Into the Dark (The Conjurors)

by Kristen Pham

  “It’s d-dark. I don’t like it,” Tan’s gravelly voice said.

  “Don’t worry, buddy, we’ll be out of this hall soon,” Thai said quietly.

  The halls split off in different directions, like a maze. An instinct steered Valerie away from the stream of people who were heading up the biggest of the passageways. “This way,” she whispered, leading Thai and Tan down a smaller hall. It was so low that they had to hunch over, and she felt as if the tight space was squeezing her. For a sudden, terrible moment, she panicked that she had taken the wrong path and they would be lost inside the pyramid forever, doomed to search in the darkness for a way out.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the end of the hall and entered an empty room with a vaulted ceiling. The vibrating was even stronger in here.

  “It’s b-b-buzzing in here,” Tan said quietly.

  “You can feel it too? I’m glad it’s not just me,” Valerie replied.

  “This must be the Queen’s Chamber,” Thai said, looking around the room with interest. “No one knows for sure what this room was for. Some people think it was supposed to be where they would put the Pharaoh’s body when he died, but they changed their minds and built the bigger room above us for the body instead.”

  Valerie walked around the room, running her hands along the surface of the walls and marveling at the way that the stones were perfectly cut and joined together. She knew that the entire pyramid had been built by hand, each stone shaped by a person, not a machine. She couldn’t imagine how they had accomplished it.

  “It’s right below here – the room that will launch me into space tonight.”

  “I w-w-want to s-see it!” Tan said.

  “Sorry, Tan, there’s no way to get to it from inside of the pyramid. But there’s a tunnel from the outside that leads straight to the room,” she explained.

  “That makes sense. Otherwise someone would have found the entrance in here, I guess,” Thai said thoughtfully. “Where’s the entrance?”

  “At the Sphinx.”

  “It’s true then, there are tunnels from the Sphinx to the pyramids,” Thai said, his voice filled with curiosity and excitement. “Lots of people have thought that’s true, but no one has found one yet.”

  “We’ll get to see one up close tonight,” Valerie said. Then she closed her eyes, concentrating. “This pyramid is such a maze – I can see the entire map of it in my head. It’s so cool.”

  “I wish I had a copy of that map in my head too,” Thai grumbled. “To make sure you don’t get lost.”

  “L-l-look! I don’t like her,” Tan said, lifting Thai’s arm to point down the dark hall that led out of the Queen’s Chamber.

  Valerie squinted, and saw a flash of dark red that stood out against the neutral stones. Seconds later, a woman glided down the hall and entered the room. When she stepped into the dim yellow light inside the chamber, Valerie felt all of the heat drain from her body. A vision from her worst nightmares had come to life – the woman standing in front of her was Sanguina. Evil radiated off of her body in poisonous ripples, and Valerie’s heart pounded.

  Sanguina had terrorized and chased her for as long as she could remember. And she was real – Tan had seen her too. She stared right into Valerie’s eyes and her mouth stretched in a soulless smile of triumph.

  “Found you,” she said, and the sound of her voice made Valerie’s stomach clench painfully. Thai stepped protectively in front of her.

  “Get away from us,” Valerie said in a wavering voice. But Sanguina glided closer and closer, and Valerie knew that they would soon be cornered in the small space. “Run,” she whispered to Thai.

  Valerie sprinted past the woman before she could get any nearer, and Thai was right behind her. He didn’t need to ask why they were running – the evil surrounding the woman was so strong they could almost touch it.

  They were only halfway down the low, narrow hallway when Sanguina appeared in front of them a few yards away, out of thin air. They stopped short, and Thai yanked Valerie’s hand so that she was behind him. She felt as if the damp heat inside the pyramid was closing around them, smothering them.

  “What do you want?” Thai demanded.

  “I know what you’re here for. And if you leave this planet, I will kill you. I promise you that,” Sanguina said, speaking only to Valerie as if Thai didn’t exist.

  “If I stay, I die. You can’t stop me.”

