Sunken Pyramid

by Alex Archer

  Annja nodded her understanding and inspected the tank regulator. He handed her a small bail-out tank to strap to her belt. It was a backup, in case they were down too long or the primary tank failed. He was a professional; she understood why Edgar had relied on him. He told her on the phone last night that in addition to teaching diving in Lake Michigan, he worked occasional rescue and recovery dives for the police department.

  Bobby finished putting on his gear while she looked over a map of the lake he had brought with him. It was similar to the one Edgar had in the folder, but had been encased in sturdy vinyl. Manny wouldn’t let her hold on to anything overnight, worried that he needed it all back in place before his morning meeting with the chief. She hoped that meeting went well, and she hoped to get another look at the contents of the folder later to compare Edgar’s map to this one.

  Bobby had brought his own boat, a ten-foot flat-bottomed aluminum one in which the center seat had been removed to make it easier to stow all the diving gear—including ten air tanks. He pointed to a spot on the map.

  “We’re anchored here. This is the last place Dr. Schwartz had me dive. Found some stuff for him and got some pictures. Hard to believe he’s dead, you know. I just saw him last week. He wanted to go down with me this last trip, but the shop didn’t have a suit that would fit him, and I told him that this early in the season the water was too cold to go without one. I didn’t want the liability, an old guy like him getting sick. Lawsuits and stuff, you know. Can’t take the chance.” Bobby shuddered. “Should’ve let him come anyway, huh? If he’d caught a cold, even pneumonia, what would it have mattered? I feel bad, not letting him go down with me.”

  Bobby had brought a pouch with him, filled with pictures he’d taken for Edgar last week. He’d used an underwater digital camera and had printed up the best images. “Dr. Schwartz was going to come to my shop Monday or Tuesday to pick them up. He paid me in advance. Guess you can have them.”

  Annja glanced at them. They were shadowy, sections of mossy stone, no definition to them, and blurry—though that might have been sediment stirred up around them, not the camera’s focus. She’d give them a closer look later. She was paying Bobby by the hour to dive, not to sit here while she tried to make sense of his photographs.

  The spot he’d pointed to was roughly in the center of the largest section of lake. The map, marked with depths and asterisks to indicate a few topographical features, showed the lake to look roughly like a figure eight. The south part was labeled a protected marsh, and near it—Annja had discovered from a walk she’d taken early this morning—was a long stretch of vegetation that reached well out of the water and was the favorite haunt of the local loon population. The northwest area boasted a big sand bar where there were two fishing beaches and a series of docks for people who owned lakefront property and for one of the resorts. It was near where she had her run-in last night with the teenage knife-wielder. Manny had called her very late last night to say the sheriff’s department had come up with nothing regarding the girl, and no one else had reported seeing her.

  One more piece of the puzzle, Annja thought.

  “Here,” Bobby said, pointing to the south section. “This is the Glacial Drumlin State Trail. It runs across an old railroad bridge. A pretty walk, if you have the time. The trail is a sort of dividing line between the protected marsh and the rest of the lake. The first time I dived for Dr. Schwartz, it was near this bridge. It was too cold for him then, too.”

  “How many times?” Annja asked.

  “He hired me on four separate occasions,” Bobby said. “Nice fellow, obsessed, but nice. Two times he brought his Greek pal along.”

  “And he told you he was looking for—”

  “Stone pyramids. Not the Indian mounds that anyone and everyone in these parts know are down there. They’re stone, too. He wanted me to find actual pyramids, I guess like you’d see in Egypt.” Bobby shrugged and tested his tank. “Real friggin’ pyramids.” He shrugged again and strapped his bail-out tank to his belt. “Like I said, he was obsessed. It was his dime, and I had the time. He booked me weeks in advance. What I found for him, what’s in those pictures, should be right below us according to my GPS.”

  He eased himself over the side of the boat and held on to the edge. “So you said you’ve dived before.”

  “Many, many times.”

  “Lake diving? Or all salt water?”

