Rakitaki: A Jonas Quartermain Adventure

by Lee Alexander

  Glancing to either side, he saw high-rise skyscrapers, all glass and steel fronts. They looked immeasurably more affluent than the rental agency. Something at the back of his mind tickled. The hair at the nape of his neck stood out, brushing his collar. He felt strange, looking at the ugly building. Horns honked behind him and he pulled into one of the three spots with signs for the business.

  He sat in the car for a long moment before he got out and walked in to the lobby. A box sat on the otherwise empty counter, labeled 'Key Return'. Jonas looked around, hoping to speak with someone. He waited a few minutes, then knocked on the counter and shouted toward the back.

  “Hello?”

  No response. He tried several more times. Ten minutes later, Jonas gave up and tossed the keys in the box. He walked out into the sun, still feeling phantom pains on the back of his hands. He was thankful cars didn't use the sidewalks, but they were still crowded. People shoulder checked him constantly, seemingly unaware of him. They would look around bewildered, then go back to their conversations.

  Jonas arrived at the hotel, exhausted after his day. His head felt fuzzy. He fished in his pockets for his hotel key, only to find it missing. He panicked and patted down his pockets, growing upset when his search ended fruitlessly. Then he wondered if he had accidentally thrown it with the rental key, or left it behind at the club.

  “Wait, I never took my key out of my pocket. Maybe the dancer took it? No, she can’t have, I threw her through the window, and she didn’t have anywhere to hide it,” he muttered to himself. It seemed like a dream. Six hours had passed since the events, but it felt like much longer. He looked back at the traffic-clogged city streets, imagining walking back to the rental agency, then back again to the hotel. He shook his head and walked into the lobby.

  The man behind the desk smiled at Jonas and greeted him.

  “How can I help you sir?” He asked in a clipped, professional sounding English.

  Jonas placed both hands on the counter, as much to steady himself as to make a statement to the man. “I lost my room key.”

  The receptionist nodded with a fake smile. “I'm sorry to hear that sir. If you show me some ID, I can get a new one for you.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Jonas sighed. He patted his pockets, then felt a fresh wave of panic. Adrenaline flooded his body as he realized he did not have his wallet. Just then, one of the other people at the desk looked over.

  “Oh, we have your wallet sir,” the second man said. He opened the bifold and took out the ID to doublecheck, showed it to the first man, then replaced the card and handed it over.

  “Of course, sir. I have you in room two-hundred-thirty-one. Please wait one moment while I get the spare key.”

  The man disappeared into a back room, returning thirty seconds later with another large brass key. Jonas was confused why the desk had even had his wallet, then decided he was too tired to deal with the issue. He thanked the pair behind the desk and took the key, then shuffled to the stairs nearby. He trudged up the first set, then found the strength to mount the second. He searched for his room with fatigue-glazed eyes. Finally, he found the door and opened it. He started to undress before it had even latched shut. His fatigue was so deep from the events of the night, he didn’t even remember falling into the bed.

  23

  “Let's go Quartermain!”

  Calhoun's voice thundered through the door startling Jonas awake. He checked the alarm clock, then scrambled to get dressed. Ninety seconds later, he opened the door to an irritated Calhoun.

  The professor was impatiently tapping his foot, ready to start the day. “I swear, Quartermain, if you weren't my best student, I would leave you behind. Let's go.”

  Calhoun speed-walked off, Jonas scrambling to keep up as he shoved his last shoe on. They made it down to the lobby and out into the street where the van sat. Calhoun went around and climbed into the driver's seat.

  Jonas looked at Calhoun, confused why he was driving. “Where's uh... what was his name? Hatter? No, Hatem. That was it. Where's Hatem?”

  “Who?” Calhoun sounded confused in addition to his usual irritable. “Just get in already, we're waiting on you.”

  Jonas started to get into the rear of the van when Simon reached out and pushed him back onto the concrete. “No room, and I have a headache. Get up front, nerd.”

  Deeply confused, Jonas opened the door and sat in the passenger seat. He was certain he had always ridden in the rear on the floor.

