Cries from the Lost Island

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  Roberto climbed out of the pit and extended a hand to help pull me up. I took it gratefully. “I’m hungry, too. Let’s go eat so we can come back here and excavate more nothing.”

  “Yeah, I have to admit, archaeology isn’t nearly as interesting as I thought it would be. I got over my sandbox fetish when I was six.”

  Every time I swallowed, my teeth grated on sand. “Well, I’m sure it would disturb someone if we accidentally screwed up the find of the century.”

  “You think?”

  Our back dirt pile—all the sand we’d dug from the pit—had been steadily growing until now it was a meter tall. Jones and Bates had informed us that if we were bright we’d dump the sand on the west side of the pit so that the pile would cast a shadow over us in the afternoon. Shade, after all, was a valuable commodity out here. We veered around it and headed for lunch.

  Roberto led the way along the face of the fortress wall, which had just started to cast a narrow shadow. As we trudged through the sand, I noticed that the thick wall radiated cool air, and wondered if the eroding bricks sucked moisture up from the water table, absorbed it and, through evaporation, kept the wall cooler than the surrounding air temperature? It made me think of the old evaporation coolers people in Colorado had shoved into their windows before the advent of modern air-conditioning.

  By the time we’d grabbed plates and bottles of water from the cook tent, and stepped into the food line, all the tables were stuffed with crewmembers from across the huge site. People who couldn’t find a chair wandered off to slump down with their plates in any shade they could find, usually beside a tent. I saw Jones and Bates sitting at the far end of the table—the same table where Moriarity and Corbelle sat across from each other, wearing unpleasant expressions. Moriarity was shaking a finger in Corbelle’s face.

  Roberto, who was ahead me in line, turned to say, “Where are we going to go sit?”

  “As far away from Jones and Bates as possible.”

  As the line pushed forward, the spicy fragrance of the food filled the afternoon.

  I turned to the redhead, about twenty or twenty-one, who stood behind me. She wore a canvas hat pulled down tight against the breeze. “Excuse me, can you tell me what we’re having for lunch?”

  She had a turned-up nose and green eyes. “That’s taamiyya. It’s deep fried patties made of fava bean paste and green herbs. You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, we just arrived from Colorado where it was still snowing. It’s an adjustment. The heat, I mean.”

  She smiled, “I’m Sarah Wadsworth. From Arizona originally, though I’m at McGill University in Canada. Pelusium temps are pretty much like Phoenix, though it’s more humid here, because we’re so close to the ocean. So, I sort of came pre-adjusted.” She pointed. “Do you see the salad at the end of the table? There’s a dish right beside it filled with tahini, a sauce made from sesame paste. Try it. It’s really good. Has a cooling effect.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’m Hal Stevens. From Colorado.”

  I started to turn back around, but she said, “I’ve heard we’re having tagine for dinner. You’ll like that dish.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  “Pigeons stuffed with rice and spices, then cooked in a stew with onions and tomatoes. It’s good. Trust me.” When I started to turn around, she stopped me again, asking, “So if you’re from Colorado, you must be working with James Moriarity.” She sounded excited by that prospect.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re lucky. What’s he like? I almost went to CSU just so I could study with him.”

  The last thing I needed was for word to get around the site that I thought Moriarity was a murdering maniac and maybe even the high priest of a demonic cult in Denver, so I said, “I don’t know him very well yet. This is our first day onsite with him. He seems okay.”

  “Yeah, it’s his wife who’s the scary one.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, wow, yeah. You’ll see. Haven’t you ever met Dr. Mallawi?”

  “Sure, a few times, but we’ve never really talked.”

  “If you’re smart, you’ll try not to. She’s loves embarrassing students in front of the entire field crew. Don’t get in her sights, Hal Stevens. You’ll regret it. She’s been sick a lot, though. So maybe you won’t have to worry.”

  “Sick?”

  “Yeah, really sick. One of LaSalle’s interns joked that she was being poisoned by a graduate student who really hates her guts. But somebody else said she’s having a bad pregnancy.”

