“Over there,” said Pahl, echoing his thoughts. He nodded toward the far end of the chamber. “Through that arch.”
Unlike the burial chamber, this next room was pitch dark. The boys teetered on the threshold, and then stepped together into a thick, inky blackness. As if by unspoken agreement, they left their flashlights off for a moment and just absorbed the feel of the room. This room felt smaller, more dense. Jase had the impression of a diamond-shaped room, and his tricorder agreed. But the air was thick. Jase sniffed. Not musty but crowded,almost as if the darkness were filled with people jostling one another.
He felt Pahl at his elbow, searched for his friend’s eyes in the glow of their tricorders. “Do you feel it?”
Pahl nodded. “They’re here.”
They’re here.Without warning, all the hackles along the back of Jase’s neck rose. He shivered. Something was watching. Quickly, he flicked on his light; the blue-white halogen beam punched through the darkness. Jase whirled about on his heel, trying to catch whatever was there in the light. His beam cut the blackness. Stone walls. No paintings. Nothing else. No one.
No, thought Jase, there wassomething—someone—there. He felt it. Jase took a step back and then another, and then his heel caught. Crying out, Jase threw his arms up. His flashlight cartwheeled through the air. Jase fell back, hit something that rustled and chattered like icicles dangling from bare branches after an ice storm. Gasping, he rolled to one side, away from the sound, just as his nostrils were assailed with the musty odor of dust and decay.
Pahl’s torch flared to life, stabbed through the black, and Jase turned. Screamed.
The desiccated, mummified corpse of a boy slid out of the darkness.
Eyes bulging with horror, Jase scuttled away like a crab. He’d touched it; he’d fallen against it! And that clattering sound, his bones, the boy’s bones!Jase rolled to his knees, gasping. His skin was clammy with icy sweat.
Calm down, he’s dead, he can’t hurt you.Jase tried corralling his addled wits. Now that he was further away, he saw the body was slumped against a wooden triangular stand of some kind. Jase stood slowly, gulping air, heart hammering in his chest. There was movement by his elbow, and he almost screamed.
Pahl handed Jase the flashlight he’d dropped. “Look at his face,”Pahl whispered.
Despite his fright, Jase leaned forward. He frowned. “What isthat?”
Pahl knelt by the dead boy’s side. He reached forward, his fingers trailing along the contours of something that glinted and shone. “It’s a mask.”
“Don’t touch it!” Jase cried. Instinctively, he knew: danger.“Leave it alone!”
“Why?” Pahl continued to caress the mask. His movements were slow, languid. “It’s harmless. It’s…” Without warning, Pahl plucked the mask from the corpse’s face.
“No!” Jase cried, too late.
Suddenly, the room was suffused with a soft, silver light. There was a hum, a sense of expectancy. No, no, what now, what’s happening?Jase jerked open his tricorder.
“Pahl’s, something switched on. Another power source. Somewhere, outside this room, I don’t know, and now there’s an energy surge.” Jase jerked his head up. “Pahl, Pahl, let’s just go now. We’ve seen enough, we’ve seen…”
His voice died in his throat. He felt the same thick congestion in the air, only more now than before. Like the bodies of people all pressed together in a small room, all breathing the same air. The energy surge—Jase stared at his readings— like a door opening somewhere, letting something out, and it started when Pahl touched the mask, when he took themask. Jase stared wildly into the silvery glow. The air was thick, and as he stared, the air changed colors. The air trembled and writhed, and then the air uncoiled, coalescing into shapes, things that lashed the air like dragons. Like snakes.
“Pahl!” Jase’s voice came in a thin, high whisper. “Pahl, Pahl, do you see them? Do you see?”
“Yes.” But not a word: more like the hiss of some serpent. Pahl’s ice-blue eyes started from his skull, but he wasn’t looking at Jase. He was staring into the roiling air. “Yessss, yesssss.”
And then, before Jase could move, Pahl placed the mask over his own features.
“No!”Jase cried, starting forward. “Pahl, stop!”
Pahl opened his mouth and let out a long, loud wail. Jase couldn’t help it; he was so frightened, a cry jerked from his throat, too. Pahl’s scream echoed like the cry of a bat flinging itself from one dark corner to the next. His scream was inarticulate, formless: a never-ending wave of sound that went on and on, crashing through the darkness.
Jase’s mind gabbled in panic: no, no,no! He had to get that mask off Pahl’s face; he had to get them outof there!
“Pahl!” Lunging forward, Jase clawed at Pahl’s face. His fingers grazed the silvery metal, and it was like he’d touched a live circuit. A sudden, hard shock rippled down his hand and shivered through his arm. He flew back, his body twisting through the crowded, thick air. He crashed against the wooden stand, and the ancient wood, rotted with age and time, erupted, exploded from within, rising in a cloud of dust and debris. Jase felt the patter of wood against his skin, heard it rain upon the rock like hail. A brackish taste filled his mouth, and he spat out a gob of saliva and blood. He groaned. Every nerve ending of his body felt on fire. He tried moving, and electric shocks tingled through his limbs.
He shouldn’t have left the biosphere; he should have listened to his dad. Dad, help us, please help us!
“Pahl,” he moaned. His fingers scrabbled uselessly over cool red stone and bits of decayed wood. “Pahl.”
But Pahl was quiet now. Shuddering, Jase lay with his cheek pressed against rock, felt the bite of grit against his skin. He saw that Pahl was shaking; his friend’s hands were twisted, claw-like. No.Jase felt the weight of the air heavy along his body, pressing him into the stone until he couldn’t breathe. No, no, nonononono…
And now, in the gathering darkness, he heard them: their voices shrill and greedy: Ours, our time, our time, ours,ours!
“Pahl,” he said, his voice a dry croak. “Pahl, help me!”
Slowly, Pahl turned, and then Jase saw Pahl’s eyes shining and luminous, glowing with all the hard, cold beauty of two blue stars. Fear gripped Jase by the throat. His voice came out in a strangled squeak of a whisper. “Pahl?”
“No.” Pahl’s voice was stony, the tone flat. Alien. “I’m not Pahl. Not now.”
Horror washed through Jase and left him weak. “Please,” he said, “please.” And in his mind: Dad, Dad, help us!
“Are you afraid?” Pahl— It—took a step then two toward Jase. The air coiled around Pahl— It.The air gathered, bunched. “Areyou?”
“Yes,” Jase wailed. Dad, Dad!“Yes, yes, yesyesyes!”
“Yes,” It said, an echo, that serpent’s hiss. “Yesssyesssyesss.” A pause. “You should be.”
And, a second later, Jase Garrett began to scream.
Chapter 31
“An alarm?”Chen-Mai asked. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” said Leahru-Mar, disliking the way the other man crowded him. “I missed it on standard scans. You’d just never think to look.”