Chapter 50. Scorpions
Island of Boyuca. Bay of Honduras.
Mountain Man Pete pulled out his Cree LED flashlight from his pack and scanned the small chamber. Torches were mounted on brackets affixed to three of the walls, but they were unlit. “First thing we need to do is get some light in here,” said Pete. He took out some dry matches from a Ziploc bag in his backpack and lit the torches. Surprisingly, they lit up. Pete handed a torch to John Morse, Zach Morse and Charlie Winston, and kept his flashlight.
Drame was sitting on the stone floor, stunned. “Shit, we’re going to die in here,” said Drame, suddenly realizing their predicament.
“You’re just realizing that?!” screamed Bolinda. “No shit, genius! If you would get your head out of your marijuana bong for five seconds you would have realized that! Why did I let you convince me to go on this fucking trip! I had a photo shoot in Greece I gave up for this! God damn it!” Bolinda, who normally seemed pretty tough, crumpled in a corner, with her head in her knees, and began crying. Drame looked at her, feeling bad.
Morse felt guilty. He was the one who had convinced everyone to go on this trip. All those deaths would be his fault. He was always optimistic, but he agreed that things were looking bleak. He looked over and saw that his son was trying to fight back crying. “Look,” he said, “We have to try. The only way to go is forward, so let’s move on and see if we can get out of here.”
Winston was also feeling guilty. He was not so much afraid of his own death as he was of the devastating effects this would have on Murielle and Teddy, who needed him. He thought of Teddy, paralyzed and now losing a father. It was too much to bear. He had to stay positive.
As the glow of the torches lit up their surroundings, they could see a passageway leading into the heart of the cave. Seeing nowhere else to go, the group sullenly went forward. Zach helped Bolinda up, telling her it would be okay. After about three minutes walking down the small passageway, their path suddenly opened up into a large cavern. As the torches lit up the room, they could see that the room was about seventy feet high, or about the size of a six or seven story building. Pete shined his flashlight around the room. There were no cave openings or doors or other passageways out. Pete looked upwards with the flashlight. There, on the far wall, was a painted picture of a giant scorpion. At the top of the scorpion’s tail, on the far wall, in the corner, near the very top of the cavern, seven stories up, was a small cave opening. It looked like that was their only way out.
The other members of Morse’s group were dejected when they saw the lofty exit, but Morse was excited. If this was truly the room of the scorpions, then the natives were putting them through the equivalent of the mythical Trials of Xibalba. This meant two things—that there may really be a Fountain of Youth, and there may really be a way out. All they had to do was to be as clever as the Hero Twins.
“If only I had brought my climbing spikes,” said Pete, disgusted with himself. The wall looked almost sheer. There was no way he was going to just climb up it without spikes. “So if we can’t climb up it, how do we get up there?”
Pete continued to scan the room with the flashlight, scanning it across the stone floor. As he did, it looked like the light passed over something with a vague human shape on the ground. “What the hell is that?” He focused the beam. There, not twenty feet in front of them, was a skeleton wearing the remnants of long-deteriorated clothing. Bolinda screamed. Disturbingly, a sharp wooden pole was driven side to side through the skeleton’s ribcage. The torn remains of buckled shoes were on the skeleton’s feet. A metal necklace snaked around the skeleton’s neck. A ring was on one of the skeleton’s fingers.
John Morse, fascinated, started to walk forward to inspect the skeleton, when Pete grabbed Morse harshly from behind, pulling him back. “Hold on there, Professor, be careful. Look.” Just in front of Morse was a rectangular hole, which looked like it plunged downward into darkness about twenty feet. The skeleton was just on the other side of the hole.
“Thanks, Pete. Bring those torches over here.” They brought the torches over and, along with Pete’s flashlight, peered into the hole. At the bottom of the hole were two square stone tiles, one closer to Morse and one further away. There were two images painted on the tiles. One looked like some kind of spotted animal. The other looked like a deer. The square tiles at the bottom of the hole looked like this:
The tile with the deer head had a slightly higher elevation, maybe three feet higher, than the tile with the spotted animal. Pete then took his flashlight and shined it back on the skeleton. The skeleton was just past the hole.
“Wait a minute,” said Charlie Winston. “It looks like there are markings all over the floor.” As Pete shined the flashlight past and around the skeleton, he could see that the entire ground floor of the cave was covered with painted square rock tiles. The floor looked like this:
“What does it all mean?” Zach asked his father.
