Secret of the Ankhs: A Maggie Edwards Adventure (Maggie Edwards Adventures Book 2)

by Nellie H. Steele

  Chapter 18

  “Sorry,” Maggie squeaked.

  Emma stalked down the steps and over to her discarded flashlight. “Next time don’t touch anything!” she snapped. She snatched her flashlight from the floor.

  “Sorry, Emma! But I thought it would lead to another chamber or something. Not lock us in!”

  “Well, thanks to your brilliance, we ARE locked in!”

  Maggie shrugged a shoulder. “For a few minutes. All they have to do is press the button up there and we’re out!”

  “Oh, really?” Emma inquired.

  “Yeah. Quit freaking out. We’re fine.”

  “If it’s so easy, why haven’t they pressed it already?”

  Maggie considered the statement for a moment. “Probably just Piper and Charlie were in the room. She’s probably too afraid to push it herself. Uncle Ollie will do it as soon as he’s back.”

  “I hope our air lasts that long.”

  “Oh, quit being a pessimist. Let’s just keep looking around. Maybe we’ll find the ankh.”

  Silence fell between them. Maggie stalked across the chamber and scanned the floor with her flashlight. After a moment, a muffled sound reached Maggie’s ears. She stopped, listening hard.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What? The sound of our air slowly running out?”

  “Shh! No! That sound. Sounds like…” Maggie paused, listening again.

  “Voices!” Emma said.

  Both women raced to the steps and clamored up them. “Henry?” Maggie called.

  “Ollie?” Emma shouted.

  “Maggie!” Henry’s voice sounded miles away.

  “Henry! Henry, I pushed something down here and it closed the opening. Push the gemstone so we can get out!”

  A garbled answer came through the slab. Maggie glanced at Emma. The flashlight’s beam cast an eerie glow across her face. Emma shook her head.

  “Henry! We can’t hear you. You’ll have to yell!” Maggie shouted back.

  A disjointed response came back. “… stuck… your end!”

  Maggie turned her ear toward the ceiling, her brow wrinkling in concentration. “Try again, we still can’t hear!”

  Both Emma and Maggie pressed as close to the ceiling as they could. Henry’s muted voice answered them in a slow, forceful manner. “The gemstone is stuck. Is there a trigger on your end?”

  Maggie’s heart skipped a beat. She glanced wide-eyed at Emma. “Did he say stuck?”

  Emma shouted at the ceiling. “Repeat! Did you say stuck?”

  “Yes!” Henry shouted back. “Stuck. We cannot open on our end!”

  Emma shook her head and shouted back, “Get Ollie.”

  “Ollie’s here!” Henry’s voice returned. “Sit tight while we work on this.”

  Maggie slumped to sit on the step. Emma settled next to her and sunk her head into her hands.

  Maggie glanced sideways at her. “They’ll get it unstuck,” she assured Emma.

  “Why did you have to touch that?”

  “I didn’t realize it would shut the door from all the way over there! I figured it would open another passage or a little hiding spot for the ankh!”

  “Figures the one time things don’t go your way, I’m the one who pays the price!”

  “Hey! We’re both stuck down here!” Maggie paused. “And like I said, I’m sure they’ll have us out in no time.”

  Maggie checked her phone and noted the time. She clicked off the display and toggled off her flashlight. “No sense wasting batteries.”

  Emma switched hers off as well. The chamber plunged into darkness. “Wow,” Maggie murmured. “It’s darker in here than I expected.”

  “We’re in a sealed underground chamber, what did you expect?”

  “I expected it to be less creepy than this.”

  Emma sighed at Maggie’s response.

  “Oh, stop being so gloomy.”

  “Gee, maybe your special sunshine can light the darkened chamber, Maggie!”

  “Will you get off my case?”

  “Just stop talking, Maggie.” Emma sighed. “Ollie’s wrong. Rosemont isn’t big enough for the both of us,” she murmured.

  “What?” Maggie questioned.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, it’s not nothing.” Maggie toggled the flashlight on and shined it toward Emma. “You said something about Rosemont. Did you say it wasn’t big enough for the both of us?”

