The Purloined Pictograph

by Terry Marchion

  In a fit of frustration, she growled and shoved the gun back onto her pocket.

  "I hate it when you're right."

  He smiled smugly at her.

  "Do you want to go exploring or not?" He brushed past her as he walked over to Hollis, who was very glad to see him. He heard Aziza stomping behind him.

  She pointed at the man who Tremain had surprised as he slowly lumbered to his feet.

  "You." She then pointed to the group of students and the staff members. There were only about eight in total. "Find the largest tent and keep them all inside." There were shouts of protest from the students. Hollis sputtered his indignation. Without saying a word, Aziza pulled up her weapon once more and fired. A chair next to the group exploded into its constituent atoms as the energy beam hit. There was instant silence. Meekly, they allowed themselves to be herded, Hollis included, into one of the tents. Tremain stood aghast. He was surprised at the instant violence, shocked at the quick hijacking of the expedition and angered by the summary dismissal of his friend and colleagues.

  "Don't you think we will need someone's expertise?" he asked her as she turned to him.

  "You're the brightest one here, Tremain," Aziza said, pocketing her weapon again. "If you can't figure this out, they don't stand a chance."

  Tremain stood puzzled, his frown deepening.

  "Figure what out, exactly? What have I missed?" His fear dissipating, intellectual curiosity was filling the gap. Aziza motioned Tremain to follow her, three of her men falling into step behind them.

  They walked over to the opening in the rock, where Christopher had tripped.

  "Take a look inside." Aziza waved her hand in front of her, indicating the opening, her other hand held out a flashlight. Tremain took the flashlight and pointed the beam into the opening.

  The light showed a large room. Dust and pebbles littered the smooth floor. The walls were decorated with designs either painted or chiseled into the rock. They hadn't noticed much more than the floor on their first look. His pulse quickened at the sight. Hollis would be enthralled. He quickly pushed the thought aside. Hollis is better off in the tent at the moment. Tremain knew he'd have to find a way to keep Aziza occupied, so Christopher had time to get help. He took his time studying the room, staying just outside the opening, so as not to disturb anything. The colors on the walls were vibrant and bright, depicting scenes of daily life with some of the images almost photo-realistic. From where he stood, he saw rows of crops being grown, tended to by quite human looking figures. One image in particular caught his eye and froze him on the spot. It showed a field surrounded by trees with a pyramid of light in the center. Within the pyramid stood two figures. Tremain swallowed hard. That solves the first mystery, he thought, remembering the time he and Christopher had a very unscheduled adventure when they first used the transmitter. The pyramid of light signified either their arrival or departure. These paintings were made by the lost people from the Mayflower. How they managed to hide themselves so near to the colony was now apparent; they had gone underground. Were they still here, he wondered. He stepped back and handed the flashlight to Aziza.

  "Well? What do you think?" she prompted when he made no comment, lost in his thoughts. He looked up at her, almost as if he'd forgotten she was there.

  "Hmm? Oh, very interesting, that's for sure. We need to catalog these things for Hollis."

  "For Hollis?" she sneered. "We're going to find out where that room leads to. Did you notice there was no other exit?"

  Tremain stood tall and stared at her.

  "Yes, I did notice that fact. Obviously, it's a solitary room. We still need to catalog it." He walked away, back towards the camp. One of the hired help tried to stop him. He held up his hand and turned to Aziza. "If you want my help, we will be treating this expedition," he emphasized the word, "as it should be. Scientifically. To do that, I need some things from my tent." He tilted his head and looked impatiently at her. With a sneer, she waved off the goon, allowing Tremain to go free. "Thank you," he said and turned back to camp.

  "You're just letting him go?" One of the men asked her. She stared after Tremain, watching him walk into the trees.

  "He has nowhere else to go." She answered. "Besides, knowing him as I do, he wouldn't miss this for the world."

  Tremain walked back to camp, avoiding the tent that held the staff, and entered his own. There, he pulled out his bag, which contained a flashlight, a notebook and, most importantly, a camera. Any pictures he took would automatically link to the tablet, letting Christopher know where they were when he arrived with help. Putting the bag around his shoulders, he walked to the 'prison' tent. The guard stepped in front of him.

