No Trespassing

by KD Robichaux

  “That’s it!” I say, hopping up as well.

  “What’s it?” She stops and looks at me questioningly.

  “Say that again. Exactly how you said it before,” I tell her excitedly.

  “Great, we figured out what the numbers mean, and how it all leads to the Atlantean Ring—”

  “Right there! Stop. It all leads to the Atlantean Ring,” I repeat, my heart starting to pound.

  “That’s what I just said. We know what it adds up to, Dean, but why are all these clues scattered around here, in the NOLA Catacombs?”

  “No, love. Think of it more literally. Not the Atlantean Ring, as in the symbol. But the actual…”

  “Atlantean Ring,” we say in unison, and at the same time I feel a chill roll up my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, I see her shiver and rub her arms.

  “HOLY SHIT!” I exclaim. “But how? Why would the Ring of Luxor be here, in New Orleans, in a place that has been abandoned for over a century?”

  “Abandoned, or ingeniously guarded? So well secured that everyone just plain forgot about it?” he offers.

  My head is spinning as my mind tries to make sense of everything. When I get overwhelmed like this, I have to talk about it out loud, or I’ll make myself crazy. “Okay… okay, Em, think. History. The history of the ring. Mom and Dad used to tell you this shit as bedtime stories, so think. All right. The ring was discovered around 1860 in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt by French Egyptologist Marquis d’Agrain. The original ring was made of clay from Assuan, now known as Aswan, a city in southern Egypt that sits on the Nile River. When it was found, it was already ancient, and it is widely believed it was made by the people of Atlantis, Egyptians’ predecessors.”

  Dean picks up where I leave off, when I try to think of where it went after the Frenchman. “It was inherited by his granddaughter, who married a Spaniard by the name of André de Belizal, who was the pioneer of Radiesthesia. I’m not well read in that area, but from what I understand, someone who practices it claims they are extra sensitive to things around them, like the presence of underground water, or they can detect an illness, or even figure out if someone is guilty of a crime. This is usually aided by a pendulum or a divining rod.”

  I snap my fingers. “Yes! That guy. My mom has one of those pendulums. She used to use it on Dad, but he’d just pretend he was hypnotized and then start clucking around like a chicken.” Dean barks out a laugh, the random story catching him off guard. “Sorry.” I giggle. “Okay, so the granddaughter and her hubs had it next, but then what?”

  “Well, from stories Marquis told him, and from ones told to them by the few people Marquis let wear the ring, it was discovered there seemed to be mysterious powers surrounding it. An entire family getting sick, but the one who wore it staying perfectly healthy. A freak accident, but the one wearing it not suffering a scratch on them. So ole André studied the waves emitted by the ring—which he called the Waves of Luxor—using his radiesthesia, and he figured out that it wasn’t the ring itself, but the pattern engraved on it—our tattoo—is what gave it its mystical power of protection.”

  I spring into the air, remembering my favorite story about the symbol, the story that pushed me to get it permanently tattooed into my skin. “Next came Howard Carter! Howard was convinced about the protective properties of the ring, when a lot of people thought it was baloney… just a bunch of hocus pocus, if you will.”

  I smile lightly, and then it stretches into a wide grin when he interjects, “My favorite childhood movie,” before I continue.

  “So Howard is a British archaeologist who learns about the ring around the year 1900, and when he puts it on, he claims he has a vision that he would discover a wonder the world had never seen. He, along with his partner, Lord Carnarvon, take a huge team down to Egypt, and in 1922, they discover King Tut’s tomb! At the entrance of the tomb, there was an ominous inscription that threatened those who dared disturb the Pharaoh’s eternal sleep. Did they listen? Of course not. If they don’t believe in a ring having mysterious powers, why would they worry about a silly little curse, right?” I hold my hand out, palm facing up, prompting Dean to play along.

  “Right. I mean, what kind of gullible idiot believes in a symbol that can emit energy that protects someone from harm? Psh, nonsense,” he replies, and gives me a smirk.

