(READ PARTS 1 AND 2 to see what came before)
Hugo Morgan, the newly graduated archeologist and expert of ancient languages, edged down the sloping passage in search of his colleague. He braced himself on the wall but the ends of his fingers curled into the open cavity of an eye socket. Hugo flinched away. Like the burial chamber, these passage walls were made of bones and skulls.
âDr. Fen?â His words came out a whisper. He tried again. âDr. Fen?â he couldnât manage a yell, not with the way that he trembled.
Perhaps an hour had passed since the superstitious villagers sealed Hugo and the other archeologists into the tomb. Barnes lay dead in a pool of blood by the exit and Prestonâs corpse was crushed into the dirt floor of the burial chamber. Dr. Fen was missing... and so was the woman, oh god, the mummy, absent from her sarcophagus. Perhaps she was the fabled monster. Perhaps she had clawed out Barnes' throat. But how on earth had she smashed Prestonâs head?
The slope steepened as Hugo progressed, more and more until the young man ambled down sideways, leaning backward on his arm now and again. Dirt shifted around his boots. He shone his light on the floor, careful of each step. Down, down, down until he came upon some scattered and filthy papers, marked up in Dr. Fenâs handwriting. They were his osteological notes, about the bones in the walls and of course about the mummy, the perfectly preserved, missing mummy. Â
The pages cascaded in little avalanches of soil as Hugo skidded onwards and downwards. If he could find Dr. Fen, then he would also find the manâs backpack. Inside the doctorâs pack was a pickaxe. Hugo planned to mine his way out of the tomb before he starved or ran out of air down here, and he knew his time was short. Already he panted. Each breath burned with dissatisfaction.
Suddenly his foot went plop through the surface of a cool liquid. It was the pool of water Preston mentioned. Ripples danced outward from the epicenter of Hugoâs ankle, waltzing with the shadows and glints of electric light as Hugoâs flashlight cast its beam.
Hugo held very still in the gloom. Where is Dr. Fenn? he thought. With a sweep of his arm, he shone his light this way and that. No one to be seen. No corpse, just dirt, and papers, some of them sliding now to the pool and floating away with the ripples. Yet, where was the doctor? There were no other rooms nor passages in the tomb. This was impossible. Had he and the mummy simply vanished?
Hugo stood upright, or least, as high as he could against the slope. He looked around again. He failed to fathom it. âDoctor Fen!â The shout echoed and died. Then he turned around, staring blankly at the skeletal wall at the far end of the pool. The skulls stared back. His fingers went limp and the flashlight angled downward, shining through the clear water. Hugo stepped forward, both feet in the water now standing on flat stone as he peered onward on tiptoe. A few paces forward was a sheer drop-off. Sloshing through the shallows Hugo continued to the edge and looked down into the surprisingly deep depths of the pool. His light cast some twenty feet below the surface and there at the bottom was an opening in megalithic rocks of a rectangular shape. It looked like a proper doorway. Perhaps it was a proper doorway at one time and then the place flooded. Now, Hugoâs mind flooded. The realization halted all further thoughts and numbed his body; There are other rooms in this place. There are rooms beyond that doorway and if I want that pick-axe I have to swim down there.Â
Hugo looked at the flashlight in his hand. He remembered the darkness, the pure and absolute darkness when heâd dropped it. Hugo backed up. He sat down, his bottom in the dirt and his feet still in the water. He put his hands to his face. I can sit here and slowly starve to death, he thought, or can I swim down there in complete darkness and possibly drown.
He stewed in his fears. His head was light. Was he already running out of air? No. No that would take days, wouldnât it?
Hugo rummaged through his leather satchel and found his lunch tin. He ate the sandwich and managed to keep it down. Then he turned the tin over his hands. He put the flashlight inside it. He shut the lid. The darkness fell. Opened the tin again and light returned. The flashlight fit inside of it. Hugo took the second flashlight, Barnesâ flashlight, off his belt and he tested it. It fit too. Hugo figured his own flashlight was lower on batteries. He turned on Barneâs light, put his own in the tin, clasped it shut and held it under the water. No bubbles. He pulled up the tin, opened it and found his flashlight still dry and shining inside it.
Hugo ascended the slope a few steps. He slid the shaft of his old flashlight into the empty eye socket of a skull. He shut Barnesâ flashlight inside the lunch tin, clambered back down to the edge of the water and removed his boots his satchel, and his jacket. He lodged his effects behind a femur that jutted out sloppily from the wall. Then, he held the lunch tin under his arm, folded his hands and prayed silently, Please, God, protect me.
He stepped down. The cool water sent shivers up through Hugoâs naked feet. He walked to the drop-off and sat down in the water. He let out a startled sound. So cold. He took a deep and panged breath slid off the edge plunged into the icy water. He swam downwards through the darkness. The light from above barely penetrated the surface. He struggled, kicking and stroking but the lunch tin tugged behind him. Hugo yanked it down. It bobbed straight back up. Hugo couldnât swim down. He swam back up. His head broke the surface and he gasped. In front of him, the tin floated on the surface of the water. Hugo let out a frustrated grunt, frog stroked to the edge and went back to the earthen slope. He opened the tin. The flashlight inside was fine.
Hugo picked up a fistful of dirt and put it in the tin. Hand over hand, he filled it will soil, burying the flashlight within. With packed and level dirt up to the brim, he closed the lid and clasped it shut. Then with a much heavier lunchbox dangled from he hand, he jumped back into the pool. He kicked and stroked and sank quickly to the flat stone bottom. With his hands and heavy tin he pulled himself along the floor and passed through the doorway into true darkness. Kicking now, he ran his fingers along the ceiling above him. His lungs burned. He prayed there in the dark cold water and cramped stone space. Donât let me drown, Lord. Donât let me drown. Then the ceiling stopped. Abruptly his uplifted hand, running along the ceiling, scooped through the empty water. No more ceiling. He stopped, touching the rim where ceiling ended. He slid his palm upward along a smooth stone surface; a wall. Maybe he could follow it up to the surface. Please, God let there be a surface.
