We had come upon a clearing of sorts, or the remains of one, I should say, and I saw decayed plaster hovels where there had once been houses, and one or two shelters which still maintained their old thatched roofs.

"The little village is gone," Merrick said as she surveyed the disaster. I remembered Matthew Kemp's mention of Village One and Village Two on his map and in his letters of years ago. She stood for a long moment staring into the remnants of the place and then she spoke in a secretive voice. "Do you feel anything?"

I had not felt anything until she asked me, but no sooner did I hear the question than I was aware of something spiritually turbulent in the air. I resolved to apply all my senses to it. It was quite strong. I cannot say I felt personalities or an attitude. I felt a commotion. For one moment I felt menace, and then nothing at all.

"What do you make of it?" I asked her.

Her very stillness made me uneasy.

"It's not the spirits of this village," she answered. "And I'll bet you anything that whatever we're feeling is precisely what caused the villagers to move on." She started off again, and I had no choice but to follow her. I was almost as obsessed as she.

Once we had circled the entangled village ruin, the trail appeared again.

However, the jungle soon became denser; we had to hack our way all the more fiercely, and at times I felt a dreadful pain in my chest.

Quite suddenly, as if it had appeared by magic, I saw the huge bulk of a pale stone pyramid looming before us, its steps covered by scrub growth and dense vine.

Someone at some time had cleared it, and much of its strange carving was visible, as well as its flight of steep steps. No, it wasn't Maya, at least not insofar as I could see.

"Ah, let me savor this," I said to Merrick.

She didn't answer me. She seemed to be listening for an important sound. I too listened and there came again that awareness that we were not alone. Something moved in the atmosphere, something pushed against us, something sought with great determination to move against gravity and affect my body as I stood there, machete in hand. Merrick suddenly veered to the left, and began hacking her way around the side of the pyramid and onward in the same direction that we'd taken before.

There was no trail now. There was nothing but the jungle, and I soon realized that another pyramid loomed to our left, and that it was much higher than the building to our right. We were in a small alley-way before the two immense monuments, and we had to make our way through cumbersome rubble, as someone had done digging here at some time before.