Chapter Forty

To conserve batteries, they turned off most of the headlamps again, relying on the light from four flame torches and Trummel’s and Gosswick’s helmets to carve a path through the gloom. The trail of footprints led into a thicket of blackthorn briars. The group questioned how a swamp forest could grow in a place without sunlight. No one had an explanation. Trummel kept his theories to himself.

We discovered the path to them.

Harlan Riley’s cryptic words drove Trummel forward with a surer step than the others. He wondered what else Riley’s team had encountered in this strange and treacherous dimension before making the ultimate discovery.

“Duat claimed all members of my team,” Harlan had confessed in his final days. “They were not mentally strong enough to finish the journey. Only I crossed through the highest gate and witnessed the revelations hidden at the heart of the Dark Realm.”

Trummel wondered who among his own team would make it through the last gate. He knew before entering the cave that his party was embarking on a soul’s quest, and there would be casualties.

Harlan had been devastated by the loss of his team. “My fellow explorers died because of me,” he had said, teary-eyed. “Had I not been so compelled to find the heart of the tomb…”

Harlan had a soft spot for those working beneath him. Trummel worried less. He left the fates of others to the gods.

After passing through the second gate, the seven explorers walked for an hour through a forest of twisting briars. Occasionally branches crackled in the distance as if something were moving out there. Trummel had the sense they were being followed.

A black void that bordered the thicket stretched to infinity in all directions. Infinity bothered some. Not Trummel.

Show me everything. Trummel mentally sent the request into the darkness, knowing it was intelligent and could read his thoughts. I want to see Duat in all its glory, no matter the costs. Take any soul you wish, but please spare me as you would a pharaoh.

Ely walked beside Dyfan, lugging his pack, steering him. Doting, Trummel thought angrily. The lad had been an eager student at Oxford, a hand-raiser, willing with the extracurricular work to assist his professor. Trummel didn’t respect arse kissers, but idolatry had its uses.

Now when they stopped for a drink and a short rest, Trummel sipped lukewarm tea from a thermos and stared into the dark. The track of footprints vanished as the spongy terrain turned into shin-deep black water. It filled his boots, making them heavy as he slogged through the mud. A humid fog seeped between the thorn branches. Trummel had the sensation he was no longer in a cave, but walking through a swamp forest. And he would never admit this to anyone, but he suddenly worried that they were lost.

As if by some miracle, or perhaps Duat showing Trummel the glory he requested, a small light appeared in the darkness ahead. He halted the group.

“What is it?” Gosswick came to his side, gun drawn.

“Hold your fire,” Trummel whispered.

A glowing white orb, slightly larger than a billiard ball, floated toward them. The others watched warily as the sphere buzzed around them.

“Amazing.” As Imogen stepped closer, its radiance illuminated her face and reflected twin spheres in her eyes.

“Careful,” Gosswick warned.

“It seems friendly.” She reached up to touch it, and the orb flew backward like a startled insect.

It stopped a few feet in front of Trummel. The light inside constantly shifted from solid to partially transparent. Imogen was right. The energy vibrating from it seemed benign. The orb made a small circle in the air, a come-hither motion. Then it meandered through an opening in the trees.

“I believe it wants us to follow,” Trummel said.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Gosswick asked.

“Can you think of a better one?” Trummel responded, eyebrow raised. Not waiting for an answer, he followed the glowing sphere as it floated ahead of them, occasionally slowing to allow the group to work their way through the brambles. Once it stopped to allow a large black water snake to slither its way through the trees ahead. This made Trummel uneasy. He hated snakes.

The Amduat and pyramid paintings depicted many snakes in Duat, including a giant serpent god, Apophis, also known as Apep. Trummel remembered one painting of the underworld that pictured a snake longer than several men. He kept a wary eye on the tall reeds and thick brush where such a creature could be lying in wait for a meal to pass by.