  “She’s pregnant?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Guess so.”

  A haunted sensation crept through me. How many months pregnant was she? I kept thinking about Cleo saying she didn’t want to be reborn . . . that wasn’t Cleopatra in her womb, was it?

  When we finally reached the table where the food was spread out, Roberto started filling his plate. Taking a piece of pocket bread, he loaded it with taamiyya patties, then moved on to the salad.

  I did the same while I thought about Sophia’s unborn child.

  We stepped out of the line and stood looking around for a place to sit down.

  Roberto said, “Where to?”

  “I was thinking—”

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah quietly interrupted. “Would you mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Sarah, this is Robert Dally. Roberto this is Sarah Wadsworth from Arizona.”

  “Hey, Sarah.”

  “Hi, Robert.”

  Roberto led the way, weaving around groups of people who stood talking, or sitting together on the ground, to get to our tent at the far western side of the field camp. A few curious looks were cast our way, but nothing unusual.

  In front of our tent, a narrow strip of shade about twenty centimeters wide had formed, so we slumped down in it and started eating.

  I took a big bite out of my taamiyya and concentrated on tasting the different flavors. “Umm, good.”

  Around a mouthful, Roberto said, “Falafel, but spicier. Not bad. Don’t these people believe in eating meat?”

  Sarah said, “Give it time, Robert. Egyptian food grows on you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a buffalo steak kind of guy. Birdseed isn’t exactly my cup of tea,” Roberto noted.

  “You should have tried the tahini,” I pointed to the sauce on my salad. “Sarah recommended it, and it’s great.”

  Roberto leaned over to get a closer look at the sauce. “What’s it taste like?”

  “Ground sesame seeds.”

  “When you find a sauce that tastes like hamburger, I’m in.”

  Sarah tucked a lock of shoulder-length red hair behind her ear and unscrewed her water bottle to take a drink. “Don’t you guys have hats? The afternoons out here can be brutal, and you’re already beet red, Robert. That’s exactly how I looked after two days in the sun here. Be smarter than me.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take it this afternoon. Moriarity dragged us away before dawn this morning. We didn’t have time to get anything we needed.”

  “He’s probably in a rush. We work ten-fours out here. Ten days on and four days off. Our ten-day ends tomorrow.”

  “So everybody will be leaving tomorrow night?”

  She nodded as she bit into her lunch. Around a half-chewed mouthful, she said, “Everybody except LaSalle. She never leaves the site. She spends the entire time excavating by herself until we get back.”

  Sarah was staring up at Roberto with appreciative eyes, smiling, which made Roberto squirm slightly. He wasn’t accustomed to female attention. At least not positive attention.

  “So you’re in Fort Collins, Colorado, right?” she asked, making conversation.

  “Georgetown,” Roberto said. “Up in the mountains to the west.”

  Sarah frowned as though puzzled. “How far is that f
rom Fort Collins? Do you have to drive back and forth every day?”

  “Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour,” Roberto answered. “I wouldn’t drive it every day for all the money on earth. I-25 traffic is the stuff of nightmares.”

  “But don’t you study with Dr. Moriarity at CSU?”

  “God, no, I’m at Georgetown High. I’ll be a senior next year.”

  “Ooooh.” She drew out the word as though Roberto’s status had just plummeted in her eyes. “I see. What about you, Hal?”

  “The same.” I used my sleeve to wipe tahini off my mouth.

  “Really? You guys look older. I thought you were freshman in college, maybe even sophomores, like me. I’ve never seen high school students out here. At least, not students from America. Sometimes they bus Egyptian high school students out here to take a look at the site, but not often. How did you get on Moriarity’s crew? He only brings graduate students here, and very few of those.”

  Roberto used his chin to gesture to Jones and Bates, who had finished lunch and were headed back out toward their excavation unit on the far end of the fortress wall. Jones threw his massive shoulders around like the Hulk. “Like Master Bates and the penile-ly deprived Jones?”

