Cries from the Lost Island

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  As we followed five steps behind, Roberto lifted both hands and made strange symbols in the air, clearly casting a spell on the good doctor. When he’d finished, he whispered to me, “Curse.”

  “Great,” I said with my brows lifted.

  Moriarity entered the cave ahead of us, and shouted, “What the . . . Put that down!”

  Roberto and I broke into a run. When we slid to a stop inside the cave, we found Samael cowering in the guns and ammo cave with a revolver in his old, trembling hands, aimed at Moriarity’s belly.

  Roberto whispered, “That revolver is loaded, Hal. Don’t push him.”

  What would have ever given Roberto the idea that I might push someone holding a gun on me, or rather, on Moriarity? Of course, given that Samael was blind, if he fired there was no telling who the bullet might hit.

  Moriarity dropped the spear and edged forward with his hands up. “Samael, it’s just us. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Do you understand? It’s me, Hal, and Robert. That’s all.”

  “It c-came in here,” Samael stuttered, “while you were gone. I was napping, but I smelled it. Look what it did?” He thrust a gnarled finger at the place where Roberto and I had stowed our backpacks and rolled space blankets.

  When I turned, the sight left me speechless. Our belongings were scattered everywhere, and I was heartily glad I hadn’t brought any underwear, because Roberto’s camo jockey shorts were laying out for everyone to see. As well as the large box of strawberry-flavored condoms he’d brought.

  “Well, it’s gone now, so you can put down the gun.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, my friend. It’s gone.”

  Slowly, the old man lowered the revolver and sagged against the boxes of ammunition behind him. “I couldn’t stop it. It’s so big and powerful. Monstrous.”

  “It’s all right. None of us expected you to battle a demon over a few pairs of jockey shorts.” Turning to Roberto he said, “Jungle camo?”

  “Yeah, need a pair?”

  “What was it looking for?” Moriarity walked over to kick through the contents of our packs. After five or six seconds, he stopped and reached down to pick up a mangled chunk of metal. “Hal?”

  My heart lurched. The locked box where I’d kept the medallion was almost unrecognizable. It was a twisted hunk of junk. All I could think of was that Moriarity must have taken it outside and smashed it with a rock while Samael was napping.

  Moriarity held it up to show the empty interior. “Tell me you have the medallion?”

  Don’t . . . don’t let . . . My aunt and uncle can’t get their hands on it.

  I heard her dying voice so clearly, she might have been in the room with me.

  “It was in that box.”

  “You’re lying!” The professor lifted the mangled metal box as though he planned to bludgeon me with it, and strode across the room with an enraged expression.

  Seeing Roberto’s fingers go tight around the gun tucked into the back of his pants, I quietly said, “Don’t.”

  Moriarity stopped a pace in front of me. For several seconds, he looked confused, as though he didn’t know what to do now. Finally, he hurled the box into the cave wall, sank to the floor, and lowered his head into his hands.

  “Dear God. There’s no reason to go to Pelusium now. How am I going to tell her I’ve lost—”

  “Her?”

  Moriarity stopped as though realizing what he’d said, but he did not look up. Moving his hands to cover his face, he went still and quiet.

  I looked at Samael. The pistol still dangled limply from his right hand. Despite our presences, he had not put it down. He was clearly terrified. His blind eyes moved constantly, as though searching the cave with his faint vision.

  If I made the wrong decision, it could cost me everything.

  Turning to Moriarity, I said, “Who is the woman you’re afraid to tell that you lost the medallion?”

  Moriarity used his fingers to massage his forehead. As though deciding what to tell me, it took several moments before he answered, “My wife. Sophia arrived at the site a week ago. She’s already searching for the old excavation unit where the medallion and bagsu were found. But the Sem priest’s burial is meaningless without them.”

  “What Sem priest burial?” Samael asked.

  Spreading my feet as though bracing for a fight, I said, “I have the bagsu, Dr. Moriarity.”

  Samael made a small sound of dismay.

