Win

by Vera Nazarian

  A name slips into my mind . . . Khnum, god of Nile’s inundation and mud, a creator of man out of potter’s clay.

  The ram-headed shadow stands motionless, and I blink again, mesmerized, forcing myself to face the crazy fact that either there’s really something there, or I’m going nuts from exhaustion and stress.

  I blink again and again, but the shadow doesn’t go away.

  Instead, to my deepest horror, another shadow joins him. Out of nothing, it thickens into being, coalesces into the outline of a man with the head of a bird. The beak is blunt and rounded, as opposed to being long and sharp, which suggests one of three deities. Since there’s no sun disk headdress, it is not Ra, and no moon disk, so it’s not Khonsu.

  Which leaves . . . Horus.

  Again, the name wanders into my mind, like a whisper.

  Horus stands next to Khnum, and their shadow-figures cast against stones are both motionless, turned to me.

  “Um . . . someone, can you look here, please?” I say, without moving.

  “What?” I hear Brie’s voice again, but don’t dare turn around.

  “Please look here and tell me what you see.”

  “Nothing. Where should I be looking?”

  “Here . . .” I say, and my voice is breathless and weak. “On the stones behind me. . . . Can you see them? Anything?”

  “Um, no.”

  This time I force myself to look away, and Brie has stood up and is staring at me closely. The others look my way also.

  “Okay, Lark, what’s going on?” Brie says.

  I look behind me again, and the shadows are gone.

  “Damn,” I mutter. “I think I’m hallucinating. I just thought I saw two Ancient Egyptian gods on those rocks—or at least their shadows. There was another one on that other rock”—I point to the opposite “wall” grouping of floating blocks. “And then he was gone.”

  Chihar moves away from the surveillance and sits down on the slab nearby. “It’s best to eat something, Imperial Lady,” he says. “When dehydrated or hungry, as all of us are in the Games, the mind can play tricks—especially with this poor lighting.”

  I nod and reach for my meal bar.

  About an hour later, the pyramid rearranges itself as usual, but there’s still no sign of Kokayi and Zaap, and for that matter Kateb and Tuar are still missing too.

  “Strange. Not good,” Lolu says, as she and Avaneh watch the surveillance. In one of the feeds of the pyramid interior they find Deneb Gratu and his crew gathered on another Safe Base slab, doing something violent to a Yellow Contender with the Artist logo.

  Or rather, the Yellow Artist stands perfectly motionless at the edge of the slab, his tall sleek body oriented sideways—as if to take up the least amount of horizontal space, with only his head turned to face them. Meanwhile, Deneb and two others, a Red and a Green, throw small disks, darts, and blades in his general direction, appearing to miss him entirely as they aim at the area behind him—the blocks hovering a few feet beyond the Safe Base.

  “What is this? I don’t understand—he’s just standing there?” Avaneh remarks with irritation.

  “Yes, why doesn’t he get out of the way?” Lolu mutters.

  “Or why doesn’t he die? I see no shield on him. How is it that he’s not hit or injured by now?” Avaneh leans in to zoom in closer. “Watch the angle of that throw. . . . See? Gratu is missing every time. This can’t be intentional.”

  The Artist continues standing a few moments longer, still as a statue. He has super-dark black skin and short gilded hair that curls tight against his scalp. At this zoom level you can tell he is very handsome, with balanced features, kohl-outlined brown eyes underneath graceful arches of brows, and a muscular perfectly-defined body that’s strangely obvious even with his loosely fitting uniform. But what’s most interesting is his perfectly confident, almost relaxed expression.

  “This is making no sense!” Lolu says.

  And then, all of a sudden, the Artist moves. He takes a few steps directly toward Deneb Gratu and the others, even as they continue throwing. . . . Two knives and a throw star whistle by his face and torso. But he simply walks past them and keeps going, as though unseen by anyone in that Safe Base. Meanwhile Team Gratu continues to hurl weapons at the stones. . . .

  “They let him pass. . . . What is it, group blindness? Or really lousy target practice?” Brie says.

