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The Bone Room, beneath the Black Pyramid, Dahshur, Egypt
CROWLEY HEARD ROSE’S cry and the sound of running feet even as he struggled to maintain consciousness. Damn that idiot Leonard; people watched too many movies. A genuine knockout could cause a person extreme brain injury. And even with the glancing blow he’d received, almost dodging Leonard’s wild swing, the pain was blinding. He put a hand to his head, felt wetness and heat. His vision swam, nausea briefly surging as he rolled onto his knees. He prayed Rose hadn’t been hit harder, her skull cracked like an egg.
He turned and slumped back against the wall, one palm pressed hard to the throbbing, bleeding cut on the side of his head. He blinked, vision beginning to clear, and saw the chamber door closing and then everything was blackness.
He scrambled in his pocket with his free hand and managed to find his phone and get the light on. Rose groaned and shifted next to him, pulled herself up to a sitting position.
“You okay?” He was pleased to hear his speech wasn’t slurred.
“That son of a bitch!” Rose sounded more angry than hurt and that was a good thing.
“Were you unconscious?”
Rose drew a deep breath in through her nose, rubbed her head just above her left eyebrow. “No, I saw it coming and ducked. But he clipped me and knocked me down.”
Relief flowed through Crowley. “Sounds like we were both lucky.” He didn’t feel lucky; his head throbbed with pain and a deep headache pulsed up from the back of his neck, but his bones were intact and his brain remained undamaged. Rose’s too, thankfully. “He even mocked us, suggesting Lily had got careless in his presence.”
She moved her hand and he winced at the egg forming there.
“He got you good, though. You sure you weren’t unconscious?”
She smiled weakly. “Yes, I’m sure. Why are you so concerned?”
He returned her smile, blinking against the pain that didn’t seem to be subsiding. “Life isn’t like the movies, that’s all.”
They took a few minutes to gather themselves and Crowley relaxed when the hammering pain began to reduce to a dull ache. The blood dried and he thought maybe he would get away without stitches. The headache he expected to persist for a while though.
He turned to Rose. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
He gestured around. “This! I took my eye off Leonard, stopped paying enough attention.”
“You were distracted by this discovery. We both were.”
“Sure, but it’s my job to stay alert. To protect you.”
Rose laughed and that stung a little. “Thank you, Sir Crowley, but I prefer to see it like we’re in this together. Looking out for each other. We both messed up this time. We both underestimated Leonard.”
Crowley paused, but had to agree. It was a better way to look at things. “Okay. So let’s both agree that we don’t take our eyes off people in situations like this again.”
Rose squeezed his shoulder. “Let’s hope there aren’t situations like this again.” She looked around, suddenly concerned. “And let’s hope that’s not because we’re stuck in here forever to become more bones for the pile!”
“Yeah. There must be a way out.”
Rose stood tentatively, found her phone and switched on its light. “Must there? Maybe the only access is via that mechanism outside. After all, these poor sacrificed souls wouldn’t need a way out.”
Crowley chose not to think too hard about that rather too likely possibility. “Let’s look for a way out.”
They moved carefully, ensuring they didn’t upset the neatly ordered ossuary. Crowley thought it stood to reason that any exit mechanism would be free of skeletal remains, but the small chamber afforded little in the way of unoccupied space.
“How long do you think these bones have been here?” Rose said.
“Thousands of years, I would imagine.” Something caught Crowley’s eye and his heart did a double beat of shock. “Or not.”
Rose looked back towards him. “What?”
Crowley moved to one side, played his light over one stack of old bones to see better the next pile. A flash of color among the dark stones and pale remains. “There’s a body here,” he said tightly.
Rose laughed. “No wonder they call you Jake Sherlock.”
He smiled despite himself. “No, I mean a recent one. Concealed under this pile.” He pulled the bones aside, as carefully as he could, to reveal the corpse of an older man. He had the appearance of a local as best as Crowley could see, though his skin was dried tight to the bone, eyes wide open, teeth bared. His clothes were shabby, threadbare, but the body was weeks old at best. “Not all of the dead are ancient, it seems.”
Rose hurried over. She muttered a low curse, pointed at the man’s chest. His shirt lay torn open, stained dark brown with copious amounts of dried blood, a gaping hole in his chest.
“His heart has been cut out.”
Anger washed through Crowley. “The Anubis Cult. Alive and well, unlike this poor bugger.”
“You think they’re performing occult rituals?” Rose asked.
“Looks like it. And I don’t intend on us being their next victims.”
Rose looked at him sharply. “You think Leonard..?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But we can only assume he’s gone for help and I don’t imagine that help will be of any benefit to us. Or if he’s not in the Anubis Cult, then whoever is will come back eventually and find us here. Or we’ll never know because we’ve starved to death in the meantime.”
“Jake!”
He smiled, put a hand on her shoulder. “So let’s get out of here, yeah?”
