As she raised herself to standing, she reached for the flashlight in her tool belt. Holding her breath for a nanosecond, she clicked it on. And gasped.
Eighteen
Her flashlight beam illuminated a life-sized, or rather, person-sized statue of Anubis.
She had dropped into a circular room the size of a small car. The Statue of Anubis stood between her and the opening to a tunnel. There was just enough room for her to step around it and enter the tunnel, but first she stood in awe of the statue. It was pristine. It had to be centuries old but the muscular onyx chest, torso, and legs gleamed as if it had been freshly polished. The gold, and Dallas was certain it was real gold, skirt, collar and jewelry, shimmered in the flashlight beam. The glittering eyes in the jackal head seemed lifelike. The lip on the ferocious mouth was up slightly on one side in a snarl. He stood some seven feet tall on a round pedestal with images of Isis and Osiris. He wore a gold ankh around his neck and held another massive ankh, as big as his head in his right hand. His left hand held a staff with a smaller version of his own head at the top.
For a second Dallas had to remind herself this was an inanimate object and not a beast that about to snarl and growl at her.
It was then she realized she’d heard voices in her ear the past few seconds.
“Oh sorry,” she said holding it up near her mouth. “I’m in. I’m safe. I’m in a circular room that leads to a tunnel and holy moly, a statute of Anubis is guarding the entrance. I can easily walk around it. Wait? Isn’t the camera picking this up?”
“Yes!” Colton said excitedly. “This is fantastic. Unbelievable.”
Dallas heard cheering in the background. “We are all gathered around the computer with our jaws dropped open.”
“I know, right!” but then her voice grew quiet. “I want to stay here and examine the statue, but I think I should go a bit further before we have to call it a day.”
“Good idea. We have about another hour of daylight and then I think we will have to pull you back up and hit it again early tomorrow morning.”
“I can’t have a sleepover here?” Dallas was joking. As exciting as it was, she wouldn’t want to sleep down here overnight with Anubis looking at her.
“Haha.” It was Colton. “Sorry, you’re coming home with me. Anubis can take a hike.”
Hearing his voice made her cheeks grow warm. She knew why he wanted her to come home and sleep tonight.
“Okay,” Dallas said, moving closer to the statue. “I’m going closer. And then I’ll check out the tunnel, see if I can get an indication of how far down or back it goes and what it leads to. Obviously, Anubis is guarding someone’s tomb and by the size of him, it must be someone important.”
Her voice shook as she spoke. Saying it out loud made it seem real.
“That’s the theory up here, too, boss.” Danny said.
“I thought Osiris was the god of the underworld.” It was Colton.
“Yes,” It was Sam speaking. “But Anubis was considered the protector of graves and a god who ushered souls into the afterlife.”
“It’s even more convoluted,” Dallas said, stepping forward, titling her head to see around the statue. “Anubis was also the son of Osiris and stepson of Isis. His presence at Cleopatra’s tomb would be very appropriate. He was said to be her ally and confidante. He was also the one who helped her resurrect Osiris’ body and get pregnant that way.”
“Whoa, Anubis has some creepy teeth. Are you sure he’s not warning you to stay away?” Colton said.
Dallas was closer now. “Could be.” She reached up and touched the statue’s forearm. It was silky smooth and cold as ice. Gold bands circled his upper arms and wrists. They had clasps on them. The ankh necklace was loose around his neck. The massive gold ankh could also be removed. All the jewelry had been placed on the statue. It could be removed, and yet hadn’t. This filled Dallas with excitement and the certainty that she was the first person in centuries to have seen it.
“You’re right Colton,” she said. “It’s likely they placed the statue here, to warn grave robbers. The best news is that it is completely untouched. The statue is pretty heavy to move I bet, but grave robbers would have at least taken all of the jewelry.”
