The Nemesis Origin

II

‘How much further?’

The dense heat of the jungle clung to Hiram Bingham’s skin like a heavy blanket as he struggled up the rocky hillside. The foliage ahead was thick and rose up into a massive canopy that obscured the cloudy white sky above, only thin shafts of sunlight reaching the shadowy forest floor.

‘As far as is required,’ Hiram replied.

The high altitude air was thin and Hiram’s lungs felt as though they had shrunk with every meandering step he had taken up the mountain. Already high in the Andes before they began the trek, and suffering from headaches and nausea brought on by the thin air, most of Hiram’s team had fallen by the wayside thousands of feet below. Only a few hardy native trackers accompanied him, laden down beneath heavy burdens of supplies.

Hiram hacked with a machete at the dense foliage, the weapon heavier with every blow made to clear a path toward a peak that he could just see through the dense canopy. He raised his hand to deploy the weapon once more but then hesitated as he saw a gigantic spider clinging to the vines, its banded legs bright orange against black and its massive pulsing abdomen glistening with moisture. Hiram change the angle of the blade and brought it down on another vine nearby as he made his way around the dangerous arachnid and clambered over a rocky boulder blocking his path.

Hiram was not following a map, for where he was headed no maps existed. His only guide was the legends and stories of the people he had met at the foot of the mountains, their recollections and fables an unreliable and often disheartening promise of unspeakable wealth and untold discoveries awaiting in this most remote region of the world. He had heard about a mysterious lost city in the jungles high in the Peruvian Andes for years, but no one in Cusco had believed his stories because it was already believed that the last capital of the Incas was the city of Choquequirao.

‘That way.’

Hiram’s guide pointed between two massive tree trunks to where a shaft of bright sunlight beamed through the forest. Melchor Arteage was a peasant farmer recruited by Bingham in Mandor who claimed to know the location of the city, his native Quechua tongue translated by Sergeant Carrasco, the only member of Bingham’s team to make it this far, and a small boy named Pablito who claimed to have climbed to the city once before. Having crossed the Urabamba River some two thousand feet below them they had climbed for hours with little sign of the supposed citadel.

Hiram nodded and aimed towards the gap, his shirt drenched with sweat and the satchel slung over his shoulder weighty with the handful of stone trinkets he had discovered further down the hillside. Made of nothing more than the rock of the mountain upon which he climbed, to Hiram they could easily have been made of diamonds for their worth was equal in his mind.

Hiram scrambled over a damp boulder and slumped breathless as he turned and looked out over the densely forested gorge that plunged away beneath them through veils of ephemeral cloud. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a tiny carved figurine, one that likely depicted an ancient sun-god of Peruvian culture known as Inti. Hiram could not be sure if the figurine belonged to the Inca, but then he had never seen anything quite like it before from any culture of the Americas. It was this tiny figurine that had led him from the open plateau of Paracus to the soaring mountains of the Andes, all based upon the supposition of Melchor Arteage who insisted he had seen the image of the figurine once before.

Hiram leaned one elbow against the boulder and looked over his shoulder at the hillside to where the sunlight beamed between the two trees. For a moment he considered how much further up the hillside he had to climb, but then he realized something about the light. The lower edge of the shaft was dead straight, a perfectly horizontal line that did not appear in nature. Hiram squinted and shielded his eyes with one hand as he examined the line, and then he put the figurine back into his satchel and clambered further up the slope even as Melchor Arteage reached the boulder.

‘I thought we take rest?’ the guide complained, Carrasco translating.

Hiram did not reply as she scrambled up through the foliage and hacked away at the dense vines as he forged a path toward the light. As he brought the machete crashing down upon the densely packed vines the blade shuddered and he heard a ringing sound as it struck stone. Hiram slid the machete into its sheath and grasped at the vines with his bare hands as he pulled them away from the dark, moss covered surface of a rock wall.

Hiram stared at the wall before him, his chest heaving with the exertion and his eyes wide as he scanned the surface and saw the unmistakable signs of human engravings in the bare stone. The wall stood as high as his head and seemed to vanish to either side through the dense jungle. Built from stones that appeared to have no mortar between them, the rocks rested upon each other in perfectly dovetailed shapes as though purposely cut to fit.

Carrasco scrambled to Hiram’s side and stared at the engraved stones.

‘This is it,’ he said. ‘This is the place Arteage spoke of.’

