Roberto narrowed his eyes at the ridge. “I hope that’s where we’re going. Look at that shadow. That’s the perfect place to make camp. I’ve never been this hot in my entire life.”
“Me either.”
Keep in mind we’d grown up in the forested Colorado high country. We weren’t used to this kind of heat. If it got to eighty-five degrees in Georgetown in the summer, it was probably the hottest day of the year.
I put on my hat and studied the ridge. The shadow of the cliff did look inviting.
Roberto’s brown hair hung around his face in sweat-matted locks. He shoved it off his forehead, and asked, “How hot do you think it is now?”
The Jeep door slammed behind us. I heard the locks click.
“I don’t know. Still over 100, I’d say.”
Moriarity came around the Jeep adjusting his fedora and stood beside me. He wore a long-sleeved tan shirt. “Actually, I suspect it’s around 38 Centigrade.”
“How hot is that?” Roberto asked.
“You, Robert, are going have to learn how to calculate in centigrade, which is easy to do. Just multiply the centigrade temperature by 1.8 and add 32. So, 38 x 1.8 plus 32 equals 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.”
“Wow, thanks. That was really helpful,” Roberto lifted his watch and tapped the glow-in-the-dark dial. “But I think I’ll just check my watch.”
Using his sleeve to mop his forehead, Moriarity said, “Oh. Does your watch have a thermometer?”
Roberto replied, “No. Get it?”
I hated to interrupt their budding friendship, but I had to ask, “We don’t have much time to hike, Dr. Moriarity. How far is Samael’s house?”
While the professor scowled at Roberto, he answered, “He lives in a cave in that cliff you see to the west, but it’s farther than it looks. We have a good two-hour hike ahead of us.”
Roberto headed out across the sand.
“Hold on,” Moriarity called. “Before we go, I need to warn you. Watch out for snakes. Especially cobras. The bite of a cobra works through neurotoxins and anticoagulants. First, the venom paralyzes you, and then it liquefies your insides. By the time the tremendous swelling sets in, you feel like your body had been dipped in acid and set on fire. Many victims use knives to slice open their own skin so the bulging flesh can spill out. Understand?”
Roberto chewed a hangnail and spat it out. “No snake handling? Shit. I was looking forward to that.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As the smoky veils of twilight settled over the desert, the crests of the dunes shaded a dark purple, and I thought I smelled trees and water. Maybe even the fragrance of flowers. Was it real? Was there an oasis ahead? Or was it just my cottony mind playing tricks?
I stopped to look around and to rest for a few seconds. Moriarity and Roberto continued walking ahead of me. I had to admit, I was tired. The worst part of the hike was the sand. It dragged at my hiking boots, making each step a chore. But we had to be close now. Just ahead, the ridge rose out of the sand like a dark fortress, its steep cliffs clearly visible in the dusk glow.
“You okay back there?” Moriarity called. When he turned around to look at me, wind fluttered his hair beneath the brim of his fedora.
“Sorry. Just looking at the desert. Pretty out here.”
I rarely took my gaze off Moriarity. The medallion taped inside my right sock wouldn’t let me. Each time I forgot and started to lose myself in blissfully looking around, the artifact felt heavier, as though in warning. Or . . . I thought it did. But for a couple of hours, my imagination had been running wild. I was just beginning to understand the first Christian ascetics. As early as the late first century, Christian monks had retreated to the wasteland of Egypt’s desert for the solitude they believed necessary to seek God.
And I could feel it, too. A supernatural presence, as though the divine permeated the very air I breathed. Often, I heard invisible footsteps in the sand behind me, but when I turned to look, I saw nothing.
“Just keeping walking, guys,” Moriarity said. “We’re almost there, and I guarantee you that tonight will be the most fascinating night of your lives.”
It was a measure of Roberto’s exhaustion that he didn’t have a comeback for that. He just plodded along behind Moriarity.
As we got closer, the vertical cliff loomed two hundred feet above us. Cracked and broken from millennia of weathering, giant fissures rent the stone. They resembled black veins worming their ways across the cliff face.
For another hour, I panted along behind Roberto, struggling just to put one boot in front of the other.
When darkness fell in earnest, it finally started to cool down, and stars flickered to life. My God, it was amazing. In Colorado, the mountain peaks obscured most of the sky, so I could only see a small slice of stars. Here, in the flat desert, the stars stretched from horizon to horizon. The only thing blocking the view was the cliff to my left, and it felt small and insignificant in this vast bowl of glittering galaxies.
I stumbled and winced. I’d finished off my water bottle an hour ago, and I’d been feeling queasy ever since. Probably dehydration. Out here, a person could not drink enough to stay hydrated. The searing heat sucked every ounce of moisture from the human body. If only I could just rest for a while, I was sure I’d . . .
“Hal,” Cleo softly called.
I came to a dead stop. The words had been as clear as a bell. As adrenaline surged through my veins, my gaze searched the darkness. In the bright starlight, every dune cast a shadow. The interplay of light and dark, along with the grains of sand that sparkled as they blew across the ground, was almost mystical. Was I so desperate to see her, to talk with her, that my unconscious was manufacturing auditory hallucinations? Suddenly, I missed her so much I could barely stand it. For most of the day, I’d forgotten my grief.
