by J. R. Rain
In the distance, it sounded like heavy boxes were being pushed around. The sound of metallic objects clanking together amid a litany of curse words I hadn’t heard since my rigging days.
This is so very weird...sure as hell sounds like Dad’s rants!
I followed the tunnel toward the voice and noises, where a light much brighter than the lamps glowed ethereally, tinted gold. When I reached the tunnel’s end, it emptied into an immense room. A room filled with more gold statues, ceremonial bowls, and trinkets than I’d ever seen in one place before. Far grander than either the temple in Honduras or the gold treasures in the Maldives, it took me a moment to notice the shadowed figure slaving over an ornate gold charger nearly as large as the man.
He looked up at me, but I could only see his scruffy beard and mouth. His beard looked a lot like mine, and I chuckled.
“It’s all here, son...just like the map has shown you,” he said, slapping dust from his hands. “You know the glyphed marker above?”
“Yes.” I wanted to confirm it was really him, my dad, but didn’t know how to broach the question.
“Well, it is where you should start digging. Get started earlier than you might normally plan, Nicky. Otherwise, you won’t be able to enjoy what you see here.”
He motioned to the vast treasure around him. I noticed many items were encrusted with precious gems, and some of the jewels were larger and seemingly clearer than I recalled seeing before, anywhere. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume they were fakes.
“Why should I believe I get to enjoy all this?” I said, my keen sense for bullshit finally catching up to the rest of my mind enamored by the glistening trove surrounding us. “And how is it that you get to show this to me, Dad?”
“Ha! Very good son!” he enthused, and took a step closer to me. A wiff of the Brut aftershave he once favored drifted toward me. “No doubt you’re beginning to understand this isn’t real...not yet. But it can be. It all depends on what you do when you wake up.”
“What in the hell?”
“Don’t give me your lip, boy!” he warned. He raised a forefinger at me, but pulled it back while shaking his head. “You want to do things your way? Well, go on and do that...and kiss all of this goodbye! You can explain why you lost it all to your buddy, Mario, when it’s finally your time to join us.”
“So, you’re a...never mind. We can start digging when the sun’s up, and see what we find. Maybe in a week or two, we’ll find this place. Or, maybe not.”
So it was a dream, right? No need to reciprocate the fatherly warmth I was basking in.
“If you don’t start immediately, and work like it’s going to fucking disappear on you, then you’ll never see it!” he warned. “Worse, you and your pals will likely be tortured and end up like your mother and me. You want that, kiddo?”
“Who’s going to take anything from me?” I said brazenly, knowing full well the unscrupulous ministry might already have someone on the way. After all, three days ago Mr. Ali quipped that Egypt should lay claim to the lionshare of artifact—not the other way around. And, yeah, I lied a little and told them I would stick to Marie’s proposal of keeping only twenty percent, and the Egyptian government could keep the rest.
“Nicky...you already know they’re coming,” said the figure, or ghost or mere figment of my imagination. Or whatever the devil he was. Anyway, as he inched closer to me, I saw the blond mixed with light gray in the beard, and the strong jawline I remembered. He smiled. “The way I see it, son, you can work diligently to uncover this place in a day or two—if you start early. But they’re coming to kill you just like they killed your buddy.”
“But that was Leo Da Vinci, and he’s—”
“Dead? Oh yes, he certainly is dead.” He moved closer to me, and the aftershave’s scent became stronger. “I watched his soul ignite into one helluva torch, as it was sucked down toward the earth’s core. Yeah, he’s dead all right. And if you don’t play your cards right, my boy...you’ll soon be dead, too!”
My father stepped into the light as he said this, his tone somewhere between anger and regret. The smile had disappeared, and his mouth was contorted menacingly. But that’s not what made me scream. It was the eyes. Or lack thereof. Just empty sockets. Like a skull with skin stretched impossibly tight across the empty sockets, as if a powerful gravitational pull was sucking his skin through them.
