could tell that he was of great stature. If he stood at full height he would have been seven feet tall or more. But he was stooped, so that the top of his head was a little above mine. He approached me slowly, limping on his left leg. No… paw. He was limping on his left paw.

As he came towards me, the light illuminated him further, and I could see that many of his features were not human. He walked on great padded paws. And his hands, though like human hands in most regards, ended in long rending claws. But the most striking was his head. It was the head of a jaguar above human shoulders. It was from a jaguar's fanged mouth that the rasping voice came, “You didn't answer. Is this shrine not magnificent?”

“Yes,” I stuttered, “It is.”

The mouth curled up into what I assume he meant to be a smile. But the bared teeth were too sinister. He looked me up and down, “So you are the one. The one who came to take from my temple. You look strange.”

“I have taken nothing. I want only to explore. To learn.”

“But the old man with you?”

Words didn't come to me for a minute, then I said, “We can return them.”

He laughs. The laugh is not as terrible as it was in my dreams. Almost more of a cough. He said, “Too late for that. I have no need for those trinkets now at any rate. Take them. Take all that you can. I'm too old now to be hoarding treasures. All I want is a drink. One last drink before I join the others.”

“The others?”

He sighed, “They neglected the darkness so long. Even before. And now… well.” He trailed off, bright feline eyes staring vacantly into the cavern beyond me. Then his gaze locked with mine again, “You have any cigarettes on you?”

“No. What?”

He shook his head, “The last fools who came here at least had that much decency. A pack of cigarettes. All gone now though. Smoked down to the butts,” He sighed, “Once it was tobacco mounded high on the altar. Enough for a year. For a lifetime of man. But now they come and not even a pack. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered. Faded away with the rest.”

I ask again, “The rest of what? What are you?”

He fixed a disdainful gaze on me, “The rest of the gods of the underworld. We haven't fared well these centuries. One after the next we starved down here. Forgotten. Forsaken.”

“Starved? Gods need to eat?”

The jaguar god looked at me then. I saw the hunger in his eyes and took a step back. Another coughing laugh. Then, “We need the offerings. We need the rituals. Without those we waste away. The rest already have. I was once the first and greatest of them, and so it's been my lot to watch them wither and die. My fate to become the last and the least.”

I held up my hands, “I don't know the rituals.”

He shrugged, “Then try your best. I'm starving. As long as the...”

Suddenly he began coughing. A hacking cough like I would expect from a dying man. In his throes, several of his fangs fell from his mouth, clattering on the stone floor of the cavern. When the fit subsided, he reached down and scooped them up in a clawed hand. For a long time he looked down at the teeth in his hand. His sides heaved and his rasping breaths filled the cavern. Finally, he took the teeth and replaced them, one after the next, into his mouth, pressing them into his gums. Blood flowed out when he did, running past his lips, down his neck, and finally onto his bare human chest, but the teeth seemed to stay where he put them. I asked, “Are you alright?”

He glared at me, “I don't have long left me. But enough. Complete the rituals.”

I began to stutter, “You… I… I don't know...”

He lunged forward gripping my shoulder in a grip like a vice. I felt his claws digging through my skin and cried out. He drew his face up to mine. His breath was stale and warm; musty like the corridors of the temple. He growled, “Complete the ritual, or you will never leave this land.”

After that, I don't remember what happened.

x

There's darkness all around me. For a long time I lie still, hoping that my eyes will adjust to the darkness as they did in my dream. The dream comes back to me in its fullness and I am gripped by a sudden dread. The god's face up against mine, his last threatening words. I imagine that I hear padded footsteps in the darkness and sit bolt upright.

As I do, something falls to the ground beside me. I reach down and my hands close on a hard plastic case. My headlamp, I realize. And then earlier memories come back to me, like they're another, earlier, dream. I was in the tunnel, trapped in the darkness. Trapped in the waters that should have surely drowned me.

But I'm not. I'm here. Wherever that is.

I turn on the headlamp, and find that whatever its earlier issue, it's now fully functioning. I find that I'm in a cavern. Pillars on limestone stand around me. At my feet is a pool, like the one at the base of the temple. It must be where the underwater passageway comes out. In the center of the room stands a rock, slightly taller than myself and running with stalagmites. It casts eerie shadows on the walls of the cavern as I turn my light on it. It's like the rock in my dream. But there it had been towering, and a perfect image of a snarling jaguar. Now it's much smaller, hardly taller than myself. When I look at it in the right way, it looks almost like the head of a jaguar, but in an abstract way. Like finding that shape in a cloud. I can only see it because I'm looking for it.

Something on the cavern wall catches my eye and I walk to see it better. Carved into the wall are a collection of pictograms. They're faint now, and hard to see, but details begin to become apparent. It shows a skyline turned on its head. Pyramids descend from a line near the top, like they're hanging from the sky. I shudder, reminded of my own visions.