  “Look!” Lolu taps her finger at the screen. “Now Deneb Gratu is talking at empty space. Somehow I don’t think he’s addressing the Games audience.”

  I breathe uneasily, inhaling a deep shuddering breath. “I really don’t like this. And our guys are still not back yet.”

  Brie cranes her neck at me. “Hope I’m wrong, but—they may not be coming back.”

  My frown deepens. Brie is probably right, but I refuse to believe it just yet. . . . This is my team, and I really should say something, but I don’t know what. And the last thing I want to do is create false hope.

  As I try to come up with some kind of optimistic but honest reply, my tired gaze stops on Chihar.

  The Scientist is seated in his usual spot. But there is something very different about him. His expression is distressed, a far cry from his usual calm demeanor. He stares with intensity past the empty abyss toward the nearest hovering stone beyond the Safe Base.

  And then, I notice that his lips are moving silently.

  Chihar Agwath appears to be having a silent conversation with a ghost.

  Chapter 66

  A ghost, or an invisible person, or a hallucination—whatever it is, Chihar’s attention is completely focused on the stone hovering a few feet before him. And now he is no longer whispering, but speaking in soft, careful Atlanteo.

  “Hey,” I say to Brie, nodding in Chihar’s direction.

  She turns to look at him and her eyes narrow. “What is he doing?”

  Avaneh and Lolu have noticed too, and everyone is now staring at our team Scientist.

  “Chihar?” I say. “Are you all right? What do you see?”

  “Hey! Chihar!” Lolu raises her voice and calls out loudly in her annoyed tone.

  But the Scientist does not answer. He continues to speak to someone who is not there, at least not anyone I or anyone else here can see. So far his voice remains low enough that I can’t quite make out full sentences, only snatches of words and phrases such as “I promise to you . . .” and “I will not fail . . .” and “I waited for so long, so many painful years . . . I’ll never forget what you taught me. . . .”

  “Chihar!”

  “He’s either ignoring us, or he genuinely cannot hear,” I say.

  “One of you go touch him,” Avaneh says. “See if he’s in a trance.”

  “Hell, I’m not touching him, you do it!” Brie snarls. “For all we know, this is poison or a virus, and he might be contagious!”

  While they’re arguing, I get up, and approach him.

  I put my hand on his arm lightly. “Who are you talking to?”

  Chihar starts a little, but does not look at me or take his eyes off whatever is before him. However, he seems to acknowledge my presence. “No,” he says, this time in English. “I will not fail. . . . I told him before, an infinite number of times . . . over, and over, and over again . . . but he doesn’t believe—never did! Why must I be the one to prove or disprove, to negate or validate an unprovable theorem, to struggle—”

  “Chihar,” I repeat. “Who is there? Who are you talking to?”

  For the first time, the older man turns around and looks at me. “My father,” he says bitterly. “He’s been dead for eight years, but now he is here, with the intent to drive me out of my mind.”

  I waste no time trying to dissuade Chihar that his dead father is not present, and no one’s really there. To be honest, at this point I can’t be sure. . . . Besides, I think he understands it on some level, but as long as his hallucination lasts, there’s not much that anyone can do.

  “Any idea what’s happ
ening?” Avaneh draws closer to me, and her vivid blue eyes are troubled. I notice she glances around the Safe Base, at all the surrounding stones hovering nearby, as if expecting someone or something to show up at any minute. Or I could simply be overreacting, and she is merely looking out for our missing teammates.

  “Well . . .” I say, looking from her to Lolu and Brie, and finally at Chihar (who’s no longer bothering to keep his voice down, and is now arguing loudly with thin air about research lab methodology). “My best guess is we’ve all been exposed to some kind of hallucinogenic substance through the Games program.”

  Lolu nods. “Yes, but how?”

  “I don’t know,” I continue. “Maybe we’re breathing it, or it’s in the water from that crazy rain, or some kind of gas.”

  “Okay, yes,” Brie says. “Whatever it is, I’m guessing the exposure is subtle and gradual. We might want to put on breathing masks.”