Could it have been his punishment for being a hard man to deal with, despite being good to his wife and kid? Lord knows, he could be one stubborn and mean son of a bitch to deal with. In the end, it cost him his life, and got his wife murdered and their only child orphaned.
I woke up screaming, and didn’t calm down until Marie had wrapped her arms around me. Ishi and Akiiki stood in the doorway in the dimness, until she motioned for them to return to their tent. A bad dream. I was unable to go back to sleep, waiting for the dawn’s light to creep in to the eastern horizon.
Chapter Five
“We need to start digging the hole right here!”
It was shortly after breakfast, and all of us moved in slow motion. Two cups of Ishi’s bitter coffee weren’t enough to override the oppressive heat and lack of sleep. The sun’s rays baked the sand around us, and there would be no relief until late afternoon, when the outcropping would provide partial shade.
“Are you sure you don’t want to survey the area first?” asked Ishi, sheltering his eyes from the sun’s glare with his hands. “It may not be the right capstone, or a capstone at all. For one thing, it looks like granite, and not limestone like the other capstone. Why do you jump to a conclusion this is the right place so quickly?”
“Because it came from Daddy in a dream,” said Marie, sarcastically. I cut her a look, and she smiled impishly. Just her turn to get me back, I guess, for giving her hell about being late to breakfast again. “But where else would you want to start the excavation, Ishi?”
“No damned place is gonna please the Tawankan!” I teased, albeit a bit meanly. He asked for it. “So it isn’t limestone, and yeah...that could be problematic. But unless you brought your Catholic/Voodoo beads and sage smudge stick, I’d say you’re pretty much screwed in finding a better spot to begin digging.”
That brought smiles and giggles, though my little buddy wasn’t sharing in the fun.
“Oh, come now, my friend,” said Akiiki, patting Ishi on the shoulder. Gotta love a guy whose infectious smile can get a party back on track. “This was the location we all agreed upon last night, no? What has changed since then?”
“I just want to be sure this is the right spot,” Ishi replied, shrugging while the scowl remained. “You remember the last time you rushed into something, Boss, don’t you?”
He regarded me with a half pleading/half accusatory look. Like an irritated youngster trying to convince a parent that playing with a box of matches is a good thing.
“You mean when Marie first hired us, two weeks ago?” I said, chuckling, while wondering if we’d even make a dent in the sand today—regardless of where we dug. “It seemed to have served us pretty well, I’d say...only got us shot at half a dozen times.”
His turn to chuckle, and like an invisible parasite the frown transferred to her. As he turned to pick up his shovel, I heard Marie mumble my last words in a grumbled mock. But I had everyone’s buy-in to pick up the pace, even if it was more compliance than commitment at first. If my dad’s advisement from beyond the grave proved correct, we’d likely find the top of the entrance by afternoon, provided all of us—our princess included—busted our asses in the searing heat.
* * *
We made a helluva bigger dent than I expected.
Aside from a few water breaks, we worked straight through to the evening, skipping lunch. I did my part in limiting my cancer stick addiction to two breaks, one in the morning and the other while the non-smoking trio enjoyed a shared protein bar, just after four o’clock. Maybe we wouldn’t have dug with such zeal had we not reached the top of an enormous door
frame before noon. Whether part of the correct doorway we sought, or not, the appearance of any doorway supported Akiiki’s assertions about what could be here—including the absurd notion of a pyramid temple of non-typical design, at least by ancient Egyptian traditions.
The temple was indeed Egyptian, although discovering granite blocks instead of limestone threw me for a loop. Familiar carved scenes depicting a dog-headed goddess graced the door frame and walls on either side, which proved to be the deciding factor. The other glyphs were also Egyptian. Slightly different from most depictions associated with Sekhmet, the themes bore strong similarities to the Middle Kingdom’s murals I studied in college.
