Only the Moon Rages

In the sweltering heat of the jungle the excavation team worked feverishly. Dr. Greg Fallows, along with senior team leader, Dr. Jana deVries, set out early in the morning to reach a ridge near the Belize border. Jana was on faculty of the Allard Pierson Archeology Institute in the Netherlands, and a first rate hands-on digger. She had a typical Dutch sensibility about her, straightforward and quietly competent. She had shoulder length blonde hair brilliant blue eyes and an easy-going personality that friends would later describe as open, honest and perhaps overly trusting. She loved fieldwork. And now as a newly minted full professor, she was in charge of the evolving Meso-American exhibit at the Museum. On this morning, one of their guides spotted a shiny object reflected in the brilliant sun near a Temple designated simply as Number 8 on the map of Guatemala. When they arrived at the site some three hours after leaving the base camp they found a relatively small clump of earth covered with jungle foliage. From the next nearest hill, it looked like all the other mounds. Without the aid of their guide, they surely would have missed it. As luck would have it they trekked to the pyramid just in time to set-up a campsite before sunset. Over the next few hours they settled in for the night. The Howler monkeys, aptly named, swung from the treetops waking Greg early. When he got up, Jana was already busy at work making her notes. It didn’t strike Greg as unusual at all. In fact it made a great deal of sense to dig in the morning before it got too hot. Greg walked over to where she was sitting on the ground; he startled her when he walked up behind her. “Morning Jana. What’s happening?” “Greg, you nearly scared the shit out of me!” She said taking a deep breath. “We should be looking over here,” She said pointing to several of the mounds they surveyed the day before. After breakfast they began the meticulous work of excavating. Inch by inch they made their way down, and back in time. After about three hours work they reached an entrance to what looked to Jana like a tomb. With a little effort they were able to force their way in. Greg and Jana’s eyes met locked in a tractor beam of anticipation. What followed was one of the most remarkable events in Greg Fallows’ life. And what he saw would change him and alter his life—forever. From the dark crevice their flashlights fell upon a sarcophagus. Jana dug furiously with a small trowel, careful as always, to put the precious layers of dirt aside for analysis later. Opening the tomb they found two perfectly preserved and mummified bodies. As a medical archeologist, Greg couldn’t have hoped for a more important discovery. He was ecstatic. But what lay beside one of the mummies was to prove even more important. Jana and Greg both noticed the object simultaneously. It was a life size perfectly preserved crystalloid skull. And it glowed like the radiant jewel it was. They stared at each other in disbelief. “What is it?” Jana cried, barely able to speak. “It has to be worth millions,” Greg said sitting down beside her to get a better view. From behind, one of their Guatemalan companions, Tomas muttered something under his breath. Tomas says it is the Maya “skull of doom,” Jana said without taking her eyes from the eerie glowing object. Greg fascinated by the beauty of it couldn’t take his eyes off the pulsating jewel. Finally he reached out to touch the skull. “No!” Jana cried, grabbing him by the shoulders. His hands tingled slightly, not in an unpleasant way but in an almost drug-induced anesthetic way, as he lifted it out of the burial chamber. It was a most magnificent piece of craftsmanship, he thought, a perfect tiny replica of a human skull. It was amazingly accurate in every detail, including a full sized jaw, eye sockets and foramina for the trigeminal nerves to exit the skull above the eye, cheekbones and lower jaw. Jana said, clearly it was extremely rare, and probably priceless. “We’ll need to take all necessary security precautions,” she said, falling back on the ground smiling at Greg. “This is going to be big, really big.” All this time Tomas stood a safe distance from the hole in the ground. His dark skin was pale and his deep brown eyes dilated wildly with fear. “Holy Father pray for us,” he repeated softly under his breath. “What’s Tomas muttering about?” Greg asked growing increasingly irritated looking over his shoulder at Tomas. “According to local legend The Pearl was the embodiment of evil in the world, and whoever possessed The Pearl could use its power for good, or evil. The local Indians say the skull or pearl was used when an old man was dying. The old man would lie next to the skull and opposite to him a young man would lay down. As the old man died, his knowledge would be acquired by the young man; in this way the ancient knowledge of the past was handed to future generations.” Greg felt a strange bubbling cauldron of emotions rising deep inside. He began to feel very hot, nauseated, alienated from his surroundings and violently uncomfortable holding this thing that increasingly disgusted him as he held it in his hand. In a flash he felt an overwhelming sense of regret, a fear of repeating past mistakes, a dark existential cloud washed over him; everything he did up to this point seemed wrong, misguided, stained like a bloody curtain before his eyes. The more he struggled to shake this feeling, the more it seemed to tighten its grip around him, constricting his very soul to a meanness no man, or woman could escape. He felt like he was going to explode. What’s happening to me? He thought. He tried to wrestle himself back from the dread that was squeezing the life out of him. What should I have done? He would ask himself a million times. Like someone had speed dialed the meanest moments of his existence, catalogued and paraded them before his eyes, for all the world to see, a cinematic nightmare only he could see was about to unfold before his eyes as he watched himself as if detached from himself. Jana is going to cheat me—take all the credit and leave me with nothing, nothing but the smoldering regret of fortune lost. This fear consumed every fiber of his being. At that moment he was certain Jana would cheat him out of this important discovery. It rightly belonged to him too! It was his work that brought them here. He wasn’t about to now share it with anyone. It was increasingly clear to him that it was his destiny to possess, to have, to own the thing. This was his treasure. He wanted the artifact for myself. He would not play second fiddle to Jana . Dr. Jana deVries was extraordinarily proud of “her” discovery. Although young she was an archeologist of the old school. She believed in the scientific method: conjecture and verification of facts. She believed in an academic meritocracy. She believed the irrational, magic and miracles were for bygone simpler times. She attributed the glow of the artifact that they referred to more and more as the “skull” to as a yet unexplained but surely natural (and therefore bio-geological) phenomenon related to decayed plants or minerals; it was highly probable it was in fact a source of radioactive energy. And she gave absolutely no credence to the idea that there was a hidden power to the thing or nature. For her it was merely an archeological discovery that would enhance the reputation of the Allard Pierson Museum—and her academic career as a result. She reveled in the beauty of the craftsmanship as she held it in her hands.