Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow Read online

  Taped below it was a scrap of parcel paper. On it, written in his father’s handwriting, was Jake’s name along with the family address for their estate here in North Hampshire, Connecticut. The package had arrived six weeks after the bandits had attacked his parents’ camp.

  That had been three years ago.

  It was the last and only contact from his folks.

  Jake fingered the thin cord around his neck as he reached the front of the class. Through his cotton shirt, he felt the small object that hung from the cord and rested flat against his chest. A last gift from his parents. Its reassuring touch helped center him.

  To the side, the teacher cleared her throat. “Class, Mr. Ransom will be teaching us…well…I mean to say his oral report will be on…”

  “My report,” he said, cutting her off, “is on Mayan astronomical techniques in relation to the precession of the equinoxes.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Equinoxes. Very interesting, Mr. Ransom.” The teacher nodded, perhaps a bit too vigorously.

  Jake suspected Professor Agnes Trout didn’t fully understand what the report was about. She backed toward her desk, as if fearful he might ask her a question. Like everyone else, she must have had heard the story of Mr. Rushbein, the geometry teacher. How after Jake had disproved one of the teacher’s theorems in front of his whole class, he had suffered a nervous breakdown. Now all the teachers at Middleton Prep looked at Jake with a glint of worry. Who would be next?

  Jake picked up a piece of chalk and wrote some calculations on the board. “Today I’ll be showing how the Maya were able to predict such events as the solar eclipses, like the one that will occur next Tuesday—”

  A balled-up piece of paper struck the board near his hand and caused the piece of chalk in his fingers to snap with a loud squeak on the board.

  “Were they able to predict that?”

  Jake knew the voice. Craig Brask. A linebacker for the junior varsity football team. While Jake had skipped a grade, Craig had been held back. Ever since, Jake had become the target for the beefy troglodyte.

  “Mr. Brask!” Professor Trout declared. “I’ll have no more of your shenanigans in my classroom. Mr. Ransom listened to your report with respect.”

  With respect? Craig’s report had been on Custer’s Last Stand. He even got the ending wrong: The injuns got whooped good!

  As the few snickers finally died down, Jake took two steadying breaths and prepared to resume his report. In preparing for his report, Jake had delved deeply into how the Maya were skilled astronomers, how they understood the grand movement of the cosmos. Such research made him feel closer to his parents. It had been their life’s work.

  But now, standing at the chalkboard, Jake sensed the boredom of the class behind him. With a small shake of his head, he picked up the eraser and wiped away the calculations he had already written. That wasn’t what the class wanted to hear. He turned to face them, cleared his throat, and spoke boldly.

  “It is well known that the Maya practiced ritual human sacrifice. They even cut out their victims’ hearts—and ate them.”

  The sudden change in topic shocked away the bored looks of the class.

  “That’s so sick,” Sally Van Horn said from the front row, but she sat straighter in her chair.

  Jake drew an outline of a human body on the chalkboard and went into great detail about the method of ritual sacrifice: from types of knives used in the slaughter to the way the blood was collected from the altar in special bowls. By the time the bell rang, no one moved. One student even held up his hand and called out, “How many people did they kill?”

  Before Jake could answer, Professor Trout waved him to stop. “Yes, very interesting, Mr. Ransom. But I think that’s enough for today.” She looked a little green, possibly after Jake’s description of how the Maya used bones and intestines to predict the weather.

  Jake hid a small smile as he dusted the chalk from his hands and returned to his desk. A few students clapped at the end of his report, but as usual, he was mostly ignored. He watched the others leave, clutched in groups of two or three, laughing, joking, smiling.

  New to the class, Jake hadn’t made any real friends. And he was okay with that. His life was full enough. Determined to follow in his parents’ footsteps, he had to prepare himself—mind and body—for that goal.

  Reaching his desk, he collected his backpack and saw that his notebook was still open. He paused just a moment to look at the photograph of his parents on the inside cover, then closed the notebook, shouldered his backpack, and headed toward the door.

