by Mel Odom
Suddenly a chill wind seemed to gust up from the fetid jungle, raising goose bumps on her skin.
CHAPTER NINE
“Carefully! Move it carefully!” Professor Fredericks commanded the laborers, his loud, strident voice rising out of the hole.
The men used a primitive block and tackle to lift the large stone from the earth. They’d spent the last thirty minutes digging it free of the ground. The other archeology students stood on the opposite side of the hole from the block and tackle assembly.
The stone sat on top of a strange rock formation shaped like the mouth of a jar. As Rachel captured trideo of its removal, she couldn’t help thinking they were uncovering a long forgotten crypt. A small part of her mind cringed at the expectation of some thing climbing out of it, boiling out in a horrid rush of spidery legs, like one of the creatures from her nightmares.
Stone grated as it moved and the thick rasp echoed below the earth. Whatever the stone covered, it was large. And empty.
“Easy!” Fredericks dodged the stone as it rose, swinging in the ropes tied around it. “Don’t break that cover!”
Because it’s valuable? Or because we may need it to trap whatever’s waiting inside? Rachel didn’t know which to think. The latter thought worried her.
In a few more minutes, the cover had been lifted out of the hole and rested on the ground. Fredericks had to use the short rope ladder to haul himself up from the dig.
“Rachel, come over here.” The professor walked over to the cover and began studying it. He took a brush from his pocket and gently swept away loose dirt. He used dental tools to remove stubborn dirt, revealing more and more of the symbols.
Rachel captured more images, but her mind stayed busy interpreting the symbols carved into the stone trapezoid. Tension knotted within her.
“Can you read this?” Fredericks gestured at the cover with the brush.
“Yes. This is the final resting place of—” Rachel hesitated. Names were often difficult to translate.
“Skip it.”
“Someone—he who served the Shadowman in life, and now serves him in death.”
“Shadowman again?” Puzzlement filled Fredericks’s gaunt features. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Rachel didn’t know why he would ask that. She was the one who hadn’t believed in the myths and legends that had brought them down to Aztlan. “Do you know what that refers to?”
“Unfortunately, no.” The professor touched the cover reverently. “I’ve never even heard of this ‘Shadowman’ before.”
A vision from her dreams spiraled up from Rachel’s subconscious. Even since she was a little girl, she had always dreamed of a deep jungle like this one, of being lost in a landscape that looked very much like the Guatemalan forest she stood in now, and feeling like she was being watched, like something was going to leap out at her at any moment. Those dreams had haunted her since she’d been a small child. Dealing with the terrors of foster care had paled in comparison.
But since she’d started translating the unknown language back at the university, her dreams had turned darker—much darker. The most recent one scared the drek out of her. She was running through a jungle the likes of which she had never seen before. The huge trees and weird plant and animal life didn’t look even remotely familiar. But even more terrifying was what was pursuing her. She was never able to get a glimpse of it, but she knew it was big, and wanted nothing more than to tear her to pieces. As far and fast as she ran, she could never get away from it. And then, having run to exhaustion, she turned around just in time to see whatever it was burst out of the jungle, all teeth and claws, straight at her. She always woke up, drenched in sweat, before she could see what wanted to rend her limb from limb.
Could this ‘Shadowman’ be what’s been chasing me through my dreams all these years? Now, it seemed those dreams had guided her here. But for every step forward she took, more questions came to light. “What does all of this mean? Why can I understand this language, and you can’t?”
Fredericks returned to her and held her shoulders. She felt him trembling in his excitement. “Don’t question your gift, Miss Gordon. You can read this language when no one else in the world can. That’s a cause for jubilation, not reservation.”
You’re not the one who’s had the nightmares all her life. Or the one who translated the document that led us here.
“Come on. Let’s see what else we’ve discovered.” After directing the other three students to stay on the surface in case of trouble, Fredericks grabbed an equipment pack and headed back into the hole.
