PACHACUTI'S CURSE - Part II

Simon, ever the web expert at his young age, turned on the PC at home and started searching for an author called Luis Julio Riano. Drinking coke and eating Hershey bars on a stormy Friday evening, he looked like the perfect cliché of a crazy reporter trying to save the day. Emma called him “a modern Ernest Hemmingway” and “our own little Indiana Jones”.

         Simon waved all that away with the pretext of saving their lives.

         At eleven o’clock at night, he called his mum and Emma in to the headquarters with a sunny smile on his chops.

         Emma came rushing in first. Amanda came in with curlers in her hair and her nightgown slightly open. They carefully read what it said on the document.

         Luis Julio Riano had written the thesis about his book about the cult and pointed out the exact place where the queen had been executed. Just like they had suspected, the body was hidden behind the Karajia sarcophagi. It was rumoured that the head returned to its’ mummified body once a year on its’ death day 14th of August. If the legend really was true, the queen for one brief moment the dawn of that morning just before sunrise transformed into a real woman. If the spell really was to be broken, a real ancestor would have to be present at the transformation and push her into the coffin, this time entombing her for real and letting all the souls rest in peace.

         They found no e-mail, just a phone number and a dated address of a probably not correct Lima apartment.

         The very next morning, Amanda called that phone number and a woman answered the phone. In broken English, the woman answered that the man was not living there anymore and she had no way of finding out where he was. They left their home number with the woman just in case he would resurface.

         They had hit a snag. Neither Amanda nor the children knew what to do. They were just about leave the house, when the phone rang. When Simon answered, a man spoke to him in a very thick accent and told him that his name was Luis Riano. They had called him, he said, and he asked them what they wanted.

         The family began describing their own story of the encounter with the queen.

         There was a long pause and for a while the three English intellectuals thought they had lost contact with Lima. Mister Riano cleared his throat. He was clearly moved or frightened, Maybe, he was sad or happy or maybe he was everything at once.

         He said something to someone in the background.

It seemed to be the woman that they had spoken to earlier.

         “Uhhm,” Luis Riano began, “you must forgive me my mistrust. There is a lot of terror in my community concerning this –,“ another long pause occurred, “– woman. I have never met someone that can prove they are related to her.”

         Amanda looked at her children and her children looked at her. They were startled and surprised and completely flabbergasted.

         “What was that again?” Emma asked. “You are saying that we are related?”

         Luis Julio Riano was rustling with paper at the other end. “This is costing you a fortune, but I guess it doesn’t matter under the circumstances. Gracias, Nora. Sorry, my wife just gave me Pachacuti’s family tree. You see, I have devoted my life to researching the whole business with the two Pachacuti rulers and have probably written ten books on the subject. I am an old man now, but once I started claiming that the Queen Pachacuti was related to the Inca King a few years ago my books have been banned from the book stores. Unfortunately, it is true.”

         Amanda sat down on her beige couch. “Mr. Riano, you have to take this from the beginning. You are saying that the two Pachacuti’s are related?”

         “Yes,” Riano went on, “I found this out while I was researching in an old vault with artefacts from the old Chachapoyas cult. The boy that was raped by the queen was her son and the father that saved him was her husband.”

         Simon shook his head.

“Wasn’t this queen young? The boy must’ve been at least twelve?”

         “He was ten,” Luis Julio Riano corrected. “At least according to the document that I found. His name was Rupac Alaco and he fled the village with his father right before the execution. They settled down in what was to become Cuzco, the navel of what was to become the Inca Empire. I followed his ancestors 15 generations to the founder of the Inca Empire that you claim to be related to. Rupac Alaco was the younger Pachacuti’s ancestor.”

         Now it was Amanda’s and the children’s turn to take a long break in communication.

         “Take your time to respond,” Luis said. “This is a lot to take in at once. You probably know what I am going to ask next.”

         Emma interrupted, her voice calmed down to a husky whisper.

         “Are there other people that can prove being related to her?”

         Luis cleared his throat. “I have to ask you to repeat that.”

         Amanda filled in for her daughter.

         “My daughter just asked you if you know anyone else that can prove having this woman as ... well, how shall we put this ...”

