Chapter Fifty-Four

Imogen walked among the coffins. They varied in sizes, some small and some longer than eight feet. Like the five in the tomb above, an animal mask covered the head of each sarcophagus. Two featured winged goddesses, Isis perhaps and her sister, Nephthys. Beyond them, elevated on a black slate platform, lay the largest sarcophagus, ten feet or longer. Imogen climbed several steps to the top of the platform. She recognized the face of Osiris on the coffin’s lid.

The Egyptians had many myths about this god. He was an early king of Egypt, who had married his sister, Isis. His jealous brother, Set, eventually murdered Osiris and sent him down to the underworld, where Osiris became ruler of the dead and the demons of Duat.

Imogen had always believed that the deities in the myths were fictitious beings. With this discovery, the entire lineage of the pharaohs, dating all the way back to Osiris, rewrote itself in her mind. The revelation that gods had once walked the earth shook her to the core. It felt wrong to have climbed into their resting place.

“Imogen!” Trummel called impatiently. His echoing shouts startled her.

She made her way back through the maze and returned to the bottom of the tube. “I think we should leave at once,” she urged.

Trummel was waiting at the top of the hole. “I’m not going round and round with you. Quit stalling and bring me one of the hearts.”

Imogen hesitated. She didn’t want to disrupt the pyramid’s system. She debated whether to say anything about what she’d found in the far chamber. If Trummel knew more coffins were down here, he’d break through pyramid floors to reach the lower level. Fearing the consequences if he did, Imogen kept silent.

Trummel sighed. “Imogen, get on with it.”

“No, I won’t tamper with these. It feels all wrong.”

“Then you give me no choice. Goss, send Imogen a message.”

She heard Caleb’s painful cry up above. Then Gosswick stepped up to the top of the hole. “A gift from your boyfriend.” He dropped a bleeding severed finger down the tube. It landed beside Imogen’s boot. An icy feeling swept through her. She stared up at Trummel and Gosswick in shock.

“Every precious minute you waste,” Trummel said, “Goss will keep dropping down fingers.”

Imogen gave Trummel a burning look of hatred. He stared back at her, cold. “Get on with it,” he said.

She turned and faced the honeycombs. The hearts contained within looked like gestating larvae. She started to touch the seal of one cell, then pulled her hand away. The thought of sticking her hand in the cell made her stomach cramp with disgust. This beating organ had once been inside the chest of a god. Now it appeared to run the pyramid. She feared what would happen if she removed it.

“Ten seconds, Imogen, or Caleb loses another finger.”

“No, I’ll do it.” Cringing, she slid her arms through a honeycomb’s soft membrane and reached elbow-deep into warm fluid. The heart pumped faster as her hands gripped it. It had slick, organic skin with protruding veins. As she pulled the heart out, rubber tubes attached to the pulmonary veins and arteries popped off, leaking viscous liquid onto her legs and shoes.

The empty honeycomb turned black. The humming sound at the pyramid’s core changed and the lights dimmed. In the surrounding honeycombs, all the other hearts pumped faster, their internal lights blinking.

Oh, God, what have we done?

The quick palpitations lasted only a moment before the floating hearts settled down. The lights brightened back to normal.

Feeling ashamed for violating the pyramid, Imogen came up the ladder with the glowing, swelling organ. As she stepped away from the hole, she cradled the heart as if it were a newborn. Its pulsations resonated inside the chamber: whump-whump, whump-whump.

“What does it feel like?” Dyfan asked.

“Alive. We’re not dealing with just relics here; these are living organisms.” Imogen offered it to Trummel.

“Hold on to it.”

“I need to tend to Caleb.”

He looked pale as he held his bleeding hand to his chest. “I’m fine. Stay where you are.”

Trummel said to Imogen, “Do exactly what I tell you, or I’ll let Goss choose what he cuts off next.”

Behind Caleb, Gosswick held a bloodstained knife. “Maybe I’ll go for an ear this time.”

Imogen shook her head. “This isn’t you, Nathan.”

“I won’t stand for anyone sabotaging my mission.”

“I don’t give a damn about your mission,” Caleb said. “Imogen’s safety is my concern.”

“How chivalrous,” Trummel said.

