Moon Mask Page 6

  “I’m talking about drug-induced trances,” King snapped. “I’m talking about hallucinogenic rituals in which shamans and wise men and prophets claim to see future events.”

  McKinney offered no further argument so King continued. “I’m talking about almost every culture in the world that has ever existed. Witch doctors and voodoo masters, astrologers and fortune tellers. I’m talking about crystal balls and fortune telling dice. I’m talking about Christianity, Islam, Judaism and just about every other religion that has ever existed and preached of prophets who could commune with god, who could see the future. Do I believe that any of these people could do so?” He shrugged. “I’ve read the myths and I’ve read the science. Some say yes, some say no. Others just keep an open mind.”

  He felt himself becoming impassioned by his speech and he let that passion take hold. For all his life he remembered his father being constantly put down by the academic world, constantly laughed at. The only man who actually believed in him was a genocidal maniac who had butchered his family. Even he, himself, had lost faith in his father’s unrelenting belief. In so doing, he had betrayed him.

  Rather than accompany him on what Reginald declared would be the greatest archaeological discovery in history as he trekked through the heart of Africa to find the ancient city of the Bouda, King signed on to the Sarisariñama Expedition. It was his chance to study orthodox history, to make a name for himself as a serious, respectable scientist. Months later, his father’s expedition had officially been declared ‘Missing; presumed dead.’

  Now, here, on another continent, he had the chance to honour his father’s memory. By proving that he was not some raving lunatic who had led his expedition to doom. But that he had been right all along.

  “What is undeniable,” he continued, “is that the men and women who have claimed to see the future, often aided by substances, believe it. As do their followers. Why do you scoff at the notion of a ritual in which an African tribe, wearing a mask and breathing in hallucinogenic fumes to enter a trance, could have given rise to the legend of a man actually travelling into that future?”

  For a moment McKinney seemed to be mulling King’s words over in her head, but then her face hardened. “Your view of archaeology would have me believing in Indiana Jones-type booby traps and the mumbo jumbo of magical masks that can predict the future. That is not archaeology, Doctor King; that is a Hollywood manuscript. Your ‘Black Death’ did not exist. There has never been one piece of evidence to confirm his existence, nothing more than unrelated, detached rumours. And as for your ‘Moon Mask’, what you have found today is nothing more than a relic, yet to be understood, just like all the ruins below our feet are yet to be understood.”

  King’s fists squeezed into balls once more, his jaw clenched, and his anger swelled. “And your view of archaeology would have us believe that our knowledge of history is set in stone, that we know all there is to know. But the truth is that in a single day, in a single moment, any discovery could change everything we ever thought we knew about our ancestors, about our history. That is the point of continuing our work, to disprove tomorrow what we learned today. But you, you and your ponced-up, brown-nosing, arse-licking, little pricks who consider yourselves to be the experts, you’re too afraid that tomorrow might bring a discovery that makes you irrelevant, that makes your knowledge useless! And then what happens to your big fat pay cheques, your second homes and your fleet of four-wheel drives?!”

  “Are you quite finished, Doctor King?” McKinney’s face burned red with anger, rage boiling up.

  “I’ve not even started!” he growled back.

  “I’m afraid you have,” she snapped. “And you’ve finished. You’re fired.”

  “What?” King demanded, rising up to his full height.

  “Doctor McKinney,” Nadia cut in but the Scottish woman shot her a look.

  “Stay out of this, Doctor Yashina. After your disregard of procedure today you’re already on thin ice my girl.” She glowered at King. “Pack your bags. You’ll be leaving with Raine tomorrow.”

  King’s entire body quaked with barely suppressed rage, his muscles bunched and he finally exploded, lashing out to smack a computer monitor and send it flying from its desk, smashing against the floor in a shower of sparks. McKinney and Nadia both gasped and stepped back away from the raging man and for a moment the Scottish woman feared for her safety.