  “Mostly salt water, but I’ve done a little lake diving,” Annja admitted. “I’ll be fine.”

  “In Wisconsin? Ever dive in this area before?”

  She shook her head.

  “My second dive for the doc was off the Fremont Bar. Here.” He stretched to point to a place on the map that had been circled in grease pencil. Annja noticed that there were four such circles, one marking the spot where their boat was anchored now. “The Freemont isn’t as deep, and I found what everybody else finds who dives there, piles of rocks...rocks all roughly the same size and thereby interesting. If you go to Aztalan Park, you’ll find mounds made out of rocks also the same size. But at Freemont, the lake has broken down whatever the rocks had been used to build. It’s all just rubble there as far as I’m concerned.”

  “And the other dives?”

  “The next time I went down, I found nothing. Zip. Nada. I was using some dive charts from 1936, where fishermen had said they’d seen an underwater pyramid. So, they were off the mark, the lake had changed or maybe the fishermen had been drinking. Who knows? And then I tried a spot a local kook told Dr. Schwartz to dive on.”

  “And—”

  “That was in the winter. Best time to dive the lake then. The water is the clearest you’ll find. And I found some stuff, had a good camera with me, a dive buddy, and we wrote it up for a scuba magazine. It was choice, if you know what I mean. Good rocks, man-made, if you could call them that. Made money from Dr. Schwartz for the dive and made money from the article and pictures. Not that the pics were all that terrific, but certainly better than what I got last time. You see, Annja... Mind if I call you Annja?”

  “Please.”

  “There are pyramids...well, buildings...mounds, whatever you want to call them...in the lake. Hard to find, despite all the high-tech equipment we have at our disposal. Still, we can’t wholly map the bottom of this lake.” He grinned wide like a mischievous boy. “Good that nature keeps some secrets, don’t you think?”

  Annja didn’t reply. She didn’t want the lake to keep any of its secrets. She wanted to find whatever it was that had been burning a hole in Edgar’s soul and had started to burn one in hers. She wanted to do this for her dear friend.

  “Well, let’s get on with it. You’re not paying me to jaw. Just understand that this particular trip is going to be a waste of time. But I told you that on the phone last night.”

  “What?” She couldn’t hide her irritation.

  “I tried to get you to do this Thursday, remember? Weather reports call for a clear, still day. Rained all day yesterday. Looks like more rain today. And if it starts lightning, we’re out of here. Remember when we pushed away from the dock? I said we could only see the rocks and sand about five feet out from the shore. This is a Wisconsin lake, and it’s not cooperating, all the rain. So prepare to be disappointed. But like I said, it’s your dime.” He put on his mask and waited until she was in the water. He stretched an arm into the boat and retrieved a flashlight, put the cord of it around her wrist and cinched it so it wouldn’t sink away. He took a second flashlight and did the same for himself. A motion from him, and they went down.

  Right below the surface was reasonably clear, and Annja saw a smallmouth bass swim past, his side a thick flash of silver against the gray-green water. When she’d dropped down ten feet, things became murky, as if she was swimming in silt. Particles made it look as if snow was swirling around her. Bobby gestured to get her attention and then be
gan finger spelling. He seemed pleased that she understood him. Annja knew enough sign language to make out D-i-a-t-o-m-s. Some divers relied on sign language, the formal kind like Bobby was using, stock hand signals or gestures they’d developed on their own. In layman’s terms, diatoms were algae, this just hatched and making visibility rotten.

  Annja hoped the trip wasn’t as worthless as Bobby forecasted.

  Another ten feet or so down and she flicked on the flashlight; all it did was brighten the silt-filled gloom. Bobby swam close enough and slowly finger-spelled again. S-t-a-y c-l-o-s-e. He dropped deeper and she followed, almost losing sight of him. Fish swam within inches, attracted by the beams. She saw bluegill and sunfish and a thin snakelike fish that she guessed to be a young northern pike or muskellunge. Noises came to her, but she couldn’t identify them, a hum that might have been a motor from a boat crossing the lake, the sound of the bubbles from her tank—all of it could have been ghosts, it carried so hauntingly.

