He took a great heaving breath in the open air. A light breeze kicked sand around. The moon was high overhead. Dylan and Simon were standing nearby, talking with one of the translators. They turned and looked at him critically.
“You okay dude?” Asked Simon.
“Just, uh, got lost for a minute,” Jonas said as he sat on the top step.
“Got lost? How? There's one tunnel leading to one small room.” Simon scratched his head and tried working out how someone could get lost in such a small space.
Jonas looked up at the hulking man. “My lantern went out, and I guess I walked into the center of the room instead of to a wall.”
“So why are you sweating like that? It's nice out today. The weather forecast said ten degrees,” Simon said.
“Ten degrees? That's freezing,” Jonas argued.
“Celsius, Jonas.” Dylan’s voice carried a hint of laughter, though his face was calm.
Jonas stopped kneading his ankle. “I knew that. That's like a nice summer day for us.”
“Exactly. So why are you sweating?” Simon asked the question again.
Jonas shook his head before speaking. “I thought I saw something down there. I don't know. Mummies and shit.”
“Mummies? How? The room is bare,” asked Dylan.
“I thought I heard something in the darkness, then I saw a flash of mummies when I flicked my lighter. Except, when I lit my lantern, there was nothing.” He eased his hand open. The shen ring had left an impression on his palm.
Simon stepped closer to examine the lighter. “Huh, that looks like the Eye of Horus.”
Both Dylan and Jonas looked at him in surprise. “What? I paid attention sometimes. Gods are cool. Just because I play football doesn't mean I'm dumb.”
“Well then, smart guy, what does the Eye mean?” Dylan said with a jab at his friend.
“Protection, royalty, and good health. You want to keep that hand, don't punch me again,” Simon rumbled. Dylan looked a little shocked at the response. It was a long moment before he started laughing. “Got you, tiny. How did you get that lighter, Jonas?”
“It was a gift from a friend back in the states. I think he just thought it looked cool, and he knew I was coming to Egypt. Anyway, we need to get lights into the antechamber and start investigating the room more thoroughly.” Jonas tenderly stood on his ankle. It throbbed a little, but he could stand and walk.
“Antechamber, huh? Alright, we're on it,” Dylan replied. He and Simon went back to giving orders and the translator repeated them in Arabic. Nothing happened. The diggers refused to move.
“What's going on?” Jonas asked.
The translator turned and spoke with one of the diggers. The man replied in Arabic, which was translated back to English for Jonas, Simon, and Dylan.
“He said there was a cartouche? Uh, something of legend. It is forbidden to work in this place.” He turned and asked the digger a series of questions, then started to speak to Jonas in English once more. “The curse of the Pharaohs warns man from disturbing the rest of a Pharaoh, or he will suffer terrible luck, illness… even death. The Egyptian diggers will not enter the pyramid anymore. He says you should not either. You might convince the Turkish diggers to stay.”
Jonas had a brief flashback to the dark room, the mummies lit by the sparks of his lighter. He shook his head to clear it and replied to the translator.
“Tell them we are paying them good money. We need their help moving equipment and processing the dig.”
“The men will not enter anymore. They will only help outside of the pyramid. This is the way it is. You cannot tell them different.” The man looked apologetic, delivering the news with a questioning shrug.
Jonas sighed, looked at his classmates, then nodded. “Okay. They can stay out here, but we need them to work to make up for it, especially if it's just the three of us in there.”
The translator nodded and spoke to the men. Jonas could see the relief and agreement on the men's faces. A quick back and forth with the translator had the rest nodding. “The Turks, they will not enter either. Not until they get more pay.”
“I don’t have the authority for that. Let them stay up here and we’ll figure something out later.” Jonas shook his head, then started giving orders. “Guess that means the rest of it is on us, until Professor Calhoun gets back.”
“What about the radio?” asked Dylan.
Jonas shook his head. “The Professor said that was for emergencies only.”
“You would think finding mummies would be enough of an emergency to warrant calling him,” Dylan said.