  “Good idea.” Avaneh returns to dig in her bag and takes out a small face mask similar to what I have in my own equipment bag.

  “Let’s run a test,” Lolu says. “Avaneh, you wear the mask for an hour and see if you begin seeing anything.”

  Avaneh’s intense expression does not change. “You mean, if I stop seeing. . . .”

  “Oh . . .” I say, suddenly understanding. “Are you seeing something now?”

  The Warrior nods, with hard disdain. “Yes. But I choose to continue ignoring it.”

  Brie frowns. “What do you see?”

  “None of your business.” Avaneh proudly steps away and turns her back to us. She then returns to the surveillance, grows still, and stares very hard at the display screen.

  I watch her rigid back and the planes of her hairless scalp.

  And when I look just a tad higher, my peripheral vision happens to catch the tall dark shadow on the distant opposite stone.

  A silhouette of a man with the head of a jackal stands facing me, motionless and silent.

  Anubis, god of the dead.

  And there, on the next stone over, is my brother Gordie.

  “Whoa!” I cry out, almost jumping, unable to hold back my stunned reaction. “Gordie! Is that you? No. . . .”

  “Lark?” Brie says. “What?”

  But I wave with my hand angrily and ignore her, continuing to look at my brother.

  Gordie is dressed in a dark sweatshirt and ratty jeans, and is bent down in a crouch, examining something at his feet. At my cry he looks up at me, then rises, straightening. “Hey, Gee Two,” he says in a familiar typical matter-of-fact way. “Just checking to see this neat stone surface. Wish I brought something like a scraping tool. . . .”

  My pulse is pounding violently as I look at him, or his ghost, or whatever it is.

  “Gordie . . .” I whisper. “You can’t be here! This is not you. I’m just seeing things. . . . Very vivid things.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Gordie snorts.

  And then a terrible thought comes to me. “Gordie!” I say. “Are you . . . dead? Are you a ghost?”

  “Hell, no,” my brother’s doppelganger hallucination tells me. “Don’t be a bozo, Gee Two. I’m completely okay.”

  “Okay. . . .” I echo him, at the same time as I see the shadow of Anubis standing like a guard nearby. “Then what is this? You are not Gordie!”

  “Sheesh, stop screaming. Of course I am,” Gordie says, running the back of his hand against his forehead, then pushes his smudged glasses up over the bridge of his nose.”

  “But you can’t be here!” I argue.

  “And why not?”

  “Because you just can’t! This is crazy! I know you’re not really here and I’m talking to a stupid rock!”

  Gordie shrugs. “All right, whatever. I’m up on the cliffs in those freaky-weird hovering audience seats, and I’m here too. Just relax and accept it.”

  I open my mouth to continue my protest, but in that moment there’s a distant sound of bells to indicate thirteenth hour, and the grinding sound of the pyramid in motion.

  “Oops, got to go for now,” Gordie says to me in a hurry, then takes a wide reckless leap from his stone to the next one below, and disappears from sight.

  It’s all so real that I’m still not one hundred percent sure what I’m seeing—my brother being here, for real (but how, why?) or a drug-induced vision.

  I blink.

  The Invocation Hymn rises in echoes from the cliffs, heralding Noon Ghost Time.

  By the time the daily meal is announced (which we choose to skip), I feel like we’ve all gone stark raving mad.

  At this point, there’s no doubt. We’re all haunted by vividly real “ghosts.” Whether they’re metaphysical or medically-induced, makes no difference to the level of “disturbing” that’s now added to this stage of the Games.

  Avaneh stubbornly continues to pretend she’s not affected and ignores her unseen visitors. Her breathing mask is on, and now that an hour has gone by, we ask her if the air filtration is having a positive effect of clearing her head, or if she’s still seeing something.

  “Oh, yes,” Avaneh says without meeting our eyes.

  “Yes what?” Lolu says. “Yes, you’re still seeing it, or yes, the mask is working?”

  “Still seeing . . .” Avaneh echoes through gritted teeth.

  Lolu frowns with her typical irritation. “Then take the stupid thing off, now that we know it’s useless.”