  "Oh please. Do you need me to toss you again?" Tremain said impatiently and pushed past him.

  Hollis started in surprise as he entered.

  "Tremain!" He shouted. "Did you disable her?"

  Tremain shook his head and leaned towards his friend. He kept his voice low.

  "Christopher is getting help. Stay put and don't make any trouble." He stood back up as shouts of protest came from the students. "Sorry, but I don't want her hurting any of you." He left the tent and went back to the rock wall. Nobody had moved. Aziza sat on a rock in front of the opening. The light filtered through the canopy of trees and lit her face. He was struck anew by her beauty, remembering the student as he studied the woman. Mentally, he shook himself. She was not the same person she was all those years ago. She'd grown harder and colder. He remembered the chair she'd disintegrated. That could have easily been one of the students. Best to remember that, instead of mooning over a long-lost relationship. He pulled out the camera.

  "Fine. Now we catalog." He started snapping pictures of the vine-covered rock face. He peered into the opening and snapped more pictures, the flash making the painted walls come alive. He noticed more details to the images. Some, it seemed, had been painted over as there were patterns that didn't match cleanly. There was a diagram of a maze on the far wall. He entered the room approached the wall, shining his flashlight over the pigment. Was this a map? Did a maze like this exist somewhere?

  Aziza and the others had followed him inside. One of the men tripped over a loose stone in the floor and cursed under his breath.

  There was a grinding noise and the stone which they had moved to enter the room slid back into place. With a cry of alarm, Aziza jumped to the stone to no avail. It slid closed, shutting out all light. Flashlights snapped open as they heard a series of heavy clicks and a hissing sound began to fill the room. Tremain played his beam of light around.

  Sand poured from holes in the ceiling. A series of levers had appeared in regular intervals along the walls which explained the heavy clicks. He made a circuit of the room. Aziza was right by his side.

  "What the hell happened?" She hissed. He glanced at her, but kept his attention on the walls.

  "Your man tripped over a keystone, apparently. Didn't expect that at all. It triggered this trap." He indicated the levers. "I'm assuming these will stop the sand from filling the room and killing us."

  One of the men, upon hearing that, pulled at one of the levers. Tremain heard the movement and gave a shout of warning, but it was too late. The lever slid down and clicked. Nothing happened. Another man, behind Tremain, grabbed the lever next to him and pulled it down. There was a loud banging sound: WHAM! WHAM! Both levers snapped back up. More openings in the ceiling poured an even greater amount of sand into the room. The floor was becoming covered very quickly as the sand piled up. Footing was going to become tricky. Tremain held his hands out at his sides, motioning everyone to stop.

  "Don't touch ANYTHING!" He shouted over the hiss of the falling sand. Making a circuit of the room with his flashlight, he roughly calculated how long it would take for the room to fill. They had time, he thought. He caught a lungful of dust and coughed. The dust clouds stirred up were going to make things difficult. They may not have as much time as he hoped.

  Aziza stared at him.


  "What are you doing?" She yelled, her eyes wild. "How are we getting out of this?" He snapped his flashlight onto her face. She threw her hand up to shield her eyes from the bright beam.

  "I'm analyzing. If you remember, it's what I do." He moved the beam of light to the maze wall. "If you will allow me." There were two levers on this wall. He played his beam over them both, looking for . . . what exactly? He knew the levers played a part in the solution, but he had no idea which levers to pull, how many to pull or in what order. The hissing sand didn't help the situation at all. That was the point, of course. He gave a humorless smile at the simplicity of this trap. The victim, too preoccupied with the falling sand, pulls a random lever causing an increase in the volume of sand. The more the victim panics, the less his ability to think critically, pulling levers until it's too late.

  He made a circuit of the room, analyzing each lever in turn, climbing over the drifts of sand, avoiding the cascades of the heavy stuff as necessary. He stopped and turned back. He played his beam over a few of the levers once more.

