Burial Ground

IV

11:18 a.m.

Dahlia leaned over Jay's shoulder and studied the odd tableau from the perspective of the camera. She had been struggling to keep up with the group. Her legs ached and her lungs burned, but her exhaustion was now forgotten as she directed her cameraman.

The spotlight affixed to the digital recorder highlighted Sam and cast her elongated shadow onto the unusual sculptures. Motes of dust swirled in the diffused beam.

"Get every inch of this place as she's talking," Dahlia whispered. "We can create a transcript of everything she says and do a voiceover in post-production."

"These statues are actually anthropomorphic wooden coffins called purunmachus," Sam said. "They're nearly identical to the ones at Karajia, north of the fortress at Kuelap. The Chachapoya would first mummify and bundle their dead in several layers of cloth, and set them on a short stone wall. Then they built the framework around the remains using long wooden poles. From there, they used a mixture of clay and straw to sculpt the body and the head."

"So you're saying there are corpses inside each of those?" Merritt asked.

"Yes, but not just any corpses. These were important men, likely their most decorated warriors. The purunmachus were constructed to look like them so that they would be honored and remembered."

"What's with the skulls staked to their foreheads?" Jay asked.

"No one is really sure. The prevailing theory is that they're the skulls of an especially reviled enemy and were displayed as trophies, or perhaps to ward off future aggression. It's a tactic they're believed to have borrowed from the Jivaro, who were notorious headhunters."

"And the golden sculpture?" Colton asked.

"Zoom in on it," Dahlia whispered to Jay, who did as she asked.

"The purunmachus at Karajia didn't have anything like it, so I can only speculate." Sam paused. She nibbled on her lower lip as she formulated her thoughts. "The foundation was obviously built to incorporate it, so it wasn't a later addition or an afterthought. It's the focal point of the whole display and must have been extremely important, even sacred, but its design doesn't reflect the typical Chachapoyan style. You can see from the faces on the purunmachus themselves that their motifs were generally more abstract, while the skull sculpture is completely realistic. And they were renowned for their textile skills, not their metallurgy, which would indicate that the idol was crafted during the years following their conquest by the Inca. Even then, it appears far beyond even their considerable skills."

"How much do you think it's worth?" Jay asked. Dahlia pinched his arm. Hard. "Ow. Jesus, Dahlia."

"It's priceless," Sam said, with a note of disdain.

"What about the other buildings?" Merritt asked. "The levels are barely high enough to crawl through. Were they built for midgets or something?"

"They're chullpas, burial buildings, similar to those at Revash, near the town of Santo Tomas de Quillay. They mortared stones together with mud to form the framework, then plastered over them like the purunmachus. They used logs lashed together with vines to create the unusual sloped roofs, and sealed them in adobe as well."

"So they're full of dead bodies, too," Merritt said.

"I'm sure. You have to understand that the Chachapoya revered their dead. Being interred in such a manner was a great honor. Not everyone who died received this kind of treatment. This is truly a sacred site, and an archeological discovery of incalculable significance. We could spend the next decade poring through these tombs and still not learn everything there is to know."

"Earlier you said that if the people in the village below us were descended from the Chachapoya, we would find their chullpa nearby," Leo said. "Judging by the amount of dust covering everything, it doesn't look like this one's been used anytime recently."

"True," Sam said. Her eyes glinted when she spoke. "Then I'd imagine this one belongs to an older tribe, presumably the one responsible for the headdress that Hunter discovered. Their village can't be far from here."

"Let's see what's inside those buildings," Dahlia whispered. There would be plenty of time for research when they returned to the States. What they really needed right now was something to add a little spice to their film, and she couldn't think of anything more exciting than being the first to explore a five hundred year-old tomb.

Jay rose and followed her to the rear of the chamber. She ducked through the entryway to her left and found herself in a small room framed by plastered stones. The beam on the camera cast her shadow deep into the structure, to where the darkness was marred by the almost palpable columns of wan light that slanted through the small windows. Pillars of fitted rocks supported the wooden floor above her. Egg-shaped bundles of rotting fabric lined the walls to either side of the central aisle. She could sense the presence of the corpses inside the bundles. The stench of decomposition was a physical entity crawling on her skin.

She had to stoop to keep from splitting her scalp on the low ceiling as she stepped aside and waited for Jay to pass her with the camera. The beam showcased footprints in the thick dust on the ground beyond where she had walked. They obviously weren't the first to have been in here. It was comforting to know they hadn't strayed from Hunter Gearhardt's trail.

Jay led her down the central walkway, which connected all of the structures well beyond the furthest reaches of sight. Between the smell and the confines, she was starting to feel as though she were crawling through a dry sewer.