Below the inverted city there is a cluster of human-like figures. One stands high above the rest. His head seems strange, with an elongated, animalistic jaw and claws at the ends of his fingers. At his feet, two men hold a third down, his chest rent open with deep gashes. Another man stands beside them, holding his hands up to the sky. In one hand is a knife. In the other, a human heart.

I turn to leave this place. I know that swimming is possible. I can't remember getting here, but clearly I did make it through the tunnel. I remember the last panicked surge I made before blacking out. Maybe that had brought me through, but then I was too exhausted by the push and passed out on the other side. It seems implausible, but I can find no better rational explanation.

As I'm walking past the rock, the shrine, on my way towards the pool, something glitters in the beam of my flashlight. I squat down before the rock, and see that in a nook within it, the mouth of the jaguar in my imagination, there is a pile of offerings. Many are carved limestone and onyx, like the figurine the Professor took, but that's not what caught my attention. I pick up a small figure from near the top of the pile. The figurine is of a terrible creature: a bloated man covered all over with spines. But it is made of a dull yellow metal and is heavy in my palm.

For a long time I stand with the figurine in my hand and weigh what to do.

g

I swim the tunnel again. Now that I know there is a connection, it's easy to do and I arrive back at the threshold, breathing hard, but not gasping. I walk up through the pyramid, finding I have to take frequent breaks to catch my breath. Sometimes, when I hear my own labored breathing echoing around a passageway, I imagine that it's someone else, a rasping, terrible breathing just around the corner. But it's just my imagination.

Still, it is a great relief when I finally step out of the pyramid and into the fresh air. It is night, but the air is still warm. Above me stars twinkle down through the jungle canopy. All around there are strange noises. The calling out of jungle creatures and snapping of twigs. But I pay them no mind. I was face to face today with the lord of the darkness and walked away. I will not be hurt now.

As I approach the camp, the Professor leaps up, “You're alive!”

I nod.

“But I thought. When the rope broke…”

I say, “I made it to the other side. There's another cavern there as you thought. And another shrine.”

“You were gone so long.”

For a long time I was silent. My experiences that day were so strange, so inexplicable, that I didn't even know how to start. Finally I said, “We have to return them” “What?” he asked.

“The figurine. The one you took from the altar the other day. You have to put it back.”

He looks taken aback, “You know perfectly well I can't do that. Without our sponsorship we'd never have gotten here in the first place, and if we come back empty handed...”

“It doesn't matter. If you try to take them, he'll kill us. He might anyway. I don't know. He said it was too late already, that we needed to do the ceremony. But...” I see that the Professor is concerned, but not with what I'm saying. He's concerned about me.

He asks, “Who? Who is going to kill us?”

I force myself to say it, “A god. I met him at the shrine. On the other side of the tunnel.”

Still that look of concern, “Are you quite sure you're alright.”

“Yes. There's nothing wrong with me.”

“You're telling me you met God.”

“No. Not God like that. He said he was a god. A god of the darkness. It was his shrine.”

The Professor cocks an eyebrow at me, “And he's unhappy that I've taken his offerings?”

I hesitate a moment, “No. He's happy about that. That's what scares me. He wants a ceremony in exchange...”

The Professor laughs, “Very good then. We'll give him his ceremony, then we'll be off. What's the god want us to do?”

I can tell that he's mocking me. He doesn't believe that I talked to anyone in the temple. Hell, I can hardly believe it myself. I say, “We can't do the ceremony. We need to return the artifacts.”

“Why?”

I lie, “I don't know it. I don't know the ceremony he wants.”

“So this...god of darkness. He tells you he wants a ceremony, but not what it is?”

“Yes.” That at least was true.

The Professor says, “Then I don't see what we can do.”

“You can return the artifacts! We shouldn't have taken them to begin with.”

He asks, “Are you getting cold feet now? You knew what this expedition entailed.”

“Raiding? Yes I knew that. And I should never have gone along with it.”

“Look, I feel as uncomfortable as you about it. But we never could have gotten funding otherwise. This whole city would have gone undiscovered. So really, is it such a price to pay? And just think, when we get back, you'll be famous. You were one of the first two men to set foot in a whole ancient city never before seen. They'll probably give you tenure just for that. Or at least a plum book deal.”

“Are you not listening to me. That doesn't matter. If we don't return the offering, we die.” He doesn't seem convinced. Finally he says, “The shrine you found, on the far side of the cenote. Did it have anything… of interest.”

“No,” I say. But I hesitate too long before I say it.

He tries to keep his face expressionless. But I see something. A twinkling in his eye.

I say, “Please. Please just return it. Don't make this worse.”

