the tent weren't so crowded, and I wished that all the people would leave.
Then I realized that there couldn't be people in the tent with me. No one had come in. I tried to regain a consistent memory of the last few moments, but something had been lost. I turned and looked at the mask again and then I drank some of the rum, which by now tasted marvelous, and I put down the glass and picked up the mask. It seemed as light as it was precious, and I held it up so that the light shone through it, and it seemed for a moment to be quite definitely alive. A voice was whispering to me rather feverishly as to all manner of small things which I had to worry about, and someone said:
'Others will come when thousands of years have passed.' Only the words I heard were not in a language which I understood. 'But I do understand you,' I said aloud, and then the whispering voice said something that seemed a curse and an ominous prediction. It had to do with the fact that certain things were best left unexplored. The tent seemed to be moving. Rather, the place where I was seemed to be moving. I put the mask against my skin and I felt steadier. But the entire world had changed. I had changed.
I was standing on a high pavilion and I could see the beautiful mountains all around me, the lower portions of the slopes covered in deep green forest, and the sky itself was brightly blue.
I looked down and I saw a crowd of thousands surrounding the pavilion. Over on the tops of other pyramids there stood huge masses of people. The people were whispering and shouting and chanting. And there was a small group on my pavilion, all of them faithfully at my side.
'You will call down the rain,' said the voice in my ear, 'and it will come. But one day, the snow will come instead of the rain, and on that day, you will die.'
'No, that will never happen!' I said. I realized I was growing dizzy. I was going to fall from the pavilion. I turned around and reached out for the hands of my fellows. 'Are you priests, tell me, what you are.' I asked. 'I'm David and I demand that you tell me, I'm not the person you believe me to be!'
I realized that I was in the cave. I had all but fallen to the thick soft floor. Merrick was shouting at me to get up. Before me stood the weeping spirit.
'The Lonely Spirit, how many times have you called me?' said the tall being sadly. 'How many times have you, the magician, reached out for the lonely soul? You have no right to call those between life and death. Leave the mask behind you. The mask is wrong, don't you understand what I'm telling you!'
Merrick cried my name. I felt the mask ripped from my face. I looked up. I was lying down on my cot, and she was standing over me.
'Good God, I'm sick,' I told her. 'I'm very sick. Get me the shaman. No, there's no time for the shaman. We must set out for the airport now.'
'Quiet, be quiet, lie still,' said Merrick. But her face was dark with fear. I heard her thoughts clearly.
I grew very quiet within myself. I'll fight it, I resolved, and I let my head roll to one side on the pillow, hoping that the pillow would be cool against my cheek. Though I heard Merrick crying out for the men to come to the tent immediately, I saw another person sitting on her cot.
It was a tall lean man with brown skin and a narrow face, and arms covered with jade bracelets. He had a high forehead and shoulderlength black hair. He was looking at me in a quiet manner. I saw the dark red of his long gown, and the gleam of his toenail in the light.
'It's you again,' I said. 'You think you're going to kill me. You think you can reach out from your ancient grave to take my life?'
'I don't want to kill you,' he whispered, with little or no change in his placid expression. 'Give back the mask for your own sake and for hers.'
'No,' I said. 'You must realize I can't do it. I can't leave such a mystery. I can't simply turn my back. You had your time and now is my time, and I'm taking the mask back with me. She's taking it with her, really. But even if she surrendered, I would do it on my own.'
I went on pleading with him, in a low reasonable voice, that he should understand. I said, 'Life belongs to those who are alive.' But by then the tent was truly crowded with the men who had come with us. Someone had asked me to keep a thermometer under my tongue. And Merrick was saying, 'I can't get a pulse.' Of the journey to Guatemala City, I remember nothing.
As for the hospital, it might have been a medical facility anywhere in the world.
Repeatedly I turned my head and I found myself alone with the bronze-skinned man with the oval face and the jade bracelets, though more often than not he did not speak. When I tried to speak, others answered, and the man simply melted as another world seemed to supplant that which I'd left behind.
When I was fully conscious, which wasn't often, I seemed convinced that people in Guatemala would know more of the tropical illness from which I suffered. I wasn't afraid. I knew from the expression of my bronze-skinned visitor that I wasn't dying. And I do not remember being transferred to a hospital in New Orleans at all. The visitor never appeared after the return to New Orleans.
By that time I was on the mend, and when days did begin to connect with one another, I was running only a low grade temperature, and the 'toxin' was completely gone. Soon I no longer required intravenous nourishment. My strength was coming back.
My case was nothing exceptional. It had to do with a species of amphibian which I must have encountered in the brush. Even touching this creature can be fatal. My contact must have been indirect.
Merrick and the others were not afflicted, that was soon made clear to me, and I was much relieved, though in my state of confusion, I had to confess I had not thought of them as I should.
Merrick spent a great deal of time with me, but Aaron was almost always there as well. As soon as I would start to address an important question to Merrick, a nurse or a doctor came into the room. At other times I was confused as to the order of events and didn't want to reveal that confusion. And occasionally, very occasionally, I would wake in the night, convinced I'd been back in the jungles in my dreams.
At last, though I was still technically sick, I was brought by ambulance to Oak Haven and moved into the upstairs left front room.
This is one of the more gracious and lovely bedrooms in the house, and, in my robe and slippers, I was walking out on the front porch by the evening of that day. It was winter, but wondrously green all around me, and the breeze off the river was welcome.
At last, after two days of 'small talk,' which was threatening to drive me out of my mind, Merrick came to my room alone. She wore a nightgown and robe and she appeared exhausted. Her rich brown hair was held back from her temples by two amber combs. I could see the relief in her face as she looked at me.
I was in bed, with pillows propped and a book on the Maya people open in my lap.
'I thought you were going to die,' she said plainly. 'I prayed for you in a way I've never prayed before.'
'Do you think God heard your prayers?' I asked. Then I realized she hadn't mentioned praying to God at all. 'Tell me,' I asked, 'was I ever in real danger?'
She seemed shocked by the question. Then she fell quiet, as though debating what she might say. I already had part of my answer, purely from her reaction to the question, so I waited patiently until she meant to speak.
'There were times in Guatemala,' she said, 'when they told me you were not likely to make it much longer. I sent them away, insofar as they'd listen, and I put the mask over my face. I could see your spirit just above your body; I could see it struggling to rise and free itself from your body. I could see it stretched over you, the double of you, rising, and I put out my hand and I pressed on it, and made it go back into its place.'
I felt a dreadful overwhelming love for her.
'Thank God you did it,' I said.
She repeated my words from the jungle village.
'Life belongs to those who are alive.'
'You remember me saying it?' I asked her, or rather I expressed to her my gratitude.
'You said it often,' she replied. 'You thought you were talking to someone, the someone we'd both seen in the mouth of the cave before we'd made our escape. You thought you were engaged in a debate with him. And then one morning, very early, when I woke up in the chair and found you conscious, you told me you'd won.'
'What are we going to do with the mask?' I asked. 'I see myself becoming enthralled with it. I see myself testing it on others, but in secret. I see myself becoming its unwholesome slave.'