By early evening, we had successfully added our first scaffold to a hole twelve feet deep and roughly eight feet long and wide. I prayed we didn’t need the much bigger scaffolding from my dream, since it would likely take days to set up, if not weeks. However, determining if the temple was a reasonable match for the Mayan and Inca structures in Mexico and South America, could take even longer. I wasn’t sure I even cared about that, since I had no interest in excavating the entire structure. I was there for the gold, and to put to rest the ghosts from my past.
Literally.
“It is indeed a doorway, no?” said Akiiki, smiling broadly, as he reached inside the top of the door frame and knocked against the smooth surface he’d been focused on clearing for much of the past hour. “Unlike the granite surface you see, the door is limestone. Similar to all pyramids in Egypt.” He regarded us all proudly. “Maybe you expected diorite from Idahet?”
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” I said, taking a closer look at the carvings along the granite door frame, and dipping my head to get a glimpse of the doors. “Yep, it looks like limestone in there. I suppose we’ll find copper door handles a couple of meters down, eh?”
“Why, yes. Although, the ones outside the pyramid might be gone, and the ones inside might not be copper,” he advised. “If you had the means to get the finest materials, like the granite blocks we have already uncovered, and that likely originated from Aswan in the east, would you skimp on luxury without good reason?”
“Are you saying the handles are made out of gold?”
Akiiki was right. Who would go to the trouble and expense in hauling granite from that far away? Of course, the rich, red granite could have come from the hills in what is now Sudan or Libya. But having the resources without a reliable means of extracting it from the hillsides would mean less back then than it does today.
“You don’t believe the handles in such a place could be gold, Mr. Nick?”
Prepared to say it’s exactly what I believed, I suddenly remembered the gold emblems etched upon the pyramid walls from my dream. I didn’t expect things to match the dreamscape exactly, since such ornamentation this far south was virtually unheard of. But knowing the northern pyramids were once covered in gold made me hesitate in popping off with another flippant comment.
“Honestly? I don’t know what to expect,” I said. “I guess anything is possible, since we know what the wealth of Thebes and Memphis were once like, if it turns out this is the spot where the Hittite gold has been resting for thirty-two centuries.”
He nodded thoughtfully, and looked over at Ishi and Marie, both silent. Silent, and obviously perturbed that Akiiki and I could carry on our debate while the two of them perished from starvation.
“Well, I’d say we accomplished quite a bit in one day, wouldn’t you?” asked Marie, moving to the closest ladder to leave the hole. “It’s time to shut this party down and grab some grub. I’ll cook...or try to cook.”
Although Marie was good at many things, cooking wasn’t one of them, and Ishi knew it as well as I. “I’ll cook,” he said, jumping in.
Marie smiled slyly, getting her way. Which made me wonder: did she purposely botch the cooking to get out of cooking? Hmm.
And so it went as we left the dig site and returned to our camp. By the time Ishi had the cooking fire roaring, the sun had set, and the desert heat had cooled considerably. The jovial mood continued around a campfire, until we had our fill of food, liquor, and each others’ company.
Looking forward to another early start, we retired to our tents, where peace prevailed beneath a moon-lit, and star-filled sky.
Chapter Six
A dreamless night came as a welcome relief.
Refreshed the next morning, my only regret was not taking advantage of Marie’s randy mood fueled by her inebriated state. Trouble was, I was just as drunk. After stumbling in the darkness of our tent, and nearly knocking over a gas lantern, the next thing I knew the morning light peered in through the tent’s entrance.
Smooth move, Romeo, I thought.
“Well, sleepyhead, do you think you’ll be getting up any time soon?” Marie appeared before me, fully dressed and wearing her patented smirk. Through my glazed eyes, her khaki blouse and the outline of her ponytail appeared ignited by the sun’s rays.
“Huh? What time is it?”
“Well...breakfast is ready, and has been for about three minutes, by my guess,” she said, giggling. A definite sweet moment for her. “My paperweight, as you call it, says the time is seven-o-nine.”
“Why in the hell didn’t you wake me up an hour ago?”
