The Immortality Curse: A Matt Kearns Novel 3

by Greig Beck

  “Was the monastery here first or the coffin?” Yasha asked quietly.

  “Good question,” Khaled breathed. “Who was important enough to have an entire church built around them?”

  “And then be hidden in a mountain?” Zahil asked.

  Khaled went to his friend, wiping the hair back from his forehead and peering into his face. “Okay, brother?”

  Abed nodded and his lips rose a little at the corners. “Tired. Just set me down for a while to catch my breath.”

  “Good man.” Khaled helped him to sit with his back against a stone column. His face was ashen, and when Khaled took his hand away, he saw there was blood on his fingers. They’d need to hurry their explorations.

  Zahil moved his flashlight over the room. “This doesn’t look like a place of worship, more a crypt. And you’re right; this church cannot have fallen in here. It was built down here.”

  Khaled stared at the sarcophagus. “Maybe it’s all a lie. The rocks overhead seemed to have been cut and laid in place like a stone roof. Maybe the lightning story was used as a smoke screen, and the reality was the monastery was always hidden.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be the final resting place of the Ark.” Zahil shrugged. “Final resting place of something.”

  “Let’s get some more light. The old wood will work to make some torches and chase those shadows from the corners. Hurry,” Khaled ordered.

  The men did as he requested, using some of the wood from the smashed door and wrapping handkerchiefs or strips of fabric around their ends. They used Yasha’s cigarette lighter to ignite them and stuck them in nooks and crannies. Only Yasha continued to hold his aloft.

  “That’s better.” Khaled slowly turned to examine the walls. The light showed the carvings in great detail – images of massive waves, islands, or perhaps they were the peaks of mountains rising from great oceans. Pairs of animals of all kinds, and a small group of people standing before a central figure – tall and bearded, with his arms wide.

  Yasha shook his head. “Maybe we are closer to our goal than we think.”

  “Perhaps.” Khaled walked to the huge stone coffin. It was roughly nine feet long, four wide and about six high and had a simple stone slab as a lid. He placed his hands on the edge and raised himself up. He still gripped his flashlight in one hand and held it aloft – there was carved writing, but the language was strange for a Christian monastery, and in fact looked a little like Hebrew, but a sort he had never encountered before. He could only make out a few words here and there.

  “Akebu-Lan.”

  He dropped back down, and turned to his team. “I’ve heard of that before.”

  “I think it’s Arabic,” Yasha insisted.

  “No, more some sort of root language.” He pointed. “This word, it’s a name, something like Elysia, Erewhon, Xanadu, Utopia, they’re all names for one place, the Garden of Eden. But the oldest name in existence is this one, Akebu-Lan. In the kingdom of Bor-Nu.” He shook his head. “I can’t read the rest, and from what I can, it barely makes sense. We need an expert.”

  He turned back to the coffin. “Well then, let’s see who’s home.” He waved his team closer. “Everyone on this side, hands on the lid, and on the count of three…”

  “Three, two, one and… heave…”

  Khaled and his team were all large men and strong, but the stone slab didn’t budge.

  “Stop.”

  He walked around the sarcophagus, running a finger along where the lid joined the actual casket. It met so perfectly it could have all been carved from a single piece of stone. He had a sinking feeling that perhaps that’s what it was – what he had taken to be a stone cap wasn’t a lid at all, but instead the whole thing was a single piece and the join was just a carved line.

  He pulled out his short blade and dug it in, working the blade in as far as he could. He held the knife in place and looked around the floor.

  “Yasha there, pass me that stone.”

  His man snatched up the fist-sized rock and handed it to him. Khaled lined up the pommel of his blade and then pounded against it. There was a sharp crack like the breaking of an ice sheet as the blade sunk in about an inch.

  “Get back,” Khaled said as a white gas escaped from where the lid seal had split. The four men backed away with arms up over their faces.

  A low moan lifted from somewhere behind them. Khaled turned, looking toward the door. The sound hadn’t come from their wounded man, but instead had seemed to come from outside. It came again, deep, mournful, followed by the sound of cracking, like splitting rock.

