by S. A. Sidor
“Hakim, we will send a rider to Cairo at once, to gather a second full crew of diggers and additional equipment. This time we proceed in an orderly manner. No rushing blindly into tunnels. Proper excavation will take months. But I know something is down there.”
Hakim looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“You want to go back inside?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But it is cursed. You said yourself this is unbelievable,” Hakim said.
“I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m learning as I go.”
“Foolhardy or stubborn, I don’t know which is worse.” He muttered something more and raised his hands to object. “Return to that insanity? All the blood… I have a beautiful wife whom I love, six happy children, and another on the way. We are poor but not stupid… no, sir, I am sorry, but I will not be going with you.”
I trod along the partially exposed step. Already the drying blood had stiffened my clothes. On five sticky fingers, I counted the reasons for returning underground. “An unmarked seal, a secret panel covered in spiral glyphs, mysterious music accompanying cries of unknown origin, a sandworm, and a river of blood… I’d say this tomb is beyond extraordinary. Don’t you see? You call it cursed. I don’t disagree. Say we’re right. Then it’s cursed for a reason, my friend. That reason is whatever lies in the bottom of the crypt.”
“Better to bury the doorway–”
“Treasure,” I said.
Hakim’s eyes shined like wet gold nuggets. His mouth hung open.
“You really think there’s treasure to be found?”
“Of one kind or another… Look, all I know is I can’t turn my back on this mystery and wonder for the rest of my life what’s down there. Those two brothers died for a chance to see it.”
Thunder rumbled from the tomb.
“Cave-in?” I asked.
Hakim braced his arms out as the stone steps vibrated. Pebbles danced wildly along the slabs and dropped into cracks. “No, effendi… the ground is moving.”
A great seizure began to rattle everything in sight with a crescendo of agitation. Our tethered, and now wildly upset, camels rolled their eyes and uttered watery burbles of distress from the backs of their throats, baring their teeth as they tried to break free from the minders who scooped up their reins. The shaking nearly tumbled me headfirst down the steps. I watched, stunned, holding my arms out for balance, while the entire arid plain undulated atop a mound of jelly. Dust clouds puffed around us, and a strange, sand-choked, ocher wind swirled out from the tomb.
Hakim crabbed his way up the stairs, crying, “Earthquake!”
We ran away from the skull rock. As my feet trampled the unsteady ground, I heard an enormous rending of earth ahead of us. I sensed the land cracking, splitting apart. I say sensed because I could not see anything – away from our torches, the desert lay black as cast iron. I was convinced that to continue onward meant driving ourselves like lemmings off a cliff. Someone, or some entity, was sending us a clear message.
I threw out an arm and grabbed Hakim.
Our diggers ran past us.
“Halt!” I yelled, breathless. “Tell them, Hakim! Order them to stop running!”
Hakim shouted, and the men froze. All but one unfortunate soul whose scream – a piteous frantic howl – faded as the unseen chasm swallowed him whole. The desert floor roared from within, and then fell silent.
We stood like panting statues.
“Don’t move. Hold completely still,” I said.
Hakim repeated my command.
Sand sifted softly into the open fissures.
After counting to a hundred, I turned around to view the skull rock. Kicked-over lamps and hastily dropped torches littered the steps, but the light they shed was sufficient for me to see the rock had grown, not horizontally, but vertically – it stood taller now, more shadows plugged the vacant eye sockets, its bulbous forehead tilted back in mute laughter, and inside of its yawning jaws the stone throat had widened.
Here was where we belonged. Here – in this horned skull – was where I belonged.
“We must return to the steps.”
“Sir–”
“Tell the brothers to pick up their torches and tools. We’ve breached the door, and any attempt to leave here spells our certain doom. We have opened the puzzle, and so it is ours to solve or die trying. Turning back is not permitted. The desert will drop beneath us like a trapdoor. The pieces are falling even as I speak. We cannot stop them. I see no other way but forward. The tomb waits. So we go to it. Or we are already as good as dead.”
