movement whatsoever. I twisted it and was rewarded with a cracking sound from somewhere behind me, on the other side of the smoke deflector. A cloud of dust shimmered in my beam, swirling on the subtle change in air currents.
I moved to the other side of the pole and twisted again. It barely moved in my hands, and yet the dust billowed up toward the roof.
And then everything fell into place.
I ran across the chamber, took the cross from the dead man, and aligned it with the top of the spear. Slid it down until it latched onto the ring around the middle. I used the arms like a wheel to turn the post. With the extra torque, it spun easily and I listened to the rumble of stone grinding against stone as the dust billowed from behind the deflector.
When I could no longer turn the handle, I walked around to the other side of the deflector and into the cloud of dust. I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose to keep from inhaling it and waved it away with my free hand. A dark hole appeared near the ground, where a minute ago there had been solid stone.
I crouched and shined my beam inside, but couldn’t see anything through the dust.
The clock in my head ticked ever louder as the sun began its descent.
I balled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking and tried to steady my nerves. When I realized that was a lost cause, I lowered myself to all fours, focused on any sound other than the thunder of my pulse, and crawled into the darkness.
EIGHTEEN
The tunnel was maybe a dozen feet long, but I was starting to think it might never end when I finally crawled out into a chamber significantly larger, and less elaborate, than the first. The walls were bare rock and reflected none of the architectural styles I had seen throughout these hills. It was essentially a natural formation that over time had been converted into something more, something I imagined few people had ever seen.
Like the preceding room, this one was roughly circular. The ground sloped away from me into the darkness. I turned my flashlight upon the wall to my left and spotlighted the first in a procession of petroglyphs that encircled the chamber and appeared to tell a story. The carvings were so faint they were almost invisible in places. I saw stick figures emerging from what I guessed was meant to be the underground based on the direction the spiral beneath them turned and the crude representation of what I believed to be the sun above and a crescent moon below. One of the figures had a round head and large ears. Its long, upraised arms formed a W and its short, bent legs looked like an M. The other was shaped like a sarcophagus with curved horns growing from its head. There were dozens of animals around them, from deer with lightning-bolt antlers to birds and snakes and scorpions and bighorn sheep.
To its right was another petroglyph. This one featured many more of the round-headed, big-eared people with the raised arms and bent knees that reminded me of monkeys, surrounded by more animals and all sorts of small handprints with short thumbs and disproportionately long palms and fingers. Above them was the lone sarcophagus-man with the horns. He now had a straight mouth, slanted eyes, and the ears of a goat.
There was so much menace and resentment captured in that simplistic expression that I shivered and had to look away.
The next carvings in line were at first difficult to interpret. They were of a slightly different style and obviously carved by a new hand. What I initially thought were supposed to be the footprints of a large bird were actually trees from which four-legged animals that looked like deer and bears hung, suspended upside down. Above this forest of death was a crescent moon, beside which a plus sign inside of two concentric circles had been drawn. I could not decipher the design that separated it from the next petroglyph, which featured the monkey-men, now thicker and more proportionate,
I moved to the other side of the pole and twisted again. It barely moved in my hands, and yet the dust billowed up toward the roof.
And then everything fell into place.
I ran across the chamber, took the cross from the dead man, and aligned it with the top of the spear. Slid it down until it latched onto the ring around the middle. I used the arms like a wheel to turn the post. With the extra torque, it spun easily and I listened to the rumble of stone grinding against stone as the dust billowed from behind the deflector.
When I could no longer turn the handle, I walked around to the other side of the deflector and into the cloud of dust. I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose to keep from inhaling it and waved it away with my free hand. A dark hole appeared near the ground, where a minute ago there had been solid stone.
I crouched and shined my beam inside, but couldn’t see anything through the dust.
The clock in my head ticked ever louder as the sun began its descent.
I balled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking and tried to steady my nerves. When I realized that was a lost cause, I lowered myself to all fours, focused on any sound other than the thunder of my pulse, and crawled into the darkness.
EIGHTEEN
The tunnel was maybe a dozen feet long, but I was starting to think it might never end when I finally crawled out into a chamber significantly larger, and less elaborate, than the first. The walls were bare rock and reflected none of the architectural styles I had seen throughout these hills. It was essentially a natural formation that over time had been converted into something more, something I imagined few people had ever seen.
Like the preceding room, this one was roughly circular. The ground sloped away from me into the darkness. I turned my flashlight upon the wall to my left and spotlighted the first in a procession of petroglyphs that encircled the chamber and appeared to tell a story. The carvings were so faint they were almost invisible in places. I saw stick figures emerging from what I guessed was meant to be the underground based on the direction the spiral beneath them turned and the crude representation of what I believed to be the sun above and a crescent moon below. One of the figures had a round head and large ears. Its long, upraised arms formed a W and its short, bent legs looked like an M. The other was shaped like a sarcophagus with curved horns growing from its head. There were dozens of animals around them, from deer with lightning-bolt antlers to birds and snakes and scorpions and bighorn sheep.
To its right was another petroglyph. This one featured many more of the round-headed, big-eared people with the raised arms and bent knees that reminded me of monkeys, surrounded by more animals and all sorts of small handprints with short thumbs and disproportionately long palms and fingers. Above them was the lone sarcophagus-man with the horns. He now had a straight mouth, slanted eyes, and the ears of a goat.
There was so much menace and resentment captured in that simplistic expression that I shivered and had to look away.
The next carvings in line were at first difficult to interpret. They were of a slightly different style and obviously carved by a new hand. What I initially thought were supposed to be the footprints of a large bird were actually trees from which four-legged animals that looked like deer and bears hung, suspended upside down. Above this forest of death was a crescent moon, beside which a plus sign inside of two concentric circles had been drawn. I could not decipher the design that separated it from the next petroglyph, which featured the monkey-men, now thicker and more proportionate,
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