by Otto Schafer
She looked at Eugene. He was a scrawny, ordinary-looking old guy. No cloak or trench coat like she had seen Apep wearing earlier. But he could have simply removed it. She followed Garrett’s eyes to the balding guy’s feet. Were those the boots Apep wore? Why couldn’t she remember the goddamned boots? Eugene’s khakis were wet up to his knees, mud-caked and filthy above that. But what about what Garrett said about the house, and the journal?
Then she looked at the coach guy. No cloak on him either, and he too wore boots, black combat boots. Apep’s boots? Could Apep be Garrett’s coach? He talked like he was military, and he had the M4. He certainly looked much more capable of picking Jerry up with one hand.
She looked at Garrett and shrugged when suddenly he gasped.
“What?” she whispered.
“Look at him. Really look. Coach Dagrun’s clothes – they’re… filthy and torn.”
Pete narrowed his eyes, focusing his perfect vision on the coach. “Not filthy, Garrett – they look like they… like… like they’ve been on fire!”
“Do it, Garrett – do it now!” Dagrun yelled.
Garrett kept the sword cocked but relaxed his grip slightly. “Why are your clothes burnt, Coach?”
“What?” Dagrun’s expression changed from stern command to discombobulation.
“Your clothes! Why are they burnt?” Garrett repeated with an even more accusing tone.
“I… I came to the dojo… after” – he pointed an accusing finger at Eugene – “after Apep left, but I was too late… I tried to save him – I swear, Garrett. I tried, but he was… beyond saving…”
Eugene, still holding his hands palms out, shook his head back and forth. “No. No way, Garrett. He’s burnt because he’s Apep. Don’t listen to him! It’s all a trick to get you to wake the dragon. That’s what Apep wants – to burn the world. He can’t wake the dragon, Garrett. Not by himself. Don’t you see? It’s a trick! It’s all been a trick to get you to do it! It has to be you!” Eugene’s pleading voice pressed, begging him to believe.
Careful to keep his sword high and at the ready, Garrett turned to Bre and Paul. “Did either of you get a good look at him when he took the stones?”
Paul narrowed his eyes at the two men. “No. It could be either one of them.”
Garrett shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know what to do. Who do I trust? Bre? Can you tell which one is Apep?”
“I’m sorry, Garrett, I can’t tell which one is Ap—” But before she could finish her sentence, her eyes clouded over, turning a smoky white. Then she spoke a single name. “Janis.”
As the name left her lips, Garrett let out a loud oomph! He slammed forward, falling into her, the force causing both of them to lose their balance and tumble off the slab. She felt herself falling but couldn’t see anything. The chamber’s stone floor came fast. She felt a sharp pain as her elbow raked across the stone, her skin pulling away. She felt a knee or maybe an elbow dig into her side. To her right she heard a clanging of metal as Garrett’s sword slid away from them into the shadows.
“Bre! You okay?” Garrett asked, untangling himself from her.
“I’m… I’m okay,” she managed, blinking away the cloudiness as she pushed herself up onto her elbows just in time to catch movement from above as Pete rushed forward.
“Janis! What in god’s name are you doing?” Pete shouted.
Janis quickly turned to face him.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Why? Why would you do that, Ja—”
Pete stopped mid-sentence, like he was frozen perfectly still.
Janis had her back to Breanne but was standing in front of Pete, blocking her view. She could only see his face, which now held a confused frown that matched Breanne’s own.
Janis glanced back over her shoulder, looked right into Breanne’s eyes, and winked.
“Pete!” shouted Lenny, who was still on the slab. He stepped up behind him and put a tentative hand on Pete’s shoulder. “Pete, what’s wrong with you? Janis, what’s wrong with him?!”
Garrett stood now, pulling Breanne to her feet.
“Garrett, what’s happening?!” David shouted.
Paul was in motion now, moving forward toward his sister.
Pete looked into Janis’s eyes and searched for understanding but found nothing. Her eyes were as empty as an abyss, like looking into space on a starless night. He looked down then, and saw Janis holding the handle of a knife – its blade buried to the hilt in his stomach.
