Crown of Serpents

by Michael Karpovage

  “That’s when Rae escaped,” Stanton added. “But listen Mr. Tununda, I knew you were out there meddling in Nero’s affairs because your name kept popping up. I knew you had to be related somehow to Big Bear.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Rae.

  Stanton stood up. “After I demanded, the elders finally told me who you were but Lizzie wanted me to keep on researching where the cave entrance was on the Depot. She said my information would have been relayed back to you in that regard, but everything moved so fast.”

  “Yeah, they ambushed us at Lizzie’s house last night,” added Jake.

  “I heard what happened,” replied Stanton. “I know what Lizzie did.” Her eyes darted to Rae then back at Jake.

  “I tried to stall,” pleaded Stanton. “Honest. I thought the state police would sweep in and arrest Nero. But when I was doing my research in Ovid, he text-messaged me the deciphered code to the cave. He threatened my life if I didn’t produce again.” Her voice wavered and cracked. “And I knew he wouldn’t tolerate failure. Just look at what happened to The Mouth. I am truly sorry I caused of all this. I am. I bit off more than I thought I could handle.” She bowed her head.

  “I’ve got something to show you and Jake,” said Rae. She reached inside her pocket. “I think this little charm protected me so far. I want you to have it.” She gave the broach to Stanton, who all but cried when she saw it. “I’ve got this back and it’s all I need now.” Rae raised her Glock firearm.

  “Nero has the other broach, the one from Luke Swetland,” Stanton stated. “He’s wearing it around his neck.”

  “I doubt it’s going to protect him,” replied Jake, turning back toward the cave tunnel. “Not when we find him. Let’s move out!”

  37

  Chamber of the Crown of Serpents.

  NERO AND ROUSSEAU hit a dead end. The long, twisting passageway they had been following for several fast-paced minutes had just stopped at a pile of rocks. The pile was stacked about three feet high in a shape reminiscent of a human figure. Nero glanced at his cave map to figure out where he was. Seconds later, he picked up the top rock on the pile. It was a skull-shaped boulder balancing on a long, flat rock used as the figure’s arms. He noticed something behind the sculpture. He smiled greedily and kicked over the rest of the rocks.

  Behind the pile was a stone slab leaning on-end against the wall. Sure enough, a tiny white deer and snake symbol was painted on the slab’s surface. Nero easily moved the stone to reveal a jagged, tube-like passageway dimly lit in a silvery-blue light. His heart raced.

  He crouched low and directed his flashlight ahead. Wasting no time, he entered first on hands and knees. “After you get in here, turn around and reposition the slab the way we found it,” he whispered back to Rousseau. “Then set the last grenade against it with the pin ready to drop as soon as the slab is touched. Booby-trap it.”

  “My pleasure,” Rousseau smiled.

  A few minutes later Nero crawled out from the snake-like cave fissure and collapsed in exhaustion on the ground. His flashlight rolled away a couple of feet ahead of him. Its white beam illuminated a smooth, gray shale floor shrouded in an iridescent fog. By the time Rousseau caught up to him, Nero had managed to recuperate and catch his breath. He stood up and retrieved his flashlight, spit some flem from his dry aching throat, and peered ahead in the bluish chamber.

  It was astounding.

  They had entered into a beehive-shaped grotto about forty feet in diameter. Hovering just above the ground, a shimmering white haze permeated the lower reaches of the chamber. Painted around every inch of the smooth limestone walls were white deer and snake symbols that danced eerily in the light. They reached as high as the eye could see into a topless, chimney-like fissure of black. The flickering room seemed to have a hallucinogenic effect. It was as if the chamber was possessed with some form of life.

  Nero pointed his flashlight toward the center of the room. Tongues of silver, blue, and white flames burned about three-feet high. They approached the flames like mosquitoes attracted to blood. Trudging slowly through flowing waves of chest high fog, they found that the source of the fire was contained in a boulder-lined pit bubbling full of a clear liquid. Nero cocked his head, realizing the flames radiated no extreme heat. Coolness rose from the water, its depths aglow in deep blue and silver shadows. Instead of smoke, milky white mist generated from the flames. Nero’s flashlight suddenly pulsed. It grew brighter then dimmed. He shook it. It pulsed again then died. He switched it on and off to no effect. Setting the flashlight down, he and Rousseau happened to glance up.