After hesitating a moment, Rachel grabbed her own pack, a fresh canteen, and followed. The fetid stench of dead things filled her nostrils the moment she climbed into the hole. The rough and ragged walls held scars left by primitive tools. Light from above quickly faded, and she switched on her flashlight, adding her beam to the professor’s and those of the men in front of her. The incline was sharp enough and uneven in several spots so that she dragged her free hand along the wall for support. She managed the climb down and saw Fredericks standing beside the opening. The professor spoke calmly into his commlink, dictating notes on what he saw.
Warily, Rachel peered into the opening, half-expecting the Shadowman’s servant to slither out and grab her. Then a hand fell on her shoulder and she almost screamed.
The man wore black battle armor from head to toe, making him look like an insect, except for the lack of appendages. The helmet and mask revealed nothing of his features.
“Pardon me, Miss Gordon.” His voice was inflected, an Eastern European accent, she was fairly certain. He’d introduced himself as Lieutenant Doyle. No first name, and she was pretty sure Doyle wasn’t his name either. “Please step back and allow us to do our jobs.”
Rachel moved back as two more black-suited figures dropped into the dig. Like the first man, they carried submachine guns and sidearms. The sec team had been provided by NeoNET. The professor hadn’t been pleased to have them added to his expedition, but he hadn’t been given any choice.
The man looked at her again as he held his primary weapon at the ready. “Please use LED vision equipment inside the underground vault if we deem it safe. We don’t want to be blinded down there.”
“Sure.” Rachel knew she had to respond because the sec team and Professor Fredericks wouldn’t leave her alone until she did.
When the security team had joined the dig team in Guatemala City, Rachel had been afraid of the men and women. They weren’t like the Lone Star guards hired to protect the university. A dangerous edge clung to these people.
“Let’s do this.” Doyle held his submachine gun in one hand and peered down into the opening.
“Be careful.” Professor Fredericks’s voice boomed inside the hole. “Whatever’s down there, I don’t want it harmed and, preferably left undisturbed.”
“Understood, Professor. If something attacks us though, all bets are off.”
What could possibly attack? Rachel stared at the opening. Whatever the place was, it had been undisturbed for millennia. Nothing she knew of could live that long.
The sec man stuck a leg over the edge of the opening, then dropped through. Rachel watched, fully expecting a mass of bloody bones to get vomited back out of the hole.
When that didn’t happen to the first man, or the next two, or to Professor Fredericks, she slipped on a pair of LED-equipped goggles and clambered into the hole after them.
CHAPTER TEN
Rachel made the short drop easily, and stood within the group of sec men and Professor Fredericks. She took some solace in the bristling security and professionalism surrounding her, but the sense of being hunted that had haunted her dreams since childhood wouldn’t be stilled. She felt it now, the sense of unease it created prickling at the base of her skull.
“We got us a cave.” Doyle scoured the walls. “Big cave.”
The cavern was primarily a naturally-created space, but several areas had been hacked out of t
he walls, creating stone closets big enough for a person to stand in. Judging from the broken debris in some of them, statues had once occupied those spaces. Most looked human, but there were some that had scaled skin, fine downy features, and fur. Rachel thought maybe this place was part museum and part mausoleum.
“Not just a cave, Lieutenant Doyle.” Professor Fredericks leaned forward and pointed. “At least two. There’s a passageway ahead.”
Doyle swiveled his head to follow the line of the professor’s finger. On the far side of the large space, the cavern dipped down and continued at an angle. There, Rachel spotted the opening of a passageway, or perhaps another cavern. More writing covered the walls there. The tension ratcheted up even higher inside her.
“All right.” Doyle sounded agreeable, like this was nothing but a walk in the park. “We have a passageway. You sure you don’t have any maps of this area, Professor?”
“None.” Fredericks gazed around as he answered. He bent and picked up a forearm that ended in a clawed hand with dried webbing between the fingers. “All of this is new to me. Miss Gordon and I didn’t know what to expect from this dig.”