Moriarity called, “Did you say something, Hal?”
“Did I? I . . . I thought I heard . . . Something.” I hadn’t called her name, had I? I didn’t remember doing that.
“Why did you stop, Hal? We have to keep going.”
Roberto said, “Leave him alone. He just needs to catch his breath.”
They stood twenty paces ahead of me, little more than two black silhouettes against the backdrop of dark cliff. I couldn’t make out either one’s face, but Moriarity’s glasses flashed with starlight when he started shifting position, as though impatient.
“Come on, Hal!” Moriarity called. “We have to go. It’s not safe out here.”
I forced my feet to march forward, leaving her behind. It would hurt her feelings, but I couldn’t help it. I was pretty sure that if Moriarity thought I was completely crazy, he’d strip me naked to find the medallion, and put me on a plane home. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t already done that, but he probably hadn’t had the opportunity.
The professor did not wait for me to catch up. He took off at a quick walk, making up time. Roberto followed him.
I started falling behind almost immediately. I just didn’t have the energy left to push . . .
“Hal, don’t go.”
I froze.
Off to the right, something moved, trudging through the deep sand. Little more than a faint black shape, it looked human. And the sky . . . the sky was bleeding . . . red streamers ran from the stars like rain . . .
I jerked when rifle shots echoed across the night . . . like physical blows . . . and I longed to shout, to run . . . I couldn’t breathe. The pungent scent of pine filled my nostrils.
Roberto shouted, “Hey! You okay?” He ran back to me. “What’s wrong? You yelled.”
She was still out there, maybe thirty feet away. I could see her black hair blowing in the wind. I was scared now, because there was no longer any doubt about my sanity. No one else had heard the shots or her voice. Only me.
“Yeah. I—I’m oka
y.”
Roberto turned around to follow my gaze. “Do you see something?”
“I’m just . . . Really worn out, Roberto. Dehydration, I think.”
“Yeah, Christ. I’ve been pissing orange for an hour.”
That’s all this is. Dehydration can bring on delusions. I haven’t lost my mind. I’m not crazy.
Roberto looked back at Moriarity who’d crossed his arms and was giving us an unpleasant look, like we were both wimps.
“Hal, if we don’t stop soon, I’m going to pitch a fit. You don’t look so good. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Nodding, I whispered, “Yeah, let’s keep going. I need to get to a place where I can rest.”
“All right, but don’t push yourself. I’m afraid you’re going to have a heart attack or pass out on me.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
Roberto started walking along the cliff face again, but he kept turning around to make sure I was following him.
When I searched for her again, the black shape was gone. All I saw was wind blowing across starlit dunes.
I put my head down and concentrated on placing one hiking boot in front of the other.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As the trail curved westward, I could see dozens of caves dotting the cliff wall. They resembled unblinking black eyes. Ahead, palm trees swayed in the starlight, and I definitely smelled water and flowers. “Is that where we’re going to camp? That oasis?”
“Yes,” Moriarity called over his shoulder. “Keep walking.”
To the north, I saw the flicker of lights, maybe lamps. They were pinpricks in the darkness, but definitely there. A small village? Or an insurgent’s camp?
When we got to within a hundred paces of the caves, a pond, fringed by palms and other trees, glowed in the starlight.
Moriarity stopped and lifted his hat so he could wipe his drenched forehead with his sleeve. “I want you two to sit down for a minute. I need to talk to you.”
Roberto gestured to the cliff. “Let’s get to the caves and then sit down. They’ll be cooler.”
“No. Sit down. Right here.” Moriarity stabbed a finger at the ground. “Get comfortable.”
Roberto and I exchanged a glance and dropped to the sand, and I do mean dropped. I hit so hard I grunted when I landed. Moriarity knelt in front of us and removed his water bottle from his belt. As he slowly unscrewed the lid, his gaze fixed on the watery reflections cast upon the cliff by the starlit pond. Finally, he tipped up the bottle up and gulped it dry. I wanted to kill him. He had that much water left? And he hadn’t offered to share when he knew I was on my last legs?
Lowering his empty bottle, Moriarity propped it on his knee. “There are some things I need to tell you about Samael before you meet him. He’s a bit odd.”
“Odd?”
“First, he’s a famous digger. Never forget that. The man is a legend in the archaeological world. I think he’s worked on every important archaeological excavation in Egypt over the past forty years. He was at Karnak when they opened up the tomb of—”
“Odd in what way?” Roberto interrupted.
Moriarity gave him a disapproving look. “Well, for one thing, his memory has started to go. He forgets things, asks the same questions over and over, and mixes up words. When he can’t remember something, like where he put an object, he often makes up a story about monsters or fallen angels to explain the disappearance. There’s no telling what he’ll say to you.”
I asked, “How old is he? Is this Alzheimer’s?”
Moriarity tilted his head as though uncertain. “Sometimes, I think so. Other times, I suspect he’s schizophrenic.” Without a trace of humor, he added, “Which you, Hal, should understand better than most.”
My spine stiffened. “Are you saying I’m schizophrenic?”
