Book of Stolen Tales

by D J Mcintosh

  “Well, this ends our own expedition.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Keep your light trained on the stair for a minute longer so I can see better.”

  “Maybe—are you serious? We’d need a couple of centuries to remove all that debris.”

  I examined the entranceway in detail, especially the joins where the brick face met the floor. “Do you notice anything?” I asked.

  “Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?”

  “We’re looking at a clever deception.” I passed my hand along the wall. “Anyone who dropped into this room would be drawn immediately to this fourth wall. It may look like a gateway but I think it’s a trap.”

  “You start down the steps and you’re cut in half by swinging scythes or spikes coming out of the walls? Come on.”

  “Nothing that dramatic. They’ve told us, actually. It’s called ‘the land of no return, without exit.’ If this really is a gateway, where are the doors?”

  “What would they be made of?”

  “Wood—cedar, most likely.”

  “And you expect that to last six thousand years?”

  “Nebuchadnezzar built Nergal’s temple in the mid-500s B.C. And, yes, wood lasts that long. Not necessarily intact. There should at least be remnants and these bones are the only organic material here. And another thing.” I clicked on my light and trained it on the other walls. “Without cable how do you think we’d have made it back? Those walls are polished smooth; there are no hand- or footholds.”

  Shaheen gave the walls a measured glance. “You’re right.”

  “Even standing on your shoulders with my arms fully extended I wouldn’t be able to reach the rim of the tunnel. People in those days were a lot shorter. Once they’d discovered these stairs led nowhere, they’d be caught in here, temporarily at least. The bones prove it.”

  I redirected my light to a perfectly round hole positioned close to the ceiling. It resembled a kind of drain, but if that was its purpose, it was in a very strange position. No water from rain or natural seepage from the water table could be drained away from that location. Rather, the water would pour into this chamber. It wasn’t a drain at all but a conduit. Did it extend all the way to the ancient canal? I looked at the bones again. They weren’t scattered helter-skelter around the stair. I could see them bunched up in a pile against the barrier of rubble. As if after drowning, bodies had been pushed against the rubble by the force of water.

  “Here’s what I think. People, early grave robbers or whatever, got trapped in here, unable to get out quickly because of the difficulty of climbing back up those walls. Then, someone activated a triggering mechanism and water poured in to drown them. Even if they floated to the top, the rising water would have inundated the entire tunnel and that would have been too far for them to get out without oxygen. This chamber is a blind, a false route.”

  “That means we truly have reached a dead end.”

  “Maybe not. Let’s go back into the tunnel.”

  We hitched up the rope and made our way back up the tunnel until we reached one of the cavities we’d noticed before. It proved to be only a hollow space created when a fissure caved in. The second opening we came across was different, an empty space extending inward at least six feet before it appeared to bend. When I ventured into it and shone the light around the bend, another flight of steps appeared.

  I had a chance at that point to tell the other two it held nothing of interest. The foreboding I’d felt hadn’t left me since we climbed into the tunnel, and here it was greatly magnified. Deep in my bones I knew we were not meant to see what lay ahead. At the same time, the pull to go on was almost irresistible. I made up my mind to tell Shaheen I could see nothing here, that this route too was blocked. But it was too late. He appeared at my shoulder and shone his light on the stairs.

  “You’ve found another entrance,” he said. “Let’s get in there.”

  I knew he’d go in without me anyway so I hoisted myself into the gap and swung my legs down to touch the top of the stairs, which ended at another gate, this one with doors. Doors was a misnomer. Although bronze hinges held some of the organic material in place, the doors were barely more than deteriorated strips of wood with a prominent gap torn through the middle. Niches in the walls surrounding the gate held fired-clay cones.

  “The Mesopotamian version of a lantern. These would have been filled with oil and set alight,” I said to Shaheen as he squeezed through the gap.