         “No,” Luis interrupted. “I cannot claim to know anyone else. You are the only ones.” There was rustling of paper again and an obvious search for words. “I can also claim to be the only one to have researched the topic. This is not a popular story. People want to forget this. Pachacuti was the founder of a giant empire and it is not popular to connect him with a namesake that spread hate across the land. The whole problem is that people keep disappearing and some people remain for years in a coma. It has to end.”

         Luis cleared his throat again.

“August 14th is in seven weeks.”

         Emma laughed cynically. “Well, it would be good to get some sun. Oxford does get a trifle too cold in the summer and London is a bit far away.”

         “We do have some savings,” Simon chirped.

         “What about dad?” Amanda said.

         “We would be saving his life,” Emma said. “And he has Roland, who will visit him every day. We know that dad will wake up if we solve this shit.”

         Amanda shrugged. “I suppose my parents and his parents can visit him now and then. We will tell the doctors to keep him under surveillance and not do anything until we come back.”

         “They will think we are nuts. I mean, leaving dad and going on a vacation,” Simon spat.

         “May I say something?” Luis chimed in at the other end of the line. The family all agreed that he may. “This woman has been troubling people for over a millennium. It is time you put a stop to it. She will trap and trip you. She will lie and tell you to go against family. Family is not the culprit. Family is the friend and everyone in your family is your friend and will live twice as long, bit only if you kill this thing. Blood relations can kill it. I can’t.”

         These words decided their fate.

         The Jeffries were rich and they did have enough money in the bank. Amanda called the relatives and explained to them what was happening. Some of them sneered and shook their heads. Others, like Roland, told them to go ahead and do it and that what they did was a noble thing.

         The family decided on four weeks in Peru, invited to live in the Riano house. It turned out that Riano, in spite of having become a recluse over the last few years, was a very rich man.

         Amanda even agreed to find a substitute for herself in the university. Her fill-in was a freelance pianist that had worked in another part of the county at the time and was very happy to be earning decent money for four weeks.

         Emma cancelled her appointments in London and Simon put his studies on hold. This was family and family always comes first.

         Luis Julio Riano was a seventy year old man, but remarkably fit for his age. Simon told him that he looked like a mixture between Anthony Quinn and Clark Gable. Luis laughed at this, claiming to be a big fan of both these actors.

         Luis had a son. His name was Fernando just like the old king that sent Columbus on his journey. Just like Riano’s father, this 27-year old man was an expert on the subject of the Chachapoya cults and young enough to teach the Jeffries family a few tricks.

         Luis’ wife Nora gave the family the meal of their lives. Simon loved spicy food. However, Amanda asked for the boring version of the meal. Luis joked: “Oh, the sissy alternative. You English women are incorrigible. You must learn how to dance Salsa.”

         There was tomato soup with shrimps served with Martinis, Argentine Steak marinated in Barbados rum with Bolivian veggies served with local beer and Grenada cocoa bean stuffed nutmeg ice cream with Port wine. Since Simon was seventeen he was allowed to take part in the enjoyment of alcohol, but only under mum’s strict care.          It was a very fun evening with Luis teaching Amanda Salsa and Fernando teaching Emma Tango. Nora grabbed Simon and taught him Merengue.

Emma fell in love with Fernando. They spent the night on the porch getting drunk on Chilean red wine. The house was big and Amanda had no control over her daughter. She disappeared around midnight. The only thing she could hear were the groans coming from below.

          It was the beginning of August and not much time was left to prepare for the expedition into the wasteland. The sturdy car was packed, the tents were folded, the camping equipment brought along, along with he compass, the ropes, the hooks, the boots, the sun glasses, the crème, the bug spray and the beef jerky.

         Now, the first thing they had to know was that they could take the station wagon as far as Chachapoyas. Then, marching would take them many days. The drive from Lima would be long enough, but the stride would take the most of their strength. Luckily enough, there was always a piece of river to bathe in or a waterfall to jump into. Nevertheless, there was no mini bar to dive into and there were insects in the wilderness that they probably couldn’t even spell.

         Timothy had taken his kids on one Peru trek. His own parents had brought him along three times, but still the Jeffries children had their own experience with wild life. Emma, Simon and their mother had already had their vaccinations and they knew about the malaria bugs and the ant eaters, the boas and the tapirs.

         Not one word had been uttered about what they were getting into. Nora stayed at home and took care of the house. She seemed happy enough, but Amanda could see that she was afraid of what her two men were getting into: they were travelling into hell.