  Sanguina was close enough now for Valerie to see that her eyes were as black as they seemed when she was unconscious. “I can and will stop you. And I will make your life a living hell for defying me, I promise you that.”

  Sanguina took a step closer, and Valerie felt like a cornered animal. Thai raised his fists, ready to fight. There was nowhere to run; Sanguina blocked the passage in front of them. How had this figment of her nightmares entered her reality?

  “Why do you chase me in my dreams?” Valerie asked, and saw surprise flash across Sanguina’s face.

  “You know me?” Sanguina said, unable to disguise her shock. “Where? How–”

  It was the second of distraction that Thai had been waiting for, and he charged at Sanguina with all the speed he could manage. But instead of toppling her to the ground, he went straight through her. Valerie stared at her in amazement, and then she heard Thai laugh with surprise and relief.

  “She isn’t even here! She’s on the Globe. This is only her projection. There is nothing she can do to either of us.”

  The anger on Sanguina’s face was a horrible sight to behold. “You don’t know how wrong you are,” her voice boomed. Despite how pale she was, she turned a shade whiter, her purplish-blue veins pulsating with her anger. Her eyes bored into Valerie as if she would kill her if she could.

  “Valerie, let’s lose this psycho. Run!” Thai’s voice yanked her out of her frozen terror.

  Valerie did run, squeezing her eyes shut as she passed through Sanguina. She grabbed Thai’s hand and they ran as fast as they could. They burst out of the pyramid into the bright sunshine at full speed, and didn’t stop until they were on the manicured lawn of their hotel, where they both collapsed, breathing in gulps of fresh air. Valerie looked behind her, half expecting to see Sanguina chasing them, but she had vanished.

  “Who was that freak? You knew her?” Thai asked.

  Suddenly, from behind, they heard a man clearing his throat. When they saw Chisisi, they sighed in relief. “Welcome back. You seem exhausted. Let me take you to your room for rest and refreshment.”

  “Thanks anyway, but we’ll be fine now that we’re back at the hotel,” Thai said authoritatively.

  “You must not assume that anywhere in Giza is safe. Danger may lurk where you least expect it, even here at the Mena House,” Chisisi said, his tone sharp for the first time. Then he abruptly turned and left them.

  Valerie immediately felt bad that they had offended Chisisi after all he had done for them. But before she could chase after him, Cyrus appeared by her side. “What’d I miss? Who was that woman at the Great Pyramid? I barely saw her inside the pyramid before she disappeared. Who do you guys know from my world besides me?”

  “Sanguina. She’s some kind of monster or something whom I always see when I’m unconscious. I never imagined that she was real. She said she’d kill me if I go to the Globe,” Valerie said quietly.

  Cyrus looked shocked, but he quickly recovered. “She’ll have no idea where to even start looking for you on the Globe, Val. Everything about your identity and your trip is a secret to everyone but a few people. And once you’re here, I’ll be able to protect you. In the meantime, I’ll ask the others about who this Sanguina person is. Don’t worry, they’ll find her. She’ll never get near you.”

  “Venu must be working for her,” Thai said thoughtfully. “Maybe at Stonehenge he was trying to stop you from leaving Earth.”

  “I don’t understand. Why is she after me?” Valerie wondered.

  “Because you’re special, of course,” Th
ai said, as if the answer was obvious.

  Chapter Six

  The group went back to the hotel and settled on the couch. Valerie and Thai munched on some fruit that Chisisi had sent up.

  “Is Tan ok? He seemed scared back there,” Valerie said.

  “I think so. When something is more than he can handle, he kind of retreats inside me for awhile. He’ll come out again when he’s ready. But are you okay, Valerie?” Thai asked.

  “It turned my world around to realize that there will still be someone chasing me when I go to the Globe. What’s waiting for me there is worse than what’s chasing me here.”

  “But there you’ll have your magic to protect you.”

  “And me,” Cyrus added.

  She looked out the window. The sun was already setting.

