The Third Gate jl-1

by Lincoln Child

  Logan nodded. So far, everything Jennifer had mentioned-the out-of-body experience, the dark tunnel, the Being of Light, the borderland, the “life review”-was consistent with other NDEs. He glanced at the timer. Over ten minutes had passed. This was longer-he knew from a cursory examination of the CTS documents-than any other near-death experience recorded at the Center.

  “The Being asked the question again,” she said. “As it did, I saw my life-from early childhood, things I hadn’t thought about or even remembered for decades-flash before me. And then…” She swallowed again. “And then it started.”

  Logan took tighter grasp of her hands. “Tell me.”

  Even in the dark room, he could see the beautiful lines of her oval face become strained. “The Being said a single word: ‘Insufficient.’ And then it… changed.”

  Her breathing grew a little labored.

  “Just relax,” Logan said. “Describe it to me. How did the Being change?”

  “At first, it was just a sensation I had. I felt the inexpressible, endless love begin to die away. So did the warmth, the well-being, the joy. It was so slow, so subtle, I didn’t realize it at first. But when I did realize it, I suddenly felt… exposed. And then the Being… grew dark. The bright light dimmed. And now I could see its face.”

  For a moment, an image appeared in Logan’s mind: a face, leering, hirsute, goatish.

  Jennifer’s breathing grew more rapid. “Suddenly, the border ahead of me… began to change, too. It was no longer golden. It wavered, become wet somehow. It looked like a curtain of blood. Then… and then it melted away.” Her voice began to tremble. “And beyond… beyond…”

  “Go on,” Logan barely whispered.

  “Beyond lay… lay the screaming dark. I tried to run, to get away. But I was being pulled in, I couldn’t fight. And then it was too late. There was no light, there was no air. I couldn’t breathe. There were… bodies, all around me, invisible, slippery, sliding past me. Screaming, always screaming. I was hemmed in by the bodies, I couldn’t move. I felt…” She was gasping now. “I felt a terrible pressure. A pressure inside me. As if the very essence of my being was getting sucked away… And always he was laughing… And then I felt the edge of the-the… oh, God!”

  And suddenly, Logan sensed it again: the malignant, demonic presence; the endless enmity and hatred and rage. It was a tangible thing that almost pushed him back in his chair.

  “Jesus!” he said, jerking violently, breaking contact with Jennifer.

  She gasped. For a moment, the office was quiet. And then she dissolved into racking sobs.

  Logan embraced her gently. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s going to be all right.”

  But she only continued to weep.

  40

  Robert Carmody stood in the dust-scented confines of chamber one, moodily playing with the focus ring on the lens of his digital camera. Nearby, Payne Whistler was kneeling on the newly cleaned floor, holding a carved tablet in a gloved hand.

  “Item A three forty-nine,” Whistler murmured into a pocket recorder. “Tablet. Polished limestone.” He pulled out a ruler, measured the object carefully. “Seven centimeters by nine and a half centimeters.” He scrutinized the tablet’s face for a minute. “It appears to be an invocation for the pharaoh’s safe journey to the next kingdom.”

  He made a few additional remarks, then gently placed the tablet on a white linen cloth that lay nearby. “All right, Bob,” he said.

  With a sigh, Carmody wheeled over a freestanding light, then leaned in, focused his camera on the tablet, snapped a dozen shots from different angles, bracketing the exposures. Then he straightened up and reviewed his work on the camera’s LED screen. “Another masterpiece.”

  Whistler nodded, then picked up the tablet, tagged it, carefully wrapped it in a fresh cloth, and placed it in a plastic evidence locker. Carmody jotted down the photo reference numbers in a small notebook.

  “Jesus,” he said, flipping the notebook closed. “We’ve been here-what-three hours already? And not one interesting damn piece.”

  Whistler glanced at him. “You kidding? All this stuff is interesting. More than interesting-these are the grave goods of the first pharaoh of unified Egypt.”

  Carmody scoffed. “Listen to you. You’re starting to sound like Romero.”

  Whistler stood up, brushed his pants back into place. “You have to be patient. If you wanted instant gratification, you picked the wrong profession.”