He nods, but says nothing more.

I feel defeated. And very, very tired. I look at the darkness of night all around me. This day has gone on too long. I tell him, “I'm going to sleep now. We can return it in the morning.”

“We can,” he says. No indication that we will.

o

In my dream that night I begged the darkness to let us return the offerings. I got no answer.

l

The next day I wake late. The sun has already passed its zenith and begun to fall to the west. I find my watch and see that it's nearly 3. The Professor is gone, and it seems that the guide has still not returned.

I get food for myself, breakfast I suppose, though a late one, and see we're nearly out of supplies. We have enough for another day but little beyond that. I eat and then spend a restless hour in the camp, swatting away mosquitos.

Finally the Professor comes back. His hair is wet and I can see that his clothes have become damp from his skin. I ask him, “Did you swim through the cenote?”

“Yes. I wanted to see the shrine myself.”

“Did you take anything?”

“No. In fact, I returned the offerings as you wanted. Now there's no need for this god of yours to be upset.”

I know he's lying. But I'm still so tired. It hardly seems to matter. So I don't push the matter. Simply say, “We're running low on food.”

He shrugs, “The guide, he said he'd be returning later today, no?”

“Yes, he thought he could make it to the jeep in a day and then return the next. He should arrive this evening.”

“Then I don't see what you're worried about. He'll be back with a pack full of nothing but food.”

“I suppose you're right.”

p

The guide does not return that evening. The next morning, we cook the last of our oats and coffee. We wait for some time, but still he does not appear. At ten I say, “I don't think he's coming.”

The Professor says, “Let's wait a bit longer. It is a rather long way back to the jeep.” We wait until nearly noon, and still he doesn't appear. At last I say, “You can do what you like, but I'm getting out of here.”

The Professor seems ready to argue but then he merely nods in agreement.

We pack what's left of the food and our sleeping bags. The rest we leave behind, tents still pitched. The Professor says it's for when we return. It feels more like jettisoning weight we can't afford. Our plan is to hike as far as Santa Gloria and spend the night in the old miner's shack. The next day we'll continue on to the jeep. Both of us are half expecting to meet the guide on our way. That he'll have some perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay.

We scramble up the side of the mountain all day. The descent had taken two hours at most, but the ascent is a nightmare. We find the ravine that we came down, but still manage to keep getting lost, taking wrong branches that end in sheer cliffs. Finding ourselves slashing through underbrush I could have sworn we'd cut on the way in. By mid-afternoon we're drenched in sweat and gasping. Still the mountainside rises up without any apparent end.

We stop and eat lunch atop a large boulder. The last canned meat. Through the foliage we can see the flatlands far below us. But no signs of the pyramids.

For the rest of the day we struggle upwards, finally reaching the ridge line as the sun sinks below the horizon. So close I know to Santa Gloria. So close to a road that would take us back to our jeep and fresh supplies. But we can find no trail. Perhaps we went up the wrong ravine. But it's getting dark. We abandon our plan of reaching Santa Gloria that day, and the shelter of the cinder block shack. Instead we clear away the flattest bit of ground we can find and lay our sleeping bags there.

For dinner we rehydrate some beans. We forgot the spices when we were packing earlier, so they taste of preservatives and their plastic container and little else. But we're both too hungry to complain or even notice.

Finally we lay ourselves out and fall asleep beneath the overcast, starless sky.

!

I do not dream that night, although maybe that is expected as I hardly sleep. We're woken by the sound of raindrops pattering on the leaves. I look up and feel them on my face. We take some large jungle leaves and lay them over ourselves, but it hardly makes a difference when the rain starts to really pick up. It has soon found its way through the leaves, through my sleeping bag, to me. I lay there and shiver, unable to fall asleep.

I lie still as long as I can bear, as the rain soaks through, chilling me to the core. Finally I give up trying to sleep and instead stand with a giant tropical leaf over my head to deflect the rain and jump up and down, trying to stay warm. But it makes little difference and I am shivering so much that the leaf nearly falls from my hand. I see the Professor is copying my strategy, with much the same result.

After what seems like an eternity, I see the sky begin to turn to an even slate gray in the east, and the rain begins to let up. We shove our sodden sleeping bags into our equally sodden packs, and eat a small handful of nuts and dried fruit for breakfast as we are both shaking too hard to operate the stove. Then we discuss where to go.

The night before, we had considered backtracking down the ravine to see if we could find where we got turned around. That had seemed a dispiriting option then, and now, with the rocks below us slick with rain and mud, it would be suicide. We could cut into the jungle and hope to find the road, but the going that way seems hard, and if we miss the road, we'd be hopelessly lost. We decide instead to walk along the ridge-line. Hopefully we'll come to the path that way. We turn right, in the direction we hope the town to be.

