Tomb of the Seven Howlers

By Charles Barnett

A corpse is delivered to a New York City book society.

A priceless Maya manuscript is taken from a Park Avenue Penthouse and its owner executed.

These, and other bizarre events, give rise to an expedition to the Guatemala rainforest where unspeakable evil lies burned-alive in an ancient ruin.

Tomb of the Seven Howlers weaves history, myth, and fiction into an adventure of romance, religion, and reason in a struggle to survive danger and death or much worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475966299

Charles Barnett

Charles Barnett has travelled widely, preferring to visit the jungles and deserts of the so-called, Third World Countries. He prefers the hermit life, with one exception. For the past fourteen years he has lived with a seven pound, red poodle. Her recent departure, to live in Heaven, has left Charles with a gaping emptiness. He will never stop loving Gnuf-Gnuf, but she taught him that he can no longer bear to live alone. By the time you read this, hopefully he has found a tiny, red, girl poodle to share his hermit life as he takes the scholars of the Chalice Corporation to the Caribbean, and the mysterious pitch lakes and mud volcanoes of Trinidad, where a lanky, black man lives in the jungle and talks to the Mot-Mot birds.

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Copyright © 2013 by Charles Barnett.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-6628-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6629-9 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923338

iUniverse rev. date: 12/18/2012

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five (1931 AD)

Chapter Six (1945 AD)

Chapter Seven (1960 AD)

Chapter Eight (1966 AD)

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

About The Author

This work is dedicated to those

who treasure old books, ancient

manuscripts, handsome people,

adventure—and join most of

us in our search for God.

Prologue

C halice Corporation was the brainchild of Reverend Ryan Quinn, S.J., a brilliant man who joined the Jesuit order after his wife was killed in an auto accident. Their child, Paul, was raised by Ryan’s parents.

After ordination, Ryan, a Ph.D. archaeologist, and talented businessman, received permission from the New York Jesuit Provincial to develop a commercial corporation specifically tailored to fill a research need Quinn perceived in the religious community. His idea was to assemble a staff of highly talented archaeologists, epigraphers, artifact conservators, philologists, and other related academicians, to perform non-sectarian, contract research for religious organizations that might not want to do their own work for fear their conclusions might be dismissed as partisan.

Chalice Corporation was a huge success with an eventual clientele drawn from virtually every major faith and most nations around the globe. With funds pouring in, Quinn established corporate headquarters in an elegant penthouse complex atop New York City’s Nyxos World Tower. The location, next door to the U.N., was chosen to emphasize the corporation’s image as an upscale, multinational operation.

All was running smoothly and profitably when Quinn was approached by a wealthy brother and sister, and at the same time by the Vatican, to undertake a mysterious mission. Though completed successfully, Father Quinn did not return to New York, but put his young son, Paul, in temporary charge of the corporation. Without explanation, Quinn took up residence with a few associates at a secluded location in New Mexico.

It became apparent after a while that he would have to replace his son with someone more mature and likely to bring greater stability to the helm of Chalice. With the Pope’s permission, Quinn selected an old acquaintance, Reverend Mathew Griffin, also a Jesuit, an astronomer and expert in ancient Maya epigraphy, who had been recently assigned personally by the Holy Father to manage the Papal Observatory on Mount Graham in Arizona, USA.

Chapter One

Ksenia was soaked. Her sleeveless cotton blouse clung to her like a second skin. If there were anyone to see, she might have won a wet T-shirt contest, but she was alone and shivering. It is strange, but even in the hot, humid rainforest, a total soaking will set one to shivering.

Ksenia had asked Hunahpú to let her wander into the ruins of Yó K´Ib´alone. She liked to wander by herself in the wilderness. She felt it was only when alone that you really experience nature. The birds seem louder. The rustle of leaves, in even a light breeze, becomes the roar of a waterfall.

This time Ksenia was getting more than her fill of nature. The storm had started as a distant rumble. She didn’t notice it. The sound had been swallowed by the noisy, nearby, rushing Usumacinta River.