Pete tried to say something, but for some strange reason, words wouldn’t come. He blinked and smiled, tears spilling down his cheeks, then the darkness pressed in upon him as he tipped backward off the slab.
28
The Underneath
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Rural Chiapas State, Mexico
A hundred feet below, the walls around Sarah began to sink slowly, slipping downward. The sense of vertigo overtook her, and she threw her hands up as she stumbled forward, falling into the wall. Reflexively, Sarah widened her stance as if she were on a surfboard.
“Sarah! What is happening?!” Fredy yelled through the radio.
Sarah fumbled for the radio button on her vest and depressed it. “I… I don’t know!” she shouted back.
“Stay calm, Sarah – we’re getting you out!” Fredy’s voice came back in a false calm.
The sound of grinding stone echoed all around her. Sarah realized it then. The walls were moving by even faster, but it wasn’t the walls that were moving – it was her. She was rising up –fast.
“Christ – hurry, Fredy!”
Sarah was moving upward way too fast and gaining speed as she rose. She squatted down butt-to-heels, her fingertips touching the floor for balance. She didn’t know if the rising floor was going to stop or continue upward, smashing her into the statue that stood straddling the hole. The irony was not lost on her. I’m about to die by getting shoved up a giant statue’s ass. Her only hope was to try and time her arrival perfectly and jump clear before she was smashed into the statue.
Gabi ran on unsteady legs toward her father and Fredy as the ground beneath her trembled.
“Back! Back!” Andrés shouted, turning to Gabi and holding out his arm. “Stay back!”
Gabi stopped short and moved behind the leg of the giant, wrapping her arms around it for stability, as she heard Fredy tell Sarah they were getting her out.
Fredy released the button on the radio and with it all the false calm. “Andrés! Pull! Get Sarah out!” he shouted, grabbing hold of the rope still tied to the giant statue’s ankle.
“Sarah!” Gabi screamed, but the rumbling had grown so loud she couldn’t even hear her own shouts.
The floor shook violently, threatening to knock them all off their feet. Bones rattled on their wooden rods, and some of the skull racks collapsed into heaps, unable to withstand the jostling.
“Itzel! Get Gabi to the stairs!” Andrés shouted.
Gabi’s mom grabbed her by the wrist. She followed numbly, her mind not on the stairs. Her mind was on the hole – on Sarah. As she followed her mother toward the promise of safety, she never took her eyes from the hole.
“¡Ay, Dios mío!” Fredy shouted, realizing that as fast as they were pulling Sarah’s rope, they were only collecting slack. Fredy dropped the rope and crawled toward the edge, peering over the side as he clung to the floor, trying not to fall.
Andrés stopped pulling. “What’s happening!?”
“Sarah is coming up – and fast.”
Gabi sucked a sharp terrified breath that seemed to inflate her eyes rather than her lungs. As soon as Sarah broke the surface she leapt forward from the hole, launching upward and outward, narrowly missing the stone giant’s crotch.
Fredy sprang forward faster than Gabi had ever seen the older man move, his arms extending like a football goalie going for the ball. As Sarah fell into Fredy’s arms, the momentum sent both tumbling across the floor.
The
lid stopped even with the top of the floor in an abrupt clunk of finality.
Everything went quiet.
Gabi, Itzel, and María were at the stairs. Each stopped, frozen in place. No one breathed as they listened. The quiet filled the chamber with the silence of a sanctuary.
Finally, Fredy sighed in relief. “Are you alright, Sarah?”
Sarah nodded. “I’m… I’m okay, Fredy,” she said, pushing herself up onto her palms. “Is everyone else alright?”
Itzel let go of Gabi’s hand and ran to Andrés, pulling him to his feet.
“Wait, Mamá,” Gabi started to say, and she wanted to say more too. She wanted to say, Come on, let’s go. We have to go! But as she opened her mouth to speak, the lid beneath the giant statue began to rotate.
