The Sick Horror at The Lost and Found (12 page)

“
Matt, there is something I
have to do – three things actually, that Tuna asked me to do,
during our last visit.” There was stress in her voice.

“
You don’t have to believe
any of this. I don’t even believe it, but listen. You know she
confessed that her husband was digging under the giant stones with
the symbols, the petroglyphs, to find the gold of La Mina. The gold
that everyone thinks came from a mine. Well, what she didn’t say
when you were there was that he was working for the hydro dam. He
was a night watchman in a nearby town, Los Planes.”

I knew Los Planes; you pass it on the
way to The Lost and Found from David. It is a huge ghost town, a
collection of dark wooden complexes enclosed by a dense, foreboding
ring of pines. It once boasted a school and even a hospital. But
now it is all shut down and boarded up. A huge barbed wire fence
surrounds it. Gabriel told me the hydro dam company built Los
Planes in the ‘70s to house the workers’ families.

“
Well,” María continued,
“Tuna told us that the Indian legend says that the rocks will rise
when the outsiders shake the earth and light the fires. Who else
could that be but the dam? They are moving the earth to drill
tunnels and the fires are the electricity they’re
making.”

Light rain came and I took back my
hand. I was clueless as to where this was going, but I knew if the
details came at three in the morning that this was all an
exposition she needed to convince me of doing something stupid. I
was getting a little pissed at the trap she set for me. I asked her
to get to the point.

“
Matt, the gold Tuna’s
husband stole was only part of the gold being extracted by the
hydro company. It was kept in Los Planes until the American
Invasion in ’89. They built that…”

She grabbed my head and pointed it
across a field to a large white building half illuminated by
distant street lights. On the front was a large Egyptian symbol,
the gold disk and colorful wings on either side.

“
Orden
Rosacruz
,” she said. “I don’t know how to
say it in English. When they hauled off Noriega they built that
temple to move some of the gold they were taking from Los Planes.
But it was a cover to hide the gold from invading American
soldiers.”

I thought it was a test. I know María
has balls. I know she plays with people – making them guess where
her childlike sense of naivety becomes pure adult recklessness. I
was about to call her bluff and express some disappointment when a
bright flash cut through the darkness and the following boom of
thunder shook the ground. Several car alarms sounded, and the light
rain became a crashing torrent all at once.

María jumped to her feet. “There’s
danger on the edge of town.”

I sat waiting, letting
myself get drenched. Fuck María. She grabbed her backpack and
disappeared in the darkness. Within a few moments she reappeared
under the light of the whitewashed building called the
Orden Rosacruz
. She
rested the blade end of a tire iron between the double doors and
then whacked it with a hammer, breaking the lock.

Sure enough, there was an alarm, but
it was clear now that María had timed her breaking and entering
with the thunder of the storm and the wailing of the car alarms.
Dogs barked, but they stopped when the alarm ceased. I was still
waiting for police. I thought that building security systems, even
in Panama, must be connected to the police.

I got up and walked around the block
to hide near the wall of the fairgrounds. My heart pounded and it
seemed like forever, but nothing moved. A moment later the rain
stopped and everything was once again silent and dark. I must have
waited ten, fifteen minutes. Then I went to look for
María.

I looked at the building and before I
was consciously aware that I was contemplating entering, the hair
on my arms stood up. I don’t know what the hell overtook me, but
before I knew it I was standing in front of the splintered doors
and found myself pushing the doors open automatically, with no
fear, like it was a lucid dream – a lucid dream I, like the others,
was learning to control.

It smelled like my old elementary
school. Where I was there was nothing unusual, just a foyer with a
low porcelain water fountain and small cloak room off to the side.
Swinging doors led to an empty room, much like a community hall,
with stairs stacked to the side. I heard a humming sound coming
from across the room and instinctually followed it. The glossy
hardwood creaked under my feet as I walked toward a small kitchen
at the back.

I found the origin of the
sound. White and red wires lead from the wall to a sink full of
water that muffled the sound of an alarm. Maria must have ripped it
from the wall and dropped it there. Beside the sink was a note
written in English and an arrow pointing to a flight of stairs at
the back:
This way to the ancient
gallery
.

María had melted candles onto tin foil
pie plates and placed them on every other stair. I picked one up to
light my way. Each step groaned as I ascended to a room that had
the feel of a waiting room to a university dean’s office. There was
a big leather sofa and locked glass book cases with large leather
bound books and group portraits of older, white men, some in formal
wear and others in white robes. There were mysterious framed prints
on the wall. Prints that resembled old auspicious maps and puzzles
filled with esoteric symbols and graphs, yet revealing no
destinations or the locations of treasures. There was no sign of
anything that looked as if the antechamber hid raided
antiquities.

On the door to another
room, María had left a small paper held by a heavy brass knocker.
The paper read, “
Weird scenes inside the
gold mine
.”

I pushed open the door. It led to an
elaborate ritual hall dimly lit by two candles on a marble altar in
front of me. The hall stretched on to the left and the right,
disappearing in shadow. Facing me on the opposite wall was a large
golden fresco of Isis standing over the coffin of Osiris. The
flickering battle between the gloom and the candlelight made the
fresco seem larger, more alive and ominous. I suppose Isis was
raising Osiris from the dead. The fresco made me think of Dr.
Anderson and the art María and Estrella had been painting at the
Lost and Found. Placed along the other wall to either side of me
were seats covered in purple velvet, like old movie theater seats.
At the far end, I could barely make out two large pillars that
stood like sentinels on either side of an ornately carved throne. I
walked toward the pillars and saw they had perfectly symmetrical
globes resting at the top, almost touching the high ceilings. María
sat on the throne a couple of steps above the black and white
chessboard tiles that covered the floor. She was barefoot and
wearing a white robe. Tied to each of her arms were golden cords
each about a meter long. Her clothes were folded in a neat pile in
the corner of the hall.