Was I afraid? Yes.
Did I feel the heady confidence of a man who might achieve something meaningful for the first time in his life? Absolutely. I wanted to make my name, to discover the hidden and bring it back into the light of the world. I was ready to risk my life and the lives of others to make it happen. But did I have any choice in the matter? Or was my Fate determined for me?
That is a question for future scholars and philosophers to ponder. I felt I had no choice but to search the tomb and claim its contents.
Hakim stared at the terra firma beneath his sandals. He had translated what I said, and the brothers obeyed, taking up their tools. Fear, I thought, made them compliant. Now I know the truth. Some among this digging tribe desired even more than I to see the crypt exhumed. We all think we are masters of our futures. But who can resist the voice that calls to him inside his own head? Or the invisible whip that bites into his flesh at every pause and drives him on and on, well past all reason?
7
The Sixth Box
We thrust our torches into the gaping rocky mouth.
The quake had lowered the floor by several feet and the walls were drawn apart. No crawling this time, we walked in upright. Our progress continued unimpeded. The tunnel sloped, snaked around on itself, and repeated this pattern, so that we retraced the same ground, each pass taking us one level deeper. We zigzagged down and down.
I led the way. Curiosity propelled me. I did not pause to contemplate the tons of sand piled above us or the pressure of the walls on either side. I forced myself not to think. No evidence of the mysterious blood geyser, which had flushed us out the first time, remained. The maggoty beast had squirmed back into its lightless lair to heal or to die. As I marched ahead – the angle of the tunnel hurrying me along – I breathed in cool damp air with a liquid heaviness reminiscent of a dense fog. Despite years of scientific study, I swore I was about to discover a mineral spring in one of the driest regions on the planet.
Everywhere, my flesh felt skimmed with cold grease.
“We’ve reached the bottom,” Hakim said over my shoulder.
I waved my torch. Flatness stretched out in all directions. Scores of shadows poised to leap from the well of darkness. Our silhouettes danced on the rock face. But I swore I saw others lilting forward to join us. What were these half-formed profiles swimming on the periphery of our light? No one else paid them attention. Was I their sole witness? Did my overactive mind create them?
Look away, I told myself. Or you will be sorry.
Yet each glimpse brought the desire to gaze more.
I feigned that the torch smoke was vexing my eyes – blinking, wiping away tears – while I stared at my shoes until the fascination passed. The success of this expedition was my charge, and I had the responsibility for safeguarding the lives of my men. So, with duty as my guidepost, I attended to solid matters at hand.
I stepped forward.
“A room with no doors – it is unsealed,” I said, failing to hide my disappointment. Robbers, I conjectured, must have dug their way in from another direction and ransacked the chamber centuries ago. Alas, we would find nothing but empty wreckage for our troubles.
“Begging your pardon, Mr Hardy, but I believe the quake unsealed the tomb.” Hakim ran his fingers into a pair of strange linear grooves along the floor, at the very threshold to the room. “See? No dust. They are clean
.”
I lowered my fire.
Crouching, I brushed my fingertips over the top of a stone slab which, judging by its dimensions, weighed several tons. “The door’s right here. That’s why there isn’t any rubble. The whole door has dropped into this slot, as snugly as a woodworker’s joint.” If Hakim had not spied the outline of the slab on the floor, I would have stepped right over it. The engineering was phenomenal.
“What mechanism lowered the door?” Hakim wondered aloud.
“I have a better question. Why build a door only an earthquake can open?”
We entered the chamber. The brothers pressed close at our backs, rubbing themselves against the wall, crowding one another but hesitant to go farther than my flame. The ceiling hung low above our heads. Hakim flipped his torch into the gloom. It landed with a burst of sparks.
Astonishing – the room was perfectly round!