  “Finally,” Calhoun practically growled. “Wipe your nose, Quartermain.”

  “What,” Jonas said as he reached up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  Calhoun glanced over, then back ahead as he started the van. “You have a bloody nose.”

  Jonas looked at the red smear on his hand.

  “It's probably the dry air. Happens to everybody. Surprised it took this long with you,” Calhoun said. He leaned over, opened the glovebox, and pulled out a travel pack of tissues. He closed the box and handed the pack over, then put the van in gear and slammed his way into traffic.

  Jonas blew his nose and thought he was going to die. His sinuses felt like they were filled with exploding white noise. He gurgled something, deaf to his own pain. Finally, the pain and noise faded.

  “— the window,” Calhoun finished saying.

  “What?”

  “I said 'if you're going to puke, do it out the window'.”

  “I'm fine,” Jonas replied. He looked at the tissue, shocked at the bloom of red snot. He wadded it up, then searched around for somewhere to dispose of it.

  Calhoun sighed, sounding tired. “At your feet or out the window.”

  Jonas shook his head. “That's littering.”

  “Just do it. We're behind schedule because of you. If you hadn't figured out how to open the inner tomb, I would have left you behind.” Calhoun drove leaning against the door, left hand on the wheel. His right hand massaged his temple on the right side of his head.

  Jonas sighed, then dropped the bloody tissue among the debris on the floor. “Everything okay?”

  “Just a headache, like everybody.”

  Jonas looked over at Calhoun. “Why are you driving?”

  Calhoun pounded on the dashboard, squeezing his eyes shut for far longer than Jonas was comfortable with.

  “Enough with the questions, Jonas,” he hissed through his teeth.

  Jonas wasn't sure which shocked him more, the actions of his professor or that he used his first name. He leaned back, watching the road. The awkward trip lasted longer than ever. Two hours later, they dropped Sidney and Simon off first in the village. He had gathered they were still working on finding a major discovery of any kind, including the endless well that was rumored on the tablet. They had found a dried up well, but it was perfectly ordinary.

  The two looked horrendously hungover as they climbed out of the van. Jonas turned in his seat and looked at Jodie and Dylan. They also looked like they had been dragged across broken glass for five miles. He thought back to the crazy night at the club, to all the drinks they had. Clashing memories fought in his mind. He distinctly remembered having a shot and a beer before the fight with the dancers, while simultaneously remembering having two bottles in the room and dozens of beers littering the floor as they partied for hours. He stared out of the windshield, trying to determine which set of memories was real. He stuffed his nose with tissues when it started to bleed all over.

  The mood stayed sour throughout the night, helped little by the mind-numbing work of tagging and bagging each artifact. Jonas went to bed well after sunrise. He was sore and exhausted, already tired of the dig. Waking near sunset, they returned to the work. The only thing that stood out to Jonas was the sheer amount of jewelry that had been buried with the pharaoh.

  Jodie and Dylan were still quiet, but back to their usual selves. Calhoun, still the tired man that he was, had returned to his usual level of surly. He helped with cataloguing, though still made Jonas give the
orders. The Egyptian diggers had refused to return after learning the name of the Pharaoh. Jonas was thankful the Turkish men were willing to work.

  Another night passed, spent working in the tomb and cataloging on the surface. Jonas walked around with a weight in his hands, trying to find additional pressure plates. Calhoun warned him of potential traps. Jonas took a break from wandering the crypt to help with cataloging. Something about the layout seemed wrong. In his mind, there should have been a dozen more chambers.

  “What's bothering you, Quartermain?” Calhoun asked from his chair nearby. They sat under an open tent cataloging and sorting jewelry from the crypt below.

  “Huh?” Jonas was caught off guard by the question. Calhoun had been almost entirely silent for the entire day.

  “I said what is bothering you,” he repeated.

  “Nothing. Well, not nothing, but probably nothing?” Jonas trailed off as he weathered Calhoun's glare.

  “As annoying as you are, you are also the best student I've had in two decades.” He sighed, wiped his face, then waved for Jonas to continue. “Tell me what it is.”