Hugo pushed off the floor. He kicked and stroked, muscles straining, lungs screaming. He worked desperately against the weight of his lunch tin. Now and again he found a crease in the stone and used it to climb. Still, he struggled to rise through the water. In the blackness, he couldnât know if perhaps he was sinking, if he was using the same crease over and over to push up only to plunge down again. He didnât know. He couldnât see.
He reached out for the wall again and grasped a ledge. He yanked himself over it. Still, he didnât break the surface and now, he lacked a wall in the in the inky void to guide him.
Hugo kicked and paddled with his hands but now he truly wondered if he was rising at all and the lunch box was so heavy in his arms and by God, he needed to breathe. His chest heaved. He felt a few bubbles escape his mouth. I donât want to abandon my flashlight, he thought. God, oh, god.
He found the air. Hugo gasped and heaved and wailed in delight for the stale oxygen. âThank you, Lord,â he said aloud, âOh, thank you,â and then he realized something was wrong. Water dripped off him, off his face, off his lunch tin... off of his dangling feet. Hugo flailed. No walls. No ceiling. No floor! He floated not in water but air. He reached in all directions. He kicked and squirmed as if something were holding him and he might wriggle free but the only sensation that gripped him was weightlessness.
 Something gleamed in the dark; two vibrant red points of light, getting larger ... no... getting closer. Hugo quit kicking. They were red circles, these lights, right beside one another. The bare flats of his feet touched gently down upon dry stone. Hugo stood there in the black, the lunch tin clamped tight to his chest with both arms as he stared at what he knew to be a pair of eyes, glowing and crimson. They blinked. Hugo let out a cry. He flinched away. Yet, nothing happened. The eyes only looked at him.
Water lapped at a shoreline somewhere and Hugoâs breath echoed around him without end. Â
Gaze still locked upon the red eyes Hugo bent to the floor, shivering. He set down his lunch tin. He unclasped it as quietly as he could. His fingers dove into the tight-packed dirt and bit by bit Hugo dug out the flashlight. He shook off some soil. His thumb clicked the dial. A beam of light sliced through the darkness.Â
Hugo shielded his eyes until the colors and shapes of the world around him came into focus.
Dr. Fenâs backpack lay sideways on the stone floor. A pace away sat the Doctor himself, pale-faced, slouched over, his long white beard stained with red. Fenâs open eyes looked at nothing.Â
A figure crouched behind him, its red eyes squinting against Hugoâs beam. It stood up. Dr. Fen slapped limp and sideways against the floor.Â
Her flesh was porcelain white, her hips wide and waist narrow. Plump breasts sported grayish nipples. A bleached triangle of hair blossomed on her mound. She stood upright and regal in her nudity, resting a foot triumphantly atop the Doctorâs corpse. Surely this supple, beautiful creature could not be the dry and tanned lump of leather which lay in the sarcophagus hours earlier.Â
Hugo lifted the beam to her face but she turned away and made a sound. The flashlight tore itself out of Hugoâs hand. It flew in the air and the she-creature caught it. The beam cast upon the floor, upon the Doctor as he lay there with his jaw agape. Small red wounds speckled the bend in his neck.Â
The woman spun the flashlight around in her hands. Her white fingers were about all Hugo could see of her with the light pointed in his direction. He could, however, still see the Doctorâs backpack. As the woman seemed to marvel at his device Hugo grabbed a strap of the bag. He pulled it toward himself. The flashlight switched off with a click, then back on again. Hugo unbuttoned the backpack and stuck his arm in. He felt the Doctorâs first aid kid. He moved it gently aside and found a long wooden shaft. His fingers curled around it. Slowly, quietly, watching as the deadly beauty waved the beam of the flashlight randomly about the room, Hugo pulled the pick-axe out of the doctorâs bag. He took the heavy tool in both hands.Â
He jumped up and lifted the pick-axe high. Hugo swung it down. Cold hands caught his wrists. The flashlight turned back toward the womanâs face. He knew the face, knew she was indeed the mummy, but the living article with full white cheeks, gleaming animal eyes and blood drizzling down the edges of her lips.Â
âHugo,â she said. When she smiled he saw her teeth, sharp and red with blood.
Hugo staggered. He left the pick in her iron grasp, backing against a wall.Â
âHugo,â she said again. She dropped the pick-axe. It clunked against the Doctorâs head. The woman approached with languid steps. Hugo lurched toward the water, making to dive but he froze in place, unable to move. She stepped in, breasts pressed against his chest. âHugo,â she whispered. She leaned in. She nuzzled his cheek. Then she bit his throat.
Though Hugoâs scream reverberated time and again off the ancient stone walls, not a living soul could hear.Â
Above ground, the villagers, man, and woman alike worked feverishly with shovels, reburying the cursed tomb. Two police officers, gagged and bound, looked helplessly on. A third lay in the grass and the gathering dew, moaning, drifting in and out of a fitful slumber and cradling a nasty bruise on his forehead. Children watched over the officers. The younger ones slept in the grass as their parents worked. When the November sun finally rose over the roofs and gables of the small Sardinian village, the tomb was nothing more than an earthen mound again, another hill in the picturesque countryside.Â
germansingergirl
jacobvanloon
discoholicmusic
baratheonpilled
stormborns
janainaart
yousharknotpass
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
snowghoul
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