“I don’t know, Zach, but understanding those patterns on the floor is obviously the key to getting out of here. But first, I need to get a look at that skeleton. There is something very familiar about it.” Morse walked over to the square tile of what looked like a man with a mohawk haircut. Stepping on the stone, and reaching just past the hole, he grabbed the remains of the skeleton in his arms. Suddenly, there was a loud crunching sound, and the square tile on which he was standing started to fall downwards. Morse quickly threw the skeleton back toward his friends . As the square column below his feet fell downward, Morse tried to grab for his son Zach’s hand, but his hand slipped, and he went along with the descending floor downward until the floor seemed to lock into place.
“Are you okay?” Zach called into the hole.
“Yes,” called Morse from the bottom of his hole. “Just a little scared, that’s all.” Morse looked downward and noticed that the tile on which he was standing, the one with the guy wearing the Mohawk, was about three feet higher than the tile next to him with the deer head on it. The significance suddenly dawned on him. “Hey!” yelled Morse from the bottom of the hole. “I figured something out.”
Morse saw the heads of several of his friends peeking out from the top of the hole.
“What is it?” asked Zach.
“It’s a staircase,” said Morse.
“A staircase?” asked Pete.
“Yes, each tile that we land on correctly goes about three feet higher than the last tile. Eventually, the columns will start rising out of the ground, to form a staircase, which, if I miss my guess, will lead us to that cave opening at the very top of the far wall. All we have to do is pick the right tiles.”
“Here, let me get you out of there,” said Pete. Pete took out rappelling rope from his backpack, and sent it down to Morse. In a few minutes, they had pulled him with the rope out of the hole. Morse brushed off the dirt from his clothes.
“I think you’re right, John,” said Winston. “That’s probably what happened to our skeleton friend here. He stepped on the first tile, the one with the spotted animal. His first two picks were correct, but the third tile he picked was the wrong choice. He was punished for his choice, and that’s how he wound up with a spear in his ribcage.”
“Where did the spear come from?” asked Zach.
Bolinda thought of this question, and then picked up a fairly large rock. Without further discussion, she shot-putted a large rock out into the center of the tile floor. As soon as the rock landed, there was a fast whistling noise, as three wooden spears shot at lightning speed from a hole in the sidewall across the middle of the room, striking the stone wall on the other side.
Bolinda borrowed Pete’s flashlight and shined the light on the left sidewall. “That’s where it came from.” Embedded in the left hand sidewall were dozens of small holes, each with a diameter of about three inches.
A further realization dawned on John Morse. “The sting of the scorpion.”
“What?” asked his son.
“The sting of the scorpion. Those spears are probably tipped in poison. Anyone who misses in this room gets a poisoned spear in the gut, just like the poisonous sting from a scorpion’s tail.”
Charlie Winston had one of the torches and had been busily inspecting the skeleton. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “John, you are gonna want to see this.”
The other members of the team crowded around the skeleton. “Look at the necklace,” said Winston to Morse. “Does that look familiar to you?”
“Not particularly,” said Morse.
“The Lion of St. Mark, the classic symbol for the City of Venice. Ring any bells?”
Morse thought. “What’s a Venetian navigator doing in the Bay of Honduras? Unless… No.”
“Yes,” said Winston triumphantly. “Look at the inscription on the ring: ‘Tutto Il Mio Amore Mattea.’ That means ‘All my love, Mattea.’ John, we’ve found the remains of John Cabot.” Morse was speechless. It certainly looked that way. This was like finding Christopher Columbus’ bones. It was incredible.
“This will be one of the greatest finds in history,” said Winston. “That is, if we ever get out of here to tell the tale.” Morse instinctively took out his iPhone to take a picture, but it had died long ago. He knew he couldn’t take the entire skeleton with him, but he was going to take as much as he could. After consulting with Winston, they agreed to remove the skull, and to take the ring, the necklace, some small pieces of bone, and some tattered pieces of the clothing, putting them in Ziplog bags in their backpacks.
“It is a shame we cannot take the entire skeleton,” said Morse.
“I know,” said Winston. “The ramifications of this are incredible. So if Cabot got marooned here, that supports the thesis that de Hojeda and Vespucci dumped him overboard and abandoned him, and then covered it up on the ship’s logs by claiming that he was a crew member who was mentally ill and jumped the rails.”
“Listen,” said Bolinda. “I know you professors are all excited about this skeleton, but I think we need to spend our time figuring out how to get out of here. Now we know what happens when we step on the right tile, and we know what happens when we step on the wrong tile, but how do we know which is the correct tile?”
