by Andrew Linke
“Do these hieroglyphs give any indication of why these two are set side by side?”
Diana slipped her camera back into the side pocket of her backpack and stepped forward to scrutinize the engravings. Her lips moved quietly as her eyes darted down the rows of symbols.
Oliver waited patiently, glancing around occasionally to verify that they were still alone. The sun, fiery red with the dust of the desert, was visible through the doorway. It rested just above the edge of the canyon. Oliver estimated that they had about twenty more minutes before the sun dipped below the ridge and the entire canyon fell into shadow. That should be enough time for them to explore one of the hallways and still make it back to the car before nightfall. They both carried flashlights, but the desert night could grow cold and as a rule, Oliver preferred to explore unknown places during the day. Most folktales and myths were just stories made up by superstitious people who didn’t understand the world around them, but Oliver’s short career as a relic hunter had taught him to maintain a healthy respect for legends about nighttime terrors.
“Most of this is fairly typical stuff for a household altar.” Diana said. “From here to here,” she gestured from the top right of the engravings to a point about half way down the center, “the glyphs call upon each of the gods and ask them to guard the house and its occupants.” Diana stabbed her finger at a place in the middle of the engraving and continued, “But here things get interesting. The glyphs describe the boundaries of the household and give specific instructions for all who might invade the home to have their heads removed from their bodies and souls fed to Setesh’s minions. Then these last two lines seem to have been intended as a description of those who may command the guardians of the house, as well as listing of the estate’s most treasured property, but as you can see, the stone is cracked mid-way down the last line.”
Oliver stepped closer and noticed that Diana was right. Not only was the stone cracked, but it looked as if whole chunks of the stone had been chipped away.
“It almost looks like someone took a chisel to those glyphs.” He commented.
“It’s hard to tell after more than three thousand years, but the damage certainly is highly localized. It reminds me of the erasures carried out by Horemheb and his successors when they decided to reform the Egyptian religion and remove all mention of the sun god Aten from monuments.”
Oliver took Diana’s hand and pulled her towards the dark passage outside which the skeleton lay. “It’s going to get dark soon. Let’s take a look down this hall then get back to the car for the night. Stay close to me.”
Diana squeezed his hand and followed. She didn’t show any consternation as they edged around the body and paused, standing over the withered legs, long enough for Oliver to double-check the doorway. After a moment he turned and flashed Diana a grin, then stepped into the hall.
Nothing happened.
Diana giggled nervously. Oliver clipped his gun to his belt and took another step down the dark hall.
They walked down the hall to the first doorway, which was set into the right side of the hallway. They looked in through this door and saw a large room with faded paintings of battle scenes splashed across the walls. It was dimly illuminated by a red light streaming in through small windows set high in the southern wall. The walls were lined with wooden furniture, the largest of which was a large bed, complete with linen coverings, located on the eastern wall between two relief carvings of women holding baskets of bread and flowers.
“This site is amazingly well preserved.” Diana commented, her voice filled with awe. She pointed at the furniture. “From the construction, I’d say that is probably the original furniture, but that should be impossible. Even if no insects got to it, it should have dry rotted and collapsed over the millennia, but nothing in here looks older than a few centuries.”
Oliver didn’t say anything, but he nodded and thought carefully about what Diana had said. He’d seen sites this well-preserved over the years, especially when a magic artifact was preserved within the site, but rarely had once been so accessible to visitors. It was as if this place had been completely forgotten for thousands of years, visited briefly by the ill-fated archaeological expedition twenty years before, and remained untouched since.
That made him nervous. Even remote temples and graves were often booby trapped to keep out invaders, but he had yet to see anything like that here.
They turned from the ornately decorated chamber and stepped across the hall to a doorway set in the left wall. This opened into an expansive room with four statues of proud-faced Egyptians placed around a central area with an inlayed mosaic floor. A large chair of finely carved alabaster, its arm rests carved in the shape of snarling dogs, stood on a raised dais between the statues near the eastern wall. Shining his light around the edges of the room Oliver could see a doorway directly opposite the one in which they stood and another behind the stone chair.
“This was probably the main hall.” Diana pondered. She shone her light onto the faces of the statues, pausing to examine each. “I don’t recognize any of these as Pharaohs, so my guess is that these represent the owner of this estate and his family. They would have been placed here to watch over guests as they waited for the master of the house to make his grand entrance, probably from the door behind the throne.”
Oliver nodded, recognizing the layout from innumerable castles and mead halls he had explored or studied. The basic configuration of any such room didn’t vary much from culture to culture. No matter who owned an estate like this, they always had the urge to build a room in which they could sit higher than those who came to them with business offers, petitions for aid, or grievances against their neighbors.
Diana stepped back from the door and continued down the hall with Oliver at her side. They could now see the end of the hall, where it turned to the right and presumably continued for some unknown distance. A dozen or so feet beyond the entrance to the main hall, another doorway was set into the right wall of the corridor. Diana stepped towards it, but froze as Oliver grabbed her left bicep and yanked her back against him.