         Luis kept saying that in Peru they were the lucky ones. Like in Bolivia, there was lots of poverty. The slums were vast. The unfinished cities were only not repaired in order to save the people from paying house tax. Certain places were not recommended for stops and a trip through the rough country was never wise without a guide. Timothy spoke Quechua. Luis thought as much. Amanda didn’t.

         The relationship between Fernando and Emma was becoming intense and Emma was practicing more than just her Spanish.

         Once the five adventurers embarked on their week long hike to the Karajia sarcophagi, Simon was tutored in what he was assigned to do when the queen decided to transform.

There was such a matter-of-fact tone of voice in Luis’ voice as he told Simon to push the queen back to hell that Simon really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was obvious that Simon, being the male ancestor in charge, had to take over and perform whatever task was there for him to do. Luis was not kidding. He was serious.

         Simon couldn’t sleep. All he could hear was Fernando and Emma making hot love in the tent next to his. The bugs kept stinging him and he felt like he was going insane. Was it the Malaria or just the fact that he was about to wet his Johns?

         The trek from Chachapoyas first went past a few villages that were so poor that they had no water and no electricity. The inhabitants regarded the well clad foreigners with a sceptic scrutiny that had Emma shiver. Amanda urged her to look away, but knew they were in luck when one of them offered them a meal.

         Everything was all right until one of the villagers caressed her long and dark blond hair. Fernando defended her as well as told off the man that had flirted with her. He said that no one had seen hair like that before. Emma excused herself for screaming, where upon the man caressed her again. This time, rage was the result.

         After sleeping on straw beds and trying to make love between bugs, Emma vowed never to return to this country again. She had forgotten how much she had hated it the first time.

         The valleys and the mountains were quite demanding and everybody but Luis and Fernando had blisters on their feet. Not a word was being said. Fernando mostly took care of the provisions. He caught the fish, picked the fruit, shot the tapir and told Emma and the rest where they could wash off. If there was no place to wash off, a dry cloth would have to do.

         Emma was told not to spray any perfume on her skin.

         It would attract unwanted attention from the wild life.

         Emma hated her own smell and longed for a bath.

         She also started hating Fernando, because he didn’t hate how she smelled. In fact, he wanted more of her. She wanted her old boyfriend back or at least the bloke she had kissed in class.

         In fact, it seemed that her smelling like a bunch of rotten fish actually turned him on. Men are pigs, she said to herself.

         The moist air and the heat made Amanda faint. Luis tried to revive her and it wasn’t until the sunset that they could wake her up. They decided to camp right there in the jungle.

         The next morning, Simon felt a tickling sensation all over his body and woke up to discover that he was full of ants. As a result, he jumped right into the Huabayacu river in order to rinse off. He came out free of ants, but dirtier than before. Just by an inch, he had missed being eaten by a carnivore water beast.

         Another day’s march had the entourage meet a very friendly tribe of Indians that only spoke an obscure dialect of Quechua. Luis and Fernando explained why they were here and the result was that the entire village started crying and showered them with gifts.

         The food they were given had a very peculiar taste, but they were bursting when they left that next morning. Simon was kissed by a Quechua girl and Emma even started enjoying herself in spite of smelling like a garlic factory. Amanda tried to communicate a good bye to one of the elders and he gave her a feather from a condor as a present and called her “his ripe fruit”. She giggled the whole day after that. Luis kept asking her why and she told him that she would’ve fallen over sideways if Timothy had ever called her that.

         The walk across two bridges lead to a waterfall that actually had them looking at the Karajia sarcophagi, where they camped three days prior to the transformation.

         The family was prepared for the horror they were about to witness by Luis, who told them at length that he had researched this subject for decades and knew nothing of what to expect. On the eve of the third day, Luis announced that it was time to journey into the pit.

         The walk into the cave beyond Karajia was among the hardest the family had experienced yet. The steep and dark pathways were only a bit worse than the wet swamps over big holes in the ground.

         God bless flashlights, Simon said as he narrowly escaped death.

         He kept hearing bats fly around the cave and Luis reassured him that they weren’t vampire bats. All the way into the darkness, Fernando told Simon that the queen would most probably challenge them once she noticed someone was in the cave with her.

         The best way to encounter her was to pray and not listen to the lies she told them. She would manifest into carnal form and that would be the time to confront her and tell her what no one had before. That she had abused her own son.