  Emma sighed again, shielding her eyes from the light. “Yes, that’s what I said. Shine that thing somewhere else.”

  Maggie swung the beam away from Emma. “Are you thinking of moving to Rosemont?” Maggie inquired.

  Emma refrained from responding for a moment. “Not really.”

  “Why would that even come up then?”

  “There’s an assistant director position open at the museum there. Ollie encouraged me to apply. Said he’d put a good word in for me.”

  “But you’re not taking it?”

  “No. Like I said, that town’s not big enough for both of us.”

  “I thought you were happy working here?” Maggie asked.

  “The tomb’s not going to need an archeologist on site forever. Look, let’s just drop it, okay?”

  “But…” Maggie began.

  “Drop it! And turn that light off.”

  Maggie clicked off the flashlight. She sighed and sunk her chin into her hand. Silence consumed the space again. They sat without speaking as time crawled by.

  Maggie checked her phone again. She groaned as she toggled her phone off.

  “How long’s it been?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Maggie answered.

  Emma moaned. “Seems like it’s been an eternity.”

  “There’s something we can agree on.”

  A shout interrupted their conversation. They scrambled to their feet and pressed against the room’s roof. “Maggie!” Henry called.

  “Yeah?”

  “We can’t budge the gem. It’s no good. We’ll have to find another way to open it. Is there anything on your side?”

  “We’ll check!” Maggie yelled. She toggled on her flashlight.

  “We didn’t find anything when we came down,” Emma said.

  “Well, let’s check again, come on!”

  Emma toggled on her flashlight and they searched the immediate area. They found nothing.

  “HENRY!” Maggie hollered. “We can’t find anything! We’ll keep looking, but there’s no trigger here!”

  “Okay! We’re talking through ideas here!”

  “Come on,” Maggie said to Emma, “let’s keep searching. Hey! Maybe I should press that heart button again!”

  “NO!” Emma shouted. “No, don’t touch anything else!”

  Maggie shrugged. “Fine. You take one side and I’ll take the other. Yell if you find anything.”

  Emma rolled her eyes but stalked to one side of the room. Maggie ambled to the other. She swept her beam up and down the wall. She searched for any triggers, but found nothing. Maggie made it a quarter of the way down the wall when she heard a muffled voice.

  Both Maggie and Emma raced up the steps. “Henry!” Maggie called.

  “Maggie! We’re working on a plan up here to try to move the pedestal or break through the floor. It’ll take us some time. Sit tight.”

  “Okay! We’ll keep searching on our end, too!”

  Maggie and Emma returned to their search. Maggie finished her wall and began a search of the back wall. She ended with her flashlight beam aimed at the heart carving. Maggie’s gaze lingered on it.

  “Don’t touch that,” Emma warned.

  Maggie spun to face her. “Did you find anything?”

  “Nope.” Emma placed her back against the wall and slid to sitting.

  “Me either,” Maggie replied, joining her on the floor.

  Emma clicked off her flashlight. “Looks like we wait.”

  The chamber plunged into darkness as Maggie toggled her flashlig
ht off. Within twenty minutes, the sound of work above reached their ears. Muffled scraping, banging and pounding filtered through the stone floor.

  Maggie glanced upward. She hoped to see a glint of light peek through the ceiling at any moment. Blackness still surrounded them. The ruckus continued for over an hour. Maggie’s head began to pound in unison with the racket.

  As she massaged her temples, the noise ceased. Maggie breathed an internal sigh of relief. She continued to rub at her forehead.

  “Wonder if they made any progress,” Maggie said.

  “Well, there’s no light shining through from the room above and we’re still down here, so they haven’t made enough,” Emma answered.

  “Ugh,” Maggie responded. “At least the pounding stopped. It’s starting to give me a headache.”

  “You’ll have a worse headache when our air starts to run out.”

  “Thank you, Emma. You’re always a ray of sunshine.”

  “Why do you think they stopped?” Emma inquired.