  At least he was done with school for a week.

  Nothing could go wrong from here.

  Jake hurried down the school’s marble steps in the bright April sunshine and headed to his mountain bike.

  Bright laughter drew his attention to the left. Under one of the flowering dogwoods in the school yard stood his sister, Kady. She leaned on the trunk of the tree, dressed in the yellow and gold of the senior cheer squad. A match to the three other girls gathered around her, though clearly she was their leader. She also held the full attention of half a dozen upper-class boys, all wearing letterman jackets.

  She laughed again at something one of the boys said. She tossed her head in a well-practiced flip, sending out a cascade of blond hair, only a few shades lighter than Jake’s. She stretched out a leg as if limbering up, but mostly, Jake knew, it was to show off the length of her leg and the new silver ankle bracelet. She was trying to gain the attention of the captain of the football team, but he seemed more interested in a shoulder-punching contest with a fellow teammate.

  For just a brief moment, Kady’s eyes caught Jake’s approach. He watched them narrow in warning, marking off forbidden territory.

  Jake skirted away. He quickened his steps, prepared to take a wide swath around the gathered elite of Middleton Prep. It was because of such a concentrated effort that he failed to see Craig Brask until he was almost on top of him.

  A large arm shot out and slammed a palm into Jake’s chest. Fingers curled into his shirt. “Where do ya think you’re going?”

  Craig Brask stood a head taller than Jake and twice his weight. His classmate’s red hair was shaved to a stubble, and his face had so many freckles it looked like he was always blushing. He had the sleeves of his school jacket rolled up to expose his apelike forearms.

  “Let me go, Brask,” Jake warned.

  “Or what?”

  By now, others gathered. Snickers rose from the crowd.

  As Craig turned to grin at his audience, Jake reached up and grabbed Craig’s thumb in a lock and twisted it. Over the past three years, Jake had studied more than just ancient civilizations. He had readied his body as much as his mind by taking Tae Kwon Do classes three times a week.

  Craig gasped as Jake broke his hold. The large boy stumbled back.

  Not wanting the fight to escalate, Jake turned and headed for his bike. But Craig lunged and grabbed the back of Jake’s collar, not letting him leave.

  Jake felt the thin braided leather cord around his neck snap under the pressure. The weight suspended from it slid down his belly where his shirt was tucked into his jeans.

  Anger flared, white hot and blinding.

  Not thinking, Jake turned and snap-kicked Craig in the chest.

  Craig flew back and landed flat on his back. Jake’s anchoring foot slipped in the grass, and he fell hard on his backside, jarring his teeth.

  Someone called out, “Kady, isn’t that your brother?”

  Jake glanced over a shoulder. The elite of Middleton Prep all turned in their direction, including the captain of the football team.

  With a frown, Randy White headed over. Taking his lead, the others followed in tow, including Jake’s sister.

  Reaching them, Randy pointed at Craig’s nose. “Brask, leave the kid alone.” The command in that voice did not invite debate.

  Craig rubbed at his bruised chest and scowled.

  Randy offered Jake a hand
up, but he managed to gain his feet on his own. He didn’t want any help. He brushed off the seat of his pants. Randy shrugged and turned away, but not before mumbling, “Weird kid.”

  As the elite drifted away, Kady remained. She caught Jake by the elbow and leaned close to his ear. “Quit trying to embarrass me,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

  Embarrass you?

  Jake shook free of his sister’s grip and returned her glare, eye to eye. Though they stood the same height, Katherine Ransom was two years older.

  Jake’s face went even redder than during the fight. Unable to form words, he freed the broken cord from under his shirttail. The object that hung from it dropped into his open palm.

  A gold coin. Actually it was only half a coin, the whole having been broken jaggedly in two, a Mayan image engraved on each half. The sunlight glinted and caught Kady’s eye. Her left hand rose to her own throat. Her half of the same coin hung from a fine gold chain around her neck.