“As soon as we saw the footage of Anubis, we cleared the tent,” Colton said in a low voice. “It’s just me, Danny, and Sam. Even so I’m hoping the crew doesn’t go back to town and tie a few ones on and talk about the gold down there.”
Dallas nodded. “At least we’ve got the Daughters of Isis guarding the temple now.”
They both grew quiet remembering the deaths from the other night.
Standing before the statue, Dallas couldn’t shake the feeling that it was alive and watching her. That’s when she remembered the supposed curse on Cleopatra’s tomb. The one Safra had spoken about. She shook the ominous feeling off as she crouched down to examine the carvings on the round pedestal. From across the room she’d assumed it was Osiris and Isis. But it wasn’t.
“You guys seeing this?”
“Oh yeah.”
Two figures faced one another, arms outstretched, hands entwined. It was Cleopatra and Marc Antony.
Her mouth had grown dry.
“Okay,” Dallas said, clearing her throat. “I’m going in.”
Making sure she didn’t look as she did it, so the camera could not see, she placed the gold coin with Cleopatra’s likeness on the pedestal base of the statue.
A terrific sense of peace and relief filled her returning the coin she had smuggled to the temple site. It would most likely be excavated later with the rest of the artifacts, but for now she felt absolved of her crime.
As she stepped around the statue, its cold bulk grazed her and sent a chill down her spine. Holding the flashlight before her, she saw that the tunnel went on for quite some ways but then it either was a dead end or a curve. She was counting on it being a curve she couldn’t see from where she was.
Dallas took a deep breath. “Okay...”
The tunnel wasn’t very tall. Only a few inches lay between the top of her head and the ceiling. If she outstretched her arms, she could lay her palms flat against the dirt walls on each side. As she stepped inside, the flashlight illuminated the tunnel before her, leaving the circular room and Anubis in the darkness behind her.
She didn’t like that. Her imagination was going wild, picturing the statue coming to life in the dark behind her and following her, creeping up on her.
She whirled and the flashlight revealed the back of the statue, immobile, of course.
“Everything okay?” It was Colton.
“Yes. Just creeping myself out.”
“Don’t do that,” Danny said.
“We’re right there with you,” Colton said. “Well, sort of.”
Dallas knew if she got hurt or needed to be rescued for any reason, it would be a tough fit for either of the men to get down the hole. But maybe still possible.
But the gold on the statue proved that Dallas was down there alone. The only other people who might be down there were harmless, dead for centuries.
“I’m definitely heading deeper,” she said. “It’s a steep incline and the air is noticeably colder.”
“The reception isn’t quite as good,” Danny said. “You have cut out a few times.”
“Oh,” Dallas said, and then added, “If I don’t hear you for a while I’ll just plan on backtracking until we have comm up again.”
“Sounds good. We do want to keep in touch with you.”
“Yeah,” Colton added.
She smiled. She had to admit that it was nice to have someone concerned about her, someone who cared about her, who worried about her like a mother might. It had been a very long time since Dallas had felt that.
Dallas was soon able to confirm her theory: the tunnel didn’t end, it curved.
She pointed the flashlight in the new direction. It showed the tunnel dipping so rapidly that she couldn’t see very far down the darkness.
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“I don’t see anything do you guys? It does look like it gets really steep quickly.”
“Proceed with caution,” Danny said. “We’ve got about another thirty minutes and I’m probably going to ask you to turn around and call it a day.”
That made Dallas pick up her pace. The tunnel was very steep now. Dallas wondered how far underground she was. The software on the computer had revealed several caverns and tunnels that dipped to sea level. Even without the nearby aquifer, Dallas didn’t like the thought of that since the Mediterranean Sea wasn’t very far away.
Just as she thought that, she took a step and the ground crumbled beneath her boot.
The next thing she knew she was tumbling through the black air.
When Dallas Jones’s eyes flickered, open there was nothing to see but a deep, velvet dark. Disoriented, she took a quick inventory. Although her shoulder stung like hell and she was sprawled flat on her back, nothing felt broken.