Vulnerable from all sides, the explorers raked their lights across the surrounding trees. Trummel almost thought there was nothing but snakes and the orb in this maze of thorny branches, until a quicksilver shape shot past his light. He jerked his beam, spotlighting a piece of white fabric floating in the water ten feet away. The sight made his heart stop.

As Trummel approached, the fabric shot away like a frightened fish. A splash followed and he swore he glimpsed a pair of kicking feet.

Beyond the torchlight, branches snapped.

The group huddled together.

Gosswick jerked around and cocked his pistol.

“See something?” Trummel asked.

The captain’s face had gone pale. “I hear children. Laughing.” He wiped sweat from his forehead. “Don’t you hear them?”

Trummel eyed the others. “Anyone else hear children?”

They all shook their heads.

“I hear something disturbing the branches,” Caleb said.

Imogen nodded. “I do too.”

The branches shivered again. The cracking sound was distant, like a breeze whispering through the thicket.

“Shut up! Shut up!” Gosswick shouted.

Trummel turned to his captain. “Hold it together, Goss.”

Ahead the white orb floated in place, waiting.

“Let’s keep moving.” Trummel walked toward the orb. It bobbed once and resumed leading them through the briars.

They sloshed through the water another few hundred yards, a distant snapping and splashes following them. Whatever was out there, it didn’t seem to mind that they heard. Ely and Imogen began to talk of seeing things moving in the dark.

“We’re safe as long as we stay within our lights,” Trummel said, hoping it was true. Were all demons afraid of fire and light as the bone keepers and shemayu had been? He didn’t know. Now that Bakari was gone there was no one to ask.

The ball of light brightened as it stopped. A massive ancient tree towered above the forest like a god. With its knobby, wrinkled bark, the tree had a familiar and unnerving shape to it. The top came to a jagged, leafless crown. Branches jutted from its trunk like deformed arms. At its base, tentacles of roots rose partially out of the water in humps. Trummel approached the wide trunk. Carved into the bark was a single word:

Trummel stumbled backward, bumping into the others.

“Are you all right?” Imogen asked.

No, I’m not bloody all right. He couldn’t remember feeling so shaken. When he shone his light back in the direction of the crudely carved word, it was no longer there. A chill coursed through his bones. The tree had changed too, now thin and thorny like all the others in this infinite forest. Confused, he spun in a circle but couldn’t find the ancient tree anywhere. Had he imagined it?

“What did you find?” Caleb asked.

Trummel shook his head. “Must have been a trick of the light.”

“How long till we rest?” Ely asked.

“When we find dry land.” Trummel continued wading through the water, weaving through tangles of branches that seemed to have no end.

A girl’s voice whispered from the dark. “Let’s play hide-and-seek,” she called.

Trummel turned his light to where the giggle had sounded. “Did you hear that?”

The others stood silent, watching him as if he’d gone mad.

Gosswick mirrored his paranoia. “You believe me now about the kids?”

Trummel mopped sweat from his brow. “It’s this place. It’s testing our will. Don’t let it get to you.”

As he sloshed through the water, he heard the familiar giggles of a young girl. His mind returned to the Finnish swamp forest of his youth. He was ten, running. And she was there, his twin sister, Nell. Gray light and mist had filtered through the spiny, leafless trees that rose from the black water.

Running along a muddy trail, young Nathan and Nell were two explorers searching for Viking treasure, while their father and mother, both archaeologists, worked a nearby dig of Nordic ruins.

Nathan and his sister had been inseparable since the day they’d left their mother’s womb. Nell had been born one minute earlier and boasted of being the oldest, while Nathan claimed that spending extra time in Mum’s womb had developed his brain more, making him the smartest. They’d challenged one another in playful competition, but no one, not even their parents, could ever come between them.

“Bet you the last of the lemon drops I can beat you to that tree,” Nell challenged, holding up the bag of sweets their father had given them.

“You’re on,” Nathan said.

