u/Midwest_Horror

This story has been out for a while, but I'm incredibly happy with how the narration turned out.

Hey Guys, this is part 3 of my series, "Fieldnotes from an Egyptological Disaster". I hope you'll consider checking out parts 1 & 2!

From the Fieldnotes of Derrick Stutz, PT II

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The old man behind the counter smiled, but I knew he was scrutinizing me behind those horn-rimmed glasses as he rang up the spools of construction line. I told him I was a contractor working on a surveying project. Still, he regarded me with distrust as I paid and turned to leave. I saw the same expression on the faces of the other old men loitering at the diner. Their distrust would turn to hate once they found out why I was really there.

 

I noticed the first yard signs along the highway on my way to the site. In town, it was hard to find a house or business without the green and white sign and its message: “Dam Your Own Damn River.” I wondered how long it took these backwater hayseeds to come up with this slogan.

 

Leaving town, I reminisced about a time when I liked my job. When I was young and principled, it felt like important work. I don’t know when I gave up those scruples, exactly. Maybe it was after I read an article in an academic journal, praising a grad school colleague for her work in the Honduran jungles. Maybe it was later, while I was slaving away in a post-grad program, working six or seven-day weeks while the university underpaid me. I started working for the State in cultural resource management around this time. If I learned anything working for the government, it's the place an archaeologist’s aspirations of greatness go to die.

 

I decided there wasn’t an exact moment I lost my moral compass. My integrity was eroded, one disappointment after another. This and McMueller Group’s sizeable salary offering were all it took for me to turn my back on academic integrity.

 

Every state-funded construction project needs a cultural impact study, from the shortest section of road to the longest bridge. The small number of people aware of this are usually the ones about to lose their homes to eminent domain. Shortly before their home is razed to the ground, these people become self-proclaimed experts, pulling out historically relevant connections to their properties with the same ease a magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, usually with as much authenticity.

 

“We have a cemetery from the 1800s in the field behind our house,” they whine.

 

“There was a log cabin on this property where a famous writer stayed one time.”

 

“Daniel Boone once hunted on this property.”

 

Adept as they are at plucking vague ‘facts’ from the annals of local history and with all their airs of someone recently educated by Google searches, they all remain oblivious to one thing: the state doesn’t care. Not enough to hire serious academics or fund anywhere near enough studies to prove anything about their properties. Like it or not, that bridge is going to be built, that new road will bulldoze the farm your family owned for generations, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

 

The state often relies on third-party organizations to evaluate the impact of these projects. Ask any politician or ethics board why, and they’ll most likely spout off something about maintaining impartiality or allowing the state to avoid the financial obligation of keeping dozens of archaeologists and historians on their payroll year-round. What they will neglect to tell you and outright deny if confronted is that third-party organizations, such as my employer, are given certain discretion when deciding what qualifies as historically relevant. It wasn’t until after I was employed by McMueller for a few years that I was assigned my current role: ensuring nothing of any real historic significance ends up in our reports. When something from the far reaches of the past crops up and threatens our build recommendation, it’s my job to make these rare but legitimate findings disappear, even if it means destroying artifacts, historic records, or defiling an excavation site.

 

I parked the company truck along the wooden stakes marking the site. They ran the length of the county road until it veered around an outcropping of sandstone bluffs. A field of corn plants across the road swayed in the gentle breeze, releasing their pollen into the air. I sneezed as I climbed out of the truck. Out of everything I dealt with in these pathetic small towns, allergies were the worst. I took some antihistamines before grabbing an aluminum frame backpack full of essentials and set off toward the site to find a place to camp. Lodging in these small towns is usually limited. At most, they might have a motel, still adorned with wood paneling, carpet that’s too long, and chrome faucets covered with miniature green craters. Outdated and usually filthy in their own right, most don’t like how dirty I get working throughout the day. I’ve been kicked out of a few once they caught on to why people in town give me strange looks as I pass them on the street.

 

Bug repellent did little to keep the swarm of mosquitoes from hovering around me. Each step through the knee-deep underbrush churned up fresh, watery mud. I alternated between cursing the backwater idiots insisting anything remotely important was ever here and the archaeology department from the University of Cincinnati. They were supposed to send their summer field school to help with this project, but one of their students wrote a letter to the school’s Dean citing ethical considerations, insisting the site of a pioneer village called “Carthage” was too important to be submerged under a reservoir. He went as far as spinning a tale about a sunken boat he discovered one summer during a drought. Conveniently, the river level hadn’t been that low since, and probably wouldn’t be anytime in the next twenty years. Whether he made the whole thing up or not, I wasn’t sure. To his credit, he wasn’t dumb; he made such a fuss about McMueller’s near 100% approval-to-build rate, it got the attention of the school’s archaeology department, and they withdrew their support from the project. As a contingency, I brought along an underwater ROV to inspect where he supposedly found the sunken vessel.

 

I settled on a spot in the woods for my campsite. It reeked of decaying plants and dead fish from being so close to the river, but it would be good enough for a few days. A fresh coat of bug spray proved ineffective as mosquitoes buzzed around my ear canal. I made quick work of pitching the tent and tossed my pack inside. Before I bothered unloading more equipment from the truck, I turned on my tablet and walked around the area I’d be investigating.

 

I saw little of interest. The site was less than a square mile in size and was littered with the usual trash: beer bottles, forgotten bags of artificial worms, the torn foil of condom wrappers, and the occasional rat’s nest of balled-up fishing line. Near the tree line overlooking the river, I took note of my location on the map, along with the dotted outline of something just upstream from me. A label on the map indicated the rock formation peeking out of the river was the site of a 19th-century factory of some description. I checked my notes. “Grist/Saw mill,” they said.

 

There was an unfamiliar symbol in the middle of the river. Tapping it brought up the description of “derelict vessel.” I rolled my eyes before glancing to the sun. It was low enough on the horizon that I decided I’d done enough investigating for one day. If anything would complicate our build recommendation, it would be a massive stone pocked with witness marks, corroborating these yokels’ claims of a vanished town.

 

Waist-high grass bordered the riverbank as I picked my way back to the truck. I was careful to avoid the occasional murky vernal pool. Summer heat reduced most of them to little more than shallow muddy pits, but they all shared the smell of rot and decay. I was so preoccupied avoiding these pools, I almost tripped over a cairn concealed in the grass.  The pile of rocks toppled, sounding like smashed clay pots as they fell. I frowned as I looked down at the wooden cross the stones held upright. Turning the piece over in my hands, I could tell, despite its weathered appearance, it wasn’t very old. It looked homemade, maybe a woodshop project. The name “Claire” was carved on its center. I dropped it where it fell and made my way back to the truck.

 

I skimmed through a few reports over my dinner to refamiliarize myself with the site. There were dozens of comment and concern forms, all sentimental but none offering any substantial claims to refute the site’s importance. Scans from a local history book had just one entry about Carthage that didn’t even take up a full page. The local author prefaced this chapter about the early settlement of the county with a quote from Plato.

 

“*In a single day and night of misfortune, all your warlike men sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea.”*

 

I shook my head. The amateur historians who write this stuff are all such assholes.

 

“Once situated upstream of the falls on Driftwood River, Carthage was established near Henderson’s Mill and Tavern, both already in operation along the trail taking settlers west. This small settlement was instrumental in the establishment of the county, providing a place of trade, government services, and employment opportunities. Few records survive, however, the ones that remain indicate the town fell from prominence as quickly as it had arisen. Most agree the site proved unhealthy, prompting the settlers to relocate the county seat to its present location, near the falls. Reports vary, but most cite the illness as being either ‘Broze John’ or malaria.”

 

I knew what malaria was, but had never heard of Bronze John before. A quick internet search informed me it was a colloquial term for yellow fever. Symptoms included fever, muscle pain, vomiting, bleeding from the eyes and mouth, and in its fatal stages, organ failure. I rolled my eyes.

 

“This sounds like the perfect place to preserve,” I thought.

 

I sifted through a few more reports but found nothing of real substance before I decided to turn in for the night. I thought about how little there was to go on as I crawled into my tent. If nothing else, it would make my job easy. I must have been more tired than I felt, because I didn’t even remember taking my socks off before falling asleep.

 

That night, I had a dream. I don’t usually remember my dreams, but this one was so realistic, it consumed my thoughts much of the following day. It started with me walking through the woods on a narrow path, not quite wide enough for a car. Cool, soft mud squished underfoot as I continued under the dark green canopy. Thin shafts of sunlight filtered through the leaves. Near the end of the path, sounds of flowing water mingled with grinding stones, overlapping conversations, and the beat of horses’ hooves.

 

Emerging from the woods into this clearing, I was thrust into a village. Men and women bustled around mud streets in old-fashioned clothes. Buildings in various stages of completion lined both sides of the trail through town. Some were little more than canvas tents, others were cobbled together from rough-sawn boards, still yellow and smelling of sap. If the villagers saw me, they paid no attention as I drifted among them. The place bustled with activity. Merchants and customers haggled over prices for various wares. The tink, tink, tinking of a hammer sounded from a blacksmith’s shop. Farmers led livestock to a butcher’s shop. Wagons loaded with sawn lumber, stone and crates left horse droppings in their wake.

 

At the far end of the street, on a foundation of crushed stone, stood the framework of a massive building. The upper floors were a web of disjointed timbers, but it would have rivaled most modern courthouses for height. Even from the other side of this small settlement, I heard the workmen’s hammer blows and rhythmic sawing of wooden planks.

 

Interesting as this was, a group of men rushing toward the river caught my attention. Women, children, and even a few dogs followed close behind. The crowd bunched up where the riverbank met a weather-beaten pier. I felt myself drawn toward them, as if prodded along by invisible hands, powerless to resist. I weaved my way between the villagers. Some of them let out an occasional cough or sneeze. A sly grin worked its way across my face as I thought about these poor bastards in the days before antihistamines. It was close quarters, but I seemed to pass right through the crowd, never bumping into anyone. I caught murmurs as I got closer to the dock, words of sickness, cholera, Bronze John, words like plague. I shuddered as a decrepit man in a black suit rose from the lower deck of one of the boats. I gathered he was a doctor by the bag he carried. He picked his first timid step out of the boat and walked sheepishly toward the crowd.

 

“Tell us, coroner,” a voice called out. “What’s become of this man, Haslem? We know he’s in there. We’ve seen him among us in our town. What’s killed him?” The frail old man held his hands before him in a defensive gesture against the gathering I now suspected was more akin to a mob than a group of interested bystanders.

 

“He has expired of purely natural causes. It might have been yellow fever or cholera. It might even have been consumption. All that can be said with certainty is we must bury this man at once and rid ourselves of his vessel. Burn it, or else scuttle it in the deepest part of the river, somewhere downstream.”

 

The villagers parted to let the man through and resumed their murmuring with renewed fervor. A woman cried out as her child broke into a coughing fit. This agitated some of the men. Someone suggested she take the child home or to the doctor. As the crowd dispersed, I gained an unobstructed view of the boat, moored at the dock. The word ‘Conatus’ carved on its backside intrigued me. It seemed familiar, even in my dreamlike stupor. Where had I heard it before? I felt suddenly dizzy as the crowd I previously walked through without effort bumped into me without care, some shoving me aside. Their abrupt closeness was jarring. I’m not claustrophobic, but I had the strangest need to be free of this tightening crowd, especially when I noticed how many of them were coughing.

 

I couldn’t find my socks the next morning. Brushing dried flakes of mud off my feet, I frowned, retracing the events of the previous night. If I left the tent in the middle of the night to take a leak, I would have remembered it. Then again, I also would have remembered to slip on my boots. I turned the bottle of antihistamines over in my hands. I snorted, congestion thick in my nasal cavity as thoughts of sleepwalking occurred to me. As far as I knew, I’d never sleepwalked anywhere. Whatever the case, I chalked it up to the off-brand pills and got started with my day.

 

I cursed the nearby cornfields, spreading pollen and causing my allergies to flare up. I coughed up God only knew how much phlegm that morning, and my eyes felt itchy and dry. The thought of these fields vanishing beneath the waters of a reservoir, never to grow anything again, became that much more enticing.

 

The mill site was underwhelming. Walking the granite rock’s perimeter and plotting its coordinates on a GIS map revealed it was at most a couple thousand square feet. Recording each of the square holes took up most of the morning. The local history book stated these holes once held the pilings supporting the mill. Impressive as they were, forming a neat grid formation on the rock, it made for a monotonous day. The most eventful thing that happened was when my foot caught one of the holes partially filled with dirt. I unleashed a torrent of curses when I felt the sharp pain of a sprained ankle. Scowling, I added it to the map before looking to the riverbank. Over time, a river’s course wanders naturally. Over a few generations, it can render a once familiar place unrecognizable. I wondered how many other holes remained hidden or buried beneath the mound of dirt.

 

Walking back to camp, I pondered how to handle the ‘slabbed rock’ as the locals called it, in my report. I could explain away or outright dispose of a few shattered earthenware jars or a forgotten horseshoe. A massive rock with indisputable proof of settlers living in the area was another story. Of all the supposed evidence that Carthage existed, this sedentary rock would be the most complicated to write off. Before heading to the site, my research dredged up very little about the place. It was never recorded in any census. Apart from short paragraphs in local history books, the only written evidence I found were early 19th-century newspapers in the state’s microfiche library, advertising land for sale. I reassured myself the remains of the mill foundation wouldn’t be an issue. After all, I’d read several accounts of foundations and entire homes being forgotten beneath the encroaching water of reservoirs or artificial lake projects. This would be no different, whether it was carved by frontiersmen or not. Besides, even the locals admitted it spent as much time submerged as it did above the river’s surface.

 

My ankle throbbed as I plopped into my chair at the end of the day. I swatted mosquitoes while typing my field report. Shaking an empty can of bug spray, I regretted not venturing to town that afternoon before tossing it aside. My frustration worsened as an army of miniature bloodsuckers took turns trying to burrow needle-like mouths into my skin. After sending my boss an email, complete with the map of the stone slab, I unlaced my boots. My ankle was tender; every touch sent shooting pain down through the joint. It needed ice and a compression wrap, but I remembered seeing the hours outside the town’s drug store. They closed at 9, just like the rest of the business district. My pain and fatigue hurried me through dinner.

 

Lying on my sleeping bag that night, I felt the bumps breaking out on my arms and face, but thoughts of West Nile Virus were overshadowed by aches of pain in my ankle. It was painful to stand on and made walking difficult. Fishing a few ibuprofen tablets from their bottle, I consoled myself with the promise of a trip to town the next day. Surely that Podunk town had somewhere that sold bug spray, and something to wrap my ankle with. I tossed and turned uneasily that night, already knowing whatever sleep I might find would be less than restful.

 

Even as I dreamed, my skin itched. My joints, sore from a long day’s work, protested every movement. Sharp pain shot through my ankle as I limped along. I was in the pioneer settlement again, only now it was dark, and thick fog rolling in from the river filled the streets. I was drawn through the place much as I had been during the first dream, my body taking me to my unknown destination involuntarily. The soft glow of several lanterns bobbed drunkenly toward the massive building I saw in my last dream. Occasional threads of light escaped the shuttered windows of the houses I passed. Despite the other people I saw, the place was nearly silent, save for the soft squelch of footsteps on mud streets and the droning hum of voices as I neared the massive double doors of the courthouse.

 

Warm, yellow light spilled from the tall windows on the first floor, casting shadows against the half-finished second floor and bare rafters. Muffled voices of arguments echoed from within. Walking through the doors was like opening a floodgate to the chaos inside. The villagers lacked any of the restraint they showed at the docks. Men shouted over one another, and the crowd swayed like choppy water before a storm. Wandering toward the front of the room, I felt shoving elbows, the rub of shoulders, and voices so loud and incoherent my head ached. A chill ran down my spine when an unrestrained cough brushed against the back of my neck. I had the absurd thought I wasn’t actually asleep, but pushed these thoughts from my mind as I tried to understand what this meeting was about.

 

“We must send for a doctor!” Others voiced agreement before the sentiment was joined by other incomprehensible shouts. At the front of the room, atop a raised platform, three men sat behind a long wooden table while one stood before it facing the crowd. Sweat ran down his face, as if the debate had gone on for some time.

 

“We have done what we can, Mr. Daniels. The untimely death of our coroner is a shock to us all. Even as we speak, Mr. Porter is travelling with utmost speed to other settlements to inquire after a doctor. He and his party have provisions to last a week or more, enough to see them to Cincinnati if that’s how far they must venture.”

 

“Pray, tell us,” said someone emboldened by the anonymity of the crowd. “What ought we to do in order to preserve our lives until such a time as Mr. Porter’s return? And what of the dead already among us?”

The crowd jeered in agreement, interspersed with coughs. I cringed as a cool gust of a coughing fit crept over my skin. I suppressed a cough of my own and cursed the allergies plaguing me even as I slept. More voices yelled at the men behind the table, demanding solutions.

A large man in the midst of the crowd, not far from me, turned to face the crowd. He regarded the room with yellowed eyes before speaking.

 

“Enough of this,” he shouted. His booming voice quieted the room. “Why do we look to this council of men for guidance when it is they who have led us astray?” Several of the men surrounding him nodded in agreement.

“I say we end this at once! Before the coroner’s life was claimed by this pestilence, he said we ought to rid ourselves of Haslem’s vessel. Why haven’t we? For no other reason than the greed and hubris of these men before us!”

 

A chorus of men shouted approval of this speech. A gavel pounded the table behind the crowd, but no one was listening. I wondered why anyone would keep anything so hazardous in their town and for what purpose.

 

“Scuttle the Conatus,” shouted one in the crowd, before the crowd echoed this demand in unison.

 

The gavel thudded uselessly as the mob threw open the courthouse doors and flooded the main street through the village. The men shoved, bumped, and elbowed me as if I weren’t there, carrying me along with them to the river. The men behind the table shouted after us, but were powerless to stop the group wielding lanterns and axes taken from wood piles. Struggle as I might, my legs refused to carry me away from the frenzy of men hacking violently at the hull of the Conatus. Most of the axe blows were too far above the waterline to sink it. For all their fury, the mob’s actions seemed little more than an outlet for their anger. Until the boat bobbed in its slip as a few of the braver men clambered over its sides and buried hatchets into the wood below the waterline. Water poured through the axe wounds in the hull. The men climbed out and chopped through the ropes. The last glimpse I caught of the boat before it vanished from the yellow reach of the villagers’ lanterns, it was listing over onto one side, its bow plunging beneath the pitch-black river.

 

I awoke with a shudder. Tiny red mounds speckled my arms. They itched and distracted me enough to overlook the fact I forgot to eat breakfast, but something else preoccupied me while I searched through documents on my tablet. Haunting as the dreams were, a single word remained on my mind: Conatus. It was hardly your everyday Latin, but I knew I’d seen it before.

 

My stomach twisted when I found it written on one of the Comments and Concerns Forms, mailed out to make these backwater hicks think they had a voice one way or the other about their river. I remembered this form, partially because of its absence of sentimental pleas to save this marshy breeding ground for mosquitoes and ticks, but also by the last name at the bottom: Stutz. It was unusual enough in its own right, causing me to recognize him as the bleeding-heart fool who got the university to withdraw from the project due to “ethical considerations”. I cursed the idealist prick for leaving me to do all this bitch work myself. Adding to my problems, he filled out a form.

 

“Between the Slabbed Rock and the right bank of the river, the sunken remains of the keelboat “Conatus” lie on a submerged sandbar.” A chill ran down my spine as I read this. I swallowed before continuing.

“Approximately 15 feet of its length became visible when water levels reached record lows. No official investigation has been made and its overall length remains unknown. A vessel of this type and size, so far up the winding lengths of the Driftwood River, suggests a connection to the region’s early settlement. Its historic value cannot be overstated. Its resting place beneath the water has preserved the wreck remarkably well. I recommend a full investigation of the vessel and recovery of any of its contents.”

 

A search for any other reference to the Conatus in our archives brought up nothing. I searched for other submissions from Derrick Stutz and found one more. Any hopes of learning more were dashed when I opened the next form and saw the large, hurried letters.

 

“Dam your own F-ing river,” was all they said.

 

Conveniently, he provided no photographic evidence to support his claims. That simplified my job somewhat. I still needed to launch the ROV for the sake of plausible deniability. Supposing this bumpkin was right about it being a genuine wreck from the pioneer era and not a plywood fishing boat that came untied during a storm, I needed to document its location. The official reason was so McMueller could recommend against construction efforts in this particular spot, under some other guise, but my secondary motivation was one I hadn’t felt in years: curiosity.