  “What is that?” Yasha asked softly.

  They waited, but there was silence again.

  Khaled shook his head. “Just the wind over the mountaintop; forget it.” He turned back to the sarcophagus. The mist was still escaping from within it. “Phew.” Khaled waved it away as he returned to the sarcophagus. He gripped the blade handle; it was now jammed tight.

  “Now, let us see.”

  The men momentarily froze as from outside the thunderous sound of another huge stone struck the ground, and then another, straight after. Dust rained down on their heads inside the small monastery.

  “Time’s running out. Again, on three –” Khaled positioned his hands on the hilt of the knife. “Three, two, one, heave…”

  This time the stone slab slid a few inches. He sucked in a huge breath, tensing his muscles.

  “Harder; three, two, one, he-eeeave…”

  The stone slid and kept sliding. It pivoted and the top half was now over the side of the casket. Khaled wiped his brow and stepped back, and then quickly looked around, finding a tumbled column of stone, which he rolled to the side of the coffin base to use as a step. It was wide enough for he and Zahil to step up.

  The pair looked into its interior. At first Khaled could see nothing but an eerie mist that filled the sarcophagus to the brim, but he waved his hand, dissipating it to reveal a single large figure. The man had long white hair and a beard and was dressed in ornate robes of someone held in high esteem. He was so perfectly preserved that the old man could have been sleeping.

  “That light, shine it here.” Khaled reached in, and felt the cheek, and then neck. The skin was cold and dry, and there was no pulse, thankfully, he thought. He continued to feel the cheek.

  “Preserved, I think, but not really mummified.”

  “Creepy if you ask me. He looks like he might wake up.” Zahil leaned in a little more. “There’s an inscription here.” He rubbed at some symbols running around the inside rim of the stone base. “Can you read them?”

  Khaled also traced the symbols. “Only this one – Shmh.”

  Yasha frowned up at them. “Is that a word? What does it mean?”

  Khaled began to laugh softly. “Not just a word, but a name – Shmh – is the very first name for Shem. The first son of Noah.”

  Yasha grinned. “The son of the Noah?” He waited, perhaps expecting some sort of joke to be revealed.

  Khaled leaned in closer to the corpse. “Why not? Only minutes ago we wondered who was important enough to have an entire church built around them. I think we now know.”

  Beside him, Zahil shone his light further into the casket. “Hey, he’s got something in his hands.”

  “I’m coming up.” There was a grunt and then with difficulty, Yasha heaved himself up beside Khaled and Zahil while still holding the burning torch. “What’s he got – treasure?”

  “Zahil leaned in. “Looks like… a skull. Whose?”

  “Adam’s,” Khaled said. He shone his light on the object that Shem had resting in his hands. It was indeed an age-browned skull, but without the jawbone. The cranium gleamed as if polished.

  “In the Biblical stories, the family of Noah were given the bones of Adam to keep safe. When the Ark finally found its resting place, Noah distributed the sacred bones of Adam to each of them. Shem got the skull.” He looked along the tall man’s remains. “More pieces of the puzzle.”<
br />
  “But not exactly coming together if you ask me,” Zahil jibed.

  “The skull; lucky guy.” Yasha grinned. “He must have really liked it to want to be buried with it.”

  “A holy relic,” Khaled said softly. “But it’s not supposed to be here. One of Noah’s final commands was for the remains of Adam to be buried in the middle of the earth, where Christ was crucified. That was to be at Karkaphta, or as we know it, Golgotha.”

  “Why would he disobey his own father?” Yasha asked.

  “Who knows, but many of the relics are supposed to have miraculous properties. Remember, Eve was said to have been created from his rib. So maybe the skull also had some sort of power.”

  “Well, if you can make a woman from one little rib, then I think I’ll just rub the skull for luck.” Yasha held the torch up and then reached in. His fingers had only rested on the top of the polished skull when there was a ripple of movement.

