by S. A. Sidor
One of the younger brothers rushed into the dark channel.
“Wait!” I yelled.
A second brother followed. Dropping to his knees – for the passage was low and cramped – he scurried into the unknown. The bottoms of his sandals, like two pale signals, faded quickly in the murk.
The next brother lunged.
I threw my body across the entrance.
“We must let it breathe,” I said.
“Later,” he said. “I only want to see what is in the tomb.”
I waved a torch and the flames whipped like a flag.
“What will you see? Your brothers didn’t take any light.”
He stumbled back. Rubbing his hands, he paused to reconsider.
“It isn’t safe,” I said.
The horror finally sank into his brain. His brothers were running around like rats in a potential maze of tunnels, and without as much as a candle to guide them. Madness.
He called past me, screaming into the hole, for them to turn around.
Silence.
The rest of the diggers gathered at the opening. They bit their lips and tore their clothes. Their enthusiasm at uncovering the vault had swiftly changed to confusion, then, in the bat of an eye, anger. Who did they blame?
I was the one stopping them from rescuing their kin.
That I might be saving their lives in the process did not matter.
Hakim came forward.
“We will go in after them. Bring shovels and lanterns. We can tie ourselves together with this rope.” He tossed the coils on the steps. “If we encounter danger, we turn around immediately. It does no good for all of us to die chasing a foolish pair.”
The brothers agreed.
I felt I had little choice in the matter.
“Hakim, may I have a word?”
“Certainly.”
Our diggers began lashing themselves together. Each had his shovel. There was no room to swing a pickaxe in the tunnel. They lit paraffin lamps and distributed them to every third man in line. The eldest, who had taken the lead spot, extinguished one torch, strapping it to the handle of a second. He held the extension, set ablaze, at arm’s length. This way he could probe ahead inside the tunnel without flames licking back at him. I nodded at the forethought. Under his belt a curved dagger gleamed like a fresh wound.
I kept my voice low.
“Since I was a boy,” I said, “I have had a fear of tight spaces.”
“Most unfortunate given the present circumstances,” Hakim said. “You have chosen a curious profession for yourself.”
“I thought that my imaginings were actually worse than what the reality would be.”
“And what are you finding now?”
“Reality is worse.” Acknowledging it only made my breathing accelerate. I sunk to my haunches. “Forgive me. I tend to panic under these types of circumstances. Being buried alive, you know? Walls closing in on me and no air…” I shook my arms as they had begun to tingle.
“That is, indeed, worse for all of us.”
Hakim folded his hands as if he were about to pray to a Christian God. It was his habit whenever solving problems. He touched the finger steeple to his lips.
“Stay here and wait for us.”
I shook my head.
“I am the leader of this expedition, and I will be there when we penetrate this tomb.”
“You can go last. That way you have no one between you and the exit.”
“Last man in, first man out – doesn’t exactly ring heroic.” I dug my fingers in the dirt.
“Tombs are filled with heroes already,” he said, smiling.
The brothers were waiting.
I stood and motioned for them to join us.
Hakim secured himself to the group. One by one each digger advanced Indian file into the underground gap, squatting before the entrance then crawling forward – eyes seeking wonder, glittery, cheeks flushed – like children at play in a huge snow fort. I half expected them to breathe out frosty plumes. The limestone muffled all evidence of chatter. In the snug darkness, the diggers grew reverent.
Hakim passed me the end of the rope.
“We don’t need a hero,” he said.
I looped the cord around my waist and tied a bowline knot. I lifted my oil lantern from the gravel. “Right, let’s get on with it,” I said. “The tomb likely won’t pick today to collapse.”
Hakim clapped me on the back.
“Good man, Mr Hardy.”
“How far do you think the tunnel goes?”
“Not far,” he lied.
He bent at the hole and stuck his head in – then withdrew abruptly.
I hoped he would express second thoughts. What a fleeting relief. He only twisted around to say, “Hold my ankle. If you are in trouble, pull on my leg.”
