Image courtesy of Bradley K. McDevitt (www.bradleykmcdevitt.net)
Professor Osborne stepped into the cold, dusty chamber and fingered the bowl of his pipe. The dust burned his throat, and he wished he could smoke. But not here. Not now.
Floodlights, powered by the generators outside, illuminated the walls. Ancient hieroglyphics stood out in stark relief. Dust floated in the beams, dancing to a long-dead musician. The corners of the room were black, starless voids.
“Professor? Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine, Charlie,” said Osborne.
Charlie, one of his grad students, went back to studiously brushing at a section of the far wall. Centuries of dust fell away beneath his ministrations.
“And how is everything in here, Charlie?”
“Well…” Charlie turned to the professor and shook his head. “We’re on schedule. But… Well, we haven’t found that one glyph you were talking about. I’m starting to think that… well…”
“It’s not here?” suggested Osborne with a smile. “Let’s see.”
He walked up to the wall where Charlie was dusting, and made a show of brushing off another section of glyphs and blowing on it. Then he turned to one of the floodlights rotated it so that it illuminated one of the shadowy corners.
“How about there?” he said, and pointed his with pipe.
Charlie gave the section of wall a quick swipe with his brush.
“There it is, sir. I guess I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“I guess not,” said Osborne.
“How… How did you know sir?” piped up Julia. Quiet, studious little Julia. Osborne was going to miss her.
“I’m just that brilliant,” said Osborne. “Or more likely, it was just one of the few places you hadn’t looked.”
Kyle, the last of the grad students, was studying the glyph up close.
“It looks like a car. Like they’re all getting into a car, gonna go for a joy ride or something.” He laughed. “Like it’s GTA Ancient World or something.” He laughed again.
Osborne smiled thinly. Kyle, he would not miss.
“Hey, there’s something weird under the glyph,” said Charlie.
“What do you mean?” asked Osborne.
Charlie worked his brush some more over the wall beneath where the glyph was incribed.
“The wall here… It’s not really wall. It’s a hole, but full of rocks.”
“Fascinating. Are they loose?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Well, then, let’s get them out of there. You know the rules. If it’s not part of the original structure, we can pull it out.”
“But document it,” said Julia.
“Oh, yes. Be sure to document everything,” said Osborne.
For the next half hour, the grad students extracted the stones one at a time and placed them in a neat grid on the floor for cataloging. Osborne smiled at how serious, how meticulous they were. He couldn’t help but be proud of them.
Removing the stones revealed a small hole in the wall, roughly two feet square. Charlie squatted in front of it and shone his flashlight inside.
“Hey, there’s another room in here,” he said.
“Really?” said Osborne. “Please. Let me take a look.”
He handed his pipe to Julia, took the flashlight from Charlie, lay down on the floor in front of the hole, and started squeezing himself through the wall head-first. He could feel the grit of the floor through his shirt. The dust scoured his throat.
“It’s a smaller chamber,” he called back to his students. His voice echoed in his own ears.
“Sir, are you sure you should –” Julia’s voice was muffled by the rock.
“Trust me,” said Osborne. He inched himself further into the chamber. It was a tight fit for for him, but he was much older and larger than his students. They would have no problem following him.
Finally, he was able to stand. He swung the flashlight around the room, revealing walls of hieroglyphs. They were similar to ones in the other chamber, but the figures were more indistinct, as if faded with time. The back wall was grooved with three vertical slashes, as if a great cat has scratched at it. Aside from the glyphs and grooves, the room was as barren as the one he’d just left.
A flashlight beam stabbed through the hold behind him.
“Professor?” called Charlie.
“It’s really quite something to see,” said Osborne. “Come, come, all of you. And bring my pipe.”
Charlie slid through first, then tiny Julia who barely touched the edges of the hole, then Kyle, who inhaled a nose-full of dust and sneezed for a minute straight.
“Are you quite done?” asked Osborne. He tapped his pipe impatiently.
“Just a sec, Professor. I just –” Kyle exploded into one last sneeze.
“What is this place?” asked Charlie.
“An antechamber,” said Osborne. “Leading into the chamber we just left. Unless of course that was the antechamber leading to this chamber… which would mean that there would be other rooms beyond this one.”
Kyle’s flashlight found the vertical grooves on the far wall.
“Hey! This could be a door. Looks like a pair of doors, see. They open in the middle here. Maybe there are more rooms.”
“Really?” said Osborne. “Now that you mention it… I guess that could be a door. If it were, it would probably swing this open way.”
Kyle slid his fingertips along the center groove. “Maybe I could get it open.”
Osborne shrugged. “I guess you could try.”
“Are you sure, Professor?” asked Julia. “Shouldn’t we take pictures and document everything first?
“The door — if it is a door — isn’t sealed,” said Osborne. “Besides, I doubt Kyle would be able to open it even if it were a door.”
Kyle set his flashlight on the floor, pointing at the back wall.
“Actually,” he said, “Once I get this dust out of the way, there’s a pretty good crack here. I can get my fingers in here and…”
He grunted as he pulled. The tip of his tongue protruded from between his lips.
Stone ground on stone as the door moved.
“Whoa,” said Charlie.
Kyle grinned.
“Told ya,” he said.
“Let me help,” said Charlie. He stood next to Kyle and slipped his own fingers around the lip of the door.
“On three,” he said. “One, two, threeeeeee!”
The door slid open an inch. Dust poured onto the floor.
Charlie and Kyle smiled and nodded to each other, and started counting again.
“One, two –”
Before they got to three, the door scraped open another inch, and the grad students jumped back.
“What –?” Julia began.
“It just –” Kyle started.
“It pushed,” said Charlie. “Something pushed from the other side.”
“Some sort of spring mechanism?” said Osborne.
“Maybe…” said Charlie.
“Let’s take a look,” said Osborne, and shined his light into the narrow gap between the doors. “There’s something back there…”
“Let me see,” said Kyle. He snatched his light from the floor and pointed it into the shadowy opening.
“What is it?” asked Julia
“I don’t know. Something reflective… looks almost wet…”
Then the wet thing on the other side of the door pushed again, and something that certainly wasn’t moist black rubber snaked out into the room, wrapped itself around Kyle’s arm, and yanked it into the darkness.
Kyle screamed. His arm was gone, his flashlight with it.
Julia, ever the practical one, turned her light towards the hole in the wall opposite the doorway. She found Osborne’s legs in front of the hole. Stone ground on stone behind her, and Charlie’s shrieks joined Kyle’s.
“Professor?” she said.
He reached out and took the flashlight from her trembling hand. He turned it off.
“Trust me, my dear. It’s better if you can’t see this.”
There were wet sounds in the darkness. Tearing. Crunching. One by one, the screamed died out, leaving only the sounds of slurping.
A voice called out to Osborne.
“I am here,” he said, and flicked the flashlight on.
Where there had been three grad students, there was now a lone man, naked and gray and hairless. He blinked in the light, then smiled.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said without speaking.
Osborne struck a match on the tomb’s wall and lit his pipe. He shook the match out and tossed it to the floor, where there was dust, but no blood.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” said Osborne in the same wordless language. “A little rest would do you a world of good.”