  “Are you ready?” Thai asked.

  “I want to thank Chisisi one more time before I go. I hope he isn’t still upset. We were kind of rude before when he was trying to help us.”

  “Fine, I guess you’re right. I didn’t mean to offend him,” Thai said, picking up the phone. “Hi, Amun, could you send Chisisi to our room? Oh, when? Okay, thanks.” He hung up the phone. “Amun said that Chisisi was heading over to our room twenty minutes ago.”

  “I wonder what happened to him,” Valerie said. It didn’t feel right to leave without saying goodbye.

  “Who knows? Whenever we don’t need him, he pops out of nowhere. And now that we do call him, he’s nowhere to be found. But we can’t wait around any longer.”

  “He’s right, Val. Let’s get out of here before something else goes wrong,” Cyrus added.

  “Well, we’re finally going to need these,” Thai said, pulling the night vision goggles out of their backpacks.

  Valerie felt herself grin for the first time all day. It would be pretty cool to go all James Bond and sneak past the security on the Giza Plateau. She led the way out of the hotel, following the map in her head of the route to the Sphinx.

  Rather than take the elevators downstairs and leave through the main entrance, she directed Thai and Cyrus to take the stairs, hoping that they would attract less attention. The minute she opened the door to the stairwell, a sour smell made her cover her nose. As they descended, the smell grew stronger, almost making her gag.

  They were going down the last flight of stairs when she realized where she had smelled that rancid odor before. “Thai, watch out, Venu’s been here. That smell is his poison, I know it,” she whispered, and her fear made her feet feel as if they were glued to the ground.

  They both stopped, but it was completely silent in the stairwell. Thai then moved in front of her, murmuring, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Hurry up; now is not the time to freeze up,” Cyrus said urgently, and she forced herself to hurry down the last few stairs at top speed and burst out the exit door behind Thai.

  “I can’t believe he was that close,” Thai said.

  Valerie noticed something lying on the ground, covered in yellow slime. She knelt down to examine it, and felt her entire body quiver with horror. It was a blue cloth with gold embroidery that she had seen before. “It’s that sash that Chisisi always wears,” she said, struggling to keep the panic out of her voice.

  “You’re right. What happened?” Cyrus said. Before she could do more than blink, Cyrus vanished.

  Thai yanked Valerie to her feet. “We have to get you out of here. Now.”

  “We can’t leave without finding him! What if Venu really hurt him? You know what he’s capable of!”

  “We don’t even know where to begin to look. I swear to you that I will not rest until I find Chisisi, but right now you need to get off this planet.”

  At that moment, Cyrus popped back into view. “He’s alive, Val. He’s not in good shape, but he’s alive. Amun called an ambulance.”

  “I have to see him, to help him!”

  “There’s nothing you can do for him now. And Venu is not going to stop trying to hurt you and those around you until you get out of here. Once you’re gone, he’ll have no reason to hurt Chisisi or anyone else.”

  “I bring everyone around me nothing but misery,” she said with despair.

  “That’s not true! Please, don’t give up on me now, when you’re so close to making it to the Globe. For everyone’s sake, you have to get it together,” Cyrus demanded.

  She took several deep, steadying breaths, staring into Cyrus’ blue eyes. “All right. Let’s go.”

  As soon as they had made it off of the hotel grounds, Valerie and Thai put on their night vision goggles.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  Thai pressed a button on the side of her goggles, and the world appeared before her in green and black. “They have a heat sensor, so we’ll be able to see the guards coming from a mile away. Speaking of which, drop to the ground, one’s about to pass us!” he hissed.

  Valerie looked to her right and saw a glowing red figure walking closer. The guard was humming a tune, clearly not expecting to find anyone trying to sneak onto the Giza Plateau at this time of night. Still, she held her breath as he passed a few yards from where she lay on the ground, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to see her or Thai in the faint moonlight coming through the clouds.

  “Thank goodness that it’s a cloudy night, or we’d be caught for sure,” she whispered to Thai after the guard was out of sight.

