Scorpion House

by Maria Hudgins

  * * *

  Paul and Marcus ran to the roof and snatched up several large blue tarps. Kathleen, Lacy, and Roxanne grabbed burlap bags and flashlights. All five ran to the tomb. Akhmed the night watchman jerked to attention, snapped his trusty AK-47 to port arms position, and stood, feet apart, blocking the tomb’s entrance.

  “It’s only us, Akhmed,” Roxanne called out, lest he begin firing. “Rain is on its way. Put down your gun and help us.”

  Roxanne switched on the interior lights and, in less than an hour, they had blue tarps spread across the tomb’s entrance and anchored with rocks. They covered the vent above the new chamber and the generator by another expanse of blue polyethylene. Inside the tomb, they gathered all their equipment, all the pottery, everything that wasn’t stuck to the walls and crammed it into burlap bags.

  Everything but the coffin.

  Kathleen looked at it and cried. “I can’t leave it here! I can’t!” The coffin lay in the burial chamber, the lowest part of the tomb. “If water comes in, it will be ruined!” She wrenched away from Roxanne’s grasping arms. “I’m going to stay here. I’ll stay here until the danger is past.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Roxanne muttered. “What would you do if the water did come barreling down the hall? Hold it back, like Moses parting the Red Sea? Shovel it out?”

  “I can’t leave it!”

  “You have no choice. If you leave, it may be all right. If you stay and it isn’t all right, you’ll simply drown. What good would that do?”

  Lacy made a suggestion which she knew would be squelched, but she figured she might as well try. “Can we lift it?”

  “Of course not!” Kathleen cried. “It would crumble. I haven’t finished stabilizing it.”

  “I mean, can we lift it just a little? If four of us lifted it up a few inches, the fifth person could slide a tarp under it and we could wrap it up. Waterproof it.”

  It took a quarter-hour of discussion, but they decided to go for it. Akhmed hauled in a wooden pallet from nearby construction work. They spread the tarp across the pallet, rolled up the edges, and then, on the count of three, Kathleen, Roxanne, Lacy, and Paul lifted the precious relic about eight inches off the floor while Akhmed and Marcus shoved the tarp-covered pallet underneath. They all heard ominous crackles and crunches as they lifted, but the coffin stayed in one piece. It was done in less than ten seconds.

  They wrapped the tarp, envelope-style, around the coffin making certain no edges would be exposed to rising water. They shouldered the burlap bags, trekked back down to the house and ate a very late dinner.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Paul brought Lacy a cup of coffee with cream and no sugar, then sat on the porch floor and leaned back against the column adjacent to the one she was using. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Missed me? You were only gone one day.” She tilted her head and smiled. His statement surprised her.

  “But we haven’t talked since Kathleen and I started the papyrus repair project. That was three days ago.”

  “I’ve missed you, too.” She kicked his boot with her own. “Missed our talks. You’re the only one here I feel I can talk to.”

  Paul set his coffee down and shifted his shoulders as if he was about to lean forward and kiss her, but he didn’t. Lacy felt her face flush as a torrent of conflicting feelings rushed around inside her. Why had Paul never mentioned being married? Was there something a bit odd about this man? A man whose best friend was a yo-yo? The more she had come to know of Paul the more aware she had become of the fact that he was, in a way, very appealing. A magnetic mouth. A bit shorter than she was, but that was no big deal. Refreshingly unassuming, compared to Graham who was constantly being reminded of how sexy he was—compared to Bart who had hardly crossed her mind in the last few weeks. That thought made her smile inside.

  The screen door squeaked and Marcus came out. “I called my wife again. She’s at the hospital. They’re monitoring her, but she still says they can wait until I get there before they induce labor.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “I don’t know.” Marcus paused a long while and exhaled loudly. “Why does everything have to happen at once? I’m really worried about Dad. I’ve never seen him like this, even after Mom was killed! I need to be here and I need to be home.”

  “How will you get to the airport in the morning?” Paul asked.

  “I’ve already made arrangements with the cab driver who dropped me off here, earlier. I may as well stay up tonight. Sleep on the plane.”

  “Want some coffee?”

