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September 24, 1939
New Orleans, Louisiana
United States
Manuel drove them into the city in an old pickup truck riddled with rust. Wilkins sat inside the cab while Louis and Richard rode in the bed, along with an old rucksack full of clothing Louis brought. Manuel had offered the two explorers some more of his own wardrobe, but they insisted they could obtain more clothing once they reached the city. Again attired in their own garb, now clean and dry if not horribly stained, they at least looked and felt like themselves once again.
The old fisherman dropped them off near the center of the city, in front of an old bank. Wilkins stayed outside while Richard went in to have some funds wired from his New York accounts, and the two dark-skinned men said their goodbyes.
Manuel walked around the truck and up to his son. His eyes shone with pending tears and his expression bore a mixture of pride and worry. He pulled Louis’s bag from the back of the truck and handed it to his son. “Stay out o’ trouble now. Iff’n dings come by to be too much fer ya...”
“Don’t worry,” Louis said as his father once again wiped tears from his eyes. The young man hefted the bag onto his shoulder, over which he cast a glance back at the waiting Englishman.
Wilkins felt awkward bearing witness to the private moment, but it would be more awkward to take his leave now. He felt as if he should offer Louis one last chance to change his mind, although the young man had been firmly set against any protestations to his joining the expedition. “Louis, if you have any doubts, now would be the time to change your mind. I can’t promise your safety beyond this moment.”
Manuel cast a thankful smile to the wiry anthropologist, then said to Louis, “Y’sure now? Ya wanna go?”
Louis nodded. “Dese two know der biz’ness.”
“I be knowin’ dat, but a father’s gonna worry.”
“I’m sure. I been wantin’ ta get out an’ see what’s out der in de world. Dis is my best chance. And dey need me.”
Manuel sighed. He placed his hands on his son’s shoulders and squeezed tightly. “You take care o’ dem, y’hear? Keep dem out o’ trouble. Dey be lost wit’out ya.”
Louis smiled back, but his eyes revealed the sadness he tried to mask. “I know. I’ll keep dem out o’ trouble.”
“Dat’s a good boy,” Manuel said, then embraced his son.
Richard walked out of the bank, fanning a pile of currency in front of him. “We’re back in business.”
Wilkins shot him a glare which could have bored holes in cement as the two fishermen ended their embrace and straightened themselves.
* * *
The first order of business was to replace their field-worn attire for something fresh and procure spare clothing for the journey to come. Wilkins, a creature of habit, preferred something similar to what he currently had on. However, there wasn’t exactly a field archeology outfitter among the rows of shops in the French Quarter. They managed to find a men’s clothing store catering more to practicality than fashion, so he settled for what he could find there: Dark brown slacks with heavy stitching on the inseam for durability, a white button-down shirt, and a tan sports coat more suited to an afternoon of cocktails on the beach than romping through the South American jungle.
Richard found the store suited his own style quite well, and he emerged wearing black slacks and a light-blue shirt with an exaggerated collar. He forewent replacing his jacket, but topped the ensemble with a charcoal trilby. He cut quite the dashing figure walking from the changing rooms, and Wilkins couldn’t help but stifle a gasp.
“What?” Richard asked.
Wilkins stammered for a response. “Oh, I just like the hat.”
“Good, because I got one for you.” The American revealed a tan fedora with a black band running around it. He plopped it firmly atop Wilkins’s head and patted him on the shoulder. “Tally ho, old chap,” he said with a horrible impression of a British accent.
Wilkins looked at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t overly fond of hats, even though wearing one was more the norm than not. He straightened the accessory and stood back. Even he had to admit that with the jacket, it wasn’t a bad look.
The real surprise came when Louis emerged from the changing rooms. Gone were the denim overalls and checkered shirt. The fisherman’s son looked like a completely different person. A practical pair of thick, tan canvas slacks peeked out from atop high leather boots. He rolled up the sleeves of a cream-colored shirt over his broad forearms. He had the shirt buttoned up all the way to his broad neck, making it look as if the garment were choking him.