  “Well, it's just that I thought there would be more rooms.” Jonas turned in a circle, waving at the blank walls.

  “Elaborate, Quartermain. Explain why you think that.”

  “The tunnel between the antechamber and the burial chamber is long. Almost as long as the tunnel leading into the antechamber, actually.” Jonas pointed from one tunnel to the other as he talked. “Even though most of a pyramid is solid stone, the two chambers still doesn’t account for the amount of available space, if we use the measurements taken from other pyramids. This one is what, a hundred meters or so on each side?”

  Calhoun pulled a clipboard out of a pile of paperwork nearby and flipped through. “The surveyors say it’s uh… one-hundred-four meters by one-hundred-seven.”

  “Which in Egyptian cubits is something like two-hundred-thirty by two-hundred-forty. That’s a little smaller than the Djoser step pyramid, which makes sense. That pyramid was built around 2650bc. That’s 900 years after our pyramid. That means this is now the oldest known stone superstructure.”

  Calhoun dropped the clipboard from numb fingers. “I never even considered that. This dig keeps getting bigger and bigger. This Pharaoh, what’s his name again?”

  “Atakheramen,” Jonas replied. He felt a shiver climb his spine.

  “Yes. He had better access to resources and human power than we had previously estimated. Even if this pyramid was never finished, this is decades of work.”

  “If you look at the blueprints that have been drawn up for the Djoser pyramid, there were a lot of rooms and tunnels. We’ve found two, or three rooms depending on how you classify the vault. They are directly connected. Where’s the rest of the rooms?”

  Calhoun nodded and pulled a pocket notebook out. He started making notes. He was in full Professor mode, judging and critiquing Jonas’ archaeological skills. “That is a good question. What have you done about that?”

  “The other day when we were looking for secret doors, Simon thought he heard a thin wall. Then we ended up distracted by the burial chamber. We should check on that wall.”

  “Excellent. Anything else?”

  Jonas thought for a moment. “Yes, sir. The signs of protection. They're wrong. Well, not all of them.”

  Calhoun thought back to what he had seen in the burial chamber and nodded. “What is wrong with them?”

  “The Ankh is upside down, which is, well, it’s weird. The Egyptians didn’t do that. I mean, turning a religious symbol only became popularized by the Christians. The Cross of Saint Peter, if I remember correctly. That’s thousands of years later. Then there’s the Shen ring. It was huge, surrounding the entire sarcophagus. In fact, usually you encounter the 'guardian' tombs of the slaves or guards or whatever before the pharaoh, but they weren't revealed until the sarcophagus of Atakheramen was opened.”

  An ominous feeling made Jonas' skin crawl, a shiver running down his spine immediately after he said the name. He looked around. Nothing had changed, yet the night seemed colder than before, drawn in, almost claustrophobic.

  Calhoun brought him back to their present. “Those are all excellent points. What do they tell you?”

  “This is going to sound stupid but...” Jonas hedged.

  “But?”

  He sighed, then went ahead. “They weren't there to protect him. They were placed to contain him.”

  Calhoun tapped his pen against the notebook. “Why would they do that?”

  “Well, we both know that the Egyptians believed not only in the afterlife, but in ritual magic. We don't know much of anything about this pharaoh, but the level of protection is puzzling. It looks like they wanted to keep him in, unless someone outside let him out.” Jonas paused, then held a finger up as he puzzled it out. “Except there weren’t any booby traps, deadfalls, or other obstacles to keep grave robbers out. That makes the least sense of anything. Why bury a pyramid– which is what we are assuming since the stairwell was filled with stone, right? So, why bury the pyramid, but allow easy access to the sarcophagus in one direction?"

  Calhoun nodded sagely. “What does it mean then? What can you infer?”

  “They wanted to check on the body. Which you don’t do. You put a body in a tomb and seal it. Bodies don’t do anything. Oh, that reminds me, there was another thing that was weird.”

  Calhoun looked like he was having his teeth pulled. “You’re like a dog chasing a squirrel. What’s this other thing?”