“No, I’m saying you have a well-developed imagination. Don’t you agree?”
“Oh. Yeah,” I conceded, and Roberto frowned at me like I should never let Dr. Who think he was right.
“Have either of you ever been around a seriously mentally ill person before?”
Roberto said, “Oh, hell, yeah. My Aunt Louise collects the shriveled body parts of saints and puts them on her mantel. Every holiday she makes us pray before them, as though a chunk of tongue can hear us.”
Moriarity stabbed a finger at Roberto. “That’s exactly the irreverent tone I want you to banish from your voice right now. As an archaeologist, it is not your job to disbelieve. It’s your job to listen and learn. Get it?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Good. If we can get him to talk about it, I suspect he has information that you will find extremely important. Especially you, Hal.”
I pulled off my hat and batted the dust out on my pant leg. “What information?”
Moriarity’s lips curled into a knowing smile. “Samael claims to have visited the Island of the Two Flames.”
“He’s been to the land of the dead?” Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the world. My lungs were starving. “I didn’t know the living could get to the Island of the Two Flames.”
“It’s not easy, believe me.” Moriarity bowed his head and grimaced at the sand.
Forcing a swallow down my throat, I said, “You sound like you’ve tried, Professor.”
“I did once.” Moriarity’s eyes narrowed as though in pain at the memory. “Samael told me he could take me there. Unfortunately, he got lost. Or said he did. We came back here after three days of walking along the Nile, searching for it.”
“So he really believes it exists?”
“It does exist.” Moriarity tilted his head to the right and gave me a strange look. “Isn’t that why you came here? To find it? You asked me about it at the funeral.”
“I came here to study archaeology with you. But I’d definitely go if Samael offered to take me.”
“You might never come back. You understand?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Moriarity’s mouth pressed into a hard white line as he gazed down at the oasis where the palms shimmered. The cliff that cradled the oasis looked taller, more ominous. The caves were pits of darkness. He pointed to one of the holes on the far end of the cliff. “All right. You see that cave on the far end? That’s where we’re going. But you must promise me that no matter what Samael says or does, you will listen respectfully. He’s very frail. Don’t hurt his feelings. Just play along with whatever he says.”
Slightly offended, I said, “I understand the tenets of anthropological field work. I won’t act like a stupid American tourist.”
“Great, but it wasn’t really you I was worried about.” His bushy eyebrows drew together as he squinted at Roberto.
Roberto squinted back. “I will be the soul of discretion.”
“You’d better be,” Moriarity warned, shoving himself to his feet.
By the time we neared the caves, the moon had risen and moonlight blazed from the cliff. Off to my right, the pond resembled an oblate silver coin, the surface so calm I could see the perfect reflections of palm fronds sprinkled with stars.
As we paused to replenish our water, Roberto said, “I smell a campfire.”
“I do, too.”
The scent grew stronger as we walked. Actually, I sort of staggered my way toward the caves, with my legs on the verge of buckling. Thirty paces away, firelight flickered over the interior of one of the caves in the middle of the cliff. Given the heat, it seemed unbelievable that anyone would have a fire going out here, but I guess if you had no electricity, you had to light your cave and cook your food somehow.
“Is that it? Is that where Samael lives?”
I tried to walk around Moriarity to get there faster, but as I passed, he caught my sleeve and dragged me back. He was studying the yellow circle of light, apparently searching for anything amiss. “For forty years, Sam
ael has lived in that cave down on the far end of the cliff. Not in the middle.”
As the moonlight brightened, I could see better. “The cave that’s boarded up? He used to live there?”
Planks had been nailed across the front, as though sealing something inside.
“Yes.” Moriarity released my sleeve. Peering into the firelit cave, he whispered, “Curious.”
“Maybe he moved,” Roberto said. “People do that.”
Rubbing his chin with the back of his hand, Moriarity replied, “Maybe.” Then his eyes widened, and he stared hard at the darkness ahead. “What’s that?”
“What?”
“I don’t know . . . I thought I saw . . .” He shook his head, and there was a long pause. “Probably nothing. Just reflections off the pond.”
But Moriarity shoved his hand inside his shirt, pulled a small pistol from a shoulder holster, and gripped it tightly.
“Nothing?” Roberto said. “You just pulled a pistol.”
“I thought it was illegal for foreigners to carry pistols in Egypt,” I said.
“It is. But insurgents and extremists can be anywhere, and they’re naturally drawn to remote oases. I wouldn’t be caught dead out here without a pistol.” He cocked his head. “Do you . . . Do you hear that? Sounds like howling.”
I listened. The sound was low-pitched, barely audible. “I think it’s a voice. A male voice. Deep.”
“If so, it is not Samael’s voice.” Gripping his pistol, Moriarity cautiously headed for the cave.
Roberto followed less than two paces behind him.
I just kept standing there with my shaking knees locked. Don’t go. Is this what she’d meant? Don’t go to Samael’s cave? Everything inside me was telling me to turn around and run. But this man might be able to help me get Cleo to the Island of the Two Flames.
I hurried forward and stood awkwardly behind Moriarity and Roberto, both of whom had stopped just outside the cave entry.
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