For a second, she was disoriented, unsure where she was or why she was on the ground injured. Then it came back to her: the ground crumbling underneath her boots. A black chasm opening up under her feet, a wild leap for the edge, fingernails wildly clawing for the dirt and missing.
In flashes, she remembered: She’d been lowered down a narrow, twenty-foot-deep hole from the surface of the dig site. She’d been in a tunnel when the earth underfoot collapsed.
Exploring the tunnel was her reward. She’d earned it. Of course, she was also the only archeologist on the dig small enough to fit down the hole, but that didn’t matter. Nobody questioned that she should be the first one down.
After all, it was her discovery. She was the one who insisted that deep under the temple rested the remains of the world’s first celebrity: Cleopatra.
As soon as her feet touched the earth and she turned on her flashlight, she discovered she was in a round room. And she wasn’t alone. There was a life-sized statue of Anubis, the god of the underworld. She was close. Her excitement had drawn her deeper into the dark, down into a tunnel behind the statue that grew increasingly steeper. Her radio had crackled just as the ground had given way and sent her plummeting.
Now, even though she’d apparently lost a chunk of time, her body was intact. Her head seemed okay, probably because she had landed mostly on her shoulder. And it was screaming in pain because of it. But the pain faded into the background as she remembered why she was here. She was so close.
She reached up to check her headset with the camera and microphone. It was bent and mangled.
“You guys read me? Anyone there? Can you hear me?”
Nothing. One earpiece had broken and hung useless on its cord her shoulder, but the other one was still in her ear. She didn’t even hear any crackling of static.
She was alone somewhere in the bowels of the temple.
She needed her flashlight.
Her good arm stretched out, her hand flailing in a wide circle around her. Her palm slapped dirt. She stretched further. There. She felt plastic. She stretched and managed to hook two fingers over it. Scraping the flashlight across the dirt into her grasp, she managed to pick it up. Her thumb pressed down and a flickering weak circle of light momentarily blinded her. When she opened her eyes again, she pointed the beam of light straight up.
The hole she’d fallen through was at least twelve feet above her. She’d need to stand on something to reach it. Several somethings.
Pushing herself to her knees, she used her good arm to propel herself into a standing position. She pointed the flashlight at the wall across from her.
“Holy smokes.” She breathed the words in a whisper and scrambled to her feet. She was in a circular chamber with walls covered in paintings of ancient Egyptian figures in royal garb. The brilliant reds, blues, golds, and greens looked as if they’d been painted that morning. It was remarkable.
The flashlight beam wavered. No! The light couldn’t go out now.
On one side of the room, directly in front of her, flanked by the paintings was a tunnel. A dark black yawning hole that was going to be her way out. Had to be her way out.
She turned, sweeping the room with a flashlight. What she saw behind her nearly brought her to her knees. A door with a cartouche. A sign that royalty was buried there.
Dallas recognized the cartouche immediately. It contained the two birds and lion she’d studied for so long. It was Cleopatra’s cartouche.
Holding her breath, Dallas stepped closer. Reaching out, her palm rested on the door. She closed her eyes and pushed. Miraculously, the door shifted. She threw her good shoulder into it and it creaked open. The flashlight flickered again but didn’t go out.
She lifted the beam of light and stepped inside.
Her gasp echoed throughout the chamber. She stared, the flashlight shaking in her hand.
The entire room glittered with gold. Gold coins spilled out of golden bowls. Engraved gold jewelry boxes overflowed with anklets, rings, bracelets, and earrings. A massive gold bed inlaid with brilliant colored stones was covered with more shimmering trinkets: daggers, swords, gold headpieces. Everything glinted and gleamed.
Her heart raced as she saw a small black onyx statue of Anubis—the half man, half jackal said to usher the souls of the Egyptian dead into the underworld. It was a smaller version of the statue she’d seen in the upper chamber. And then she saw the most astonishing thing of all—the door across from her was flanked by two life-sized gold statues.