But she was gone without an answer, leaving me to scramble for my clothes. Often, this sort of experience came complete with a nasty hangover. Not this time.
At least there was that.
“Too much fun, Mr. Nick?”
Akiiki handed me a plate of scrambled eggs and jerky and a cup of Ishi’s coffee when I joined the others. Rather than add too heaping teaspoons of sugar, as I had the prior two days, I drank it straight while wolfing down the tasteless, powdered eggs and spiced jerky.
“More than I deserve, I guess,” I said, glancing at the dig site. A breeze pushed swirling sand toward the hole, as if the desert had begun an earnest effort to heal the wound we dug out yesterday. “Why in the hell didn’t you two wake me sooner?”
“We tried!” said Ishi, indignantly. “But only she woke up...you turned over after telling me to bugger off!”
“Sorry, old pal.”
Always tough to apologize when I’m not convinced I’m in the wrong, I wasn’t willing to concede anything just yet.
“Do not worry, my friend,” Akiiki said to Ishi, moving to put the cookware away while eyeing me impishly. It was more than that, as really it was an elfin smile with a penetrating gaze, like he was trying to catch a glimpse inside my soul. “It’s probably best to follow the boss’s urgency to get started.”
The growing urge to get started on the day’s work overrode all else. It was both a familiar and odd sensation. Something was out of synch.
“Well, after everyone nourishes the shrubs and cactuses, I’d like to get started,” I said, armed with cigarette number one. I looked forward to having at least three more, to make up for my abstinence from yesterday. “Chop-chop!”
* * *
Our next problem was that there was only room for two diggers, and so we worked in shifts. Two at a time, continuously. Over and over until something beautiful happened.
We came across a sealed doorway.
Akiiki and I, who’d been working side by side, exchanged surprised looks. Two hours of digging later, and we pushed on the sealed limestone. Amazingly, beautifully, the door pushed inward, but as it did, the sand surrounding the rest of door poured into the chamber beyond the entrance.
As it did so, the scaffolding began to collapse amid shifting sand below. Clinging to the upper bars, he and I crashed into the doorway.
“Nick! Akiiki! Are you all right?” cried Marie. She and Ishi scurried after us into the hole. Getting out was going to be fun. Rule #44 in Nick Caine’s Practical Looters Handbook: “Always have an escape plan.”
“Nick—”
“We’re fine!” I told her. “I think, anyway. Akiiki...are you all right, man?”
“I think so,” he said from some
where in the darkness ahead of me. I assumed from the sound of his voice, we were either in a small room or tunnel.
“Damn, did any of us bring a flashlight, or are they all back at camp?” I asked.
“I have one,” said Ishi. “But, it’s small.”
He and Marie joined me, and when he turned on the palm-sized lamp and pointed it toward the entrance, we found Akiiki standing just inside the doorway. A tall man in stature, he appeared to have gained a few inches, until I noticed he stood atop a debris pile.
“What the hell happened?” Marie asked, reaching out to touch the door. It was covered with glyphs, some familiar but many foreign to me.
“The door gave way,” I said. “Guess it wasn’t locked.”
My attention was drawn to the colorful pictographs on the wall behind Akiiki. Several hours, or perhaps even an entire day, had been nixed from having to dig through sand in the rising heat to get to this point. We had caught a lucky break.
“But that makes no sense,” said Marie. She held onto the back of my shirt as I stepped past the door and down into the room. “Time and thousands of pounds of pressure would’ve breached the entrance eons ago. Don’t you agree?”
“Yep, that sounds about right.”
“Nick, I’m serious—something feels wrong about this!”
There she goes, being a girlie lass...
“There’s nothing wrong about a room full of gold,” I quipped.
Ishi pulled up the rear and positioned the flashlight to where we could clearly see everything around us. The room was a tunnel after all, and the shaft extended almost sixty feet. We continued along, slowly, carefully, and the next limestone door we came across had gold handles.