Black Mountain

THIRTY

The climb up to the cave entrance was more difficult than Matt had anticipated. It was only about thirty feet, and he’d done much more complicated no-rig ascents many times in the past, but the exposed rock and the muddy, greasy soil around the cave made it slippery. Thomas was right behind him, yelling instructions, with Sarah just starting the climb, and Charles stepping from foot to foot on the path, impatient to begin.

Matt levered himself into the triangular opening, and kneeled at the edge to look down at the path and beyond. His view was obscured by a grainy haze of the cloud that formed a thick curtain just past the slip path’s drop-off point, which also reduced any vertigo he might have experienced. He drew in a long breath, and immediately noticed the acrid smell — a shitty, rank animal odour emanating from the interior of the cave. Beneath it was something raw and decaying, like old mushrooms or bad hamburger. The smell wafted towards him on a draught of warm air that heated the cold skin on his face and made his nose and cheeks tingle.

He squinted into the dark hole and got to his feet, taking comfort from the fact that the breeze was blowing outwards. If there was anything inhabiting the cave, his own scent wouldn’t be carried inwards. Important if it’s a predator, he thought.

He took a few steps into the interior, and halted at the remains of the first wall. There were fresh cracks in the rock ceiling, and the stones on the floor were mixed with debris from the cave roof — all proof of their theory that an earthquake had caused the wall to crumble.

He had left his pack down on the slip path, but fumbled in his pocket for the small plastic flashlight he’d taken from it, even though it was more suited to reading a book in a sleeping bag than exploring stygian darkness.

‘Phew. Something’s dead in there.’

Matt jumped at the voice behind him. Thomas walked past and began to examine the fallen rocks of the first barrier. Sarah appeared in another few minutes, holding the top edge of the small pink boot in her teeth. Charles came immediately after her, his impatient expression suggesting he’d been held up by everyone’s slow ascent.

Thomas tapped one of the broken stones with the toe of his boot. ‘You know, I’ve never been beyond this point… and I bet no other human has for a hundred generations.’

He took a large theatrical step over the tumbled stones.

Twilight had descended on the mountain peak, reducing the light at the mouth of the cave to little more than a grey glow. Thomas tried to direct Matt’s hand holding the flashlight to where he wanted, but soon gave up and used his cigarette lighter instead. A barely perceptible warm breeze caused the tiny orange flame to bend towards the cave opening now twenty feet behind them.

Thomas lifted his lighter to the closest wall. ‘This what you’re looking for, Mr Kearns?’

The wall was covered in paintings and carvings. Matt’s face broke into a smile as he moved quickly to where Thomas stood and traced the images with his hand while not actually touching the artwork.

‘This is amazing,’ he said. ‘The figures are definitely Paleo-Indian… but some of the characters are much older… more like Mesoamerican. Strange, though — it’s like they’re not reproduced correctly.’ His fingers traced more of the designs. ‘As if someone was drawing them from memory without really knowing what they meant.’

Thomas crowded in closer with his lighter. ‘I’ve never seen many of these symbols; and I’ve never heard of any of my people or ancestors using them. They’ve been hidden behind this barrier for many, many centuries.’

Matt frowned, his lips moving as he vocalised the symbols and images, teasing out their meaning. After a while, he nodded. ‘Okay, it’s like a story, or maybe some kind of record. There’s mention of Tooantuh, and the battle with the Great Ones.’

He traced some more symbols and frowned again, looking confused or like he’d lost his place. He stood back and rubbed his chin with the back of his hand, then leaned forward. ‘Of course! I couldn’t work out the flow, but it’s actually telling the story backwards. This shows the defeat of the Great Ones, so the start must be further in.’

He moved his small circle of light further along into the cave. ‘Just as I thought — look at this.’ He pointed to the glyphs on the wall. ‘These characters are much older, more like real Mesoamerican… in fact, a little like Mayan. It’s telling the same tale as in the outer chamber, but it’s more detailed, richer and… complete.’

He indicated to Thomas where the more primitive Paleo-Indian work was gradually overtaken by the Mesoamerican — with fewer instances of the two-dimensional shapes and many more detailed drawings and carvings. Then he pointed at one central image. ‘Tell me I’m not seeing this. This can’t be real.’

The old Indian grunted and nodded. ‘So that is why they hate us,’ he said slowly. ‘They were slaves.’

The image showed several hulking beasts with ropes around their necks and waists. They were pulling carts loaded with the smaller human figures, some of whom were lashing the creatures’ huge bent backs.

Sarah made a sound of disgust in her throat. ‘Then I’d say it was more a case of revolt than attack.’ She held the small boot up and shook it, ‘Let’s look for the girl and then go.’

Charles added his torch beam to Matt’s. ‘Are you saying the Indians somehow tamed or domesticated these great anthropoids? Bullshit.’ He looked from Matt to Thomas.

Thomas shook his head. ‘This is not part of the legend I know of the Chiye-tanka. I have never heard this.’

‘It might not have been something they were proud of,’ Matt said. ‘But forget that for now. Look — don’t you see something in the picture that shouldn’t be there?’ He paused, but the trio looked blank. ‘Remember, this is thousands of years old.’ He waited again, before giving up and answering his own question. ‘Wheels! The Paleo-Indians never had wheels; they never invented them. This looks like a totally different race. And judging by the fact that the ochres and dyes are nearly fully faded, I’d say the language script is much older as well.’

Matt walked back to the other side of the second wall and briefly re-examined the carvings. He shook his head. ‘I knew it: it is different. There’s no doubt — the work on the other side of the outer wall must have been done thousands of years later.’

He moved deeper into the cave, stumbling as he focused on the wall rather than his feet. Sarah and Thomas followed, transfixed by the story Matt was deciphering from the strange images on the wall.