The jungle is dense here and every foot forward is earned with slashes of the machete blade. The ground is soaking. Sometimes muddy and my feet slide out from under me. Sometimes a squelching bog that I can hardly walk through. Rain continues to pour through my shirt, but at least now that we're moving I feel warm.

Noon arrives and we still have not found the path we went in by. We do not eat lunch. Our stomachs are growling incessantly, but neither of us even brings it up. Instead we rest and drink from our canteens. Then, we force ourselves up and keep marching through the jungle.

I miss the path when we cross it. Able to focus on nothing but the brush ahead of me, fighting through hunger. But the Professor calls to me, “Here, is this it?”

I turn and see that it is. There's little to mark it. Some footprints in the mud, and vines slashed through, both leading away from the ridge. It would have been so easy to walk on past it. That thought nauseates me, so I try not to dwell on it. The Professor takes the lead, walking briskly now, knowing where we are at last.

It takes longer than I remembered to reach Santa Gloria, and when we finally see its decaying visage through the jungle, I nearly burst into tears. From joy, from fear, from utter exhaustion. We find the house we had stayed in when we were here last. It feels like it was years, perhaps centuries before, although I know it was only a week. There, we collapse to the floor and listen to the rain on the sheet metal above us.

We eat the last of our food. It does little to sate our hunger.

We fall into a deep sleep.

W

The god was waiting for me there. He grinned, baring a row of yellowing crooked teeth, and said, “You're running from me?”

“We're not. We have no food. We have to leave.”

He shook his head, “And you think I'll let you leave? Just like that. I haven't had my ritual yet.”

I said, “He said he returned the offerings. We owe you nothing.”

“Do you believe him?”

I didn't answer.

The god said, “Would you believe me if I said that he went to the shrine and took all he could carry from it?”

Again, I remained silent.

He laughed, “Did you enjoy the rain?”

I glare, “Are you telling me that you sent it?”

“Yes. I had to make sure you wouldn't escape me.”

“Well it didn't work. The rain didn't stop us. We're almost out.”

“Oh?” He flashed a fanged grin, “You think that the rain was meant as your first obstacle? That I would have hoped to stop you with a mere trudge through the damp. No the rain is your final obstacle. For if all else fails.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Of course you wouldn't see. Your kind is so small, your vision so narrow, so focused on now, as if that is all there is. But it will all become clear soon enough. Clear enough even for your blindered sightlines. Tomorrow the fun begins”

And then his laughter rolled over me, it's thunderous peels slowly blurring into the cacophony of rain hammering down on the thin roof above us.

A

I wake before dawn and can't bring myself to sleep again. It seems that the rain is letting up. The rattling against the sheetmetal slowly fades into a light patter, and finally nothing at all. The overwhelming roar of the falling water against the roof transitions to the million small noises of the jungle. The chirping of small creatures. The snapping of twigs. Once, I imagine I hear padded footfalls coming towards us, but when I strain my ears to hear more there's nothing.

Finally, the howler monkeys begin screaming, and the square of sky framed in the doorway turns from black to gray. I rise from my sleeping bag then and begin to heat water. We have no food, but I'm freezing, and need something to fill the pit in my stomach.

The Professor wakes when the stove hisses to life. He looks out the door, “Good day today.”

I nod.

He says, “We'll make it to the jeep soon. Can't be more than a few hours.”

“If it's still there.”

“What do you mean?”

“The guide never returned. There's been no sign he tried.”

“You think he left without us?”

I say, “I don't know. But I won't be content until we're driving away from this god forsaken jungle.”

I pour us both a cup of heated water. We drink it, and the heat feels good, but seems to remind my stomach of its deprivations. It rumbles loudly and I wince with pain.

We leave the stove and fuel behind and head down the road. As overgrown as it is, it's very easy to follow and the path we cut on the way here is still walkable. My machete remains at my side. Soon, the day, which had begun so cold, is nearly unbearable for its heat. My head throbs painfully with each step I take. We have to stop to rest every twenty minutes. Then every ten. Then every five.

At one of these rest stops, a breath of wind comes around the bend ahead of us. It cools my skin, and I breathe in deeply at this small comfort. But then I nearly gag. I manage to force out, “That… smell.”

The Professor begins to ask, “What...” but then it hits him too and he doubles over, dry heaving.

He covers his mouth and nose with a rag and I follow suit. Then, without a word we round the bend.

We find the guide there. He's been dead for a while it seems. The sight of his bloated body, face down in the mud, coupled with the odor, almost brings me to my knees. I stagger backwards, colliding with the Professor. His face is ashen.

We stand for a minute in shocked silence. I say, “How...”