“Stop fighting,” Imogen pleaded. “I’ve done what you asked.”

Trummel offered Imogen his knife. “Your next task is to slice open the heart. What I want is inside it.”

She met eyes with Caleb. He shook his head slightly. “Don’t.”

Her hand trembled as she grasped the knife’s handle. The organ felt so vulnerable in her hands she felt as if Trummel was asking her to stab an embryo in its womb. As she started to bring the blade down, the heart pumped faster. She stopped short of cutting it. “I can’t. Open it yourself.”

Caleb cursed as Gosswick’s knife nicked his ear.

Gosswick grinned at Imogen. “I can do this all day, sweetheart.”

The fast-beating heart in her hands pumped against her chest until it synchronized with her own heartbeats. More than alive, the alien thing felt like a conscious life-form aware of being in danger. It nuzzled against her like a child seeking comfort in the bosom of its mother. Imogen felt its fear so strongly she dropped the knife.

Dyfan picked it up and stepped forward. “I’ll open it. Please, give the heart to me.”

“I don’t think we should harm it,” Imogen said. “I think it’s aware of us.”

“Give me that.” Trummel snatched the organ from Imogen and gave it to Dyfan.

Imogen backed away, unsure of what was going to happen. Caleb rose to his feet, grimacing in pain. Gosswick drew his pistol and kept it trained on Caleb.

After taking a deep breath, Dyfan dragged the blade across the thick outer skin. The heart released a loud hissss. Purplish-blue liquid dribbled onto his hand. The organ opened like a juicy peach, revealing part of its hidden seed.

Trummel moved closer. “Ease it out, gently.”

Gripping the dissected heart, Dyfan placed his thumbs into the slit and ripped it open wider. The thing inside pulsed. Its texture resembled metal infused with something organic. Trummel’s torch illuminated the seed’s many crevices.

Dyfan pulled the object free, letting the skin of the deflated heart drop to the floor. Neon blue fluid flowed along the stone floor to his shoes. The thing in his hands pulsated and writhed like a breathing, living organism. It was shaped like a sphere made of interwoven flesh with metal bands. Along the edges of the bands moved hundreds of tiny silver needles.

“What is that thing?” Imogen asked.

“According to your grandfather, inside the hearts of the gods is a codex made from their bodies,” Trummel said. “It is the most advanced book man has ever discovered.”

A fat vein coiled like a worm along one side of it. The book appeared to inhale and exhale.

Trummel’s eyes gleamed. “It’s breathing air for the first time. It has been here all these millennia, gestating since before the pharaohs reigned Egypt. The gods gave them books like this one to advance their civilization.” He took the knife from Dyfan’s hand, pointed the blade at the details of the book’s skin. “Just look at the fine carvings of its surface, the life force that flows through its veins. No relic compares.”

Imogen stepped forward for a closer look. Strange lettering curved and veined around the sphere. More needles and ribbed tubes crisscrossed in the design. A dark liquid oozed from numerous pores as the codex continued to swell and contract.

Imogen felt both enthralled and repulsed. “What else did Grandfather tell you?” she asked Trummel.

“This book was written by a race far superior to ours.” He looked at the giant corpse with the ibis mask. “Thoth was the scribe and the keeper of the Books of All Knowing. These books contain the truth about all life, death, the universe, enlightenment, absolutely everything.”

“Grandfather had been fascinated with Thoth,” Imogen said. “Thought he was the key to ancient Egypt’s mysteries.”

Trummel nodded. “Thoth gave the Egyptians the Book of Two Ways, the Book of Gates, the Amduat, but there are countless more volumes stored in this pyramid.” He motioned to the giant corpses in the open coffins. “The gods confined these books within their hearts. The knowledge of the cosmos was encoded in their genes. Through the ages, they sacrificed their bodies so primitive man could obtain their wisdom.” Trummel began quoting theories from his book. “The early Egyptians seemed to be the most ready to receive this wisdom. After rising into a powerful empire, the pharaohs made these beings into deities. When the pharaohs stopped ruling Egypt, the truth died with them, buried in their tombs—” Trummel looked directly at Imogen, “—and lost to those who disbelieved the myths.” He smiled proudly. “I intend to utilize this knowledge for the advancement of the human race.”

