The Artifact: Natasha Burrows Series Book One

by Phillips, Michelle

  “What is that smell?” she gasped, covering her nose and mouth with her hand.

  He lay gasping for a moment. “It's the cloaca.” he explained. “The anaconda’s posterior opening. The glands of that body part emit an extremely foul smelling poisonous musk that can actually kill small organisms.” He looked at her. “Let’s get away from it” he said “it’s a confined space and that anaconda is huge.” She nodded helping him stand. He winced from pain and clutched at his side.

  “Are you alright?” she cried, scared that he was seriously injured and hours away from help.

  He smiled weakly “yes, my ribs aren’t broken, just bruised. I’ll be alright in a minute when I have regained my breath.”

  She looked at him, “thankyou” she said simply.

  He looked back at her “for what?”

  “For pushing me out the way, for saving my life” she said.

  He looked at her, “that’s my job” he said “I won’t let anything happen to you” and she could see he meant it. “Anyway” he placed his hand gently to her face wiping some of the drops of blood away “I was right about you.” He reached down and gently pried the machete from her hand. She realised she was still clasping to it for dear life, and let it go.

  “You were like a woman possessed” he laughed, “that snake wasn’t getting out of here alive.” She chuckled with him, it was good to laugh after such a strong rush of adrenaline. “There have been a few before us, who have not fared so well” he said looking at all the skeletons around them.

  “Poor souls” she said her voice quavering, “that thing was massive, it looked ancient, positively evil, how old do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know, it's been there for a while judging from all the skeletons. I think it would have to have been at least thirty foot long.”

  “I thought snakes could digest bones?” she asked looking a little confused.

  “So then, you do know something about snakes?” he looked at her surprised. “They can, but if they do eat too large of a prey, the bacteria naturally residing inside the prey can decompose the prey body faster than the snake can digest it. The body will begin to putrefy creating gas and the snake is forced to either vomit the stomach contents or risk dying. Basically, if the body starts to rot before it can be fully digested, the anaconda has to regurgitate it or risk food poisoning.”

  “Ugh, the more I find out, the more repulsive it gets. You know, that’s one of the reasons why I’m a vegetarian. Meat and fish can take as long as two days to digest in your stomach.”

  He smiled weakly, “well, that snake is lucky really, if he ate me he truly would have bitten off more than he could chew. I would have hung on in there for days and given it a bad case of food poisoning.”

  She looked at him “I’m not laughing” she said. “Don’t joke like that. I… I need you” she added a little reluctantly.

  He looked at her his eyebrows raised, “I didn’t know you felt that way?”

  She sighed. “No, not that way - I mean to survive, you know, get out of here alive. I won’t make it without you.”

  He regarded her intently, “you are stronger than you think.”

  “Just the same, I wouldn’t like to test your theory on that.”

  “I think we already have,” he replied softly.

  “What is that over there?” she asked pointing down the pathway. It appeared to come to a halt. She covered her mouth aghast. There was a wall of skulls, piled on top of each other, blocking the pathway.

  “Well that’s interesting” he said. “It's a warning.”

  “That would be right” she said sarcastically, “but don't warn us about the giant man-eating snake.”

  “This could have possibly been done by the natives. They consider these caves to be a gateway to the underworld.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then whoever put whatever is in there, wanted to keep people out.”

  “Comforting” she said apprehensively, remembering the discussion she had with her uncle about traps.

  “Come on,” he said waving her forward. “We have come this far.” He walked up the wall and started pulling the skulls away. They were old and brittle and falling apart in his hands. The wall of skulls started to collapse, revealing another solid wall behind it.

  “This can’t be right. It’s solid rock.” He clasped his side wincing with pain.

  “Are you alright” he looked at him concerned, he wasn’t looking good despite his banter.

  “Yes, just stretched it a bit. It's just a bruise don’t worry.”

  “Let me see it” she said reaching out her hands to lift his shirt. She gasped at the dark bruise that was forming over his chest and ribs. “You are bleeding internally” she cried.

  “It’s nothing, just bruising” he said pulling his shirt down quickly. “Come on, let's finish this.”

  “What do you mean ‘finish this’ there’s no way to go, it's solid rock, completely blocked off.” She looked at the damp, cold stultifying rock wall anguished that all their struggles, pain and effort had led to this. A dead end.

  He turned his head towards the water “the cave continues on past this point,” he said, indicating to the water beside them.

  “What, you mean it continues on. What, through there?” She looked at the lake and saw that the ceiling of the cavern had lowered at this point and was sitting just above the surface of the water, which looked dark like liquid ink. “I’m not going in there she said nervously.”

  “Come on” he said “we are so close now, I can feel it.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked skeptically “swim through there?”

  “There is some breathing space” he said.

  “Until there is not” she replied. “We don’t have any diving gear.”

  “I’ll go first” he said preparing to enter the water.

  “No, no” she said, “we’ll go together.” She removed her jacket but left her shoes on. He took a piece of rope and attached it to a stalactite.