“Lucky I don’t tear it off,” I muttered. I tossed my shovel onto the steps.
Hakim wriggled ahead.
I crouched and squinted. Lamplight smeared the hollow. Here goes. I squeezed my shoulders together until I was narrow enough to fit. But a damned tight fit it was! Immovable weight pressed on me from every angle. I inched up to my midsection. My legs were still kicking outside; I could already taste the air turning stale and thin. I puffed open-mouthed, feeling lightheaded, and wedged my body farther into the cavity.
Like a cork crammed in a bottle. The lamp creaked rustily as my arm shook. The dangling light wobbled shadows cast against the rough-cut walls. My head spun.
I cannot do this, I thought.
I tried backing out. I absolutely needed the sight of stars overhead, vastness, and night-cooled desert air in my lungs. The rope grew taut, pulled. Against all instinct, I closed my eyes and plunged deeper, groping for Hakim’s ankle. I patted the stone floor. Nothing. The rope jerked me again. I opened my eyes to a spray of fine dust. Blinded, I forced myself to advance until the rope slackened and I collided with my venerable foreman. I seized his leg. As I dabbed at my gritty eyes with a shirtsleeve, I realized Hakim was whispering to me.
“Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Shhhhh…” he said, “listen.”
5
The Tomb (Part II)
A low moan reverberated up through the passage. The timbre fell somewhere between an oboe and an owl. Hearing it quickened my pulse. I could recall stillness in the desert that night: no wind was blowing through the rock above us.
“Do you think someone’s been hurt?”
“Too deep,” Hakim said. “I feel it coming up from underneath.”
Vibrations trembled, almost musical, certainly rhythmic.
“Is that a drum?”
The moaning stopped.
After a few beats, the thumping faded as well.
I listened to myself and Hakim panting like two mice in a cobra hole.
A murmur transferred down the line of diggers. Hakim talked to the man ahead of him. The line began to move.
“They think they saw one of their brothers,” Hakim said.
“Good,” I said, although I wasn’t so sure.
We were crawling quickly now. The passage, I noticed happily, had widened a few inches and appeared to continue relatively uniformly, which was a comfort of sorts, though I had an irrational fear it might taper again, funneling down to nothingness. As it was, the confines were too small for me to turn myself around. If we reached a dead end, I would have no choice but to negotiate crawling out in reverse, and blindly. I had no torch, no shovel for probing. My body was a clog, trapping the lantern light ahead of me and allowing few rays to pass. I shot backward glances into the dimness at regular intervals. In the event of a cave-in behind me, I did not worry I would be killed immediately, rather that I would not… I tried to think of the burial vault instead, how it might be tall enough to stand, how it might be filled with treasure and mummies.
I had Hakim within my sight. I released his ankle and began tapping my fist against the right wall every yard or so as a means of m
arking our progress. Ten taps. In this dreamy world of ancient wonders, I was touching something absolutely solid, solid, solid. Twenty taps. I hoped we were getting close. The line slowed. Thirty taps. We had reached a ninety-degree left turn in the tunnel. Thirty-five. Hakim rounded the corner. The rope connecting us tautened. I scooted forward until I saw past the doglegged bend. The tunnel sloped at a forty-five degree angle: a ramp.
At the fortieth tap, directly opposite the turn, I saw a rough diagram etched into the limestone – a circle filled with spirals. I hit it dead center with my clenched hand and thought I heard hollowness, in fact, I felt the rock face ever-so-slightly yield.
A secret chamber?
Or a mere deviation in the thickness of the limestone?
Perhaps a dangerous fault?
No time to investigate. The rope pulled me downward. I went with it. Here I found myself never having been inside a tomb before, and all the others, even Hakim, had passed the strange drawing without so much as a second glance. Was it no more than a signpost? An indication we were closing on our target?
I was about to ask Hakim this very question, when the gurgling started.
Upon my life, I would have sworn it was water coursing through pipes. Below us, above us – the noise of flowing liquid surrounded our position. And a second disturbance, equally odd, and more troubling to me because of its proximity, stirred in the tunnel to the rear: a dry scuffling and the clatter of loosened falling rocks.