 

I didn’t feel like wading through long grass, soaked with the morning dew, and decided to dig some test pits around the site until later that morning. The first few pits turned up nothing, and left just photographs of 1-meter square holes, bordered in construction line with a black and white scale at the bottom to indicate the size of the nothing I’d found. The fifth hole was different. I dug it next to an outcropping of purple wildflowers. About 10 centimeters deep, I found the shattered remains of apothecary jars, their glass pocked with bubbles and imperfections of a long-deceased glassblower. A few of them were almost perfectly preserved, only showing the smallest chips and scratches. There were also the crumpled remains of an antique balance and its weights. It was almost a shame no one but myself and McMueller would ever see these, I thought as I stuffed the artefacts into a small bag.  I dug the pit deeper until nothing but bare soil was visible and took a picture. After the seventh hole, I was satisfied there was no need to bring the ground-penetrating radar sledge out. The proximity to the river, along with the constant growth, death, and decay of plants, would disrupt any indications of building foundations from the pioneer era, save for those made of stone, and that seemed unlikely enough. I remember the courthouse from my dream, but dismissed the thought. The local history books all agreed it was never constructed, or at least finished. Even if it was, those rocks would have been prime candidates for salvage when the next courthouse was built.

 

It was past lunchtime when I lugged the ROV to camp. As I collapsed into my chair and propped up my sprained ankle, my appetite was the last thing on my mind. My whole body ached, even while sitting. I tried telling myself I was just tired. It seemed reasonable. Doing all this work without any help would exhaust anyone. Especially if they hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since arriving on site, let alone a decent meal.  A sneezing fit that devolved into hacking coughs interrupted these thoughts. I spat and watched the spit soak into the dark soil, leaving behind thick mucus. A grimace worked its way across my face as I tore open an MRE pouch and looked at its slimy contents. I didn’t bother heating it up. I tried forcing myself to eat, but was repulsed by the slop squelching under my fork. Swallowing was painful. I managed to eat half of the pouch’s contents before nausea forced me to quit.  I don’t know how long I stared into the woods, lost in a thoughtless daze, before I realized I needed medicine.

 

I frowned at my reflection in the truck’s rear-view mirror. I hadn’t seen myself in days, but the man staring back at me in the mirror was in rough shape. He looked like hell and felt worse.

 

I drove through the business district two or three times searching for the drug store I’d seen the last time I was in town. This place didn’t have a CVS or a Walgreens, and I was at least an hour away from anywhere that did. Dazed, I parked in front of an old building with the letters “Rx” printed beneath the much larger ones that read “Dime Store”.

 

I rushed past the pimply kid behind the counter on my stiff ankle and aching joints. He mumbled, welcoming me to the store, but I ignored him and followed the sign to the pharmacy counter in the back of the store. Rounding the shelves of bandages and rubbing alcohol, I was disappointed to find a darkened room behind the counter. A roll-down security gate like you’d find in a mall provided a glimpse of shelves, stocked with medical supplies or bulk containers of pills. A wooden sign gave the pharmacy hours for the weekend; they closed at noon on Saturdays and wouldn’t open again until Monday. I cursed, thinking something back there might be more potent than the vitamin C, decongestants, and ibuprofen I carried with me to the checkout counter. I asked the half-wit clerk where I could find a doctor.

 

“We don’t have a doctor in town,” he said, echoing the cries from my dream. “We got an urgent care clinic, but they’re closed by now. You’re best bet is the hospital a couple towns over.”

I left and headed down the street toward the hardware store. I remembered seeing several cans of bug spray there when I bought the construction line. I didn’t see many people, but the few I did meet gave me a wide berth. A wave of nausea met me when I stepped inside the rundown building. My eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. It was just my luck that the place was busy. The old man from last time was nowhere to be seen as I grabbed the dusty aerosol cans from the shelf. A high school-aged kid in a green apron was working instead, hustling to help a handful of customers, while his girlfriend sat behind the counter on her phone, chomping gum. My body ached, and cold chills made my back shiver. As I leaned against the counter, waiting to be helped, I noticed the girl wore an identical green apron, rolled down to cover just her waist.

 

“Excuse me,” I said, trying not to cough. “Do you work here?”

 

She glanced up, annoyance on her face. Getting a better look at me, her expression turned to one of disgust.

 

“If you have any hardware questions, you better ask Tom. I just started working here and don’t know anything about tools or hardware, or-”

 

My eyes ached as they rolled in their sockets.

 

“I just need someone to ring me up,” I pleaded, holding up a can of bug repellent.

 

She wouldn’t touch the cans after I set them on the counter. She wouldn’t even take my credit card when I went to pay; instead, she pointed to the card reader. She looked relieved when I took the cans and left.

 

Back in the truck, I downed a handful of pills. Washing them down with a warm bottle of water, I tried to figure out what I needed to do next. I’d made a good enough show of taking samples with the test pits, but I still needed to launch the submersible ROV. I checked the time on my watch. There were still a few hours of daylight left. More than enough time to take sonar scans, maybe shoot some video. Just this one last task, I told myself, and I could leave this damn place and forget Carthage ever existed. With new resolve, I wrapped my sprained ankle in a compression wrap and set off to finish the job.

 

The ROV was heavier than I remembered as I lugged it to the mill foundation. More than once, I needed to take a break. By the time I reached the river and clambered over its steep bank, my arms were weak from exertion. Doubt crept into my mind whether I’d be able to drag it back to camp.

 

The river’s brown water obscured the submersible’s yellow hull before swallowing it completely. Only the flash of its bright strobe light was visible as it puttered upstream, just beneath the surface. I paid out one arm's length of umbilical cable after another and watched the sonar scan of the river bed as the small craft fought the current. The scans confirmed my initial suspicions: nothing was on the river bottom except a few fallen trees that settled there to rot once they became too waterlogged to float.

 

The spool of yellow cable was nearly empty, and I began to feel optimistic. Everything about the Conatus was a lie. Just a fanciful story to hold up a major infrastructure project. I was about to maneuver the ROV back downstream when SONAR picked up something that wasn’t a tree. It was the middle of July, but a chill ran down my spine when I saw the skeletal remains of an overturned boat on top of a submerged pile of rocks. My heart sank when it lined up just upstream of the nautical wreck symbol from my first day on site.

 

I stared at the ghostly outline on the screen. The image was faint enough for most people to overlook. Normally, I would have done just that and brought the submersible back, but this was different. I had to know.

 

Camera visibility was terrible. Onboard flood lights illuminated only dirty water as the craft dived deeper into the river’s murky depths. Near the bottom, the jagged outline of the rock pile became visible. I held my breath as the thing came into view. I hoped all the while it was anything else. I felt nausea on top of the overwhelming dread as the short-sighted ROV brought the keel and broken spars of the boat into view through the haze of river silt. Some of the planking remained intact as I piloted the submersible toward the vessel’s backside. My hands trembled as I brought the cameras around to face the planks that made up the stern. My heartbeats thudded in my aching head while I waited for the current to carry away river silt. Slowly, the weathered planks came into view, along with the name I hoped I wouldn’t see: Conatus.

 

I vomited the contents of my stomach onto the granite rock. When I was done retching up my guts, I crouched down on shaky arms and legs, still dry heaving. I don’t know how long I stayed there, staring at the puddle of black vomit pooling around me.  

 

I abandoned the ROV on the granite slab. I was too weak to carry it back to camp, and I was compelled by a sudden urge to flee. I barely made it over the riverbank. My head ached with a splitting pain. The sunlight hurt my eyes as I stumbled through the underbrush. I was desperate to reach camp. McMueller could send someone back later for the ROV. I could leave behind my tent and everything else, but I needed the documents on my tablet before I could leave.

 

I drank greedily from my bottles of water. It trickled down my neck and soaked my shirt, but I didn’t care. It tasted wonderful to rinse the taste of black vomit out of my mouth. Fresh nausea overwhelmed me. I wiped away snot pouring from my nose and toppled into my folding chair. Every muscle ached, every joint throbbed, my ankle felt like it was full of needles. My surroundings blurred. I struggled to stand, and it occurred to me I needed to lie down.

 

“Just for a few minutes,” I told myself, dragging the satchel with my tablet alongside my sleeping bag.

 

I stumbled through misty fogbanks. I wiped allergy-induced tears from my eyes before the shadows of houses and storefronts crept into my peripheral vision. Sniffling along the muddy street, my skin tingled with unease. The bustling crowds were reduced to a scattered handful of disinterested villagers doing their daily chores. None of them seemed to notice me. Most houses I passed were deathly quiet; others held muffled coughs, some weak, some violent, but all sounded like the occupants hacking up phlegm. A woman’s cries of agony in one house gave me pause, and I stopped in my tracks. Between sobs, she must have heard my footsteps stop through the canvas covering her window.

 

“Please, kind stranger. I know you’re there. Fetch me a pail of water.” She broke into a fit of violent coughs and sobbed again. “I beg of you. I haven’t the strength to do it myself, and my child is sick.”

 

I saw the wooden bucket, overturned on top of a large pile of tattered cloths near the front door. I grabbed the rope handle, but lifting it up, I felt sick realizing it wasn’t a bundle of rags. The pale-faced man stared back at me with vacant yellow eyes. Dried blood covered his mouth and beard. It startled me so much, I tumbled to the ground and put my arms out to protect myself from the corpse rotting into the ground.

 

“My husband will be back soon with our child, please, I need water,” the woman pleaded.

 

I looked at the bundle in his arms, oblong and wrapped in white cloth. This made the bright red stains at one end that much more noticeable.

 

The woman inside was sobbing again, but I couldn’t stay. I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could on my sprained ankle. Heads turned to follow me as I hobbled down the street past men solemnly loading possessions into wagons. Others seemed to deliberate whether they should bury their dead before fleeing. Panic spurred me on as a handful of villagers emerged from the darkened doorways of cabins, all with the same yellow eyes and blood staining their mouths. Some held outstretched arms, as if beckoning me to stay. Others stared as if I were a passing shadow, a ghost, or some entity which by all rights wasn’t really there.

 

I didn’t stop for any of them. I ran, afraid they might follow me. It was murder on my ankle, but I didn’t care. I ran until I was enveloped in the same misty fog that ushered me into Carthage, until I was doubled over in a coughing fit that followed me into the real world.

 

The taste of blood nauseated me as I stood under the tree canopy. My feet were cold and wet beneath the layer of fog covering my uncertain surroundings. Turning from side to side, I tried to get my bearings. My head swam in the cacophony of voices, whispers, and cries of anguish. I shuddered at the unwelcome sensation of someone laying a hand on my shoulder. It was well after dark, and I had no clue where I was, but I ran from that place. Thorns pricked my legs and feet. Unseen animals scuttled away as I screamed in terror. Voices kept pace with me as I tried to escape. I tripped over my own test pits, stumbled through vernal pools. I passed my campsite, but the voices prodded me on. They sounded closer. Patting my pants for my wallet and keys, I abandoned everything else. The presence of settlers surrounded me as I ran through the tall grass to the truck. It sounded as if they were trampling the long fronds of grass, closing in on me. The key shook in my trembling hand as I jammed it into the ignition and sped off in a cloud of gravel and dust. I didn’t chance glimpsing into the rear-view mirror until I was back in Henderson Falls. I did so out of morbid curiosity, a desire to confirm a suspicion I already knew was true. At a flashing red light, I clicked on the dome light. Tears rimmed my eyes as I saw their yellowed, bloodshot reflection staring back at me. 

 

​

Sprinkles of rain pelted me as I raced down the river road. I wheezed, trying to keep up with Claire. Every breath tasted like dust kicked up by her red Schwinn, even after she vanished around the curve up ahead. My chest tightened. I thought of my mom constantly nagging me to always carry my inhaler, even though it’d been years since my last asthma attack.  Around the bend, Claire swerved from one side of River Road to the other, not pedaling. Her bike's sprocket sang mechanically, “I’m waiting for you.” 

“Hurry up,” she shouted.

 I left behind my own cloud of dust as I sped up. Gravel crunched under my tires. Leaning over the handlebars, I balanced on the balls of my feet as I pedaled. I closed the gap between us enough to read the green and white button on her backpack as she tightened the straps. “Dam your own damn river,” it said. Small and ineffectual as it was, it was about as much as either of us could do to stop the hydroelectric dam from coming to our county. Claire glanced over her shoulder, her thin lips curling into a satisfied smirk before she raced ahead. 

 

Every school has at least one kid like Claire. Her clothes were all hand-me-downs, worn from the time she was big enough they wouldn’t slip off until they were either too tattered with holes to wear or she couldn’t fit them anymore. If I’d known the word “malnourished" when I met Claire, I might have understood why this rarely happened. Every day at lunch, she ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the school made for kids who forgot to pack a meal. She also wore glasses, the cheapest kind the eye doctor sells, the thin black wire frames making the lenses look even thicker than they are. I think the saddest thing was the fact her parents didn’t bother making sure she was clean when she went to school. If you passed Claire in the hallway, or sat beside her in class like I did, you could smell the miasma she carried around with her.

I never paid much attention to Claire until the winter of fourth grade. In Henderson County, our winters are usually mild. A coat or thick jacket usually made recess bearable, but that year, a polar vortex caused temperatures to plummet. It was so cold, the thermometer outside our classroom window pointed to the empty space under negative 15. So cold, the teachers kept us inside during recess. Instead of playing tag or climbing on the jungle gym, our teacher pulled out board games that looked and smelled like they’d been mothballed since the Carter administration. This didn’t matter to me, the asthmatic kid who struggled with running, but for about two months, the rest of the class complained. Some of them cobbled together decks of mismatched Uno cards. Others tried putting together incomplete jigsaw puzzles. The last group activity was playing with a dusty set of Lincoln Logs. If you wanted to do something by yourself, the only options were reading or drawing quietly. 

There were never enough Lincoln Logs to go around, and despite our teacher’s best efforts, the classroom was too noisy to read, so I spent that winter drawing. I looked forward to recess, not just for the break in schoolwork, but also because Claire would leave the desk we shared, and I’d have fifteen or twenty minutes of much improved air quality. I never made ugly comments about how she smelled, but I had to admit, it was unpleasant. 

If I paid more attention to Claire after she left, I might have realized these breaks were to be short-lived. After the first week of indoor recess, the other kids didn’t want to play card games with her or lend her any of the limited supply of Lincoln Logs. 

One day, instead of finding a group to reluctantly let her sit with them, she wandered around the classroom, stopping here or there, waiting for an invitation to join in. None of them ever asked. They just ignored her until she left. This went on until she made a full circuit of the room. Defeated, she came back to our desk and sat in her chair.

I saw her staring at me from the corner of my eye, but tried ignoring her like everyone else. It felt like minutes passed as we sat there in awkward silence. I was shading in the shadows under a car when her timid voice interrupted me. 

“I like your drawing.”

“Thanks, Claire,” I said, not looking up.

“Is it a Mustang?”

Her voice trembled, and she let out a muffled sniff. I turned to face her. My frustration, realizing I wasn’t getting a break from sitting next to Claire, died when I noticed the tears behind her thick glasses.

In that moment, I remembered my mom telling me about the time she volunteered to help with the elementary school’s lice check. The staff knew a few of the kids had them, but for the sake of appearances, everyone was sent to the nurse’s office. She said the worst part wasn’t combing through hair infested with parasites; it was overhearing the kids waiting in the hallway make fun of anyone who left the room with a bottle of special shampoo. 

“I hope you’d never do anything like that,” she said. Looking at Claire, I realized she might have been one of those kids. I felt ashamed for ignoring her and decided to be friendly.

 

“It’s a Camaro. An IROC-Z.”

She sniffled as she wiped away tears with an oversized sweater sleeve. “I think my uncle used to have one of those.”

“That’s cool,” I said, forcing a smile. 

She stood there with a sad smile, not saying anything. 

“Do you want to draw with me?”

I’ll never forget how her eyes lit up, or how excited she was to find a blank page in her notebook. The rest of that winter, Claire spent recess with me. She was good at drawing, even if she mostly just made pictures of houses, usually two-storey ones, complete with turrets, spires, and wraparound porches. After a few days of talking to her, I found out she was a lot like the other kids I knew. Her parents might have had trouble holding down jobs and keeping the water on, but they always had cable. She liked the same popular TV shows as the rest of us.

What surprised me most was how much we had in common. We both read the Goosebumps books, watched reruns of Unsolved Mysteries, and even shared an interest in history. It was the first time I’d been able to mention this and not worry about someone calling me a geek. Before long, I found myself looking forward to recess with Claire. After indoor recess ended that spring, we still spent that time talking and drawing on the playground.

 

The scattered sprinkles turned into a misty drizzle as I tailed Claire down the tree-lined road. Our tires hummed over the old truss bridge’s grated floor. The river trickled below, clear enough you could see its muddy bottom, speckled with various discarded junk: a bicycle, a busted TV, even an old battery charger, to name a few. On the other side, we shot past a sulfur yellow sign from the 50s, riddled with bullet holes, but still legible. 

“No Swimming. Danger of Whirlpools.”

Old timers at the hardware store talked about people who didn’t realize these whirlpools weren’t like the ones in a bathtub. There was often nothing on the surface to indicate the submerged vortex, ready to drown anyone caught in it until they’d already been pulled under.

We pedaled another quarter mile or so, and Claire skidded to a stop next to the crooked oak tree, her brakes stirring up fresh dust. I coasted to a stop next to her, panting and wondering if I needed my inhaler, but Claire was already off her bike.

“Ahem,” she said, extending her backpack to me in one hand. I barely had one strap over my shoulder before she scrambled down the tree’s exposed roots to the riverbed. I hopped after her on one foot, pulling on my dad’s waders. I was surprised how fast she picked her way down the riverbank. All summer, she insisted I go first and help her down. I felt a strange aversion to this almost as strong as my fear of grabbing a snake lurking within the tangled mass of tree roots. I never felt a snake slither through my fingers, but I did feel knots in my stomach every time Claire lowered herself into my waiting arms, and in the split second she lingered in front of me when I set her down, and when she took my hand on the climb up to the road. I got that feeling just thinking about her sometimes, even if she wasn’t around. 

Low rumbles echoed through the river valley.  I chased Claire across the massive granite slab, worn flat from centuries of flowing water. The unassuming rock spends half of the year underwater, but when the river is low, it’s a local favorite for picnics and fishing. If you’re not careful, you might trip over one of the numerous square holes hollowed out at careful intervals between the river and its Eastern bank. Once used to support pilings for a grist mill, they provide the only archaeological evidence of Henderson County’s earliest settlement. Claire splashed across the shallow river, strangled by drought to little more than an ankle-deep trickle. Mud covered her ankles and bare feet when she reached the sunken boat we spent most of that summer excavating. We found it while researching our final project in 8th-grade history.

Mr. Stanford’s history final was a presentation about local history. The material wasn’t covered in the state’s official curriculum. It was more of a test of our abilities to apply the research techniques to the real world. The final was worth enough points to drop your report card a full letter grade, just to keep everyone engaged. This didn’t worry Claire or me. Since fifth grade, we had a running competition to see who could get the highest grade in history. We studied obsessively for every test, took copious notes, and even did the extra credit assignments. Before the final, we were tied at 108 percent. And since we worked together on all our group projects, the ongoing stalemate seemed likely to last indefinitely. Our partnership became the butt of several jokes. Even Mr. Stanford seemed to be in on it as he peered over his clipboard the last week of class.

 “I want you and Claire to give us a presentation about the mill that used to be near the river during the pioneer days.” His thick moustache twitched as he spoke. “There aren’t very many sources about this one, but find out as much as you can about what went on there.”

 Claire turned in her desk to face me. Gone were the days of assigned seats from grade school, but we still sat with each other in all the classes we shared. Her grey eyes brimmed with excitement. It was the same look she got after we both finished reading the same book, she was kicking my ass in Battlefront II or when we talked about our favorite music. 

I couldn’t help noticing the clique of popular girls in the back row and their half-muffled laughter. After being friends with Claire for so long, I sometimes forgot about the stigma she carried around with her. She still wore thick glasses, but took somewhat regular showers now. I’d been letting her sneak them at my house around the time she started coming home with me after school. Her clothes improved somewhat; basketball shorts or sweatpants replaced the pants that didn’t fit. The biggest difference was probably her height. She now stood almost as tall as me, but was still lanky from not getting enough to eat. Normally, I wouldn’t have cared what those girls thought, but it was hard to ignore their teasing eyes when I realized they weren’t just making fun of Claire; they were making fun of me too.