  “We can use this as a guide, to get back where we came from” he said. Without any hesitation he slid into the water and she followed. Surprisingly, the water was remarkably warm. She tried hard not to think about the things that might be lurking in it. It was hard not to fantasise when the water was so dark and so deep you couldn’t see the bottom.

  The black water luminesced around them, their lights reflecting off the metallic fish, silurids and brotolids, ancient descendants of fish living around the time of the Mayan rule, darting around them over excited by the lights.

  They continued on through the water, sculling, their heads raised pressed almost against the cold rock ceiling, their noses just above water level. They continued for several metres, until the rock disappeared under the water. He signalled to her, attaching the end of the rope to his waist. He dived under, disappearing in the black velvety molasses. She waited.. And waited for what seemed like minutes.

  She started to panic, thinking she should try to pull him back, when suddenly he reappeared.

  “It opens out again” he said short on breath. “You have to swim around three metres under water. Do you think you can do that?” She nodded, secretly petrified. “I’ll go through first” he said “and then you follow behind, just use the rope.” She nodded, as he took another deep breath disappearing under the dark waters.

  Thankyou Uncle, she thought to herself for what must have been the hundredth time as she dived under the water. She did not suffer from claustrophobia, but the thought of being trapped under tonnes of rock, in the dark, surrounded by water was she believed, not entirely an irrational fear, but a real one.

  She kicked as hard as she could, using strong, long strokes, taking herself, hand over hand along the rope, until she felt his body and instant relief came over her. She rose, gasping for breath, her arms around his waist. He winced a little, but did not move them. Her face was near his, she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheeks, the sweet musk of
his cologne.

  She moved away, climbing out of the water onto a creamy limestone ledge. He followed slowly, partly because he was admiring the way her went pants clung to thighs and partly because of the pain he was feeling in his chest.

  She looked up at the ceiling, it was amazing, like looking at a starscape. Bioluminescent dismalites were speckled across the ceiling like thousands of little led lights, tucked into the folds and crevices illuminating an alien landscape of what look like undulating sheaves of bacon, hanging in layers from the ceiling.

  Even more startling were the walls, the timeless seepage of water through limestone had left deposits of calcite everywhere, seemingly frozen in mid-flow. In the light of the dismalites and their headlights, the walls gleamed like marbleized ice.

  Hanging at angles to the walls were ceiling-to-floor curtains of calcite, rigid, delicately thin and almost translucent. They looked like acoustic wings in an Art Deco concert hall. In the recesses of the curtains, in every crevice and on every ledge, in every possible place, were piles of human skulls and bones, sparkling with coatings of tiny calcium crystals. Hundreds, possibly thousands of glowing skulls, glistening and glowing in the light of a thousand stars.

  “This is amazing” she said, letting out her breath, which unbeknownst to her she had been unconsciously holding. “Just think, we are the first people to set foot in here for centuries.” She looked directly ahead, and saw, what looked like a stone tomb, encased in carvings. She gazed at the tomb silently, knowing this was what their entire journey was leading up to, the discovery of a lifetime. She walked over to the tomb, treading carefully through the shards of broken stalactites beneath her feet.

  She stood, taking her headlight from her head and pointing it at the archaic drawings.

  “What does it say?” She jumped realising he had come up behind her. She was that engrossed in trying to read the glyphs she had blocked everything else out.

  “It… it appears to be a story.” she said, hurriedly scanning it. “But you would not believe it.” She shook her head slowly from side-to-side, hardly believing it herself.

  “Try me” he said, his arm wrapped awkwardly around his torso trying to ignore the pain.

  “Ok. But please bear with me though. These guys had a habit of writing backwards from left to right, and sometimes from bottom to top and some of the glyphs are a little obscured, they have deteriorated over time in this damp environment.” She paused for a few moments, running her headlamp over it. “It is saying here that many ages ago, gods came from the sky.”

  “Wait, gods? like aliens?” he looked at her with consternation. “Are you sure you have translated that correctly.”

  She looked at him darkly “of course, but we aren’t going to get very far if you interrupt” she chastised. “It is saying here that they walked on two feet like us, but were much larger, some would say giants, and were…..reptilian in appearance.” She pointed to the glyphs as she spoke. “ Here, it shows them gathering men together in civilizations first cities. The symbol here is a bit odd, the reference to gathering is like one you would use when referring to livestock.” She pointed to another glyph. “Here, it shows them making man build the pyramids.” She stopped for a moment, and then looked at him silently. “There it shows where they feasted on our flesh.”

  “Cannibals?”

  “Not exactly, more like carnivorous. Cannibals eat their own kind.” He nodded understanding.

  “But something happened… here …. She pointed to a hieroglyph. It looks like one of the ‘gods’ had a…...a child, possibly plural, children, yes, that is the symbol for baby. Children with earthen women. Here, this glyph here basically means.. .abominations.”

  “A hybrid of alien and human?” Xavier looked at her with intense interest now.

  “It appears so. They considered the resulting child unnatural, a perversion. It goes on to say the children were unnaturally strong, and violent, I… I can’t really make out what the rest of it means, there are some symbols there I don’t understand.”

  “Try” he interjected, “please.”