  Some of the wood splinters from the ruined door fell away in a puff of dry wood dust, releasing a faint scent of cedar. “Another set of stairs here,” he said. A minute or so later he exclaimed, “What do you know!”

  When I reached him, the cause of his excitement was plain. At his feet were a couple of discarded plastic water bottles and energy bar wrappers.

  Shaheen pointed to them. “Army issue. Loretti and Hill were here. No question.” Ben, who’d come up from behind, voiced his agreement.

  A cloud of black flies hovered around me as we descended the stairway. They seemed to have materialized out of thin air and hung persistently near my head even though I waved my hand around to bat them away. I suddenly felt overcome with apprehension, much more acutely this time. Aboveground I could dismiss the underworld gods as relics of a primitive age. Quaint emblems of the past. In this dim warren the powerful mythic realities felt overwhelming. We’d broken into territory that ancient people held sacred and also greatly feared. Who was I to ignore their wisdom? The warnings about what lay ahead swung back to me with an alarming ferocity.

  The thrill of discovery had left me. I felt gripped by sober second thought and instinctively recoiled at the thought of going any farther. We had no business being here. I knew that from the moment we started digging. Too late for misgivings. Shaheen had already crossed the threshold of the first gate and had a mission to find the source of the stone weight. He had the instincts and tenacity of a pit bull and backing off wasn’t in his vocabulary. Whatever lay ahead, I wouldn’t abandon him.

  Forty-Eight

  It was a considerable surprise, then, when Shaheen instructed us to wait. The three of us crouched together, poised at the top of the flight of stairs. If we were going in, despite my apprehension, I wanted to get it over with. The suits were hot and uncomfortable; the helmets made it tough to breathe. My throat ached. I couldn’t understand Shaheen’s reluctance.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “Waiting for reinforcements,” he replied. “This is the real thing and I don’t think three of us is enough. John, why don’t you get ahead of me? Your knowledge of these old sites is much better than mine.”

  We changed positions. In hindsight, perhaps I let false pride obscure what should have been obvious. Even when I heard the rustle of someone making his way toward us, I didn’t suspect a thing. There had been signs, though, and I’d been oblivious to them. Shaheen had spoken into the intercom system right after we left the false chamber and I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t hear what he said. He must have had a second line of communication, closed off to me.

  Another sign. Shaheen’s reluctance to go the official route, not using military personnel to stand guard while we explored the site. And who were Ali, Ben, and the other contractor, really? I had only Shaheen’s word for it that they were on America’s side. Shaheen’s insistence on taking me to Iraq when he could have called on any number of archaeological experts for this expedition was another red flag. Now I knew why.

  A man made his way toward us and edged through the opening. He was suited and booted like us. When he lifted his head my body went rigid with shock. Mancini.

  Shaheen had his pistol out, aimed at me. His voice sounded harsh through the intercom. “I’m a good shot even from much farther away. And my bullets will work.”

  “You bastard,” I raged. “You’re a total scum. A fucking traitor. Shoot that thing off in here you’ll just bury us all.”

  His tinny laugh sailed through the speaker. I couldn’t h
ear Mancini but saw his sly smile through the Plexiglas plate of his helmet.

  “They’re hollow points. They’ll cut up your insides so bad it will look like someone put them in a blender. They won’t leave your body, so no impact on the surrounding walls. Don’t put it to the test. Get going. You’re our front man in case there’re problems ahead.”

  “Forget it. I’m not moving.”

  He tightened his fingers around the grip. “You’ve got about ten seconds.”

  He calculated I’d be too unnerved by the sight of his gun to try anything so I took him by surprise when I bashed him in the chest with my jacklight. I tried to knock his gun aside with my right arm, but I was up against all his military training. He deflected the blow and jammed the gun barrel into my neck. “You get one stupid move, not two. Move it.”

  The only hope I had was time. If I slowed down and stayed alert as we descended the stairs, there was a minuscule chance some opportunity would present itself, another cavity perhaps, or a new branch I could run into. I clammed up and moved at a snail’s pace toward the first entrance.