The state history books in our school library had precious little to say about our town, let alone the forgotten mill. The most we could find was a single paragraph in a moth-eaten book from the 1930s. It mentioned the grist mill in passing before going on in vague terms about the rapid and poorly understood decline of a nearby settlement. We were more intrigued by this later entry, but agreed it was something we would have to follow up on after the assignment.

“It’ll be a good summer project for us,” Claire said with a smile.

One paragraph in a book that didn’t even have an ISBN wasn’t enough to write a report, so we ended up riding our bikes to the county museum after school, hoping to find more information. The retired man working inside seemed eager to help. He had a habit of drifting the conversation, but after numerous course corrections, we were able to tease out more details about the mill. According to him and an even older local history book he showed us, the grist mill also milled lumber during the off-season. 

“They had stonemasons working in there too,” the man beamed. “They used to make whetstones, headstones, even building foundations from rocks quarried from the hills out there. A lot of them things ended up on flatboats launched from the ferry near Henderson’s tavern, bound for New Orleans.”

We thanked the man for his time and left. Even before visiting the museum, we planned on going to the site of the mill. Thanks to the old man’s long-winded history lesson, we were running short on time before it got dark. Even that last week of school, it hadn’t rained in almost a month, and the slabbed rock sat well above the water level.

Like most people in town, we’d been there before with our families on picnics, but this time we brought along a tape measure, digital camera, and a folding shovel. Working methodically, we measured the space between each of the holes. Plotting them in our notebook revealed the mill was massive. Our excitement grew with each hole added to our map. By the time we finished marking piling holes, the sun had almost sunk below the horizon, and the mill had become considerably more interesting. Claire even tried her hand at sketching what it might have looked like based on our research and a description from one of the books. Fireflies were coming out, and the streetlights would be on soon, but we decided to walk along the edge of the massive stone before leaving.

“Can you believe the size of that thing? It had to be the biggest building in the county.”

“Yeah,” Claire said, tilting her head to one side in thought. “There isn’t even anything this big in town now. Just think what it must have been like in pioneer days to see a factory in the middle of the forest, with nothing else around.”

“Wasn’t that tavern supposed to be around here too? The one with the ferry crossing?”

“Yeah, I think so. The guy at the museum said that the town from the school library book was nearby, too.”

“Carthage?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Claire scribbled the vanished town’s name in the margin of our map. 

We walked slowly. Claire was stalling, and I was too. She never wanted to go home and I didn’t blame her. One of the few times I met her at her doublewide, maybe because her parents hadn’t paid their phone bill, I saw her not-so-great home life firsthand.

“I’ll be right out,” she said. The crack in the doorway was just wide enough to poke her head through, but I still caught a glimpse of the mountain of trash behind her. It didn’t take her long to get ready, but I felt awkward waiting on the cluttered porch. One of those times, while waiting outside, I met her dad. Overweight, unshaven, and smelling like beer, he was working in a lean-to carport behind their home. A cigarette bobbed from the corner of his lip as he leaned under the hood of a truck that was more rust than paint. I said hello, and he trained his watery, bloodshot eyes on me. 

“So… You’re the one,” he said, nodding. 

“I’m Claire’s friend,” I said, introducing myself. “We sit together in some of our classes.”

He nodded, his face tightening into a grimace. “You’re the one she’s always goin’ to see. The one that’s got her talkin’ ‘bout history all the time.”

This was the first time I’d seen anyone drunk, and I didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure what to say.  I just stood there. My silence didn’t stop him from going on, slurring words as he went. 

“Got her talking about honors classes, readin’ books, goin’ to college, thinking she’s better than me and her Ma’.”

I was relieved when I heard the trailer’s screen door slap shut. I took a few steps back. “It was, nice, uhh... meeting you, sir,” I said before turning and joining Claire. 

“Did my dad say something to you?” She whispered before we took off on our bikes. 

“No, not really.”

Her dad’s hoarse voice shouted after us, something about Claire not staying out too late, as he shook a wrench in the air. I hated thinking of Claire in that place and wished she didn’t have to live with her parents.

 

“What do you think you would have been back in pioneer days?” I asked, grinning at the thought of Claire wearing an old-fashioned homespun dress. 

She considered for a moment. “Probably a school teacher.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “That or a seamstress. It’s not like there were lots of options for women back then.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess not.”

“What about you?”

“Maybe a mill worker or carpenter?”

“Hmm.” Claire mused. “I was thinking you’d make a good blacksmith.”

I laughed. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re just really strong. Swinging a hammer all day, making things like in shop class? It seems like a good fit.” She looked away awkwardly as she said this. 

We walked a few moments in silence. I wasn’t sure how to respond to her compliment. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, something was changing between us. My other friends jokingly called Claire my girlfriend. My face turned red every time it happened. Most of that summer, I’d been struggling to find the right words to tell her how I felt. We had been friends for so long, I didn’t want to ruin anything. I’m ashamed to admit it, but the ugly comments people made about Claire made me hesitate. Some shallow part of me worried people would think less of me if I dated “the poor girl”.  

The silence ended when Claire pointed toward the river and shouted, “What is that?”

I followed her gesturing hand to a small mound of rocks and sand in the middle of the stream. 

“That’s just a sandbar.”

She shook her head. “No, on top of the sandbar. Under those rocks!”

Before I could say anything, Claire pulled off her shoes, stepped off the granite rock, and waded through the knee-deep water. 

“Are you crazy?” I shouted as I followed after her, almost losing my balance in the strong current. She ignored my words and toppled the rocks piled against what looked like the trunk of a tree. It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized it wasn’t a sunken tree; it was the hull of an overturned keelboat. I helped her pull away one stone after another, exposing the weathered, grey transom. We pulled away enough rocks to reveal the word “CONATUS” carved into the wood. We each tore a sheet of paper from the notebook and made rubbings of it, similar to the ones people make of headstones. We had everything we needed to finish our final project, but now we had an opportunity to do something we’d both dreamed of: uncover a missing piece of history. 

 

I’m not sure how long we were digging when the first lightning strike lit up the sky. Thunder shook the air around us, and the afterglow lit up our dim surroundings. I glanced up in awe and terror at the thunderhead overhead. I tried to put a finger on the muffled crackling sound that followed, but gave up quickly.  Claire tried hiding the fear behind her thick glasses as we locked eyes. She didn’t say anything. She turned and resumed digging. I shook my head, amazed at her stubbornness. 

“Claire?”

She didn’t answer, instead, she kept shoveling.

Glancing at the river, I realized our situation was worse than I thought. I’d ignored the scattered sprinkles earlier that morning. I hadn’t paid much attention to the light drizzle that replaced it. But gazing upstream, I saw the wall of advancing rain covering the river with ripples. Muddy water washed down the riverbanks. An odd crunching sound mingled with approaching rumbles of thunder.  A concrete culvert vomited grey water mixed with trash and roadkill into the river. Within seconds, the curtain of rain reached our sandbar, and heavy droplets beat down on us.  Most alarming was the fact that the channel between us and the safety of the granite slab had nearly doubled in width, and the strengthening torrent was eroding our small islet. Despite all this, Claire shoveled away.

I sighed reluctantly and folded my entrenching tool.

“Claire, we need to leave,” I said, stepping closer to her. She never once turned from what she was doing.

“We can’t stop now. Just five more minutes! I know we can-”

“In another five minutes, this will all be underwater.”  Drops of rain caught in the wind slapped my hand as I reached her shovel. The muffled crunch sounded somewhere nearby. I had no idea what it was and wrote it off as a distant lightning strike. 

She shook her head. “Not now. Can’t you see? We’re never going to have another chance-”

A streak of lightning struck the gnarled oak tree across the river we leaned our bikes against. The crackle of thunder mingled with the sound of splintering wood as the lightning strike cleaved a large branch from the tree.

“You see that! If we stay here, we’re gonna get hit by lightning or washed away!” I gestured to the widening stream, realizing for the first time it would be challenging to wade across.

Claire stood firm, but her eyes wavered. 

“Give me your shovel. I’ll put it in the pack.” 

I reached for it, but she jerked her arm behind her back. I stepped closer, grabbing at the olive green spade, almost coming chest to chest with her.

The whole time she kept muttering, “No… please… we’re never… going to have another chance like this.”

“Give me the damn thing!” I shouted at her. The words barely left my lips before I regretted them. Looking into those big, grey eyes, I felt the same remorse as if I’d just smacked her. 

Claire’s lip trembled, and something that wasn’t rain streamed down her cheeks. I struggled to say something, anything.

“We’ll come back in a couple months, or next year the river will be low.”

“We both know that’s not going to happen.” She shirked from my gaze.

I dropped my arm and tried a different approach. “Look, if we can’t dig it up, there’s gotta be another way. Maybe we can mount a camera underwater or ”

“I’m not talking about the stupid boat!” Claire screamed, throwing her shovel into the dirt. I stepped back. She had never raised her voice at me. I think that’s why it stunned me more than her slender fists pounding weakly into my chest.

“I’m talking about us!” 

I looked at her, speechless. Present dangers forgotten as she buried her face in my chest and cried, “Are you really that dumb?”

My mind raced to find something coherent to say as I grabbed her small, round shoulders. “What are you talking about, Claire?”

She looked up at me, tears flooding her timid grey eyes. “Do you really think it’s going to be like this next year in high school? Us hanging out together?”

I must have hesitated, because she broke into tears.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

She turned away from me.

“Claire, what the hell is going on?”

“You’ve been avoiding me all summer!” She glared at me through fresh tears. “How many times this month has it been *your* idea to come out here? Better yet, how many times this summer?”

I opened my mouth to deny this claim, but only silence came out. I couldn’t think of the last time I called and asked Claire to come over or see if she wanted to excavate the “Conatus.” Lately, she had just shown up at my house and knocked at the door. On a handful of occasions when I was sleeping in after a late shift at my part-time job, she had to let herself in with our spare key and wake me up. 

I tried not to look away, but failed.

“I know I’ve been busy lately, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you. You’re my friend.” My stomach tied itself in knots as I said this. Claire looked at me, the hurt still in her eyes.

“Do you think it’s going to get any better school starts next week? You’re starting honors history and English, and I’ll be stuck in the regular classes with everyone else. When are we going to see each other? In the hall between classes? At lunch? At…” She choked on her words and broke down into fresh, uncontrolled sobs.

I closed the space between us to try comforting her. As soon as I was within arm’s reach, she threw her arms around me. I hugged her back and held her a moment despite the worsening rain.

“I need to tell you something,” she sniffled.

“What is it?” I felt her peering into the depths of my soul as she fixed her beautiful eyes on me.

“It’s important,” she paused for a moment. “You’re my best friend, you know that, right?”

 My inner voice begged me to just tell her how I felt. Instead, I just nodded. “I know.”

She closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. She trembled as she looked into my eyes before steadying herself and wrapping her warm lips around mine. The urge to disentangle myself from my awkward first kiss vanished almost as quickly as it came. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Not storms, not school, not sunken boats or forgotten towns, least of all what anyone thought about us. I kissed her back. A lot was left unsaid as she pulled back and looked into my eyes, but I knew she shared the same feelings I had for her. I was going to tell her it would be alright. We could go back to my house and figure everything out. She was going to be my girlfriend, and we were going to make it work. Those big, grey eyes beamed at me with happiness I hadn’t seen since that day in fourth grade when I asked her to draw with me.

 

The muffled crunch was louder this time. I didn’t think much of it until Claire went stiff in my hands, and her eyes widened, fixated on something behind me. I looked over my shoulder at the broad, tall sycamore tree and immediately understood. Runoff from the cornfield washed clumps of dirt away from its roots, and the trunk crunched louder each time it bent under a fresh gust. 

“We gotta get out of here! That thing will crush us!”            

Claire grabbed her shovel and stuffed it in the soaked backpack. I glanced upstream at the churning brown water and hesitated to pick my first step. The tree overhead swayed, its limbs flogged at the water violently as the trunk leaned, prodding us along. Ankle-deep rivulets of muddy water ran across the sandbar. The longer we waited, the more dangerous picking a path through the water would be. 

My first step off the sandbar, water crept past my knee, threatening to top my waders. Clair followed. She stumbled over the uneven river bottom and almost fell into the cold, opaque water until I grabbed her. She trembled as I threw her arm over my shoulder and pulled her close to me. We had to lean against the current. Each careful step was a struggle as I searched blindly with the toe of my boot for a safe foothold. From the corner of my eye, I could see the tree thrashing violently in the storm. A deafening boom accompanied another lightning strike. I was too afraid to see how close it had been. Claire’s fingernails cut through my wet T-shirt into my skin. I tried to ignore a banded water snake slithering through our legs as we neared the slabbed rock. It took almost all my strength to keep us from being swept away as I probed around for the next step. I tried to ignore thoughts about the tree, lurking just behind us, exposed roots and ruined branches reaching out like claws, ready to drag us under the water. 

Claire muttered my name a few times. I ignored her. The next foothold on solid rock had to be close. From there, we could take a leap of faith, even swim a few feet if we landed short, and free ourselves from that damn river. Whatever she saw couldn’t wait any longer and she screamed my name. Her cries were drowned out by a cacophony of snapping roots and cracking limbs as the tree came crashing down toward us. I was almost too stunned to move as I watched the massive tree fall. I don’t remember how, but Claire and I ended up toppling over into the stream.

 We weren’t ready when the current pulled us under the murky water. I caught a glimpse of the patchwork of white and grey bark come down where we were just standing. Claire slipped from my grasp, and darkness enveloped me. For the briefest moment, another lightning strike illuminated my brown and black surroundings, just in time for me to see the backpack I had shrugged from my shoulders sink from my sight, carrying away all the proof of our excavations. 

The riverbed was deeper than where we crossed that morning, its muddy silt held the remains of waterlogged trees, branches, and roots snapped off at jagged angles, each like a crooked headstone in a murky graveyard. Thoughts of joining them raced through my mind when I felt cold water seeping through the buckled tops of my waders, weighing me down and dragging me deeper. 

My lungs burned. I told myself it was because I hadn’t taken a full breath before diving away from the tree, not a mounting asthma attack. Clawing at the buckles, one came undone easily enough. I pushed the rubber anchor down my pant leg. Cold water soaked my jeans as the waterproof boot vanished in the stream. I kicked as hard as I could toward the surface and choked on windswept waves, still struggling to undo the other boot. Even over the howling wind, I heard Claire screaming my name. I tried turning toward her voice to find her, but could barely keep above the surface with the wader clamped onto my leg. I needed both hands to get it off. Claire was never a strong swimmer. She needed me. Mustering what bravery I could, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. 

Cold water passed over my face as I sank once more toward the bottom. The steel buckle cut my hands as I tried inching the rubber strap through it. Something slimy, yet stiff, brushed my shoulder. “Probably a fish or another waterlogged tree,” I thought.  My hands panicked over the cheap buckle, and I cursed myself for overtightening it. Something in the darkness nudged against my leg. Bubbles escaped my mouth as I cried out in muffled terror. I clawed at the buckle. A couple of my fingernails bent the wrong way in my desperate attempt to free myself. Just as the buckle began to loosen, my foot was caught in what felt like the forked branches of a sunken tree. I thrashed against its tightening grip, each movement slowed by the water. The current pulled my ankle deeper into the narrowing crevasse. Even in the darkness, white fog clouded my vision as I resisted the burning urge to take a breath. I fought to stay calm. I denied the possibility that the tightening in my lungs was the onset of a full-fledged asthma attack. As consciousness began slipping away from me, an odd calmness washed over me. With slow, deliberate movements I realized might be my last, I stretched the top of the boot open as wide as I could. Cold water rushed inside, and its grip on my leg slackened.  Using the snag on the river bottom as a boot jack, I pulled my socked foot free. My lungs were on fire. I struggled to keep my lips sealed while swimming upward. 

River water flavored my first breath with hints of dirt and decayed fish, but I inhaled greedily, coughing after each gasp. I wiped the wet hair from my face and looked around. Claire shouted my name, but her voice sounded far away. I spun in wild circles searching for her. 

“Claire!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, but the storm drowned out my cries. A frantic scan of my surroundings showed no trace of her. There was also no sign of the granite slab. We were approaching the washboard section of the river. I knew there was no way we passed the steel bridge leading to town, or the “falls”. They were all of three feet high, but our town was named after them.

Lightning lit up the river valley, illuminating drops of rain the size of nickels, trees along the riverbanks bowing to the wind like sheaves of wheat, the neglected truss bridge’s chalky red paint coming into view, and a bobbing head of soaked black hair. 

She shouted my name and I hurried after her, swimming with the current. Waves lapped up by the wind blocked my view. Each time they dropped or I crested one, I reoriented myself and beat the water with deliberate, hard kicks. Nearing the spot where she was struggling to keep afloat, I saw that her glasses were missing. 

“Claire! Stay where you are! I’m coming!”

“Where are you?” Her voice came to me in a whimper. “I can’t see you and I’m scared.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but the waves left me gagging on filthy water. I crested one swell after another. My lungs struggled for air. I felt so cold in the water, but none of it mattered. I kept paddling toward the last place I saw Claire. I was overjoyed when I found her treading water in a small circle, arms outstretched, searching for me. 

My relief catching up to her vanished when I realized she wasn’t swimming in circles of her own free will. She was trapped in the widening maw of a water vortex. I felt nauseous seeing the warnings of the sulfur yellow sign unfolding before me. Ignoring every instinct of self-preservation, I swam toward the thin, trying all the while to remember if the Boy Scouts ever taught me how to escape a whirlpool. This knowledge was forgotten if I ever learned it in the first place.

The current pulled me and everything else floating on the surface downstream, except the whirlpool and the things trapped in it. They stayed more or less in one place. Paddling headfirst toward the watery spiral, I knew I only had one chance to grab Claire before it was too late, and I was carried away by a current too strong to fight. 

I was nearly abreast of the whirlpool when I screamed for Claire to take my hand. I saw the terror in her eyes as she sank deeper into the murky brown vortex. 

“Grab my hand!”

I thrust a hand over the edge, into the deepening chasm of air. 

Claire wrapped her cold, slender fingers around my hand.

I gripped her hand and tried with all my might to haul her over the edge of the whirlpool, but I was caught in the current. My soaked clothes dragged against the churning water, tugging me downstream while Claire and the vortex anchored me to that spot. 

I kicked and paddled to no avail. The whirlpool sucked Claire deeper into it’s depths dragging me with her. I took a breath before I was pulled once more beneath the opaque waves. 

I thrashed against the water, kicked wildly, did anything I could think of. It was all useless, but I couldn’t give up. I was going to get us both out of this, even if it meant filling my lungs with water. There had to be a way out of this. I just had to think. There had to be something I could do.

That’s when I felt Claire loosen her grip. An instant before her fingers slipped through mine, I realized what she was doing. I screamed for her to stop but it was useless. The current ripped me from the spot. The muted rumble of thunder sounded overhead as a lightning strike illuminated the murky water. A sepia silhouette was the last I saw of Claire before she was swallowed by the river.

 

 I didn’t know they made coffins out of cardboard. Waiting in line to pay my respects, I wondered how long the coroner spent trying to get the serene expression on her face, one she never wore in life. A surprising number of our classmates were there under the guise of paying their respects, but I suspected some were just there to gawk. I felt eyes on me as they stole glances. Some whispered. 

When it was my turn at the coffin, I looked down at Claire’s pale body propped up on those lacey white pillows. My vision blurred with tears I couldn’t let myself shed. Claire’s mom glared at me. I’d never met her before, but her hateful eyes never left me as I said goodbye to my best friend. Walking away, my head drooped, I heard Claire’s dad whispering something about me loudly. I was glad I was too far to hear much of what he was saying. Even with the wide berth I gave him, I smelled the beer on his breath. 

I didn’t watch them bury her. I just couldn’t. As soon as my parents parked our car at home, I ran to my bike and rode off. Claire would have loved riding her bike on a day like that, even if it was overcast. I felt staring eyes on me once again as I pedaled through town. Whether anyone was actually paying attention to me as I wound through the familiar streets, I can’t say.  I just knew I didn’t want to be around anyone. I raced along, thinking for a bittersweet moment I might turn my head and see Claire on her bike, about to overtake me, but I knew it wouldn’t happen. My town flickered by in a blur as I lost control of the hot tears pouring from my eyes. I wasn’t having an asthma attack, but I couldn’t breathe as I sped down the river road.