  I hold up a peace sign. “Within two years, nearly the entire team, almost twenty people, including Lord Carnarvon, died from an inexplicable cause. Boom, dead. Out of nowhere. But there was one who survived. The only one who lived a full life until he died of natural causes. Guess who.” I hold my hand out again, even though I’m sure he already knows the story.

  He puts his hand to his chest, and in a put-on southern accent, he asks, “Oh my, who could it be?” making me giggle.

  “Why, our friendly mystical-wave-believing buddy, Howard Carter!” I squeal, and then do a pirouette, and when I face him again, I stomp my landing, throw my arms out wide, and shake my hands in a ‘Ta-da!’ motion.

  “You’re forgetting one thing though, love,” Dean says, and I stand up straight before looking at him questioningly. “Howard Carter wasn’t wearing the original ring. He was wearing a replica he had made, which it is said he never took off for the rest of his life.”

  “Shit, that’s right. So where did the ring go after André and the granddaughter?” I ask.

  “Nobody knows. André studied it for years, and wrote several books on it. He was well respected for all his findings, and left an incredible legacy in his invention of instruments, the pendulums and such, and then documented experiments and research. He and his wife travelled the world with their findings, and come to think of it, I believe I read somewhere that New Orleans was one of her favorite places to visit, seeing how she was of French descent and all,” he relays.

  “Oh, my God. What if that’s it?” I squawk. Now he’s the one to give me the confused look. “Dean, there’s no way a ring believed to have magical powers just disappeared off the face of the planet. Especially after André did all those experiments that pretty much proved it was real. If it was stolen from him, it would have been recorded somewhere. New Orleans was his French-born wifey’s favorite vacation spot? Hello! We are in the New Orleans Catacombs, frolicking along a tunnel that has clues spread throughout it that basically spell out ‘Altantean Ring This Way!’”

  “There was absolutely nothing in the documentation of this site that even mentioned the ring… or even placards on the walls. Usually on maps of these locations, any and all artwork, markings… the tiniest little details, are somehow indicated. Even the most miniscule cracks are specified. It helps with preservation. But here, for the NOLA Catacombs, hardly anything. There was a quickly jotted list of the dates in which cemeteries were emptied and the bones were stacked down here. There was a list of names of famous people who were secretly buried down—”

  “Wait, what?” I interrupt, my curiosity getting the best of me.

  He smirks and puts me out of my misery. “Only the richest and most infamous of New Orleans’ residents knew about the catacombs, because they were the ones who funded it. And they were given the opportunity to reserve plots in one of the tunnels. Supposedly, number two is the hoity-toity tunnel, much nicer than this one, number three, which is where the bones of all the emptied cemeteries are if we ever go deep enough. I guess they thought they were too good to be buried amongst the common folk. And then number one was completely empty.”

  “I find it strange that they started with number three,” I think aloud.

  He shrugs. “Maybe they were starting at the back and planned on working their way forward.”

  A thought hits me out of nowhere, and my head whips around as if I’ve been slapped. “Dean. Let’s think of the dates here. The catacombs started being dug out after the cemetery filled up around 1780.”

  “That’s correct,” he verifies.

  “Let’s say it took some time for them to come u
p with plans for these catacombs, plus the money to do it with…” I prompt.

  His eyes look skyward, as if he’s searching his brain for the right photographic memory stored there. “If we based it on the technology of the time, and say, compared it to other things that had been built underground around the same time period, these tunnels would have been finished in around eighty years, give or take a decade,” he says, confirming my suspicions.

  “Exactly eighty years after St. Peter Cemetery filled up in New Orleans, Louisiana, when these catacombs would almost certainly be nearing completion, French Egyptologist Marquis d’Agrain discovered the Ring of Luxor in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the year 1860. Somewhere between then, and just forty years later, when our good friend Howard Carter tried to get it from André in 1900, it vanished. Poof! Gone. And oh, B-T-Dubs, the last known people to have it just so happened to love coming to New Orleans, where they were just finishing up a secret, exclusive underground tunnel where only the most infamous and rich people could buy grave plots,” I spell out, and I see it in his face when he picks up what I’m throwin’ down.