Hiram searched along the wall as he followed the engravings. Images of shamans and sun gods, geometric patterns and spirals adorned the cut stone, and as Hiram made his way along he finally found what he was looking for. He grasped as he looked upon an image of the sun beaming down upon a figure that bore a wide angular head that was more conical than a human skull. The figure was dressed in ornate clothes that bore no relation to other engravings Hiram had seen across Peru by other cultures.

Hiram reached into his satchel and produced the figurine he had been holding just moments before and he held it up alongside the engraving. The bizarre proportions of the figurine matched the icon before him in the rocks.

‘You see,’ Carrasco said. ‘This is the place.’

Hiram drop the figurine into his satchel and reached up to the top of the wall as he dug his boot into a groove between the ancient stones and hoisted himself up. He rolled onto the surface above and came to his feet to see another wall of similar height above him. Hiram grabbed the nearest, thickest vine he could see and clambered up onto the top of the next wall, and then the next beyond it, and then four more before he broke out the forest canopy and realized he was standing on a massive plateau. Behind him, he realized that the series of walls were in fact terraces of perfectly joined stone, almost certainly for agricultural use.

Hiram turned and took a single place forwards and then dropped to his knees as he stared upon the sight of majestic grandeur that greeted him.

Atop the mountain ridgeline and veiled within trees and vines was a vast citadel that stretched as far as he could see, an immense city of terraced fields, stone temples and brickwork houses all forged from the solid stone of the mountain. Hiram turned and stared out across the immense mountain ranges of the Andes, ribbons of cloud drifting across the forested peaks as though he had ascended toward heaven itself.

Carrasco, a shorter and stockier man than Hiram, finally managed to scale the walls and breathlessly joined him on the terrace. His skin was sheened with sweat but his eyes were alive with delight as he surveyed the enormous city.

‘We found it,’ he gasped.

Hiram got to his feet and pushed the hat on his head back from his forehead as he surveyed the city and noted the large temple dominating the terraces ahead. Enshrouded in vines, creepers and trees, Hiram could nonetheless detect the angular lines of its walls, a building that could only possibly be the dwelling of the most powerful members of the civilization that had built this tremendous city.

‘We must keep going,’ Hiram said.

Pablito appeared and tugged at Hiram’s shirt as he shook his head. Hiram frowned down at the child, who gabbled an excited statement and then turned and fled down the terraces and vanished back into the jungle.

Hiram made to move forward, but Carrasco’s hand on his arm forestalled him.

‘Wait,’ Carrasco said. ‘Pablito said that nobody has returned from this place, that it is haunted by the ancients who lived here. This is a sacred place, not to be intruded upon.’

Hiram pushed Carrasco away with a scowl of irritation. ‘I know what is said, and most of what is said is nothing but hot air. Either you are with me or you remain with the cowards further down the hillside. What will it be, Carrasco?’

Carrasco’s broad shoulders slumped as he glanced over his shoulder at the forest descending away from them into the plunging depths of the mountains. The Urabamba River flowed somewhere deep between the precipitous mountain slopes, veiled now by thick banks of cloud. Hiram knew that Carrasco would not want to go back down having come so far, and Carrasco reluctantly nodded.

Hiram made his way up the terraces, seeking paths where the vines had not crept in and the growth of trees had been hindered by the stone walls and passages that wound between the countless buildings entombed within the jungle. Hiram had no doubt whatsoever that what he had found was at least a palace and perhaps the fabled last resting place of the Inca civilization, placed as it was upon the precipitous peak of the mountain and virtually invulnerable to any form of attack from below.

The temple ahead loomed above them, ranks of steps carved from solid stone and laced with thick vines and creepers leading to an entrance as black as night. Hiram climbed without fear, Carrasco following directly behind him as they reached the top of the steps and hesitated before the entrance. Hiram reached to his belt and unclipped a hefty flashlight that he tapped and tested before switching it on and aiming the beam into the gloom. He resisted the temptation to glance at Carrasco for support or advice, knowing that any sign of weakness might send his companion running back down the slope. Instead he straightened his back, lifted his chin and strode directly into the darkness.

The cloying heat of the jungle gave way to a cool, almost cold breath of stale air as though the interior were haunted by the long-dead breaths of its savage architects. The interior of the temple was clad with vines much as the exterior was, but these creepers were thinner and weaker, even the power and absolute patience of nature struggling to pierce the perfectly built walls. Hiram’s flashlight beam picked out an altar of some kind that was engraved with various geometric designs associated with the Inca. Hiram noted evidence of scat all around, much of it desiccated, revealing that the temple had been open to the elements for perhaps centuries. As he approached the altar he noted a larger engraving on the wall behind it. Clad in moss and draped in creepers, he could nonetheless see the unmistakable shape of a distorted human face staring out at him from the depths of prehistory.