  Thai scanned the landscape in every direction. “Okay, it looks like the coast is clear, so lead the way.”

  Valerie and Thai hurried across the plateau, keeping a sharp eye out for any security guards – or threats like Venu, she remembered with a shudder. The sight of Chisisi’s sash covered in yellow slime flashed through her mind. Would he survive? She didn’t know how she could live with herself if he died because of her.

  “Stay with me, Val,” Cyrus said, seeing her expression.

  “You can do this. I’ll go back for him, and he’ll be okay,” Thai added.

  She nodded and forced herself to focus on their mission. Finally, they reached the Sphinx. The sight took her breath away, and she was temporarily distracted from her worries. When she had seen the Sphinx from the distance during the day, it had seemed like a piece of ancient history whose story had already been told. But in the moonlight, the Sphinx came alive, and she was reminded that this was a living monument that still had a role to play, particularly in her own future.

  Valerie took off her night vision goggles as she approached the Sphinx. Up close, she could see that the half lion, half man was wearing an ancient Egyptian headdress. Despite the fact that his face had been battered with time and he was missing his nose, the Sphinx’s wise and regal expression soothed Valerie’s troubled mind.

  His stone eyes looked as if they held a fascinating secret, and they seemed to follow her as she approached closer and closer. It felt as if he could see inside of her mind, and she felt all of the hairs on her arms rise.

  “Unbelievable,” Thai said. “You can’t understand the power of these places by looking at pictures.”

  Only Cyrus wasn’t awestruck. “So where’s the entrance to the tunnel, Val?”

  “I think I have to ask – well – him,” she said, looking into the searching eyes of the Sphinx.

  Almost as if she was in a trance, Valerie approached the Sphinx. She circled the entire monument without speaking and then stopped at the base, right beneath his head. Hesitantly, she reached out to touch the stone. Beneath her fingers, she felt warm muscle covered in soft fur. Gently, she stroked the fur, and she almost gasped in surprise when she heard a gentle, contented purr. She looked up and saw that the Sphinx’s eyes were softly glowing blue, just like the face at Stonehenge. Valerie’s feeling of eerie trepidation vanished.

  The Sphinx was a guardian, protecting the magic of this place. But he recognized the magic inside of her, and his fierceness disappeared. She felt a tingle in the back of her mind, and suddenly she knew how to find the tunnel. “The entrance is through th
e top of the back right paw,” she said, looking at Cyrus and Thai for the first time. They stared at her, astounded.

  She walked to the Sphinx’s back right paw, where the lion’s tail curled over the hind quarters. The top of the paw was rough stone that looked very different from the finished, exact lines of other parts of the Sphinx. It was the only part of the Sphinx’s paw that hadn’t been repaired over the years by people trying to preserve the landmark.

  “Why wouldn’t they fix the top of the paw too?” Thai wondered.

  “Let’s say that your Egyptian benefactor can do more than get you a room with a view. He made sure that the entrance was never touched,” Cyrus said. Valerie couldn’t help thinking that it was too bad that the benefactor, whoever he was, hadn’t been able to protect Chisisi.

  Cyrus continued, “The top of the paw looks so old because it is – it hasn’t been changed since the time it was made.”

  “Duck!” Thai said suddenly, and he and Valerie crouched behind the paw. She put her night vision goggles back on and saw that another guard was doing his rounds. Minutes later he was gone, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  They removed their goggles again to examine the stone. Thai turned on his flashlight and shone it on the rough stone. Then he turned the flashlight on her face. “Ready?”

  Valerie nodded, took a deep breath, and pushed on the stone with all her strength. Nothing happened. Thai added his muscles to the struggle, and they both turned red from the effort. Just as she thought her muscles would collapse, the ancient stone groaned, and then swiveled, turning sideways. It opened to a dark tunnel. “The keystone shaft,” she said quietly, referring to the map in her mind and straining her eyes to see into the darkness. She would almost have to crawl to get in the entrance.