  “What profession? You’re the archaeologist.”

  “Surveyor,” Whistler corrected.

  “I’m a photographer. I’ve been here three weeks now. Can’t call home, can’t order in a pizza, can’t even go for a damn jog.”

  “There’s all the pizza you could ever eat in the mess. And the exercise room has plenty of treadmills.”

  “Can’t get HBO. Can’t play World of Warcraft. Can’t get laid.”

  “Well, that’s your problem.” Whistler set the evidence locker aside.

  “I mean, I’m not stupid. I knew what I was getting into when I signed the nondisclosure forms. But I thought I’d get to shoot pictures of, you know, mummies. Golden masks. That kind of thing. Stuff that would look good on the resume, later, when I could talk about it. But he’s picked this place clean, cleared out everything sexy. He’s keeping all the good stuff for himself. I mean, look at that.” And Carmody gestured toward the rear of the chamber, where a locked partition sealed off the entrance to chamber two.

  “What did you expect? March is the head archaeologist. Stop grousing-you’re getting well paid. I mean, you could have it a lot worse. You could be doing his job.” And Whistler jerked a finger out toward the Umbilicus platform, where a security guard stood, monitoring their progress.

  “I didn’t sign on to be a door shaker. I’m an artist at what I do. I don’t just point my camera and fire away. I’ve had my work in five different shows.”

  “Sell anything?” Whistler grinned wickedly.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Let’s get on with it.” Whistler turned and carefully removed another object from the gilt-edged wooden box that sat nearby. He turned it over in his hands, peered at it closely. “Item A three fifty. Tablet. Polished limestone.” He measured it. “Six and a half centimeters by nine centimeters.” He glanced at its inscription. “It appears to be an itemized list of the gifts Narmer’s wife, Niethotep, was given on her thirtieth birthday.” He nodded to himself. “Now this is interesting.”

  “Yeah. As interesting as watching paint dry. How do you say ‘fuck you’ in hieroglyphics?”

  Whistler raised his middle finger. Then he placed the tablet on the linen cloth. “Do your thing.”

  With a huge sigh, Carmody raised his camera, took the obligatory shots. He made some notations in his book, then watched sourly as Whistler put the tablet carefully away for curation and documentation.

  “I just want a little fun,” he said as Whistler reached again into the gilded box. “I mean, stuck out in the ass end of nowhere for three weeks-I’m going crazy here.”

  “Take a walk out in the swamp. Then come back and count the mosquito bites. That’ll give you something to do.” Whistler shook his head. “Last tomb I worked on was a Neolithic sand pit burial. Compared to that, this is heaven.”

  “You know what? You need to get out more.”

  “Maybe.” Whistler pulled another object from the box, examined it. “Item A three fifty-one. Tablet. Polished limestone.”

  “Not another one,” Carmody groaned. “Somebody shoot me. Just shoot me, please, and get it over with.”

  Out on the metal grating, the guard’s radio crackled into life. “Maw Base to Eppers, come in.”

  The guard raised the radio to his lips. “Eppers here.”

  “Sensors are picking up a pressure spike in the Umbilicus, at waypoint nineteen. We’d like you to climb up and do a visual before we send a repair team down.”

  “Copy that.” The guard
snugged his radio into his belt, then turned toward the metal rungs and climbed out of sight.

  Carmody watched him disappear. Then he looked around the chamber. As he’d already pointed out, it had been cleared of most of the easily transportable items. Beyond the gilt box and a scattering of grave goods, only the furniture and the huge guardian statue, covered by a tarp, remained.

  His eye settled on one of the chairs: intricately carved, decorated with gold filigree. “Watch this,” he said. He walked over to the chair and sat down in it with an air of mock gravity.

  Whistler looked at him with a mixture of surprise and horror. “What the hell are you doing? Get out of there! It hasn’t been fully curated-you could damage it!”

  “No way. This stuff is solid as a rock.” He folded his hands over his chest. “King Narmer speaking. Bring me the virgin du jour.”

  Whistler looked worriedly up at the security camera. “They’re going to see you. Stone’s going to have your ass.”