Hiram slowed as he reached the altar and as he looked down at it he realized that it was not an altar at all. A stone block, perfectly shaped and smoothed by countless hands, the block was capped with an ornate tombstone, a sarcophagus the likes of which Hiram had not seen since observing similar constructions excavated in Egypt. As he stared down at the top of the sarcophagus and aimed the flashlight beam at it, so the shape of the form within leapt into life as the engraved surface was illuminated.

Hiram knew without doubt what lay within the sarcophagus, fully recognised the distorted shape of the skull and those baleful wide eyes that he had first seen in the bizarre figurines he had collected as far away as Paracus, on Peru’s Ica coastline. Believed by the local inhabitants to be an ancient depiction of gods, Bingham had taken a chance that they were more than just depictions.

‘Here, help me with this.’

Carrasco moved to the far side of the sarcophagus as Hiram set the flashlight down nearby, the beam cutting through the musty air and illuminating them as he reached down and curled his fingers beneath the lid. They looked at each other and Hiram nodded once, twice and then a final third time. On the third nod both he and Carrasco heaved with all of their might against the weight of the sarcophagus lid.

In the gloomy darkness the rumble of rock against rock echoed like the growl of some unspeakable beast as the lid shuddered across the top of the sarcophagus. Hiram drove his boots into the ground and pushed hard as he leaned his weight behind the lid, Carrasco likewise pushing with all of his might, and they saw it slide clear as with a deafening crash it dropped onto the stone steps and cracked in two. The crash echoed through the temple as though the building were protesting the violation of its most valuable secrets.

Hiram grabbed the flashlight and directed the beam into the interior of the sarcophagus, and he heard Carrasco mutter of prayer under his breath and make the sign of the cross on his forehead and chest as he stumbled away.

Inside the sarcophagus lay the bones of what looked like a child, its bones huddled up in a foetal bundle and its desiccated skin drawn taut across the skull. The eyes were hollow pits and much of the remains had long since decayed to dust, but he could see strands of wiry black hair poking from the skull cap. Hiram leaned in and saw the tell-tale glint of gold woven into the fabric of the child’s ancient clothes that glittered in the flashlight beam. But his gaze barely lingered on the gold, drawn instead to the bulbous and conical skull.

‘Sweet mother of Mary,’ Hiram finally whispered as he looked down at the contents. ‘I found it.’

‘We should leave this place immediately,’ Carrasco said quickly from nearby the temple entrance. ‘This place, it is not of this earth.’

Hiram stood up and directed the flashlight beam at Carrasco’s face.

‘You will speak nothing of this,’ he said in a tone that crackled like thin ice, ‘and you will do exactly as I say. Bring the bearers up here but not into the temple. I will package these remains and you and your men will carry them back down the mountain.’

Carrasco shook his head, beads of sweat and worry glinting on his forehead.

‘No, I cannot,’ he blubbed. ‘To move the remains would bring the bearer’s soul great torment!’

Hiram reached down to his belt and drew his service revolver. The sound of the mechanism clicked loudly as he cocked the weapon and aimed it at Carrasco.

‘Do you want your men to carry these remains down the mountain, or yours?’

Carrasco threw his hands up either side of his head, his features twisted with anxiety as he turned and hurried towards the temple exit.

Hiram watched Carrasco flee and then he turned back to the remains before him. He could barely contain the smile that spread across his even features as he saw his fortune glitter like gold before him in the flashlight beam. He had spent many years searching the jungles in the hope of making his name with a great discovery and now that time had come. Nobody, anywhere in the world, would be in any way prepared for what he had found.

Hiram lowered his pistol and slid it back into the holster at his waist, then hurried towards the temple exit. He would need to carefully document the remains first and take photographs before ensuring that the contents of the sarcophagus were properly wrapped and sealed, for there was no way he could allow his bearers to see what they were carrying. Most would run for miles rather than…

Hiram stopped at the entrance to the temple as he saw Carrasco’s body lying on the steps before him, his eyes staring lifelessly up at the sky and his left temple a bloodied mess where it had been crushed by the blow of a weapon. Hiram’s hand flashed to his pistol but it never made it to the weapon as a new sound reached his ear. The unmistakable click of a pistol hammer as it was drawn back, and Hiram felt the tip of the weapon’s cold barrel pressed into the side of his head.

‘Do exactly as I say,’ a voice said, ‘and you will get to live the rest of your life in peace.’