  This flight of stairs differed dramatically from the one above. It had the same polished brick on the floor and roof as in the false chamber but the walls were plastered, probably over a similar type of brick. Most of the frescoes here were intact, startling and stunningly well executed—frightening hybrids, chimeras the Greeks had called them. Vulture-headed lions with claws extended; fish bodies with human heads and feet; thick, coiled snakes. They were intended as warnings. Altogether too late for me.

  The frame of the first gate had been made of wood. The second was constructed of stone. Half of the set of doors had been ripped clean away. The other side remained intact. Shaheen pointed at the floor and I saw a circular stone door jamb, shaped to allow it to pivot easily. The presence of this type of door indicated a high-status structure. An ancient bronze bolt dangled on the other side. Debris fell in a trail down the next flight of steps.

  “Who would have destroyed these doors?” Shaheen asked. “Loretti and Hill?”

  “Unlikely. A thick layer of dust has accumulated under the intact door,” I said tersely.

  Mancini played his light over the third flight of stairs.

  “We must be almost fifty feet underground now,” Shaheen said. “How much farther do you think will this go on?”

  “Not until we reach hell, where you belong. If you’re counting, we’ll probably pass through seven gates.”

  Just as I predicted, we entered three more gates, one finished in copper, green with age, and one of bronze. What remained of the fifth was black with tarnish, which meant it had been faced with silver. The flies stayed with us all the way, swarming around our heads, searching for a way to penetrate our suit fabric and nest in our eyes and ears. As we made our way down, my head cleared somewhat and I kept a close eye out for tunnels that might have been excavated off to the side. I couldn’t see so much as an alcove, nor any culverts to drain away water flow.

  It was extremely dry. No sign of water runoff or drips from the ceiling. In ancient times, this close to the canal and with periodic, if slight, rainfalls, there would have been a good deal of moisture underground. The early builders must have constructed the tunnel we’d first shimmied through to drain water away from the site much closer to the surface. The fact that it was so dry now meant their engineering still operated effectively.

  Each foot we dropped, a greater and greater pressure descended on me. The murky surroundings and progression of ominous chimeras covering the walls added to my fear. I picked up the tones of a flute again, very faintly. Mesmerizing music with all the joy stripped out of it. Each step I took felt blacker and I knew I was indeed on a one-way road. There was no way I was getting out. Shaheen would execute me once we reached the end, of that much I was certain. His betrayal cut me so deeply I could still barely comprehend it.

  Shaheen faced life-threatening conditions all the time. If you confronted your fears every day on your job, you found a way to cope. He seemed able to meet every setback or precarious situation with some wisecrack as if he were indestructible and the sheer force of his personality would see him through. And remembering what he’d endured growing up, I thought he wasn’t far wrong. You could either take life on the chin or be swamped by it. Early on, he’d chosen the former.

  His ability to stare down adversity had also warped his human side. There were only so many times you could kill, even to survive, before it permanently altered your soul. Mancini had obviously found a way to get through to him.

  At the seventh gate the stairs bottomed out to a flat, square platform. Here, small polychrome terracotta cones had been applied to the gateway wall to produce remarkable geometric mosaic designs, and the gateway doors, completely intact, stopped even my three opponents in their tracks. The doors were covered with sheets of hammered gold.

  On the right-hand wall, early craftsmen had painted an image of a winged demon, Namtar, guardian of the gate to the throne room I was sure lay just beyond the doors. Ben set his jacklight on the floor and in the odd configuration of light, the demon’s form appeared to move. Mancini motioned to Shaheen. In a recess below the image of Namtar sat a collection of around two dozen stone rings identical to the weight Alessio had stolen from Renwick.

  Mancini bent down and scrutinized them. He glanced up at Shaheen and said something on their private communication channel.

