by Aiden James
“Then what gives?” I asked, finding it damned near impossible to remain compassionate. “You said your father told you it had been returned here in 1735 by Lord Carleton, who laid it on top of the mound at dawn on the winter solstice that year, and watched the amulet disappear. You said Carleton claimed it was apparently pulled into the crypt through the frost-covered grass by an unseen hand, and that’s the last time anyone visited the mound in search of it. Especially after he later claimed to be haunted by ‘something from the banks of the River Avon’. The very same thing he spoke about on his deathbed.”
“If the amulet’s not here, I’m going to be seriously pissed!” added Ishi.
“It should be here,” Marie insisted, but with meager enthusiasm. She shook her head worriedly, and began sifting through the remains closest to where she stood. “But, we are wasting time debating instead of looking. I would appreciate your cooperation for the time being, and we can fight about it later.”
“How big is this thing supposed to be, again?”
Marie didn’t answer my question for nearly a minute, while she and Ishi worked feverishly to sift through the skeletal remains closest to them. Many still contained tattered garments that crumbled as they pushed them out of the way. Surely Marie was thankful for the gloves she wore, protecting her from the grime and occasional worms and dormant insects. Maybe it was the same for Ishi, since he moved quickly, sifting through two corpses and then prepared to explore the more noxious, and possibly poisonous, remains lying upon the lower shelves.
“Be careful, little buddy,” I cautioned.
His response was a mere grunt. But unlike me, it seemed he had a clear idea of what to be on the lookout for.
“The sapphire should be three inches tall and two and a half inches wide, and about an inch thick,” Marie advised, when she finally addressed my question. “The dragon holding it is solid gold, giving significant weight to the amulet. Also, the gold chain is large enough for a grown man from two thousand years ago to drape across their collarbone.”
“So, about twenty to thirty inches in length for the chain?”
“Yep. Now… how about helping us find the damned thing, Nick?”
“I’m on it, sweetheart!”
Her latest zinger was delivered like a spitball from a southpaw pitcher. I didn’t hang around for a second admonishment, and went to work on the smaller remains of a female of significant social importance. At least the jewels near the skeleton’s sternum indicated as much.
“Don’t even think about it,” warned Marie, as I picked up a ruby and diamond necklace and prepared to slip it into my pocket.
“Even though this baby might pay for our expeditions for, I don’t know… the next ten to fifteen years?”
“Did you not hear what I said a few minutes ago? You must be thinking with your other head!”
I whirled to face her, and her flashlight was pointed at my crotch.
“Very funny, darlin’.”
“It’s not intended to be funny. This shit’s very serious, Nick. The same goes for you, too, Ishi.”
I swear, Marie has eyes in the back of her head. Ishi dropped what looked like a gold brooch encrusted with emeralds and rubies onto the shelf he presently stood next to. The item came from somewhere hidden, below the shelf, likely from the putrefied contents of the very bottom, based on the nasty gunk still clinging to it.
“That royally sucks!” he lamented. “Do you know how hard this is for a pair of looters to not loot?”
“Apparently harder than I previously thought,” she replied. “If you two can behave while we’re down here, in the coming weeks I’ll take you to a place that will put the riches stored here to shame. But only if you don’t piss away the opportunity we have here. Comprende?”
I especially hated her using one of my pet words. Even so, my gut told me Marie was right. We were indeed wasting time picking through this shit.
“Well, I hope you’re right about it being here,” I said. “If it isn’t, please spare us the mumbo-jumbo bullshit about it magically hiding someplace, or that the damned thing is presently in use somewhere else. Otherwise, you’ll have two very unhappy ‘compadres’ on your hands. Comprende?”
I couldn’t resist the return barb, and there wasn’t any sugar to sweeten that sucker. It was increasingly feeling like a very bad idea, and I had become too pissed off to care. Focused only on finding anything resembling the amulet Marie had described, Ishi matched my fervent efforts to get through this exercise as quickly as possible. Regrettably, priceless relics can be destroyed by such recklessness. However, since we weren’t taking them with us anyway, the rarities that could’ve gone for untold thousands were simply in the way of what we sought.
I expected Marie to squawk about our careless bulldozing, but like us, she hurriedly sifted through corpses and filth as if looking for the iPhone she frequently misplaces. Within two hours, we had finished our initial investigation.
No sign of the Ambrosius Amulet.
“Maybe it’s hidden in the walls, between the bricks, no?” said Ishi, wiping the sweat from his brow with his cleaner forearm.
The tomb was nowhere near as cold as the outside temperature had been upon our arrival. All of us were sweating from the exertion and high humidity inside. Exerting and breathing the air’s foulness, too. We were idiots for leaving our better surgical masks in the Viano, and being too damned lazy to go get them once we picked up the pace of our sifting work.
““We just haven’t looked hard enough in this place… or the amulet’s not here,” I said, snickering. “Maybe the map is a fraud.”
“It’s not a fraud, you dumbass!” Marie reached in her coat and yanked the map out. “How can you not believe in alternative explanations that deal with the supernatural, Nick? Especially after everything we’ve dealt with? Did you not watch a pyramid lift off from an Egyptian desert and soar into the sky? And did you not see a living deity that was half human and half lioness? Or, do you suppose this is one long opiate-fed dream state you’ve been stuck in for the past six months? Hell, maybe I’m not real either!”
Yeah, you’re real all right—a real peach when you don’t get your way, which makes you a royal b—
“Don’t say it, Nick! Don’t say it, or I swear to Christ I’ll….”
“Maybe it’s just a treasure map, Boss—”
“Shhhh!”
“What in the hell was that?” whispered Marie, after I motioned for her and Ishi to remain quiet.
She pointed nervously to the hole leading out of the mound. The sunlight from earlier barely reached inside the opening, as the winter sun continued it’s westward journey across the sky. But I seriously doubted it would aid us in any way from the men owning the voices we heard. Voices speaking in the Masri dialect of Egypt.
Shit!
“That? Oh that, my dear, is the sound of underestimating our Egyptian buddies’ determination to find us!” I hissed, motioning for her and Ishi to join me in quietly moving out of reach of a potential flashlight’s beam. “Looks like we’ve got company.”
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About the Author
Aiden James is the bestselling author of Cades Cove, The Judas Chronicles, and Nick Caine Adventures (with J.R. Rain). The author has published over thirty books and resides in a small historic town in Tennessee with his wife, Fiona, where they share an old antebellum home with several ghosts.
Please visit his website at: www.aidenjamesfiction.com. Or look for him on Facebook (Aiden James, Paranormal Adventure Author) and on Twitter (@AidenJames3).
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