  The two coin pieces had been mailed in the parcel three years ago, along with their father’s camp diary and their mother’s sketchbook. Neither knew why the package had been sent or who had mailed it. Since then, the gold tokens never left Kady’s or Jake’s neck.

  Jake stared down at the piece in his palm. Sunlight reflected off the burnished gold, making the symbol on his half of the coin shine brightly. The symbols were called glyphs.

  The glyph on his coin represented the Mayan word be (pronounced BAY) or, in English, road.

  For the thousandth time, Jake wondered what it meant. It had to be significant. Turning his back on his sister, he shoved the coin into his pocket and strode stiffly toward his chained-up mountain bike.

  He was soon pedaling away. How he wished he would never have to return to this lame school.

  But he shook his head.

  No, his heart was too full of one wish to bother with any others.

  One hand lowered to his pants pocket as he pedaled. He rubbed his palm over the coin through the jeans, shining it like Aladdin’s lamp.

  There was room for only one wish in Jake’s heart: to discover what had happened to his mother and father.

  It was why he worked so hard.

  If he ever hoped to learn the truth about his parents’ deaths—to discover why they’d been killed—he must first become like them. Like father, like son. Follow in their footsteps.

  With a renewed determination, Jake lifted out of the seat and fought his bike up the long hill toward home.

  Nothing else mattered.

  2

  AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION

  Just the smallest tap…

  Jake lay on his belly as the sun baked his back. He had been down in the quarry behind his house the entire Saturday. The slab of rock under him was mostly flat, but by now, every slight bump in the surface had grown into a sharp knob.

  His lips were stretched in a hard grimace—not from pain, but from his painstaking concentration.

  Mustn’t harm the sample.

  The Paleozoic-era fossil looked like a cross between a squashed crab and some alien spacecraft. He could even make out a pair of tiny antennae.

  It was a rare find for the area. It stretched almost three inches long, an outstanding example of Isotelus maximus, more commonly known as a giant trilobite.

  An amazing find!

  Jake held a small pick-chisel in one hand and a tiny hammer in the other. One more good tap should free the fossil from the surrounding rock. He could then take it back to his room and perform a more delicate cleanup under proper conditions.

  He positioned the chisel, took a steadying breath, and lifted the hammer. He wanted to close his eyes, but he doubted that would help.

  Here we go…

  He swung the hammer and—

  “CALLING, MASTER JAKE!”

  —startled, he struck his thumb a good blow, right on the knuckle.

  “CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

  The squawks were coming from the two-way radio balanced on a rock near his elbow.

  Jake shook his injured hand and rolled to his side. He picked up the radio and pressed the transmit button. “What is it, Uncle Edward?” he asked with exasperation.

  “DINNER IS ABOUT TO BE SERVED.”

  Dinner?

  “AND I SUSPECT YOU’LL NEED TIME TO CLEAN UP.”

  Jake glanced to the sky and finally noted how low the sun had sunk and how long the shadows had grown. Lost in concentration, he had not realized how late it had become.

  He raised the radio to his lips. “Okay. I’ll be right there.”

  He took an extra moment with chisel and hammer to free the trilobite fossil, then pocketed it. Finished, he rolled onto his back, only to find slobbering jowls and a big black wet nose hanging over his face. Hot breath panted down at him. A dollop of drool landed on his forehead.

  Ugh.

  Jake reached up and pushed the basset hound’s face away from his own. “Phew, Watson. That breath could kill a dragon.”

  Jake sat up.

  Ignoring the insult, Watson dragged a long wet tongue across Jake’s cheek.

  “Yeah, that’s better. Share the germs.”

