JOURNAL OF DEREK RAYNE2 April - Quince Mil - Wednesday night
Still I am barely containing my anger. We fought all day. He won’t listen to reason. It’s like he’s insane. All I wanted was to spend some time with him. Now he’s turned my holiday into an expedition to hell. Why is his duty to the Legacy and to his damned colleagues always more important than we are? It’s why Mother took us back to Amsterdam. She said she couldn’t bear the loneliness anymore. She couldn’t bear the waiting and not knowing whether he would ever return.
He kept shoving these parchments in my face and wanting me to translate them as I read. The road was so rough I couldn’t have even focused on Mother Goose in giant print.
I am finally calm enough to write of the incidents of yesterday. Very late Mon. night I heard a knock on the door, but I was so far asleep that I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head. Father awakened me at five. After that I could never move fast enough for him. I don’t think he had slept at all. We grabbed breakfast at a stall in the central market - boiled something. That was when I wrote my last entry, while he was in search of a pistol and ammunition. He also bought about ten sticks of dynamite and blasting caps.
By 6:30, we were on the road to Puerto Maldonado, a town on the Madre de Dios river near the Bolivian border. About noon we hit rain. It has rained ever since. The road was bad enough before, but with the deluge it became patches of asphalt interspersed with oceans of mud. We got stuck twice yesterday and three times today. Last night we stopped for a few hrs. along the roadside. There was no way to make a camp, so we slept in the car.
Late this evening we finally made it into a town called Quince Mil and found a room at the New York Hotel. What a joke! I’d rather be sleeping in the car. No facilities and a bed that looks to be infested. I don’t even want to spread my sleeping bag on it for fear that the creatures will change their address. The roof leaks so much that the floor resembles a tidal pool - every now and again something swims by.
~~~~~
Still not thinking clearly - to backtrack again: Apparently the knock on the door was a telegram sent from this town by one of the local guides. It said an unusual box had been found at a mine in Chipote, which is somewhere northeast of here. Father believes it is one of the five sepulchres said to imprison fallen angels. The sepulchres have been his obsession for as long as I can remember, but it has been getting worse over the past few years. I’ve heard it said that he often neglects both his Legacy work and the foundation in pursuit of these artifacts. Prof. Washburn covers for him, but says that no one understands the power of these things. He says that if they exist they are not for mortal beings - their power is seductive and absolute. He told me that he worries because Father will never use the team or even take anyone as backup when he goes on these searches, which often last for weeks. Father says he knows exactly how dangerous they are and does not wish to risk another person. I’m not sure that’s the only reason.
How am I ever going to sleep in this place?
NEXT 