  "What do you see?" Aziza demanded. "Tell me!"

  His only reply was to hold up his hand and point his flashlight beam at one of the levers in the far wall.

  "This one." He said loudly. He moved the beam to two others on the entrance wall. "These two as well." After a look at each other, followed by a shrug, the men moved to one of the indicated levers. Tremain pointed to one of them. "Pull that one." The man did as told.

  The lever clicked down. There was no change in the flow of sand.

  Temain pointed to the second of the levers he had indicated. "Number two, please." The second man took a deep breath, gripped the lever and gave it a pull.

  It made a louder click as it slid into place. No banging sounds. Encouraged, Tremain indicated the third lever. The man there didn't hesitate and yanked on his lever.

  Nothing happened, at first. Tremain was about to look at the levers again, thinking he'd miscalculated, when the flow of sand began to slow. There was a collective cheer from the three goons as the sand stopped altogether.

  "How did you know to do that?" Aziza asked, him relief in her voice.

  Tremain waved a hand to blow away the dust floating near his face.

  "Pretty simple, really. Each lever had scrape marks where it moved against the stone wall behind it. Assuming this trap had been sprung many times before, I looked for the levers that didn't have very pronounced markings, meaning they hadn't been pulled as often. Those must have been the correct ones. Fortunately, I was right." A deep stone grinding sound came and the back wall began to move.

  The entire wall slid to the left as the grinding noise shook the room. An opening slid into view as the moving wall slowed and came to a halt. Tremain shone his flashlight over this previously unseen section of wall showing not paintings, but carvings. Some were unidentifiable, having broken in places. Tremain noticed a pattern in the carvings which repeated multiple times, as if they were a motif, a phrase or a chant. He ran his hands through his hair as he tried to make sense of it. Without a word, Aziza slid past him, running her hands over the carvings.

  "These are the same type of carvings as the pictograph." She whispered as she pulled it from her pocket. Tremain had almost forgotten about it. He watched as she held it up over the wall. The stone and the style of carving were similar. She gave a cry of victory as she pointed to a spot in the lower part of the wall. Tremain moved his flashlight to find another burst of lines, similar to the stolen pictograph. Aziza turned to him, her face alight. "This is the way. The weapon is through this doorway. She waved her hand at the men, who dutifully aimed their flashlights into the new doorway and went in, one by one. Tremain noticed the men didn't hesitate, not even once. Aziza entered after the men, leaving him standing there.

  "Not a cautious one, is she?" He muttered as he followed.

  The new room they found themselves in was different from the first. The walls were painted stark white. The flashlights showed no pictures, no carvings, no adornments at all, only smooth walls with no windows or other openings. Tremain turned in a circle, taking pictures as he contemplated what this puzzle would be. He was sure there would be another one to solve. He didn't have long to wait.

  By some instinct, they had spread out along the entrance wall. Tremain was thankful for that as it gave him more time to analyze the room. His flashlight was on the opposite wall when he noticed it. A seam.

  "Look at that." he said, his voice just louder than a whisper.

  Aziza pointed her flashlight to the same spot.

  "Another doorway?" She asked, breathless.

  Tremain glanced at her.

  "I would assume so."

  Aziza pulled at the arm of one of the men.

  "Go take a look." He dutifully did so. Tremain moved his beam of light over the floor. There was a grid pattern there. Oh no.

  "Wait!" He shouted, but it was too late. The man stepped on one of the squares. It depressed slightly. A loud gong sounded and they heard a noise like a spring being released. Suddenly, the man had a wooden shaft sticking out from under his collar bone. He gave a grunt of pain. Another wooden shaft appeared in his thick thigh. He went down, hissing in pain. He crawled back to the rest of them. Aziza reached down as if to pull the shaft from his chest.

  Tremain stopped her.

  "We have no medical equipment with us." He said quickly. "If we pull it out, we open the wound. No tourniquets, no way to stop any blood loss." He looked grim. "He'll have to wait it out until we can get him some help." He looked at the man, his face softening. "I'm sorry." The man nodded, sweat pouring from his forehead.