  Sarah squelched a smile. “Yeah, well, Mike and Jonathan are at the bottom of Moriarity’s totem pole out here. More like the professor’s slaves than graduate students. For the past two summers they’ve gotten stuck with all the crap work. If somebody has to drive into town for toilet paper, they get the job.”

  Roberto chewed and swallowed. I suspected he was mulling over that new information, probably thinking it explained a lot. I, on the other hand was contemplating the fact that they were both at CSU, both his students, and both trying hard to work their way up in his hierarchy so they stopped being saddled with all the crap work. How far, I wondered, would they go for him?

  I’m sure it was just my overactive imagination, but I couldn’t help wondering if they weren’t temple lackeys in an ancient Egyptian cult in Denver, duty-bound to carry out the orders of the high priest. Which was a crazy thought, but until I knew who or what had killed Cleo, paranoia was going to be my best friend. Better safe than sorry.

  “So, are you part of Dr. Corbelle’s crew?” I asked.

  “I am. We’ve been here for about two weeks.”

  “You like her?”

  “Oh, yeah, LaSalle is great. She worked at Tanis, you know? I mean, she’s a taskmaster. If she tells you to do something, she means now, not in two minutes. But if you watch and listen to her, you learn a lot.”

  “What are you excavating?”

  She lifted a hand and pointed to the east. “A spectacular Roman bath with polychrome mosaic floors. This is only the second bath found at Pelusium.”

  “Really? And this was a big city, right?” Roberto said. “There must have been a lot of really filthy people.”

  Sarah squinted, not quite sure if he was serious or joking. “So, are you, like, archaeologically challenged?”

  “More like completely clueless.”

  She stared at him. “Wow. Historical morons are rare in this circle. You’re more interesting than I thought.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know how you missed that earlier.”

  “When you get off work today, why don’t you come over? I’ll show you around the bath.”

  “Thanks. We’ll try to do that.”

  “Well, I should go find out what’s happening with the rest of the crew. See you two later, I hope.”

  When we were alone, I said, “Sarah was definitely giving you the eye, bro.”

  Roberto stuffed the last chunk of food into his mouth and chewed. “Yeah, well, I’m not interested in any woman who wants to spend all of her time in an old bathroom. Besides, she has to be nineteen. Why would she be interested in me”?

  “Pedophilia?”

  Roberto grinned as he dusted the crumbs off his hands and reached for his water bottle. After taking a long drink, he wiped his mouth on the arm, and his gaze drifted over the desert and the ruins, before settling on the fortress wall. The shadow on the eastern side was getting longer, looking more and more inviting. “Hal, you ever going to tell me what really happened in that cave?”

  The sudden change of topics made me blink. My cheeks went hot. “Not unless I have to.”

  “You saw something, didn’t you? The demon?”

  “No, and I didn’t actually see anything. But there was . . .” How did I describe it without sounding totally crazy? “A presence. Something old and powerful. But not evil. I think it was just curious about me.”

  “It scared you, though. When you crawled out and starting shoving dirt over the hole, I knew you thought something might crawl out after you.”

  Taking another drink of water, I swallowed slowly, deciding what I should tell him. “The pyramid of weapons really set off my imagination. It felt alive, as though each spear, sword, and dagger held the soul of a soldier just waiting for the command to rise and fight again.”

  “A command from the thing in the cave?”

  A tingle went up my spine. “You just scared the holy hell out of me. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Roberto suddenly sat up straighter. When I turned to see what he was looking at, I saw Cleo’s Aunt Sophia standing talking with Sarah Wadsworth. A tall black-haired woman with a narrow waist and long legs, she wore a long-sleeved white shirt and chinos. Dr. Mallawi kept nodding at whatever Sarah was saying, but her gaze was fixed squarely on me and Roberto.

  “Are they talking about us?”

  “Looks like it.”

  When she walked away from Sarah, Dr. Mallawi headed straight for us.