“¡¿Qué diablos?!” Andrés shouted.
The lid clicked into place, and with a violent jolt the entire room dropped a full meter, knocking them all off their feet. The sound of grinding stone returned as the room began to sink.
In the center of the room the statue stood motionless, unmoving, not sinking. The lid and lip around it now formed a column.
Gabi looked up toward the scene on the wall. It was now pulling away from her as the floor sank. She knew it now, that wasn’t a lid at all. She thought about the room. A perfectly circular room, with a perfectly circular shaft dead center. She shook her head, frantically trying to comprehend – to understand what was happening. They were standing on a circular platform that was dropping. Like an elevator, she thought. The hollow column in the middle must somehow work as part of the mechanism.
Fredy wasn’t trying to figure out what was happening, he was shouting orders. “Andrés! María! Everyone! Get to the stairs!”
They all ran to the spiral staircase. From above lights bounced down the stairs.
Juan and Manuel appeared on the bottom step. “What is happening!?”
Andrés was the first to reach Gabi and the stairs, but the bottom step was nearly two meters high now. Her father snatched her up by the waist, lifting her in the air.
“Take her, Manuel! Take her!” Andrés begged as he held her by the waist above his head.
The two men fell to their hands and knees, reaching for Gabi.
“Reach, Gabriela! Reach!” her father screamed.
She did reach. She stretched her small hands out to the men with all she had, but the floor kept sinking and their hands pulled away. Sarah, her mother, and María all tried to jump too but none could make the grab.
Without warning, a crack opened at the bottom of the stairs. Gabi turned to see that the gap stretched all the way around the room. The floor continued to descend as the crack grew from a few centimeters into a dozen and then into a meter then more. An expanse of impenetrable darkness opened around them as cool air washed over the sinking platform. The few skull racks that remained standing tipped off the edge, the precious artifacts plummeting into the unknown.
Instinctively they all backed away from the edge.
The rumble softened as sound escaped into the vastness around them, but still they continued to descend.
“Manuel, go get rope!” Andrés shouted.
“Okay! I’ll return for you, compadres!” he said, disappearing up the stairs.
Gabi’s father grabbed her wrist with one hand, motioning to Itzel and María with the other. “Come on!” They ran back to where Sarah and Fredy stood near the center column, away from the edge of the platform. Her father held them tight to his chest, as if he were waiting for death itself to announce its arrival. “Sarah, what’s happening?”
“It must be another trap!” Fredy asked.
Sarah answered in a voice that wasn’t completely hysterical. She didn’t need to yell anymore either as the rumble dissipated into the darkness beyond. “No, I don’t think so, Fredy. This is too elaborate. We’re descending to—”
“To the lower chamber!” Gabi burst out. “The one where the god sleeps!”
29
Judas
Wednesday, April 6 – God Stones Day 1
Petersburg, Illinois
Garrett stood on the temple floor next to Breanne, staring up at Janis. Lenny stood next to her, his own face flooded with horror. In that moment Garrett’s emotions stalled. He felt like he was outside himself watching from somewhere else. This wasn’t real. None of this was actually happening. He didn’t just watch Janis stab Pete. He blinked, shaking his head. God, this couldn’t happen. This couldn’t really happen. But it was happening – it was.
Janis glared back down from the slab, her face as hard and cold as the steel blade still in her hand.
“Pete!” Lenny screamed down from the slab, his eyes going wide. “What the…?” He reached down into the small back pocket of his dobok where he had safely tucked the knife Paul had loaned him in trade for the staff – but it was gone. “Garrett! That’s Paul’s knife! She took it when she grabbed my ass earlier!”
Janis turned to Lenny.
The strange surrealistic feeling faded as fear clenched hold of Garrett, but it wasn’t fear for himself. “Lenny! Jesus, Lenny, get out of there!” he shouted, as he and Breanne ran to Pete, who lay facedown on the slab in a pool of his own blood.
Janis turned to face Lenny, who was still standing on the slab. “Well, Lenny, what’s it going to be? You can join your friends down there or bleed up here.”
