“So where is it then?” Ben said desperately. “There’s nothing else in here! No gaps or grooves in the wall we can prise open, the only other feature in the whole place is the plinth.”
They all looked to where he was pointing. It was the structure that Gail had originally seen on the x-ray screen all those years ago. It protruded from the floor, its top tilted with a lip at the bottom edge, in which had sat the books of Aniquilus and Xynutians. Roughly three feet wide and two feet deep at its base, it sat in an alcove at one end of the rectangular room, the bookcases lined up in front of it like pews in a church.
Walker was already there, inspecting the base of the plinth. Gail joined him, despite Ben’s best efforts to stop her from going near the man who barely half an hour earlier wouldn’t have hesitated in shooting them all.
“It’s a separate stone from the floor,” she told him. “We know that much already.”
He grunted in reply, then looked up at her. “No drawings of Egyptian things and cats and shit? I’ve seen all the adventure movies, there’s always some writing somewhere that someone leans on, then the secret passage opens up; hey sesame.”
“This isn’t a movie,” she said bitterly. “Yes, there are usually inscriptions inside Egyptian tombs and monuments, but not in this one. The only recurring symbol is the stickman – Aniquilus.”
“Aniqui who?” Ben asked, surprised at hearing the name for the first time.
“It’s a long story,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, there are no other hieroglyphs in here. We’ve always focussed our research on the literature that we found, the contents of the bookcases rather than the structure itself. I mean, how many times do you check the walls out when you go to your local library?”
“My local what?” Walker joked. He stood up laboriously and looked at Ben. “If there’s one thing we should try knocking over, it’s this.”
No one disagreed, and soon they were pushing with all their might to try and topple it sideways.
It remained solidly in place.
They tried again from the other side, with the same results. After a few minutes, even Walker conceded that the plinth wasn’t going anywhere.
“Could we lift it?” Patterson suggested.
“Bit of a heavy trapdoor isn’t it? How would they have dropped it in place behind them?” Ben commented.
“Fill the space underneath with sand and then take the sand away slowly from below,” Walker said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. “But then we have the same problem: how’d the last person get out?”
They stood looking at the plinth for several long minutes.
“In any case,” Patterson said finally, “whether it was dropped in behind them or slid across, I don’t see how they could have done it. It’s too heavy and it would have left marks all over the floor if it was dragged, and there are no signs of anything like that.”
Gail sat down and leant against the back of the alcove, exasperated. Letting her head thud against the cold stone, she buried her face in her hands and groaned. “What’s the use? We’ve been down here nearly an hour, and we’re already running out of air. Our only hope is that someone up there digs us out.”
Ben got up onto the plinth, so that he was leaning against the book holder, his backside wedged into the lip that originally stopped the books from falling to the floor.
Gail gave him a disapproving look, then shook her head and closed her eyes.
“What?” he said. “I’m sorry Gail, but we’re going to die down here, the last of my worries is damaging the –”
“Ben, shut up!” she said suddenly, sitting bolt upright, her eyes wide open.
“Oh great! First I’m not allowed to –”
“No seriously, Ben, shhh!” she put her finger to her lips and everyone listened: somewhere beneath the floor, a rumbling had started, like the rolling of a bowling ball making its journey down to the pins.
Then there was the muffled sound of something clicking into place, followed by silence.
After waiting a few seconds longer, Gail got to her feet and pressed her ear against the back wall of the alcove.
“Whatever it was, it didn’t do much,” she said, disappointed. “When you sat on the plinth you must have set off the first part of some mechanism, but over the centuries whatever function it had has probably rotted away.”
They all returned their attention to the plinth, but despite Walker, Patterson and Ben pressing down on it together as hard as possible, nothing further happened.
Gail turned and kicked the wall hard, swearing both out of frustration and pain for having kicked the stone with soft shoes. As she crouched down to nurse her toes, the distinctive grating of stone against stone filled the room, and before her eyes the entire back wall of the alcove slid downwards, revealing a long corridor, the end of which was so far away the lights in the Library left it in darkness.
The air from both spaces mixed in a cloud of dust where they stood, causing more than one of them to cough. But despite their original concerns, the air remained breathable. Walker took a couple of steps forwards, crossing the threshold of the corridor by stepping over the half-foot of door still protruding from the floor.
“How the hell would that work? That stone is over a foot thick, and must weigh tons,” he said, amazed.
“You said it yourself,” Patterson answered. “Put the stone on a load of sand. When the mechanism is activated, in this case probably a ball or roller of some description taking a series of pins or plugs with it as it goes, sand pours out of holes, and the door slides down.”
“But instead it got stuck and didn’t budge, while the sand poured out underneath it,” Gail continued. “That kick was all it needed to start falling down. It was a pretty tight fit!” She was inspecting the gap between the wall and the groove into which it had been placed.
They all walked into the passage, with the exception of Gail, who continued to examine the doorway.
“Wait, this raises more questions than it answers.”
“Who cares?” Walker said, striding forwards into the tunnel. “It’s not like we have all the time in the world, is it?”
“No, seriously, this is important,” she insisted. “If this door opened from inside the Library, then whatever lies beyond this door must be further away from the original entrance. We’ve found a way to get deeper into the tomb, or whatever this is, but we haven’t found the original way into the Library.” They were all staring at her, even Walker. She tried to put it as simply as she could: “If we go down there, we’re getting further away from the outside world.”
Ben broke first, visibly agitated. “So what do we do, ignore this entrance and keep looking for another one? And what if we do find the original way in to the Library, and it actually just takes us back to the stairs that are filled with rubble? What if that was the original entrance, but we simply didn’t take the time to find the original door?”
“Makes sense to me,” Walker nodded.
“Oh, and now you’re the archaeologist are you?” she targeted him vehemently. “A little while ago you were killing people and threatening to kill us too, but now you want to go down there like Indiana Jones and find some hidden treasure while we wait to be rescued, or worse, wait to die?”
Patterson and Ben took a step away from Walker, as if Gail’s comments had suddenly reminded them who he was.
“No,” he replied calmly. “But we’re not getting out through the stairs, and there ain’t no books to read in this so called library of yours, so I thought it’d be best to have a look round and see what else there was to do. And while I’m at it, if I come across another exit, I’ll let you use it too,” he said with mock gallantry.