         That night, Simon wet his own pants and spent the entire time crying.

Once at the centre of the cave, the mummy of the queen appeared before them. The headless corpse waited there for its’ counterpart to arrive and there was only one way to find out if the whole tale was accurate or not. The waiting was torture and Amanda began feeling like a coal miner trapped in a hole.

          She did it for Timothy. That’s all she could think about. After all, she had experienced too much to just wave it off as superstition. This bitch was going to be laid to rest.

         Emma felt like she was in a film. She had seen a bunch of adventure movies about explorers chosen by her brother himself. Simon had forced her to see them and she really hadn’t expected to like them as much as she did. This, however, was everything that these people in hats and capes were, except this was real and might kill them. She didn’t like it one bit. She leaned against Fernando, who comforted her with the touch of his tender furnish.

         Simon was reminded of comics he had read about Inca curses he had read. It scared him to think of being here after having read stories he believed were made up, but this scared him even more. He was about to meet a real ghost.

         The assembled explorers only saw the contours of the mummy on the other side of the cave. There were artefacts around it, but the coffin itself was small. Emma asked Luis why this coffin had not been removed or why these artefacts were not in a museum.

He answered that in this country they respected their dead and this woman was kept away from society. This was a tale that people wanted to forget. There were very few people who actually dared to come here.

The distinction was family. Queen Pachacuti was afraid of family. The expression “blood is thicker than water” was really the precise pinnacle to utter at this juncture. Only family could put her to rest and in this case Simon was Queen Pachacuti’s closest relative. A boy had been raped and as a result of that rape he had founded a dynasty. Now, another boy was avenging that other child and a story was coming to close.

         Simon spent the whole night shivering. There was one piece of beef jerky left and he was munching on that and farting like a champion. Under different circumstances everyone would’ve laughed. Now they were in the dark and shining flashlights on an open coffin with a headless corpse in it.

         Amanda and the children all wanted to run and forget the whole thing, but then they remembered Timothy and the fact that this was the only way they could get Timothy back.

         Bats circled the cave and bugs seemed to chew on their heads.

         Just when Emma felt a spider climbed her back, there was the faint sound of a wheel ascending the steep tunnel. The familiar panting sound of the mouth of the queen turned into a shriek that had her yelling in staccato tones and she started shattering. She spoke in her own Quechua dialect.

         “I see we have visitors,” she laughed. “You are as good as dead now. Bitches and bastards that will rot in hell.” There was a long pause, but now it was not the pause of fear. It was the pause of a beast looking forward to a bigger steak than it had expected. “Ah, I see. Family is here. Timothy is the last of the Mohicans, so to speak. I shall be ready for him. Oh, but he is in stasis. Too bad. The gent is here. Simon. I shall have to decide whether to grill you or eat you raw.”

         Simon’s eyes were wide open with fear and so were everyone else’s. The entire assembly now saw the skull bump down the ascent toward the coffin. It was like a staircase made of stone leading to a puddle and a cliff where the coffin stood before a doorway to a bigger hole. The whole place was a labyrinth.

         It was perverse to see the skull hop down and up and back and forth up to its’ body. It laughed the whole way over there. Now it turned around and the group of travellers saw Pachacuti’s eyes glow in the dark with a hatred that left their oral cavity open. It was the long haired skull of a pirate. The golden crown shone in the darkness. Now the skull lifted off the ground. On a given signal, the coffin swung open and shut again. The coffin opened again and when it did the body inside came alive and shredded its’ bandages, finally adjoining with the head. Now, the entire cave turned into the scene from her execution 1111 years ago. The queen was dragged onto the cliff by a bloodthirsty mob.

         Simon remembered. He wasn’t Simon anymore. He was the little boy that had been abused by his mother. He was standing with his father behind a bush and being urged to leave. Before the execution, he did leave and never came back until this day. Simon was about to finish a long tale, saving the Inca empire the children of his children had founded. He was a reincarnated spirit of a very troubled soul.

         Now, Simon was working on instinct alone. He grabbed a flashlight and shot like a bullet down the slope. Queen Pachacuti saw him and recognized who he was. She shook her head, realizing that her son was now having his revenge at last instead of just leaving with his father and saying nothing.