How did the architects of this mausoleum carve a circular room from bedrock? With hammers and copper chisels? I think not. For as I ran my fingers over the walls, I felt the faint ovoid traces of a large, dare I venture to say, mechanical cutting tool. Our entrance would also be our exit. No other passages penetrated – or, to put it another way, escaped from – the depths of the vault. All at once my chest tightened. I struggled to draw a breath. An overwhelming urge to run back up the tunnel, and keep running, seized me. But I stood my ground.
This was no royal tomb. Earthly treasures – the customary gold, jewels, and exquisite artifacts amassed to reflect social preeminence, and most importantly, in keeping with the Egyptians’ religious beliefs, to provide for the journey to the afterlife – were completely absent. The unpainted room before us was sparse as a jail cell. Anyone interred here would be sent to the next world to wander eternally – starved, bankrupt, and unprotected. Yet it was a burial place, and its contents in time would prove most rare.
Six coffins.
Without a second thought, I rushed ahead to inspect our discovery. Wood splinters crunched underfoot. The ancient funereal display occupied the center of the room – five caskets, each roughly man-sized and badly damaged.
The sixth box loomed much larger.
“Sarcophagus!” Hakim clapped his hands in joy at the sight.
It was made of stone, not wooden like the others. And by our smoky torchlight, it appeared to be fully – one might even call it pristinely – intact.
I surveyed the arrangement of the five cedar coffins, noting the gaps between the planks of their half-shattered lids and deep splits running along the sides. Had some grave robber attempted to pry them apart? And in frustration had he turned to smashing them? Why did he stop? And why did the boards appear not to have sustained an attack from above so much as one from–? No. I shook my head. That was impossible. And robbers could not be the answer either. Since the burial, no one had been down here. This bleakest of tombs had never been violated.
Until now.
I passed my torch to one of the diggers and kneeled, withdrawing a lucifer from a box I always carried in my pocket, and using my thumbnail to strike it.
I hunched over the nearest coffin.
Through the ages, and in perfect darkness, a length of tattered, soiled binding had unraveled and snaked its way to where it poked a few inches out through the largest of the cracks. The dangling linen looked as delicate and black as Chantilly lace. I put my nose next to it and sniffed. It smelled burned. When I touched the edge, the mummy cloth disintegrated on my fingertips.
I wiped the ashes off my hand.
After careful investigation, I determined all five of the damaged coffins contained mummified bodies. I could not judge their states of decomposition by peeking through holes while hot matches scorched my fingertips, but I looked long enough to know they were present and accounted for. My throat was so dry it crackled when I swallowed. I had no spit and wished I had brought my canteen with me. “Look at the pattern they make,” I said. My voice rasped. “Like spokes of a giant wheel…”
“Or the radiant beams of the sun,” Hakim said.
“A blackened sun,” I whispered.
Was I afraid I might be overheard?
The illogical answer is yes. Yes, I was. I had the impression that someone hidden from view was eavesdropping on our conversation.
Who was listening?
That very question hovered foremost in my thoughts.
The largest coffin, the sarcophagus, was like no other I have witnessed before or since. Nine feet of cigar-shaped black quartzite, fashioned without corners or sharp edges. I had not spotted any seams either. Only by scratching with my fingers in the grit did I detect the hint of a lid tucked underneath the hulking encasement. The stone was unadorned, faceless. I stood and pondered the width of the casket – twice as thick across the chest as I was, tapered at both head and foot. If the occupant’s size resembled this box, he was a giant. The question popped into my brain: Why were this giant and his five lesser companions inhumed with such harsh unforgiving methods?
Using my sleeve, I rubbed away a scrim of dust. Along the side here… what was this? A diagonal row of hastily carved hieroglyphs – a name enclosed by an oval: a cartouche. But cartouches were for the names of royalty and gods. How puzzling. These carvings, shallow scratches really, appeared to be an older, cruder variation of the glyphs I had learned back home at the library. I trailed my finger underneath the symbols, doing my best to parse them.
The great hidden one, born wicked in the darkness, priest of chaos–
That was all.
The rest of the message had been gouged away, and in a flash I envisioned the long-ago writer, surprised during his secret act, being dragged off, watching his unfinished work mutilated with a chisel.