​

Sprinkles of rain pelted me as I raced down the river road. I wheezed, trying to keep up with Claire. Every breath tasted like dust kicked up by her red Schwinn, even after she vanished around the curve up ahead. My chest tightened. I thought of my mom constantly nagging me to always carry my inhaler, even though it’d been years since my last asthma attack.  Around the bend, Claire swerved from one side of River Road to the other, not pedaling. Her bike's sprocket sang mechanically, “I’m waiting for you.” 

“Hurry up,” she shouted.

 I left behind my own cloud of dust as I sped up. Gravel crunched under my tires. Leaning over the handlebars, I balanced on the balls of my feet as I pedaled. I closed the gap between us enough to read the green and white button on her backpack as she tightened the straps. “Dam your own damn river,” it said. Small and ineffectual as it was, it was about as much as either of us could do to stop the hydroelectric dam from coming to our county. Claire glanced over her shoulder, her thin lips curling into a satisfied smirk before she raced ahead. 

 

Every school has at least one kid like Claire. Her clothes were all hand-me-downs, worn from the time she was big enough they wouldn’t slip off until they were either too tattered with holes to wear or she couldn’t fit them anymore. If I’d known the word “malnourished" when I met Claire, I might have understood why this rarely happened. Every day at lunch, she ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the school made for kids who forgot to pack a meal. She also wore glasses, the cheapest kind the eye doctor sells, the thin black wire frames making the lenses look even thicker than they are. I think the saddest thing was the fact her parents didn’t bother making sure she was clean when she went to school. If you passed Claire in the hallway, or sat beside her in class like I did, you could smell the miasma she carried around with her.

I never paid much attention to Claire until the winter of fourth grade. In Henderson County, our winters are usually mild. A coat or thick jacket usually made recess bearable, but that year, a polar vortex caused temperatures to plummet. It was so cold, the thermometer outside our classroom window pointed to the empty space under negative 15. So cold, the teachers kept us inside during recess. Instead of playing tag or climbing on the jungle gym, our teacher pulled out board games that looked and smelled like they’d been mothballed since the Carter administration. This didn’t matter to me, the asthmatic kid who struggled with running, but for about two months, the rest of the class complained. Some of them cobbled together decks of mismatched Uno cards. Others tried putting together incomplete jigsaw puzzles. The last group activity was playing with a dusty set of Lincoln Logs. If you wanted to do something by yourself, the only options were reading or drawing quietly. 

There were never enough Lincoln Logs to go around, and despite our teacher’s best efforts, the classroom was too noisy to read, so I spent that winter drawing. I looked forward to recess, not just for the break in schoolwork, but also because Claire would leave the desk we shared, and I’d have fifteen or twenty minutes of much improved air quality. I never made ugly comments about how she smelled, but I had to admit, it was unpleasant. 

If I paid more attention to Claire after she left, I might have realized these breaks were to be short-lived. After the first week of indoor recess, the other kids didn’t want to play card games with her or lend her any of the limited supply of Lincoln Logs. 

One day, instead of finding a group to reluctantly let her sit with them, she wandered around the classroom, stopping here or there, waiting for an invitation to join in. None of them ever asked. They just ignored her until she left. This went on until she made a full circuit of the room. Defeated, she came back to our desk and sat in her chair.

I saw her staring at me from the corner of my eye, but tried ignoring her like everyone else. It felt like minutes passed as we sat there in awkward silence. I was shading in the shadows under a car when her timid voice interrupted me. 

“I like your drawing.”

“Thanks, Claire,” I said, not looking up.

“Is it a Mustang?”

Her voice trembled, and she let out a muffled sniff. I turned to face her. My frustration, realizing I wasn’t getting a break from sitting next to Claire, died when I noticed the tears behind her thick glasses.

In that moment, I remembered my mom telling me about the time she volunteered to help with the elementary school’s lice check. The staff knew a few of the kids had them, but for the sake of appearances, everyone was sent to the nurse’s office. She said the worst part wasn’t combing through hair infested with parasites; it was overhearing the kids waiting in the hallway make fun of anyone who left the room with a bottle of special shampoo. 

“I hope you’d never do anything like that,” she said. Looking at Claire, I realized she might have been one of those kids. I felt ashamed for ignoring her and decided to be friendly.

 

“It’s a Camaro. An IROC-Z.”

She sniffled as she wiped away tears with an oversized sweater sleeve. “I think my uncle used to have one of those.”

“That’s cool,” I said, forcing a smile. 

She stood there with a sad smile, not saying anything. 

“Do you want to draw with me?”

I’ll never forget how her eyes lit up, or how excited she was to find a blank page in her notebook. The rest of that winter, Claire spent recess with me. She was good at drawing, even if she mostly just made pictures of houses, usually two-storey ones, complete with turrets, spires, and wraparound porches. After a few days of talking to her, I found out she was a lot like the other kids I knew. Her parents might have had trouble holding down jobs and keeping the water on, but they always had cable. She liked the same popular TV shows as the rest of us.

What surprised me most was how much we had in common. We both read the Goosebumps books, watched reruns of Unsolved Mysteries, and even shared an interest in history. It was the first time I’d been able to mention this and not worry about someone calling me a geek. Before long, I found myself looking forward to recess with Claire. After indoor recess ended that spring, we still spent that time talking and drawing on the playground.

 

The scattered sprinkles turned into a misty drizzle as I tailed Claire down the tree-lined road. Our tires hummed over the old truss bridge’s grated floor. The river trickled below, clear enough you could see its muddy bottom, speckled with various discarded junk: a bicycle, a busted TV, even an old battery charger, to name a few. On the other side, we shot past a sulfur yellow sign from the 50s, riddled with bullet holes, but still legible. 

“No Swimming. Danger of Whirlpools.”

Old timers at the hardware store talked about people who didn’t realize these whirlpools weren’t like the ones in a bathtub. There was often nothing on the surface to indicate the submerged vortex, ready to drown anyone caught in it until they’d already been pulled under.

We pedaled another quarter mile or so, and Claire skidded to a stop next to the crooked oak tree, her brakes stirring up fresh dust. I coasted to a stop next to her, panting and wondering if I needed my inhaler, but Claire was already off her bike.

“Ahem,” she said, extending her backpack to me in one hand. I barely had one strap over my shoulder before she scrambled down the tree’s exposed roots to the riverbed. I hopped after her on one foot, pulling on my dad’s waders. I was surprised how fast she picked her way down the riverbank. All summer, she insisted I go first and help her down. I felt a strange aversion to this almost as strong as my fear of grabbing a snake lurking within the tangled mass of tree roots. I never felt a snake slither through my fingers, but I did feel knots in my stomach every time Claire lowered herself into my waiting arms, and in the split second she lingered in front of me when I set her down, and when she took my hand on the climb up to the road. I got that feeling just thinking about her sometimes, even if she wasn’t around. 

Low rumbles echoed through the river valley.  I chased Claire across the massive granite slab, worn flat from centuries of flowing water. The unassuming rock spends half of the year underwater, but when the river is low, it’s a local favorite for picnics and fishing. If you’re not careful, you might trip over one of the numerous square holes hollowed out at careful intervals between the river and its Eastern bank. Once used to support pilings for a grist mill, they provide the only archaeological evidence of Henderson County’s earliest settlement. Claire splashed across the shallow river, strangled by drought to little more than an ankle-deep trickle. Mud covered her ankles and bare feet when she reached the sunken boat we spent most of that summer excavating. We found it while researching our final project in 8th-grade history.

Mr. Stanford’s history final was a presentation about local history. The material wasn’t covered in the state’s official curriculum. It was more of a test of our abilities to apply the research techniques to the real world. The final was worth enough points to drop your report card a full letter grade, just to keep everyone engaged. This didn’t worry Claire or me. Since fifth grade, we had a running competition to see who could get the highest grade in history. We studied obsessively for every test, took copious notes, and even did the extra credit assignments. Before the final, we were tied at 108 percent. And since we worked together on all our group projects, the ongoing stalemate seemed likely to last indefinitely. Our partnership became the butt of several jokes. Even Mr. Stanford seemed to be in on it as he peered over his clipboard the last week of class.

 “I want you and Claire to give us a presentation about the mill that used to be near the river during the pioneer days.” His thick moustache twitched as he spoke. “There aren’t very many sources about this one, but find out as much as you can about what went on there.”

 Claire turned in her desk to face me. Gone were the days of assigned seats from grade school, but we still sat with each other in all the classes we shared. Her grey eyes brimmed with excitement. It was the same look she got after we both finished reading the same book, she was kicking my ass in Battlefront II or when we talked about our favorite music. 

I couldn’t help noticing the clique of popular girls in the back row and their half-muffled laughter. After being friends with Claire for so long, I sometimes forgot about the stigma she carried around with her. She still wore thick glasses, but took somewhat regular showers now. I’d been letting her sneak them at my house around the time she started coming home with me after school. Her clothes improved somewhat; basketball shorts or sweatpants replaced the pants that didn’t fit. The biggest difference was probably her height. She now stood almost as tall as me, but was still lanky from not getting enough to eat. Normally, I wouldn’t have cared what those girls thought, but it was hard to ignore their teasing eyes when I realized they weren’t just making fun of Claire; they were making fun of me too.

The state history books in our school library had precious little to say about our town, let alone the forgotten mill. The most we could find was a single paragraph in a moth-eaten book from the 1930s. It mentioned the grist mill in passing before going on in vague terms about the rapid and poorly understood decline of a nearby settlement. We were more intrigued by this later entry, but agreed it was something we would have to follow up on after the assignment.

“It’ll be a good summer project for us,” Claire said with a smile.

One paragraph in a book that didn’t even have an ISBN wasn’t enough to write a report, so we ended up riding our bikes to the county museum after school, hoping to find more information. The retired man working inside seemed eager to help. He had a habit of drifting the conversation, but after numerous course corrections, we were able to tease out more details about the mill. According to him and an even older local history book he showed us, the grist mill also milled lumber during the off-season. 

“They had stonemasons working in there too,” the man beamed. “They used to make whetstones, headstones, even building foundations from rocks quarried from the hills out there. A lot of them things ended up on flatboats launched from the ferry near Henderson’s tavern, bound for New Orleans.”

We thanked the man for his time and left. Even before visiting the museum, we planned on going to the site of the mill. Thanks to the old man’s long-winded history lesson, we were running short on time before it got dark. Even that last week of school, it hadn’t rained in almost a month, and the slabbed rock sat well above the water level.

Like most people in town, we’d been there before with our families on picnics, but this time we brought along a tape measure, digital camera, and a folding shovel. Working methodically, we measured the space between each of the holes. Plotting them in our notebook revealed the mill was massive. Our excitement grew with each hole added to our map. By the time we finished marking piling holes, the sun had almost sunk below the horizon, and the mill had become considerably more interesting. Claire even tried her hand at sketching what it might have looked like based on our research and a description from one of the books. Fireflies were coming out, and the streetlights would be on soon, but we decided to walk along the edge of the massive stone before leaving.

“Can you believe the size of that thing? It had to be the biggest building in the county.”

“Yeah,” Claire said, tilting her head to one side in thought. “There isn’t even anything this big in town now. Just think what it must have been like in pioneer days to see a factory in the middle of the forest, with nothing else around.”

“Wasn’t that tavern supposed to be around here too? The one with the ferry crossing?”

“Yeah, I think so. The guy at the museum said that the town from the school library book was nearby, too.”

“Carthage?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Claire scribbled the vanished town’s name in the margin of our map. 

We walked slowly. Claire was stalling, and I was too. She never wanted to go home and I didn’t blame her. One of the few times I met her at her doublewide, maybe because her parents hadn’t paid their phone bill, I saw her not-so-great home life firsthand.

“I’ll be right out,” she said. The crack in the doorway was just wide enough to poke her head through, but I still caught a glimpse of the mountain of trash behind her. It didn’t take her long to get ready, but I felt awkward waiting on the cluttered porch. One of those times, while waiting outside, I met her dad. Overweight, unshaven, and smelling like beer, he was working in a lean-to carport behind their home. A cigarette bobbed from the corner of his lip as he leaned under the hood of a truck that was more rust than paint. I said hello, and he trained his watery, bloodshot eyes on me. 

“So… You’re the one,” he said, nodding. 

“I’m Claire’s friend,” I said, introducing myself. “We sit together in some of our classes.”

He nodded, his face tightening into a grimace. “You’re the one she’s always goin’ to see. The one that’s got her talkin’ ‘bout history all the time.”

This was the first time I’d seen anyone drunk, and I didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure what to say.  I just stood there. My silence didn’t stop him from going on, slurring words as he went. 

“Got her talking about honors classes, readin’ books, goin’ to college, thinking she’s better than me and her Ma’.”

I was relieved when I heard the trailer’s screen door slap shut. I took a few steps back. “It was, nice, uhh... meeting you, sir,” I said before turning and joining Claire. 

“Did my dad say something to you?” She whispered before we took off on our bikes. 

“No, not really.”

Her dad’s hoarse voice shouted after us, something about Claire not staying out too late, as he shook a wrench in the air. I hated thinking of Claire in that place and wished she didn’t have to live with her parents.

 

“What do you think you would have been back in pioneer days?” I asked, grinning at the thought of Claire wearing an old-fashioned homespun dress. 

She considered for a moment. “Probably a school teacher.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “That or a seamstress. It’s not like there were lots of options for women back then.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess not.”

“What about you?”

“Maybe a mill worker or carpenter?”

“Hmm.” Claire mused. “I was thinking you’d make a good blacksmith.”

I laughed. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re just really strong. Swinging a hammer all day, making things like in shop class? It seems like a good fit.” She looked away awkwardly as she said this. 

We walked a few moments in silence. I wasn’t sure how to respond to her compliment. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, something was changing between us. My other friends jokingly called Claire my girlfriend. My face turned red every time it happened. Most of that summer, I’d been struggling to find the right words to tell her how I felt. We had been friends for so long, I didn’t want to ruin anything. I’m ashamed to admit it, but the ugly comments people made about Claire made me hesitate. Some shallow part of me worried people would think less of me if I dated “the poor girl”.  

The silence ended when Claire pointed toward the river and shouted, “What is that?”

I followed her gesturing hand to a small mound of rocks and sand in the middle of the stream. 

“That’s just a sandbar.”

She shook her head. “No, on top of the sandbar. Under those rocks!”

Before I could say anything, Claire pulled off her shoes, stepped off the granite rock, and waded through the knee-deep water. 

“Are you crazy?” I shouted as I followed after her, almost losing my balance in the strong current. She ignored my words and toppled the rocks piled against what looked like the trunk of a tree. It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized it wasn’t a sunken tree; it was the hull of an overturned keelboat. I helped her pull away one stone after another, exposing the weathered, grey transom. We pulled away enough rocks to reveal the word “CONATUS” carved into the wood. We each tore a sheet of paper from the notebook and made rubbings of it, similar to the ones people make of headstones. We had everything we needed to finish our final project, but now we had an opportunity to do something we’d both dreamed of: uncover a missing piece of history. 

 

I’m not sure how long we were digging when the first lightning strike lit up the sky. Thunder shook the air around us, and the afterglow lit up our dim surroundings. I glanced up in awe and terror at the thunderhead overhead. I tried to put a finger on the muffled crackling sound that followed, but gave up quickly.  Claire tried hiding the fear behind her thick glasses as we locked eyes. She didn’t say anything. She turned and resumed digging. I shook my head, amazed at her stubbornness. 

“Claire?”

She didn’t answer, instead, she kept shoveling.

Glancing at the river, I realized our situation was worse than I thought. I’d ignored the scattered sprinkles earlier that morning. I hadn’t paid much attention to the light drizzle that replaced it. But gazing upstream, I saw the wall of advancing rain covering the river with ripples. Muddy water washed down the riverbanks. An odd crunching sound mingled with approaching rumbles of thunder.  A concrete culvert vomited grey water mixed with trash and roadkill into the river. Within seconds, the curtain of rain reached our sandbar, and heavy droplets beat down on us.  Most alarming was the fact that the channel between us and the safety of the granite slab had nearly doubled in width, and the strengthening torrent was eroding our small islet. Despite all this, Claire shoveled away.

I sighed reluctantly and folded my entrenching tool.

“Claire, we need to leave,” I said, stepping closer to her. She never once turned from what she was doing.

“We can’t stop now. Just five more minutes! I know we can-”

“In another five minutes, this will all be underwater.”  Drops of rain caught in the wind slapped my hand as I reached her shovel. The muffled crunch sounded somewhere nearby. I had no idea what it was and wrote it off as a distant lightning strike. 

She shook her head. “Not now. Can’t you see? We’re never going to have another chance-”

A streak of lightning struck the gnarled oak tree across the river we leaned our bikes against. The crackle of thunder mingled with the sound of splintering wood as the lightning strike cleaved a large branch from the tree.

“You see that! If we stay here, we’re gonna get hit by lightning or washed away!” I gestured to the widening stream, realizing for the first time it would be challenging to wade across.

Claire stood firm, but her eyes wavered. 

“Give me your shovel. I’ll put it in the pack.” 

I reached for it, but she jerked her arm behind her back. I stepped closer, grabbing at the olive green spade, almost coming chest to chest with her.

The whole time she kept muttering, “No… please… we’re never… going to have another chance like this.”

“Give me the damn thing!” I shouted at her. The words barely left my lips before I regretted them. Looking into those big, grey eyes, I felt the same remorse as if I’d just smacked her. 

Claire’s lip trembled, and something that wasn’t rain streamed down her cheeks. I struggled to say something, anything.

“We’ll come back in a couple months, or next year the river will be low.”

“We both know that’s not going to happen.” She shirked from my gaze.

I dropped my arm and tried a different approach. “Look, if we can’t dig it up, there’s gotta be another way. Maybe we can mount a camera underwater or ”

“I’m not talking about the stupid boat!” Claire screamed, throwing her shovel into the dirt. I stepped back. She had never raised her voice at me. I think that’s why it stunned me more than her slender fists pounding weakly into my chest.

“I’m talking about us!” 

I looked at her, speechless. Present dangers forgotten as she buried her face in my chest and cried, “Are you really that dumb?”

My mind raced to find something coherent to say as I grabbed her small, round shoulders. “What are you talking about, Claire?”

She looked up at me, tears flooding her timid grey eyes. “Do you really think it’s going to be like this next year in high school? Us hanging out together?”

I must have hesitated, because she broke into tears.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

She turned away from me.

“Claire, what the hell is going on?”

“You’ve been avoiding me all summer!” She glared at me through fresh tears. “How many times this month has it been *your* idea to come out here? Better yet, how many times this summer?”

I opened my mouth to deny this claim, but only silence came out. I couldn’t think of the last time I called and asked Claire to come over or see if she wanted to excavate the “Conatus.” Lately, she had just shown up at my house and knocked at the door. On a handful of occasions when I was sleeping in after a late shift at my part-time job, she had to let herself in with our spare key and wake me up. 

I tried not to look away, but failed.

“I know I’ve been busy lately, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you. You’re my friend.” My stomach tied itself in knots as I said this. Claire looked at me, the hurt still in her eyes.

“Do you think it’s going to get any better school starts next week? You’re starting honors history and English, and I’ll be stuck in the regular classes with everyone else. When are we going to see each other? In the hall between classes? At lunch? At…” She choked on her words and broke down into fresh, uncontrolled sobs.

I closed the space between us to try comforting her. As soon as I was within arm’s reach, she threw her arms around me. I hugged her back and held her a moment despite the worsening rain.

“I need to tell you something,” she sniffled.

“What is it?” I felt her peering into the depths of my soul as she fixed her beautiful eyes on me.

“It’s important,” she paused for a moment. “You’re my best friend, you know that, right?”

 My inner voice begged me to just tell her how I felt. Instead, I just nodded. “I know.”

She closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. She trembled as she looked into my eyes before steadying herself and wrapping her warm lips around mine. The urge to disentangle myself from my awkward first kiss vanished almost as quickly as it came. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Not storms, not school, not sunken boats or forgotten towns, least of all what anyone thought about us. I kissed her back. A lot was left unsaid as she pulled back and looked into my eyes, but I knew she shared the same feelings I had for her. I was going to tell her it would be alright. We could go back to my house and figure everything out. She was going to be my girlfriend, and we were going to make it work. Those big, grey eyes beamed at me with happiness I hadn’t seen since that day in fourth grade when I asked her to draw with me.

