Lex paused in the pyramid’s entranceway, listening. She could swear she’d heard something—a disturbing howl like the shriek of a wild beast. She looked around at her companions, but no one else seemed to have noticed.
After a moment, Lex shrugged, deciding it was her imagination.
“It’s perfectly preserved,” Thomas marveled. “These carvings are as pristine as they were the day they were etched into the stone.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sebastian murmured. “The hieroglyphics look to be some kind of hybrid language containing both Aztec and Egyptian characteristics. Perhaps an Ur-language—a lost and forgotten tongue that was the mother to all human languages.”
Miller had his spectral analysis kit out and was already working. He blinked at the digital readout that appeared on his tablet PC.
“This reading says these stones are at least ten thousand years old.”
Sebastian shook his head. “That’s impossible. Check it again.”
“I already did.”
“Amazing,” said Weyland.
“If you like that, you’re going to love this,” Lex called, waving her flashlight to get their attention. She was standing on the threshold of a pitch-black corridor that led even deeper into the massive pyramid.
Weyland hobbled forward, his pole clicking on the tiled floor. Sebastian and Thomas raced up to Lex, their expressions eager. But before they could enter the tunnel, she waved them back. The rest watched as Lex placed a small strobe light on the floor behind her and another on top of a carved stone shelf.
“They’ll burn for six hours. We’ll be able to find our way back.”
Then she led them forward, into a short passage ornamented with carved stone lintels and lined with elaborate pictographs. At the end of the passage, there was another door—more impressive than even the entranceway. The doorjambs were engraved with thousands of hieroglyphic characters and framed by stout bas-relief columns.
“This is obviously the central ritual chamber,” Sebastian whispered, his tone reverential. “The reason this structure was built.”
Probing the darkness, their flashlights illuminated a mammoth circular stone chamber with a high ceiling that arched into the shadows. The walls were covered with terra-cotta columns etched with the same hieroglyphics, the floor dominated by seven raised stone slabs, each the size of a large man and each occupied by a mummified corpse. The slabs were arranged head to head in a circular shape like the petals of a flower. In the center of the circle was a carved stone grille. Beneath that grille, all was dark.
Weyland touched a cold stone slab. “These are…?”
“Sacrificial slabs,” said Sebastian.
“Just like the Aztecs and the ancient Egyptians. Whoever built this pyramid believed in ritual sacrifice,” Thomas explained.
Lex directed her flashlight beam toward the far wall, at a mound of human skulls six feet high. “You can say that again.”
“My God,” Max Stafford whispered softly.
Miller leaned over a cadaver. “It’s almost perfectly preserved.”
Like the others, this corpse had been freeze-dried by the harsh environment. Flesh and tendons still clung to the bones. The dead man wore a ritual headpiece and a jeweled necklace, its stones and precious metal gleaming dully under the dust of millennia. Though there were no injuries beyond a hole below the rib cage, the face on each mummy was contorted, jaws gaping as if frozen in agony.
“This is where they offered the chosen ones to the gods,” said Thomas.
Miller gingerly touched the remains. The flesh was leathery, the bones calcified to roughly the texture of stone.
Meanwhile, Sebastian played his flashlight across one of the slabs. Darkened spots stained the surface—mute testament to the ritual slaughter this chamber had witnessed.
“Those that were chosen would lie here,” he told the others. “They weren’t bound or tied in any way. They went to their deaths willingly… men and women. It was considered an honor.”
“Lucky them,” said Lex. She ran her fingers around a circular, bowl-like indentation at the base of the slab. “What’s this bowl for?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Opinions vary. Some archaeologists think it’s where the heart was placed after it was torn from the body… the living body.”
Weyland shone his flashlight through the stone grate in the center of the floor. “Look at this!”
Max struck a flare and dropped it through the grate. Crouching over the hole, he watched while it fell. Everyone heard it strike something.
“How far down does it go?” Weyland asked.
“Can’t really see,” said Stafford. He was on his knees, face pressed against the grate. “Maybe a hundred feet. Looks like another room.”
Weyland upped the intensity of his flashlight and played it along the walls. The beam illuminated more stacks of human bones. Many of the skeletons were still intact.
Weyland caught his breath. “There must be hundreds of them.”
“At least,” Max replied.
As Weyland moved away from the main group, Adele Rousseau remained at his side, one hand on the pistol in her belt. Like the others, she gazed in horrified fascination at the mountain of bleached bones.
Rousseau examined the rib cage on one of the intact skeletons. Like the mummies on the slab, there was a hole punched through the ribs.
“What happened here?” she asked, tucking a finger into the cavity.
Thomas moved to her side. “It was common in ritual sacrifice to take the heart of the victim.”
But the woman shook her head. “That’s not where your heart is. Besides, it looks like the bones were bent straight out. Something broke out of this body.”
Thomas found something in the stack of human remains. He stood up and displayed his grisly discovery.
“Incredible,” said Miller. “The entire skull and spinal column removed in one piece.”
With Miller’s help, Thomas turned the skeleton in his hand so they all could see the severed rib bones.
“The cleanness of the cut… remarkable,” Miller said, scratching his head through his wool cap. “Straight through the bone. No abrasions. You’d be hard-pressed to do this with modern knives, maybe even lasers—”
Miller’s speculations were interrupted by a long, echoing howl, like an animal in torment. The sound continued for another moment before fading.
“Did you hear that?” asked Lex, sure now that what she’d heard earlier had not been her imagination.
“Air?” said Miller. “Moving through the tunnels.”
“I don’t know,” Sebastian said, looking around. “Maybe…”
Searching for the origin of the sound, Sebastian spied a low corridor hidden between two ornate wall columns. Shining his light into the gloom, he still couldn’t make out any details beyond the entrance. Stepping around a skeleton, he cautiously edged his way toward what he thought was the source of the sound.
“Do you see anything?” Miller whispered.
Sebastian did see something—or so he thought. He was forced to crouch low because the ceiling at the rear of the antechamber sloped downward dramatically. Futilely, he tried to shine the flashlight rays into the darkest reaches of the tiny, claustrophobic chamber.
Suddenly something dropped on Sebastian’s back. He stumbled backwards and fell on his spine. With a dry clatter, the thing—heavy and pale white, with multiple crablike legs—landed on the tiles next to his head. He felt a cold, clammy tail lash against his face.
With a yell, Sebastian rolled away from the object just as Lex caught it in her flashlight.
“What is that thing!” Sebastian cried, his calm demeanor shattered.
The creature was approximately the size of a bowling ball and looked like a crab without front claws, though it did have a long, snakelike tail. It was milky white and nearly two feet long stretched out on its back. Miller stooped low, prodding the creature with his flashlight.
“Be careful,” Stafford warned.
“Whatever it is, it’s been dead a while,” said Miller. “The bones have calcified.”
Lex looked at Sebastian, still not quite recovered from his scare. “You must have dislodged it from a crack in the ceiling.”
“No idea how long it’s been there, but the temperature has kept it preserved,” said Sebastian. “Looks like a kind of scorpion.”
“No. This climate’s too hostile for a scorpion,” said Lex.
“Ever seen anything like it?”
Lex shook her head.
“Maybe it’s a species that’s never been discovered.”
“Maybe,” Lex replied, but her tone was doubtful.
From the belly of the creature dangled a hard, petrified tentacle that looked to Lex, more than anything else, like a shriveled umbilical cord.