Drowned History

by Rebecca Lovell

  While Phillip and Nadir discussed the best way to go about things, George fought the urge to go back and check on Alice. It hadn’t even been fifteen minutes but he was concerned. She should have woken up already. It occurred to him that maybe her touching the wall had caused this and he wasn’t in any particular hurry to have her come in contact with it again.

  “Perhaps the writing on the wall will have some clue as to why all this is happening,” Nadir said as they walked out to what George refused to think of as a temple. It looked more like a cave to him, with pieces of stone sticking out of the earth. Maybe when it was more fully excavated it would seem more like a temple but for the time being he could only think of it as a cave.

  They gathered around the pedestal and looked up at the wall, then at Phillip. He glanced around at the faces of the other men, then nodded once and began to creep toward the wall. He looked nervous but kept moving forward, giving George a newfound respect for the boy.

  The others held their breath as he made his way across the cave, waiting for him to drop to the ground the same way they and Alice had done, only to be surprised when he reached the wall. With a glance back in their direction, Phillip pressed a hand against the wall. Once again George expected him to fall but he didn’t.

  “I don’t understand,” Nadir said. “Why was he able to reach the wall?”

  “I haven’t the slightest,” George said, shaking his head as he went to join Phillip at the wall with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. He made it without so much as a headache and the academics followed with the camera. Just as Alice had done, and Phillip after her, George pressed his palm against the wall. “It feels warm,” he said. “Like it would have been if it was out in the sun.”

  “Here’s the writing,” Nadir said, rubbing a finger over the wall. “Let’s see if we can get a photograph of it.” Kiran nodded and they all stood back as he took a few pictures. Nadir turned to George. “Can you read this?”

  “No,” George said. “I can’t even place the language, to be honest. Are you able to read it now that you can get closer, Dr. Udeesh?”

  “No,” Kiran said. “It appears to be ancient Sanskrit. The individual characters are familiar but I cannot understand the whole. They make no sense.”

  “Alice could read this,” George said almost absently as he went forward and continued to run his hand over the wall. There was something hidden behind it, he was certain of it. As to why and how the wall had formed he had no idea, nor did he know why Alice was still asleep. There was too much he didn’t know or couldn’t figure out just yet, and he didn’t like it. “I’d be willing to bet my life on it.”

  “Then we must wait until she wakes up,” Kiran said. “I will send one of the men to the city to have these developed right away but they probably will not reach a laboratory until tomorrow and it may take as long as a day to have them back.”

  “Looks like we’re stuck waiting,” George said, moving over to run his thumb over the carved words. Alice was right. They were carved directly into the wall and despite his rubbing at them they did not blur or crumble. Without waiting for the others, he went back out into the sunlight. He wanted to check on Alice again, and something about the cave was making him anxious. It felt like there was some sort of energy running through the cave, an electricity that contradicted Kiran’s claim that there was none in the camp. If the others were feeling the same thing he was, they would have to be careful. One thing was for sure, there was nothing normal about this wall, nothing at all.

  Eight

  Alice.

  “What?” Alice frowned and stopped in the middle of the hallway. She could hear her professor Amesh and his wife Neha talking on either side of her but their voices were faraway and garbled. They continued walking and she shook her head, then hurried after them.

  Alice. Come to me.

  “Who is that? Who’s talking?” She was asking her friends but they had disappeared. Alice turned and found them behind her, growing smaller and smaller as if she was walking away from them. They didn’t seem to notice anything odd and she reached out toward them just as the voice began to whisper in her ear again.

  You must keep moving or you will be lost, it said. Come to me and you will be safe at last.

  “I’m safe,” Alice said, her body moving forward without her consent. “No one can find me here. I’m safe.”

  Come, the voice said again, and she did.

  At the end of the hallway there was a bright light that almost hurt her eyes, and she knew she was supposed to walk toward it. The closer she got, the louder the whispering got and she realized that it hadn’t been Amesh and Neha’s voices that were garbled, it was someone else.

  When she reached the end of the hallway Alice was surprised to find that she was shivering. The air hummed around her and crackled with what felt like static electricity. Her teeth began to chatter even though she wasn’t cold, and she turned the corner to find herself standing in front of a wall that seemed to be made of glass. Behind it was a cloud of mist that looked like something she might see the morning after a heavy rain and she felt an uncontrollable urge to touch it.

  Alice reached out to the glass and pressed her hand to it. A sharp pain stabbed through her and blood ran from her palm down the glass. Instantly it disappeared, letting the mist free. It surrounded her and the voices in Alice’s head surged into a roar while she struggled to breathe. The mist turned into water that filled her lungs and she tried to scream but couldn’t.

  Just as the realization that she was drowning hit her, Alice sat up straight with a gasp and found that she was lying in a bed inside a tent. A thin blanket covered her and she looked at her palm to make sure it wasn’t bleeding before she pressed her hands to her face. What was that? The dream was already starting to disappear and Alice pushed back the blanket to find that the bed she was laying on was still made. Someone had covered her with their blanket and she wondered who it was.