 

The muffled crunch was louder this time. I didn’t think much of it until Claire went stiff in my hands, and her eyes widened, fixated on something behind me. I looked over my shoulder at the broad, tall sycamore tree and immediately understood. Runoff from the cornfield washed clumps of dirt away from its roots, and the trunk crunched louder each time it bent under a fresh gust. 

“We gotta get out of here! That thing will crush us!”            

Claire grabbed her shovel and stuffed it in the soaked backpack. I glanced upstream at the churning brown water and hesitated to pick my first step. The tree overhead swayed, its limbs flogged at the water violently as the trunk leaned, prodding us along. Ankle-deep rivulets of muddy water ran across the sandbar. The longer we waited, the more dangerous picking a path through the water would be. 

My first step off the sandbar, water crept past my knee, threatening to top my waders. Clair followed. She stumbled over the uneven river bottom and almost fell into the cold, opaque water until I grabbed her. She trembled as I threw her arm over my shoulder and pulled her close to me. We had to lean against the current. Each careful step was a struggle as I searched blindly with the toe of my boot for a safe foothold. From the corner of my eye, I could see the tree thrashing violently in the storm. A deafening boom accompanied another lightning strike. I was too afraid to see how close it had been. Claire’s fingernails cut through my wet T-shirt into my skin. I tried to ignore a banded water snake slithering through our legs as we neared the slabbed rock. It took almost all my strength to keep us from being swept away as I probed around for the next step. I tried to ignore thoughts about the tree, lurking just behind us, exposed roots and ruined branches reaching out like claws, ready to drag us under the water. 

Claire muttered my name a few times. I ignored her. The next foothold on solid rock had to be close. From there, we could take a leap of faith, even swim a few feet if we landed short, and free ourselves from that damn river. Whatever she saw couldn’t wait any longer and she screamed my name. Her cries were drowned out by a cacophony of snapping roots and cracking limbs as the tree came crashing down toward us. I was almost too stunned to move as I watched the massive tree fall. I don’t remember how, but Claire and I ended up toppling over into the stream.

 We weren’t ready when the current pulled us under the murky water. I caught a glimpse of the patchwork of white and grey bark come down where we were just standing. Claire slipped from my grasp, and darkness enveloped me. For the briefest moment, another lightning strike illuminated my brown and black surroundings, just in time for me to see the backpack I had shrugged from my shoulders sink from my sight, carrying away all the proof of our excavations. 

The riverbed was deeper than where we crossed that morning, its muddy silt held the remains of waterlogged trees, branches, and roots snapped off at jagged angles, each like a crooked headstone in a murky graveyard. Thoughts of joining them raced through my mind when I felt cold water seeping through the buckled tops of my waders, weighing me down and dragging me deeper. 

My lungs burned. I told myself it was because I hadn’t taken a full breath before diving away from the tree, not a mounting asthma attack. Clawing at the buckles, one came undone easily enough. I pushed the rubber anchor down my pant leg. Cold water soaked my jeans as the waterproof boot vanished in the stream. I kicked as hard as I could toward the surface and choked on windswept waves, still struggling to undo the other boot. Even over the howling wind, I heard Claire screaming my name. I tried turning toward her voice to find her, but could barely keep above the surface with the wader clamped onto my leg. I needed both hands to get it off. Claire was never a strong swimmer. She needed me. Mustering what bravery I could, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. 

Cold water passed over my face as I sank once more toward the bottom. The steel buckle cut my hands as I tried inching the rubber strap through it. Something slimy, yet stiff, brushed my shoulder. “Probably a fish or another waterlogged tree,” I thought.  My hands panicked over the cheap buckle, and I cursed myself for overtightening it. Something in the darkness nudged against my leg. Bubbles escaped my mouth as I cried out in muffled terror. I clawed at the buckle. A couple of my fingernails bent the wrong way in my desperate attempt to free myself. Just as the buckle began to loosen, my foot was caught in what felt like the forked branches of a sunken tree. I thrashed against its tightening grip, each movement slowed by the water. The current pulled my ankle deeper into the narrowing crevasse. Even in the darkness, white fog clouded my vision as I resisted the burning urge to take a breath. I fought to stay calm. I denied the possibility that the tightening in my lungs was the onset of a full-fledged asthma attack. As consciousness began slipping away from me, an odd calmness washed over me. With slow, deliberate movements I realized might be my last, I stretched the top of the boot open as wide as I could. Cold water rushed inside, and its grip on my leg slackened.  Using the snag on the river bottom as a boot jack, I pulled my socked foot free. My lungs were on fire. I struggled to keep my lips sealed while swimming upward. 

River water flavored my first breath with hints of dirt and decayed fish, but I inhaled greedily, coughing after each gasp. I wiped the wet hair from my face and looked around. Claire shouted my name, but her voice sounded far away. I spun in wild circles searching for her. 

“Claire!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, but the storm drowned out my cries. A frantic scan of my surroundings showed no trace of her. There was also no sign of the granite slab. We were approaching the washboard section of the river. I knew there was no way we passed the steel bridge leading to town, or the “falls”. They were all of three feet high, but our town was named after them.

Lightning lit up the river valley, illuminating drops of rain the size of nickels, trees along the riverbanks bowing to the wind like sheaves of wheat, the neglected truss bridge’s chalky red paint coming into view, and a bobbing head of soaked black hair. 

She shouted my name and I hurried after her, swimming with the current. Waves lapped up by the wind blocked my view. Each time they dropped or I crested one, I reoriented myself and beat the water with deliberate, hard kicks. Nearing the spot where she was struggling to keep afloat, I saw that her glasses were missing. 

“Claire! Stay where you are! I’m coming!”

“Where are you?” Her voice came to me in a whimper. “I can’t see you and I’m scared.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but the waves left me gagging on filthy water. I crested one swell after another. My lungs struggled for air. I felt so cold in the water, but none of it mattered. I kept paddling toward the last place I saw Claire. I was overjoyed when I found her treading water in a small circle, arms outstretched, searching for me. 

My relief catching up to her vanished when I realized she wasn’t swimming in circles of her own free will. She was trapped in the widening maw of a water vortex. I felt nauseous seeing the warnings of the sulfur yellow unfolding before me. Ignoring every instinct of self-preservation, I swam toward the thin, trying all the while to remember if the Boy Scouts ever taught me how to escape a whirlpool. This knowledge was forgotten if I ever learned it in the first place.

The current pulled me and everything else floating on the surface downstream, except the whirlpool and the things trapped in it. They stayed more or less in one place. Paddling headfirst toward the watery spiral, I knew I only had one chance to grab Claire before it was too late, and I was carried away by a current too strong to fight. 

I was nearly abreast of the whirlpool when I screamed for Claire to take my hand. I saw the terror in her eyes as she sank deeper into the murky brown vortex. 

“Grab my hand!”

I thrust a hand over the edge, into the deepening chasm of air. 

Claire wrapped her cold, slender fingers around my hand.

I gripped her hand and tried with all my might to haul her over the edge of the whirlpool, but I was caught in the current. My soaked clothes dragged against the churning water, tugging me downstream while Claire and the vortex anchored me to that spot. 

I kicked and paddled to no avail. The whirlpool sucked Claire deeper into it’s depths dragging me with her. I took a breath before I was pulled once more beneath the opaque waves. 

I thrashed against the water, kicked wildly, did anything I could think of. It was all useless, but I couldn’t give up. I was going to get us both out of this, even if it meant filling my lungs with water. There had to be a way out of this. I just had to think. There had to be something I could do.

That’s when I felt Claire loosen her grip. An instant before her fingers slipped through mine, I realized what she was doing. I screamed for her to stop but it was useless. The current ripped me from the spot. The muted rumble of thunder sounded overhead as a lightning strike illuminated the murky water. A sepia silhouette was the last I saw of Claire before she was swallowed by the river.

 

 I didn’t know they made coffins out of cardboard. Waiting in line to pay my respects, I wondered how long the coroner spent trying to get the serene expression on her face, one she never wore in life. A surprising number of our classmates were there under the guise of paying their respects, but I suspected some were just there to gawk. I felt eyes on me as they stole glances. Some whispered. 

When it was my turn at the coffin, I looked down at Claire’s pale body propped up on those lacey white pillows. My vision blurred with tears I couldn’t let myself shed. Claire’s mom glared at me. I’d never met her before, but her hateful eyes never left me as I said goodbye to my best friend. Walking away, my head drooped, I heard Claire’s dad whispering something about me loudly. I was glad I was too far to hear much of what he was saying. Even with the wide berth I gave him, I smelled the beer on his breath. 

I didn’t watch them bury her. I just couldn’t. As soon as my parents parked our car at home, I ran to my bike and rode off. Claire would have loved riding her bike on a day like that, even if it was overcast. I felt staring eyes on me once again as I pedaled through town. Whether anyone was actually paying attention to me as I wound through the familiar streets, I can’t say.  I just knew I didn’t want to be around anyone. I raced along, thinking for a bittersweet moment I might turn my head and see Claire on her bike, about to overtake me, but I knew it wouldn’t happen. My town flickered by in a blur as I lost control of the hot tears pouring from my eyes. I wasn’t having an asthma attack, but I couldn’t breathe as I sped down the river road.

Entry 1 | Entry 2 | Entry 3 | Entry 4 | Entry 5 | Final Entry

The advancing wall of sand overtook the thing and slammed the lift into the cliff. The impact ripped the railing from my hands and flung me to the opposite toe board. Large rocks broke free of the precipice, pummeling the steel grating under us, destroying forgotten equipment and warping the floor. Steel cables rang against each other as the lift swung in the fury of the wind. Sand blotted out our glimpse of the coming dawn over the valley rim. Our surroundings were reverted once more to brown globs: the beat-up railings, the ruined equipment, even Sam.

I struggled to regain my footing and move to Sam’s end of the platform when the lift shifted abruptly, canting over toward the valley. I was knocked to the floor a second time. Rocks and tools skittered across the grating before spilling over the edge. That’s when slender black fingers wrapped around the toe board, pulling the thing with them. It was the first look I had of its gaunt, inhuman face. Blood dripped from its fanged teeth. Ashen, aged skin clung to its body like wrinkled paper, and strips of black linen hung from its body. It unleashed a blood-chilling scream as it fixed its sunken, glazed eyes on me. The platform rocked level again as it hauled itself over the edge. Sam fell, crab-crawling backwards, trying to get away from the thing. I felt around for a weapon, anything sharp or heavy enough to bludgeon the thing with, but all I found was my walking stick.

I got to my feet, the thorn in my knee forgotten as I advanced on the thing and swung. I aimed for its head, hoping to land a lucky blow before it found its footing. My stick bowed as it made contact. The thing’s eyes glowed a faint red as it fixed its gaze on me. I whacked the side of its head with a second swing. It wasn’t enough. The thing had a foothold on the platform and towered over me. Before I could take another swing, it backhanded the side of my face. My knees buckled beneath me and my skull bounced off the steel floor. My vision blurred. Sounds came in soft, muffled tones: the thing’s screeches, Sam’s cries, even the storm. Before the cloudy haze heralding unconsciousness overtook me, Sam’s silhouette emerged from the wall of sand behind the thing and swung a shovel into the back side of its head.

My surroundings went black. I felt no sensation as I drifted through the no-man’s land between death and unconsciousness. I wasn't sure I was going to wake up. I thought of my body, a useless heap lying on the platform. I thought of the thing, coming back to finish me off. In my stupor, I wondered if it would be painful when it happened.

That’s when a hand touched my shoulder, much smaller and more gentle than the thing’s. It shook urgently, like a mother trying to rouse a child from sleep. A familiar voice whispered to me from far away. I could hardly believe my eyes when I turned and saw Claire kneeling beside me, still wearing the plain white dress they’d buried her in. Her long, black hair shrouded her pale face, and she wore a sad smile. She gave me a final shake, more tangible than the others. She leaned closer, and her words were clear as she spoke in that earnest voice I’d once known so well.

“She needs you, Derrick! You have to get up!”

I started awake. My arm was frigid where she had touched me. New pain coursed through my body. The side of my head was warm and wet. My brain felt like it’d just rattled around my skull. I didn’t have time to care. Sam was trapped at the far end of the platform with nowhere left to run. She screamed helplessly as the thing stalked toward her, waiting to strike.

I forced myself to my feet. I had to do something, anything to buy Sam a chance to escape. My eyes rested on an army-style folding shovel. Splinters dug into my palms as I gripped the cracked wooden handle in white knuckles. Time slowed as I hobbled over the debris littering the swaying platform. I hefted my weapon over my shoulder, ready to bring the spade over the thing’s skull like a splitting maul. But before I could swing, it lunged at Sam and sank its teeth between her neck and shoulder. She let out a deafening, bloodcurdling scream and clawed at the thing's face and neck before her hands fell limply to her sides.

I brought the shovel down with all my strength. The thing’s neck buckled unnaturally under the spade’s blow before it snapped its head back toward me. It abandoned Sam’s convulsing body and turned to face me. I hit it again, and again, and again. The handle cracked with each blow, but the dark figure continued advancing toward me, seeming more irritated than hurt. The final swing I took at the thing’s neck ended with a loud snap. The shovel’s metal head clanged to the steel grate floor. I was left clutching the jagged remains of its wooden handle. Sam's blood dripped from the thing’s fangs as it approached me, lowering its body like a cat about to pounce. I looked over its hunched shoulder to the other end of the platform. Seeing Sam lie there motionless, dying, or perhaps already dead, broke something inside me. I abandoned any sense of self-preservation and charged. I yelled and lunged head-long at the thing, aiming the splintered tip of the handle at its throat.

It never made contact. Beams of sunlight cascading over the edge of the cliff, illuminated its head and shoulders. It shrieked as plumes of black smoke poured from its upper body before crouching low, trying to get away from the light. I stepped back, shocked as it fell forward and collapsed to its hands and knees. Emaciated hands clawed desperately for the toe board. I realized it was trying to throw itself into the sandstorm raging below and escape into the darkness of the valley.

I gripped the wooden handle and fell on top of the thing. It shrieked and clawed at me as I plunged the broken handle through the back of its ribcage. I put all of my weight onto the handle. Ribs snapped. Organs and blood squelched as I worked the crude spear through its body. More black smoke, reeking of resin and incense poured from the wound in its back as the handle lodged between the rectangular holes of the platform floor. Through the grating, I saw the thing trying to pull the splintered handle pinning it down the rest of the way through, but it was useless. Its efforts to free itself devolved into a fit of rage. It flailed at everything within reach as the lift raised it higher and sunlight illuminated it entirely. I clambered away, collapsing next to Sam as dust and black smoke consumed its thrashing body. I covered my ears against its deafening wails of pain but never took my eyes off the grotesque transformation in front of me. With a final deafening scream, it burst into flames and moved no more.

Everything went silent. In an instant, the storm died. The wall of sand fell to the valley floor as if it were a massive curtain dropped by invisible hands. I scooted across the steel grating closer to Sam. Her breathing came in short ragged gasps. Her eyes were dull, lifeless, much like they were after the scorpion attack. Most concerning was the blood pooling around the fanged bite marks between her clavicle and neck.

“Sam! Sam! Stay with me!”

I ripped a rag from my tattered shirt and covered her wound. She inhaled sharply as I applied pressure. Her body trembled, probably from shock. I tried convincing myself she hadn’t lost that much blood, but I knew deep down this was impossible for anyone to know. I felt my fingers around Sam’s wound were growing weak. A wave of nausea overwhelmed me. My surroundings became bright, oversaturated. I fought to stay conscious, taking long, deep breaths.

Just as I was beginning to worry how long I would be able to offer what little help I was giving, the lift’s mechanical brakes shuddered. I turned from Sam and the valley and looked to the other side of the platform at the top of the plateau. I shielded my eyes against the sunlight I thought I’d never see again. Emergency vehicles encircled the site, along with the trucks left behind when our expedition first arrived to the valley.

Hot tears rolled uncontrollably down my face as I realized we were saved. The next moments were a blur of shouted orders in Arabic as paramedics loaded us onto stretchers. Through all that chaos, I heard Elaine’s voice calling out to me. I looked and saw her, bright red blood covering her wrists and gloved hands as she saw to a group of five or six others from our team. Sam and I hadn’t been the only ones to make it out. I realized this as the expedition’s nurse approached me. The nausea returned as rescue officers carried me to one of the waiting emergency vehicles. My vision was engulfed in white clouds when Elaine got to me.

“Derrick! Is there anyone else down there? Did you come across any other survivors?”

“I don’t know,” was all I could manage. Tears blurred my already cloudy vision. My voice sounded distant, slurred, like I’d had too much to drink. Elaine gave me a concerned look and muttered something I couldn’t understand to one of the paramedics before laying her hands on my shoulder.

“You’re going to be just fine, you and Sam both. What’s important is that you take it easy. I have to go back and see to the first wave of evacuees.” She said all of this slowly, enunciating each word carefully, as if she thought I wouldn’t understand. I was about to rest my head on the stretcher when I noticed one of the khaki-uniformed men carrying a red cylinder toward the lift. I didn’t think much of it until I saw him pull a pin from the silvery handle and aim a rubber hose at the flaming corpse on the lift. I fought the restraints holding me down and screamed.

“No! Stop! Don't put it out! Let it burn!”

The rescue officers looked at me like I was insane. They didn’t understand me, but I screamed louder for them to stop. I thrashed against the straps holding me down. I only succeeded at causing the stretcher bearers to nearly drop me. In the middle of my cries, I felt a pinprick in my arm. The last thing I saw before I went under was the fire extinguisher’s white burst smothering the flaming remains of the thing’s slumped body.

I don’t remember much after that. Rescue vehicles transported us to a clearing, where a helicopter airlifted us to a hospital in Al Qasr. Sam was in critical condition. So much so that after receiving 3 units of blood, she was airlifted again, this time to Cairo. They seemed less concerned about me, although it was discovered that my head bouncing off the platform resulted in a moderate concussion and a cut that needed 8 stitches. My most vivid memory from Al Qasr was when they pulled the acacia thorn from under my dislocated kneecap. It was the size of an 8-penny nail when the doctor dropped it into a kidney-shaped metal dish.  

I spent two days in the Al Qasr hospital, waiting for my transfer to Cairo. When I was awake, I worried a lot about Sam. None of the hospital staff could give me any update on her condition. The only other diversion I had was my field notebook. I awoke that first day to find it and my other personal effects in a white plastic bag on my bedside table. Flipping through its pages, I looked over excavation notes, artifact inventories, and tomb sketches. In spite of everything, it was still legible, if a bit dusty. I stopped at the page with the cuneiform rubbing from the sarcophagus lid. Just the sight of the white, wedge-like symbols against the graphite backdrop sent a chill down my spine. Only morbid curiosity about what exactly it was James resurrected, kept me from ripping it out and tearing it into confetti. Looking over the remaining blank pages, I thought of the ones who hadn’t been as lucky as Sam and me. There weren’t more than a handful of other survivors with Elaine on the plateau. I thought about Jorge, Felix, and everyone else I worked with in that valley. I wondered if any of them were still alive, hiding, waiting for rescue. I spent a lot of time filling the notebook pages with the events leading up to the incident. Many of them are the words I’m typing now.

The ten-hour ambulance ride to Cairo was exhausting. Each bump along the desert highway sent dull throbs of pain through my bandaged knee. The only window was the ambulance’s back door, and after leaving Al Qasr, it was rare to see anything but the black ribbon of asphalt retreating into the desert behind us. I didn’t bother trying to write anything; the road was too bumpy for that.  Without much else to do, I fell into a restless sleep and didn’t stir until they unloaded me at Cairo. Even then, I was only half-awake as I moved to my new hospital room. There was no bedside table in my new room, so I tucked my notebook under my pillow. Before going back to sleep, I resolved to find Sam the next day.

The next morning, I awoke to find Professor Ossendorf on the couch in my hospital room. Portly as ever, he leaned heavily on his cane even as he sat.

“Derrick! How nice it is to have you back!”

“Professor,” I said by way of greeting as I rolled to face him.

“No, none of that now. We have no need of formalities, not after all you’ve been through.”

“Alright,” I said. "Do you where Sam is?”