  Still, Jake grinned and gave the old dog a rough scratch behind his floppy left ear, which got the hound’s rear leg kicking happily. Watson, going on fourteen years, had been a part of the Ransom family longer than Jake. Jake’s mother had rescued Watson from a British breeder of foxhounds who was going to drown the dog as a puppy because he was born with a crooked front leg. Watson still walked with a bit of a limping swagger, but as his mother always said, It’s the warts that make us who we are.

  Still, bum leg or not, if Watson saw a squirrel, he could take off after it like a furry bolt of lightning. Jake kept a dog whistle handy to keep from losing the hound in the woods. Especially because Watson’s eyesight was getting weaker with age.

  “C’mon, Watson. Let’s get some food.”

  The last word got the hound’s tail wagging again. His nose lifted in the air, sniffing. That sense certainly hadn’t gotten any weaker with age. He probably already knew what Aunt Matilda had cooking on the stove.

  Jake stared down at another two fossils he wanted to collect. They would have to wait until tomorrow. The light was getting bad, and he didn’t want to make any mistakes. That’s what his father taught him. An archaeologist needed patience. He heard his father’s voice in his head: Don’t rush history…it’s not going anywhere.

  Taking that advice, Jake gathered his tools and set off with Watson. He climbed out of the old quarry and headed home.

  Ravensgate Manor spread ahead of Jake, fifty-two acres of rolling hills dotted by forests of sugar maples and black oaks.

  Jake headed down a wood-chip-strewn path. The estate went back generations, to the first Ransom to set roots here shortly after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He had been a famed Egyptologist, and each generation continued in the footsteps of the founder, all explorers in some manner or another.

  As Jake rounded a bend, he spotted home.

  In the middle of a sprawling English garden stood a small mansion of stone turrets and timbered gables, of slate roofs and copper trims, of stained-glass windows and brass hinges. Off near the front, a circular driveway of crushed stone led out to the main gate, whose pillars supported a pair of carved stone ravens, namesakes of the estate.

  Since his parents had vanished, the house itself had grown more forlorn. The ivy had grown thin and yellowing in patches, a few tiles were missing from the roof, and a section of windowpanes had been patched with tape and board. It was as if something essential had been stolen—from the land, from the house, but mostly from Jake’s heart.

  With Watson at his side, Jake headed to one of the back doors. He pushed inside the house to a small red-tiled mudroom, where he knocked the dust from his shoes and patted down his clothes. He hung up his specimen bag and tools on a hook by the door.

  A head popped in from the next room. Aunt Matilda. Her wrinkled
face was framed by white curls, mostly bunched under a baker’s cap. She didn’t step fully into the room. She seldom did. Aunt Matilda seemed always too busy to move her entire body into one room.

  “Ah, there you are, my dear. I was just spooning up the soup. Best you hurry and clean yourself up.” A small frown of concern tightened the corners of her lips. “And where might that sister of yours be?”

  The question was not truly meant to be answered, especially by Jake, because he and Kady seldom kept company anymore. It was merely a complaint to the universe.

  “I’ll wash up and be right back down, Aunt Matilda.”

  “Be quick about it.” She vanished away, off to oversee the cook and two maids. But her head popped back into view. “Oh, Edward would like you to stop by the library before dinner. Something’s arrived in today’s post.”

  Curiosity hurried Jake’s pace. Significantly less interested, Watson wandered off to search for scraps in the kitchen.

  The library was just off the main foyer. To reach it, Jake headed down the manor’s central hall that stretched from the back of the house to the front. One wall was hung with oil portraits of his ancestors, men and women, going back to the original Bartholomew with his heavy mustache and sun-squinted eyes, posed next to a camel. Every portrait looked down across the central hall to its own private display cabinet.

  Cabinets of Curiosities, his father called them.

  Each leaded-glass display contained artifacts and relics from that ancestor’s adventures: beetles and butterflies pinned to corkboard, gemstones and mineral specimens, tiny bits of pottery and carved figurines, and of course, enough fossils to fill an entire museum, including a tyrannosaurus egg, partially hatching.