The throbbing at the base of my skull let me know two things. First of all, I was awake. Fantastic. The other thing was this whole trip had been a set up. A ruse. On the one hand, I should have known this. On the other, well, one of these days Ill strike it lucky.
The pain swelled as I stood; they had hit me hard and I had gone down easily. I dont know if they thought theyd killed me, or if they just didnt care to check. Ill put that in the win column.
I looked around the empty room. They had taken everything. The piles of gold, the gems, even all the parchment documents that had been left here. All of it was gone.
I rolled my eyes and kicked at the sand that had accumulated over the years in the tomb and looked for what they had missed. I knew now that they werent actually scientists looking for something undiscovered, but mere grave robbers. Which meant that they wouldnt have searched for anything beyond what the entrance way to the tomb offered. They wouldnt have found the other door.
It took me a while to find it myself and I could tell just from looking that it was still sealed. I stared at it for some time, trying to build up the courage to break the seal.
I wasnt afraid of a curse or anything like that. The popular definition of curse wasnt how these people understood it. You disturb someones eternal slumber, so they will disturb yours. A like for a like. If there was a curse – and you needed to have a pretty hefty shaman around to place it – then it wouldnt affect me, or any of my duplicitous friends until after we were dead. I could deal with it then.
No, what I was concerned about was that this was a new find. I hadnt found it, of course, but I had been drinking buddies with one of the team who had. And they had yet to crack the seal, to enter the central room and find the sarcophagus. They hadnt even made it inside the building at all.
I never got to do this kind of thing. But here I was, with the opportunity of a lifetime directly in front of me. The small square slab, slightly different from the surrounding ones, the last stone placed after the deceased royal was entombed. Sealed with a gum-like glue many thousands of years ago. What would it be like inside? How preserved would it be?
While I wasnt untrained in these things, I didnt have the experience needed to do it ‘properly.’ I didnt have any of the solvent that would break down the glue, leaving the sandstone intact. I didnt have any lifting aids to pull the stone out; it would be heavy. The torch I had was on limited batteries and, upon checking, found that I, too, had been robbed. My wallet, phone and second torch were missing. Problems for later.
What I did have, thanks to one of the others having dropped it on their way out, was a crowbar. And if I knew anything, I knew how to use one of those.
The glue around the stone was easy to break. It was already old and with the influx of fresh air and some sharp jabs with the crowbar, it basically fell away in sharp clumps.
Then came the harder part: sliding the stone out to a point where I could get my hands on it and pull. The crowbar fitted in every side, even inching the slab across in its shaft. But no matter what I tried, it wouldnt move forward. It wouldnt slide out.
I stared at it, this time in frustration as I wondered how long it would take to leave, get some gear, come back and do it properly. Every scenario I tried would take far too long. If I was going to break into this tomb, it would have to be with whatever I had available to me now, namely my physical strength and a crowbar.
As I stared, the words ‘break in’ kept running through my head. I shoved them back out each time, but they kept coming back. ‘Break in. Break in.’
The switch flicked somewhere in the back of my mind and suddenly, I understood. In.
I placed my hands on the stone slab and gently started to push. Without all that much effort, the stone started to slide in its hole. It made an awful noise as it moved back into the central room and with one last complaint as the front side cleared the back edge, fell into the room with a muted thump.
A cloud of grey dust kicked up inside and I waited a few minutes before continuing. I could see the first few rays of dawn over the horizon and begged for the dust to clear. When it became clear that I could wait any longer, and risk running into people coming to continue their work, I pulled my shirt up over my face and pushed myself through the hole into the central room.
I stood and waved my torch around the space. It was several times larger than the entrance way and far more intricately detailed. Every available surface was covered in hieroglyphs. The larger walls were painted with, presumably, the story of the deceased's life. Some of these paintings had small crystals embedded in various places, mostly representing the eyes of some god who this person had prayed to. Im not a history buff, by any stretch, but I do know the ancient gods of this part of the world, and that isnt one of them. More problems for later.
After admiring the art and the many detailed hieroglyphs, I shone my torch, finally, on the centrepiece. The thing this room had been built for. The sarcophagus.