The Professor points to the ground near the guide. It takes me a moment, but then I see it. A snake lays there, it's body bent at an unnatural angle, dead like our guide. It's body is crawling with ants, but between them I can make out its stripes of black and red and yellow. A coral snake. He managed to kill it. Looked like he cut it nearly in half. But it bit him. Maybe before the machete's blow. Maybe after. Either way, it hadn't been enough.

The Professor gives a cry of dismay, “The backpack!”

I see it beside him. It's been torn apart by jungle animals. Much of the food he was carrying back to us probably gone by now. I hardly have an appetite anyway, but the Professor approaches. Keeping one hand over his face, He goes through the pack, studiously avoiding eye-contact with the body beside it. After a moment he motions to me, “Help me get what's left of our provisions.”

I stand still, “The guide. He's dead, can...”

The Professor snaps, “We'll be dead too if we don't get a meal soon. Do you want that?”

I join him. We manage to find several cans of meat and some oats. I find a pack with three cigarettes left and pocket it. Everything else was ripped apart or carried away.

Once we're certain there is nothing more, the Professor walks away, off down the road. I stand a moment. It seems wrong to leave the body here, decaying in the sun. Food for the vultures and ants. We have no tools to dig a grave or build a pyre. Neither of us had the strength to carry the body with us. The Professor turns, “Are you coming.”

I keep looking down at the body, “He saved my life you know? There was a snake like that one. Back in Santa Gloria. He got it fast enough that time. If he hadn't I'd be dead now instead of him.”

“He was just doing his job. He knew the risks. Now come on. There's still...”

“Give me a minute.”

“Fine. You can find me ahead. I can't stand this stench another minute.”

I stand above the body. The smell doesn't seem so bad anymore. I realize that I hardly knew this man at all. I couldn't say what rites he would want me to say for him. I don't know what family he leaves behind. He led us into the jungle, the jungle of his country, so we could plunder its treasure. I remember the fear he had been suppressing on the day we entered the temple. At the time I had thought him merely out of his element deep in the stone tunnels. Now I wonder if he knew something. Anything about the dark forces we would wake. The forces that have now taken his life.

For I'm certain that his death was not chance, but an act of the god. The night before he had warned me. Tomorrow the fun begins. This is what he meant. Before I had held out some reservations concerning the limits of his powers. Secretly, I had some hope that he was bluffing. Nothing more than an echo of ancient fears in the suffocating darkness of night. But those hopes were gone. Here I saw the clear marks of his claws. Laid bare under the broad light of day.

I take one of the cigarettes from the packet and light it. I take a single drag to get the end burning, then I kneel beside the guide and stick it butt first into the sandy soil. Not much I guess, but I suppose it's the incense he'd want burned for him. And I have nothing else.

l

Around the bend, I find the Professor eating one of the cans of meat, forking the cold processed flesh into his mouth and swallowing greedily. Looking up at me, “Do you want any?”

I say, “I'm not hungry.”

He forks down another mouthful, “Fine.”

“We have to leave them.”

“What?” He says through the mouthful.

“The pieces you took from the temple. Leave them now.”

“I told you, I put them back.”

“Don't lie to me.”

“It's true. I put back the pieces I took that first day.”

“And during your visit to the shrine. You took nothing then?”

He's silent.

I say, “Just leave them. You want to end up like our guide?”

He scowls at me, “What are you on about? He was bit by a snake. I don't see what the pieces I may have…”

“The god visited me again last night. He told me that it starts today. He's done waiting. He killed the guide. He'll kill us.”

“Listen to yourself. The guide was killed by a snake. Nothing more. I realize you're hungry and tired, but you've got to pull yourself together. This is no time for you to go ranting on about gods in the dark. We have enough problems in the real world without you going and making new ones in your head.”

I scowl back, but say nothing more.

a

The jeep is where we left it, perched before the monstrous washout. For a moment, there is a flash of hope. Maybe this nightmare can end.

When I turn the key, that hope is dashed. The engine gives a brief choking sputter and then nothing. I try again to the same effect. Then a third time and hear nothing.

Maybe the battery is dead. Maybe the starter is broken. It doesn't matter. I know we won't fix it. At the root of the matter, what's wrong with the engine is the dark forces bent against it. Against that, the engine will never run again.

I lean the seat back and pull out a cigarette from my pocket. I light it and take a drag. The Professor says, “You smoke now?”

I shrug.

“Come help me get the engine started.”

I laugh, “What do you know about engines?”

“Nothing,” he snaps, “But better try anything then sit around smoking and waiting for death.”

He takes the manual from the glove compartment and leaves the jeep. He props up the hood and I can hear him muttering. Trying to make any sense out of the machine in front of him and having no luck.