“Oh yes, Samantha. She’s right here in this building. Terrible business what happened to her, terrible.” The man’s jowls jiggled as he shook his head back and forth. “Rest assured, she’s been well taken care of. I must congratulate you for bringing her back through that dreadful storm. I’m afraid I can’t abide by your treatment of that mummy, however.” The old man screwed up his face, as if in.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You may want to reach out to your embassy,” he continued. “Are you familiar with the expression of being beyond reproach?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“There are some sources who assert you and Samantha were among the last to be seen with James, a valued member of the Egyptological society. God have mercy on him, he’s now a missing person. And that’s to say nothing of the mummy you set aflame.”

I realized I had no idea what sort of man I was talking to. There was something just beyond that grandfatherly charm that, a certain glimmer in his eye that suggested someone baiting you, like a lawyer leading a witness into a trap. I stopped talking.

“We’ve already confiscated the memory cards from Samantha’s camera as evidence," he went on. "If you have any of your own, you’ll find per the agreement you signed at orientation, they are still property of the Ministry of Antiquities, as are any working papers, notes, and so forth.”

I felt the hard cover of my notebook under the back of my head and gave the man a hard look.

“Everything I’ve got is in there,” I nodded to the bag at the foot of my bed. “Take a look.”

“I already have,” Ossendorf said, rising from his spot with the help of his cane. “Just as an FYI, you and Samantha are under strict orders to remain within this hospital. There are police outside to see to it you both remain here. I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s an inquest once the Authorities are through with their investigation.”

“Is that right?” I scowled.

“Yes, that is right. At the very least, I shouldn’t be surprised if you were both barred from re-entering the country.” With that, Ossendorf turned to leave, and I was once again alone in my hospital room.

After a small breakfast, I forced myself onto a pair of crutches and began navigating the halls. I took my notebook with me. It was too risky to leave it behind for Ossendorf or anyone else to find. I was in pain as I hobbled along, but I had to bear it. I needed to see Sam. I had no idea where to look, but luckily for me, the hospital staff were willing to talk, and there aren’t many redheads in Egypt. One of the nurses directed me to a room a couple of floors above my own. The blinds were drawn, but her door was cracked wide enough for me to crutch through.

Sam was asleep in her hospital bed. Wires and IV tubes snaked around her in the bed. A heartbeat monitor crested and dropped, several times faster than the rise and fall of her breathing. Fluorescent lights gave her skin a yellowed look, except for the black and brown bruises creeping from beneath the edges of the surgical dressing on her shoulder. She looked oddly peaceful.

I was debating whether to come back later or wait for her to wake up when her eyelids parted. Her bright blue eyes drifted to the doorway, and she seemed to awaken fully as she noticed me.

“Derrick?” She said, through cracked, dry lips. Tears welled in her eyes as I hurried across the short distance between us. My aluminum crutches clattered to the hospital floor as I abandoned them to grab her in an embrace. I don’t think I have ever felt as happy as I did having her back in my arms.

Over the next week or so, we spent a lot of time together in that room. Feelings of mutual affection aside, we needed to plan our next move. Sam couldn’t believe my fieldnotes survived the ordeal, let alone that I’d managed to keep them from Ossendorf, not until I showed her the worn green cover tucked carefully inside my hospital gown. Sam was, in her own words, “chuffed” to learn what it was the expedition uncovered. We both wanted the cuneiform translated, but agreed that sending an email from a hospital computer was too risky. Texting a picture to Sam’s friend was also out of the question because we both lost our phones while evacuating the valley. Over a hundred miles from anywhere with service, it was amazing how quickly they’d been relegated to the status of paperweights and forgotten in the bottom of our bags.

“We’ll just have to have Jen meet us at the airport," Sam huffed impatiently. "You pass through London on your way home, don’t you?”

As it turned out, I did, and we met with her friend Jen much sooner than either of us planned. Foreign Service officers roused us from our sleep one morning and informed us we would be departing the country and, until further notice, would be barred from re-entry. The Egyptian Authorities didn’t know how to explain the deaths of over 20 foreign nationals conducting an archaeological dig, but they knew neither Sam nor I were behind it. They also knew better than to dredge up more trouble for themselves searching for answers to something so inexplicable. They were content to sweep the whole thing under the rug, and file the deaths as the result of a natural disaster. As for our banishment, I suspect Ossendorf had a hand in that. He may not have held much sway in criminal investigations, but his position within the Ministry of Antiquities came with a certain amount of influence over the Egyptian Passport and Immigration Authority. I can't help but think he blamed us somehow for James and the loss of the mummy, circumstantial as his evidence against us was. Sam was livid. She wouldn’t speak to me or anyone else as the Foreign Service Officers from the United Kingdom and United States took us to the airport. They accompanied us through check-in until we boarded our flights, sending us off with strict instructions not to return to Egypt.

Neither of us said much on the flight from Cairo to London. Sam let me have the window seat. She was too bitter to take a final look at the land she’d staked so much of her academic career on. It was just my luck it was too overcast to see much of anything as the pilot brought us to cruising altitude. If you told me before I came on the expedition that I’d never see the Sphinx or Great Pyramid, let alone the Egyptian Museum, I would have been disappointed. As I sat holding Sam’s hand on the flight to London, I considered that I’d seen enough.

I only had about an hour for my layover at Heathrow Airport. Sam’s friend Jenny, the friend who studied Cuneiform, was there to meet us as we disembarked. Sam left me limping with my TSA-approved cane as she raced to meet her friend. Bright-eyed and bubbly, Jenny's energy was contagious. Sam wasn’t quite back to old self, but I caught a glimmer of her from the night we first met in her eyes and in the lilt of her voice.

“Sam! I’m so glad you’re back!” Sam winced as Jenny wrapped her in a tight hug. “Oh. Sorry luv. I thought you were on the mend.”

“I am,” Sam said. “I’m just a bit sore, that's all. Jen, this is Derrick. I met him during the dig.”

“Charmed!” Jen said, taking my hand. “Samantha’s told me so much about you! It’s a real shame though, isn’t it? You having to jet back to America so soon? Just imagine coming all this way and not seeing any of the sights.”

“I’m sure I’ll have a chance another time,” I said, forcing a tight-lipped smile. “Anyway, if you wouldn’t mind translating that inscription for us, I'm afraid I don’t have very much time.”

Jen’s face lit up, and she dug a laptop from her backpack. I pulled the well-used field notebook from my cargo pocket and opened it to the page with the sarcophagus rubbing. Sam and I looked at each other as I handed it over. Jen seemed to recognize it instantly.

“This one is quite common, actually. It’s an incantation against Lamashtu.”

“Who?” I asked.

“She’s a central figure in Mesopotamian demonology,” Jen explained. “She was said to cause all manner of misfortunes, seemingly for no reason other than her own vindictiveness.”

“Like what?” Sam asked.

“It’s all just myth and superstition.” Jen shrugged. “She was blamed for any number of things: diseases, killing plant life, infesting waterways, drinking the blood of men. It’s really quite fascinating. A lot of modern vampire lore can actually be traced right back to her.”

Sam and I exchanged an uneasy look.

“You mentioned this was an incantation against the demon,” I began.

“Demoness,” Jen corrected.

“Right… What was it meant to do?”

Jen glanced back and forth between her laptop and the notebook, deciphering the rubbing. Finally, she shook her head.

“It looks fairly typical for this sort of thing. All it’s really meant to do is ward off her spirit. These were sometimes made into amulets for people to wear for protection.”

The conversation came to an abrupt end as Sam and I stared at the graphite rubbing. I  thought of it nestled in my cargo pocket as we fought the thing and had to wonder if it had anything to do with us not ending up like the others.

“Anyway, Sam you’re mum and Dad will be along shortly. We’re to meet them for an early tea.”

Sam shot her friend a wordless look, and Jen returned a small smile.

“Well, it was so nice to meet you Derrick,” she said, taking my hand once more. “I’ll just leave you two alone to say your goodbyes.” With that, Jen walked away from the terminal, looking over her shoulder once to give Sam a playful smile.

Once Jen was out of earshot, we were left in an awkward silence of our own. I exchanged sad smiles with Sam.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye for now,” I said, offering Sam a farewell hug.

“You really don’t have to go,” Sam said, wrapping an arm over my shoulder and looking up at me. “Won’t you stay? Just for a day or two? I’m sure mum and dad would be absolutely thrilled to meet you.”

“I wish I could, but you heard the FSOs at the Airport.”

“What were their exact words?” Sam asked, raising a challenging eyebrow. I thought for a moment.

“We’re… not to return to the land of Egypt?”

“Well, we’re not in Egypt anymore? Are we?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Then I say, what difference does it make? If it’s your ticket you’re worried about, I’m sure Mum and Dad would be happy to help cover the cost for another. It wouldn’t be a bother to them in the slightest, and they’d be happy to let you stay with us. I’m sure.”

Looking into Sam’s eyes, the thought of saying goodbye was suddenly unbearable.

“You know,” I said, feeling a crooked smile spreading over my face. “I’ve always wanted to see the British Museum.”

Entry 1 | Entry 2 | Entry 3 | Entry 4 | Entry 5 | Final Entry

Sand stung our eyes. Sam and I leaned against each other as the windstorm buffeted our clothes. More than once, it nearly knocked us to the ground as we trudged back to camp, coughing up muddy spit every step of the way. The once distant wind grew in intensity, howling through the valley in a deafening shriek before softening back into a prolonged wail. I wondered with dismay where the sun had gone. All we had was the communications tent’s yellow glow to guide our path.

The satellite dish shuddered under the storm’s abuse before snapping off its base and cartwheeling out of sight. Orange tents, still waiting to be taken down, rolled away like strange, geometric tumbleweeds. The terrifying thought we’d been left behind raced through my mind as we burst through the tent’s flapping door and collapsed to the floor.

“Sam? Derrick? Where the hell have you guys been?”

“We had to leave something in the tomb,” I coughed, wiping sand from my watery eyes.

“Hey, stop that. You want to scratch a cornea or somethin’?” Jorge stood from the flickering computer monitor and grabbed something from the table.

He handed me a bottle of water, and I rinsed the gritty sand from my eyes. They still stung as I handed Sam the bottle, but now the chaos unfolding around me was in plain view. Electric lights swayed drunkenly overhead, equipment sat in haphazard piles on the work table, and loose leaves of paper littered the floor. A flatscreen monitor lay on the floor, displaying a fragmented image, while the other sat on the work table, a download bar slowly filling in.

“You guys made it back just in time. Everyone else is in the dining tent getting ready to hike outta this place. The only reason I’m in here is Felix asked me to back up the computer files.”

Sam handed the water bottle back to me, and I took a drink. It tasted just like river water, and I spat the muddy mix from my mouth. Jorge cursed at the computer struggling to transfer files. I got up and helped Sam to her feet. Jorge put on a dust mask and goggles and gestured to a small box beside him.

“There’s extras in there you guys can put on. What took so long anyway? Felix said all you was supposed to do was leave a coin in there. What’d you do? Go into the pit and throw an unwrapping party?”

Sam shot me a glance, her eyes were bloodshot from sleep deprivation and irritated by sand, but she also seemed taken aback. Surprise at Jorge’s halfway right guess aside, she must have understood how it felt to witness something you can’t explain without sounding insane.

“Let’s just say our project officer dropped in on us.”

“So that’s where that jerkoff went. Felix is looking for him, too.”

A pop-up message announced the file transfer was finished, and Jorge unplugged the hard drive. Sam and I masked up and watched him hustle over to the cigar-shaped R.O.V. nestled between the pelican cases and pull a similar hard drive from the tail section of it. He muttered something to the red machine and patted it affectionately before getting back to his feet and stuffing both hard drives into a backpack propped up against the table. He was about to sling it over his shoulders when the lights in the tent faltered before going out entirely.

“Come on, you guys, we gotta get outta here.”

We donned our own goggles and followed. Stepping through the tent’s flapping door, the storm was raging outside with more intensity than ever. Lightning strikes cast a dim light over our surroundings. Thunder followed, muffled by the wind’s fury as the not-so-distant wall of sand clawed at the sky over the valley walls. The lightning had the effect of a slow strobe light as we trundled over the uneven sand toward the dining tent. Shadows of other archaeologists filing hurriedly out of the dining tent, moving with frightened uncertainty, forming a crooked line. One of the forms stopped outside the tent door and ushered the others through. As we got closer, I could tell it was Felix.

“Derrick!” He shouted, “Do you know where James went? I haven’t been able to find him anywhere.”

“He went back into the tomb! Back into the mummy pit!”

“What the hell for?”

My jaw hung agape open under the mask. Condensation already covered my lips as I struggled for words.

“I don’t know.” Felix threw his hands up in defeat.

“We don’t have time to go back for him or anyone else. The storm is closing in faster than we ever expected. Before we lost contact, headquarters said evacuation efforts are being sent to the lifts. We need to get there as fast as we can.”

In the dusty haze over Felix’s shoulder, one of the crew members was walking down the line, pausing at each person for a moment before passing on.

“Here,” Felix said, handing each of us a carabiner. “Fasten these to your belts and hook them to the climbing rope. I don’t want anyone getting lost. Derrick, do you mind bringing up the rear?” The archaeologist paying out the rope reached us and handed my supervisor the knotted end of the line. “It’ll be up to you to make sure no one slips off the line.”

I nodded understanding and hooked my carabiner around my leather belt and through the figure eight knot. Sam took the spot directly in front of me. Jorge found a spot a few people ahead of her. Felix walked ahead, checking everyone’s connection to the lifeline before he was so obscured by dust I couldn’t tell him apart from the jumble of nondescript figures stretching toward the trailhead. I cast a glance over my shoulder at the hateful black cliffs towering over the mouth of the tomb. Sam caught me, and I tried playing it off with a wordless shrug. Till this point, I hadn’t had time to consider what crawled through the serdab and down the mummy pit. I told myself it didn’t matter. I had Sam right in front of me and could protect her if it gave chase. As the rope tugged against my belt, it consoled me knowing we were putting distance between us and that thing.

The dense thicket of acacia trees was nothing like I remembered. The green canopy that shaded us when we blazed a trail to the site was stripped bare by the raging storm. The only thing swaying overhead now were the thorn-covered branches reaching across the narrow path. Wiry underbrush shuddered against each new gust. It was slow progress following the trail as it twisted and wound its way around the worst of the thickets and the crevasses littering the valley floor.

It could be hard to follow at the best of times. With near zero visibility and sand drifts consuming the footworn trail, I had no idea how Felix was able to pick our path forward with any degree of certainty. The last traces of the sun were gone, and the dust in the air transformed our surroundings into itching, muddled shades of browns and tans. Distant figures appeared black. Dim light shined from the team members wearing headlamps, but these were powerless to illuminate anything much farther away than the next person in line. The closest thing to color left in that sepia hell was Sam’s red hair fluttering wildly in front of me.

Occasionally, our rope got tangled or snagged on thorned branches as we navigated around fallen trees. Progress slowed to a barely perceptible crawl as we picked our way through the whipping, thorned branches. In moments like that, while I waited for the line to start moving, my eyes were drawn to the underbrush. Even without leaves, the thickets of acacia saplings and bushes were too dense to see through. The unwanted image of a dark form stalking our procession, similar to the scene in the tomb’s mosaics, flitted through my mind. Near total darkness combined with the constant swaying of the underbrush made this delusion more believable than I cared to admit. I tried ignoring these thoughts, writing them off as my imagination running wild, but my mind would invariably gravitate back to the mummy pit, James’ rituals, and the Ka statue’s glowing eyes. And that was to say nothing of the shadowy form emerging from the Serdab. I witnessed all of this. Try as I might, I couldn’t rationalize any of it away, and bringing up the back of the line, I felt a terrifying sense of vulnerability. If anything followed after us, I was completely exposed.

We trudged on. My lungs burned from the exertion. Condensation seeped from around my mask’s edges, leaving muddy trails down my throat. It was a constant battle, brushing sand from its pleated filter, only for it to clog up again minutes later. I had no idea where we were on the trail. I wondered more than once if we were lost. The wind howled louder. Sam trembled in front of me as the onslaught of wind reached one crescendo after another. My eyes were drawn once more to the underbrush, this time to my left. It wasn’t the random movement of branches tossed by the storm; they shook violently, as if something were moving through them. Sam jerked her head in the same direction; she’d seen it too. She glanced over her shoulder at me and shouted something through her clogged mask. Her words were lost in a useless puff of dust but I saw fear in her eyes as she faced me.

I didn’t have time to respond before we rounded a small bend in the trail and entered a clearing. Oddly, the storm abated for a moment, long enough for me to realize where we were: this was the halfway point. My relief at not being lost faltered when the rope went slack. For a moment, I thought it was another fallen tree blocking our path, until the rope went completely limp. I frowned and stepped to the side to get a better look at what stopped us. Thoughts of escape being close at hand were suddenly dashed. An icy chill shot through my veins when I caught sight of the black humanoid figure standing in Felix’s headlamp. The thing towered over him in his trembling headlamp. The lifeline went taut once again as the team members closest to Felix bolted in different directions. They were trying to flee, but only succeeded in getting tangled in the lifeline, frantically trying to unclasp themselves. Felix was left, frozen in terror when the thing moved.

It closed the gap between them in clumsy, rapid steps. Felix screamed over the wailing storm as the thing lifted him from his feet and sank its teeth into his throat. Red mist hung in the air as it came down on the silenced man’s convulsing body. It all happened so quickly. The members at the front of our party panicked, jerking against the rope now anchored to a dead man, trying to get away. Some stumbled over themselves, others got tangled in the rope. I grasped for my carabiner, not wanting to be trampled by the wave of fleeing archaeologists. I unclasped it from my belt and dropped the carabiner.

“Sam! Unfasten yourself!”

I shouted, but my words were lost as the storm’s wails regained their fury. Sam stood in front of me, frozen in horror. I grabbed her by the back of her belt and pulled her behind me, catching a glimpse of her terrified face. I grabbed the rope and tried to pull the end through, only for the figure eight knot to snag in the opening of Sam’s carabiner. I snatched the climbing device and started loosening its locking sleeve.

“Sam! Get off the line! We need-”

My words were cut short as panicked team members slammed into me. I was knocked to the ground and had to roll to avoid the stampede of trampling feet. Before I could regain my footing, I saw Sam’s mop of red hair, being carried away by the mob of fleeing team members. A painfully familiar pang of guilt swept through me at the sight of her outstretched hand. Somewhere behind me, the thing’s inhuman shrieks echoed through the valley and I was left to cope with the fact there was nothing I could do.

Glancing over my shoulder, the thing pounced onto one of the fallen archaeologists. It was only a matter of time before it came after me. I had to get to Sam, but seeing the dig team bottlenecked, fighting each other to get out of the clearing, I knew I didn’t stand a chance of making it through the only exit. No, not the only exit.

I scrambled to my feet and raced toward the tree line. Worries of hidden snakes and thorned foliage vanished in the wake of something immeasurably worse as I shielded my face and leapt into the thick brush surrounding the clearing. Sharp thorns ripped my clothes, pierced my skin, but with the thing screeching in the clearing once more, I couldn’t stop. I tried weaving around scrub brush and dodging tree limbs, but it was useless. I felt the distinct sensation of slamming my knee into the branch of a fallen tree, but I kept going. I don’t know how far I ran. In my mind, I had the vague idea of circling back to the path, avoiding the thing, but these thoughts were interrupted by the odd sensation of weightlessness, similar to when I lowered myself into the mummy’s pit. Jagged stone walls enveloped me, and I realized I was falling.

I don’t know how long I floated in darkness. It might have been minutes or hours, but slowly the dream-like haze shifted into shades of brown. I felt the sickening sensation once more of sinking through water. In the distance, a slender black figure crept into view. My movements were slow as I fought against the water, trying to flee from the thing. That’s when a distant voice calling my name came to me, over and over, like a whisper in my ear.

“Derrick… Derrick… Derrick!”

The sensation of water, real water pouring over my face, jolted me back to consciousness. I awoke to a shadowy figure hunched over me. I cried out in terror and kicked myself back away from it. Stabbing pain shot through my right knee. I yelled louder. That’s when a bandaged hand covered my mouth, and I heard a familiar voice.

“Be quiet! That thing is still lurking around up there,” Sam said.

My eyes adjusted to the scant moonlight, and I got a better look at Sam and her tattered clothes. I rested my head onto the bed of gravel and sand beneath me in relief.

“Where are we?”

“Remember those fissures they briefed us about back in Cairo? Well, you seem to have found one.”