  Maggie shrugged as she considered it. She had pondered the same thing. “Maybe they’re trying a new strategy.”

  “Or maybe they’re stuck.”

  “Maybe they broke a tool and have to get another one.”

  “I don’t know. It seems strange though,” Emma said.

  “They’ll start up again soon,” Maggie answered.

  They sat for thirty minutes with silence filling the chamber. “I can’t believe they haven’t started up again,” Maggie said.

  “Perhaps they went to eat,” Emma conjectured.

  “Doubt it,” Maggie answered.

  “Doubt it? What time is it?”

  Maggie checked her cell phone. “Five,” she answered as she clicked off the display.

  “Dinner time, just like I said.”

  “Henry would never leave me down here to go eat dinner,” Maggie argued.

  “Oh, right. I forgot. He worships the ground you walk on. He’d starve to death rather than eat BEFORE he rescues you.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes in the dark. “I’m just saying that he wouldn’t stop working. If they are eating, I think they’d continue working. Do you really believe everyone up there would head off to dinner and leave us down here?”

  Emma sighed. “No, I don’t. But it’s better than the alternative.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “They stopped working, period.”

  “Why would they do that?” Maggie inquired.

  “That’s the million-dollar question. But I haven’t heard anything for a while up there.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Which worries me.”

  Emma’s statement settled on Maggie like a lead weight. Worry grew within her. Why had the work stopped? Had they hit a problem? Did a tool break? Did something happen to one of them? Maggie bit her lower lip as a crease deepened in her forehead.

  Another few minutes passed. Maggie strained her ears for sounds of any activity above them. No sound penetrated through the ceiling.

  Maggie climbed to her feet and clicked on her flashlight.

  “Where are you going?” Emma questioned.

  “To find out if I can hear anything from up there.” Maggie climbed the steps and listened. No sound reached her ears.

  “Anything?”

  “No,” Maggie said with a shake of her head. “HENRY!”

  The sound of Maggie’s voice echoed in the silent chamber. “HENRY!” Maggie called again.

  No answer came. “HENRY! UNCLE OLLIE! ANYONE?”

  No one responded. Emma joined her on the steps. “There’s no one there.” With her eyes wide, Maggie faced Emma.

  “HELLO!” Emma hollered. She pounded against the ceiling.

  “No one’s there,” Maggie repeated. She crumpled to the step below her.

  Emma collapsed next to Maggie. “Dinner time?”

  “This long? It’s been over thirty minutes. Close to an hour!”

  “Maybe they went to get help or more tools.”

  “Maybe, but…”

  “But?” Emma questioned.

  Maggie shook her head. “No, it’s not that. Neither of those.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They would have said something,” Maggie contended. “They wouldn’t have just left.”

  “What could have happened?”

  Maggie rose from her spot on the step and descended to the floor. She paced the room. “I’m not sure but we may be on our own.”

  “Let’s not panic just yet,” Emma answered.

  “I’m not panicked,” Maggie said, ceasing her pacing and spinning to face Emma. “But we need to be realistic here. They aren’t up there working! We may need a new plan.”

  “Let’s just sit tight.”

  “Sit tight? You’ve been yammering on about running out of air and you pick NOW to sit tight? How long can we survive down here?”

  Emma glanced around the room and shrugged. “How big would you estimate this chamber is? About fifteen by twenty?”

  “Yeah, that seems about right,” Maggie said as she swung her flashlight beam from end to end. She pointed the beam upward. “About a ten-foot ceiling, maybe?”

  Emma nodded in agreement. “So that’s…”

  “Three thousand cubic feet,” Maggie finished for her.

  “Right,” Emma said. “So, that gives us…” Emma paused, her forehead scrunching in concentration. “Maybe eighteen hours.”

  “That’s it? Then we suffocate?”

  “No, but the carbon dioxide levels will be high enough that we’ll start to feel drowsy. We’ll only suffocate AFTER that.”

  Maggie flung her arms out. “Great. So, we’ve got eighteen hours before we fall asleep, never to wake up again. Minus what we’ve already used.”