  "It's okay," he grunted. "Faced worse before."

  She stood and turned to Tremain.

  "Now what?" She snapped, her eyes challenging him. "How do we get across without getting skewered?" Tremain shook his head. Typical. Leaving her question hanging in the air, the turned away from her and took another look around the room. The blank walls gave him nothing to go on. He took stock of the wall they stood up against.

  There were crude grids scratched into the white pigment on this wall. Excitedly, he took a look at them in turn. Each one was progressively more detailed than the last. The grids on the left showed only groupings of three or four squares, while the right-most one showed almost a complete grid. What did it all mean?

  He puzzled over this as he compared the grids. Then he moved to study the floor. The grid pattern only covered the inside two thirds of the room. There was a perimeter around the walls. He wondered if they could just skirt around the room that way, then quickly brushed that aside. The ones who devised this puzzle would have thought of that too. He didn't want to risk any more injuries. He had to find the correct sequence of squares to walk on. That was the answer to this room.

  Chapter 9

  Christopher materialized behind a tent at the outskirts of the camp. Getting his bearings, he took a glance from behind the tent. He watched as the guard in front of the largest tent sat down on the ground next to it, folded his hands in his lap and hung his head. Soon, Christopher heard the sound of snoring.

  Who is he guarding? Christopher thought as he slowly and quietly tip-toed over to the tent and entered. Jenkins gave a start as he saw the boy enter. Christopher put a finger to his lips, cautioning him to be quiet.

  "The guard is asleep just outside." He whispered. Jenkins nodded. Hollis, came over, rubbing his hands together.

  "Christopher, my boy," he said in a hoarse whisper, "did you bring the cavalry with you?" Christopher smiled, but shook his head. Hollis visibly slumped.

  "They're on their way, though." He said. "I had to come help my uncle. We can't let that woman find any sort of weapon."

  Hollis nodded.

  "I think she's come unhinged," he agreed. "She was always so professional, I don't know what happened."

  "Uncle Tremain has that effect on many people, I think." Christopher giggled to himself, then stopped when he again realized what kind
of trouble his uncle was in. The tablet in Christopher's pocket gave a muted chirp. He unrolled it to see pictures had been added. "What the heck?" He whispered as he activated the icon.

  Photo after photo of the entrance in the rock wall appeared. He quickly realized Tremain had taken these to show him where they went. Photos of Aziza and the men were there too.

  "Ok, we have Tremain, Aziza and three of her men in the mountain." A photo of a skewered goon popped into the gallery too. "Oops, make that two men. One seems down for the count." He looked up at Hollis, whose eyes were wide in his puffy face. "Injured only." Christopher quickly added. He rolled the tablet back into his pocket. "I'm going after them. My uncle needs my help."

  Hollis gave a sound of protest.

  "Alone? You're only a boy, Christopher, what can you do against those men?" Making a decision, he pulled up his pants, straightened his sweat-stained shirt. He had a determined look in his eyes. "I'm coming with you. I can't allow you to do this alone."

  Christopher gaped at the corpulent professor.

  "I can go faster and quieter alone. Plus, I don't intend to confront them, just slow them down to give Senator Marcus enough time to get here with the police." He moved to the tent flap. "Just hang tight. We'll all be out of this soon." And left. Hollis Perlmutter puffed out a long breath and sat back down. Jenkins stared incredulously at his professor.

  "And you're just going to let him go alone?" His whisper was sharp and angry. Hollis blushed and looked away. Jenkins moved to the flap and looked out. He saw Christopher making his way through the tents. A young woman quickly ran after him. Jenkins shut the flap and sat back down. "He's not alone. He has a friend with him." He gave Perlmutter a baleful stare. "At least he'll have help."

  Chapter 10

  Tremain stared at the grids carved into the walls. Aziza stood by him, trying, and failing, to hide her impatience. The other two men knelt by their wounded comrade. Tremain, ignoring everything else, studied the carvings. The answer to this room was here, he knew it.