They resumed their search and Crowley tried not to let despair get the better of him. This chamber was a box, made of stone, with one entrance built into that Anubis carving. And the only release for it was the one Leonard had used on the other side. After a good ten minutes of searching, even moving piles of bones to check the floor underneath, he sat back against one wall and put his chin in his hands. Never one to quit, never one to give in. But he was out of ideas.
Rose looked over, his concerns echoed on her features. “What do we do?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe someone will come for us and we’ll have to fight our way out.”
“I don’t think Leonard will make the mistake of underestimating you.”
Crowley winced. She was only being honest, but that cut deeply. He had made a grave error letting his attention waver from Leonard and it might have cost them everything. He tipped his head back against the wall, staring up at nothing.
No, not nothing. The ceiling of the chamber didn’t look quite right. He tipped his head left, then right. “Rose,” he said quietly. “Can you move aside, please?”
She looked at him quizzically, but did as he asked. He pointed his light at the ceiling, then the floor, and a slight smile pushed up his lips.
“What have you seen?” Rose asked.
He pointed up to where the ceiling met the wall on the opposite side of the room. “Look how the ceiling sags there.”
She turned to look, eyebrows creased together. “Yeah, I see it. This place is thousands of years old, after all.”
“Yes, but remember what all the guides keep talking about? It’s built too close to the Nile, there’s ground water, the weight of the pyramid caused it to sink, to crush the underground chambers.”
Rose’s eyes went wide. “You think we can, what, collapse this place? How will that help?”
Crowley laughed. “Well, collapsing it might just help to kill us extra quick. But if this area is subject to some subsidence, then it means the general structure is compromised. We can use that. Look along the side of that block near the middle at the top. See the crack in the mortar? If the walls have shifted, if they’ve sunk, they’ll be loosened, right?”
“I don’t know...”
Crowley picked up a heavy tibia and whacked it hard against the ground, breaking the ball joint of the hip off the end. With the resulting ragged point of bone he reached up high and began digging at the thin line of mortar around a large stone just below ceiling level. He ignored Rose’s concerned scrutiny, working hard at the job, building up a sweat as he went. After a few minutes he’d cleared a fair amount of mortar from the sides and underneath the block. Unable to reach properly to get leverage, he muttered an apology to the long dead and pushed a heap of bones up against the wall to use as a makeshift step. They crunched and cracked as he stepped up on them, but gave him the boost he needed. He scraped more, cleared more mortar. Deciding that might be enough, he leaned back and then slammed both palms hard against block. There was a deep creak and dust rained down all around him.
“Jake!” Rose’s voice was high.
He dug in again, cleared more, then double-palmed the block again. This time it shifted a good half its width out into the chamber beyond. The next block down shifted an inch or two as well and the ceiling rained more debris.
“What if you bring this whole place down?” Rose asked, panic making her speak quickly.
Crowley paused. “I don’t think it’ll collapse entirely. Or we can wait to see who comes.” He watched her, serious about the choices. He would abide by whatever she chose.
She pursed her lips for a moment, then resignation softened her face. “Don’t crush us, please.”
He grinned. “I’ll try.”
He worked more carefully now he’d made a start in the block’s removal. If the structure had been compromised by the slowly sinking edifice, but was still standing, he felt sure removing one block wouldn’t be enough to cause a catastrophic collapse. “We only need one of these out for you to squeeze through,” he said as he cleared more mortar.
“Me?”
“I’m too big.”
After a moment he pushed against the first block, more cautiously this time, and it slid forward then dropped with a dull crack to the floor outside. The ceiling creaked and moaned, dust danced through their flashlight beams as it sifted down. With a sharp crack the large block of ceiling above Crowley shifted and dropped. With a cry he leaped backward, staggering off his bone pile as adrenaline flooded him. The ceiling stone fell at an angle, maybe ten inches below its original level at one end, but still held up by the greater part of the wall at the other. Everything settled.
“Holy crap,” he said quietly. Then he smiled. “But it’s holding. You can get through there, right?”
A deep groan rumbled through the pyramid, seeming to be both far above them and far below at the same time.
Rose blew out an exasperated breath and stepped forward. Crowley cupped his hands together to give her a boost and she went up the wall, arms first through the small hole. It pressed and scraped at her hips and Crowley had a moment of fright thinking she might get stuck there, but another shove against the soles of her feet sent her through. He heard her drop and roll on the other side, grunting with the effort.
Crowley stepped back. “Quickly, pull that mechanism!”
A dull grinding sound filled their ears and the small door at the base of the wall slid up. Crowley shot through and into the main chamber. The carving of Anubis had been marred, his left shoulder fallen to the floor and broken where Crowley had pushed the block out. But he didn’t stop to consider the damage. Maybe some enterprising archaeologist would oversee repairs. For now, he was only concerned with leaving.
“Come on!” Rose said, pulling at his sleeve.
He grinned. “Right behind you.”