  “The perfect place to bury something you never want found.”

  GOD, THIS WOMAN is a force to be reckoned with. She figured out the meaning of the numbers. She figured out how the Golden Ratio correlated with the Atlantean Ring. And now, she’d figured out the only reasonable explanation why all this would be here.

  I know several people, mostly scholarly type friends of mine, who would chalk all of this up to coincidence. I fall into the fate-believing category. Too much in my life has happened as if it were meant to be, for it all to be coincidence. My mother dropping me off at an orphanage that just so happened to be next to abandoned mines, where I ran away to. The groundskeeper of said orphanage used to work in said mines, and told me stories that would spark a love of history in me that would lead to me focusing all my energy into working my ass off in school. Becoming the first kid from the orphanage and at my Podunk high school to not only receive a full-ride scholarship to college, but to UPenn, the Ivy League school with the best archaeology program in the United States. Being discovered by a TV producer at my job as a tour guide, and then offered my own television show doing what I love.

  And it all seems to be leading me to this moment right here. With this enigmatic beauty. God, where did she come from? Where had she been all my life? Well, for the past two, she’d been right there, within arm’s reach. The thought I could’ve been with her this whole time pisses me off a little.

  But no, being a believer in fate, I have to believe we weren’t supposed to interact until today, when we’d find each other down here in the catacombs, when I could rescue her from being crushed. She would’ve snuck in either way, finally forcing her way into a site after being rejected so many times. She admitted it herself; that ceiling would’ve come down whether I was here or not, but I was here to save her on this night.

  Then the mutual fascination with the Golden Ratio, her understanding of the French language, I suppose from being from New Orleans, and being able to translate what I couldn’t, her parents putting the Atlantean Ring all over their home before moving to Egypt…

  Wait. Egypt? Why would a girl’s parents leave her here and move all the way to Egypt? Parents who owned pendulums and told their child bedtime stories about King Tut’s tomb and French Egyptologists. Who the hell were Emmy’s parents?

  I look up at her from my still seated position on the ground, and quietly, I ask her, “Hey, love? What’s your name?”

  She turns her head sideways, probably confused at the abrupt change in subject. “Is that why you keep calling me love? You forgot my name?” She laughs. “Don’t feel bad. I never remember people’s names the first time they tell me. In one ear and out the other. It’s Emmy, short for Amelia—”

  I cut her off, “No, no. I remember that. I mean, what’s your full name?”

  She pulls her hair down out of her knot once more, smoothing all the fallen strands back up into a fresh one, while she replies, “My full name is Amelia Suvan Crain. I told you about the Amelia part, but Suvan is an Egyptian go—”

  “Emmy Crain,” I interrupt once more, because the realization of who the goddess standing before me is shuts off any manners I might’ve had to let her ramble adorably. “With parents who own pendulums and use the Atlantean Ring to decorate your home and tell their kid tales of Egyptian history instead of princes and princesses…”

  “Well, pharaohs and goddesses,” she defends them.

  “Your parents are Thomas and Elizabeth Crain. Your parents… are the couple who drove the crawler in the Great Pyramid of Giza. They discovered the queen’s chamber!” I explain, as if she doesn’t know who her own mom and dad are.

  Her mouth falls open and she plops onto her ass, much like I did before, as if the ground had fallen out from under her. “You know my parents?” she prompts, her voice mystified.

  “Well, no, I don’t like, know them. But I know of them! What educated historian and archaeologist wouldn’t know the Crains? That husband and wife duo have made insane and truly important discoveries,” I reply heatedly.

