Jack Scarlet by Dan McGirt

Author:Dan McGirt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: action adventure, science fiction thriller, kraken, pulp adventure, pulp action, pulp thriller
Publisher: Trove Books

17: Underworld

The deeper passages proved to be narrower, the ceilings lower, and the air more foul. Counting paces under his breath, Jack led Galahad through a maze of abrupt turns, steeply slanted ramps, and peculiar, twisting stairwells.

“You’re sure there are no scorpions?” asked Galahad, pointing to yet another relief carving of scorpions devouring a human sacrifice.

“Reasonably certain,” said Jack. “The San Marcos scorpion is listed as extinct.”

“You think whoever made the list came down here to check?”

Jack laughed. “I doubt even the Maya came down here often. Only select members of their priesthood on rare ceremonial occasions.”

Galahad stopped short. “So who are these guys?”

“This is the Hall of Bones,” said Jack.

“No kidding.”

Stone walls gave way to a hideous gallery of leering human skulls, full skeletons, stacked ribs, and other bones arranged in appalling geometric patterns. Even the floor, which descended in a series of wide steps, was paved with polished tibias and femurs.

“The Hall of Bones is a symbolic entrance to Xibalbá, the world of the dead,” said Jack.

“You think?”

Galahad aimed his light down the narrow corridor. Projecting bones cast macabre shadows that writhed and twisted like tendrils of smoke. His eye caught a flicker amid the skulls.

“Something moved.”

“Only shadows.”

“Yeah, well...after you, kemo sabe.”

Jack shuffled forward sideways into the bone-lined passage. He felt he was being slowly swallowed by some fossilized behemoth serpent, and reflected that this psychological effect was most likely intended by the builders. Skeletal hands seemed to clutch at him. The black void of empty eye sockets stared sightlessly through him as he pressed past mounted skulls, being careful not to brush against the ancient bones, browned with age. A hundred sliding paces brought Jack to the hall’s end, where he reached a doorway framed by the cyclopean jawbones of a long dead whale. Jack beckoned to Galahad.

“Your turn.”

“Be still my heart.”

Galahad unslung his carbine for easier handling and advanced into the Hall of Bones. He moved more cautiously than Jack, shining the flashlight along each section of the bone-crusted wall before advancing.

“Your mural better be worth all this trouble, man.”

“It will be,” promised Jack.

“It better have naked ladies.”

“I can’t promise that. But it does pre-date the murals at San Bartolo in Guatemala, which are otherwise considered the oldest Preclassic Era examples of Maya mural work.”

“That’s something, I suppose. I’d prefer naked ladies.”

“Time is wasting, Gal. We are on a schedule here.”

“I do not trust these grinning – Aieee!”

Galahad recoiled as he came nose to nose-socket with a skull and something moved inside. He jerked back against the opposite wall. Several ribs of an old skeleton cracked on impact as Gal slammed into them.

A scorpion appeared in the eye socket of the skull. It was black and glistening, its pincers raised.

“Chodaya!” Gal jumped sideways.

The scorpion climbed onto the face of the skull. It was six inches long, with a segmented tail curled over its body. The scorpion snapped its pincers in challenge, before dropping to the rough, bone-paved floor. It scuttled toward Galahad.

“Huhisdi!”

Galahad slammed the butt of his carbine down fast and hard, smashing the scorpion’s body with a crunch and splat.

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