It was laying in the centre of the room and I assumed it was laying north to south, like all the others that had been found from that time period, in this area. So far so normal.
What was not normal was its shape and size. Usually, the final covering of a dead royal was a golden shell, emblazoned with an image of the deceased, ready for their crossing over. But this one was a simple black box. It was in two parts, the sarcophagus itself on the bottom and the lid on top. Around the edge of the lid was a series of golden painted images; not hieroglyphs, but another style of pictogram. Underneath the join of the lid to the box, the series repeated.
I held the crowbar in one hand and stared at that three or four millimetre gap that kept the box sealed. The crowbar could wedge in there. There would be no glue on this; these things werent permanently sealed shut so that the deceased could easily push the lid off so they could head to their afterlife. This particular lid should just slide right off.
But this was not a sarcophagus I really wanted to mess with. Beyond the weird style of coffin, another sweep around the room with my torch revealed something I had missed. There was nothing. There were no skeletons, indicative of slaves having been buried in here with the body. There was no further gold; the ‘real’ treasure. Just carved and painted sandstone. And the coffin.
After another look around, I learned there wasnt any other way out of here either. Everything about this person was strange. I had the distinct feeling the mummy itself would continue this trend.
I would wander around the room, but I would always end up back, staring at it, the crowbar in my hand. I could hear my head telling me to do it. To just ease the crowbar in and push. Thats all it would take and I would have opened my first sarcophagus.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had stepped over to the box and had wedged the crowbar into the gap. The lid lifted and while I didnt hear anything that sounded like a seal breaking, I could imagine it. That little puff of dust as the pressure equalised within the coffin.
I looked down at the end of the crowbar, already most of the way there and shrugged. I was already this far gone. Whats that little bit further?
“Finally,” someone said as the lid of the sarcophagus slid off and thumped to the floor. The voice was raspy and impatient. “How long, boy?” it asked.
“Me?” I managed to utter, looking around for who was speaking.
“Theres no one else here,” it sounded disgusted when it spoke. Like it was doing some awful chore that was beneath its station. “How long has it been since I was imprisoned?”
“Uh, I dont know,” I replied. I knew that this dig was looking for something within the 5,000 year range, but initial reports – that I had stolen for someone else – suggested this particular find was closer to 7,500 thousand years old.
As I watched, the classic B-movie design mummy pushed itself up from the coffin and leaned over the side. The ends of various bandages hung off it and a leathery, dead skin could be seen through the gaps. Bandages, seemingly glued in place, covered the mummys eyes and mouth.
“How long?” the voice was coming from the mummy, but it was not being spoken by it. It was like the idea of words.
I had to get it together. “Some people believe this place is 5,000 years old, others believe its closer to 8,000 years old,” I said. “But this isnt a prison,” I added. “This is a tomb; youre dead.”
“Clearly not,” the mummy said. “How do I get out of here?”
“Get out?” I asked and instinctively put myself between the mummy and the entrance way.
“So I can stand before my people,” the mummy said proudly. “Surely they would be pleased with my return?”
“The truth is,” I say, “no one knows your name. This tomb, it was forgotten. Left to be buried and consumed by the desert. There was no name plaque over the door. No identification anywhere. People here, now, dont know you.”
“Disgraceful,” it spat and pulled itself up further. “I shall need to recover my belongings and head back to the court and challenge who does sit on my throne.”
I looked at him and sighed. “Dressed like that?”
For the first time, he looked confused, then he examined his arms and chest. Then he looked back at me.
“I was mummified,” it said. There was a small amount of horror in its voice.
“Yes, you were dead.”
“I was not,” it retorted and held out a hand. Out of nowhere, a small gem appeared in it. It rippled through all the colours and settled on a deep green. “This ensures I do not die.” The gem rippled again and set itself on a light red. “This one ensures no one can deceive me.” It glared at me again. “Would I be welcome in your world? Would this world allow me to retrieve my belongings and retake my place?”
“No,” I said immediately.
“Then you will have to do it for me, wont you?” it said, as the gem rippled and became blue. “This one will seek out my things and you must retrieve them for me. Return me to my full power and I will make sure you are rewarded.”