  The professor lifted his head. A strange glow entered his eyes, as though he’d known it all along. He rose to his feet and loomed over me. “Where’s the bagsu? Show it to me.”

  “Let’s pack up and head for Pelusium before it gets too hot. I’ll show it to you later.”

  “Where’s the medallion?”

  “I have no idea. That’s the truth.”

  I walked wide around Moriarity and went over to start picking up my belongings and stuffing them in the right pockets of my backpack. A few seconds later, Roberto joined me.

  The first thing he reached for were his condoms. As he jammed them in his pack, he glanced at Moriarity, and softly said, “You should have let me shoot him. Now we’re going to have to sleep with one eye open.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Jeep trip to the site was silent, brooding. We stopped once for a bathroom break and to buy lamb kebabs for dinner, then we piled back into the vehicle and took off in a cloud of dust.

  Staring out the window, I watched the sunny dunes pass until they changed to a constant stream of villages and green fields, and hours later turned into reeded marshes soft with starlight. The Nile Delta was stunningly flat and crowded, but birdsong filled the warm night air, and it was cooler here near the seacoast. I couldn’t shake the premonition that I’d made the wrong choice telling Moriarity I had the dagger. The sense of foreboding had settled into my blood like the wet snowflakes that fell in Colorado in April.

  I kept second-guessing myself. It must have been Moriarity who destroyed the medallion’s metal box, then tore through our packs looking for it. Now he knew I carried the dagger with me at all times.

  On the other hand what if Samael had told the truth? A monstrous demon had entered the cave while he was alone and thrashed through our belongings searching for the medallion . . . or the dagger? Memories of turquoise skin, red hair, and an Egyptian Army uniform flashed behind my eyes. Had it followed me to Egypt? Was it the thing that looked and sounded like Cleo?

  Though I kept thinking about that possibility, I just didn’t believe it. The person I kept hearing and seeing was Cleo. It was her. Or rather, her soul. There was no doubt in my mind. It was Cleo, and she needed me.

  And, yes, I know that sounds like the talk of a madman in the grips of DID. Believe me, the possibility that I am not sane is never far from my mind.

  To the north, the dark ocean spread for as far as I could see, but westward, the lights of Port Said shone, and in the distance, Alexandria’s glow lit the sky. I kept seeing planes descending toward an airport in the east, but I had no idea which one. Probably Tel Aviv in Israel. Maybe Jerusalem.

  Roberto shifted in the seat beside me and sand trickled down his pants to patter on his hiking boots. We were all covered with it. Every time my teeth came together, sand grated. In front of me, Moriarity drove with his fedora canted at an angle on his head, and Samael slept. I’d given Samael the pair of sandals I’d brought with me and, holding tight to Moriarity’s arm, while using his makeshift spear as a walking stick, he’d made it across the desert in much better shape than I had in my hiking boots. As soon as we’d stowed our packs in the rear of the Jeep, however, Samael had fallen asleep as though completely exhausted.

  The dirt road swerved around the marshes, and the scents of water and damp earth filled the night air.

  The most spectacular part of the trip was driving
over the long suspension bridge that crossed the Suez Canal. About a half hour later, Roberto suddenly sat up in his seat.

  “What’s that?” He extended his arm in front of my face to point at something.

  Awe swelled my heart. Starlight gleamed whitely on the standing marble columns that ringed the stunning ruins of a massive D-shaped amphitheater. “My God,” I said, “We’re here.”

  “This is Pelusium?”

  “It must be.”

  A short distance away, I saw at least one hundred tents and twenty or thirty ramadas. Tables had been set up beneath the ramadas and the tops were heaped with boxes of what looked like bagged and tagged artifacts. Lanterns glowed inside many of the tents.

  “This excavation is huge, Roberto,” I softly said. “I had no idea there would be so many people here.”

  Roberto leaned close to reply, “Dr. Who is serious, bro. He wants that grave.”