As she moved deeper into the jungle, the sound of the river gave way to the rumble of thunder. In the rainforest, you cannot see the telltale signs in the sky of an approaching storm. You cannot see the sky at all. Walking in the jungle, you are perpetually engulfed in twilight, even at mid-day. As clouds pass, your world grows darker, then lighter, but there are no shadows—no sunlight. It is only a rare shaft of light that manages to find the floor through a chink in the jungle’s armor. There is very little vegetation. Plants need sunlight and there is none. The floor beneath your feet is a brown carpet of dead leaves fallen from above, then plastered flat by time and constant dampness. When the animals are silent, which is most of the time, you can hear the blood pounding in your ears. You are a primeval human, a lone worshipper within a vast, dimly lit temple.

Ksenia was lost in her private worship when she first heard the rumbles of thunder. Moments later they turned to loud crashes as lightning began to strike all around the forest. Then came the downpour. At first she was protected by the dense vegetation overhead but at best it was an umbrella riddled with holes. The leaves gathered water for a few moments, then let it flow until she found herself within a labyrinth of undulating, liquid curtains with nowhere to hide.

She was looking around desperately for shelter when she noticed a cloud of steam ahead. She knew what it meant. The ancient Maya believed that Chac, the rain god, lived beneath the ground and exhaled clouds of steam from the mouths of caves. It rose into heaven to form rain clouds. Ksenia headed for the mist. She hoped she would find a cave and shelter from the storm. She was right.

It was eerie walking into the cloud of steam. It billowed around her, thickest below the level of her knees. Water droplets falling from above cut meteor trails through the fog. The storm was frightening, but so beautiful—crashing thunder, dense fog shot through with raindrop trails, and an occasional black tree trunk, soaked by the rain, looming suddenly before her as she moved forward.

All at once the open maw of the cavern was in front of her. A thick tongue of fog was rolling toward her from it. Ksenia Kurakova was a scientist, not a spiritualist. With head down, she pushed forward and entered the open mouth. It seemed less interested in devouring her than continuing to exhale the carpet of steam that now swirled about her feet.

The last few steps had brought sudden relief—no more rain pounding on her head, and a little farther inside the cave, no mist. Unlike the ancient Maya priests, she knew it was the change in temperature that turns the saturated cavern air to fog as it leaves a cave—and it’s the low pressure of an approaching storm that causes the cave to exhale, pushing the fog out into the forest. There was no mystery, though Ksenia had to admit the whole thing was eerie and made the hair on her neck stand up and goose pimples rise on her arms.

This is really dumb, she thought. I should have been prepared for rain. She usually ridiculed others who were surprised by sudden, jungle downpours. Why do you think they call it the rainforest? she would chide them. Now she stood in the entrance of a cave, the forest outside, invisible in the clouds of steam that were billowing into existence just in front of her.

She turned to look back into the cave. At her feet she noticed a path of crushed, white rock that led off into the darkness. That was interesting but also no surprise.

A sacbé, she thought—one of the ancient white ways, created by the Maya through the jungle. This must have been a ceremonial cave. The path would probably lead back to a chamber where they would have collected virgin water or even have performed human sacrifices. She began to shiver again. This time it was not because she was chilly. It was the eerie setting in which she found herself. Despite efforts to be scientifically detached, Maya archaeologists were notorious for their fascination with the morbid aspects of the ancients. Ksenia remembered the very words of one professor of archaeology from the University of Minnesota as he described his emotions in a setting much like that in which Ksenia now found herself.

I began to toy with the idea, he had said, that Xibalbá, the Maya Hell, was a land reached through a cave. I was not particularly terrified, simply fascinated by the inky blackness around me.

Ksenia knew friends of professor Dennis Puleston. One colleague made a point of that fact that Puleston didn’t say he wasn’t frightened, but "not particularly terrified." There is quite a difference between the two.