  “Here she comes,” Roberto said. “What do you think she wants?”

  “To engage us in charming conversation?”

  Dr. Mallawi tramped across the sand with her head down. She looked so much like Cleo that it was heartbreaking for me. I inhaled a deep breath and held it in my lungs for a few seconds, hoping the emptiness filling me up would go away.

  Dr. Mallawi stopped a couple of paces away, and said, “How are you two doing? I understand you’re learning to excavate?” She had just a slight accent.

  “Yeah, it’s fun. Good to see you again, Dr. Mallawi.”

  “And you, Robert. Are you having fun?”

  Roberto replied, “Oh, yeah, hot sandboxes are very interesting to me. Ever since I was three, I’ve had this thing—”

  “Hal,” she interrupted in a clipped voice. “I need to ask you for the bagsu.”

  My smile vanished in a heartbeat. “It’s in our tent. Buried in my pack.”

  “Go find it, please?”

  She pointed to the tent, as though expecting me to instantly rise and obey her orders.

  The canvas tent flaps were tied closed. Had we done that before we’d left this morning? I thought about trying to delay this, but I didn’t know how to get away with it. I’d told Moriarity I had the dagger, and he’d told Sophia. This moment has been inevitable. The question was what was I going to do after I produced the dagger? There was no way I was just handing it over to her or anyone else.

  Rising, I went to kneel in front of the door and begin untying the flaps. As soon as I threw them back, my heart leaped in my chest. “Oh, my God. Not again.”

  “What?” Roberto jumped up and ran to look inside the tent. All of our belongings had been ripped from our packs and strewn across our sleeping bags. “Someone broke into our tent and rifled through our packs!” he cried. “Who would do that?”

  I ducked into the tent and started sorting through the mess. While I did, my thoughts were churning.

  “Get out of my way!” Dr. Mallawi shoved Roberto aside, and forced her way into our tent.

  “I don’t see it anywhere!” I said. “It’s gone!”

  She started throwing our belongin
gs around. In self-defense, I grabbed my dig kit and our hats and crawled outside.

  Roberto stood casually in front of me, chewing on a hangnail. After he’d ripped it off and spat it out, he gave me a sly smile, and said a little too loudly, “Goddamn it, this is the third time someone has fingered my condoms trying to find that stupid dagger. It’s just a freaking old knife.”

  I handed him his Colorado Rockies baseball cap, which he flipped onto his head. I’d brought a roll-up canvas hat with a six-inch brim. As I unrolled it, Dr. Mallawi crawled out of the tent and stood up with her green eyes blazing. The wind buffeted her white sleeves.

  “Jim told me you were probably carrying the dagger with you at all times. I don’t know why I fell for this little charade of yours. I want it right now.” She held out her hand.

  “What charade?”

  “Give it to me!”

  I pointed a finger in her face. “You’d better search the field crews out here to find that dagger, or your little cult in Denver is going to be really upset that you didn’t put it back in the grave.”

  “What cult in Denver?”

  “I’m tired of people jerking us around! Come on, Hal,” Roberto said indignantly. “Let’s grab another bottle of water from the cook tent and go back to our sandbox.”

  He stalked away so fast I had to trot to catch up.

  When we were twenty paces away, he said, “Good thinking, but that only bought you a few hours, Hal.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t do it, Roberto.”

  “You didn’t empty our packs onto the floor?”

  “No.”

  “No shit? You were the last person in the tent this morning. I just assumed . . . A delaying tactic, you know?”

  “Yeah, it would have been a smart thing to do. Wish I’d thought of it.”

  “Well, if you didn’t do it, who did?”

  My thoughts returned, once again, to Samael. I didn’t see him anywhere in camp. I looked over my shoulder at his tent just a few paces away. The mesh front was zipped closed to keep insects out, but the flaps were tied open. I thought I saw a body stretched out on a blanket inside. Had he decided to take a nap during the heat of the day?

  Roberto followed my gaze. “You think he did it?”