  “Ok” she said a little uncertain of herself. She reached up to touch one of the glyphs gently, curious as to what it meant. “It goes on to say that the offspring grew quickly and they were vicious, intelligent and sought to destroy the gods so that it might take power from them. They started an uprising, seeking to wrest the power away from them and rule the world.”

  “This is…. This place, it's unbelievable.” Xavier shook his head in disbelief, who knew there would be something like this down here?”

  “It’s incredible all right,” she said her eyes transfixed on the wall, continuing on with the story. “It says that the gods decided to destroy the hybrids. They felt regret at the creation of such abominations, and decided it could never be allowed to happen again.”

  “What? So basically, it sounds to me like they were scared of them. What’s that there?” he said pointing to a glyph that looked like a boat.

  “Before they could attack the hybrids, the entire world was destroyed in a deluge. It is saying that a few people survived the deluge and these multiplied to be many again. They lived in fear of the gods returning to destroy them and continued to offer sacrifices in the hope of appeasing them. And here… after a while some still worshipped the gods, kings obsessed with their own power hoping to be granted immortally, to be like them.” She looked sideways at him, no longer reading but guessing, “so after a few hundred years people forget, and realities turn to myths. Fear of the gods turns into a tool for the kings to control people.”

  “Makes sense” he said wincing slightly and holding his stomach, there was an odd timbre to his voice. “When has religion not been used to control the masses?”

  She nodded. “Fear is a common control mechanism. So making out you have favour in the eyes of those people fear, puts you automatically in a position of power over them.” She looked back at the stone glyphs “I wish,” she said biting her lip in consternation, “I could understand what those two glyphs mean.”

  She walked around to the other side of the stone tomb. “There’s more here” she said excitedly. Xavier was now finding it difficult to share in her excitement, and was slow to move around. “It mentions something here… I think that say’s creation tool? It is depicting a powerful object, a tool that can used to shape worlds, it is also the tool that can be used to destroy worlds. It is depicting earthquakes and large waves of water, volcanoes and what looks like fire falling from the sky, followed by a final deluge that engulfed the world.”

  She shook her head, her hands trembling “a world creation tool? What on Earth could that be?”

  “Something very dangerous by the sounds of it” said Xavier, struggling to gather his breath. There was a strange glint in his eye, a look she had never seen before and could not interpret.

  She bent down, dismissing it, eager to continue reading. “There was a battle over the tool, they tried to wrest it from a human hybrid who was attempting to use it. They wanted to stop him, before he could use it against them. The result was an.. an accident, a great deluge.” She studied the pictures a bit further along. “They sought to conceal the orb from those who might try to use it again.” she concluded. “But who is they?” she mused. “You know, the whole story appears to be a warning.”

  “Ok” said Xavier after she had paused looking at the tomb for a further couple of minutes “and what else?”

  “Huh?” she said raising her head from deep reverie “Oh, that’s it, there’s no more.”

  “So what’s really in the box then?”

  “I.. I really don’t know”

  “Well then, come on, let's open it and find out.”

  She stood alongside the tomb excitedly as they both bent and pushed the lid. It was heavy, but moved with a slow grating sound. Xavier winced slightly as he pushed, his breath ragged and uneven. The tomb made a slight hissing noise as the lid swung free and a stale, acrid odor overtook the
ir lungs making them gasp. Tasha raised her handkerchief holding it over her nose and returned her head to gaze upon the contents of the tomb.

  Inside was the body of a perfectly preserved corpse. But this wasn’t just any corpse, it was a large corpse, possibly 10 feet tall, with reptilian type scales covering its entire body. It was wearing a loin cloth and an egyptian death mask, in the shape of a jackal. It was evident from the mask that it had an elongated face and high pointed ears.

  “Good god” she gasped.

  Xavier leaned over slightly looking into the tomb shocked, not knowing what to say. “Well it's safe to say that thing is not human.”

  She looked at him “this is… this has to be one of the most amazing discoveries…. Of all time.”

  He smiled weakly “I don’t know, whoever made that fake cheese that goes on Doritos…”

  “Are you ever serious?” she interrupted scolding him.

  “Quite honestly” he said “I don’t exactly know how to act right now. I could never have believed this.” His voice sounded a little insincere, hollow. She made a mental note of it, but was too excited to really pay attention.

  “I need to get photo’s” she cried, rushing to remove a small waterproof camera from his backpack.

  “Is, that.. Is that gold?” asked Xavier slowly reaching his hand into the tomb.

  “Don’t touch it” she screeched her voice echoing throughout the cavern, bouncing off the walls.

  “Ok, ok…” he said removing his hand.

  “Sorry” she said returning to the tomb. “It's just things may not be what they seem. These guys liked their booby traps.” She looked closely at it. “That's not gold” she said “It looks like pyrite or fool's gold.”

  “Why put that in there? Did they value it back then?”

  “It could be a distraction” she said thinking, “or…” she remembered something vaguely from her childhood science days. “It could actually be arsenopyrite. Which is actually just fools gold with the handy addition of a bucketload of arsenic. We might have some poisoned rocks here.”

  “Really” he looked genuinely surprised. “A rock could kill me?”