Y

I smoked the cigarette to the butt and then threw it to the ground outside the window. It was past the hottest time of the day, but still sweat rolled down my face. In the stuffy air inside the jeep my head was throbbing painfully. I was probably dehydrated. Still hadn't eaten anything. Not that it mattered. This was the end. We had nothing left. There was no walking out. If the jeep didn't start, we would try to walk, because why the hell not. But we'd never get out. This is where we'd die because this is where he meant for us to die.

But that didn't make any sense. He didn't intend to kill us like this. He wanted the ceremony. And once I realized that, I saw this for what it was. This wasn't a death sentence. It was a test of faith.

I pulled myself out of the jeep. With the sun beating down on me, I felt my head spinning. The edges of my vision were encroached by blackness, seeming to push the world away from me. But I took a deep breath and steadied myself against the jeep. Its hot metal burned my hand, but I hardly noticed.

The Professor looked up from the engine. Upon seeing me, he asked, “Are you alright?”

“Of course,” I said, “I've figured out the problem. I know what to do.”

As soon as I said that, I knew it to be true. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to do it. I was being swept along by something greater than myself. Like my body was being swept unstoppably by a powerful stream. I couldn't help but go where the current took me.

The Professor's face had a look of grave concern, “You look terrible. Are you sure...”

I paid him no more heed. Instead, I took the cigarette from my pocket. The last one we had. I held it up above my head. I said words then. Words I can't remember now. But I know that they were the right words. Finally, I lowered the cigarette, touching it's end to one of the battery's terminals. There was a loud crackle of electricity from the battery and the cigarette was lit. I brought it to my lips. I said one more word.

Then I suck the tobacco deep into my lungs. Let the stinging smoke fill me up.

S

I'm on the ground in front of the jeep, coughing out smoke. I cough until my throat is raw, until my chest is sore. I can't breathe. My vision goes dark.

u

I was on my knees. All around me were the warren on tunnels, so I knew this was another dream. I was coughing, even in my dream. Slowly the pain in my throat and chest drove me out of my body, until I was hovering above it, watching myself cough. Watching myself through a pair of sharp feline eyes. I lift the cigarette to my fanged mouth and breathe in the sweet smoke. From somewhere deep in my chest a noise rises up unbidden. A deep throaty rumble. Purring.

The purring filled the tunnels, just as the laughter had. Reverberating and amplifying. Building into an all encompassing experience of sound. And then slowly shifting, changing into a sound I knew I should recognize, but could not.

!

For a moment I lay and listen to the purring. Only now it's finished its transformation, and I know what I'm hearing. The engine. It's running. Purring. Driving us back down the road. For a long time I lie still, only half conscious.

Then I’m jostled fully awake as the jeep goes bumping over a washed out section of the road. It is piloted over the exposed rocks with less grace than the guide had managed guiding us in. Rocks slam against the bottom. We slide to the right and I hear the side screech against an outcropping. Then we stop. The wheels spin without gaining purchase and I hear the Professor let forth a stream of profanities. Then he shifts us into reverse. We bump back a moment and then forward again gaining speed. There’s a terrible crunching sound from the front as the bumper is bent upwards on impact with a prominent rock. But we make it through, scraping the whole bottom of the jeep against the rock, but coming to the relatively hospitable dirt road on the far side.

I slowly open my eyes and find I'm sitting propped up in the passenger seat, my head against the window. The Professor is driving us. I try to ask for water, but my throat is so parched only a feeble cough comes out.

He is so startled that he nearly crashes the jeep, snapping several branches by the side of the road. Bringing us to a stop he says, “You're conscious?”

I cough again. Then, “Water?”

He hands me a canteen and a drink it all. My throat still aches, but at least I can speak now, “What happened?”

He says, “I don't know you came out of the jeep looking a right mess. I thought you were going mad. Held up one of your cigarettes and shouted something. Couldn't say what it meant for the life of me. Then you put the cigarette to the battery and it lit and you smoked it. I think it nearly killed you then. You were choking and your face was turning blue and you passed out.”

“I remember all that. How did the jeep start though?”

There's a very long silence. Finally he said, “I was hoping you could tell me. I wasn't paying much attention. Was trying to get you to stop coughing. When you finally did the jeep was running.”

“It just started on it's own.”

“It must have been something you did. Maybe when you touched the terminal on the battery it fixed some connection. And then...” He trails off, knowing how weak this explanation sounds.

I know. It was the ritual. But I don't say so, I know he'll just try to explain it away. Instead I lean back in the passenger seat and close my eyes. I'm so thirsty. So hungry. So tired. But I can't sleep.

The light is getting dim. The Professor turns on the headlights, but keeps going. If anything, he speeds up, driven to return us to civilization as quickly as he can manage. I say, “Be careful. There are those washouts coming up.”

He says, “We're past them.”

“Really? All of them?”

“Yes. There were three we drove over on the way in, we had to stop at the fourth. I drove over all three while you slept.”