Rachel balked a little at the lie; Fredericks had expected a lot. Probably more than he’d even told her. But she kept quiet. Unease coiled more tightly within her. She wanted to climb back out of here, but part of her also wanted to know what lay ahead in the darkness.
“You get lucky, maybe you’ll find something they’ll name after you.” Doyle started forward, his boots crunching on the remnants of the statues as he strode for the other side of the cavern.
Fredericks didn’t reply.
Rachel followed the two men as they walked toward the passageway, recording the carvings that covered the walls as she walked. Most of the images were pictographs, crude stick drawings instead of the detailed symbols that had covered the cave’s seal. In that moment, she realized that’s what had covered the cave’s entrance: a seal.
But was it supposed to keep things out?
Or keep things within?
Another chill ghosted through her as she studied the walls. Among the stick figures, one rose above the rest, a pictogram of a man larger than the others, above the throng, like he was floating—or flying. Rachel peered closer. Were the others . . . worshipping this floating man? And barely visible in the walls, were those . . . wings?
Fredericks joined her, his LED headlamp playing over the nearest wall. “Can you read the symbols?”
“I can. They’re prayers.”
“That’s how I interpreted them. But prayers about what?”
“They’re all honoring the Shadowman.” Rachel pointed to several places on the wall. “The symbols for his name appear often.”
Fredericks put his narrow face close to the wall. “Some type of long-lost cult, maybe? Darkness worshippers?”
Rachel played her beam over the wall. “Toward the end of whatever civilization lived in this area, maybe. There were others before. The ones who made the pictographs, perhaps. Many people lived here at different times.”
Fredericks approached the wall and laid a tentative hand on the pictographs. His fingers traced the deeply carved images. “Thousands of years ago. Just think of it. Primitive people worshipping some sort of powerful being. A religious cult we’re just now discovering.”
And what if that thing was still in the cavern system?
That was the part that truly creeped Rachel out. She’d been ecstatic to be one of the students chosen for this expedition. She’d learned the forgotten language faster than anyone else in class. But she hadn’t had the cred to finance the trip. Until he’d arranged a grant for her.
The idea of traveling to a foreign country had been amazing by itself. The possibility of encountering some kind of long lost creature, which she hadn’t believed could exist, despite the amount of magic loose in the world these days, wasn’t so wiz.
Fredericks looked at her, his eyes positively glowing with excitement. “I’ve got a feeling about this, Ms. Gordon. This is big. Something like this is what archeologists pursue their whole lives. Most seldom find it.” He paused as he looked around. “But I believe we’ve found something extraordinary here.”
“Are we ready to see what you’ve found?” Doyle stood waiting, his weapon cradled in his arms.
“Yes. Of course.” Fredericks stepped toward the sec man.
“All right.” Doyle nodded to one of the other mercenaries. “Send out the drone, Childers.”
The man reached into his cargo pants pocket and produced a slender tube as long as his hand. As he held it in his palm, blue lights flared to life along its length. Delicate-looking, translucent wings sprang out, giving the device the appearance of a mechanical butterfly. Then thin legs unfolded, and the tube leaped into the air.
“That’s Bernice.” Childers pointed at the departing drone. He sounded young and cheerful. “She’s our eyes and ears when we’re in potentially hostile territory.”
The drone disappeared down the dark passageway. The sec man stood still, but the fingers of one gloved hand moved rhythmically. Rachel assumed Childers was controlling the drone, seeing what it saw. After a moment, he stepped forward.
Doyle moved forward slowly, trailing the rigger. “Do you know what we’re looking for, Professor Fredericks?”
“No. This is purely exploration, gentlemen.”
“Is there any reason to believe anyone else has been down here lately?”
“After the way that entrance was sealed?” Fredericks’s skepticism was thick enough to cut. “I wouldn’t think so. Not without leaving a trace of their passage.”
“That might not be the only entrance.”