  Although Annja had dived in lakes before, they’d not been anywhere near as cloudy as this one. The algae seemed even more numerous now. It was eerie and unsettling; she might as well have been on another planet. She only guessed at the time, that maybe five minutes had passed. She didn’t have a waterproof watch, and Bobby had not brought one for her. Something brushed her leg and she swung her light down and around, catching site of a tail that might have belonged to a ten-pound something. Then Bobby was gently tugging on her ankle, bringing her down to the bottom with him, gesturing with his flashlight and nudging her closer. He finger spelled S-l-o-w.

  They crept along the bottom. Annja looked up and directed her beam. The light traveled five or six feet, showing only a trail of diatoms. She finger spelled E-i-g-h-t-y?

  He cupped his hands and then drew them apart. She took it to mean they were more than eighty feet down. N-i-n-e-t-y, he spelled. Then he turned his beam to the lakebed, which looked like mud. Each step shifted and multiplied the silt. One meter, two, three, and then his light hit a large round stone, and he brought his face mask in close to hers, his eyes wide. He nodded and drew her down to her knees, bringing the light in against the stone.

  At first glance, it looked like nothing special to Annja. But as she stared, she noted a depression in the center of it. Altered by man. Annja suspected the stone had been used as a primitive mortar for grinding grain. There was another just like it nearby, though a little larger. She released her grip on the flashlight and it floated, still tethered to her wrist. Her hands free, she tried to lift the stone. She could budge it, barely, so she knew it would be too heavy to bring to the surface...at least not without a winch.

  Bobby took her hand and led her in what she suspected was north. There was evidence of vegetation on the bottom here, surprising since she was certain no light from the surface made it down. Perhaps on very sunny days, she thought, there was just enough to satisfy the plants. Farther and there was a big bed of moss. The water was clearer here, though dark as night, the moss keeping the silt down. There were more stones, all roughly two feet in diameter and looking as if they might have been worked on to be so uniform. Most of them were moss covered, but some were clean; Annja suspected this was from divers handling them. She scolded herself for trying to lift the other stone. A good archaeologist disturbed nothing without the proper tools.

  Among the symmetrical stones was an iron buoy weight with three feet of moss-spotted nylon rope hooked to it, undulating like a serpent. More searching revealed two more weights. Divers had been to this spot before and marked it with buoys, cutting the ropes when they weren’t planning to return.

  Bobby signaled for her to ascend.

  Annja shook her head, wanting to see more. Round rocks weren’t enough; they only tickled her curiosity and did nothing to help sate it.

  He signaled again and pushed off from the bottom. Reluctantly she followed. On the surface, she could tell they’d traveled only about thirty feet from the boat.

  “Stay here, all right? I’ll bring the boat over.”

  The next dive would start from this spot.

  Annja treaded water, setting her head back and looking up at the sky. It had been cloudy when they came out here, and it had gotten darker in places. It was going to rain again, and the lake would get even more silt filled.

  During the second dive nearly a half hour later, they came across one of the notorious stone mounds. A quartet of mud puppies, two-foot-long salamander-like creatures, lounged on it. As Annja brushed away some of the moss, the mud puppies fled, stirring up algae and muck and cutting visibility to nothing, even with the beams.

  Since their tanks were low on oxygen anyway, they surfaced, waited nearly an hour, then dived again. The muck had settled, and there was no sign of the mud puppies.

  There was, however, next to the base of the mound, a steering wheel from an old car; a small boat anchor, which might have been attached to a buoy at one time; and the windshield from an old Model T or Model A, which had probably motored out on the ice more than a hundred years ago and broke through. There were no skeletons to indicate that the car’s occupants had followed it to the bottom, but she did find a thoroughly rusted fender. Several large bass, which Annja knew any fisherman would give anything to catch, swam lazily above the worked stones.