I stared through my legs.
Only shadows – then something dropped into the passage with an unmistakable thud; a small eruption of pale dust bloomed. Before I could judge its cause, the turbid cloud prickled my eyes, and I heard a weight being dragged, not away, but toward me. The liquid noises had all but receded, so it surprised me when Hakim started backing up, forcing me in the direction of the yet unidentified activity.
“Stop pushing,” I said.
Hakim did not respond. But he did stop pushing. Against my wishes I was nearer to the source of the scuffling, and it sounded very much to me like a schoolboy kicking his way along a gravel path. Also, I detected a soft pip-pip-pip that was at once moist in origin and air-influenced; blowing kisses was the first thought to enter my head, although the laugh building in my chest had more to do with abject terror than humor.
The gurgling returned.
With it came a horrible vapor which stunk like a dog’s mouth as it tears apart rotten meat. Hakim rammed his backside into me and I shouldered him in return.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
Again, he gave no reply.
I would have insisted he answer, except at that instant I spied movement in the space behind me: a side-to-side bobbing which coincided with the pips and suggested in its pantomime a quality of searching. I rolled onto my back to get a better view.
Holding the lantern between my knees, I buttressed my elbows and peered hard into the illuminated burrow.
The maggot-thing squirmed into view.
Fat as a wild boar, it nuzzled the walls. Eyeless, dumb, glistening with its own vile excretions – its skin shimmered transparently, and inside the body tube sloshed a white jelly, melting and congealing with every undulation of the great boneless menace.
I felt my gorge rise.
The conical head of the maggot-thing twitched, wet and eager, a slit at the tip dilated, then clamped shut again, and finally I knew where the pipping had come from. Wormlike segmented rings bristled with hooked blond hairs. The maggot-thing edged closer. I drew my legs as far from its mouth as I could. Because it did, indeed, possess a mouth. Tasting the air, the tip blossomed obscenely. Flesh petals splayed to reveal thousands of spiky teeth carpeting the underside of each flap. Enough to denude any man’s skeleton.
“Hakim, go!”
“I can’t,” he said.
“For the love of God, why not? Do you see this?”
“I do but…”
Hakim stuck a wet red hand in front of my lantern.
“The tunnel is bleeding.”
Normally I would have said that was impossible. In the presence of the maggot-thing I found myself less able to pass critical judgment. I was speechless.
“The diggers won’t go any farther!” Hakim shouted.
Steadily the maggot-thing progressed. Its supremely oral visage – hideously lacking in structure, like a deboned face – gaped at me. I kicked it hard under the flaps, hoping to stun it or even cause its retreat. Rather the head, alarmingly swifter than any previous motion had suggested, darted downward.
Teeth raked my shoe.
I tucked my knees to my ribs and realized that my backside was soaked. The blood sloshed around me. Quickly its level rose to my waist. It was warm.
Horridly warm.
I mopped my hand across my sweating face and knew by the stickiness that I’d succeeded in smearing myself with more blood. A gush of crimson washed over the lantern, not extinguishing my light, but dimming it and dyeing the glass ruddy. I curled my body tighter to avoid the encroaching maggot. My lungs were squeezed flat, I could not draw a breath, and when I tried to stretch out again I had even less room than before. The meager air grew salty and humid as the sea, and nearly as unbreathable.
“Where is the blood coming from?” I gasped.
“Everywhere,” Hakim said. The word gurgled, as if his lips were being dunked.
Hissing, shouts, and the acrid smell of smoke: the bloody gobbets raining from the ceiling were snuffing out the men’s torches and lamps. The line of diggers reversed in a raw panic. Only Hakim’s strength and his barked commands calling for order kept them from driving me straight into the maggot-thing’s maw. Red gore surged like a flash flood in a gully. My body lifted, buoyant. I had to brace to keep from being swept away. I held my lantern high. Losing my handhold in the slippery incoming tide, I banged my forehead against a wall. Stars danced in the lamplight.