  Jutting straight up from the middle of the flames stood a long twisted wooden pole. At its zenith sat a large buck skull with blackened eye sockets. Long bright white antlers, branched in multiple points, extended from each side of the white skull. Nero stared at the buck skull, its hollowed eyes now seeming to blink alive. Or was it an illusion? And then the pole seemed to slither like a snake. He backed away, breaking his gaze, shaking his head from side to side. But he bumped into stone. The fog dissipated and then he knew immediately the grotto was actually a funerary chamber.

  Positioned around the flaming pit, like spokes around a wheel hub, were three mummified corpses displayed on waist high stone slab tables. Raised several feet off the rocky flat floor, the ancient corpses lay flat on thick shale altars as if they were floating on clouds. Their upper torsos were wrapped in white deer fur shawls. The heads of the corpses were covered in wooden false-face masks carved and painted in an array of bright colors and hideously laughing expressions. Long, fragile white hair framed the bent-nosed masks. Inspecting each, Nero noticed two of the deceased false-faces had male features, while one seemed female in its characteristics. The corpse’s highly preserved clothing, under their deer coats, revealed jewelry, wampum necklaces, and other accessories further denoting their genders. The bony fingers of two males, wrapped tightly with shrink-wrap-like maroon skin, held turtle rattles and eagle feathers. The female clutched a single corn-husk doll in one hand and a painted clay head the size of a baseball in the other. Rousseau reached out and touched the little head.

  “Don’t touch a thing,” warned Nero. “There are other forces at play here. Spirits are here. I can sense them.” He took a close look at the jewels around the corpses’ necks, just under their masks. Silver broaches gleamed at their throats. Sure enough, the corpses wore the same wampum-bordered, hand-hammered silver jewel that he had around his neck, complete with a duplicate buck and snake emblem.

  “Who are they?” asked Rousseau, his body already chilled to the bone from a growing sense of fear.

  “I’m pretty sure they are the Founders,” answered Nero in a deep garbled voice.

  “Of the Confederacy?”

  “Yes. The Crown of Serpents is close. It is calling me.”

  “This place is freakin’ me out,” muttered Rousseau, his head on a swivel. He waved his silenced pistol. “The deer are moving all over the walls. And these masks seem real. It’s like this whole place is coming alive or something.”

  A muffled blast echoed from far up the entrance tunnel in. A man bellowed in agony.

  Rousseau and Nero looked at each other smiling.

  “Make sure they’re dead,” ordered Nero. “I’ll search for the crown.”

  Snake tunnel.

  Jake’s old battle wound on his arm itched like a bad disease as he snaked through the twisting, dimly lit, smoke-filled cave tunnel. After setting off the grenade he had detected at the stone slab entrance, he screamed feigning injury. He then handed off his Halligan bar to Stanton so it wouldn’t scrape in the tunnel and took the point position to confront whoever lay ahead. He was hoping a curious rat would come back to the scene of the explosion to check on its handy work. And then he’d dispose of the menace once and for all.

  He gave Stanton and Rae instructions to remain behind, shut their helmet lights off, and to make no sounds whatsoever. With his rifle slung close to his chest, he breathed slowly,
focusing on any sounds or movements up ahead.

  Five long minutes later he heard a slight scrape just around a bend. A shadow cast on the low ceiling made the slightest hint of movement. Jake froze in the prone position, rifle butt tight to his shoulder, vision glued down his scope. Someone was definitely there. One person. He could even hear labored breathing. He waited for his soon-to-be victim to make the first move.

  As the seconds passed, Jake wondered if the person just around the bend had another grenade. If one was tossed in his direction, he was simply dead meat. No matter about it. Should he proceed forward, make the first move instead? He became distracted. He needed to remain calm, think clearly, hold a bead on that corner. He shook the negative thoughts and peered ahead in the blue glow, trigger finger twitching.

  Another scrape.

  A shadow grew.

  Let the rat come.

  A forehead appeared slowly from around the corner, filling the cross hairs in Jake’s riflescope. Then eyebrows and blinking eyes with blue tattoos under each.