“We don’t even know for sure that I saw mummies. It might have been a trick of the light. Let’s find out first. Simon, I need you to get the mobile generator going, then bring the lights down. Dylan is going to manage everything up here. I’m going to grab the camera and document the antechamber. Let's get moving.”
Simon started to nod, then noticed Jonas favoring his leg. “What happened bro?”
Jonas looked at his ankle then back up to Simon. “I fell, twisted my ankle.”
“That’s no good. Alright, let’s get that looked at.” Simon helped Jonas over to a chair then took his shoe off. Simon poked and prodded, eliciting hisses of pain from Jonas. He started to move the offending foot around. Finally, he stood and tossed the shoe back to Jonas.
“You’re fine. Won’t even need a wrap. I bet you don’t even feel it in half an hour.”
“Thanks,” Jonas said dryly. He put the shoe back on, noting that it had started feeling better already. “Alright, let’s get to work.”
Both students nodded and began relaying orders through the translator as they worked. Jonas hobbled back to his tent, unlocked a cabinet, and retrieved a camera. He grabbed extra rolls of film, having a feeling he would go through at least a hundred frames.
Ten minutes later, Jonas was in the antechamber again, looking at the blank walls. The work lights lit every surface in harsh relief. He was thankful they worked and hoped they would stay lit as long as they were down there. The only decoration to be seen was the single cartouche. He framed the cartouche in the center of the shot and snapped multiple pictures from different angles. He hoped his film captured the detail in the design. He couldn't shake the image of the mummies from his head. As best as he could tell, the antechamber was the end.
Simon had started trying to break down the false wall with little success. The sandstone was harder than it had any right to be. He swung the pick with ferocity, yet it bounced off more often than biting into the wall. After several minutes with little progress to show, he took a break. Sweat had already started beading along his brow and he wiped it with his arm. Jonas was still wandering around the room, looking closely at every surface.
Simon watched him idly for a minute before asking “what are you looking for?”
“There has to be a mechanism or something to allow access deeper into the pyramid. Especially since you can't seem to get through that wall,” Jonas said as he pointed at the barely damaged rock face.
“It's harder than it looks.” Simon walked to the center of the room to look around. He felt the ground sink an inch under his foot. A grinding sound came from the walls, surprising both men as a section of the northern wall sank into the ground.
“What did you do?” Jonas held both hands out as if to stop all movement.
“Nothing,” said Simon. He took a step toward the newly open tunnel in front of him and the wall slid back into place. The process was quick and nearly silent.
Dylan stepped into the room just then. “Hey guys, they’re ready above. All we need to do is open it.”
“Hang on,” Jonas said as he stood where Simon had been. Nothing happened. Then he stepped away and indicated for Simon to stand there again. Once more, the wall sank out of sight. Jonas watched with fascination as a twelve-inch by six-inch rough square sank into the floor.
“It's a pressure plate, and you're too light to trigger it,” Simon said
.
“That makes no sense, a pressure plate is a terrible security measure. And I opened it earlier,” Jonas said grumpily.
“Is it so terrible if it takes a giant turd like Simon to open?” Dylan asked with a smirk.
“Bro,” Simon said.
“No, think about it. Millennia ago, Egyptians were tiny. I look big compared to them, and I’m five-four. The average person would have weighed closer to a hundred pounds, not the two-hundred-something Simon does.”
“One-ninety-five.”
“Fine, two hundred pounds. It looks like the plate is just big enough to hold Simon’s foot, so you really wouldn’t have had people that could easily trigger it on their own. A simple counterweight system triggered by the floor plate seems like it would be a good solution, especially if you needed regular access to the tomb.”
“Why the hell would you need regular access?” Simon asked in confusion. He stepped on the plate and released it repeatedly, watching the door move.
“My thoughts exactly,” said Dylan.
“Holy shit, this is centuries ahead of where they should have been, technologically,” Jonas said. “Especially if the whole mechanism is hidden and discrete.”
“We're going to be rich,” Simon said to Jonas' back.