The twins raced a hundred yards to a tall pine. Nathan was easily beating her, but slowed at the last second to let her win. They leaned against the pine’s massive trunk and laughed, out of breath.

“Told you I was faster,” Nell bragged.

“Too quick for me,” Nathan conceded. They both knew the truth.

“Here.” She shared the remaining sweets with him anyway.

Nathan popped a lemon drop in his mouth and pressed his forehead to his sister’s. They looked into each other’s eyes, a staring contest, willing each other to blink, until they both broke out laughing.

Nell was a fearless girl with flowing dark hair and an infectious laugh. Nathan could be in the worst of moods and his sister would put her arm around him, give him a nudge, and suddenly everything would be all right again. He remembered her clearest on that day in Finland he most wanted to forget. September fourth of 1903. One minute she was walking hand in hand with him, the next pushing him away and yelling, “Let’s play hide-and-seek!” Nell ran through the trees. “Bet you’ll never find me.”

Nathan pressed his head against a tree, eyes closed, and counted, “One potato, two potato…” When he got to twenty, he opened his eyes and ran looking for her. At first he felt the thrill of the hunt as he searched behind trees and logs. He whistled a few times, his signal for her to whistle back and give him a clue. Each time she whistled, she sounded farther away. They were only supposed to stay within a few hundred yards of where their parents were working. Nathan got mad that his sister had ventured deeper into the forest.

After a half hour passed since she last whistled back, he grew very concerned. “Nell!” His voice echoed across the swamp. “You win! Come out. Now!”

No matter how many times he called, she didn’t come. Then she whistled from somewhere beyond the pines. Something felt terribly off. The psychic connection he’d always felt with her, like an invisible line that tethered them together, was gone. He couldn’t feel her.

He wandered farther into the woods to an area overgrown with thorn briars and trees with sharp branches. Among her small shoeprints in the mud were bigger prints made from work boots. Soon her tracks disappeared at the base of a giant leafless tree with deformed branches and a jagged crown. The word JARVI had been etched into the bark. Nathan found Nell’s white stockings and shoes spotted with blood, tucked under one of the tree’s exposed roots.

Frantic, he followed the boot prints along a ribbon of mud that stretched between two swamps of black water. “Nell! Nell!” he shouted over and over.

A flock of storks startled and took flight.

He spotted Nell’s white dress drifting several yards from the shore, where the land disappeared into stagnant water. She was still in it, floating facedown.

The memory of his sister’s death still tore at deep wounds in Trummel’s heart.

After his parents notified the police, a search party found an old shack deep in the swamp where a recluse named Göran Järvi lived. He had kept Nell’s knickers and the last of the sweets. Nathan, who had been waiting with his parents for the search party to return, could still see the killer’s mangy bearded face and wild eyes as the police escorted Järvi out of the woods. The man’s arms were cuffed behind his back. He had looked right at Nathan with a grin and whistled the same signal Nathan had heard in the woods.

Now, a singsong whistle sounded from the dark woods followed by the crackle of branches. With a shudder, Trummel wondered who was tempting him into the thicket, his sister or Järvi?

It’s not real, he tried to convince himself. Nell lay in Highgate Cemetery in England where their mum’s relatives were buried, and Göran Järvi had been shot by a firing squad in 1918.

The crackling branches and taunting whistles continued until the group reached a small island of mud and jutting stones.

The swamp fell silent.

The white orb guided them through an old cemetery. They walked among crooked tombstones covered in grime and lichen. Trummel remained in morbid silence as he came upon a large gravestone. It wasn’t Egyptian. The curved gray rock tombstone belonged in an English graveyard. The angel’s face protruding from the stone made Trummel’s skin prickle. He wiped moss from the surface until the words etched in the stone were clear. As he read the epitaph, he fell to his knees and touched the name.

HERE LIES

NELL TRUMMEL

A BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER

WHO DIED MUCH TOO SOON

1893–1903