  But then King whirled and charged through the tent flap, stalking away through the camp. He didn’t jump over the taut guy-ropes but walked straight through them, ripping them from the ground. He felt the urge to lash out and hit something else but fought it.

  He was close. He was so close to finally proving his father’s theory, to finally showing the bastards that he was right; about the Black Death, about the Moon Mask, the Bouda, and the Progenitors. But they were against him! They were all against him! He had been laughed at, scoffed at, mocked and belittled all his life and yet he had struggled on, he had ignored people like McKinney and sought out people like Sid-

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” His girlfriend’s words repeated themselves in his mind. She was against him too. She had betrayed him, and where was she now? Swanning about with Captain America, swooning and drawling and-

  All sense, all reason left him. He ploughed into the mess tent, pushing through the crowd. His eyes scanned their faces, looking for Sid. Looking for Raine.

  “Where’s Sid?” he demanded. Blood pumped through his eyes. Adrenaline and testosterone surged through his body.

  “Out back,” someone replied. “With Raine.”

  King was already moving, stalking through the crowd which nervously backed away, allowing him to burst through the back entrance, just in time to see Sid, hidden inside a copse of trees, throw her arms around the American’s neck.

  “You bastard!” he snarled, stalking up behind the American and grasping his shoulder. He spun the stunned pilot around and before he knew what was happening, his large and powerful fist smashed into his smug face!

  Blood erupted in a fountain as Raine staggered back. The crowd burst into shocked gasps, some of the drunker ones hooting like monkeys, egging the violence on, while others screamed obscenities at the madman.

  “Ben!” Sid bellowed. “What the hell are you doing?!”

  King ignored her. He threw himself at Raine but the American was faster, recovering from the initial blow quickly and spinning away from the second. He swung up a defensive block, pushed King back then bolted to his feet. He moved faster than the archaeologist, jumping back, just beyond each of his swings.

  “Benny!” Raine shouted, anger mixing with confusion. “What the-?” He ducked below another swing and, realising the enraged archaeologist wasn’t going to back down, he lashed out with his leg, catching King behind the knees and wrenching him to the ground.

  Instead of falling backwards, King lunged forward, his powerful shoulders smashing into the pilot’s chest in a wrestling-style take-down. The impact threw them both to the ground.

  “Ben, get off him!” Sid bellowed but King didn’t hear. Straddling Raine, he brought his fist back for another blow but his elbow was caught mid-air. The gawping on-lookers had finally been spurred into action and several of the men closed around him, grasping him and wrenching him off the helicopter pilot.

  Raine scrambled to his feet, holding his bloodied nose. “What the hell is your problem, Benny?!”

  “My problem?!” King struggled against the overwhelming number of hands holding him back. “My problem is that it’s not enough for you to sweep in here every fortnight and disrupt this dig just so you can get your end away with the interns, but now you feel the need to put your ego-centric American whammy on my girlfriend!”

  “What?” Raine asked, confused.

  “He wasn’t putting the ‘whammy’ on me, Ben,” Sid shot at him, angry.

  “I saw you . . .” he wasn’t sure what word to use and annoyingly settle
d on “embracing! Out here in the bush where no one can see.”

  “Yeah,” Sid admitted matter-of-factly. Her blunt admission brought him up short. Wasn’t she even going to try and deny it? “Yeah, I hugged him . . . to say thank you.”

  Now it was King’s turn to be confused. He shrugged off the hands holding him. “Thank you? For what?”

  “For this!” She threw a cardboard sleeve at him. It frisbeed through the air and one corner dug into the soft earth at his feet. “Nathan’s spent the last two months trying to get hold of it and get it out here in time for your birthday next month! The Royal bloody Mail doesn’t exactly deliver to the middle of the Amazon, you know!” Tears streamed down her face.

  King suddenly felt very small, very stupid. The eyes of the entire camp were watching him.