“For the record, I never really trusted you, Janis.” Lenny threw a roundhouse kick at the girl’s face.
Janis easily slipped the kick and countered with a fast, stabbing thrust, the serrated blade slicing open Lenny’s dobok and the flesh of his shoulder along with it.
“Ah!” Lenny shouted, spinning away.
Janis didn’t hesitate, snapping a quick kick into Lenny’s back. The momentum sent him flailing off the slab.
Lenny tucked when he hit the floor, rolled, and sprang back to his feet. He spun back toward the slab, ready to give it another go, but stopped abruptly when he heard Janis start chanting. It was a low mumble at first, but as she continued, her voice became louder, more commanding.
“What the hell is she doing?” Lenny asked, craning his head to look down at his shoulder.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good! Are you okay?” Garrett asked.
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s very deep,” Lenny said.
“Help me with Pete,” Garrett said, grabbing one of Pete’s wrists as he nodded for Lenny to grab the other.
“I’ll get his feet,” Breanne said.
Pete didn’t move and his arm was limp. Garrett’s stomach turned.
With Lenny and Breanne’s help, he dragged Pete away from the stone slab and the chanting Janis. David and Paul joined them. “This way,” Garrett said. He knew they couldn’t go back toward the entrance – Eugene and Dagrun were both in the way. They couldn’t flee to the other side of the slab unless they wanted to risk getting closer to the sleeping dragon. They went in the only direction they could and backed themselves into the one corner void of giants, dragons, or evil wizards.
Eugene moved cautiously toward Janis as she continued to chant.
Dagrun carefully followed, matching Eugene’s movements.
“Garrett, do you remember the story I told you about Sun Tzu?” Eugene yelled toward the group, without taking his eyes off Dagrun. “He wrote that book The Art of War. You remember?”
Garrett spotted his sword lying behind him against the chamber wall. He dropped Pete’s wrist and lunged forward, grabbing his sword.
“Do you remember, my boy?”
Eugene loved to teach kids lessons, whether it be about the lord or life in general – always in a humble way, never by putting himself above others. But there was something different in his tone now, something strange in the look. Something that hinted at… contempt.
On the slab, Janis chanted faster now.
Garrett tightened his grip on the hilt and set his jaw. He had come to trust Eugene more than any other adult. In fact, he’
d admired him. Garrett watched the man’s face now, but it wasn’t admiration he felt. Now he felt… sick. Sick because in that moment he knew he had been fooled.
“Sun Tzu taught us to subdue the enemy!” he shouted, nodding sharply to Janis.
The ground began to shake as giant spears of stalagmite broke through the floor.
“What’s happening?!” Breanne shouted over the rumble.
Each spear was part of a uniform row, stretching up, gaining in height and width, until finally crashing into the ceiling one after the other. Chunk! Chunk! Chunk!
By the time the stalagmite spears stopped growing, they were only inches apart. Suddenly they were in a cell built of thick stone columns, each at least a couple feet in circumference. Garrett and the other five were effectively trapped, separated from Janis, Dagrun, and Eugene by large stone pillars.
Coach Dagrun ran forward.
“Stop right there or I’ll burn them alive!” Eugene ordered, raising his hands up, fingers splayed. Then for effect he curled both hands into tight fists of burning grey flame. “Think I won’t do it?”
Dagrun stopped.
So, there it is, I’ve failed, Garrett thought. Eugene is Apep.
Eugene paced in front of the stone cell. “Oh dear, Garrett. Oh my, you’re in a real mess now. You were the last hope for your Keepers of the Light. How sad for you, how sad for your pathetic world. You can’t be blamed, no, no,” he said, waving a finger. “What a pathetic prophecy. Doomed from the beginning. I should know, I was here long before it was written.”
Everything was spinning out of control. How was he supposed to fix this? Wasn’t that what the prophecy said? He was the chosen one? Now they were trapped. Pete lay on the floor bleeding. So much blood. Paul had passed out too – the blood loss from his leg must have finally been too much.