I am filled with hope then. If we're past the washes, and the engine is still running, then that means that we will be back to a town soon. Out of the jungle that is the god's domain. Safe. But still something nags at the back of my mind. He had said that the rain would stop us in the end. It's been dry all day though. Nothing now but a bit of mud for the jeep to tear through. And then, with a flash of certainty I realize what is going to happen. But I realize it too late.

I turn to the Professor to warn him, just as the jeep races around a sharp curve on the downhill. And there it is before us: a new washout. This one has scraped the road right off the face of the hillside, not even rubble is left to drive over. A new washout formed by the rain. Formed to stop us.

The Professor slams his foot down on the brake, but it's much too late. We skid through the mud for a second. Then, we're over the edge. I'm slammed into the door of the jeep as it lurches sideways, rolling. I hear the glass on the driver's side shatter as the jeep hits a rock. Then I'm flung upwards into the roof, although I suppose the roof is now down. Then for just a second, we're airborne, arching above the steep, rocky ground below. I see the rocks rising up at us. It feels like it's in slow motion, but it's done in the blink of an eye.

There is an ear-splitting crunching of metal and glass. The hood buckles as it hits the rocks. The whole car comes to an instant stop, but I don't stop with it. I'm flying, my body spinning through the air, my vision darkening again.

q

I was in darkness again with the tunnels around me. I was lying on the floor and though I tried, straining my muscles, I could not get up. I was perfectly paralyzed, unable to move even a finger.

I heard the padded footsteps approaching me. At first they were at the very edge of my hearing, maybe just a dream within my dream. But slowly they got louder as the god walked towards me. He took a circuitous path through the maze; sometimes the footsteps came from the left, other times the right. Sometimes they came from before me, and sometimes behind. But always, they came closer. Finally, he turned a corner and was standing before me. I could hear his rasping breath.

I said into the darkness, “Am I dead?”

“Not yet.”

“I want to be.”

“Then die. It's not hard.”

I tried to move, to strike out at him, but I could not move. Instead I said, “Why did you kill the guide? He did nothing to offend you.”

Briefly there was laughing, “He carried your food. His death broke your will. It made you really believe for the first time.”

“And you need that? You need me to believe.”

“No,” He said, “I only need the ceremony.”

“I hate you.” I meant to shout it, but it came out in a dead, inexpressive voice. A statement of fact.

“Good. Yes, hate me. They all did.”

I had nothing more to say then. After a while he left, stalking back into the tunnels.

l

I am tangled in vines and wrapped in darkness. I struggle and when I do pain shoots through my body from a thousand points. My head throbs. My arms sting. My chest heaves. My legs scream. My face and abdomen ooze blood.

I yell to marshal my strength, a primal scream eaten by the darkness, and rip free of the vines around me. Without the vines holding me up, I plummet. I try to snatch out at the branches around me, but they fly by whipping my face. I fall hard on the sloping ground and then tumble through the darkness until I'm wrapped around a tree's trunk. Another wave of pain and the breath is knocked out of me.

I lie there, wrapped around the tree, gasping and gasping and gasping for breath. I'm sure that The whole world would be spinning right now if I could see a damn thing. But nothing. Just darkness and darkness and…

In the corner of my eye I see light. White but faint. Coming to me filtered through the dense foliage of the jungle. What it may be I cannot say, but I drag myself to my feet and begin to walk towards it. I tear through the jungle and it tears right back through me, thorny bushes that I never see leave cuts across my arms, legs, face. But the light grows brighter. Closer.

And then I'm at it and it's headlights. Or a headlight. The other has been smashed. I go to the drivers side door of the jeep and pull it open. I see the Professor inside, slumped forward in his seatbelt. He groans and lifts his head, trying to face me. I ask, “Are you alright?”

A weak cough. Then he forces out, “I… yes… I… You need to...”

He is overcome by a fit of coughing. I wait for it to subside and then ask, “What do you need?”

He says, more surely now, “I'm hurt. I think I've broken a collarbone or… I can't get out. You need to go. Go get help.”

“But it's dark as...”

“Take this,” He fumbled for a moment and then placed something in my hand. A flashlight. He said, “There is a town. We were so close. Go. Get help.”

I switch the flashlight on. I try to go then. I really do. But my feet don't move. Finally I say, “There's no point. I'll never make it.”

He squints into the beam of the flashlight, “What...”

“I'll never make it to the village. Help will never come for you. You still can't see it. Even now. He's won. There's no other choice now.”

“Who… Are you out of your mind.”

I ignore him, “I was lying you know. When I said I didn't know what the ceremony was. I knew. I know.”

“What are you talking about? You have to go. For the love of God…”

“No, certainly not for that. But you were lying too. You said you'd put the offerings back. You never did.”

