by Mac Flynn
Chapter 2
The trip was a short half mile back to our small village of white tents. Each tent was made of white canvas in an A-frame shape, and was eight feet deep by six feet wide, though the walls slanted to give the impression it was much smaller. We earned the right to have our own tent by carrying those heavy canvases on our backs from the road a half mile off to our camp spot. For some reason the cart driver who brought us from the village hadn't wanted to come any closer. Probably didn't want to get his cart stuck in mud or something.
The camp itself was set up so there were two rows of four tents with a wide path between the rows. At the end of the row on the opposite side of the trail to the dig was the professor's tent. In the center of the camp lay our campfire complete with all the modern conveniences of a ring of rocks for cooking and logs for sitting.
I slipped into my tent which lay closest to the dig path. There was a cot opposite the entrance and a small folding table beside that. I plopped myself down on the cot, pulled off a boot, and tilted it upside down. A stream of dirt flowed onto the dirt ground of the tent. Digging and dusting was a dirty business, but somebody had to do it. I emptied my boots, lay down on my cot and let my mind wander back to the staircase and the wall. I wondered what sort of a man this prince had been to warrant such a hidden tomb far from any evidence of civilization. He must have sliced a lot of people to make others angry enough that they would want to desecrate his tomb.
The flaps to my tent opened and Stacy peeked her head inside. Even after a long day of nothing with a finish of excitement she was still a bundle of energy. "Dinner's almost ready, and the professor's going to tell us more about that prince guy," she told me.
"Coming," I replied. I sat up, stuffed my feet back into the boots, and wandered outside.
Night had fallen and there was a crackling fire in the campfire. A large pot sat in the center of the fire and boiled away that night's mystery soup. The mystery wasn't the spices but the meat that went into it. You see, Professor Van Sloan wasn't a meek, mild-mannered professor. He had a gun, a rifle, to be exact, and he knew how to use it. While we picked our way through the dust he would go off into the woods with his gun. We'd hear a shot an hour or two later, and that night there would be meat.
I walked over to the logs, grabbed a bowl on a table and went to the pot. The surface of the liquid inside had a greenish hue, and bits of vegetables and mystery meat floated against each other. I ladled a bowl full and plopped myself on a log beside Stacy. That's when I noticed our supervisor wasn't anywhere in sight. "Where's the professor?" I asked Stacy.
She shrugged. "He said he wanted to make sure the tarp was still on the entrance to the tomb, but he'd be right back," she told me.
As though bidden a shadow emerged at the far end of the tent village and Professor Van Sloan joined us. He was all smiles as he ladled himself some of his mystery stew. "I believe you students are in for quite a treat tomorrow after we clear away the dirt covering the slab over the stairs. Everything appears to be untouched around the door, so we have every reason to believe the tomb itself is untouched."
Images of a tomb filled with gold statues and fancy furniture came to my mind. "Do you know anything else about this prince?" I spoke up.
The professor furrowed his brow and rubbed his chin. "Well, it has been quite a few years since I heard the tale from the village elder, but if I recall correctly the prince was a great warrior who fought against the Roman invasion around the turn of the Common Era. He was said to have an immense wealth gathered from the tributes of the surrounding tribes. His end came in battle where he was mortally wounded by a Roman centurion. He gave instructions to his men to give his body over to an old man who would bury him in a tomb he had prepared. Then he ordered them to leave his tent. They did as was ordered and a few minutes later they heard a cry of agony. The soldiers hurried inside the tent and found their prince slumped over his cot dead. In his hand was a vial of poison. He'd taken his own life rather than suffer through the last pains of mortality. The prince's body was given to the elder of a village around this area as instructed, and his men returned to his stronghold in the far north to divide his treasures. They found the prince's treasury empty, carried away months or perhaps years earlier by the cunning prince. He hid the treasure, some say in the tomb. Others say he never had much wealth or he spent it all during his life."
"How old was he when he died?" I asked him.
"He was rumored to be about thirty or thirty-five when he died," the professor replied.
"How did the elder know all of this?" Stacy wondered.
"It's an ancient tale passed on through his family from the man who supposedly buried the prince," Van Sloan explained.
I glanced at our surroundings. They were pretty, but not what I would call prince material. "But why would the prince want a village elder to bury him here? What did the prince see in this place?" I pointed out.
The professor shrugged. "Perhaps it was the seclusion or the natural beauty." He paused and chuckled. "Though the village people believe it was because the ancient elder was well-versed in the dark arts of bring the dead back to life."
"Like zombies?" Stacy suggested.
"No, I believe the closest equivalent would be the undead. Nosferatu and revenants," he explained.
I maturely snorted. "So the elder could make Dracula?" I guessed. My fellow mature college students burst into laughter.
The professor smiled and waved his hands to quiet us. "In a way I suppose Mary is right, but this tomb Ed has found is very serious. If it is the tomb then we have on our hands possibly the entirety of the prince's treasure-hold. It would be the find of a lifetime, and something I've always dreamed would happen here." He straightened and pounded his fist into his hand. "I just knew the story wasn't a fabrication! There were too many details in the sister university for the tomb not to be hidden here."
"So you've been looking for this tomb for the last ten years?" I asked him.
He smiled and gave a nod. "Yes, it's why I chose this spot for the practice dig, and tomorrow we'll see if we can enter the tomb and find the lost treasure, or at least the prince's body, if any of it remains. It could be a long day, so let's turn in early and get some good rest," he insisted.