Ksenia was definitely not terrified. Should she be? She was alone, inadequately dressed, and possibly standing on the path to Hell. She laughed out loud at the thought. Her laugh echoed back from deep within the cave. The sound was anything but reassuring. She recalled that the same professor had died under very strange circumstances. They had been the subject of campfire discussions for years.

Dr. Puleston once thought it would be fun to pull God by the beard, as the saying goes. At the famous ruins of Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, he decided to taunt the god, Chac, the same entity thought by the Maya to control clouds, storms, lightning . . . and the mists that pour from caves. He found a pile of carved stones he believed to be chthonic instruments, limestone rods carved by the Ancients to emit specific notes when struck. Before a small gathering of colleagues, he called out a mocking prayer to Chac while rapping on the stones. Then he climbed the steep steps of El Castillo, the main structure at the ancient site. At the top, he stood with arms outstretched as dark clouds began to gather.

All at once a lightning bolt flew from the sky and struck the temple—not near Dr. Puleston, but with uncanny determination, it burned a sizzling trail across the front of the structure and found the archaeologist. He died instantly.

Professor Dennis Puleston, a man thought to have a brilliant future in Maya archaeology, is buried in the Merida municipal cemetery in Yucatan. His colleagues erected a headstone for him with the words, Illuminatus Xibalbá—Enlightened by Hell.

Ksenia was not terrified or even close to it. The story of Dennis Puleston was true, but had many reasonable explanations. The first one was—don’t climb the highest structure around during a lightning storm. She chuckled to herself at that, but was careful not to laugh out loud. She wasn’t anxious to hear it echo back from deep within the cave again. Her cynicism had its limits.

She refocused on her situation. There were three things of immediate concern. First, it was growing late and no one knew where she was. Second, she was not well prepared to spend the night. And third, where the hell did this cave come from? It was not on any maps though they had been digging in these ruins off and on for almost a century. Her own aunt had been among the first.

Ksenia was being well paid by the Chalice Corporation to make this trip to the jungle and the ruins of Yaxchilan and Yo k´ Ib, For her it was also a special pilgrimage to honor her renowned family member. She’d seen this place before—in pictures. She’d been here over and over in her mind. She was only three when her aunt died.

Thirteen years later a group of the famous lady’s colleagues had traveled here to scatter her ashes atop a structure designated in the literature as Temple J-23. It was the tallest of the vine covered structures and overlooked the Usumacinta. Neither Ksenia nor any of her aunt’s relatives had been there, but she had seen photos of the memorial ceremony and listened to an account of it from Ian Graham at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. He’d had kept her ashes in his office for thirteen years. He turned them over to younger colleagues better able to make the difficult trip.

It was the photos and description of that ceremony that triggered something deep within Ksenia. As a high school teenager on a field trip to the Peabody, she had decided to become an archaeologist. Professor Graham had invited her into his office when he heard she was related to his former colleague. She was clear with him that the word aunt was used loosely in her family. It simply mdeant a respected elder. The blood connection was dubious at best.

In school teachers noted Ksenia’s drawing talent. She decided she would put it to use as Tante Tanya had, to sketch the mysterious structures hidden beneath the soil and vegetation in the jungles of Central America. The idea of those cities engulfed by vegetation made her mind swim. She would sit in her room, listening over and over to a recording of Claude Debussy’s prelude, La Cathédrale Engloutie, The Engulfed Cathedral. She thought of the jungle soil and vegetation as a fluid, a body of water that had risen up around the ancient Mayan ruins.

Debussy’s composition was based on an ancient Breton myth about a castle submerged in water off the coast of an island named Ys. When the surface was still, the water was so clear, you could see the cathedral below and hear priests chanting, bells ringing, and the cathedral organ playing.

Ksenia loved the mystical concept within the myth and the sonorous mysticism of the French composer’s prelude, but she thought her own ancient ruins beneath the jungle floor were even more marvelous. They were real, not a myth, and her vision of the soil and vegetation rising above them like liquid was just as true. She had been fascinated by her study of geology, though often given to daydreaming in class as she contemplated the mechanisms of the planet. The more she learned of the earth, the more she took delight in the realization that it truly was a fluid in motion.