He couldn’t contain a small laugh of excitement. ‘Look… more proof. The glyphs are now fully carved; there are no paintings at all. The style is almost pure Mesoamerican in its detail and precision — maybe even Zoque Indian, which is more than 1000 years older than the Mayans. This inner work was done by artisans rather than rock painters or stonemasons. My guess is that each story block was created millennia apart, which is why the work’s so different in style and content. The tale was probably handed down and then reproduced.’

He shone the flashlight at the third section. ‘And that’s why the story moves from myth to chronicle. What we’re seeing now is a transcript of what actually happened right here, over 10,000 years ago.’

Matt pointed out a warrior that was taller than the rest. The detail was magnificent — he stood on a large rock, his arms outstretched, holding a spear in one hand and what might have been a staff in the other. ‘Tooantuxla,’ he said to Thomas. ‘Wow. I’m guessing that’s your original Tooantuh.’

Thomas touched the stone. ‘The mightiest warrior ever to have lived in our land. He will always be “Tooantuh” for me and my people.’

Matt’s brow screwed up in confusion as he tried to make sense of the ancient story. ‘This will take years to unravel,’ he murmured. ‘Basically, the humans fought the mighty creatures all the way into the caves, but they didn’t just use bows and arrows — they had swords and shields too, more akin to ancient Greek or Roman warriors.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s all mixed up.’

He moved along a few steps to the very first images, which chronicled the arrival of both the First People and the Great Ones, and his mouth dropped open.

‘Arks! The Gigantopithecus didn’t cross the land bridge, they were brought here in boats. Charles, look at this!’

But Charles wasn’t there.

The cave twisted slightly before opening into a larger chamber, with several tunnels leading away into impenetrable blackness. Charles loosened his jacket — the air was warmer the further in he went. He examined the ground… as he’d hoped, it was churned and scuffed, suggesting frequent passage. This was an active, inhabited environment.

His torchlight caught something glinting on the ground. He removed his gloves and stuffed them in his pockets, then bent to pick the fragment free. He rolled it around in his palm and frowned. It was a gold tooth. He scanned around with his light, then moved a bit further along. He had to breathe through his mouth as the smell was becoming overpowering.

He opened his jacket, exposing the dart gun. He was in no doubt that he was in an animal’s lair. If the creature was as big as he suspected, he didn’t want to startle it and cause it to rush him. Then again, it would be worse if it fled as soon as it saw him. He went on another few feet, trying to quiet his breathing. If I can get close enough to see it clearly, just a peek, I’ll be satisfied, he thought.

He paused mid-step. There was a noise from ahead… that soft tinkling sound again. He tilted his head to listen. The tinkling lifted and fell in time with the movement of the warm breeze that blew past him as the humid air inside the cave was sucked out into the colder atmosphere outside.

Charles walked forward, waving his flashlight back and forth as he searched for the sound. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to cover his face. The stench was so acrid that it was stinging his eyes. He was creeping now, hunched over, even though the roof of the cave was a dozen feet above his head. The dark and the smell were claustrophobic, pressing in heavily all around him, making him feel smothered.

He rounded a huge column of stone that had probably started as a few drips of mineralised water from the ceiling of the cavern centuries ago, and stopped to wave his flashlight around. At first, it seemed to be a dead end, but then he spotted openings behind several smaller columns. He took a small step forward, but the air was becoming ominously heavy. He contemplated calling to Matt and the others, but rejected the idea even as he drew in a breath to shout. For some reason, he felt a strong urge to remain silent, his own animal senses warning him to be cautious.

Charles willed himself to enter the nearest smaller cave, drawn on by his curiosity and the strange tinkling sound. But as he stepped into the blackness, both the warm breeze and the music ceased. He waved his flashlight back and forth but the weak circle of light wasn’t powerful enough to illuminate the space ahead. It was as if something was blocking the tunnel.

As he turned back to the main chamber, he felt something crunch under his boot. He shone the flashlight down at his feet and grimaced. He was standing on a raft of bones of different hues of brown and red. Most had been broken open and sucked of their marrow, but many were still joined together by gristly tendons.

He stepped back and swung his flashlight to illuminate the walls. What looked like cloth or material was piled against one wall. He held the light closer, and saw that the strips of cloth were actually the remains of clothing, roughly torn and heaped in a mound.

Charles screwed up his face in trepidation as both the breeze and the tinkling sound came again — closer now.

‘Emma?’

He knew it was insane to consider the girl might be alive, given what he was standing on, but Sarah’s earlier desperate calls hung in his mind. It’s what she would do, he thought.

He closed his eyes briefly to concentrate on the sound, then took a few crunching steps towards where he thought it was coming from. He shone his flashlight up along the wall near the smaller cave, and then fell to his knees, gagging.

There was a natural shelf of rock about seven feet up from the ground, and on it sat a row of heads, many of them trailing glistening lengths of windpipe and spinal column. The necks were twisted, as though a giant child had screwed them off, like pulling apart a doll. The faces were imprinted with panic, terror, agony — visual proof of the horror they had experienced during their last moments alive.

In the centre of the adult heads, as if in pride of place, sat that of a small girl, her tiny features frozen into a wail. One ear held a clip-on earring with a small string of blue glass beads ending in tiny silver bells; as the soft, foetid breeze stirred them, they made a tinkling sound.

Charles retched onto the bones beneath his feet, his near empty stomach reluctantly giving up a long string of yellow bile that stuck to his chin. As he wiped his mouth, he heard a soft, crunching sound behind him and breathing.

He lifted his flashlight, expecting to see Matt or Sarah, or even Thomas Red Cloud. He raised the beam higher, and then higher again, and his mouth dropped open.

‘Oh my God.’

He fumbled for the dart gun.