  Marcus shook his head and leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees. “You guys haven’t even had a chance to get over Dr. Friedman’s death, and now all this!”

  “Right.”

  “That hit Dad hard, too. He and Friedman were great friends. How did it happen?” Marcus looked at Paul, then Lacy. “Was he sick first, or did he just die in his sleep?”

  “He died in his sleep. First morning after we got here, I went in to wake him up and he was dead.” Lacy saw Joel lying there again, his feet sticking off the end of the bed, saw the unguent-smeared sheet, and saw Joel’s head pressed face down in the pillow. “He was a dear friend of mine, too.”

  “Paul, do me a favor. While I’m gone, keep checking on Dad and call me every day, collect. Can you do that? His lawyer says he’ll keep in touch, but if he does arrange bail, you and Roxanne will be here with him. Keep a close eye on him.”

  Paul said he would.

  Lacy was still seeing Joel’s body on the little bed. His partially-unpacked suitcase lying on the floor and the manila folder on the desk. “Does the name Jody Myers mean anything to you?” she asked.

  Marcus sat up straight, obviously startled. “Jody Myers? Where did you hear that name?”

  “Joel wrote it on the back of a folder. The folder he kept his flight information in. I wondered about it because I’m sure the name wasn’t there when we were flying over, but it was there the morning after he died.”

  “Must be a different Jody Myers, then. I was thinking about the kid that lived in our neighborhood when we lived on Old Canoe Road. A real weird-o. Mom and Dad told me we couldn’t play together anymore, then the other neighbors told their kids the same thing and Jody got removed from the home. Went to live with relatives.”

  “This was the kid who used to abuse animals?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Your dad told me.”

  “How did it come up?”

  “I’ve forgotten, now.” Lacy recalled what she could of the conversation she’d had with Horace on this same porch a long time ago, it seemed now. “I think we were talking about raising kids. That’s right. We were talking about your new baby and he said he was glad you were having a girl because they were easier to raise than boys.”

  “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.” Marcus shook his head. “I made things tough for them. Now Dad’s paying me back. He’s making things tough for me.”

  “So what happened to Jody Myers after that?” She glanced at Paul who had seemingly lost interest in the conversation. He was staring past her toward the hills.

  “I have no idea. I haven’t heard a thing since. It was a good thing the court took the kids out of that home, though. Their old man was a drug addict and a pervert. They ran him out of town.”

  Paul stood up, leaving his coffee cup on the porch floor. “If you’ll excuse me …” he nodded to both of them and slipped into the house.

  Turning back to Marcus, Lacy considered briefly and then decided to go for it. “What’s your take on this, Marcus. Did your father kill Susan?”

  “No!” Marcus was clearly insulted at being asked.

  “Who does he think did? He must have some idea.”

  “They didn’t let me talk to him long, but I think he still believes it was Shelley Clark.”

  “Shelley?”

  “He said something to the effect that he thinks Graham planted ev
idence in his lab in order to get Shelley released.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  * * *

  When the rain started, it sounded like a hurricane. The wind picked up, screaming around the corner of the house, then thunder, then hail. Lacy got up and walked to the antika room. Through the windows along the porch she could see nothing but silver streaks of rain and hail reflecting the floodlights attached to the eaves. Although Whiz Bang was built of sterner stuff, she suspected a number of mud-brick dwellings around them were at that moment dissolving like sugar cubes. It lasted until nearly dawn.

  She barely heard Marcus leaving. The small click of a door somewhere along the hallway and a pop, which was probably the front door opening. The rain had stopped, and an eerie quiet was left in its wake to greet the morning sun.

  Lacy trudged through sloppy mud to the tomb at daybreak assuming she’d be the first one there but Paul caught up with her on the slope. They made the last leg of the climb together, comparing notes on the storm no one could possibly have slept through.

  Akhmed stuck his head out from the tarp at the tomb entrance, one finger on his lips. “Little Yasser sleeping,” he said, slipping out past the tarp and side-stepping a rather large puddle at the threshold.

  Lacy said, “Who?”

  At the same time, Paul said, “Any damage last night?”