Though seemingly unchanging, the landscape rises and falls, flows this way and that, if you watch it with the Eyes of the Eternal. Ksenia, though ambivalent about theological dogma, did pray at times and thought she could see the Earth through God’s eyes. She would look at the landscape around her with the timeless eye God had placed within her brain. She would watch mountains rise, landmasses drift away on self-directed journeys around the globe, and step back when they tore at one another beneath her feet, sometimes splitting to reveal the planet’s smoldering core. Her Engulfed Cathedral was not a single structure but whole cities, once teeming with people, swamped by soil, torn apart by vines, shaken by earthquakes, and overgrown by trees and underbrush. Like Debussy’s bells chiming beneath the sea, she could hear the muffled sounds of the long gone people, their voices struggling to be heard through the sea of jungle rock and soil.

As a child, then as a University student, Ksenia planned to walk the jungle trails and wander among the mysterious ruins once so familiar to the illustrious Tatiana Avenirova Proskouriakoff. Now she was standing in the entrance of a jungle cave amidst the seemingly random cluster of rubble mounds outside she knew to be quite orderly. They were once the gleaming sturctures of a magnificent city.

Here, at last, I’m within a stone’s throw of Tante Tanya’s ashes, she thought, and I’ve gone off stupidly on my own. She would be ashamed of me.

I’m not frightened, she said to herself, the hair standing on the back of her neck indicating otherwise. This place is really creepy, she added, afraid to say it out loud lest an echo respond.

Besides the unpleasant surroundings, there was the problem of her diabetes. She had been diagnosed with the disease while still a child. No one could blame it on bad diet or lack of exercise. She was just short of being a vegetarian and an accomplished athlete with a hard body. The disease was genetic. She was never intimidated by the insulin shots she’d learned to self-administer. Others winced when she allowed them to watch—lift the skin on her flat stomach, insert the needle, and push in the plunger. It didn’t hurt. Besides diabetes, she had also inherited a mischievous streak from somewhere. The wincing her performance elicited amused young Ksenia. Another innocent, but somewhat mean, little game was one she played on people. Friends tried to give her a nickname, since pronouncing the double consonant in Ksenia was tough for all but those familiar with Slavic languages. She would repeat her name several times with a little grin—Ksenia, Ksenia. They would try, mouthing various incorrect pronunciations—Kesenia, Senia, Kersenia.

The beautiful diabetic may have been dumb to wander off on her own, but she had developed an important, self-preservation reflex years ago. She never went anywhere without a couple of pre-loaded, insulin syringes in a small fanny pack. She pulled it around front and checked inside to make sure she had her medications. There were several syringes, along with the little ice pack necessary to keep them cool for a few hours. The ice pack was still cool but had turned liquid. No problem. Technology had made things easier. Humulin-N was not terribly sensitive to temperature. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical companies didn’t have Central American rainforests in mind. She was safe for the time being, but would have to return to the river and the tiny solar-powered refrigerator in her duffel she had improvised for trips such as these. She had taken it out and set it up on the beach before she went into the woods.

Outside the cave, rain was falling in columns through gaps in the jungle canopy. Here and there a noisy deluge would hit the forest floor as a broad leaf dipped beneath the weight of collected water and discharged its burden all at once.

As she peered out, Ksenia noted with concern that the light was growing dimmer. It was getting late. But at least the thunder and lightning had let up. The storm was moving on.

Though the air in the cavern was clear, the forest outside remained shrouded in fog. Ksenia watched with fascination as a low carpet of fog rolled from where she stood, then rose to envelope everything. Despite the eerie scene, she was more concerned for her companions who were due to arrive soon from up river. She was tough and able to rein in her jitters when necessary, but she was afraid the others would arrive, miss her, and begin a dangerous search in the heavy downpour. They did not know these ruins as she did. Rain was not the main problem. They would dress for that. The real danger was the confusing terrain, made even more difficult by the storm and approaching darkness. The ancient ruins were not structures the others could use for orientation as she could—just jungle-covered mounds of earth and rock. Everything would look the same to them except for variations in size. They would see only muddy paths twisting through an endless maze of trees and vines.