She spun to face him, confusion and anger playing across her face in the light of their flashlights, but Oliver held a finger to his mouth and shushed her question before it even came out. He listened intently for the sound that had set his hairs on end.
The hall was completely silent for a dozen heartbeats. Diana opened her mouth to ask Oliver what he was about when the sound came again. It was a low scuffling and creaking, like a bundle of dry sticks rubbing against each other as they were dragged across the stone floor.
Oliver pushed Diana back down the hallway in the direction of the front hall and drew his gun. He checked that there was a round in the chamber, then raised the flashlight and gun in a two handed grip pointed down the hall. The light revealed nothing but the finely cut stone of the walls and a thin layer of sand strewn smoothly across the floor. He began backing down the hall, pushing Diana behind him.
The sound came again, louder this time and clearly emanating from around the corner at the end of the hall. Oliver pushed a shoulder into Diana’s chest, urging her to move more quickly.
Oliver and Diana were just passing the entrance to the room with the bed when the scuffling, scraping sound came again. This time it was accompanied by the appearance of something at the end of the hall. The beam of Oliver’s flashlight played over and past it for an instant, then he snapped the light back onto the thing.
It was a skeleton, standing upright with a bronze short sword griped in one bony hand, reflecting the beam of Oliver’s flashlight back at them from its wickedly sharp edge. The empty sockets of the skeleton’s skull glowed with a pale blue light that seemed to trace wisps of glowing smoke through the darkness as it turned to face them. The scraping and clattering sound came again as the skeleton turned slowly and placed its bony foot upon the stone floor of the hall.
“Get to the car. Now!” Oliver growled.
He steadied his aim
and pulled the trigger. The gunshot was deafeningly loud in the narrow stone corridor. The skeleton jerked back as the mass of the 9mm hollow point round slammed into its ribcage with shattering force, sending out a burst of fragmented bone to dance in the flashlight beam. Blue smoke surged out from the shards of bone and the ribcage shuddered as if ready to collapse forward, then steadied and held firm. Then the skeleton raised its sword and opened its jaws and charged.
To her credit, Diana immediately turned and ran for the exit. Oliver fired one more shot at the advancing skeleton and took off after her, the shot whizzing past the creature’s empty jaw and caroming off the stones behind it. As Oliver turned he saw Diana lurch into an awkward tumble as she tripped over the body of the beheaded man. She righted herself, spouting profanities and slapping fragments of bone and flakes of dry skin from her clothes, and ran for the door to the outside.
Oliver spun back towards the skeleton and dropped into a controlled fall, landing on his backpack and sliding through the scattered remnants of the headless man as he fired three more shots towards the advancing skeleton. Two missed it, whizzing through the empty spaces where its flesh should have been, but the third struck the monster in the collar bone and knocked it off balance. The skeleton spun wildly, lost its footing, and slammed into the wall of the corridor with a mighty clatter of bone and metal.
Oliver rolled to his feet and ran, following Diana down the wide steps of the house and across the courtyard. They ignored the winding path through the pools and raised gardens, electing to make a straight dash across the stones and drifts of sand to the yawning opening they had entered through. Oliver didn’t dare look back until they had hurtled through the gap in the wall.
Once they had passed the wall Oliver spun to face the courtyard, praying that the skeleton was not right behind him, preparing to slice his head off. The skeleton was still behind them, clattering and scraping across the stone and sand of the courtyard in the fading light of day. Its left arm dangled at an strange angle from the shattered collar bone, but it still clenched the age worn sword in the bones of its right fist. The creature moved quickly, but did not leap across the brick lined waterways and through the dry pools as Oliver and Diana had. Instead it followed a slower path, crossing the dry stream only on the ancient stone bridges.
Oliver glanced back to see that Diana had slowed in her retreat and was also watching the skeleton’s progress across the courtyard, her mouth hanging open in complete shock. He darted up to her and gave Diana a push in the direction of the Range Rover. “Go! Get the car running!” he shouted.
She closed her jaw with a snap and turned, running again.
Oliver continued to move towards the car also, but at a slower pace, stepping slowly backwards across the rocky terrain and always keeping one eye on the skeleton.
The skeleton advanced past the gap in the wall and disappeared from view. Oliver continued to move back, not trusting that the creature wouldn’t realize its mistake and come hurtling out towards him through the breach in the wall. It didn’t. Glancing back and forth along the wall as he retreated, Oliver saw the skeleton appear in the opening where the gates had once stood. It saw him and roared again, dashing forward for a dozen feet before coming to a sudden stop in the midst of the gateway, as if the gate had still been standing and the skeleton had run up against it. The fiend continued to glare menacingly at Oliver and make unsubtle flourishes and jabs with its sword, but it came no closer. Oliver watched it for a moment or two until he was certain that the skeleton was not going to pass the invisible barrier where the estate gates had once stood, then he turned and loped up to the already running car.
“Please tell me we weren’t just chased out of an ancient Egyptian mansion by a skeleton with a sword.” Diana said as Oliver climbed into the passenger seat.
“Can’t do that.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” She muttered.