  Akhmed chose to answer Paul’s question first. “Everything okay. Water come all …” From this point, his narration of last night’s events involved more hand and body language than actual words. Lacy got the idea water pounded and pummeled the entrance all night but Akhmed had fearlessly stemmed the surge, forcing the tarp against the stone with his bare hands. Shifting the tarp aside and scotching it open with a rock, Akhmed put his finger on his lips again, and motioned them in.

  Curled up against the opposite wall of the transverse hall, the child to whom Paul had given his yo-yo slept, his long tunic twisted, baring his little feet and legs. “Why is he here?” Lacy asked.

  The tot’s head popped up and turned. He looked at Paul and Lacy, confused for a second, and then, in a thin, reedy voice, said, “Thank you. Good bye,” the same words Paul taught him and the only English he knew other than how, now, brown cow.

  Lacy sat on the floor beside him, hesitant to touch him for fear he might take her touch as a threat but wanting, badly, to comfort him. “Hello,” she said, and repeated the word twice more.

  Paul and Akhmed moved across the room and launched into a lively bilingual conversation involving much gesturing. Paul turned to Lacy and said, “He says Kathleen is in the burial chamber. She stayed there all night.”

  “Why is this child here?”

  “He belongs to a family that lives on the other side of the hill, near Selim’s house.” Paul squatted near Lacy, touched the little boy’s cheek lightly and smiled at him. Whispering, as if whispering would keep the tot from hearing and knowing they were discussing him, he said, “His name is Yasser. He went home last evening and found his home was missing. He guesses the bulldozers got it. But he couldn’t find his parents or any of his brothers or sisters and he didn’t know what to do. So he came here. It was dark by then so Akhmed told him to stay here and he’d help him find his family this morning.”

  “The poor baby.”

  “Can you sit with him while I go down and try to talk Kathleen into leaving?”

  Paul dismissed Akhmed, who picked up his AK-47 and left.

  “Wait a minute! What about the boy?” Lacy said.

  “Akhmed’s going by Selim’s house now. Either Selim or his wife will come over to get him. They know his parents and Akhmed doesn’t.”

  Lacy looked at Yasser and racked her brain for some sort of non-verbal entertainment to keep him occupied. If only they had a yo-yo. How about itsy-bitsy spider? That’ll work. Singing the song with the appropriate finger moves, she captured his attention, then manipulated his little hands into the index fingers-to-thumbs starting position. After a couple of false starts, he did it along with her, complete with hands-at-the-sides-of-the-face on out came the sun. This child was smart. By the fourth repetition, he was actually singing along in passable English. She taught him Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, wondering if she should change “church” to “mosque.”

  Some fifteen minutes later, Paul tramped back up the long hall and across to the front entrance. As he passed through he said, “Kathleen’s going to stay a while longer, but she’s all right.” He moved the hanging tarp back with one hand and stepped out, then began lifting rocks off the tarp. Lacy rose to help him.

  “Dodged the bullet, didn’t we?” he said. “We may as well fold this up and take it back.” They were moving the last of the anchoring stones when they heard screams. Horns. The braying of donkeys.

  Paul leaped onto the retaining wall near the tomb entrance and pointed. From the north, a muddy tide rounded the bend near the Temple of Seti I, carrying with it sticks and limbs and chunks of what looked like parts of houses. “Shit! Oh, shit!”

  He jumped off the wall. “Flash flood!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Put the tarp back!”

  “Will the water come up here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It took only a second to stretch the tarp back across the entrance but they had another small problem, Kathleen and Yasser were still inside. Lacy slipped in, lifted the confused child into her arms while Paul sealed them in and returned to his look-out spot on the wall. “I see Roxanne and the others standing on the porch.” Paul yelled. “There’s water and crap up to the bottom of the driveway. Oh, my God!”

  Lacy heard nothing else for a minute. The child in her arms began to cry. She held him closer, feeling his body tremble. If only I could explain to him … His lower lip trembled as he drew in a breath. “What’s happening? Paul?”

  “It’s coming! Holy shit!”