I winced at the sharp pain in my knee as I sat up. Feeling out the rest of my body, I was surprised my knee was the only serious injury I’d received running through the thicket. The slightest movement or the least pressure sent sharp pain through the joint.

“Son of a Bitch!” I whispered through gritted teeth. Sam took one of my arms and turned it over in her hands, removing the occasional thorn.

“As for finding you, it was quite simple, really. I saw you run this way after I was carried off by the fleeing mob. I broke free from them and hid behind some fallen trees until that thing moved along. After that, I stayed behind the tree line until I came across your path from the clearing. You left behind quite a trail of broken sticks and branches. Anyway, I followed them and, well, here we are. I’m so glad you’re alright.”

I winced as Sam pulled a small thorn from my wrist, before eyeing my pant leg’s blood-soaked knee. I wasn’t ready to see the damage. I turned my attention to the fissure’s jagged rim about 10 or 12 feet above us. A sparse trickle of sand and the occasional small rock blew over the edge. For the first time, I noticed the far-off sound of the sand storm.

“Is the storm over?”

“Not quite, no. But it has dissipated quite a lot.” Sam moved on from my arms to my legs. Instinctively, I pulled away as she rested a probing hand on my injured knee.

“Stop that! I’m trying to help.”

Her eyes met mine for a brief moment as she gathered handfuls of my pant leg on either side of its torn knee. I gritted my teeth and looked away as she ripped the hole in the fabric to reveal my battered leg. A large thorn protruded from the underside of my knee cap. I didn’t like looking at it. I could write off the bruised, purple appearance as a trick of the moon’s pale light, but the swelling and visibly dislocated kneecap were unbearable.

Sam insisted on pulling out the thorn. I fought back cries of pain with each unsuccessful attempt. When her hands were too slick with blood to try again, I suggested snapping the thorn off where it stuck out. Sam reluctantly agreed and wrapped the area with cloth torn from my shirt.

“F-ing hell,” she whispered. “It doesn’t seem like anything is broken, really. Do you think you can put any weight on it? Maybe if I got you a stick or something?”

It was agony just moving that leg. I couldn’t imagine walking anywhere on it.

“I’m not sure I need to go anywhere,” I said.

“Why ever not? You can’t stay here, not with that thing on the loose!”

“Whatever it is, I’m no worse off down here. Besides, it’s not like you need me slowing you down.” Sam frowned, obviously dissatisfied with my answer.

“We don’t even know what that thing is,” I said.

“What difference does it make? It came from the tomb, didn’t it?”

“That doesn’t tell us anything about what it is! Hell, the Egyptians probably didn’t even know. You said it yourself, the Ka Statue didn’t even resemble Egyptian art from that period. And why would they hide it under the floor tiles?”

Sam sat across from me and frowned.

“I can’t begin to guess at why they bothered hiding it so well. And I did say that about the Ka Statue, didn’t I?” Sam bit her lip and looked as if she were weighing something in her mind, deciding whether or not to share. Finally, she broke the silence. “I’ve had a number of strange dreams lately, nightmares really. They’ve all been so vivid, as if I were there in the tomb when they placed the sarcophagus inside and sealed it. The high priests were frightened of it. I heard them whispering words of the underworld. The more I think of it, the more I’m reminded of Sekhmet, their goddess of wrath. I can’t believe I never made the connection earlier. After all, she’s often portrayed as-”

Somewhere in the valley above, the shrill cry of someone being devoured echoed. I didn’t recognize their voice. No one sounds like themselves, not when they’re being eaten. Sam scooted close to me under the cover of the fissure wall and clung to me as the screams for help went unanswered and ceased. Neither of us spoke. Not for several minutes.

“You said that thing is like Sekhmet,” I said, breaking the silence at last. “How can we ward it off? Or maybe kill it?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Sam whispered, tears rimming her eyes. “Their priests would have used incantations, maybe offered sacrifices, but they would have balked at a mortal killing one of their gods.”

We debated amongst ourselves, weighing the pros and cons of each course of action. Staying in the fissure seemed safer than dodging whatever was lurking in the valley above. Sam pointed out that even if we could wait out the storm, there was no way of knowing when someone would come looking for us, or if the thing would move on after picking off the rest of the dig team. She said moving would only get harder for me as the adrenaline from my injury wore off. I didn’t buy her logic, but glancing at the fresh wrappings on my knee, already soaked with blood, I realized time might not be on my side. If I kept bleeding like this, I would be dead either way. Sam insisted, continuing toward the extraction point was our only chance. Reluctantly, I agreed.

Sam fashioned a crude brace for my knee from sticks littering the bottom of the fissure. It wasn’t easy, but she helped me to my feet. Resting weight on the joint was painful, but bearable.

“There now, that’s not so bad then, is it?”

“I guess not,” I lied. I took a few test strides and tried not to wince at the stabbing pain radiating from my knee. Sam frowned, looking into my eyes, and I could tell she knew the truth.

“That’s fab,” she said, forcing an unconvincing smile across her own face. “Let’s crack on, shall we?”

With that, she walked the short distance to a rope dangling into the fissure and climbed up, pausing briefly near the top to peek over the edge. Once she was sure the coast was clear, Sam hauled herself over the edge. I limped to the rope, pondering its length before coiling it once around my good leg. It was slow climbing with only one leg to aid my ascent. Letting the injured leg hang limp was the closest thing I’d felt so far to actual pain relief. A couple feet from the top, Sam reached over the edge and took my hand before pulling me from the fissure.

I collapsed on my back, panting from the exertion of the climb. The moon lit our surroundings in a blue indigo light. The sandstorm’s wail had diminished to a distant, droning whistle. Visibility was dramatically better than before the encounter with the thing, but mites of airborne sand still irritated my eyes. I remembered the goggles hanging from my neck and put them back on.

Glancing in the direction of the clearing. It wasn’t an obvious trail, but you could tell pretty easily where I’d made my escape by all the trampled sticks and snapped branchlets, dangling from their bark from acacia trees. The clearing beyond looked blue in the moonlight. Drifts of sand slowly swallowed abandoned gear. I shuddered when I noticed Felix’s body. His arms spread out at unnatural angles. Black sand pooled around his head where he bled out.

“Do you think we should go check his body?” I asked.

“What ever for?”

“Maybe he had a Satellite phone or a GPS on him. Maybe he had something we could use to call for help.” Sam looked pensive in the moonlight and glanced at the short distance between us and his corpse.

“Alright, I’ll run out there and check. You stay here.”

“I’m not letting you go out there by yourself.”

“You are if you want the sat phone. I won’t be out there more than a minute.”

I didn’t say anything else. I just watched as Sam picked a path through the underbrush, being careful not to step on sticks, snap branches, or make any kind of noise that might give her away. I listened intently for any sign of movement as she dashed across the sand and knelt next to Felix’s body. Sam shuddered as she laid hands on his corpse before turning him over and rifling through his pockets. She pulled out something that glowed green before rushing back to the tree line. She shuddered as she dropped to the ground beside me in our hiding spot.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Sam said, breathing heavily. “God, he was like a dried-up husk.” That I could tell she wanted to put the experience behind her, so I didn’t press the matter. Instead, I waited until she broke the silence.

“No sat phone, I’m afraid. But he did have this.” Sam held out a yellow and black GPS. Coagulated blood covered the screen before she wiped it off, revealing an SOS signal was transmitting. A timer indicated the call went out before the dig team ever left camp. I frowned before navigating to another screen. The map was crude. I was disappointed by its complete lack of topography. This meant more fissures could be hidden along the way. But there were waypoints marking the path to the lifts with enough clarity for us to find our way out while avoiding them.

“Here, I thought you might use this.” Sam interrupted, handing me an acacia stick with most of the thorns broken off. “Now let’s get moving.”

I nodded and followed her through the dense underbrush. Thorns left fresh scratches on our arms and legs. Every step was pain. Sand in the air was more of a nuisance at this point than anything. It may have been the middle of the night, but it was easier blazing a new trail for ourselves through the thickets than it had been following the tug from the lifeline with the storm in full force. I thought of Felix and how easily the thing had picked him off his feet and killed him. It had done that while it was hungry and weak. Skulking along under the cover of the acacia trees, I had to wonder what it was capable of now that it had killed at least three of us.

Sometimes, the only way forward was to crawl. Somehow, this was more painful than just limping along with my walking stick. I became gradually aware of the blood trickling past Sam’s field dressing and pooling in my boot. Sam insisted we stop long enough to add more makeshift bandages. There wasn’t much left of my own tattered shirt sleeves, so she tore strips from her own. We thought it might be a good idea to pack the wound, but it wasn’t. As soon as Sam pressed the wadded-up cloth against the back side of the thorn, my vision went white. I ground my teeth together to stifle screams of pain, but it was useless. Sam must have realized this was doing more harm than good because she abandoned this method and just wrapped the wound tighter.

We kept going. We encountered the occasional fissures, but none as abrupt as the first one. Trees and brush usually gave way to rock and sand well before the cavernous plunge. Luckily, most were small enough to navigate around without much trouble. There was one, however, that was too large for that. I remembered it from the LIDAR scans of the valley, mainly due to its unusual size. It would have taken us a mile out of our way just to get around it, and we were forced to skirt the edge between it and the trail. Just as we were in that narrow squeeze, barely wide enough for a car to pass through between the open trail and the drop to the bottom, I caught the unwelcome sound of wind picking up. Foliage rustled and branches snapped. Sam shot me a terrified look as the storm gained intensity and kicked up fresh dust. We dropped immediately behind the scant cover offered by the trunk of a fallen tree. Only then did I realize the movement wasn’t the thing coming after us; it was on the other side of the trail. I heard labored breathing, muttered curses. My stomach sank when Jorge burst from the brush across from our hiding spot and tripped onto the path. He was trying to get back to his feet when the tops of the trees behind him bowed under the strength of the storm ripping through the valley once more. I wanted to call out to him. Yell for him to hide, to run.

I never got the chance. A skeletal, black arm reached through the thickets and caught hold of Jorge by the ankle and dragged him screaming back into the thicket. The wind howled with renewed ferocity. Before sand completely blotted out my view in the moonlight, I caught a glimpse of a red, bloody mist in the air as the thing ravaged Jorge’s body. Sam and I lay there, pinned down by terror as a blood-curdling scream reverberated through the dusty air and howling wind. We were powerless to do anything but cower and listen to the thing devouring our friend.

 Tree limbs cracked as the thing abandoned its kill and retreated deeper into the darkness on the opposite side of the trail. It wasn’t until the wind’s howls died down to an occasional gust that either of us moved. Muddy tears streamed from the corners of Sam’s goggles as she looked at me with terrified, blue eyes. We stared at one another through the dim light before wordlessly agreeing to move on.

We crept along more cautiously now, only standing when there was no other way to clear an obstacle. Every snapped twig or rustled branch made us freeze. The sharp pain I felt when Sam first rescued me was replaced by a dull, persistent throb. Lightheadedness came and went as I struggled along. I had no idea how much further we had to go. More than once, the echoed cries of another team member, followed by the shrieks from that thing, spurred us on.

Eventually, the thickets thinned out enough for us to see the trail. My joy realizing we were almost at the end melded with feelings of unease at the sight of abandoned personal effects and the glimmer of dried blood beneath dwindling moonlight.

Tumbling through the last of the thorned bushes, we found ourselves under what was left of a crooked acacia tree. Like the others in the valley, its canopy was largely denuded of any foliage, but it still provided some concealment. Gazing through the tree’s thorny branches, I could hardly believe my eyes: the lift platform. It was similar in size and appearance to the scaffolding you might find hanging from high rises in a city for washing windows, but this one’s steel grated floor rested on the valley floor, waiting. I was almost more excited by the yellow glow of truck headlights shining from over the cliff’s edge. We’d parked the expedition vehicles up there after driving through the desert to the valley; someone else must have made it out, or rescue efforts had arrived. I didn’t care which, because the only thing standing between us and the help we so desperately needed was about 100 yards of sand and loose gravel.

We sat in silence for a moment. A few small dust devils skittered through this final clearing. Sam gazed appraisingly at the small distance ahead of us. Her eyes that brimmed with excitement watching Lawrence of Arabia, that stole glances at me across the campfire and laughed with her too-big smile stared emotionlessly ahead. Since leaving Felix’s body, neither of us had ventured from the cover of the trees. Now it was our only option.

“I think we should make a run for it,” Sam said.

“Do you know how to run the lift?” I asked, glancing disdainfully at my knee. She looked at me, incredulous.

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I paused. “Just, whatever happens, I want you to keep running, alright? Don’t stop, and for God’s sake don’t wait for me.”

“I’ve already helped you this far,” Sam said with a frown. “I’m not going anywhere without you, and that’s that.”

I’d known Sam long enough to know there was no arguing with her, not when she used that tone and furrowed her brow. I gave a final sigh, staring off at the sheer cliffs while she helped me to my feet. I steadied myself, leaning heavily on the stick I’d dragged along most of the night.

“Just remember this isn’t a race,” Sam said, looking me over. “Do you need me to help you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, hoping it was true. I tried putting weight on my bad leg and immediately felt the dull throb give way to something sharper, more intense. My facial expression must have betrayed the level of pain I felt because Sam’s expression morphed into one of concern.

“Are you quite sure you’re alright?”

“I’m sure,” I said, trying to keep an even voice. “I’m ready when you are.”

Sam glanced through the tree limbs, scanning to make sure the thing wasn’t nearby, waiting to give chase. Once she was satisfied, she turned to face me.

“Ready?”

“Set.” I nodded.

“Let’s go!”

We bolted from the cover of the tree and Sam grabbed my arm, dragging me along after her. It was the fastest I’d managed to hobble all night. Even my “good” knee was skinned raw and my pant leg chafed with each step. Each step on my right leg brought a painful reminder that a thorn was still wedged into the joint. I kept up with Sam as best as I could, but it was easy to tell she was holding back. Before I could urge her to run ahead, wind whipped my back with renewed fury. Sand sliced at my skin, and the almost forgotten sandstorm was back, howling with as much intensity as ever.

My skin crawled when I heard the inhuman screech from behind us. Sam looked over her shoulder at me, eyes wide with terror. I was too afraid to follow her gaze. She shouted something to me, but the storm drowned out her words. I couldn’t hear her, but I could read the word fresh on her lips.

“Run.”

Adrenaline pulsed through my body. I forgot the state of my legs and ran for all I was worth. Still, I knew I was slowing Sam down. Thoughts of the thing from the tomb catching and killing us both, like it had Felix and Jorge, raced through my mind, all because Sam refused to leave me behind. I wanted to shout at her, tell her to run faster, to save herself, but the storm was too loud for that.

Sand blurred my vision. I remembered the goggles around my neck, but didn’t have a free hand to put them on. The lift was barely visible through the storm. Despite the ever-shrinking distance between us and the platform, it seemed farther away than ever. I choked on dust and struggled to breathe. Still, I willed my legs to carry me over the sand and loose gravel faster.

We were less than a hundred feet from the lift when Sam pulled away and hurdled over the platform’s railing. I knew I couldn’t lift my leg high enough for that. When the time came, I ended up flopping over the railing. I came down hard on the metal grate floor and some abandoned excavation tools. It knocked the air from my lungs and sent fresh pain through my already wrecked knee.

Sam scrambled to the control panel. She twisted the Master Power switch to “ON” and pulled the control lever to “UP”. Contacts shut. Steel cables rang as they were pulled taut by electric motors humming overhead.

For a moment, Sam’s eyes met mine. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew a laugh was escaping her lips as that too-big smile worked its way across her face. We had made it. Against all the odds, we were getting out of that terrible place.

Our moment of triumph was cut short when I looked back toward the trail and saw the blackened form approaching us. A towering wall of sand whirling behind it, rising in time with the entity’s outstretched arms. I grabbed the railing before screaming as loud as I could.

“Sam! Hold onto something!”

Entry 1 | Entry 2 | Entry 3 | Entry 4 | Entry 5

Sand stung our eyes. Sam and I leaned against each other as the windstorm buffeted our clothes. More than once, it nearly knocked us to the ground as we trudged back to camp, coughing up muddy spit every step of the way. The once distant wind grew in intensity, howling through the valley in a deafening shriek before softening back into a prolonged wail. I wondered with dismay where the sun had gone. All we had was the communications tent’s yellow glow to guide our path.

The satellite dish shuddered under the storm’s abuse before snapping off its base and cartwheeling out of sight. Orange tents, still waiting to be taken down, rolled away like strange, geometric tumbleweeds. The terrifying thought we’d been left behind raced through my mind as we burst through the tent’s flapping door and collapsed to the floor.

“Sam? Derrick? Where the hell have you guys been?”

“We had to leave something in the tomb,” I coughed, wiping sand from my watery eyes.

“Hey, stop that. You want to scratch a cornea or somethin’?” Jorge stood from the flickering computer monitor and grabbed something from the table.

He handed me a bottle of water, and I rinsed the gritty sand from my eyes. They still stung as I handed Sam the bottle, but now the chaos unfolding around me was in plain view. Electric lights swayed drunkenly overhead, equipment sat in haphazard piles on the work table, and loose leaves of paper littered the floor. A flatscreen monitor lay on the floor, displaying a fragmented image, while the other sat on the work table, a download bar slowly filling in.

“You guys made it back just in time. Everyone else is in the dining tent getting ready to hike outta this place. The only reason I’m in here is Felix asked me to back up the computer files.”

Sam handed the water bottle back to me, and I took a drink. It tasted just like river water, and I spat the muddy mix from my mouth. Jorge cursed at the computer struggling to transfer files. I got up and helped Sam to her feet. Jorge put on a dust mask and goggles and gestured to a small box beside him.

“There’s extras in there you guys can put on. What took so long anyway? Felix said all you was supposed to do was leave a coin in there. What’d you do? Go into the pit and throw an unwrapping party?”

Sam shot me a glance, her eyes were bloodshot from sleep deprivation and irritated by sand, but she also seemed taken aback. Surprise at Jorge’s halfway right guess aside, she must have understood how it felt to witness something you can’t explain without sounding insane.

“Let’s just say our project officer dropped in on us.”

“So that’s where that jerkoff went. Felix is looking for him, too.”

A pop-up message announced the file transfer was finished, and Jorge unplugged the hard drive. Sam and I masked up and watched him hustle over to the cigar-shaped R.O.V. nestled between the pelican cases and pull a similar hard drive from the tail section of it. He muttered something to the red machine and patted it affectionately before getting back to his feet and stuffing both hard drives into a backpack propped up against the table. He was about to sling it over his shoulders when the lights in the tent faltered before going out entirely.

“Come on, you guys, we gotta get outta here.”

We donned our own goggles and followed. Stepping through the tent’s flapping door, the storm was raging outside with more intensity than ever. Lightning strikes cast a dim light over our surroundings. Thunder followed, muffled by the wind’s fury as the not-so-distant wall of sand clawed at the sky over the valley walls. The lightning had the effect of a slow strobe light as we trundled over the uneven sand toward the dining tent. Shadows of other archaeologists filing hurriedly out of the dining tent, moving with frightened uncertainty, forming a crooked line. One of the forms stopped outside the tent door and ushered the others through. As we got closer, I could tell it was Felix.

“Derrick!” He shouted, “Do you know where James went? I haven’t been able to find him anywhere.”

“He went back into the tomb! Back into the mummy pit!”

“What the hell for?”

My jaw hung agape open under the mask. Condensation already covered my lips as I struggled for words.

“I don’t know.” Felix threw his hands up in defeat.

“We don’t have time to go back for him or anyone else. The storm is closing in faster than we ever expected. Before we lost contact, headquarters said evacuation efforts are being sent to the lifts. We need to get there as fast as we can.”

In the dusty haze over Felix’s shoulder, one of the crew members was walking down the line, pausing at each person for a moment before passing on.

“Here,” Felix said, handing each of us a carabiner. “Fasten these to your belts and hook them to the climbing rope. I don’t want anyone getting lost. Derrick, do you mind bringing up the rear?” The archaeologist paying out the rope reached us and handed my supervisor the knotted end of the line. “It’ll be up to you to make sure no one slips off the line.”