The quartzite held alluring depths. I buffed a porthole.
I peered into a silica sea and glimpsed – what, exactly?
Surely not the suggestion of anything moving – but when I looked closer, I saw it again. It was like viewing a fish swimming under a layer of fractured black ice. Down at the bottom – an alert human form shifted restlessly, straining to break free from its imprisonment. How could anything in there be alive? I blinked and stared harder.
And saw only rock.
Behind me I heard rapid footsteps.
8
Amun Odji-Kek
Inside the tenebrous tomb, I never saw the dagger descending toward me, only the grotesque contorted face of the man who gripped it. He filled my vision. My reaction was to flick the lit match I was pinching between my fingers squarely into his right eye. He grunted – a lucky shot. The pain was not enough to stop him, though it succeeded in making him miss his target. We crashed into the sarcophagus. The point of his dagger scraped along the lid. His other hand grabbed my shirt. All my buttons popped, scattering like beetles, as he pulled me roughly around. I shoved him back as hard as I could while regaining my balance. Quickly I turned my shoulder at him, figuring if he slashed me that would be about the choicest place to take the damage. He paused, steadied himself, and did his best to find me, one-eyed, in the semi-dark.
I put up my fists.
A lot of good they would do in a knife fight. Though I never had a chance to discover how poorly I might have fared. For as the devilish digger raised his weapon to kill me, a sound like an axe splitting a wet log exploded from the back of his head, and his eyes, even the blinded one, grew big and round.
My would-be assassin fell at my feet.
Hakim hoisted his bloody spade and hit him again.
“Stop! He isn’t going to… he’s dead.”
Dead he was, indeed. Even in the dimness, I could see exposed bone glistening like the white of an eye in the red gash across the back of his neck. My thoughts turned to survival, for Hakim and I were below ground with a dozen of this murdered man’s brothers.
Their silence chilled me.
Hakim addressed the men with authority, but I heard desperation edging into his voice. If he lost control of them, we would never se
e the desert sky again.
He exchanged words with the dirtiest of the diggers, a sun-leathered veteran whose beard was striped like a skunk’s tail. The longer the gaunt digger talked with him, the more confused Hakim looked. The digger pointed emphatically at the dead man, then at the sarcophagus. He stepped into the spreading pool of blood and kicked the corpse viciously in the head. Then he pointed his gnarled finger at me.
“Amun Odji-Kek,” he said, smiling. And he bowed in thanks.
“No,” Hakim said.
But the digger just nodded, his skunk-tail chin whiskers bobbing in the shadows, as he grinned at me with snaggletoothed glee. Perhaps the sun had boiled his brain while it cured his skin.
Hakim approached the sarcophagus and read the cartouche.
He staggered backward.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Very bad… I cannot believe…”
“Can’t believe what? That man tried to kill me! How can they blame us?”
Hakim shook his head, never taking his eyes off the glyph.
“They don’t care about him.”
“What?”
“They’re happy he’s dead.”
“Why on earth would they be happy?”
“He was a religious man, a reciter of the Qur’an. He betrayed them by trying to stop you.”
“Stop me from what?”
“If that cartouche is correct, then this coffin houses the mummy of Amun Odji-Kek, Sorcerer of Set. I never believed the stories, but… this is real.” Hakim thumped the sarcophagus and drew his hand back, alarmed. He stared in disbelief. “Amun Odji-Kek is a tribal legend according to the priests, someone to scare the women and children. The pharaohs denied his existence. He is known by many names, but they all mean the same: He Who Disturbs the Balance, Plague Bringer, Corruptor of the Land, Slayer from the South, Lord of Demons. Mr Hardy, he is the embodiment of evil.”
The brothers fell to their knees and began chanting as they bowed in unison. Inside our tight little hollow beneath the skull rock, the noise was quite alarming. I felt the smallness of our presence, the pressing of the earth above, and my heart fluttered.