  “She didn’t know where you were or when you were going to arrive in the mess so we came out here so I could give her it without you seeing,” Raine explained. The embrace King had witnessed was nothing more than a friendly thank you.

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” Sid whispered through angry sobs.

  “Sid, I . . .” he began, reaching out for her but she pulled away and pushed through the crowd, running through the mess tent and vanishing into the gloom. King watched her go, his legs heavy and unable to run after her.

  “Come on folks,” someone said from behind him, addressing the crowd. “There’s nothing more to see here.” In a babble of muted conversations, the crowd dispersed back into the mess tent. King kept his gaze averted as someone led Raine past, having applied a damp towel to his bleeding nose.

  Moments later, he stood alone, his heart hammering in his chest, his face flushed with embarrassment and shame. The music was abruptly cut off and the floodlights shut down, leaving him in muted darkness, staring down at his gift, still embedded in the ground.

  For a few moments earlier that day he had had everything- the proof of his theory, his ticket to academic success . . . and he had Sid to share it with.

  He finally bent over and picked up his gift, examining it. It was a record- an actual LP, not some digitally re-recorded CD. His joy at discovering the title- a rare 1976 Elvis Presley Live at Lakeland vinyl- was locked within a black pit of despair.

  Not an hour earlier he had had it all.

  Now, he feared, he had lost everything.

  5:

  The Evil Spirit

  UNESCO Base Camp,

  Sarisariñama Tepui,

  Venezuela,

  The camp was silent, save for the hum of the generators which kept essential equipment running throughout the night.

  The impromptu party had, unsurprisingly, come to an equally impromptu end following King’s fiery display. All the attendees had soon retired to their tents, the distant whispers of conversation slowly dropping away as lamps were extinguished one by one. Now, the only light came from the bright display of speckled stars and the silvery haze of the moon as it hung low above the canopy of trees.

  Benjamin King sat alone in the darkness. As he often did, late at night when Sid was sleeping and he was haunted by nightmares, he had ducked under both the safety cordons and sat on a ledge which he had picked out not long after arriving on the dig.

  This night was different, however, in that instead of sneaking out of the tent which he and Sid shared, he had not retired to it at all. Instead, he sat alone, legs dangling over the edge, thousands of feet above the ocean of tree tops below. Over the artificial whine of the generator, he could hear the natural backdrop of noise- the buzzing and twitching of insects, the distant cry of prey falling to nocturnal predators, the occasional flourish of activity on the forest floor or the rapid beating of a bat’s wing. He realised sombrely that he was going to miss each and every one of those noises.

  “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” a voice said quietly from behind. King glanced around to see the last person he had expected to see.

  Nathan Raine ducked beneath the perimeter cordon, a bottle in hand. “May I?” he indicated a spot beside King on the ledge.

  King shrugged. “Sure you want to?”

  “Well, I thought that sharing a bottle of whisky might restrain you from taking another shot at my nose,” Raine half joked, shuffling into a position beside King and, like him, dangling his feet casually over the vertical cliff face.

  King glanced at the bottle. “That’s not whisky.”

  “It is bourbon,” Raine said, double checking he had brought the correct bottle.

  “Precisely. You want whisky- you need to get your taste buds around a single malt Scotch. Not some Yankee swill.”

  Raine pulled the cap off with his teeth. “Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” He offered King the bottle and he greedily took a long swig, feeling the liquid burn his throat. Then he smiled hollowly.

  “How’s the nose?”

  “The nose?” Raine repeated casually. “Ah, fine,” he waved it away. “You punch like a girl.”

  King shot him an angry look but when he saw the subtle hint of mischief in the American’s ice-blue eyes he couldn’t help but laugh. They both looked back out over the rainforest, settling into an uncomfortable silence.

  “So, McKinney tells me I’ll be having a passenger with me on the way back tomorrow,” Raine broke it.

  King nodded slowly. “Guess so,” he said.

  “Not gonna try and practice your punches while I’m flying are you?”

