Cries from the Lost Island

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. It was already starting to get hot. “Samael believes it. He’s terrified.”

  “Yeah, but the old guy is not right in the head, Hal, you have to admit.”

  He was giving me that look that said, Come on, don’t get weird on me. So I said, “Yeah, he’s strange all right. But we’re not exactly normal, you know.”

  “That’s what makes us interesting.”

  While I moved closer to the cave to sniff the air penetrating between the boards, Roberto crouched and brushed at the dirt beneath the lowest board. A metallic tang seeped from the cave. I could taste it in the back of my throat, like sucking on a copper penny.

  “Look at this, Hal.”

  “What did you find?”

  With his finger hovering above it, he drew the outline of knee prints. “Somebody knelt here.” He hesitated, then added, “And the sand here is a different color. Do you see this?”

  I did. It was darker. “It looks like someone scooped fresh sand over the bottom of the board to block a gap.”

  Roberto continued brushing at the dirt until he’d revealed the hole beneath the board. The bedrock had been perfectly smoothed, as though someone routinely lay on his belly to slide beneath the board to get into and out of the cave.

  Roberto stood up and we both stared at the hole while we listened to the sound of birds singing in the olive trees by the pond.

  “Yeah,” Roberto nodded. “Given that the sand is still a different color, it looks like somebody crawled under the bottom board recently. Maybe an hour ago. Do you think that’s where he hid the weapons?”

  I took a deep breath to fortify my courage. “I guess I’ll go look.”

  “All right, but . . .” Roberto reached down the front of his pants. “Take this with you.” He pulled a pistol out and handed it to me. “I picked this up when I was searching the guns and ammo chamber.”

  I didn’t know much about firearms, but I knew that was a semiautomatic. “I thought that was a codpiece.”

  “If it was, it’d be bigger.”

  Which I knew from personal experience was true. Roberto had tried wearing one for the first time at last year’s Valentine’s Day dance. It hadn’t worked out so well. I think the glue was old on the tape he used to strap his mom’s sanitary napkin to his leg, because it kept working its way down all night until it fell out on the floor when he was dancing with Molly Henson. Most people would have been humiliated, but with fifty people watching, Roberto had calmly bent down, picked it up, and said, “Christ, Molly, can’t you strap these things in better?” before he’d handed it to her and walked off the dance floor.

  Glancing at the gun, I said, “Bullets don’t work against demons. Didn’t you hear Samael?”

  “Yeah, I heard. What if it’s not a demon?”

  I backed away from the weapon. “I’m not good with guns, Roberto.”

  He shoved it into my hand. “This is the safety. Switch it down when you’re ready to pull the trigger. It’s not complicated. And if I’m eaten by a demon while you’re in there, I expect you to take whatever is left home to my parents.”

  The pistol was heavy. I stuffed it into the back of my pants, and dug in my pocket for my flashlight. “Even if all that’s left is demon shit?”

  “Gift wrap it and give it to my Aunt Louise. She’s a religious fanatic. She’ll have people praying over it in no time.”

  Stretching out on my stomach, I shone the flashlight inside the cave. Nothing happened, so I slid forward and stuck my head beneath the board to look around. As my flashlight beam illuminated the walls, my excitement grew. “My God, this is amazing. This whole cave is covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics, Roberto.”

  “Any sign of demons?”

  “No.”

  “Then save the wallpaper for later. Look for weapons.”

  I slid under the board, thankful for the weight I’d lost, and rose to my feet inside the cave. The main hieroglyphic panel was gigantic, covering the entire northern wall from floor to ceiling. The magnificent colors were still brilliant. A woman I thought might be Cleopatra was carrying a platter of food and a cup of wine to the kneeling figure of a man. One of the souls of the dead? Ammut sat on her hippopotamus hindquarters a short distance away with her crocodile jaws gaping to show sharp teeth. All around the figures were images of war, of huge ships with people inside, and countless rows of soldiers standing with lances in their hands.