“We're going to be famous,” Jonas replied. He stepped toward the tunnel, and the doorway closed again. “Hey!” He looked back, seeing a sheepish Simon.
“Ah, sorry, I wanted to see too. Let's find some way to keep it open while we explore.” Simon suppressed a shiver. “I don’t want to get locked inside of there, wherever it leads.”
“Before we do that, let me get a picture of you in front of the door with it open.” Jonas indicated the spot with his free hand, then held up the camera. “We need to document that it was done with a pressure plate.”
“Yeah, alright.” Simon posed in what he thought of as a heroic stance. Jonas snapped two pictures, momentarily blinding him with the flash. “Damn, that's bright.”
“Get over it. Let's find a weight and go look in the new area.”
Jonas and Simon grabbed a fifty-five-gallon drum of water from above and wrestled it down the stairs and into the antechamber. It took several tries to get it to sit in the right spot. Eventually, the door slid open. The dark tunnel lay beyond. Jonas dry swallowed, then held his lantern high and led the way.
18
“That's it?” Simon asked, his voice filled with disappointment.
“I guess so,” replied Jonas.
They were standing in an even smaller room with bare walls. A single work lamp had been brought in to light the room. It was tucked to the side of the doorway to allow passage. In the center of the room lay the sarcophagus. It was made of stone and painted with faded colors. Canopic jars were displayed on a crumbling shelf. Piles of jewelry lay in a circle around the coffin. Jonas took pictures of everything. When the camera clicked to indicate the end of the roll of film, he finished winding it and swapped for a fresh roll.
“I swear I saw like a dozen mummies.” Jonas circled it again, looking at the room from all sides.
“Yeah, but you did find a sarcophagus, that’s a major find all on its own,” Dylan said brightly. He stood near the doorway, watching as Jonas and Simon circled the stone coffin.
“Mhmm,” grunted Simon.
Jonas leaned over the stone cover of the sarcophagus. “This is fascinating. Look at this,” Jonas said as he snapped several photos. “This looks like a wadjet, and over here is a scarab on the chest. Look, the Uraeus.”
“The what?” Simon asked, confused by the term.
“The Uraeus. That's a Greek word, but it refers to the rearing cobra that Pharaohs wore. This one is on his forehead. Here's the Ankh... This is weird. The Ankh looks wrong. It’s like it’s upside-down… but the Egyptians never did that. And usually there's a Shen Ring somewhere on the Pharaoh's tomb.”
Simon leaned over to look at the lid as well. “Why? What does an upside-down Ankh mean?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t exist,” Jonas said in puzzlement.
“Then what would it mean if it did exist?” Simon asked again.
“Well, the Ankh means life, or breath of life. I guess if you treat it like the Cross from Christianity, it would mean the opposite. Un-life, or death.”
Jonas felt his skin crawl as he said it. He looked at the other two. They also appeared disturbed by the supposition.
Simon shook himself as if to warm back up. “What's the shen thing look like again?”
Jonas pulled his zippo out again. “Like this,” he said as he showed the backside of the lighter to Simon.
Simon kicked at the ground and said “like the gold braided rope that is under the jewelry around the sarcophagus?”
Jonas put the lighter away and looked around the tomb. He could see the rope Simon was talking about. A few moments of clearing jewelry away showed it encircled the stone entirely. Large portions of the rope flaked away as he touched it.
“Huh, usually it's not that big.” Jonas, for a change, sounded confused.
“What could it mean?” Simon, while not the cleverest man to walk the earth, had a habit of asking the right questions.
“It's one of the symbols of protection. Strange to see it so big. Anyway, I've got pictures of everything. We're going to need to catalogue every piece of jewelry, the jars, everything. I suggest we go little by little.” Jonas let the camera hang from its strap around his neck as he bent over to inspect the jewelry closer. “Oh, and make sure nothing ends up in your pocket. The curse of the Pharaohs might not be real, but the sentence for smuggling artifacts definitely is.”
“Duh,” Simon said as he shifted uncomfortably. “I'm going to start carrying some of the jewelry out.”