  Clown Face. Time to go to hell.

  Trigger. Rifle blast. Slight kickback.

  In Jake’s scope Rousseau’s head snapped back and dropped sideways on the ground. A black bullet hole appeared directly between his wide-open, frozen eyes.

  “Rat poison,” Jake whispered. “Works every time.”

  Chamber of the Crown of Serpents.

  Soon after, Jake’s female counterparts caught up to him in the tunnel and he helped the pair weave their way passed Rousseau’s lifeless body. Jake had already searched it, finding a knife and Kantiio’s silenced pistol. He took both then led the way into a hazy blue, dome-like chamber. Jake and Rae entered first, keeping their helmet and flashlight beams extinguished. Working in tandem with weapons at the ready, they hit the perimeter in a classic room sweep.

  Seconds later they met at the far side. Jake confirmed, “Clear!”

  “Ann!” shouted Rae. “Come in. Go to the middle of the room.”

  Jake and Rae also converged toward the center. They watched Stanton approach on the far side, mouth agape in wonderment. Jake ignored the three corpses on the stone tables. Instead, he walked through a calm misty fog to pinpoint the luminous blue light that seemed to keep the funerary chamber aglow. It was originating from a circular, rock-edged hole or pit centered between the corpse tables. He slowly panned his rifle up a knotty wood pole leaning out of the hole. A large, ten-point antlered buck skull sat a top the pole looking as if it would fall off at any moment.

  Jake then peered deep inside the pit, his eyes following the twisted effigy pole down another eight feet to where it disappeared into a shimmering pool of bubbling liquid. On the surface flickered low silvery blue flames, their height no more than a oven burner gas flame set on low.

  “Some sort of a natural gas well,” he said out loud. Inspecting the pit closer he noticed a series of jutting rocks and crevices along the sides. The rough stairs led down into an open wider area under a shale lip. He detected a slight draft of air rising out of its depths. Strange, he thought, it felt cool against his face — no heat being generated.

  “Probably the source of the Lake Guns,” commented Stanton. She set Jake’s stainless steel Halligan bar against one of the stone corpse tables. She then closely inspected the female corpse lying on the slab.

  “These paintings are unbelievable,” remarked Rae. She stood mesmerized by the shadow dancing of deer and snake symbols plastered all over the walls.

  Jake ignored her. He looked up, his head cocked to one side, a frown upon his face. He was fixated at the ominous buck skull on the gnarly wooden shaft. Suddenly, the pole moved. It twisted. Or did it? Jake glanced back down into the pit. The flaming water rose slightly, causing the pole to shift.

  “Mr. Tununda?” prompted Stanton, now hovering over one of the male corpses. “I’m going to hazard a guess, but I think these individuals are the three original founders of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Two males and a female.”

  “Deganawida, Hiawatha, and Jecumseh,” stated Jake, stealing a glance back at her.

  She nodded. “It was said by the Faithkeepers,” explained Stanton, as Rae stood listening at her side. “That the three great ones wanted to rest together when they passed into the spirit world. That they wanted to provide the first line of defense from anyone possessing Atotarho’s crown ever again.”

  “That means the crown is around here somewhere,” offered Rae.

  Jake agreed, watching the grave marker pole. It slowly righted itself as the churning, burning water rose another foot. Light pulsated from deep within the well’s bowels.

  “Or maybe it was here and Nero already found it and took another way out,” added Stanton.

  White swirls of fog crept out of the pit. Jake took a step back. “Shit. Did we miss an exit?” He looked around the room and then tried to switch his rail-mounted flashlight back on. It didn’t work. He cursed and tried again to no avail. Giving up, he raised and panned his M4 out toward the cave walls.

  “But there’s no other way out of here,” said Rae. She raised her Glock toward the perimeter too. “We already searched.”

  “Or is there?” refuted Jake. “Let’s do a secondary search again near the walls. A little slower this time. Miss Stanton, take this.” He pulled from his pocket the Browning pistol confiscated from Rousseau back at Lizzie’s house. He handed it to her. “The safety is off. Make your shots count.”

  Stanton took the weapon without saying a word.