  The reason she was waking up in a warm tent instead of her cool apartment came to her suddenly and she slipped her feet into the low-heeled shoes that were sitting beside her bed, and stood up. She expected to be dizzy but wasn’t and reached back to feel her hair. It was almost certainly a mess and she opened her suitcase. Pushing aside the books she found a small case of toiletries and used the mirror inside to put her hair up using a tortoiseshell comb after taking it down and brushing it. She’d brought the comb thinking it would be best to go with something simple in the middle of nowhere and was glad she had.

  Once she was presentable, Alice stepped out of the tent and was surprised to find that it was almost full dark. The realization that she had been asleep almost an entire day hit her with the force of the water in her dream and she hurried to the tent from which she could hear Nadir speaking to the others.

  “---radioed me back and said that we should have the photographs in the morning,” he was saying. “I’m glad I brought some money with me, otherwise it could have taken days.”

  “It’s a moot point now,” George said. “We---”

  “Hello, gentlemen,” Alice interrupted. They all turned to see her standing in the doorway and Phillip immediately got up and offered her his seat. Alice wanted to tell him that she had been resting long enough but didn’t want to be rude. She sat down, fully aware that they were all staring at her, and smiled. “I’m sure I’ve missed a great deal of fun.”

  “Are you all right?” Phillip was the first one to speak and Alice turned to him.

  “I’m fine,” she said. The others looked like they weren’t buying it and she smiled wider, a little uncomfortable with all the attention. “Really, I’m fine.”

  “I’d rather make certain,” George said. He stood up and nodded in the direction of the sleeping tent. “Come along, then.” Alice frowned at him and he pointed impatiently at the door. She knew better than to argue with him when he was like this so she sighed and got up.

  “What exactly are we doing?” She was surprised that no o
ne was following them but a part of her was glad that they weren’t. Whatever George had in mind, she was happy to be alone with him for a moment. They hadn’t had anything like it since they met again at Nadir’s office and as she sat on the edge of her bed and watched him open his medical bag she wished she could think of something to say. There was so much she wanted to tell him, things she wanted to apologize for, but she didn’t know how to begin.

  “Here we are,” George said, putting his stethoscope in his ears. He pressed the bell against Alice’s chest and her face reddened. It was something she’d had done hundreds of times by doctors but this was different. This was George. The fact that he really was a doctor now hit her and tears rose in her eyes. He was looking down at his watch so she was able to blink them back before he looked up at her, but the frown that wrinkled his brow gave her a sinking feeling that he’d already noticed that something was wrong.

  “Is something the matter?” Alice tried to keep her voice light but as always, he saw right through her.

  “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?” He looked at her closely, then took out a blood pressure cuff and attached it to her arm. “We need to determine if you’ll be able to continue with this mission.” There was a clinical detachment in his voice that she didn’t much like. It meant that his concern for her didn’t go any further than how her health meant success or failure for the team. Alice stayed quiet while he took her blood pressure, not feeling much like sparring with him now that he was showing her something more than cold contempt, and he took the stethoscope out of his ears.

  “Mission? Did we enlist in the military while I was asleep?” It was a joke, but George’s expression told her he wasn’t amused.

  “Expedition, then. You know what I mean.”

  “Well then, doctor, am I going to make it?” She tried again to sound playful and George looked at her closely. He wrote down the numbers in a small notebook in his bag, then tucked the notebook in his jacket pocket and carefully put both his stethoscope and the blood pressure cuff in the bag.

  “You seem to be fairly stable for someone who’s been unconscious almost twenty-four hours.” He took his penlight from the bag and clicked it on. “Look over here at me,” he said and Alice obliged. George leaned close to her and opened one eye with a touch so light it was like air, then shined the light into her eye. Alice’s instinct was to close it but George didn’t let her until he was convinced both her eyes were in complete working order. “It looks all right,” he said. “Now tell me your name.”

  “Alice Anna Graesser.”

  “Your place and date of birth?”

  “Utica, New York. I was born at home because there was a blizzard that crippled both the city and surrounding towns. Luckily my aunt is a nurse. She was able to make it to our house to deliver me and I came into the world at 4:35 AM on February 21.”

  “I didn’t ask for your life story,” George grumbled. “If I ask you who the president is are you going to try and tell me the entire history of the American political system? We don’t have time for this sort of nonsense.”

  “It’s FDR,” Alice said impatiently, not knowing what difference it made. “Same as it’s been forever.”

  “His full name, please.”

  “Franklin. Delano. Roosevelt. How many more questions are you going to ask me?” Instead of a reply, George stuck a glass thermometer between her lips. She was about to take it out and tell him where he could stuff his medical examination when he unclipped her hair and let it fall down around her shoulders. It was a strange, intimate gesture made even more puzzling by the way he was moving his hand over her head.

  It actually felt kind of nice, though she realized almost immediately that he was only checking for a head injury. His fingers moved over her skull with the same earlier lightness, in complete contrast to how he’d been treating her from the time they’d shaken hands at the university. When he was finished, George handed her back her tortoiseshell comb.