She reached for the gearshift, but Oliver got his hand on it first and said, “Wait. Just look at the thing, it’s not going past the wall.”
Diana slapped Oliver’s hand away from the gearshift and glared at him, but he met her gaze levelly and nodded out the windshield at the gateway of the estate. Diana sighed and looked out her window to see that Oliver was correct. The skeleton’s bleached bones seemed to glow a soft red in the fading sunset, with occasional sparks of something like blue fire darting out from its skull and between the joints as it prowled back and forth in the gap, never crossing the place where the gates had once stood.
“The hieroglyphs above the altar,” she whispered. “They described the border of the estate as all that stood within the walls. Do you think that those words were... what, some sort of instruction for magical guardians?”
Oliver nodded. “Probably. I told you, Diana, there are places and things in this world that can only be described as magic. We’ve just escaped from one of them.”
“So what are we going to do now?”
Oliver looked to his gun, which he was still gripping tightly in his right hand. “Let me try something.”
Before Diana could stop him, Oliver threw open the car door and jumped out. He strode across the sand towards the gatehouse, ignoring Diana’s shouted threats of what she would do to his body if he didn’t come back to her immediately. As he approached the empty gateway the skeleton stopped pacing back and forth across the opening and turned to face him. It raised its heavy bronze sword and snapped its jaws together with a terrible clacking sound. Air whistled through its teeth, propelled by invisible lungs and shaped by a tongue that no longer existed, and roared out of its mouth as unintelligible words in a dead language. Oliver stopped less than ten feet away, separated from the fiend by nothing but the rusted shards of metal that had once banded the
“Let’s see if this stops you.” Oliver muttered. He raised the gun and aimed it directly between the glowing blue holes of the skeleton’s skull. He pulled the trigger twice.
The first shot shattered the skull, sending fragments of bone skittering across the sand and stone of the courtyard. The second the bullet ripped through an expanding cloud of blue smoke, scattering it backwards in a glowing spiral that quickly faded to nothingness. A high-pitched screech broke the cooling night air for just a second, then the whole body of the skeleton collapsed into a pile of dusty bones.
Oliver turned and walked back to the car where Diana was glaring furiously at him through the windshield.
“Why did you go out there?” Diana shouted as Oliver slipped back into the passenger seat.
Oliver opened his mouth to reply but found himself unable to articulate as Diana launched herself across the center console, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pressed her lips against his.
Chapter Eleven
Oliver was paralyzed with surprise for a moment, but soon enough he gave in to the kiss and allowed himself to be lost in the experience of it. It had been a long time since he had kissed a woman and Diana was absolutely the type of woman he was attracted to. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the warmth of her lips, dry from the trek through the canyon yet pleasingly soft. When Diana finally pulled back, Oliver reached down to pull the seat lever. He leaned back in the soft cushion and scooted sideways to make room for Diana to lay beside him on the seat. She slid lithely over the center console and pressed herself against him, wrapping one arm tightly around his neck as she pressed her face into his chest. Oliver wrapped both arms around Diana and pulled her closer, enjoying the soft press of her body against his own. She began to shake gently against his chest and spent the next ten minutes alternating between pounding her fists ineffectually against Oliver’s back and kissing him on the neck, softly sobbing the while.
Oliver did his best to ignore the soft pressure of her body, knowing that this was nothing more than a momentary outburst. He focused instead on reviewing his concerns of the previous few days, letting each of them melt away and be replaced by a warm thrill at having found the site of Sephor’s estate. Wo
rking together, they had managed to get a look at the scroll and interpret its contents to uncover this ancient estate. They had shaken off Senator Wheeler’s grip on the expedition, and apparently rid themselves of Rais Karim. Most importantly, Oliver no longer felt any guilt about bringing Diana along on this excursion. Her sudden need to be held by another living human was a fairly predictable reaction to encountering an honest to god undeniable sign of magical power, especially one that took the form of a murderous undead skeleton. Oliver was honestly impressed that Diana had not frozen when the skeleton charged at them in the hall. Present tears aside, she had a strong spirit and Oliver was confident that Diana would soon recover and continue to be a valuable asset on this quest.
Eventually, Diana reached a hand up between them and wiped away the tears from her cheeks. She looked into Oliver’s eyes for a moment then turned away, blinking back more tears. “Some strong, independent, modern woman I am right now.” She quipped, wiping away more tears and pressing her face against Oliver’s shirt to dry her cheeks.
“There’s nothing wrong with having a good cry. You just survived a literal encounter with death.”
“You’re not crying. Hell, I was on the brink of collapse and you went back out and shot that thing right in the face.”
Oliver smiled and pushed a strand of tear-sodden hair away from Diana’s right eye. “Trust me, Diana, this is nothing to be ashamed about. The first time I encountered a magical guardian, I didn’t have time to even think about it for three days as Amber and I fought our way out of the jungle. When I finally escaped from the jungle and made it back to civilization, I spent a week waking up screaming with night terrors.”
“Really?”
“Complete truth. Only reason I’m not freaking out now is that I’ve faced dozens of things like that skeleton in the last few years.”