“I did. I...”

I shine the light into his face. I can see the lie there. He's not even trying to hide it. Never was. Not really. I turn away and trudge to the back of the jeep. To the two packs sitting in the trunk. I unfasten his and begin to pull the contents out one by one, dropping them to the ground at my feet. I hear his protests from the front, but pay them no mind.

I find them at the bottom of his pack, in a small cloth satchel. It's heavy. Far heavier than a package that small has any right to be. I walk back to the front of the jeep. He says, “You've gone mad.”

I open the satchel and look in. There are the offerings. The golden figures from the mouth of the inner shrine. I lay a hand on one, and then, I find that there are words coming from my mouth. I listen in fascination as I speak.

“It all started long ago, when they found the cave. When one brave warrior dared. He swam to the other side, to the shrine in the world of the dead, and he left an offering to the god he found there. After that he could not lose in battle and his people became great.” I place a small figure on the ground at my feet. It is crudely made, and so beaten that it's features can no longer be determined.

“They built the temple, and another and another. For a hundred years they ruled this land, and then a hundred after that and a hundred after that until no one could remember another ruler.”

I placed another golden figurine on the ground.

“Every time they went to war, and that was often in those times, the king would first leave an offering. He would swim through the tunnel and leave a figure of gold made in the god's image.”

Another figure comes from the satchel. Is set at my feet. In the light reflected from the headlight I can see its gaping fanged maw, and I can imagine it's rasping laugh.

“Some kings would not make it. They would drown in the tunnel and then it would pass to their successor to take the offering. To ask for victory. And that pleased the god well. But he also required something else. He would give a victory. He would give the kings what they desired. But in return, after the battle was won: the ceremony.”

I place the final figurine that the professor had taken on the ground.

“We have been blessed by him. By this god of the underworld. He has given you what you desire. And now… He shall take his price.”

The Professor looked up at me with eyes filled with terror, “What does he want.”

I stand before him and realize that I'm trembling, my whole body shaking. I say, “I'm sorry. I can't do it.”

But I can.

x

I was standing outside myself. Standing in the jungle just beyond the beam of the headlight. Looking at myself through eyes that see in the dark, and see through the dark, and see the darkness itself. I was shivering. So afraid. So weak. But I knew what I had to do. There was no other choice.

So I walked around the jeep to the back. To the trunk where our packs lay. The Professor's ransacked. Mine untouched. I took the machete from where it hung on the side of my pack.

Then I walked back to the Professor. I unclipped his seatbelt. I dragged him into the night. He screamed. I could not understand the words, or even if he was screaming words. He screamed from the pain of his injuries, and the fear of the blade in my hand. I threw him to the ground and knelt, holding him flat, face towards the starless sky.

And then the machete came down. He screamed louder and thrashed with all his might. But he had little might left, and I was animated with strength I had never known. The strength of three men. One to hold him to the ground. One to wield the blade. One to watch from the darkness.

The machete came down again, and this time I heard bone break. Ribs cracking under the blow.

The machete came down. Blood sprayed up.

The machete came down. Screaming. Mine and his.

The machete came down. Now only mine.

Again and again the machete slashed downward on the now still body. The blade cutting through flesh and bone.

Finally, I plunged my hands into his chest, pushing past the ruins of his ribcage. I grasped his heart in my hand and pulled it out. Blood trickled down my arm. With a final cut I slashed through ventricles. I stood and raised my hand over my head, holding aloft the heart. Blood splashed down onto my face, sticky and warm, and I shouted into the night, “Is this it? Is this what you wanted?”

It was.

u

I take the offerings and return them to the satchel. They are mine now. Bought and paid for. I go once more to the back of the jeep and take anything that will help me back to the town. A canteen of water. A headlamp. No food is left.

As I search, I avoid looking at the Professor's body on the ground. I mutter to myself, “That was a long time ago. Hundreds and hundreds. Thousands of years ago.” It seems true.

I hear a rustling in the jungle behind me and swing around, pointing my flashlight beam into the darkness.

From there, I see a pair of eyes watching me, slit-like pupils in the center of golden orbs. They approach and a moment later I see the whole jaguar. It's body is sleek and spotted, and much larger than I thought a jaguar should be.

I grip the machete in my left hand, but the beast ignores me. Instead, it stalks up to the Professor and sniffs a moment at his gaping chest cavity. Then, it takes another elegant stride to where his heart had been placed, resting at his feet. I can hear it panting, only feet away from me now. It takes the heart in its jaw, and then it looks up at me.

For a long time we stand there. I am captivated by its fierce burning eyes. By its perfect muscular body. By the blood dripping from its mouth. Then it turns and with a single bound vanishes into the jungle.

And so passed from this world the last god of the darkness.

Acknowledgments