  “Yish!” He pulled back. “Did you see…?”

  “What is it?” Zahil leaned forward on his elbows.

  “Don’t touch it!” Khaled stared. It must have been a trick of the dancing light, he thought. But while he watched the face of the corpse, now bathed in the flashlight beams and Yasha’s burning torch, began to ripple, and the hair and beard waved like in a soft breeze.

  The eyes flicked open.

  “By all that is holy, he is alive.” Zahil jerked backwards but the pupils were jet black in milky orbs. Then what looked like a long hair or thread eased from one of the nostrils. It quested about for a moment, before easing back in.

  “What was that?” Yasha held the burning torch closer, the heat and flames only a foot or so from the face. The effect was immediate. The dark pupils in the eyes dissipated and spread away from the center of the eye, like milk poured into a swirling coffee cup.

  The cheek twitched, the lips moved, trembling and jumping, and every hair on his head and face took on a life of its own. The corpse of Shem began to swell; first the cheeks ballooned, and then the chest, arms, and stomach, and finally, the old man simply exploded into a mass of squirming thread-like worms.

  Zahil was a brave man, but with a yell he jumped backwards from the stone he was standing on.

  “Stay there,” Khaled yelled to Yasha, whose flame wobbled in his hand as they watched the horrifying sight of the man bursting into separate pieces.

  The magnificent clothing sunk in on itself, as there was nothing to hold its shape as everything else in the casket writhed and squirmed as it fled from the heat.

  “It’s not a man at all,” Yasha stammered.

  “Maybe it once was.” Khaled grimaced. “But now something has infiltrated the body.”

  Like a wave in a bathtub, the mess in the casket surged up the side toward them. Khaled reached out to snatch the burning torch from Yasha. He jammed it into the writhing horror, and the old clothing caught immediately.

  “The prophets preserve me.” Khaled ground his teeth. The sound was of a million tiny, screaming mouths, and it grated on every nerve in his body and tore at his sanity. The worms were now boiling like liquid, pitching and frothing as they tried to escape the flames.

  The smell of the burning worms was the worst thing Khaled had ever encountered in his life, as the grease from it coated the lining of his nose and mouth. He threw a hand up over his face and stepped back, forgetting his was standing on a rock, and fell to the ground. His flashlight bounced from his hand, but the flames from the open casket revealed the terrifying sight of millions of thread-like worms piling up and then spilling over the rim of the stone coffin.

  The abominations were fast. Much faster than he had expected. Once on the ground, many of the glassine threads headed for the darkness or any crack or crevice they could find. But many more simply spread out like an ever-growing pool of viscous liquid.

  He scrambled to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Khaled backed up, wishing he had a flamethrower. He wondered what horrors from hell had possessed this church and corrupted the body of the son of Noah himself. Was he cursed? Was this why the architects of this place had hidden the body away all these millennia?

  “Khaled!” Zahil yelled his name, breaking his trance.

  He held up a hand and nodded to his men. “We’re leaving – help me with Abed, and…” He turned and his words froze in his mouth.

  His friend was covered in a moving wave of the worms. They swarmed over him, seeming to investigate every inch of his body, probing, seeking, and exploring. For his part, the man just lay as if asleep and didn’t seem to notice.

  Outside a stone pounded to the ground, shaking the church. There came another, and then another, almost like a titan’s footsteps. Khaled sprinted for one of the other torches they had positioned around the stone room and went to approach Abed’s covered body, but Yasha held his arm.

  “He’s lost. We must go, now.”

  Khaled felt a surge of anger well up into his chest. “And if it was you? Would you want me to leave you to these abominations?”

  Yasha stared for a moment, and then dropped his hand from Khaled’s arm. “Sorry, brother.”

  Khaled swung back to Abed, his arm with the torch outstretched toward the stricken man to ward off the horrifying things. But they were already gone.

  Abed coughed, raising one hand to his face. Khaled, Hisham, Yasha, and Zahil raced to him.