  “Calm down. Paxton’s manning the desk this afternoon-he’s a buddy of mine.” Carmody got out of the chair, looked around to make sure the guard was still out of sight, then walked over to the massively constructed royal bed. While the legs, posts, and canopy were dense with inlay and gold leaf, the bed surface itself was of plain, unornamented wood. He tested it with his fingers, pressing, and then-satisfied-lay down on it.

  “Carmody, you’ve gone frigging stir-crazy,” Whistler said, his voice low and serious. “Get out of there before the guard sees you.”

  “I’ll just take a quick forty winks first,” Carmody replied. He raised his head, made a show of looking around the chamber. “Hey, Cleopatra, get your ass over here, I’ve got a royal scepter that needs polishing-”

  There was a sudden, sharp cracking noise; the entire frame of the bed vibrated, then gave a violent shear. Before Carmody could move, there was a little puff of displaced air and-with a second, even louder crack-the massive wooden canopy overhead broke loose from its anchors and hurtled down onto his prostrate form.

  A flash of brilliant white-a moment of unspeakable, crushing pain-and then nothing at all.

  41

  When Logan entered the forensic bay of the Station’s medical suite, Dr. Rush was just pulling a green shroud over Robert Carmody’s crushed and broken body. Hearing footsteps, the doctor looked over, caught sight of Logan, and shook his head.

  “I’ve never seen a body so thoroughly destroyed as this one,” he said.

  “They’ve finished the preliminary investigation,” Logan told him. “The gold bolts holding the canopy bed together appear to have been deliberately loosened.”

  Rush frowned. “Loosened? You mean, as in sabotage?”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps in preparation for being pocketed by somebody. They’re solid gold, after all, each one as big as a railroad spike.”

  Rush was silent a moment. “What’s the mood?”

  “More or less what you’d imagine. Shock. Grief. And anxiety. Talk of the curse has spiked again.”

  Rush nodded absently. He looked pale, and there were dark patches beneath his eyes. Logan recalled what the doctor had told him on the plane: I trained as an ER specialist. But somehow, I could never get used to the death. Oh, I could handle natural causes all right. But sudden, violent death… He wondered if this was the right time to talk to Rush; decided there wasn’t likely to be a better.

  “Do you have a moment?” he asked quietly.

  Rush glanced at him. “Let me just finish up here, make a few notes. You can wait in my office if you like.”

  Ten minutes later, Rush came into the office. He appeared to be more composed, and the color had come back into his face. “Sorry for the delay,” he said as he took a seat behind his desk. “What’s up, Jeremy?”

  “I’ve spoken with Jennifer,” Logan said.

  Rush sat forward. “Really? Did she tell you about her NDE?”

  “We basically relived it together.”

  Rush looked at him for a moment. “She’s never spoken of it in detail at CTS. It’s rather awkward, really, given my position there.”

  “I think she needed to speak about it to somebody who was completely objective,” he said. “Somebody with experience dealing with-the unusual.”

  Rush nodded. “What can you tell me?”

  “I suppose I should get her permission before I go into details with anyone-even you. I can tell you that the first part of the experience was relatively textbook. But the last part-where she was ‘over’ longer than anyone else in your database-was the opposite of textbook.” Logan paused. “It was… horrible. Terrifying. It’s no wonder she doesn’t want to speak of it to anybody-let alone relive it.”

  “Terrifying? Really? I suspected there was some unpleasant aspect, given her unwillingness to confront it, but I had no idea…” Rush’s voice trailed off for a moment. “Poor Jen.”

  For a moment, the office fell into silence. It was on the tip of Logan’s tongue to say: There’s something else. I can’t say why-but Jennifer’s description of her NDE, of the horror near its conclusion, reminds me strongly of King Narmer’s curse. But he could not explain why; it was just a feeling, like the seed between one’s teeth that wouldn’t go away. Nothing would be helped by mentioning it. But maybe… maybe… there was another way he could help.

  He cleared his throat. “I strongly recommend that she have no more channeling sessions. They’re upsetting her and may even be psychically damaging.”