  In reply Avaneh yanks the mask off her face and tosses it in her bag.

  As I watch her angry motions, I try not to look at Anubis at the edge of my peripheral vision. . . . I also try not to look behind me where there are two more Egyptian gods—Bastet, the lioness-headed goddess, and scarab beetle-headed Khepri, a creation god. Yeah, did I mention I’m surrounded by Egyptian deity-shadows? They’re on every dratted block hovering around the Safe Base.

  So far, Lolu seems to be the only one of us unaffected. At least that’s what she claims.

  But now Brie is showing symptoms of being haunted. “No! Just . . . no,” I hear her say a few times in a hard whisper, followed by muttered cussing. Then she glances at me quickly, almost guiltily, while her eyes appear feverish, even slightly reddened.

  “Walton, are you okay?” I say. “Seeing stuff?”

  “Never better,” she retorts with a bitter laugh, and turns away from me. I notice her fingers are twitching and constantly drumming against the slab of stone on which we sit.

  Meanwhile, we try to keep up with the surveillance feed, and what we see all over the Game Zone is just pure chaos. . . . And the Games audience is eating it up.

  Contenders, alone, and in teams, are acting insane. People are running up and down the outer stones on the pyramid slopes, as if pursued, when no one is following. . . . Weapons are drawn and swords and knives are flung at invisible enemies. . . . In their panic state, quite a few Contenders fall to their deaths on the sandy beach below, accompanied by the roaring audience.

  Indeed, the roar on the cliffs had been deafening, coming in waves as the action heats up and individual Contenders react violently to invisible stimuli.

  But not everyone is panicking.

  “Look at that guy, cool as a cucumber,” Brie says, as she stops scrolling to zoom in on a view of the Safe Base occupied by Team Kukkait.

  Here I see the familiar white-haired Warrior Hedj Kukkait as he sits calmly in his cross-legged meditational pose, watching two of his teammates acting out some kind of shouting match with no one, while three others are swinging long knives at invisible opponents.

  But he’s not alone in being composed. Another female Contender on his team sits watching their surveillance feeds, with a controlled look on her face.

  “People are different,” Lolu replies. “Everyone reacts differently. Just because they see some vision doesn’t mean they panic.”

  “I suppose it also depends on what they see,” I say, with a side-eye glance at the shadow of Thoth, ibis-headed god of wisdom, information, and knowledge, as he stand
s watching me from a few steps away.

  It’s late afternoon of day three, and none of our missing teammates have returned. I am still holding out hope that they’re alive, but we have bigger things to worry about. The rest of us are hanging on to sanity by a thread.

  Chihar has stopped communicating with his dead father, but now he sits with his head held between his hands, covering his ears, and his eyes shut. When he does look up, I see a wretched expression and a forehead glistening with sweat.

  Avaneh has given up staring at surveillance feeds and now looks grimly at the distant hovering blocks of granite and limestone. Her arms are folded in a confrontational stance, but she says absolutely nothing. At times, however, I catch her shaking her head in cold fury. And there is definitely sweat on her forehead, and a reddened color around her eyes. “How many hours until midnight?” she keeps asking.

  “It’s only early twilight,” Lolu replies, giving her an almost pitying glance. “The evening lights haven’t even gone on yet. What does it matter anyway?”

  Avaneh furrows her brow, seeming to think hard. “Midnight . . . midnight is when it ends . . .” she mutters.

  “No, it doesn’t!” Brie snarls at her, wiping her own sweaty forehead. “You’re off by a day, baldie-locks, this is still day three! Got that? Day effing three!”

  Avaneh continues looks at her, as though incapable of understanding.

  “We still have about thirty-three hours,” I say, checking my clock gadget.

  “That’s a crapload of hours,” Brie says, glancing behind her anxiously. “More than enough to go crazy all the way. . . .”

  “Midnight . . .” Avaneh says again, opening and closing her fingers into fists. “How long . . . until midnight?”

  Lolu whirls around from watching the smart screen. “Just shut up!”

  “Maybe if you close your eyes and lie down?” I say gently to Avaneh.