  Jonas ignored the comment. It was far more targeted than previous comments, but everybody was tired. He chalked it up to exhaustion. “One of the mummies collapsed into dust that day we opened the tomb. I remember the pile being pretty big, but now there's no pile at all.”

  “That is strange, but are you certain you saw a mummy? Could it have been spores of some kind? Did you inhale the dust?”

  Jonas shook his head, then thought back to the strange drug at the club. He shook his head. No way people were... what, snorting mummies? He knew people had used parts of mummies for medicine, but that practice had been abolished long before. Modern medicine knew that ingesting humans was terrible for your long-term health. He laughed at himself. Still, the strange behavior of those affected by the drug weighed heavily on his mind. He remembered how it made him feel, like he could do anything.

  “Those are good questions. Continue the real archeological work, and maybe you can figure it out.” Calhoun put extra emphasis on ‘real’, indicating what he thought of Jonas’ questions. “You haven't found any burial tablets yet. You remember from your lessons, the ones that describe the life and accomplishments of the Pharaoh. There are usually at least a few in a tomb. So, you need to find them. That's where your answers lie. You should do that later today.”

  Jonas nodded, feeling chastised. “Yeah, okay.”

  He focused on tagging what felt like his ten millionth piece of jewelry. He would have been bored, but thoughts of the chaotic day in Sharm El-Sheikh had him questioning himself. His memories of the night were hazy, like a dream. He could still feel the pain of his hands glowing, then being on fire in the car. He remembered throwing the dancer through the club window. The feeling of the wind scouring his skin on the highway. The image of the two burning alive in the dawn light. Their corpses turning into trees reaching into the sky.

  “Quartermain, focus,” Calhoun startled him back to his task. Jonas nodded, grabbing and tagging another piece. He had a mountain of bracelets, amulets, earrings, chokers, and other accessories sorted on a table next to him. He glanced back at Calhoun after starting the tag for the bracelet he picked up.

  “Professor, are there legends of people that burst into flames in sunlight?” He felt stupid as soon as the words left his mouth.

  Calhoun gave him the side-eye as he worked on his own pile. Instead of mocking him or saying something about focusing, he responded with a hint of interest. “That sounds like vampires. C
ommon trope in cinema. Why do you ask?”

  Jonas shook his head. “I mean specifically in Egyptian lore.”

  Calhoun stayed silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Relating to ‘vampires’ specifically, Osiris would be your god.” He held up his hands, a bangle in one of them, and made air quotes around the word ‘vampire’. “He oversaw life, death, and rebirth. Blood, corpses, and other sacrifices were offered to Osiris for his blessing. You would see his hieroglyph at ritual sites. The most common image was of a man kneeling before a throne, with the Eye of Horus above.”

  Jonas pulled the lighter out of his pocket and looked at the cast symbol. The eye stared back at him, into him, through him.

  24

  Jonas was back in the club. He glanced around, confused. He could have sworn he was just in the desert at the dig site, talking to his professor. He touched the fabric of the booth, smelled the air heavy with sweat and stale beer. He could hear the music, louder than he remembered it being. He had to shout to be heard.

  The lighting in the booth was dim, just bright enough to allow Jonas to make out the shapes of his friends. Simon laughed in the booth next to him. Dylan was saying something he couldn’t hear over the music. In the other booth, Hatem was dancing with a beer bottle in his hand. Jonas noticed the beer bottle in his own hand.

  He took a sip as Hatem called for the women again. They appeared at the glass door a minute later, dancing as they entered. The neon lasers outside of the dark glass-line room lit their veils in a dizzying pattern. The dancer in yellow approached him all over again, swaying her hips and making the discs on her waist and wrists chime.

  She moved close enough he could faintly smell sweat on her skin. She gyrated her hips against him, speaking softly in Arabic. He looked up and down her body, enjoying her performance when a detail he had missed the first time around caught him. She wore a simple necklace with a stylized Eye of Horus.

  Jonas rocked back in his seat at the sudden appearance of the symbol. He glanced around, his heart beating like a racing engine. He was back in the desert as suddenly as he had been thrust into the memory.