  “Take it easy.” Khaled helped him to sit, while his fellow team members cast worried glances around at the floor and walls.

  Abed looked up at him and nodded. He inhaled deeply, and then to their surprise, he grinned.

  “How are you feeling?” Khaled saw that where there had been blood on his face and also matting his hair, there was now none. Did the worms consume it? he wondered.

  Abed got to his feet and held his arms out, looking at each as if checking them. “I feel… fine.”

  “What?” Zahil face was contorted. “How?”

  Abed looked down at his feet and lifted one leg after the other. “I feel fine. My leg is good. It must have just been sprained.”

  Hisham edged away. “This is wrong.”

  “That was no sprain.” Khaled kept his flashlight on the man’s face. “I felt the broken bones myself.”

  More stones fell, and this time a portion of the roof collapsed inward, as if struck by a meteorite. Zahil looked outside, moving now from foot to foot.

  “It’s collapsing.”

  The huge blocks could be heard falling continuously now, and beneath their feet, the vibrations made the stones jump. Khaled knew that with any stone roof architecture, there were key stones, locking stones, and once these were removed, then the entire arching skin over their heads would crumbled in all at once.

  “We go, now.”

  They sprinted down the stone steps, and Khaled paused in confusion – he was sure they had come this way. There was the road, and the table-sized stone plinth, but now it was vacant. He spun one way then the other – where was the giant gargoyle?

  The rocks began to fall faster now, so there was no time for wondering about details. The men began to run as if the devil himself were after them. They headed for the column of light and the thread of rope hanging down from above. As they danced over the broken stones, they could just make out the heads of their two team members waving them on from the rim.

  “Zahil, you first, and then you help Rizwan and Saeeb pull us all up – fast.” Khaled turned to Yasha. “You and Abed next, then Hisham and myself.”

  Yasha looked nervous, but he bit it down and waited. He helped Zahil tie himself off, and then yelled up to his colleagues who immediately started the jerking tug to lift the man off his feet, and then start to ascend.

  Khaled spun looking for Abed. The man had stopped moving and was standing among the debris, a beatific expression on his face. He held out a hand.

  “We should stay.”

  Khaled waved at him. “Get over here and get ready to climb, immedia
tely.”

  “No.” Abed shook his head. “There’s nothing to fear. I’m staying… we should all stay.” He turned back to the monastery. “They need us you know. They’ve been so lonely, so… hungry.” He smiled sadly. “They won’t let you leave anyway.”

  “What?” Khaled frowned back at his colleague. “What are you talking about?” He turned to Hisham. “Bring him here.”

  From out of the darkness of the cave there came again the moan he had heard when inside the monastery. Its mournful echoes bounced around them, until the sound of falling rocks drowned it out.

  “What was that?” Yasha hissed next to him.

  Hisham froze on his way to Abed, and Khaled turned slowly. They stood under the column of light from above that diffused outward to form a circle around them of about a few dozen feet, but beyond that, it was as dark as the vacuum of space itself.

  “I don’t know,” Khaled said, turning slowly.

  Yasha moved a little closer to the light, and only Hisham and Abed stood a little further back. From the gloom there came the sound of movement, heavy, but fast as if something was circling them.

  Khaled pulled his weapon – a Browning semi-automatic pistol, and then laid his flashlight across the wrist of his gun hand. Yasha and Hisham did the same.

  Only Abed stood still, his expression almost dream-like. “I told you.”

  “What is it? What’s out there?” Khaled screamed the words, but kept watch on the dark, trying to track the movement with his gun.

  Abed smiled. “You’ll soon see.”

  The attack came fast. One second, Hisham was standing at the periphery of the column of light, and the next, something hit him, took him, and he vanished with only a single cry of surprise.

  Khaled went to charge after him, but Yasha yelled back. “Stay here! You’ll be lost in the dark.”

  As if in response, the remains of their comrade came bouncing back into the light. The man had been torn in half, and his facial features were still screwed up in a mix of agony and horror.