         The queen grabbed Simon by his chest and threw him into the coffin. The boy was gone. Luis, Amanda, Emma and Fernando stood up and screamed. All of them rushed toward the queen and it was as if the souls that replayed this event all did the same. They were about to finish off a demon that had been too powerful for too long. There was one single hand sticking out of the coffin and it was way to obvious that Simon was stuck between worlds.

         Pachacuti now fought to keep him there and started wrestling with the four adventurers. She aimed to eat them, but Fernando took his airgun and shot a big hole in her head. She started bleeding and looked up at him with big empty eyes. She had become mortal.          Amanda rushed to the coffin and pulled Simon out of the other world. At the same time, Fernando threw in the entire body of the queen into the coffin and shut the lid. The crowd of souls that had witnessed this cheered and disappeared into the heavenly spheres.

         It was the most beautiful sight to see these glowing souls sway and glitter as they were summoned back to the heavenly Lord.

         When Luis opened the coffin a second later the entire body of the queen was visually rested right there in its mummified tomb. The head was on its’ body as if it always had been there and a light rose toward heaven. Maybe, after all, the queen had found peace.

         The dawn arrived and the five explorers found themselves by a campfire eating breakfast. Walking back through the jungle was tiresome. Fernando and Emma kept on making love and Simon kept on being bugged by ants. Luis was making passes at Amanda and the gents of the tribe kept touching Emma’s hair.

         Once back in Lima, Nora had received word from Oxford.

         Timothy was awake and, as far as he had heard, other victims of Pachacuti’s curse being lifted were waking up as well.

         It was a glorious homecoming.

         Fernando promised to come to Oxford one day. If not, then Luis would insist on inviting them to Lima for another bowl of chilli flavoured tomato soup and Chilenean wine. Peru was not around the corner. Emma had had a sexy fling with an Antonio Banderas look-a-like, but she knew that her place was in London. Besides, as good a lover as he was – that Fernando guy – there were plenty of nice colleagues to cuddle in Kensington. The nicest cuddle was Mister Drama himself and the career that he promised to offer.

Timothy was in rehabilitation for months in order to learn how to use his muscles again. Once he was back at work, it seemed so remote that he had been so desperate and, very soon, he started to teach again. He rarely drank wine anymore, he cooked traditional English food without any spices and enjoyed watching the BBC. Now and then, Simon, Amanda and himself enjoyed game of Monopoly and laughed at John Cleese and his very classy wit. Every Friday evening they watched Fawlty Towers together and the Saturday evening was reserved for Elgar, Britten and Holst. Well, Simon disappeared into his room and listened to the Sex Pistols on his MP3 player. It had never been so British.

In that dark corner of his mind, Timothy remembered having walked the paths of Hades. He had been caught between worlds and he had known that his son was being used as the ultimate weapon against a very old ruler.

One thing bothered him. He had not experienced the actual battle between his son and the Queen. But why had the Queen chased Timothy and not Simon straight away? If Simon had been the reincarnation of the Inca boy, why had the Queen not chased him in the first place? After speaking to his family, Timothy realized that his own connection to the Incas had been the catalyst for Pachacuti’s curse to work. The Queen had been called into action by seeing his great passion for the subject and then eventually been led to Simon.

         As a result of this, one thing disappeared from the home altogether: the picture of Pachacuti. He was a part of their lives, yes, but anything with that name was not tranquil enough to remain a component of their ideal existence.

         No Earth-Shaker had a right to live here in Oxford. And any squeaking wheel was immediately fixed with a bottle of oil that was kept handy in the garage at all times.

         At least until Timothy was strong enough to remember his origins without crying.

         Better being bored than petrified was his motto and so Timothy Jeffries felt that there was no place like home. What had he searched for? The exotic. What had he found? That the peace of having a family could give you a fulfilment that the exotic could not provide.

         In effect, there had been enough adventures for a life time.

         Inca in all glory, being English really did mean having won first prize in the lottery of life. Cecil Rhodes had been right about that.

         Timothy vowed to concentrate on British history from now on.

         At least, Queen Victoria didn’t chew on her subject’s feet.

         She went crazy when somebody mentioned having been kissed, but there was no harm in that. Mrs. Brown had her pride. Rule Britannia, chap. We Britons rule the waves.

Within the bowels of the Karijia Sarcophagi, though, a little sound echoed through the vaults. Its sqeaking sound reverberated clearly and grew louder as it approached the moonlit night.

It was the sound of one wheel turning.