  “Dear God,” I whispered in awe, “this is stunning. And really atypical for Egyptian hieroglyphics. At least, I think so. I’m no expert—”

  “Weapons?” Roberto interrupted.

  My heart in my throat, I answered, “No weapons. Yet.”

  “Keep moving, Hal. We only have another fifteen or twenty minutes before Moriarity gets worried.”

  Panning my flashlight around, I didn’t see anything threatening, no snakes, no mice, not even an insect scrambling across the floor. Which, when I thought about it, was curious. This was a perfect place for snakes and mice, not to mention spiders and scorpions. Even more interesting, there was a slight breeze in here.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I was walking toward the rear of the cave with my flashlight beam flipping around. The hieroglyphics seemed to go on forever. The colors were so vibrant they looked like they’d been painted yesterday. I’d been studying color symbolism, so I knew the brilliant red in the paintings symbolized the protective power of the blood of Isis, whereas Osiris had green skin, and . . .

  I stopped.

  About fifty paces into the cave, my flashlight beam blazed from a pyramid of gold, silver, and bronze. Astonished, I couldn’t take my eyes from it. Thousands of lances, spears, swords, daggers and other weapons had been arranged into a pyramid in the middle of the floor. A ring of ancient oil lamps, cold and dark, encircled the pyramid.

  “Unbelievable,” I whispered. “Samael must have spent his whole life collecting Roman weapons.”

  As I walked closer, I thought I heard Roberto calling me, but the voice was so faint, I dismissed it. If he were really calling me, he’d be shouting, and the breeze moving inside this cave led me to believe there was a vent hole somewhere, maybe a crack in the cliff that allowed air to pass through the cave. The whispering was probably the wind meandering along the rock walls.

  Reaching the ring of lamps, I halted and let my gaze drift upward. Jewels glittered everywhere. The moment was almost bizarre. The stack of weapons stood twice my height, and everything had been beautifully, even lovingly, organized. The square frame of the pyramid was formed by lances that had been arranged according to length, the longest at the bottom, the shortest toward the top of the pyramid. The peak was composed of daggers. There was even a pattern to the placement of the jewels. All the rubies seemed to be on the north side, the emeralds on the south. My flashlight didn’t do it justice. I could only imagine what this structure looked like when the ring of oil lamps glowed and sent random flickers dancing through the skeletal depths of the pyramid. It must literally blaze to life.

  Awe expanded my chest. This was clearly a shrine, a monument to the deaths of a thousand heroes. How many more wonders like this existed in the maze of caves that honeycombed this desert ridge?

  As I listened, I understood the whispers. The breeze played the lances like a musician. It was symphonic and ethereal, but soft. Just a caress of melody against my ears.

  Slowly, I curved around the ring of lamps, and shone my flashlight into the depths of the cave. The hieroglyphics continued for as far as I could see. Beyond the halo of light, tongues of darkness licked at the walls, as though marking the boundary where this world stopped and the dark underworld of Osiris began.

  My flashlight beam blazed on a golden chair—a throne? It stood on a raised platform. I was momentarily stunned. The chair’s armrests were sculpted lion heads and the feet were lion paws
. The chair back was painted with an image of a woman seated on a throne, maybe Cleopatra, and a man kneeling before her with his head resting in her lap. The purple, red, and white colors of their clothing were as brilliant today as they must have been thousands of years ago when first painted.

  And lying in the seat of the chair was a single dagger . . .

  As though being drawn by a hand tugging on my shirt, I walked closer. The dagger, also made of pure gold, glittered wildly in my beam. I picked it up. I’ve seen this before . . .

  As my throat constricted with emotion, I was once again standing on the hilltop overlooking the Gulf of Ambracia filled with hundreds of ships, my arms around the mother of my children, fearing the death of everything I loved.