  “We haven’t been down here that long. We can wait a little longer,” Emma responded.

  “Okay,” Maggie agreed. “Fine, we can wait a little longer. But we need a plan and a time to start it. We don’t want to wait until we’re almost out of air to try to find a way out of here.”

  Emma shrugged. “There may not be a way.”

  “Emma, there’s a way,” Maggie answered.

  “You don’t know that,” Emma argued.

  “Okay, given your knowledge of tombs, do you really believe this is a dead-end?”

  “It could be.” Emma hesitated. “But given my knowledge, I’d estimate the probability of that is low.”

  Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Okay, so there’s probably a way out. We just need to find it. Now, how long do we wait before we make a move?” Maggie checked her phone’s display. “It’s quarter after five. We estimate they’ve been gone about forty-five minutes already. How long do we wait before we decide they aren’t coming back?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said with a sigh.

  “Come on, Emma, make a decision!”

  “You make it! You’re Miss Wonderful, oh-so-smart and beloved Maggie Edwards.”

  Maggie sighed. “Okay, let’s just AGREE on a decision. We’re in this together, whether you like it or not. How about we wait until seven? If they aren’t back by then, we start to search for another way out.”

  Emma considered the statement, then responded, “Okay. Seven. If there’s no movement by seven, we’ll begin another search.”

  Maggie climbed back up the steps and sat down next to Emma. “I really hope they’re just having a nice long dinner.”

  “Me too,” Emma answered. “I wish I was having a nice long dinner.”

  “Me too,” Maggie agreed. Maggie dug in her pocket. “I have a granola bar.”

  Emma glanced at it. “No, it’s yours, you can have it.”

  Maggie opened the wrapper. She broke the bar in half. “Here,” she said, handing half to Emma, “we’ll split it.”

  Emma accepted the chocolate-covered bar. “Thanks.” She clicked off her flashlight. “We should conserve batteries.”

  “Good idea.�
�� Maggie switched off her light.

  They made short order of the small amount of food. Afterward, they sat in silence. Maggie strained to listen for any sounds. None came. With every passing moment, Maggie’s hopes sunk lower.

  At one point, Maggie thought she heard sounds of their return, but instead, it was Emma shifting on the step to find a more comfortable position. Maggie checked her phone multiple times.

  “What time is it?” Emma finally asked.

  “Six thirty-seven,” Maggie answered. “Twenty-three minutes to our deadline.”

  Emma sunk her head into her hands as Maggie’s cell phone back-light dimmed. They waited as their time ran out. After thirty minutes, Maggie announced, “It’s after seven.”

  “Maybe we should wait longer,” Emma suggested. “It’s only been a few hours. We still have at least twelve hours to go.”

  “We can’t wait until the last minute. We need to leave ourselves plenty of time to search and find a way out.”

  “It won’t hurt to wait a little longer.”

  “Emma,” Maggie stressed, “they are NOT coming back. They’ve been gone for hours. They never told us they were leaving. Something isn’t right here.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m starting to agree with you. But I’d rather not face that.”

  “We have to face it,” Maggie responded. “And the sooner, the better. Come on.” Maggie rose and reached for Emma’s hand. “Let’s get started.”

  Emma sighed but grabbed Maggie’s hand and stood. “We should use one flashlight and work together to conserve batteries.”

  “Okay,” Maggie agreed. “We’ll use mine and save yours.”

  Maggie toggled her light on. They rechecked the area near the steps but found nothing. They began a thorough inspection of the walls, ceiling and floor. As they searched, they went through any items on the floor. Most articles were pottery or tools.

  After a two-hour search, they found nothing. Maggie sighed as Emma clicked off her flashlight, plunging them into darkness again. “That’s it,” Emma said. “There’s nothing.”

  “Except the heart carving,” Maggie reminded her.

  “The thing that got us into this trouble.”

  “And maybe the thing that can get us out!” Maggie retorted.

  “I’m not on board with trying that again.”

  “We may not have another choice.”