  Paul popped through and dropped to his knees, checking the seal between the tarp and the floor. A loose and imperfect seal at best. “It’s here!” The tarp bowed inward, sliding the anchoring rocks with it. The weight of the flood water overwhelmed it, tossing the rocks aside like styrofoam doorstops.

  The floor in the transverse hall was uneven, the lowest part down the center and aligned with the long hall. Water rushed through and down. They both had a decision to make, and no time to make it.

  “I’ll get Kathleen. You take care of the kid. Get him outside as soon as you can.”

  “You can’t Paul! You’ll both drown!”

  But Paul was already running down the long hall, slipping and sliding along with the newly-formed river rushing toward the burial chamber.

  * * *

  The slope of the long hall directed all the incoming water into the burial chamber. If it continued until the water leveled out even with the tomb entrance, the burial chamber would be flooded to its ceiling. If it didn’t, the chamber would be flooded to a somewhat lesser extent. Could Kathleen escape by herself? Certainly not against the muddy tide cascading down the long hall. She would have to wait until it slacked and that might be too late. Would Kathleen leave her precious coffin at any price? Even at the cost of her own life?

  Paul knew he couldn’t hope to get ahead of the water, but at least the current was with him. He careened from one wall to the other, sliding, falling, scrambling back to his feet, slipping again. He and the first couple inches of water slid into the burial chamber at the same time. He found Kathleen kneeling beside the coffin, her hands folded in prayer.

  “Let’s go!” He grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet.

  “No! I won’t go!”

  Paul threw his arms around her waist and pulled her toward the hall. Kathleen twisted, flailed him with her fists, kicked out toward his shins but her kicks were ineffective due to the counter-force of the onrushing water. He hauled her upward against the tide, his gaze fixed on the morning light he could see through the entrance ahead.

  “Damn you, Paul! Damn
you to hell!” She bit his arm.

  Something under their feet changed. He stopped, let her go, and looked down. No more water. The last of the flood was slipping into the burial chamber behind him, the upper section of the long hall now nothing but slick, muddy rock.

  “Is that it?” he whispered. He slipped and slid upward, past Lacy and the screaming child, and looked out. The flood still rushed southward down below, a foot or so below the level of the entrance, but it was no longer rising.

  “Where’s Kathleen?” he said. “Stupid question.” He yanked off his boots for another trip down the long hall, reasoning that socks would give him better traction than leather on the wet rock. The water in the burial chamber leveled out at about ten inches depth from wall to wall. It would have to be pumped out.

  Thanks to the pallet, the coffin sat six inches off the floor, with only its tarp-covered bottom sloshing in flood water.

  “Thank God for the pallet and the tarp. This was Lacy’s idea, wasn’t it? If we hadn’t lifted it, it would have been ruined.”

  “Yep. She’s full of good ideas.”

  Paul retrieved his boots from the transverse hall and slogged out to the retaining wall where he found a spot to sit. He dragged off his sopping socks and wrung them out. He was wet and muddy to his waist and the skin on his feet had wrinkled. Blood trickled in a snaky line from the double arc of red marks left by Kathleen’s teeth. Damn her, anyway. He thought about the source of the floodwater (rain) and took some comfort from the fact that it wasn’t Nile River water but he’d still need to disinfect the arm thoroughly when he got the chance.

  Lacy and the child were sitting on the south wall.

  “That was a flash flood,” he announced.

  “Is that it? Is it over?”

  “I think so.”

  The leading edge had swept around the hill west of the Temple of Seti I and down, in a sort of question mark shape, past the driveway of Whiz Bang and into the hollow between the house and the tomb. The initial slosh had carried water over the retaining wall and into the tomb, then retreated, finding its own level. Paul climbed to the highest point on the wall and gazed across to the village center where the alabaster shops lay. He could see no motor traffic. Shouts, bleats and brays still pierced the air from all directions. To the south, a crowd had gathered in the road in front of Selim Hamdy’s house, all gesturing eastward, excitedly. Selim’s village, high on the side of the hill, hadn’t been touched by the water but it hadn’t been nearly as fortunate in its battle with the wrecking ball. More than half the dwellings including poor little Yasser’s home were now reduced to rubble.