I was the first to break the silence.
“María, there’s nothing here that looks like the gold idols of the
Ngäbe.”

Without responding, María stood up and
pointed to another throne in the opposite end of the room. “Sit,”
she commanded. I obeyed.

María stood up and slowly circled
around the altar, resting on the balls of her feet with each
stride. She stopped at the altar with her back to me and blew out
one of the candles. There was something else there that she picked
up – a digital camera. She turned and lifted the last candle to her
face, casting a giant shadow of herself on a dark curtain behind
the velvet seats. She approached me, turning toward an electric
organ near my throne. She pranced over and turned it on. A low
electrical hum resonated through the room. On top of the organ she
found a cordless microphone used for addressing groups. She tied it
tightly around her neck like a collar.

“
Under your chair you will
find a strip of cloth,” she breathed. “It’s your blindfold. Put it
on.” I did as she told, without knowing why. I felt a current of
excitement run through my body. I could see nothing.

She spoke slowly, in a whisper, but
when amplified through the organ speaker it sounded like she was
all around me at once. “This is the story of the princess Janca,
the daughter of the great warlord Chief Urracá of the ancient Ngäbe
tribe. Janca fell in love with Tam Weh, a man from the next
village. But she was already promised to a powerful shaman from
that same village because the Chief Urracá needed the shaman’s
magic to protect the villagers from the invading Spanish. When the
shaman learned that Janca had fallen in love with Tam Weh, he
cursed her. He cast a spell to transform her into her power animal
on the next full moon. The shaman did not know that she was to
become a black jaguar.”

I heard a soft click and the quiet
hiss from speakers. She turned up the volume. Her voice and breath,
even louder now, resonated throughout the room.

“
Frightened at what she had
become, she ran home and went to the room where she slept. When her
father entered, he saw the jaguar and thought his daughter had been
eaten. He ran at her, ready to tear her to pieces with his bare
hands. Janca, in the form of the jaguar, fled.”

I could see nothing through my
blindfold but I could smell the waxy smoke and knew she blew out
the last candle.

“
Urracá summoned all of the
best hunters in the land to hunt the jaguar. Thinking that the cat
had killed his one true love, Tam Weh took up a sword he had won
killing a conquistador, ready to kill the cat. He tracked her to a
cave high in the mountains. Catching a glimpse of her shining eyes,
he drew his sword. Janca, defeated and overcome with sadness,
waited to be killed. But then a strange thing happened. Their eyes
met and he saw the sadness, saw Janca behind the face. The shaman
had only given her the mask of a jaguar. Tam Weh dropped his sword.
When Janca rested her paw on Tam Weh, he was transformed into a
jaguar too.”

The room went silent. I listened
carefully. María took in a sharp breath that echoed through the
room.

“
Matt?” She spoke softly
but her amplified voice echoed in the temple hall. “Have you ever
seen two cats fuck?”

“
No.” I kind of squeaked it
out. My throat was dry. The darkness and the pulse of the organ
mesmerized me. I felt like I was floating.

“
The male cat seems quite
uninterested even though he can smell that the female is in heat.
He can smell her from yards away. Maybe the male cat knows that
she’s just dying to come. Cats have an uncanny ability to see in
the dark. When the male of the species doesn’t pay attention, the
female brushes by the docile male with her tail straight and stiff
in the air and lets out a low pitched growl.”

Although my blindfold held tight I
knew she was near me now. I could feel the air change around
me.

“
She’ll stick her wetness
right into his face. He can smell her. He wants her but still he’ll
wait. Just sitting there in the dark. He loves to humiliate the
dripping female. He wants her to beg for it. But inside the male is
an intensity he cannot suppress.”

She was right in front of me now. I
could feel the heat of her breath and smelled her – like lavender
and sweat -- but her voice came through the speaker and echoed in
all directions.

“
The female turns around
and swipes at the male’s face. The female draws blood and quickly
turns. With a ferocious hiss the male digs his claws into the
female’s back, sinking his nails into her flesh. His cock is hard.
He thrusts into her with his claws firmly tangled in the flesh of
her back. He hisses with dark intensity. The female’s claws dig
into the ground. She growls with such pain and ecstasy that the
sound carries for miles.”

She stopped and told me to take off my
blindfold. The moment I pulled it off a blinding flash assaulted me
from the darkness. It was her camera. For a brief moment, a
stunning red glare blinded me and I felt a sharp sting across my
forehead and right cheek. She whipped me with the cord that was
tied around her wrists. I don’t know what happened to me… I never
lose my temper but that fucking hurt. I swung my arms around trying
to catch what hit me.

I calmed down. It was a game. I could
hear María breathing harder now. I just didn’t know from where. I
got down on my hands and knees and slowly crawled in a kind of
twisted adult hide-and-go-seek. There were brief moments where I
could make out the camera’s red glare. I found her robe. She was
using it to block a little sliver of light from under the door. I
took off my belt, pants and underwear there. I moved her robe to
let some light through so I could at least try to catch her
shadow.

She taunted me. “Meow, I’ve been a bad
cat.”

I felt my way to the throne where
María had been sitting and rested behind it. I closed my eyes,
trying to get them to adjust to the dark. When I opened them I
could make out a nebulous dark form. She was sitting on one of the
velvet movie theater chairs and there was something metal catching
and reflecting the scant light under the door.

“
What will you do when you
find me, Matt?” She had a sword. She had the point pressing into
the floor and the hilt resting between her legs.