“You’re seriously out of your mind,” Caleb said.

Trummel ignored this. He became animated like he did when he gave his lectures. “Imagine what the world will be like when we expose these books to the masses, the churches, other governments…. Thoth’s collection of higher knowledge can answer every question ever imagined. Wars will end, religions will unify and finally preach the same gospel, because man will no longer quarrel over God or science. Man will know the whole truth.”

“But what if we’re not ready to receive the knowledge?” Imogen asked. “You can’t foresee the consequences without knowing the contents of the books. The release of information beyond our present abilities to comprehend could easily unleash enough fear to be catastrophic on a global scale.”

“You’re being paranoid,” Trummel said. “Our surviving the Duat and discovering this tomb proves that we’re ready for the wisdom of the gods.”

“Us, maybe, but we were drawn here. We’ve spent our careers searching for answers. That doesn’t mean everybody else can handle learning that alien beings existed before us.”

“Imogen’s right.” Dyfan’s cataract gray eyes looked up from the book. “I’m getting a strong intuition that this knowledge won’t bring power to the human race. It will only destroy us. I won’t be a part of this.” He walked toward the hole, his shoes squishing through the puddle.

“Goss, stop him!”

The soldier locked arms around Dyfan.

Trummel lifted the Scotsman’s chin with the knife’s blade. “Open the book, or I open you.”

Gosswick released the blind man. Dyfan ran a hand across the sphere’s bulging surface. Several needles pointed upward. They swayed with the movement of his hand like tiny sensors on an ocean-floor fish.

Imogen wished she could stop them, but Trummel and Gosswick looked insane enough to commit murder.

Dyfan placed his fingers into a groove. The thing released a squeal and attached itself to his chest. Spiked metal tubes shot out like tentacles. They swung around his arms and torso, making a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound.

Gosswick stood too close and one scratched his cheek, drawing blood. “Bugger!” The captain backed away.

Attached to the appendages were tiny hooked claws that carved into Dyfan’s flesh, shredding his clothes as they moved. Blood poured from the wounds.

Dyfan cried out, his face a mix of pain and terror.

Imogen moved to help him, but Trummel grabbed her. She tried to shake his grip. “We have to do something! He’ll die!”

Trummel smiled like a madman. “What is one sacrificed life, when we can enlighten millions?”

Dyfan fell to his knees, moaning. The thing clung to his chest like a sucking parasite. More metal tubes emerged from slits that opened in its flesh and coiled around his lower body. A silver needle-legged centipede slithered up his face and wrapped around his head like a thorny wreath, each of its needles boring into his scalp. Blood tears streamed down Dyfan’s face. His shrieks echoed in the pyramid’s chamber.

Imogen watched in horror as a thick appendage with a lamprey mouth rose behind his head and attached to the back of his skull. His eyes rolled back to whites as the tubes worked their way down his face.

After a moment of torture, the parasite fell off his chest. Dyfan’s screaming finally stopped. He ripped off most of the tubes. His exposed red flesh revealed tiny scriptures carved on his entire face and body. He yanked the last tube from his cranium, now completely bald. His beard was gone too, every hair plucked. He remained on his knees, half naked, save for a few tubes.

Dyfan stared hard at Imogen and the others, his eyes focused as if he could now see them. His shredded lips bled. He spoke in a deep, reverberating voice that sounded like someone else. “I knew you all would come and right on schedule.”

“Thoth?” Trummel asked.

“That is one of my names.” Dyfan looked at the scars that mapped his arms and torso. “You seek to know the truth of all truths.”

“I saw the codex on Dr. Harlan Riley’s body,” Trummel said. “He told me whoever opens the Books of Thoth will embody the knowledge of the gods.”

Dyfan nodded. “Harlan spent a year as my apprentice. I filled him with as much wisdom as the human mind and body can hold. He helped me run the Dark Realm’s matrix. He had one weakness, though, a part of his humanity he could not let go of.” He turned to face Imogen. “He wanted to bring you here to be enlightened along with him.”

Imogen’s eyes teared up. “Did he suffer here?”

“Not while with me. He flourished in the Dark Realm. Once your grandfather left, he was vulnerable to a world that was light-years behind him.”