The outer blanket of one of the bundles to her left had rotted away to reveal a second blanket underneath. From her preliminary research, she knew that these funerary bundles were created by wrapping the deceased in fetal position within several layers of fabric. Each layer contained a stuffing of objects that were both of personal importance and meant to help the dead in the afterlife. She had read about bundles filled with corn, pottery, hollowed gourds that held various grains, and different ornate textiles. The stuffing from the outer layer littered the floor at their feet.

Jay filmed the bundle a moment longer before directing the camera at the ground. The light caused a shimmer of green to pass across the mound of dusty feathers.

They pressed deeper into the dwellings, passing from one to the next through constrictive stone thresholds. There were bundles everywhere. They filled every inch of free space, shoulder-to-shoulder. It reminded her of the scene in Aliens when Sigourney Weaver found the chamber with all of the alien egg pods. She was just about to share her observation with Jay, whom she knew would get a major kick out of it, when she noticed that one of the corpse-filled bags had toppled into the aisle ahead. It looked like some sort of rodent had gnawed through the blankets to liberate a scattering of grains, kernels, and feathers. Through the tattered fabric, she could see a desiccated face in profile.

"Zoom in on that."

"Way ahead of you," Jay said. He brought the beam to bear on the gaunt head. The skin had taken on the consistency of parchment, the bones beneath sharply obtrusive. There was only a hollow, dark pit where the eye should have been. The lips had shrunken back from the bared, yellowed teeth, and the nose was upturned like a pig's following the dissolution of the cartilage. Thick scars bisected the cheek. She wished she could see more, but the rest of the body was still shrouded.

"There's another one over there," Dahlia said, pointing back behind them. When Jay turned with the camera, she grabbed the edge of the fabric near the face and ripped downward with a tearing sound.

"Christ, Dahlia," Jay snapped as he whirled back around. "They'll have our heads if they find out you did that."

"That's why I couldn't have it on film." She smirked. "Besides, we aren't going to fully unwrap it or anything. I just want a better look at what's inside."

"You're pushing your luck, you know."

She rested her hand on his shoulder and felt him stiffen. His affection for her was readily apparent, which made him far too easy to coerce. He was a dear friend and she hated to take advantage of his feelings, but sometimes she just couldn't help herself.

"I have luck to spare," she said. "You ought to know that by now. And what would any of them do anyway? It's not like they'd send us packing. They need us, Jay. So are you going to film this or what?"

The light again zeroed in on the corpse.

Dahlia gasped.

She didn't know what she had expected, but this was the furthest thing from it. The dead man's legs had been bent, pinned to his chest, and bound in place with a frayed rope. The left arm was jaggedly fractured mid-shaft, and the skin had curled back from the bone into a liquefied black sludge, presumably the source of the foul, gangrenous stench. The entire left half of the ribcage had been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole framed by pointed fragments of bone. The flesh that surrounded it was ruggedly torn and peeled back in leathery straps.

"That must have been one big, nasty rat," Jay said.

There was a shift in the shadows inside the broken ribcage, and, as if on cue, a gray rodent poked its whiskery face out, its eyes glowing red.

Dahlia screamed. She whirled and sprinted as fast as she could toward the entrance. Her head struck the low log ceiling repeatedly, but she hardly even felt it. All she could focus on was the distant rectangle of light.

She burst through the opening and nearly slammed into Galen, who shuffled aside just in time.

Jay emerged a few seconds later, laughing so hard that tears streaked through the dust on his cheeks.

"It's not funny," Dahlia snapped. She punched him in the arm.

"Oh, but it is, princess. It is." He raised the camera to capture the expression of terror on her dirty face.

So the rodent had surprised her. Big deal. Ha, ha.

"That was the biggest rat I've ever seen in my life. It was the size of a dog."

"You keep telling yourself that. Just wait until you see the playback," Jay said. He could barely catch his breath through the laughter. "Then you can tell me again how big it was."

Dahlia huffed and turned away. The heat of embarrassment flushed her cheeks.

Galen crouched directly in front of her before the golden skull as though praying to the obscene idol. His hand trembled as he reached out and removed a dusty feather from beneath it. He held it up and blew on it---once, then again. His gaze fell upon the shiny skull, and the color blanched from his face.

"What is it?" she asked.

He looked up at her and blinked repeatedly as though abruptly awakened from a dream.

"Not yet," he mumbled. He rose and shook his head. "Not until I'm sure."

He cast one last glance back at the skull before wrapping his arms around his chest and shuffling out of the cave and into the sunlight.