Undiscouraged, the maggot-thing lapped up the scarlet fluid.
Nothing, I thought, could have made the pale worm look worse, yet crimson splashes did the trick. Its red-dipped slurping head quivered with joy (if such a creature might know joy). Behind me, the diggers floundered and screamed. The gurgling in the walls amplified into a roar of rushing liquid – I knew it now to be blood, somehow, uncannily, circulating in the dead rock. I clamped the lantern handle with sticky fingers. Blood gagged the diggers’ mouths, quieting their cries. What choice did I have? To drown in blood or be worm-eaten? Hakim could no longer hold back the kicking men and unstaunchable sanguine river – he slid into me. I sunk neck-deep in red.
The maggot-thing lifted its mouth, splitting wider to welcome me.
I smashed my lantern against the ceiling.
Glass shattered. Burning oil sprayed worm flesh. The maggot-thing knuckled sourly into itself. Its sickly white meat charred and bubbled, and the creature emitted a high-pitched shriek as it skidded snappily down the tunnel from where it had come.
A wave of blood crashed into me, shot me through the channel and into the blunt body of the retreating worm. Luckily the underground dweller was more interested in escape than a meal, though I felt it thump into my gut like a medicine ball. Feet first we rode the ruby stream up the ramp where the maggot-thing, blistered and smoking from its wounds, squirmed back into its hole in the wall (at the place where the spiral-filled drawing had broken apart); past the turn I tumbled, the rope tangled in my legs but it did not matter because I glimpsed a square of gray light – the entrance – and the bloody force vomited me and my companions onto the steps of the tomb.
6
Second Entry
Two from our group – the first pair who scrambled headlong into the tunnel – were dead, drowned in blood. I stared at their grisly faces: bulging eyes, jaws locked in silent screams, and tongues like chewed rags hanging down their chins. The terror of their final moment was all too apparent.
What had they encountered in the bowels of the tomb?
I could not fathom it
.
The surviving brothers coughed, spit, and gulped fresh air until discovery of the harrowing condition of the bodies started them swaying. Sorrowful wails rose above the pre-dawn desert. I slunk over to Hakim who was on his hands and knees retching.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded. His eyes bugged out like sheep’s, and his clothes appeared as if he had rolled around on a butcher shop floor. His limbs trembled uncontrollably.
“What the hell happened in there?” I asked.
“Nothing… I have ever seen before.” He shook his head to clear the vision. He tried to spit but could draw no saliva. His skin had turned as rough-looking as the sand.
“You’re the one who lives here, damn it! I was almost consumed by a worm!”
“It is most strange.” He tugged at his peeling lips. Like an opium eater, he stared into some hazy middle distance only he could see. Sighing, he sat back heavily on a step.
“Here, drink.” I handed him a jar of water. “Worms! I didn’t sign on to this expedition to get drowned in a bloody tunnel no bigger than a sewer pipe.” I shook my gore-matted head. “I’m a man of science. I don’t believe in, in… any of this! Why can’t there be a decent amount of dirt to remove and then you get your relics? Remove dirt. Receive relics. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Maybe we are dreaming.”
I stared hard at my foreman. “That was no dream, man.” I paced, glad to be in the open air. “There must be an explanation. We don’t have all the facts to draw a reasonable conclusion.”
“Curses don’t care about reason. This is sorcery, not science.”
Sorcery, not science. How was I to argue with that? I had seen what I had seen and it was not reasonable or scientific. A worm and a tunnel of blood. Moans and drumbeats from an underground passage that hadn’t been opened in several thousand years. The stuff of legends. Weren’t legends what I wished for? Instead, I had an abundance of evidence but no way of explaining any of it. I needed to see more. To know more. There would be answers, later. My panic slowly subsided. Despite the lives lost and my own brush with the crawling hideousness, I felt energized, even thrilled. This new headiness was strange to me. I did not recognize myself, but my surprise did not restrain my drive – nay, obsession – to get back into the tunnel.