  Tears blurred my eyes. I thought about the men who’d died fighting after I ran away and the thousands of bodies that had washed up on shore. For weeks after the battle, distraught soldiers had remained to search for friends and loved ones. All across the vista, the scrubby Greek lowlands flashed with weapons dropped by men who simply could not go on.

  My head was pounding. I closed my eyes and sobbed.

  What was the matter with me? I felt foolish weeping over the deaths of people I had never known in a battle that had been lost more than two thousand years ago, but I couldn’t help it. The tragedy lived inside me as though it had been passed to me in my very genes.

  When I finally caught my breath and opened my eyes, I heard footsteps.

  Light as a cat’s.

  “Hello?”

  Something old and powerful stood in the cave before me. Though I could not see it, I felt it there, watching me.

  My heart in my throat, I stuffed the dagger in my shirt pocket and pulled the pistol from the back of my pants. While I aimed it at nothing, I retreated one step at a time. My flashlight beam whipped around the cave, grazing the colorful hieroglyphics and flashing across the ceiling. I saw nothing. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but surely if I’d been in here for longer than twenty minutes, Roberto would have come looking for me.

  When I’d finally edged around the magnificent pyramid of weapons, I did the only thing I could. I pivoted and charged back for the boarded-up entrance, where I hit the ground on my belly and slithered through the hole into the sunlight.

  Roberto jumped when I emerged. “What took you so long? I was starting to panic out here! Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  “Sorry.” I got to my feet, and shoved the pistol into his hand so I could dust off my pants. “I found the weapons, thousands of them.”

  “You did? Why didn’t you bring a few with you? The old man would—”

  “They form some kind of shrine, Roberto. I’m not touching that thing.”

  When I turned back to stare at the boarded-up entry, I could sense it standing just on the other side, its ear pressed against the wood, listening to our voices.

  My throat suddenly went dry. Falling to my knees, I scooped dirt back over my exit hole, and waited. A moment later, I felt the presence fade, as though it had turned around and started walking away into the dark tomb. In my mind’s eye, I could see it standing beside the pyramid, the circle of oil lamps alight, and casting flickering reflections through the ancient weapons. “It” was strong and commanding. But not alive. Not human.

  A well-developed imagination Moriarity had called it. My mom would have diagnosed this as another dissociative episode from her unhinged son.

  But I couldn’t help wondering why it hadn’t followed me out beneath the boards and freed itself?

  Unless, of course, it was already free.

  Roberto gasped. “What’s that thing in your pocket?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  You can’t tell anyone about this, Roberto.” I pulled it from my pocket and handed it to him. “I’m pretty sure this is what Cleo sent me here to find. This is the sacred dagger, called a bagsu, that belonged to her in 30 BC.”

  While he smoothed his fingers over the gold, he said, “It’s so small. The blade is barely three inches long.”

  “Long enough to stab yourself in the heart, I guess.”

  “Definitely. What makes you think it belonged to Cleo in 30 BC?”

  I knelt, unstrapped the duct tape where I’d kept the medallion, and retaped it around the dagger, making sure the blade was covered. As I pulled my sock up over it, I said, “Samael told me the dagger was waiting for me, and this was lying there all by itself. This has got to be it.”

  “Okay, whatever. Tell me about the shrine.”

  As we walked back along the trail, the fragrance of water and olive blossoms blew up from the oasis, and we heard what sounded like wood being chopped. I debated on whether or not to tell Roberto about the presence I’d felt in the cave, but I just couldn’t convince myself to do it. I was having enough problems. If my only friend abandoned me because he thought I’d lost my mind . . . Well, I wasn’t sure I could face life without even a single friend.

  “Fifty paces into the cave, there’s a pyramid made from ancient Roman lances, spears, swords, and daggers. About twice my height, so maybe twelve feet tall.”

  Roberto slowed down to veer around the chunk of rock in the middle of the trail. “Why would someone build a pyramid of old weapons?”

  “It had a ring of oil lamps around it. I swear it looked like a monument to fallen heroes.”

