“I don’t like them,” Jacob said with a shrug, stepping back and turning with axe in hand to look across the clearing at the distant overgrown structure. “They don’t belong in all this green.”
Van Resen lingered by the strange trees to jot something on the paper, peering between the trunks but never entering the wood saying, “To finish my thought on a personal note, if we were beetles you and I, this scent might very well surpass a rose.” The scientist laughed and wrinkled his nose. “I’m not fond of the color.”
“Come away from there, doctor,” Jacob warned over his shoulder, his trepidation growing. “Could be something dead in the trees. Could be what happened to whoever built that hut.”
“Ah, I see your train of thought. They may have ingested some part of these sickly moringa and died beneath their branches.” He moved to the black man and shook his big hand again. “Morbid, but excellent thinking, Mr. Raines. Perhaps we will have time to solve this riddle.”
“I hope not,” Jacob said, shoulders slumping.
“Now, we best pick up our pace, the others will be growing impatient,” Van Resen said, moving with Jacob through the long grass toward the vine-covered building, struggling when prickly vines growing among the blades caught at their pants.
Halfway there the scientist began muttering to himself and then nodding he smiled and said, “I’m sure I’ve seen illustrations of such things as this in Eastern Europe—now that I’m looking at it.”
“At what,” Jacob offered, “the hut?”
“A hut, exactly, but it has definite congruencies of design—similarities—with the yurt’s used by indigenous peoples on the central plains of Mongolia. There are variations on the design found throughout Eastern Europe.” The scientist laughed, and clapped his hands.
“Mongolia?” Jacob came to a halt ten feet from the structure and stared.
“Of course, those were built to be easily carried...mobile, if you will. I have seen drawings of these dwellings that were circular in construction, while this is clearly rectangular—or is it?” Van Resen paced left and right, craning his neck at the vine-shrouded construction. “Do I see evidence of an octagonal shape beneath the verdure? So the basic ‘circular’ design I recognize is in place with modifications forced upon the builder by climate and need. This is a ‘fortified’ version of a yurt.”
“Yurt?” Jacob repeated.
“Yes.” The scientist turned in place to view the jungle that encroached upon all sides. “Traditional yurts are practically tents, you see, and you wouldn’t last long in a tent in this vicinity. Which is undoubtedly also the reason that it was built in the trees.” He started forward. “I wonder if the walls within are of reinforced lattice...”
Jacob followed Van Resen to where grass grew plentifully around the base of aged trees with tangled branches and crowded trunks that had been used as pillars to support an elevated platform on which the yurt was constructed. From below, they could see the planed boards comprising the trusses.
“Now look around us, Jacob,” Van Resen said, stretching up to touch the lowest plank. “Do you see a lumber mill?”
“No, sir,” Jacob said, before scanning the edge of the clearing where the thick jungle grew like a wall. “Unless, there’s a town...”
“Also an excellent notion,” Van Resen said, orienting himself by the lowest of a series of rough wooden rungs nailed up the side of a supporting tree trunk. “We will learn much more by going inside.”
Once they had climbed the ten feet to gain the high platform, Van Resen quickly discerned the shape and location of the yurt’s only door. After pressing upon it, and inspecting the frame, he found a leather string leading out through a hole in the wall near the roof.
“Should we knock?” Jacob asked, gripping the axe.
“Most certainly!” Van Resen stepped aside to knock three times upon the door, and then with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, he pulled the string and was answered by a hollow scraping sound as the door swung inward.
“Wait for them to answer!” Jacob warned, holding the axe across his chest and sliding back a pace.
“The yurt is abandoned.” Van Resen stood by the open doorway.
“How do you know?” Jacob peered in but the darkness was complete.
“Thick grass at the base of the trees. Moss and fungi growing unmolested on the ladder rungs. There was no path worn in the approach to the structure,” Van Resen said matter-of-factly. “And the smell that I detect issuing from within.”
Jacob sniffed at the air wafting from the open door, and he quickly glanced back at the moringa grove. “It smells like those trees!”
“Similar,” Van Resen answered, leaning in to sniff the dark interior. “But quite different. This aroma is of mildew and dust, decay of wood, rotting cloth—and some flesh, I’m afraid...”
“Some flesh?” Jacob stuttered, looking into the shadows.
“But primarily it is neglect that we smell,” Van Resen said and holding the butcher knife before him, he walked under the lintel, and stopped. “Ah, the master of the house!”
“Where?” Jacob groaned, peering over the scientist’s shoulder before he gagged.
Just across from them a human skeleton sat propped up in a chair, the remains of its clothing nothing but rotten rags draped over bone.
“God save us!” the black man cried, and grabbed at his companion with a free hand.
“Careful, Jacob.” Van Resen half-turned, pushing the man back and rubbing at a tender place between his shoulder blades where the axe-head had made contact.
“No need to worry... He is quite dead.” The scientist gestured to his own facial hair and to that which straggled over the dried skin clinging to the skeleton’s jaws. “And he is also old enough that he cannot be the cause of the smell that is so apparent.” Van Resen took a step into the room