  “Split up,” ordered Jake. He stepped away from the corpse circle. “And turn your helmet lights back on.”

  “Mine doesn’t work,” said Rae. She walked out toward the chamber wall, her Glock leading the way. “I already tried it.”

  “Mine either,” shouted Stanton, nervously pressing the on-off switch on her helmet. Her weapon was also raised, although within a shaky hand.

  “Mine’s malfunctioned too,” said Jake. “And it ain’t no coincidence.”

  “Not sure we need lights anyway seeing as how it’s getting brighter in here,” observed Rae from clear across the room. She continued to grope along, searching for signs of another concealed passageway.

  “And the fog is getting thicker too,” shouted Stanton. She searched an opposite wall.

  Jake shouted back from his side of the cave. “The water in that pit has been rising too.”

  Stanton glanced back to the pit. Silver flames reached higher, their tips dancing with cyan blue tongues. The skull pole had righted itself completely and now stood vertical. Waves of milky blue mist spilled out of the hole causing the three corpses to look as if they were floating on air. And then something peculiar caught her eye.

  “Oh my God! Look!”

  The Crown of Serpents.

  Rae and Jake spun around. And froze. Was it a hallucination?

  Rising out of the flames and fog slithered a cluster of silver serpents. Flickering tongues darted from their open mouths. Their reddened eyes flashed like rubies. They hissed like boiling water.

  Stanton blinked from across the cave. Her eyes must be deceiving her, she thought. Her head felt light. Cool air drifted upon her face. She blinked and looked again.

  A muted Jake shook his head. Through the flames he saw Rae across the room. A look of horror filled her face as she stared wide-eyed, back against the wall.

  The snakes had now wrapped themselves around the pole and were climbing higher. A human head started to take shape below the intertwining serpents. Flames rose higher in whites, blues, and purplish hues. Long, wet, gray hair intermixed with the hissing snakes. A shadowed face with silver glowing eyes emerged. Naked broad shoulders rose with wiry arms folded across a heaving hairless chest glimmering with a silver and wampum broach on a necklace. Dark wet pants clung to strong legs. A flash of light revealed the full figure.

  Alex Nero.

  One with the Crown.

  Jake raised his assault rifle and centered his mark on Nero’s chest. Stanton gripp
ed her pistol and took aim. Rae was already in position, her legs spread apart with one hand grasping her Glock, the other cradling in support.

  Nero floated higher. He seemed unreal. The Crown of Serpents was now at the same height as the buck skull. The snakes took a hold of the skull and shattered it in a smattering of bones. All that was left were two, multi-pointed antlers now clearly meshed as part the crown.

  Nero stepped out of the overflowing well and onto the smooth shale floor. He looked physically bigger, stronger, and much healthier. He stretched his arms out in a God-like pose and slowly turned in a circle, announcing himself to his small captive audience.

  “I AM ATOTARHO!” he announced in a clear, strong voice. His raspy coarse tone was completely absent. Suddenly, three flashes of white light shot from the pit. “Kneel down to me my servants or meet instant death!”

  The three remained still, unsure how to handle what was happening.

  Nero took it as defiance. “NOW!” he bellowed.

  Stanton flinched with fear. She pocketed her weapon, kneeled, and raised her arms in surrender. But Jake and Rae refused to give in. From opposite sides of the room they acted simultaneously and depressed the triggers of their respective weapons.

  Clicks followed.

  They tried again. Their weapons refused to fire. Jake checked his chamber. A round was there. He aimed at Nero’s head and pulled the trigger again. Misfire. Malfunction. Rae’s Glock acted the same.

  Nero’s deep laughter echoed throughout the chamber. “Your modern weapons are useless against my power,” he shouted. Wasting no time in dealing with the insubordination, he first lashed out at Jake, his strongest threat. Closing his silver laced eyes, he summoned his crown’s newfound energy. He extended both arms and pointed all of his fingers toward his foe, then opened his eyes.

  An invisible force tore through the fog. The jolt struck Jake like a concussive electrical shock. It knocked him backward, helmet flying off his head. He screamed in horrified torment, clutching the sides of his head while backpeddling and slamming himself into the cave wall. A frenzy of searing pain shook his body.