“I’ll help and get the paperwork started up above,” Dylan said.
Jonas put the jewelry back down, stood and brushed his hands on his pants. “Sounds good. I'm going to see if I can get the sarcophagus open.”
In a rare show of concern, Simon said “be careful, it's probably really heavy.”
“Thanks, I will.” Jonas started circling the sarcophagus again, looking for any gap in the seal.
Simon gathered up a massive armful of the jewelry, accidentally yanking on the braided rope. It broke, fragile due to extreme age.
“Simon! Take a piece or two at a time,” Jonas admonished the bigger man. “You broke the rope.”
“Oh, damn. Sorry,” Simon said as he walked out. Dylan took a handful of jewelry, sneezing at the dust, then he followed Simon out. Jonas thought he felt something change in the room, but couldn't see anything that had moved.
“Why was the Shen ring made from rope anyway? It’s normally carved into a sarcophagus when it is present,” Jonas wondered aloud. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. But, we’re here to discover the legacy of the Pharaoh Atakheramen.”
Just saying the name gave Jonas the shivers. He looked around the small room at the blank walls. He cleared a spot to stand on one side of the sarcophagus and took a deep breath to steel himself. He tried to budge the stone. Nothing happened. When Simon returned, he caught the bigger man.
“Hey, I need help moving this.”
“That thing probably weighs a thousand pounds. You’re not moving it, not even with my help.”
“Look, can we just try?”
Simon shrugged, then took up a position next to Jonas. Together they shoved and were rewarded by a stone-on-stone grinding.
“There’s no way in hell we’re actually moving this thing,” Simon grunted through the strain of moving the slab of stone.
“Keep pushing!”
Inch by inch, the lid moved. Soon they could see a strange powder covering the edge of the sarcophagus where the lid had lain for presumed millennia. They stopped just before the lid was ready to fall to the floor.
“What the hell is this?” Simon asked as he touched the powder.
“Don’t!” Jonas shouted. He caught Simon’s hand bef
ore the larger man could sniff the residue. “Wipe your hand off. You have no idea what that is.”
“It’s not like it’s cocaine. Though, it kinda looks like it. Too powdery though, like baby powder actually.”
“Maybe that’s why we were able to move the lid,” Jonas mused aloud.
“Not likely. We shouldn’t have been able to move that stone at all.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Nope,” Simon said as he took another armful of jewelry. Jonas shrugged, checked the far side was clear, and pushed the lid the last bit. The lid slid over and to the floor with a resounding crash.
A wood coffin lay inside the sarcophagus. The Eye of Horus was emblazoned on the wood, both painted and carved in. Additional grinding could be heard, and Jonas looked around in surprise. All around him, walls were sinking into the floor. Mummies surrounded him.
“Gah,” he shouted. He stepped to the side and bumped into one that toppled over and collapsed into dust. More than a dozen mummies were now surrounding him. Some stood up, weapons in hand, while others lay in open sarcophagi. Standing where he was, they appeared like sun rays off the central room. Piles of jewelry lay like drifts of snow everywhere in the greater room. The vault that lay behind the burial chamber was an unusual design. More notably, while the tomb had been a scant fifteen feet by ten, the vault was much larger. Jonas guessed it was thirty or forty feet deep in a half circle around the burial chamber.
Simon rushed into the room and paused at the entry. “Woah, dude. What was that massive crash?” Simon looked around, then back at Jonas. “I guess there was more after all.”
Jonas stood at the far end of the Sarcophagus. “The lid fell. I guess there was another hidden mechanism that lowered the walls when the lid was removed.”
“Huh. Well, there's going to be a lot more work now, so give me a hand. And stop finding new shit! Hey, what's that?” Simon pointed to the pile of dust.
“That… was a mummy.” Jonas sighed. “I bumped into it when the walls opened.”
“Gross. Wait, that’s not how mummies work.” Simon looked at Jonas, then pointed at his own side. “And you got some on you.”
Rakitaki: A Jonas Quartermain Adventure Page 14