  Moriarity stopped the Jeep on the far western side of the field camp, and called over his shoulder. “Grab your packs, boys. Those tents on the west are reserved for us. Yours is the small one.”

  Roberto rolled his eyes, like, of course it is.

  When I stepped out of the Jeep, and my foot first touched the soil of Pelusium, a light-headed sensation possessed me. In my mind, there were no ruins, no automobiles in the parking area, no one speaking English. The city stood before me exactly as it had in 48 BC, when Cleopatra’s younger brother Ptolemy XIII became sole ruler of Egypt. Thirteen at the time, Ptolemy had watched Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus wade ashore, then ordered his beheading. Cleopatra had tried to raise a rebellion against her brother right here.

  Right here.

  I bowed my head to stare at the ground. I could be standing in the footsteps of Cleopatra, or Ptolemy, or Marcus Antonius, even Julius Caesar himself. Those towering historical figures had influenced all of Western civilization. The person I was today was because of who they had been more than two thousand years ago. Reverence filled me. Closing my eyes, I could feel them all around me. Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were portals to the afterlife, planes upon which the gods and the dead spoke to the living. Deep inside me, I knew if I just listened hard enough, they would tell me what to do.

  Roberto’s boots came up beside me. “You ought to try being here in this world. It’s way more interesting than whatever’s happening in your head.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were thinking about sex.”

  “Surprisingly, I wasn’t. I was remembering that, in the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC, the oncoming Persian Army carried cats as living shields against the Egyptians.”

  “Cats?” Roberto sounded mystified. “I’ll bet they got the holy shit scratched out of them.”

  “Maybe, but cats were sacred to Egyptians. The Persians knew their foes would be hesitant to spear a cat.”

  “Did the Persians win?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Roberto took a deep breath of the marsh-scented air and let it out in a rush. “It’s been a long, scary-as-hell day, Hal. Let’s go stuff, and I do mean stuff, our packs in that tiny tent. I’ll take first watch.”

  “No. Let me do it. I won’t be able to sleep for a while anyway. I’m too excited.”

  “Affirmative.”

  We walked to opposite sides of the Jeep and reached into the rear to pull out our packs. As we shrugged into the shoulder straps, we watched Moriarity helping Samael slide out of the passenger door. It was a slow process.

  “Hold onto my arm, my friend,” Moriarity instructed.

  “Where’s my walking stick?”

  “Right here.”

  Moriarity supported the old man while he gingerly edged from his seat, then he placed the stick in Samael’s hand. “I’m going to take you to your tent, and I’ll return for our things.”

  “All right,” Samael said in a frail voice.

  When he drew even with me, Samael stopped and looked up with those eerie demon-touched eyes shining like pearls. “You feel her coming, don’t you? The Weret-Kekau. She’s almost here.”

  My gaze riveted on the amulet he wore on a leather cord around his neck. I’d never seen it before. As though he could see my gaze, Samael walked closer. Reaching down, he lovingly cradled the amulet in his gnarled fingers to show it to me. It was a stone carving of the demon Ammut, the handmaiden of The Judgment. Her crocodile head was discernible even in the faint light.

  “A prayer for justice,” he explained in that kindly old voice. “There are many such charms found here at the site. Tomorrow, I will find one for you to wear. It will protect you against destruction. Evil against evil. You see?”

  The air was redolent with a bitter tang, like copper on the tongue. The same scent that had pervaded the boarded-up cave. And I could feel something moving in the darkness not more than a few paces away.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For finding me a charm tomorrow.”

  Roberto walked around the Jeep and said, “Can I have one, too? This is kind of a creepy place.”

  Samael tilted his head and peered blindly at Roberto for several seconds. “They only protect the living.”

  “Oooh. I forgot I was dead.”

  After a moment, Samael slipped his arm through Moriarity’s, and they walked away toward the tents.

  When they were far enough away, Roberto said, “What was that mumbo jumbo about something coming?”

  “The Weret-Kekau means The Great Magic. It was one of the many names for the goddess Isis. Cleopatra was supposedly the reincarnation of Isis.”