  “Or dead enemies, Hal. Which means it isn’t a shrine, just a victory monument. It’s like saying, ‘My enemies can bite me.’”

  I considered that possibility. It had felt sacred to me, but ancient things always did. Cleo had once told me I was clairvoyant and could hear the voices of the dead. But I think I’m just a historian. Historians spend most of their lives mourning the deaths of people who’ve been moldering in the ground for centuries. It’s a curious kind of penance for having been born too late to know them when they were alive.

  I said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  As we cleared the boulder, we saw Moriarity down in the olive trees sharpening a length of wood with his knife.

  Roberto stuffed the pistol into the back of his pants and pulled his T-shirt over it to hide it. “Looks like Dr. Who is about finished with the spear he promised to make Samael. Are you going to tell him about the weapons pyramid?”

  “Do you think I shouldn’t?”

  “Depends. Do you want to get to the site so we can start helping Cleo, or stay here for two months while Moriarity dismantles the thing and studies every nick and rust spot in the swords?”

  “He has a field crew waiting for him, Roberto, I don’t think he’d . . .” I stopped talking because Roberto was giving me that look that said, do you really want to take that chance?

  “Okay. Maybe you’re right.”

  Moriarity didn’t see us yet. He stood up with the weapon in his hand, and seemed to be testing its weight and balance. In the distance behind him, the wind had whipped up a minor sandstorm.

  It was just after seven AM, and my blue shirt and jeans already stuck wetly to my body. The temperature had to be in the high eighties. I was not looking forward to hiking across the desert to get back to the Jeep. Relief filled me when we walked into the shade of the palms to wait for Moriarity. This was such a beautiful place. The wind-blown shadows of the trees wavered over the water bubbling from the spring.

  “Thirsty?” I asked as I knelt down and dipped up a handful of cool water. The pond tasted slightly salty, as though composed of the tears of thousands of caravan pilgrims that had stopped here over the centuries. I was sure crossing this brutal desert had never been easy.

  A soft voice came from Samael’s cave. Probably the old man talking to himself. Tilting my head, I listened, but didn’t hear it again and rose to my feet.

  “What’s it taste like?” Roberto asked.

  “A little salty, but good.”

 
Roberto crouched and started dipping up water with both hands, drinking.

  “I have the feeling we’d better drink a few gallons before we start for the Jeep. It might be a real scorcher today.”

  Moriarity moved around the edge of the pond, using the newly made spear as a walking stick, and a shocked expression lit his bearded face when he saw us. He wore his fedora, a long-sleeved white shirt, and tan chinos. The black rims of his glasses perfectly framed his bottomless black eyes.

  From the corner of his mouth, Roberto said, “He looks surprised to see us. Why?”

  “Don’t know.”

  When he got close enough, Moriarity called, “Find the weapons?”

  I shook my head. “No. Any chance they could be in some of the other caves? This whole ridge is honeycombed with them.”

  Moriarity stopped in front of us and pushed his fedora back on his head. Examining me with one suspicious eye, he said, “You didn’t actually go inside the boarded-up cave, did you?”

  “Sure, I did.”

  “And you found nothing?”

  “No, why?” Heat flushed my face when it occurred to me that perhaps he knew what was in there.

  Moriarity’s dark gaze slid to Roberto, and he stared at him unblinking. “Did you go into the cave with Hal?”

  Roberto shook his head. “No. I stayed outside. I figured that way I could run for help if Hal screamed that he was being eaten by a demon.”

  Moriarity nodded. “That sounds exactly like something you’d do, Robert.”

  “Yeah, so. No weapons.”

  As though the wood had grown slick beneath his palm, Moriarity took a new hold on the spear. “Samael will be happy to see you alive. He was certain you’d be killed by the demon the instant you entered its prison.”

  “But he asked Hal to do it anyway? That is really cold, bro. Why didn’t you say no?”

  “You survived, right?”

  Smiling, Moriarity hiked past us with the spear propped over his left shoulder and headed for Samael’s cave.