“Except me,” Trummel said. “I understood enough to lead us here. I come as an ambassador for the human race. We are ready to advance our evolution to the next level.”

“Of course, you would think that,” Thoth said through Dyfan’s mouth. “You see yourself as chosen. The only modern-day messiah capable of bringing my knowledge to humankind.”

Trummel nodded. “People around the world have become uncivilized. With your books, we can put human evolution on its rightful course.” He gestured a hand toward Dyfan. “This body will be the next living codex to carry your message. I will become a pharaoh who communes with the gods and translates your divine knowledge to the masses.”

“So this is about you gaining power,” Imogen said.

“It’s about enlightening an idiotic world,” Trummel said. “It’s about bringing us out of the dark ages of ignorance, war, and conflicting religious and scientific theories. I’m giving man absolute truth, Imogen. It’s time to advance people to a level of supreme intellect that only I have known. Therefore I must control the power of these books.”

Thoth’s resonating voice chuckled. “You’ve always wanted to be a god, haven’t you, Nathan Trummel?” Blood and incandescent fluid ran down Dyfan’s body as he got up on his feet and walked slowly toward the archaeologist. “Ever since you were a boy, you’ve considered yourself superior to those around you. Gifted with high intelligence, but no conscience, no ability to connect emotionally with others. Except for your twin sister. Nell was the closest you came to feeling love, the only person in the world who understood you, and then she was taken from you.” Trummel shook his head as Thoth spoke. “Nell’s murder still haunts your mind, doesn’t it? The resentment that courses through you runs deep into your marrow. You could not stop Nell’s suffering at the hands of a mentally disturbed child killer.” Dyfan whistled a singsong note. “You blamed your parents for not paying attention, saw them as pathetic and weak-minded. With Nell gone, you felt abandoned in a world of idiots. You visited her grave and made a pact that you would fix this broken world.”

Trummel’s face trembled. “I never told anyone…”

“Everyone has a book inside them. Dark little secrets that they keep.” Dyfan turned his red glistening face toward Imogen. “An orphan who feels abandoned, not only by her family, but by God. You contemplated suicide a number of times, because deep down you don’t believe you deserve to be alive. A part of you wishes you would have died in that fire.”

Imogen felt shame and looked away.

“Don’t listen to him,” Caleb said.

Dyfan faced Caleb. “You try so hard to be a saint, but when you go after something you want, you can be selfish to a fault. You missed your own father’s funeral because you were on another continent chasing a story.”

Imogen watched Caleb’s tough exterior fracture. What guilt he’d kept submerged deep within him rose to the surface, filling his eyes with pain.

The angry being inside Dyfan was opening the darkness within them. “You all thought you had come here to steal relics from our tomb, enlighten your planet, become rich and powerful, when in fact you came into our world to confront your darkest wounds. Death is the only way to advance to the enlightened level you seek.”

Gosswick glared at Trummel. “You promised to make me and my men rich. They all died for your bloody cause.”

Dyfan grinned. “Aiden Gosswick, your book is the most sordid of all, isn’t it? If people could read your pages, how sickened they would be. You’ve slaughtered dozens of innocent people for greed. You drink to numb yourself, but the guilt is like a swarm of flies crawling across your disturbed brain.” Dyfan wriggled his fingers. “You’re feeling the flies now, aren’t you?”

Gosswick raised a shaky pistol. “Shut the hell up.”

Dyfan walked toward him. “Those poor little orphans…. Killing their parents wasn’t enough. You had to slaughter the children too.”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Gosswick fired his gun, hitting Dyfan in the center of the chest. He gripped his wound with a look of shock on his face. Then he fell to the floor.

“Dyfan!” Imogen ran to him. His blank eyes stared at the ceiling. The psychic’s death tore her heart to pieces.

“Christ, Goss, what have you done?” Trummel examined Dyfan’s corpse. “You’ve destroyed this one.”

Gosswick stood red-faced and shaking. He scratched at the back of his head.

For the first time, Imogen saw the scriptures up close. Inscribed on Dyfan’s face were the holy cross, the Star of David, the ankh, mathematical equations…. “What in God’s name?” she breathed.

Trummel said, “The codex could have answered so many questions.”