  “Right? Oh, my God! You have no idea how many times I’ve lowered myself to use the whole ‘Do you know who I am?’ thing while trying to get into sites. Mind you, that was after showing them my dual degree in the subjects. I mean, I didn’t go to the fancy schmancy Ivy League school you did, yet mine is nothing to sniff at. But did anyone care? Hell no! Not when they had the rock star of documentaries on their schedule.” She crosses her arms and pouts.

  There’s a lot I could say to all of that, but instead of getting defensive like I would with anyone else, my mind focuses on one minor detail. “You’ve researched me.” Not a question. I’ve never mentioned on the show or in any post on social media that I went to UPenn. She had to have looked into my background. Not that she would have found much, since I paid a shit load of money to keep my personal life off the internet.

  “What? No!” she squawks, and looks away. But it’s like the lie immediately eats at her, and she confesses, “Maybe a little.”

  I scoot closer to her, butting my knees right up against hers while we both sit Indian-style on the dust-covered floor. “So tell me, love. Tell me about myself.”

  Her cheeks redden, but she doesn’t move away. And I feel myself smiling as she names off what little people could find about me on Wikipedia. “You went to UPenn, where you got your degrees in archaeology and history. You worked at the university’s museum as a tour guide, before one of The Adventure Channel’s producers discovered you and hired you to host UPenn’s episode of Ivy League Schools of America. Shortly after, you got your own goddamn show, called No Trespassing, which is currently in its sixth season and is the top-rated show on The Adventure Channel, and the sixth highest rated show on cable television. You’ve won three Emmy awards”—I snort, and she glares—“for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program. You donate millions to restoration projects. And last time I checked, you have eight scholarship programs with your name on them.”

  That last part gets my attention. There’s no way she found that out with a simple Google search of my name. I try to keep my charity work as quiet as possible, because a lot of it could lead back to personal details I want to keep out of the public eye. The money I donate to reservations, I don’t hide, because it would make sense with what people do know about me. But the other…

  “How did you find out about the scholarship programs?” I inquire.

  “I got on this kick where I wanted to try to make it on my own, without my parents’ help. I thought if I let them pay for my education and made it blatantly clear who we were, then I wouldn’t be taken seriously as an archaeologist. Everyone would just know me as the Crains’ daughter. I wanted to make a name for myself. So I looked into scholarships, and lo and behold, six years ago, when I Googled archaeology financial aid, yours popped up. Back then, you only had one. And I didn’t qual
ify, because I didn’t live in foster care.” She looks up from her lap and into my eyes. “I wanted to be mad about not being able to apply, but I couldn’t. I found it very admirable that you’d want to help those kids out.”

  Her admission fills me with pride. I was truly lucky where I ended up. I could’ve been somewhere else, being mistreated or abused. But no. I actually found more love in that orphanage than I ever had before my mother dropped me off. And I feel compelled to tell her about it, which I’ve never done before. “Mr. Watson,” I state.

  Her brow furrows. “Pardon?”

  “The answer to your question before. Why I call you ‘love.’ Mr. Watson. He was the groundskeeper of the orphanage I grew up in, and he fell for the lady of the house, our caretaker, Miss Potts. And before you ask, yes, she actually looked just like the Beauty and the Beast character—after she became human again, of course—and would sing all the songs to us while she cooked and cleaned. Anyways, he always called her that, simply ‘love.’ And the way he looked at her… it’s like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Sort of the way it feels when I look at you.” I run a finger along her jawline, watching her intake of breath.

  After a moment, I smile at how she decides to respond, obviously too shy to touch on the last part. “You make living in an orphanage sound wonderful,” she whispers.

  “I mean, there were downfalls. There were some boys who came and went who liked to cause trouble, who were already too messed up by the time they came to live there to realize what we had. And what we had was a loving home with the best mother and father figures we could’ve ever hoped for, and in my case, a hundred times better than who actually birthed me. They were so extraordinary I never begrudged my mom for leaving me there, because at eleven years old, I was old enough to see and be thankful for what I got handed,” I tell her.