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Buried in the Past *working title*
No one will admit it, but not a single person becomes an archeologist to beg for grants and catalogue shards of thousand year old dishware. In truth every single one dreams of excavating vast tombs and braving booby traps. Be a lost tomb or a secret Aztec city adventure is the true reason. If for no one else it is true for me.
I dreamed of uncovering hidden civilizations and fighting treasure hunters. I pictured exotic locales and working late into the night on my newest discovery, which is why sitting in the middle of the nowhere in the desert that is Arizona (or was it New Mexico?) with project updates piling up and coffee running low I began to consider another career. It became a nightly ritual, me in my pathetic excuse for a tent and an unopened bottle of whiskey by candle light. The bottle was a gift at my graduation; I was to drink a toast to my first great discovery. Then I believed the great discovery would have something to do with a dig I was working on, now I would consider it to be a proper replacement for this dull life.
“Well, Jackie,” that was what I had named man pictured on the bottle. “Either I can become a tour guide at a museum and let the suits rip my future apart or I could become an archeology instructor and save a few helpless souls from this.”
Jackie stared back at me through bushy eyebrows.
“Then it is settled. I’m going to be a teacher.” I grabbed Jackie by the neck and tore off his collar. I popped the seal and held the bottle in the air. “To my first great discovery, may it be my last.”
* * *
My temple throbbed; Jackie was empty and resting by my head on the ground. I could feel my heartbeat pounding through my skull. Slowly I pushed myself to a sitting position.
“Alan! Alan!” The yell was magnified a hundred fold.
I kicked Jackie, the empty bottle flying over the head of whoever entered. “And stay out!”
“Alan, we found something.” It was one of the diggers, no one of my aides, Mitch something.
“Hey, maybe this one will have something other than fossilized crap and broken plates!” Maybe I and drinking were not a good combination.
“Have you been drinking?”
I looked at Mitch and suddenly wished that the bottle had hit him.
“This isn’t anything like that. This is something different.”
“What?”
“A tunnel, there is writing all along the walls, it’s like nothing I have ever seen.”
“Mitch, how many digs have you been on?” I poured myself a cup of day old coffee. “That was a rhetorical question. Calm down, hand me a shirt and let’s go.”
He didn’t calm down but he did get me a shirt. I tied the dirt stained rag around my head and followed him down the path. For once no one was working, which if it were any other day I would have been furious.
“It’s right over here. We were taking a coffee break when we found it.”
The entire dig team was gathered around something. They were looking down. I pushed my way through and had a look.
“Yep, that’s a hole.” I sipped my day old coffee. “Who’s down there?”
“No one, yet. I went peaked down there and then came to get you.”
“How deep is it?”
“About seven feet.” I nodded and handed Mitch my cup.
With a casual step I dropped into the hole. “Light.”
Someone handed down a flashlight. As the beam cut through the darkness I couldn’t breath this truly was like anything I had ever seen. The walls were smooth, like they were freshly cut into the earth and the stone was all wrong. This area was sandstone and the walls looked like polished slate. They were cold to the touch. There was writing on the sides of the tunnels, but it was not etched into the stone and the figures were almost poetic.
“Get a camera down here now; I want pictures of every inch of this place. I need my tape recorder.”
Within minutes Mitch and another dropped into the cave with flashlights and cameras. The other handed me my tape recorder.
“April Second, two thousand and four, Alan Dixon. The team discovered a tunnel early this morning and I am now examining.” Gone was the bitterness, this way my dream. “Mitchell Wilson and Teri Douglas are documenting the discovery. There appears to be a text on the walls of this tunnel. Height is no less than seven feet and the width is at least that. The walls are impossible. When the light touches them the wall appears to fade and the text enhanced. It is insane. The text is completely alien to me. The best way to describe it would be cuneiform with definite Celt and Chinese influences. It is for lack of a better word, beautiful. I can’t make any of it out, but this is something very important. This could rewrite anything we know about the cultures of this area. We are now moving down the tunnel.”
The flashes from the cameras hinting at something more to this tunnel. I moved deeper into the unknown, my flashlight revealing something even more unbelievable.
“Mitch, tell me I’m really seeing this.” Mitch walked beside me; I could hear him stop breathing. “We have come across some kind of door. It looks like a vault door, but it is completely transparent. The door takes up the entire width of the tunnel. Two circular beams lay parallel to each other and the ground, there appears to be no locking mechanism. Beyond the door there appears to be a chamber.”
Mitch touched the door; he pulled his hand back quickly. “It’s freezing.”
“Teri, keep taking pictures of the text, Mitch you get this.” I stood beside the door for size reference.
“Put your flashlight on the ground, I need more light.”
I bent over and tried to light myself better. As I straightened, Jackie’s was still having his way with me, I fell back. I closed my eyes, bracing for impact, waiting for the cold. Much to my surprise it didn’t come. I opened my eyes.
“Holy s--t.”
I was looking at Mitch and the tunnel from the other side of the door. I was inside the chamber! I waved for Mitch to follow me. He nodded slowly and took a step forward, he stopped abruptly, his face flattening against the door. He took a step back and shrugged his shoulders.
“Can you hear me?”
He couldn’t.
“I am going to look around in here.” I tried to pantomime was saying, by the looks of it he got the picture. “I don’t know if I can go out and come back in. I don’t want to chance it. Pick up the flashlight, and shine it in here.”
As he did the room became very eerie. The lighting reminded me of a fish tank in the dark. There was writing on these walls as well; in the center was some sort of altar. On the far side of the altar was a circular disk that was had some sort of indention. I moved to the other side, I couldn’t help but creep slowly. It just didn’t feel right otherwise. I looked down at the circular disk; it was connected to the altar by a sliver of stone. Upon closer inspection I could not believe what I was seeing. The altar appeared to be ivory, but the thing was that it appeared to be natural, as though this altar had grown here.
What was really odd was that on the circular disk there was what seemed to be a hand print. The print was slightly indented in the stone; it was wider than my hand and only had two fingers. I couldn’t help myself, my hand slowly reached forward. As my hand touched the stone an extreme cold shot through my arm. I could feel the cold spreading quickly throughout my body through my blood. My eyes burst open, every vein engorged.
If I didn’t know any better I could have sworn I heard screams.
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