“Hold on,” Richard said as he walked over to Louis. He reached up and undid the first three buttons, splaying out the collar and revealing more than a hint of smooth, ebony chest, deep collarbones, and chiseled musculature. “There,” he said as he stood back and beamed at their new protege.
Louis returned the smile, his eyes lighting up as he looked at himself in the mirror.
Even the shopkeeper took notice. “Dat dere’s a fine look, if I do say so myself!”
* * *
With mundane issues resolved, Wilkins was eager to pursue the lead which struck him while unearthing the ruins in the swamp. Richard had mentioned offhand that some Spanish explorer might have recovered the idol during their occupation of the region. This trivial assumption had sparked a memory of something Wilkins read long ago.
“Francisco Berdénes,” he muttered as the three men walked along the road toward the center of the city.
“Who?” Richard asked.
“You said dat name out in de bayou,” Louis said.
“Indeed,” Wilkins replied. He silently put together pieces of the puzzle in his mind.
Richard reached in front of the scholar’s chest, barring his way. Wilkins looked up to see he had almost wandered into a busy street full of motorcars while lost in his pondering.
“Care to enlighten us?” Richard asked before giving him a gentle push from behind as he spotted a break in the traffic.
Wilkins jogged across the street with the others and took a moment to catch his breath as he took in their surroundings. They were in Jackson Square, in the heart of the French Quarter. The large park dominated the center of a network of busy streets. Trees, bushes, and flower gardens adorned the space. Central to this was a statue of a man in a military uniform atop a rearing horse, reminiscent of the early nineteenth century.
“Who is that again?” Richard asked as they passed the statue. Ahead of them, the spires of a grand cathedral pointed heavenward.
“Andrew Jackson,” Wilkins said.
“No, not him.” Richard waved dismissively at the statue. “This Francisco fellow you keep babbling about.”
They stopped at the other end of the park, across from the cathedral. As they waited for another break in traffic, Wilkins explained, “Francisco Berdénes was a Spanish explorer. He was never particularly famous. What I remember was little more than a footnote in a text about the early exploration of the Americas.”
Louis saw the break they were waiting for and waved them on. As they crossed the street, Richard asked, “And what does he have to do with the ruins in the swamp?”
“Well,” Wilkins continued, “you mentioned perhaps some Spaniard had already taken the idol. This led me to recall the peculiarity of Berdénes’s story. He was something of an amateur anthropologist in his day, though the profession wasn’t as organized as it is now. Treasure hunter would be a better term for his exploits. In fact, he and yourself might have quite a bit in common—”
Richard cut him off. “Can you get to the point before I’m as old as he is, and tell us where we are going?”
“We’re here,” Wilkins announced as they stood before the looming spires of the cathedral. “Or rather, there.” He pointed to the building on their left, a three-story affair in a colonial style, dominated by rows of columns and arches stretching across the entirety of the ground floor. There was a crowd around the entrance, and people were flowing to and from the building with regularity. “The Cabildo.”
“The what?” Richard asked.
“It’s a museum,” Louis explained. “De Spanish made it when dey came by here. Used to run de place from dere.”
Wilkins nodded as he led them down the sidewalk. “Quite right, my friend.”
Richard sighed impatiently. “And this Francisco guy?”
“Oh, yes,” Wilkins said, snapped back to his original train of thought. “Berdénes had a reputation as a collector of relics back in Spain before he traveled to the Americas. He claimed to have discovered remnants of a lost civilization somewhere in the Pyrenees mountains on the French border, although as far as I can remember, nobody ever corroborated the claim.”
As they approached the main door of the museum, Richard fished a few bills from his pocket and paid for the three of them to enter at a small ticket window lined with iron bars. As he handed the tickets to the others, he asked, “And what does that have to do with this place?”
“Well,” Wilkins huffed and blew out his mustaches, “if you’d let me finish.”