Though Ksenia had not been here before, the structures were in her head. Many of them had been drawn by Aunt Tanya, as though untouched by time, rising pristine above the jungle. She saw them as her aunt had—and the maps her aunt had drawn as part of her role with the 1930’s University of Pennsylvania project. If asked, Ksenia could draw identical copies from memory. Besides a beautiful face, incredible body, and tremendous IQ, Ksenia had been blessed with an eidetic memory. She could remember things in her head that she had seen only once, as though they were photographs. People commonly referred to such a talent as a photographic memory. Though usually a valuable ability, it was sometimes a bit of a nuisance. Ksenia could see her aunt’s maps, complete with a couple of coffee cup rings in one corner and a smudge of chocolate near the map legend. She would never be able to clean them up unless she got to see a clean copy. In this case, she didn’t want to. She liked to think her aunt had left the coffee stain with her own cup, or set a piece of chocolate down while she was working.

That idea was more romantic than likely. Her aunt was far too fastidious to allow such blemishes to remain on her work. Some sloppy research student must have left them there. Near the chocolate smudge she could see her aunt’s perfect, block-letter statement, DRAWN BY PROSKOURIAKOFF.

Right now, Ksenia knew she was in the midst of a cluster of structures in a quadrant known as J. But was that correct? This cave was not on the map of Quadrant J. She could not be mistaken. The map was clear and sharp in her mind.

With that thought, Ksenia turned to look into the cavern behind her. Was it her imagination or did she see a soft glow in the distance? She blinked and rubbed her eyes.

No. It was real!

Chapter Two

Dr. Afonso Winik had been kneeling in front of the image of Black Jesus for a very long time. His knees were hurting badly. In the United States they had long ago thought to put padding on kneeling benches. Not so here in his home district of Chiquimula, Guatemala. Alfonso had a lot of money, a medical degree from Harvard, a large collection of ancient Mayan artifacts, and Osgood-Schlatter Disease. His Harvard degree, in addition to his family’s wealth, had made him probably the richest man in Chiquimula, and maybe one of the richest in Guatemala. Osgood-Schlatter Disease was not fatal—not even life threatening, just uncomfortable. Millions had it. It’s what had interested him in becoming an orthopedic surgeon. He liked the sound of its medical description— an irritation of the patellar tendon at the tibial tuberosity . He had lumps on his knees. He had probably gotten them from kneeling in church. He had always been a very devout Catholic. For many years he had been especially drawn to praying before the image of Black Jesus at the Basilica of Esquipulas. He, like many of his ancestry, felt that a white Savior somehow excluded him. His father was Mayan of a group known as Chorti. Winik, in Ch’orti simply means man. His father certainly was that—small in stature but an Olympian athlete. His mother was Hispanic. She had christened him Alfonso. It was her father’s name, a wealthy doctor in Mexico City.

Alfonso had dark skin like the Black Jesus of Esquipulas and a dual dedication to the Catholicism of his mother and to orthopedic surgery. Besides Drs. Osgood and Schlatter, he had a more compelling reason for choosing his medical specialty. As a romantic fascinated with the history of his father’s people he had studied what was known of the legendary ruler of the jungle city, Palenque. It’s ruler, Pacal, had a deformed foot. Skeletal deformities could be a death sentence in the unyielding environment of the rainforest. Lord Pacal was more than fortunate in his choice of a mother. She was a powerful political force like her counterpart in Egypt, Queen Hatshepsut. Pacal’s mother had held the throne of Palenque for him until he was old enough and physically strong enough to hold the throne on his own.