  This was where the scientists had found the pathogen, contained within the ancient collection of spindle whorls. I hoped the fungus was still firmly locked inside them.

  Shaheen ordered me to sit with my back against the wall. I refused. What difference did it make? I had little time left anyway. In my throat, I could feel my heart beating raggedly. They planned to leave my body here, where it would never be found.

  “Load them up and for God’s sake let’s get out of here,” Shaheen said to Ben without taking his eyes off me. Ben shrugged off his backpack and unzipped the flap. Pulling on an extra pair of gloves, he crouched down and began dumping the weights into a polyethylene bag inside the pack.

  Mancini went over to the doors and ran his hands across the gold surface. He put his head against one of the panels. I imagined he was hearing the same music I could detect, barely audible through my helmet.

  While Mancini’s attention was distracted by the doors, Shaheen motioned with his gun again for me to get down. The hell with that. I’d run out of options, I knew, but I could still run for it. I eyed the opening we’d just come through and tried to gauge whether I could sprint up the stairs before Shaheen fired off a round. The fear curdling my gut told me otherwise.

  Shaheen’s eyes shifted. Almost as if he were directing me toward the stairs. Engrossed in his examination of the doors, Mancini had his back to us. In a moment of blinding joy, I understood.

  It was not me he planned to execute.

  I crept over to the stairway and Shaheen gave me a slight nod. Still oblivious, Mancini pressed against the doors. The thin melody of pipes suddenly swelled to a deafening wail. Ben dropped his knapsack and stared at Mancini in alarm. Mancini put his palms flat against the doors and pushed with all his might. There was a loud click. He braced his shoulder to the golden surfaces and shoved again.

  The doors burst open like plywood shutters breached in a hurricane.

  Forty-Nine

  Mancini’s light radiated off a huge room, every surface a shimmering, translucent blue. A blue so iridescent it mimicked the shafts of sunlight underneath a tropical sea. Every part of the interior—floor, walls, ceiling—was fashioned from sheets of the royal gemstone, lapis lazuli.

  Against the back wall were two immense thrones of inlaid ivory and hammered gold. They were reflected, gold on blue, in the mirror-like walls and floor. On the wall behind the thrones mosaic tiles had been used to create the life-size image of a white horse.

  In the midst of this splendor, the protracted disintegration of thousands of dead creatures stunned us into
silence. Cruel hooks hung from the ceiling and on some of these rib cages still swung, the cartilage having dried and stuck like glue. The rest of the bones, long ago detached, had fallen to the floor. They’d been severely damaged—skulls flattened, long bones snapped in half, others crushed beyond recognition. They lay in cascading heaps reflected in the ceiling and blue walls rising above them. We stared at the sight. Khalid`s haunting reference to the jinn, the desert demon who feasted on rotting flesh, came back to me.

  Mancini and Ben ventured through the doors and then halted as if they’d hit an invisible wall. Shaheen raised his gun again but dropped it and put his hands to his head. Mancini tore offhis breathing mask and flailed his hands as if to ward offsome threat. His voice broke and I realized he was crying. Ben ripped his mask off, jammed his hands over his ears, and screamed.

  A shadow grew on the back wall, not phantom gray but deep maroon, the color of a spreading bloodstain. Amorphous at first, the shadow enlarged and split into two. The shapes began to take form.

  One of them grew an abbreviated snout that widened into a viper’s head with dark red pits for nostrils. Its body took on the thick muscular form of a predator; wings sprouted from its shoulders and raptor’s claws curled out from its back feet. It wagged its snake head back and forth, like a cobra hypnotizing its prey. The image of Nergal.

  The other curved into the hour-glass shape of a woman with horns on her spiky head and talons for feet, the sharp killing tools of the owl: Ereshkigal.

  The things had a ponderous, dull quality and appeared to be without consciousness as we would understand it. Primordial figures from a time much deeper in history, before humans took their first great journey from Africa to Arabia.