A man and a woman. Cleopatra and Antony. Dressed as Osiris and Isis.
Just then her flashlight went out, plummeting her into darkness. She swore. But she had a candle and matches in her tool belt.
She reached for them. But before her hand lowered, she heard it.
Breathing. Behind her.
She was not alone.
Nineteen
The flashlight beam wobbled to life again as Dallas whipped around in time catch a glimpse of a masked face right before she received a sharp stinging blow to her wrist that sent the flashlight clattering to the ground, it’s weak beam pointing at the painted wall.
Within seconds, she was on the ground beside it, her cheek pressed into the dirt, the wind completely knocked out of her.
She saw more than one set of feet moving in the weak flashlight beam. As soon as she tried to scramble to her knees, she felt something hard pressing down on the small of her back.
“Stay down.”
She recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. The pressure was removed from her back and she heard men’s voices speaking low above her. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but it sounded like an argument.
“Turn the light off. It’s hurting my eyes.”
A foot struck the flashlight, sending it clattering across the ground until it struck a wall, but didn’t go out.
“I said off.” The same familiar voice was low and menacing. Dallas started to lift her head but a foot on her neck pushed her face back into the dirt.
“Oof.” She hadn’t meant to speak but it came out.
“Silence.”
She watched through one eye as feet and then legs approached the flashlight beam.
“I’ll handle it.”
Another familiar voice. This time she recognized the voice. Her knowledge was reaffirmed when he crouched down reaching for the flashlight to flick it off. It was David Caldwell. He wore night vision goggles that were now resting on his forehead. Immediately Dallas knew who the other voice was: Malcolm Land.
“No. We light the torches now.”
“Good idea,” someone else said. Familiar voice that she couldn’t identify immediately but that caused a chill to run down her spine.
“Yes, sir.” Land answered. Oh, my God. The two archeologists were behind everything. All the deaths. The snakes. Everything. But who was the third man?
Clearly, their boss.
From the subservient tone they took with him, he was in charge. The room filled with light.
Hands grabbed
her from under her armpits and Dallas was yanked to a sitting position. Several torches were scattered around the room, lighting it up.
Dallas pulled herself to a sitting position, wincing in pain as a lightning bolt of pain shot through her shoulder. That’s when she recognized who stood before her. Calvin Train.
His scarred face looked sinister in the lantern light. Dallas vaguely wondered if he paid journalists to Photoshop his skin to perfection.
“Nice to see you again,” he said. He smiled. The warmth of the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Not really,” Dallas said.
“Your theory appears to be correct, Miss Jones,” he said, nodding his head toward the entrance guarded by the two statues. “But the discovery will be ours. Don’t worry, you will be given credit for it. In fact, you can take comfort that your name will be in all the history books as the brave young archeologists who came up with the theory of where Cleopatra’s Tomb was located. And how you tragically died during the discovery because when the ground caved in and you fell, you suffered a fatal blow to the head. We found you that way. Already dead.”
“What are you going to say you were doing?” Dallas asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Hunting for magic mushrooms.”
Train cocked his head, his teeth working his lip as he appraised her.
“You’re a little mouthy, are you?”
“You haven’t seen nothing yet,” Dallas said, pulling back her shoulders. It was hard to seem tough when you were cowering on the ground before a six-foot-something mammoth.
As he said this, Dallas noticed that Caldwell was lightly hitting a wrench into his palm.
He saw her gaze and smiled.
“I do feel a little bad about it,” he said. “I know that like me, you’ve waited your whole life for this moment, so I’ve decided to keep you alive until we open the tomb. That way your last moments won’t be so bad. You will die happy.”
Dallas glared at him. She would never admit that it had been exactly what she was thinking: What a shame to die before she saw Cleopatra’s tomb.
Buried Secrets Page 16