Alfonso loved the idea of the two powerful women, but most of all he became driven to create a haven of mercy for the orthopedically deformed children of the forest. Besides the stories of the powerful queens of history he loved the legend of Robin Hood. He would charge the rich handsomely for his services but provide them free to the people of the jungle. As he prepared for his life mission he would think about naming his future establishment. He would call his enterprise La Clínica de Ortopedia Winik de la Selva—Winik’s Jungle Orthopedic Clinic. He chuckled at the more alliterative version in English, The Winik Clinic.

At Harvard, Alfonso not only learned to saw and repair bones. He practically haunted the halls of the Peabody Museum. He learned to pronounce it the way they did at Harvard—P’bdy. It was not only close at hand but renowned for its specialization in matters related to his ancestors. There were people there like Professor Michael Coe, Ian James Alastair Graham, and the highly revered, Tatiana Avenirova Poskouriakoff. The insiders all called her Tanya. She passed away in 1982, before Winik entered medical school, but her name was still frequently on people’s lips. At the very time he was fastening femurs together with titanium screws and plates, her cremated ashes were sitting in an urn on a bookshelf in Ian Graham’s office at the Peabody. He had kept them, undecided as to their appropriate disposal. Years later, a bit too old to make the trip, he gave them to a group of field anthropologists to spread atop a temple at Piedras Negras, the jungle site in Guatemala where she had done some of her finest work. Alfonso knew the place well. He preferred to use its ancient Maya name, Yó-K’Ib. He was fascinated by archaeology, particularly the mystery that surrounded jungle ruins. He had been to Egypt and found their art and archaeological sites skillfully executed, but there they were, baking in the bright sun with not a blade of grass, not a tangle of vines, not a giant ceiba tree, to frame and deepen the mystery they represented.

He began collecting regional artifacts in a small way at first, mostly Maya, but some Olmec. He never saw anything wrong with the practice, and still didn’t, but became exposed much later to the conflicts that raged at academic institutions on the subject. He had a burning desire to own them, the money to acquire them, and the contacts to make their acquisition simpler than it might have been for a non-Guatemalan.

One day, a dark-skinned man like himself, brought him a few items that seemed totally beyond probability. Provenance is always a concern, both for the academician and the serious collector. Where did the items come from? Could the assertion of their physical origin be proven? And what had been, as lawyers might say, its chain of custody?

The items were not Mayan. No question of that, but the man who brought them to Alfonso was well known to him. He had once performed a surgical procedure on him free of charge. The man was just short of being a disciple of the philanthropic surgeon. He could be trusted completely when he said he had found the items in a tomb that had never been entered before. Furthermore, he said they had never left his hands since he acquired them.

Those details pertaining to provenance might not stand up in the pinch-nose Halls of Academe, but for Alfonso, they were more than adequate—the declaration of one man of integrity to another. It was Alfonso’s studied conclusion that the artifacts were not created by any Mayan, but probably collected by a Maya lord, just as Alfonso now collected theirs. He paid for the items and put them away in his vault to ponder the enigma of their existence.

Ω

Alfonso Winik, M.D. arose from the kneeling bench in front of Black Jesus and massaged his knees. He had been praying for guidance regarding a number of things, including a prayer that he might understand the nature of the strange items he’d bought and kept hidden in his vault.

The next morning he would be travelling, first by chauffeured limousine to the local airport, then by TACA to Guatemala City, and finally, via American Airlines to Los Angeles. He would be speaking at a medical convention on the challenges of potential sepsis during hip replacement in the Third World environment. No one was more qualified to speak on the subject. His clinic in Chiquimula was state of the art but heat and humidity constituted a vast Petrie dish for the growth and spread of undesireable biota. A bigger problem was finding and keeping trained assistants. Both would be the focus of his talk, partly as information for the attendees, but also as a gentle recruitment vehicle. Few Guatemalans came to him with useful experience. Those who heard of his clinic in the USA came with long hair and sandals looking for the mind-expanding experience of working with poor people. They usually left shortly after experiencing the real thing. He