The possibility had crossed Rachel’s mind as well. She trailed after Fredericks without the same level of enthusiasm he was showing. He was looking for a prize. She was afraid her nightmare was about to come true.
“How did you find out about the entrance your people dug up?” Doyle skirted a large boulder and followed Childers around a curving wall. The slope remained steady, winding down into the earth.
“Research.” Fredericks paused to shoot trideo of more carved art on the wall.
We followed a dream. Rachel held her tongue, still not believing she’d been able to pick the spot for the dig so precisely.
They walked down a set of crumbling stairs into the next passageway. The drone glowed faintly blue in the distance. More pictographs and symbols covered the walls as they continued their descent.
Doyle walked easily, always balanced. “Is there any chance someone else might have gotten hold of the same research?”
“No.”
Something clicked under Doyle’s foot, the gentle scrape too mechanical to be merely a dislodged stone. Fear shattered inside Rachel, but even as she opened her mouth, it was already too late to yell a warning.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A spear-wielding skeleton burst from a narrow recess in the wall. The thing had been carefully hidden among the pictographs, and had looked two-dimensional, even in the bright LED beams.
With superhuman quickness, Doyle dodged aside, blocking Professor Fredericks back with his body even as he turned his submachine gun on the skeleton warrior and fired. The silenced rounds smashed the bones into fragments that spun and fell to the floor. A few splinters bounced off Rachel’s face and upraised palms with little force. Ricochets pinged down the passageway.
The sec man rigger controlling the drone grabbed Rachel and took her to the ground. The air whooshed out of her. He stank of sweat and armor.
The other sec man squatted down with his SMG to his shoulder. “Hold steady.” Doyle kept his weapon pointed at the scattered remains of the skeleton.
Rachel half-expected the thing to rise up again and renew its attack. Things like that had happened in her nightmares, but she’d never witnessed it in the real world. Now that they were in the cave, though, the real world seemed far away.
Childers released Rachel and stood, taking his weight off
her. She drew in breath with a wince.
“Sorry, ma’am.” His tone was contrite but distant. His weapon never wavered from the remains of the skeleton, and his head roved to check all around them. “Was that thing spelled?”
Doyle kicked through the loose pile of bones. “Inanimate. Some kind of trap. I felt a counterweight shift underfoot when I stepped on it. Couldn’t move fast enough to avoid setting it off.” He looked at the third man. “Did you sense anything, Beaumont?”
The man shook his head. “Nothing magical about it.” He hesitated. “But there’s been a lot of magic in this place.” He ran his fingers over the carvings like they were delicate and might break. “You can feel it.”
Doyle shook his head and cursed with real feeling. “I hate magic. And I hate this fragging low-tech stuff, too. Gimme a street sam or a merc any day. At least then I know what I’m up against.” Shaking his head, he continued sweeping forward.
Reluctantly, Rachel followed him, trailing the professor. The cave air turned colder around her.
“How far have we come?” Professor Fredericks keep examining the walls, his LED lights bobbing crazily as he looked up and down. The pictographs and symbols continued down the passageway.
Rachel wrapped her arms around herself and wished she’d brought a jacket. The outerwear would have been unbearable topside, but she wanted it now.
“Half a klick.” Doyle kicked a meter-long, bright orange centipede out of their path. The meaty smack of the boot’s impact filled Rachel’s ears.
The creature plopped against the wall, fell, then rolled over and scuttled away on its many legs. Several more centipedes roamed the passageway around them. Doyle continued kicking his way through them.
Rachel had kept watch for other signs of mammalian life, bats and other rodents, but hadn’t seen any. Plenty of spiders shared space with other crawling things that lived in the earth.
She couldn’t help wondering if animals with higher intelligence stayed away from the cave and passageway on purpose. Or if there simply wasn’t a way in. Or maybe those higher intelligences could sense the wrongness about the place—the same wrongness she was feeling now. None of those thoughts was particularly restful.