Richard gave a low bow and gestured for them to enter the building. “By all means.”
Louis chuckled as he followed the two of them inside. “I can’t tell which of you is de crazy one.”
“He is,” the two explorers said in unison.
“Anyway,” Wilkins continued as they walked through the entrance hall, “Berdénes’s true claim to infamy was the outrageous assertion that, while exploring swampland in the Americas, he found relics of the same culture he discovered in the Pyrenees. He was dismissed as a liar or an idiot, and from there was reduced to a footnote in history.”
“So, you think he actually found something here, and it was the idol?” Richard asked.
“Indeed. I believe the ruins our friend Louis led us to were the same as those discovered by Francisco Berdénes. I always dismissed his claims as lunacy, same as any other serious student of history might. To think that a culture had spread from Spain to the Americas in antiquity was ridiculous.”
“But now that you’ve seen the same culture in both Peru and Louisiana...” Richard began.
Wilkins nodded. “It lends credibility to his claims, which is groundbreaking when one thinks of it. Some ancient culture, wiped from history somehow, which spread from Spain to the Americas; and not only that, but then spread from here all the way to Peru?”
“Or somebody from here that traveled to Spain?” Richard surmised.
Wilkins twisted his mustache as he led them into an exhibit of local archaeological finds. “I hadn’t even thought of that! In my own Eurocentric worldview, I had simply assumed the culture had spread from there to here. If the opposite were true, that would turn our understanding of history on its head.”
Wilkins noticed Louis looked around the room in awe. His eyes paused on fragments of swords, rusted cannons retrieved from shipwrecks, and a small pile of gold coins locked tight behind a glass case.
“You’ve not been here, have you?” Wilkins asked.
“No, sir. Pop an’ I don’t come to town much. Usually just to sell de crayfish.”
“Ah.” Richard’s eyes lit up. “Then come look at this.”
Wilkins took the opportunity to begin searching the exhibits for clues regarding Berdénes’s finds while Richard enlightened Louis on the finer points of piracy in local history. He was sure he read something about a relic the man found being sent back to Louisiana from Spain as part of a cultural renewal project. The arrangement had returned local artifacts to the region from Spanish museums in trade for a collection of relics from their explorations made here. With luck, the idol missing from the ruins in the swamp would be part of that collection.
They may have lost one, but if there were another artifact which could shed light on their mystery, Wilkins needed to find it. He also knew it would be too dangerous to leave here in the open, now knowing what he did of its supernatural nature.
As he was about to give up in his search, there was a crash of glass from an alcove in the corner. Wilkins spun around and found Richard already turning his own attention to the source of the noise, followed closely by Louis. He turned back to the alcove in time to see a man in a finely tailored white suit emerging. A knowing grin crossed the figure’s face, causing his pencil-thin handlebar mustache to twitch.
“Bonjour once again, mes amies. It is too bad you did not arrive sooner. Yet, the timing is... how does one say? Poetic, is it not?”
Henri stood before them, a small statuette barely a foot tall in his hands. It seemed crafted of the same stone as the Peruvian idol, with dark green and black marbling, but the form of it was different. It had the same circular base covered in glaring eyes and writhing serpents, but the figure atop it was anything but human. It seemed to have the torso and arms of a man, but from the waist down it stood on a cluster of smooth tentacles in place of legs. The half-man half-octopus clutched a simple, upright spear to its chest with both hands.
As Wilkins gazed into the deep-colored stone, it seemed to grow darker still until it was all black. A soft green glow emanated from it, and a sudden wave of nausea hit the pit of his stomach. Whether this sensation was from the idol itself or born of panic, he was not sure.
He looked to the side and saw Richard and Louis both charging toward the man. He held up a hand to stop them and tried to shout, but no sound came forth. The glow from the stone grew as darkness filled the room.
“C’est dommage, friend Wilkins,” Henri said. “To come so close, yet again be too late.”
Darkness and silence engulfed Wilkins, and he felt as if he were falling.