  “Doesn’t sound like the brightest idea.”

  “Seems to me you’ve not been too bright lately anyway.”

  King sighed. “Guess not,” he admitted. He looked at Raine and offered the whisky bottle as he said, “I’m sorry.”

  Raine laughed. “You know what, I like you Benny,” he said. “In fact, you’re probably the only schmuck in this place that I do like, except for your good lady of course.”

  “For someone who doesn’t like these ‘schmucks’, you certainly made a good impression on them.”

  The pilot took a swig, handed back the bottle, put his hands behind his head and leaned back, seemingly oblivious to the sheer drop below. “They’re my employers. Regardless of what you really think of them, you’ve gotta put on your smiling face and make ‘em happy if you want that pay cheque at the end of every month.” He tilted his head in the direction of the sleeping camp. “And what hot blooded male who spends most of his time flying a Huey over one of the most isolated places on earth is going to turn down a little female attention, huh?”

  “You’ve got a point,” King conceded.

  They each took another swig of bourbon. King felt his head start to swim already but enjoyed the sense of relaxation the alcohol brought to his tense muscles.

  “So, what is this crazy-ass theory of yours, and what’s it got to do with that thin looking fellow I pulled out from a crocodile pool earlier?”

  “Ah, it’s complicated,” he replied casually.

  “I’m listening,” Raine replied.

  King studied him for several seconds, looking for any signs of piss-taking. “Okay,” he said and proceeded to layout the theory that he and his father had spent years working on. He told the pilot all about the Bouda, about their city of stone and their belief in a magical mask which could travel through time, but which did not save them in the end.

  He explained how initially his father had come to the conclusion that the Bouda had been a great civilisation which had spread throughout the African continent, but that his theory evolved to suggest that they too had been the remains of an even greater, global culture. The Progenitor Race, he had come to believe, were the gods of the Bouda who had divided up the Moon Mask and carried it on their journeys to different lands, one of which being South America. Finding the Moon Mask not only proved the existence of the mythological Bouda, but of their ancestors, the Progenitors.

  Raine listened with a surprising degree of interest, asking the occasional question between taking gulps of bourb
on.

  “So how does our emaciated friend fit into all this?” he asked, referring again to the skeleton they had found earlier.

  King’s face sank. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Not now. I mean, I thought I did, but . . .”

  “Who did you think he was?”

  King took another swig of whisky. His words came out breathlessly. “The Black Death.”

  “As in . . . the plague?” Raine asked uncertainly.

  “The pirate.”

  “Oh.”

  “Between the years 1707 and 1712 there were a number of scattered reports about a pirate raiding ships and ports around the Caribbean- a large, black African. An escaped slave.”

  “What’s so unusual about that?”

  “Nothing,” King admitted. “Except that most of the pirates of that era were well documented at the time. Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Bartholomew Roberts-”

  “Jack Sparrow,” Raine added with a grin.

  King smiled. “But, there have never been any official logs or reports that specifically mention anyone I can identify with the Black Death. It’s more of a legend, verging on a ghost story. I’ve only ever found two references to him by ‘name’, or nickname anyway. In each account he is described as a giant black man, wielding a golden sword and dagger.”

  “Would pirate ships of that era have travelled such distances?”

  “It’s not unheard of, though they ordinarily concentrated on particular areas.”

  “Hence, Pirates of the Caribbean,” Raine said with a grin. Apparently, Hollywood was his only fount of knowledge concerning pirates.

  “But,” he continued, “for the right prize . . .”

  “The Moon Mask,” Raine realised. “The Black Death was searching for the pieces of the Moon Mask.” He frowned. “Why? Surely there were much more lucrative treasures to be found?”

  “The Black Death wasn’t interested in treasure,” King said. “I believe he scoured the earth, travelling any distance necessary, in order to find all the pieces of the Moon Mask. I’m not saying I believe it,” he added defensively, “but there is no doubting that he would have believed the ancient legend.”