The Tomb of the First Watch

            You finally come to a dead end in the tunnel. A blank wall of rock without any distinguishing feature.

            For a moment you just stare blankly.

            You’d found the hidden chamber that had started this trek completely by accident. At first, it was just another chamber in just another tomb of just another high class nobody beneath the Egyptian desert. This nobody being Menes, the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty of Egypt and the chamber belonged to his favored advisor, an unnamed nobody who was also apparently a prolific scribe.

There had been hundreds of papyri scrolls and chiseled stone tablets in the first chamber. All carefully and meticulously written in the medu-netjer. God’s words they are often called. On one wall, however, a set of symbols unlike anything yet discovered and entirely different from known hieroglyphs had caught your eye.

You’d sent sketches to colleagues all over the globe and no one had yet been able to decipher them, no less recognized them. All suspected it might be a form of personal code the fellow had used and amounted basically to gibberish.

Still, the symbols have haunted your thoughts since. Your dreams, your waking hours, even your nightmares are filled with them, taunting you, beckoning.

Marlina had even invited you to join her little excursion to Peru in search of El Dorado to get your mind off them and your unexpectedly halted excavation while Egyptian authorities inspected the new discovery.

You’d scoffed, of course.

You’d told her El Dorado was a fool’s adventure.

You should have invited her to join you instead.

She hadn’t returned your phone calls in months and now, with your personal assistant having abandoned you several hours ago, the loneliness was beginning to worm its way through you like a parasite.

It was interesting that with each new chamber and excavated corridor that connected them, the further down into the earth you and your team had gone, though no one would admit to understanding or recognizing those symbols, one by one they had dropped away and left you to it. Alone.

Now here you are staring at a dead end.

Perhaps they had outsmarted you.

Perhaps they’d known all along.

And yet, you were certain you’d heard whispers amongst them on the way down.

Something about a tomb and the first watch.

You assumed they had meant a favored guard had been buried here. Someone trusted to watch over the pharaoh and his advisor on their journey into the Afterlife. But who would plant a guardian so far away and so far down from the main body of the pharaoh’s tomb?

Could it be someone despised instead? Someone they wanted tucked far away and hidden so no one would ever discover them? Were the symbols that pulled at you a warning?

You place your palm upon the stone and sigh, wondering if you should give up and go back to the surface before the oil lamp at your feet ran out to leave you also, utterly alone and lost in the dark.

A sharp chirp draws your attention down to the small cage beside you and the bright yellow canary you’d wrested from the hand of your last mutinying assistant. The extra electric torch and refill of oil, unfortunately, had disappeared with the lout along with the extra snacks and water. Your own electric torch had fizzled out a while back. Hours? Days? Minutes?

At least you still have the canary, so maybe not entirely alone.

As your eyes rise from the canary though, a small indenture of the stone floor draws you down to examen closer. It looks roughly like an arrow. Not the modern things of today, naturally, but like a primitive arrow drawn in ancient cave art. Only this is chiseled into the stone.

Your heart pounds as you follow it to the adjoining wall running parallel to the corridor rather than at the end of it.

Yes! There! Your symbols, and as you brush your rough fingers over the stone you can feel where stones are stacked and mortared together to close off another entryway. Could it be the final chamber at last?

These symbols are different though, than those you’d found at each entrance previously. They are larger, more deeply carved and above them is what looks like a moon inside the sun.

Could this be the symbol of someone who understood an eclipse for what it actually was? Was this an invitation to fellow scholars and scientists? To others of a like mind. Look here. Follow me.

You drop your pack, pull a long swallow from your half-filled canteen, and take out your tools.

With the first crack in the stone the tension inside you loosens.

With the first stone that finally pulls away, you are weightless and full of adrenaline. You lean back and stare into the darkness that lays beyond, feeling a cool breeze flow past, and sigh with pleasure.

The canary chirps and stares into the darkness as well.

It ruffles its feathers and flutters its clipped wings, then hops to the back of the cage and presses itself tightly against the metal frame.

So, you wait.

A few heartbeats, a few breaths.

The canary still breathes.

You breathe deep, tasting the air yourself. The air from the chamber isn’t foul, though there is a certain undertone of filth and decaying matter. There is a familiarness to something in the aroma, metallic, earthy. You can’t quite put your finger on it.

Still, you know you can proceed and so you do.

When the last stone falls away and gives you an opening large enough, you push through with your pack, lantern, and caged canary to find yourself standing in a larger chamber with walls to either side. It is only slightly wider than the corridor you’ve just left. The ceiling, though, is high enough above that the meager light from the lantern just barely touches it.

In fact, as you step further into the chamber, the light of the lantern begins to lose the ceiling as if you are either moving down a ramp or the ceiling is rising at an incline.

Your brain though, whispers to you. It isn’t just the ceiling being lost to the shadows, the wall to your right also slowly fades as the light from your lantern seems to condense. The canary still presses against the back of the cage and is now breathing rapidly as if it fears whatever lays beyond.

Like a virus, its fear makes its way into your thoughts, and you wonder again if you shouldn’t go back to the surface.

Perhaps upon your return your assistant or your team will see that no evil has befallen you and may be more willing to travel back down with you to explore. Maybe Marlina or Franchesco will finally return your phone calls and come to see what you’ve found.

Something skitters across the stone just beyond the edge of the lantern light and the flame flickers, as if, like the canary, it too is frightened.

“Just rats,” you say aloud to yourself, just to hear the calming sound of another human voice.

Another sound rattles through the chamber in answer, like a low growl at first, then echoing off the walls as it grows into sneering thunder. “Just rats,” a voice echoes, guttural and almost sibilant, coming from nowhere and everywhere as if the chamber has no end.

“J-just my own echo,” you whisper.

The laughter echoes again and then, “echo, echo, echo,” the voice mocks.

Without realizing you’ve stopped at the edge of the larger space and to the left of the opening where you stand, stone-carved shelves full of scrolls rise from the floor and disappear far above. Forgetting the voice for a moment, or perhaps, telling yourself it is just a figment of your fear-addled imagination, you put down the cage and reach for the edges of the ancient documents. There are papyri, like the first chamber, but also vellum, barkcloth, parchment, wood, bamboo, palm leaves, and Chinese paper.

“It…it’s a library,” you wonder aloud.

“Yes,” the voice answers.

The lantern flickers again and you realize the circle of light has grown much smaller. You can only see a few feet in each direction. The shadows that surround push against its perimeter, leaning towards you like living things, and somehow, you are certain that if it should go out you won’t be wandering in the dark after all. The shadows will swallow you.

You begin to back up. All curiosity and excitement of the discovery forgotten.

The voice… had answered.

A soft, fluttering sound catches your ear as your empty hand finds the corner of the stone wall. Rustling fabric or giant wings, which you can’t be sure, but you back up faster, certain that something…someone?... has come close and joined you at the edge of the entry.

The rasp of metal, a squeak of a hinge, and you realize you’ve left the canary. There is a brief flicker of mourning before you tell yourself it is just a bird and you don’t need it to return to the surface.

If…you return to the surface.

You push the thought away as the sound of the canary taking flight echoes through the underground library, only barely covering up the sound of footsteps coming towards you.

“Where are you going, little bird?”

The singsong manner floods you with fear, and you turn to run towards the hole you made in the wall.

Just as the lantern sputters out.