  Annja followed the length of the structure, aware that Bobby hovered nearby, present but unobtrusive. She didn’t need him to keep such a close watch on her; she was probably as expert a diver as he was. But she appreciated his vigilance. She mentally marked off the distance, judging the “building” to be a hundred feet long and a dozen feet high. Perhaps it had been taller centuries past—Annja guessed the structure was roughly a thousand years old. The top of it was flat, and the stones here were worked smooth and mortared together...though there was little left of the mortar material. The years and the stones’ weight held the structure together.

  Suddenly the water cleared around her, and she could see all the details, the rounded corners on the stones to make them fit properly, and etchings on some. One stone at the very top looked to be carved into the shape of a turtle, and there were marks on the “shell” that could have been a language. Another had the shape of a frog. She cursed herself for not bringing a camera or asking Bobby to bring one. But she would come back tomorrow with the proper equipment so she could better document this.

  She didn’t touch the turtle stone, but drew her finger above it, as if tracing the marks. They weren’t at all Mayan. Despite her knowledge of many ancient languages, she couldn’t place this. But if she took a photograph and posted it to some of her contacts through the internet, she might be able to get it translated.

  Annja touched very little, carefully brushing moss away here and there or moving things that were not in any way part of the ancient building, such as a concrete-filled coffee can that had probably anchored a buoy. Disturb nothing and leave only bubbles, she thought. The place had the “feel” of something sacred, maybe a burial spot. If there were more than one of these, as the stories about Rock Lake suggested, maybe the lake bottom was an entire city of the dead.

  She could come up with an angle to make a Chasing History’s Monsters episode out of this—which would give her a better reason to stay longer and to come back after Morocco. But for some reason she didn’t want to sensationalize this. There had been enough publicity about these mounds through the years, according to Bobby.

  Let the lake keep this secret. And if these were burial mounds, let the dead rest.

  This couldn’t have been what Edgar was so intent on. There was nothing Mayan about this place. It smacked of something European or Native American. She circled it again, finding no way in, further lending to her notion that it was a burial mound.

  Bobby tapped on her shoulder and pointed up, gestured to his watch and pointed again. Annja nodded and reluctantly ascended. She could have gotten another ten minutes out of
this tank, as she had been breathing shallowly to make the oxygen last. She also had the small tank on her waist for an emergency. But there was no reason to argue with her guide.

  On the surface, she saw that the clouds had actually thinned out and the sky was brightening. She flipped up her mask. “You have underwater cameras, right?” Annja put the emphasis on the plural because it was obvious he’d taken pictures before.

  He treaded next to her, reached up, grabbed the side of his boat and pulled himself in. He took off the mask and let the water dribble out of it. “Sure. I have three that are mine, the best a Canon 350D. The shop has more, has some for sale.”

  She pulled herself over the side and took off the tank and reached for another one. “When we come out tomorrow, can you bring two? The Canon and another? I want to get some shots of—”

  “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Sorry. There is no tomorrow out here for me. I’m booked. Sunday through Wednesday, I’m booked. Like I told you on the phone, I have Thursday open. At least, I think I do. One of Dr. Schwartz’s friends wanted to book Thursday, and I have him penciled in, but he hasn’t gotten back to me.”

  Annja’s throat tightened. “Dr. Papadopolous?” Was she going to have to tell Bobby a second of his clients had died?

  “Not him. I know him, Dr. Papa-D. He said to call him that. But Papa-D didn’t want to dive. I got the feeling he was claustrophobic. A lot younger than Dr. Schwartz. I wouldn’t have had trouble taking him down with me. But he was chicken, even though he was excited about all of this. Excited like a kid, but he was scared. Maybe he was afraid of drowning. Who knows?”

  “So if not Papa, who were you going to take out here Thursday? Maybe I know the archaeologist.”

  Bobby pulled off a glove and rotated his thumb. The joint was swollen; too young for arthritis, but that was what it looked like. “A doctor—” He thought a moment. “They’re all doctors, aren’t they, those archaeologists? I’m not too good with names, Annja. That’s why I write everything down. It was...Dr. Cheepa, something like that.”