“Hmmm,” said Morse, loving the challenge of a good puzzle. Let’s see what we have so far. The first tile appears to be a cat with spots, perhaps a leopard or an ocelot, something like that. The second tile is clearly a deer.”
“Wait a minute,” said Ka’-an. “Did you say ocelot?”
“Yes,” said Morse. “It’s also called a dwarf leopard.”
“I know what an ocelot is,” said Ka’-an. “Oh, and a deer. Oh, I see what it is. That guy with a Mohawk, that’s a Monkey.”
“Really?” asked Zach, staring into the hole. That doesn’t look like a monkey to me.”
“Yes, it’s a monkey,” said Ka’-an. “These are the Aztec astrological symbols. Mayans use a system almost identical to this. It is very similar to your zodiac, or to the animals for the Chinese new year. I do not know why I did not see it before. Of course, that’s what it is.”
“Great,” said Winston. “So tell us what each of these tiles mean.”
“Each of these are ‘day-signs,’” said Ka’-an. “The Mayans start with the crocodile. Then they go in groups of four. The first four are Crocodile, Wind, House, and Lizard.”
“I see the crocodile,” said Zach looking across the stone floor. “And the House, and the Lizard, and the Wind.”
“The next four are Snake, Death, Deer, and Rabbit. I think that the skull is Death. The other three are pretty clear. The next four are Water, Dog, Monkey, and Grass. Water is the one that looks like waves. The Monkey is the mohawk guy. Dog and Grass are pretty clear. See them over there? After that comes Powerful Reed, Ocelot, Eagle, and Vulture. The Powerful Reed is the one that kind of looks like a cattail reed. The Vulture is the bird showing his teeth, and the Eagle is the other bird. The Ocelot is the spotted one. After Vulture comes Earthquake—that’s the one that looks like one boomerang on top of another boomerang—then Knife, Rain, and Flower. You can see the Knife over there. Rain is the one that looks like water drops. Hmmm, I don’t see the Flower sign. That’s it. There are twenty signs in all.”
“OK, I did not have time to memorize all of those,” said John Morse, “but I noticed from what you said that the first tile is not the Crocodile. If we are going to go in order, you would think that the Crocodile would be the first tile.”
“Yes, the first tile is the Ocelot,” said Ka’-an. “If we were going in order, the next tile would be the Eagle, but instead the Deer is the next tile. So I don’t think the solution is to go in order.”
Morse looked at the tiles again. “So the first three are Ocelot, Deer, Monkey. What do those have in common?” Morse bit his lip, studying the tiles, trying to discern some pattern. The group stared silently, unsure what to make of it all. “Let’s see. If our staircase goes from Ocelot, then to Deer, then to Monkey, then we have to figure out the next step. The only tiles touching the Monkey are Water (going straight ahead) and Eagle (going to the left). The Snake touches on the diagonal to the right, but John Cabot, our skeleton friend, picked that tile, so that has to be wrong. There is another Ocelot on the diagonal to the left. My intuition, though, is that this is a continuous staircase, and that going on the diagonal is probably wrong, but, of course, I don’t know that for sure. So if I were a betting man, I would think that the most likely choice is either Eagle or Water.”
“So we have a 50-50 chance of dying,” said Zach, not that impressed by his father’s detailed analysis.
Charlie Winston felt that they needed more information. “Ka’-an, tell us everything you know about these astrological signs.”
“Well, Mayans have a 260-day astrological calendar, based upon the system used by the Aztecs. 260 days is 13 repetitions of the 20-day cycle. Each sign represents one of the twenty days. Much like the zodiac, if you are born on a particular day, the sign for that day rules your destiny—your character, your profession, the type of mate who would be good for you. In ancient times, part of a Mayan child’s name would be the name for that particular day. For example, Eight-Deer is the name of one Mayan hero.”
“Why are they in groups of four? What is the significance of that?” asked Winston.
“Well, each of the day-signs is assigned a direction,” said Ka’-an. “So persons born under an East sign, like the Crocodile, are aggressive, outgoing, energetic, creative. People born under the North signs are idealistic and romantic, and so on.”
“Directions,” said Winston triumphantly. “Well, there it is! North, south, east, west. We just figure out which way in this cave is North, and then we use the tiles to point us in the right direction, climbing the staircase to the top.”
Bolinda eyed the holes on the side walls as she put her foot near the edge of the tile floor.
“You guys better not be wrong,” she said.