  “I can’t believe these things are still around,” he muttered, packing things into his medical bag. “Damn things always seemed to show up in the middle of the floor in the middle of the night.”

  “Kept you on your toes, though,” Alice said, putting her hair back up. Before she could stop herself, she smiled up at him more openly than she had before. “Thank you, George.” She caught his wrist as he stood up off the bed. “Thank you for keeping me safe.”

  “You’re the one that did all the work,” George said nonchalantly. “I just made sure everyone left you alone and no one buried you for dead.”

  “And you covered me,” she said, a little more quietly. “With your own blanket. I saw that it was missing from your bed. Between the wall, those pills you gave me, and being covered, I’m surprised I woke up at all.”

  “The pills,” he said, a look of realization coming over his face. “I never thought about that. They wouldn’t have kept you asleep an entire day, though.” He waited for her to follow him back to the other tent and she watched his back the way she had so many times before. He wasn’t a big man but he’d always seemed strong to her.

  “Is she all right?” Phillip was waiting anxiously by the door and George nodded.

  “Everything seems in order. I don’t want her going back in that cave without some sort of precautions, though I don’t know what exactly those might be. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before.” They went back over to the table and Kiran stood up to give her his chair. George sat in the other empty seat, then passed a piece of paper to Alice. “Have a look at this.”

  “Is this what was on the wall?” It looked like a rubbing of some words and she examined them carefully. “This is Sanskrit. I recognize the characters but it’s so old it may as well be an alien language.”

  “So you can’t read it at all?” Nadir looked disappointed and Alice bit her lip.

  “There are books at the Vidyapith that could help,” she said, then looked up at Kiran. “Can you contact them? Amesh Patel will know who I am, he can get me access to the archives.”

  “We can radio them first thing in the morning,” Kiran said. “There will be no one there this late in the evening but we should have an answer for you quickly.”

  “Thank you.” Alice ran a finger over the rubbed letters and a shock went through her body, turning her hot and then cold. It took her a moment to realize that everyone was looking at her but the words that had suddenly appeared in her mind took up every inch of her thoughts.

  “Alice?” Phillip looked at her, concern evident in his voice. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s a warning,” Alice said. “These words are a warning.” She touched the paper again lightly but the shock didn’t come again. “You said this is a temple of Kali?” Kiran nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “Why?” Phillip looked at her curiously and George took the paper. Alice watched him closely to see if he had the same reaction. When he didn’t she relaxed.

  “She’s the goddess of death and destruction,” he said. “She would want to keep people away. There must be something special in that temple.” George set the paper aside and looked at Nadir. “Can you tell us anything more about the artifact?”

  “Yes,” Kiran said. “I suppose you do need to know as much about it as possible if you’re going to help us reach it. We’ve been keeping it back from the workers at the dig but our financial backers have reason to believe that Kali’s own trishula resides in that temple.”

  “You what?”

  “What’s a trishula?” Phillip looked from George to Kiran, but it was Nadir who answered his question.

  “It’s a sort of trident,” he said. “Kali has many arms and she holds a different object in each one, representing a different state she rules over. One of those is a trishula.”

  “This is dangerous,” Alice said. The tips of her fingers were tingling. “This is very, very dangerous territory.” She looked up at George, the only person whose opinion she really cared about, and fou
nd that he was looking back at her. “I want to read more about this before we go any further. None of us should go back in that cave until I get back from the Vidyapith.”

  “Agreed,” George said, nodding at her.

  “Now that we have that settled,” Kiran said. “I think we should have some dinner. I’m not sure about anyone else but my appetite has finally come back.” As soon as he said it, Alice’s stomach growled. It hadn’t occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten in over a day and found it hard to believe that the men hadn’t eaten either. “I’m afraid it won’t be anything more interesting than biryani rice and dal but it’s quite good.”

  “I’ve never eaten Indian food before,” Phillip said uncertainly and Alice glanced around the table at the men. Have they really not eaten?

  “I think you’ll like it,” Alice said with a smile, hoping they didn’t see her concern. “Just keep an open mind and trust me.”

  “Of course I will,” Phillip said and the tone of his voice made Alice’s heart beat a little faster. Before she could begin to figure out why, George scoffed.

  “A man could get himself in trouble that way.” Alice’s stomach dropped and her fingers tightened on the empty air. She stood up and forced a smile.

  “If you gentlemen will excuse me,” she said. “I need to go fix my hair. It feels as if it’s going to fall down.” It was a weak excuse but one that got her out of the tent, and as soon as she reached her bed she sank onto it and put her hands over her face again.

  She wondered how long George was going to punish her for trying to save his life.

  Nine

  The bullet that came to a stop in the ground just beside George’s head was all the motivation he needed to pull his head back down into the foxhole and he pressed himself against the hard-packed earth of the wall. His heart was thundering in his ears and he became aware of how fast he was breathing.