  “So, what does that mean? Cleopatra is coming?”

  A vague prickling taunted the back of my neck. The feeling I’d had that something was out there in the darkness evaporated, but the air still carried the coppery bitterness. “I don’t know, Roberto. I’m pretty sure the old guy is insane.”

  Roberto shrugged his pack into a more comfortable position. “Pretty sure? Bro, come on.”

  “Let’s go check out our palatial tent. That’s got to be a whopping five square feet of space.” Roberto hiked off for the tent with his pack swaying back and forth.

  My feet sank deeply into the sand of the ancient Nile Delta as I trotted to catch up.

  The square tent was actually six by six feet, which meant we had a whopping thirty-six square feet. It was going to be close quarters, but I didn’t mind.

  After we’d stashed our packs on either side of the tent near the entry flap, we pulled out our space blankets and arranged them. Roberto immediately stretched out and went to sleep.

  To allow the evening breeze to flow through, I tied the tent flap back, then crouched inside the doorway to keep watch. The crescent moon had just risen, flooding the site with a silver glow. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of square holes and massive back dirt piles cast shadows across the site. It seemed impossible that the crew had only been excavating for a week, but I didn’t know much about archaeological field techniques. Maybe a crew of two hundred could move that much dirt in seven days?

  At around midnight, I stood up and yawned. The lanterns had all been shut off. The camp slept for the most part. Snores and coughs and quiet voices carried.

  Really tired, I’d start to doze off and then jerk awake. I needed to get my blood flowing to stay alert. I decided I’d walk to the closest excavation unit. It was less than thirty paces away, which meant I could still keep an eye on our tent.

  The night was so perfect I felt like I had stepped into one of those historical photographs of Egypt that fill the Internet. The ruins of Pelusium were cast in gray tones, the monumental amphitheater like a gigantic half-open mouth; its standing columns reminded me of broken teeth. The dust of ancient civilizations blew through the silvered light. But beneath all that, beneath the ruins and marshes and tents, I could see the ancient city rising from the flood plain, embra
ced by two meandering arms of the Nile. I knew this place as surely as if I myself had walked here two thousand years ago. Right over there to my left, Caesar’s cavalry horses stood, tack jangling as they stamped their feet to dispel flies. The helmets of centurions glinted as they walked the line, checking on the guards who stood watch between the dark forms of horses. The ancient voices that filled the darkness spoke mostly Greek and Latin. I could understand some of what they were saying, discussing the treachery of Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius, talking about how hungry their families were back in Roma. More than anything, I heard the downright hatred in their voices. These were the soldiers who ravaged my dreams. The people I knew in my heart were going to kill me and everything I loved.

  I trudged forward to look down into the excavation unit. Small, it covered only about ten by twelve feet. Darkness prevented me from seeing anything clearly, though moonlight gleamed from potsherds embedded in the western wall.

  A dark form loomed to my right.

  I spun around with my heart in my throat just as the man unslung his rifle and ran toward me. A click sounded as the safety on his weapon was shifted into firing position, but then he abruptly stopped.

  “Ah! You are one of the young men from Colorado, yes?” the soldier called.

  “Yes, sir.” My voice sounded a little terrified, because I was. “Is it okay if I’m out here?”

  The soldier slung his rifle over his shoulder and strode closer. He was about my height, with short black hair, wearing a camo uniform I’d seen a thousand times in my repeating nightmares. Egyptian Army. How strange that it hadn’t occurred to me that the military would be guarding the excavation. Of course, it was. Looting was at an all-time high in Egypt. All across Africa and the Middle East, archaeologists were being killed for trying to protect antiquities. Dead archaeologists and destroyed sites were bad publicity. Images of the ravaged city of Palmyra in Syria flitted behind my eyes.

  The man’s teeth glinted with moonlight as he came to stand beside me. “Which are you?” he asked in heavily accented English.

  “Hal Stevens, sir.”