  “I mentioned as much to Stone,” Rush said. “He’s agreed to dial back the number of future sessions to just one or two more. He wants me to ask her about the third gate and what lies beyond. Also, what she meant about that odd tomb painting: ‘That which brings life to the dead, and death to the living.’ ”

  “It’s a bad idea,” Logan replied. “And the sessions I’ve witnessed haven’t provided you with anything material.”

  “Actually, the last session did. Tina Romero’s been studying some of the utterances-and she finds them to be very intriguing, given the context of what’s known about the stability of ancient Egyptian texts.”

  “You asked me to see Jennifer-and I’m giving you my recommendation.” Logan took a DVD case out of his pocket, placed it on the desk, and tapped it with a finger. “Here’s the data you provided me with from your CTS files. I’ve been going over it.”

  “And?”

  “And I want you to answer a question-please answer it honestly. Has Jennifer been acting differently since her NDE? Is she in any way a changed person?”

  Rush looked at Logan but did not respond.

  “I’m no expert in such matters. But based on what I’ve read in these files, from what you’ve already told me about your changed relationship with your wife, and from what she’s said herself-not only was Jennifer’s NDE very different from other people’s, but I believe her behavior in its wake has been different from the others you’ve studied at the Center.”

  For a long moment, Rush remained silent. Then, at last, he sighed. “I haven’t wanted to admit it-even to myself. But it’s true. More than just our relationship has changed.”

  “Can you qualify the change for me?”

  “It’s subtle. At times I think it’s more me than her, seeing things that aren’t there. But she seems… remote. Detached. She was always so warm, so spontaneous. I don’t sense that as much in her these days.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily have to do with her near-death experience,” Logan said. “Those could be manifestations of depression, as well.”

  “Jennifer was never a depressive personality. And it’s not just that. She…” Rush paused. “I don’t know how to put it. She seems to have less of a-a moral center than she used to. Here’s a stupid example. She was always a sucker for sappy movies. Toss in a little melodrama, and she’d be crying like a baby. But not anymore. One of the first nights here on the Station, they screened the old tearjerker Dark Victory for the crew. Even some of the toughest roustabouts were
choked up by the end. But Jennifer remained stone-faced throughout. It was as if the emotion… well, as if it no longer penetrated.”

  When Logan next spoke, it was slowly, thoughtfully. “You know, Ethan, there are cultures on earth who believe that-under the right circumstances-a person can be separated from their inner spirit.”

  “Inner spirit?” Rush repeated.

  “I mean the intangible life force that links us from this world to the next. The Byzantines, the Incans, certain Native American tribes, Enlightenment-era Rosicrucians, all had variant belief structures regarding such a thing-there were, and are, many others.”

  Rush looked at him but did not speak.

  “At the end of her NDE, Jennifer mentioned feeling a terrible pressure. She felt as if-let me try to recall her exact words-‘as if the very essence of my being was getting sucked away.’ ”

  “What is it you’re saying, exactly?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m just speculating. Is it possible that your wife was clinically dead for so long that she… well, that she lost an integral part of her human spirit?”

  Rush let out a short, explosive laugh. “Her spirit? Jeremy, that’s crazy.”

  “Is it? I plan to research it further. But one could argue that such phenomena might explain the need for one of the rites of the Catholic Church itself.”

  “Oh? And what rite is that?”

  “The rite of exorcism.”

  A sudden, freezing silence fell over the office.

  “What is it you’re implying?” Rush asked after a minute. “That Narmer isn’t just speaking through Jennifer? That in those crossings she’s being — possessed by Narmer?”

  “I don’t know what’s happening during those crossings,” Logan replied. “I don’t think anybody can know, exactly. I only know it might be dangerous.”

  Rush fetched a deep sigh. “Just one last crossing. To ask about the third gate. Then I’ll refuse to authorize any more.”

  42

  Logan stepped into the brilliantly lit Staging Area, notebook in hand. Somewhere here-amid the bustle, noise, and ceaseless activity-was the workman who had reported hearing strange, ominous whisperings in the night. He was next on Logan’s list to interview… if he could manage to find him.