I nodded understanding and hooked my carabiner around my leather belt and through the figure eight knot. Sam took the spot directly in front of me. Jorge found a spot a few people ahead of her. Felix walked ahead, checking everyone’s connection to the lifeline before he was so obscured by dust I couldn’t tell him apart from the jumble of nondescript figures stretching toward the trailhead. I cast a glance over my shoulder at the hateful black cliffs towering over the mouth of the tomb. Sam caught me, and I tried playing it off with a wordless shrug. Till this point, I hadn’t had time to consider what crawled through the serdab and down the mummy pit. I told myself it didn’t matter. I had Sam right in front of me and could protect her if it gave chase. As the rope tugged against my belt, it consoled me knowing we were putting distance between us and that thing.

The dense thicket of acacia trees was nothing like I remembered. The green canopy that shaded us when we blazed a trail to the site was stripped bare by the raging storm. The only thing swaying overhead now were the thorn-covered branches reaching across the narrow path. Wiry underbrush shuddered against each new gust. It was slow progress following the trail as it twisted and wound its way around the worst of the thickets and the crevasses littering the valley floor.

It could be hard to follow at the best of times. With near zero visibility and sand drifts consuming the footworn trail, I had no idea how Felix was able to pick our path forward with any degree of certainty. The last traces of the sun were gone, and the dust in the air transformed our surroundings into itching, muddled shades of browns and tans. Distant figures appeared black. Dim light shined from the team members wearing headlamps, but these were powerless to illuminate anything much farther away than the next person in line. The closest thing to color left in that sepia hell was Sam’s red hair fluttering wildly in front of me.

Occasionally, our rope got tangled or snagged on thorned branches as we navigated around fallen trees. Progress slowed to a barely perceptible crawl as we picked our way through the whipping, thorned branches. In moments like that, while I waited for the line to start moving, my eyes were drawn to the underbrush. Even without leaves, the thickets of acacia saplings and bushes were too dense to see through. The unwanted image of a dark form stalking our procession, similar to the scene in the tomb’s mosaics, flitted through my mind. Near total darkness combined with the constant swaying of the underbrush made this delusion more believable than I cared to admit. I tried ignoring these thoughts, writing them off as my imagination running wild, but my mind would invariably gravitate back to the mummy pit, James’ rituals, and the Ka statue’s glowing eyes. And that was to say nothing of the shadowy form emerging from the Serdab. I witnessed all of this. Try as I might, I couldn’t rationalize any of it away, and bringing up the back of the line, I felt a terrifying sense of vulnerability. If anything followed after us, I was completely exposed.

We trudged on. My lungs burned from the exertion. Condensation seeped from around my mask’s edges, leaving muddy trails down my throat. It was a constant battle, brushing sand from its pleated filter, only for it to clog up again minutes later. I had no idea where we were on the trail. I wondered more than once if we were lost. The wind howled louder. Sam trembled in front of me as the onslaught of wind reached one crescendo after another. My eyes were drawn once more to the underbrush, this time to my left. It wasn’t the random movement of branches tossed by the storm; they shook violently, as if something were moving through them. Sam jerked her head in the same direction; she’d seen it too. She glanced over her shoulder at me and shouted something through her clogged mask. Her words were lost in a useless puff of dust but I saw fear in her eyes as she faced me.

I didn’t have time to respond before we rounded a small bend in the trail and entered a clearing. Oddly, the storm abated for a moment, long enough for me to realize where we were: this was the halfway point. My relief at not being lost faltered when the rope went slack. For a moment, I thought it was another fallen tree blocking our path, until the rope went completely limp. I frowned and stepped to the side to get a better look at what stopped us. Thoughts of escape being close at hand were suddenly dashed. An icy chill shot through my veins when I caught sight of the black humanoid figure standing in Felix’s headlamp. The thing towered over him in his trembling headlamp. The lifeline went taut once again as the team members closest to Felix bolted in different directions. They were trying to flee, but only succeeded in getting tangled in the lifeline, frantically trying to unclasp themselves. Felix was left, frozen in terror when the thing moved.

It closed the gap between them in clumsy, rapid steps. Felix screamed over the wailing storm as the thing lifted him from his feet and sank its teeth into his throat. Red mist hung in the air as it came down on the silenced man’s convulsing body. It all happened so quickly. The members at the front of our party panicked, jerking against the rope now anchored to a dead man, trying to get away. Some stumbled over themselves, others got tangled in the rope. I grasped for my carabiner, not wanting to be trampled by the wave of fleeing archaeologists. I unclasped it from my belt and dropped the carabiner.

“Sam! Unfasten yourself!”

I shouted, but my words were lost as the storm’s wails regained their fury. Sam stood in front of me, frozen in horror. I grabbed her by the back of her belt and pulled her behind me, catching a glimpse of her terrified face. I grabbed the rope and tried to pull the end through, only for the figure eight knot to snag in the opening of Sam’s carabiner. I snatched the climbing device and started loosening its locking sleeve.

“Sam! Get off the line! We need-”

My words were cut short as panicked team members slammed into me. I was knocked to the ground and had to roll to avoid the stampede of trampling feet. Before I could regain my footing, I saw Sam’s mop of red hair, being carried away by the mob of fleeing team members. A painfully familiar pang of guilt swept through me at the sight of her outstretched hand. Somewhere behind me, the thing’s inhuman shrieks echoed through the valley and I was left to cope with the fact there was nothing I could do.

Glancing over my shoulder, the thing pounced onto one of the fallen archaeologists. It was only a matter of time before it came after me. I had to get to Sam, but seeing the dig team bottlenecked, fighting each other to get out of the clearing, I knew I didn’t stand a chance of making it through the only exit. No, not the only exit.

I scrambled to my feet and raced toward the tree line. Worries of hidden snakes and thorned foliage vanished in the wake of something immeasurably worse as I shielded my face and leapt into the thick brush surrounding the clearing. Sharp thorns ripped my clothes, pierced my skin, but with the thing screeching in the clearing once more, I couldn’t stop. I tried weaving around scrub brush and dodging tree limbs, but it was useless. I felt the distinct sensation of slamming my knee into the branch of a fallen tree, but I kept going. I don’t know how far I ran. In my mind, I had the vague idea of circling back to the path, avoiding the thing, but these thoughts were interrupted by the odd sensation of weightlessness, similar to when I lowered myself into the mummy’s pit. Jagged stone walls enveloped me, and I realized I was falling.

I don’t know how long I floated in darkness. It might have been minutes or hours, but slowly the dream-like haze shifted into shades of brown. I felt the sickening sensation once more of sinking through water. In the distance, a slender black figure crept into view. My movements were slow as I fought against the water, trying to flee from the thing. That’s when a distant voice calling my name came to me, over and over, like a whisper in my ear.

“Derrick… Derrick… Derrick!”

The sensation of water, real water pouring over my face, jolted me back to consciousness. I awoke to a shadowy figure hunched over me. I cried out in terror and kicked myself back away from it. Stabbing pain shot through my right knee. I yelled louder. That’s when a bandaged hand covered my mouth, and I heard a familiar voice.

“Be quiet! That thing is still lurking around up there,” Sam said.

My eyes adjusted to the scant moonlight, and I got a better look at Sam and her tattered clothes. I rested my head onto the bed of gravel and sand beneath me in relief.

“Where are we?”

“Remember those fissures they briefed us about back in Cairo? Well, you seem to have found one.”

I winced at the sharp pain in my knee as I sat up. Feeling out the rest of my body, I was surprised my knee was the only serious injury I’d received running through the thicket. The slightest movement or the least pressure sent sharp pain through the joint.

“Son of a Bitch!” I whispered through gritted teeth. Sam took one of my arms and turned it over in her hands, removing the occasional thorn.

“As for finding you, it was quite simple, really. I saw you run this way after I was carried off by the fleeing mob. I broke free from them and hid behind some fallen trees until that thing moved along. After that, I stayed behind the tree line until I came across your path from the clearing. You left behind quite a trail of broken sticks and branches. Anyway, I followed them and, well, here we are. I’m so glad you’re alright.”

I winced as Sam pulled a small thorn from my wrist, before eyeing my pant leg’s blood-soaked knee. I wasn’t ready to see the damage. I turned my attention to the fissure’s jagged rim about 10 or 12 feet above us. A sparse trickle of sand and the occasional small rock blew over the edge. For the first time, I noticed the far-off sound of the sand storm.

“Is the storm over?”

“Not quite, no. But it has dissipated quite a lot.” Sam moved on from my arms to my legs. Instinctively, I pulled away as she rested a probing hand on my injured knee.

“Stop that! I’m trying to help.”

Her eyes met mine for a brief moment as she gathered handfuls of my pant leg on either side of its torn knee. I gritted my teeth and looked away as she ripped the hole in the fabric to reveal my battered leg. A large thorn protruded from the underside of my knee cap. I didn’t like looking at it. I could write off the bruised, purple appearance as a trick of the moon’s pale light, but the swelling and visibly dislocated kneecap were unbearable.

Sam insisted on pulling out the thorn. I fought back cries of pain with each unsuccessful attempt. When her hands were too slick with blood to try again, I suggested snapping the thorn off where it stuck out. Sam reluctantly agreed and wrapped the area with cloth torn from my shirt.

“F-ing hell,” she whispered. “It doesn’t seem like anything is broken, really. Do you think you can put any weight on it? Maybe if I got you a stick or something?”

It was agony just moving that leg. I couldn’t imagine walking anywhere on it.

“I’m not sure I need to go anywhere,” I said.

“Why ever not? You can’t stay here, not with that thing on the loose!”

“Whatever it is, I’m no worse off down here. Besides, it’s not like you need me slowing you down.” Sam frowned, obviously dissatisfied with my answer.

“We don’t even know what that thing is,” I said.

“What difference does it make? It came from the tomb, didn’t it?”

“That doesn’t tell us anything about what it is! Hell, the Egyptians probably didn’t even know. You said it yourself, the Ka Statue didn’t even resemble Egyptian art from that period. And why would they hide it under the floor tiles?”

Sam sat across from me and frowned.

“I can’t begin to guess at why they bothered hiding it so well. And I did say that about the Ka Statue, didn’t I?” Sam bit her lip and looked as if she were weighing something in her mind, deciding whether or not to share. Finally, she broke the silence. “I’ve had a number of strange dreams lately, nightmares really. They’ve all been so vivid, as if I were there in the tomb when they placed the sarcophagus inside and sealed it. The high priests were frightened of it. I heard them whispering words of the underworld. The more I think of it, the more I’m reminded of Sekhmet, their goddess of wrath. I can’t believe I never made the connection earlier. After all, she’s often portrayed as-”

Somewhere in the valley above, the shrill cry of someone being devoured echoed. I didn’t recognize their voice. No one sounds like themselves, not when they’re being eaten. Sam scooted close to me under the cover of the fissure wall and clung to me as the screams for help went unanswered and ceased. Neither of us spoke. Not for several minutes.

“You said that thing is like Sekhmet,” I said, breaking the silence at last. “How can we ward it off? Or maybe kill it?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Sam whispered, tears rimming her eyes. “Their priests would have used incantations, maybe offered sacrifices, but they would have balked at a mortal killing one of their gods.”

We debated amongst ourselves, weighing the pros and cons of each course of action. Staying in the fissure seemed safer than dodging whatever was lurking in the valley above. Sam pointed out that even if we could wait out the storm, there was no way of knowing when someone would come looking for us, or if the thing would move on after picking off the rest of the dig team. She said moving would only get harder for me as the adrenaline from my injury wore off. I didn’t buy her logic, but glancing at the fresh wrappings on my knee, already soaked with blood, I realized time might not be on my side. If I kept bleeding like this, I would be dead either way. Sam insisted, continuing toward the extraction point was our only chance. Reluctantly, I agreed.

Sam fashioned a crude brace for my knee from sticks littering the bottom of the fissure. It wasn’t easy, but she helped me to my feet. Resting weight on the joint was painful, but bearable.

“There now, that’s not so bad then, is it?”

“I guess not,” I lied. I took a few test strides and tried not to wince at the stabbing pain radiating from my knee. Sam frowned, looking into my eyes, and I could tell she knew the truth.

“That’s fab,” she said, forcing an unconvincing smile across her own face. “Let’s crack on, shall we?”

With that, she walked the short distance to a rope dangling into the fissure and climbed up, pausing briefly near the top to peek over the edge. Once she was sure the coast was clear, Sam hauled herself over the edge. I limped to the rope, pondering its length before coiling it once around my good leg. It was slow climbing with only one leg to aid my ascent. Letting the injured leg hang limp was the closest thing I’d felt so far to actual pain relief. A couple feet from the top, Sam reached over the edge and took my hand before pulling me from the fissure.

I collapsed on my back, panting from the exertion of the climb. The moon lit our surroundings in a blue indigo light. The sandstorm’s wail had diminished to a distant, droning whistle. Visibility was dramatically better than before the encounter with the thing, but mites of airborne sand still irritated my eyes. I remembered the goggles hanging from my neck and put them back on.

Glancing in the direction of the clearing. It wasn’t an obvious trail, but you could tell pretty easily where I’d made my escape by all the trampled sticks and snapped branchlets, dangling from their bark from acacia trees. The clearing beyond looked blue in the moonlight. Drifts of sand slowly swallowed abandoned gear. I shuddered when I noticed Felix’s body. His arms spread out at unnatural angles. Black sand pooled around his head where he bled out.

“Do you think we should go check his body?” I asked.

“What ever for?”

“Maybe he had a Satellite phone or a GPS on him. Maybe he had something we could use to call for help.” Sam looked pensive in the moonlight and glanced at the short distance between us and his corpse.

“Alright, I’ll run out there and check. You stay here.”

“I’m not letting you go out there by yourself.”

“You are if you want the sat phone. I won’t be out there more than a minute.”

I didn’t say anything else. I just watched as Sam picked a path through the underbrush, being careful not to step on sticks, snap branches, or make any kind of noise that might give her away. I listened intently for any sign of movement as she dashed across the sand and knelt next to Felix’s body. Sam shuddered as she laid hands on his corpse before turning him over and rifling through his pockets. She pulled out something that glowed green before rushing back to the tree line. She shuddered as she dropped to the ground beside me in our hiding spot.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Sam said, breathing heavily. “God, he was like a dried-up husk.” That I could tell she wanted to put the experience behind her, so I didn’t press the matter. Instead, I waited until she broke the silence.

“No sat phone, I’m afraid. But he did have this.” Sam held out a yellow and black GPS. Coagulated blood covered the screen before she wiped it off, revealing an SOS signal was transmitting. A timer indicated the call went out before the dig team ever left camp. I frowned before navigating to another screen. The map was crude. I was disappointed by its complete lack of topography. This meant more fissures could be hidden along the way. But there were waypoints marking the path to the lifts with enough clarity for us to find our way out while avoiding them.

“Here, I thought you might use this.” Sam interrupted, handing me an acacia stick with most of the thorns broken off. “Now let’s get moving.”

I nodded and followed her through the dense underbrush. Thorns left fresh scratches on our arms and legs. Every step was pain. Sand in the air was more of a nuisance at this point than anything. It may have been the middle of the night, but it was easier blazing a new trail for ourselves through the thickets than it had been following the tug from the lifeline with the storm in full force. I thought of Felix and how easily the thing had picked him off his feet and killed him. It had done that while it was hungry and weak. Skulking along under the cover of the acacia trees, I had to wonder what it was capable of now that it had killed at least three of us.

Sometimes, the only way forward was to crawl. Somehow, this was more painful than just limping along with my walking stick. I became gradually aware of the blood trickling past Sam’s field dressing and pooling in my boot. Sam insisted we stop long enough to add more makeshift bandages. There wasn’t much left of my own tattered shirt sleeves, so she tore strips from her own. We thought it might be a good idea to pack the wound, but it wasn’t. As soon as Sam pressed the wadded-up cloth against the back side of the thorn, my vision went white. I ground my teeth together to stifle screams of pain, but it was useless. Sam must have realized this was doing more harm than good because she abandoned this method and just wrapped the wound tighter.

We kept going. We encountered the occasional fissures, but none as abrupt as the first one. Trees and brush usually gave way to rock and sand well before the cavernous plunge. Luckily, most were small enough to navigate around without much trouble. There was one, however, that was too large for that. I remembered it from the LIDAR scans of the valley, mainly due to its unusual size. It would have taken us a mile out of our way just to get around it, and we were forced to skirt the edge between it and the trail. Just as we were in that narrow squeeze, barely wide enough for a car to pass through between the open trail and the drop to the bottom, I caught the unwelcome sound of wind picking up. Foliage rustled and branches snapped. Sam shot me a terrified look as the storm gained intensity and kicked up fresh dust. We dropped immediately behind the scant cover offered by the trunk of a fallen tree. Only then did I realize the movement wasn’t the thing coming after us; it was on the other side of the trail. I heard labored breathing, muttered curses. My stomach sank when Jorge burst from the brush across from our hiding spot and tripped onto the path. He was trying to get back to his feet when the tops of the trees behind him bowed under the strength of the storm ripping through the valley once more. I wanted to call out to him. Yell for him to hide, to run.

I never got the chance. A skeletal, black arm reached through the thickets and caught hold of Jorge by the ankle and dragged him screaming back into the thicket. The wind howled with renewed ferocity. Before sand completely blotted out my view in the moonlight, I caught a glimpse of a red, bloody mist in the air as the thing ravaged Jorge’s body. Sam and I lay there, pinned down by terror as a blood-curdling scream reverberated through the dusty air and howling wind. We were powerless to do anything but cower and listen to the thing devouring our friend.

 Tree limbs cracked as the thing abandoned its kill and retreated deeper into the darkness on the opposite side of the trail. It wasn’t until the wind’s howls died down to an occasional gust that either of us moved. Muddy tears streamed from the corners of Sam’s goggles as she looked at me with terrified, blue eyes. We stared at one another through the dim light before wordlessly agreeing to move on.

We crept along more cautiously now, only standing when there was no other way to clear an obstacle. Every snapped twig or rustled branch made us freeze. The sharp pain I felt when Sam first rescued me was replaced by a dull, persistent throb. Lightheadedness came and went as I struggled along. I had no idea how much further we had to go. More than once, the echoed cries of another team member, followed by the shrieks from that thing, spurred us on.

Eventually, the thickets thinned out enough for us to see the trail. My joy realizing we were almost at the end melded with feelings of unease at the sight of abandoned personal effects and the glimmer of dried blood beneath dwindling moonlight.

Tumbling through the last of the thorned bushes, we found ourselves under what was left of a crooked acacia tree. Like the others in the valley, its canopy was largely denuded of any foliage, but it still provided some concealment. Gazing through the tree’s thorny branches, I could hardly believe my eyes: the lift platform. It was similar in size and appearance to the scaffolding you might find hanging from high rises in a city for washing windows, but this one’s steel grated floor rested on the valley floor, waiting. I was almost more excited by the yellow glow of truck headlights shining from over the cliff’s edge. We’d parked the expedition vehicles up there after driving through the desert to the valley; someone else must have made it out, or rescue efforts had arrived. I didn’t care which, because the only thing standing between us and the help we so desperately needed was about 100 yards of sand and loose gravel.

We sat in silence for a moment. A few small dust devils skittered through this final clearing. Sam gazed appraisingly at the small distance ahead of us. Her eyes that brimmed with excitement watching Lawrence of Arabia, that stole glances at me across the campfire and laughed with her too-big smile stared emotionlessly ahead. Since leaving Felix’s body, neither of us had ventured from the cover of the trees. Now it was our only option.

“I think we should make a run for it,” Sam said.

“Do you know how to run the lift?” I asked, glancing disdainfully at my knee. She looked at me, incredulous.

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I paused. “Just, whatever happens, I want you to keep running, alright? Don’t stop, and for God’s sake don’t wait for me.”

“I’ve already helped you this far,” Sam said with a frown. “I’m not going anywhere without you, and that’s that.”

I’d known Sam long enough to know there was no arguing with her, not when she used that tone and furrowed her brow. I gave a final sigh, staring off at the sheer cliffs while she helped me to my feet. I steadied myself, leaning heavily on the stick I’d dragged along most of the night.

“Just remember this isn’t a race,” Sam said, looking me over. “Do you need me to help you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, hoping it was true. I tried putting weight on my bad leg and immediately felt the dull throb give way to something sharper, more intense. My facial expression must have betrayed the level of pain I felt because Sam’s expression morphed into one of concern.

“Are you quite sure you’re alright?”

“I’m sure,” I said, trying to keep an even voice. “I’m ready when you are.”

Sam glanced through the tree limbs, scanning to make sure the thing wasn’t nearby, waiting to give chase. Once she was satisfied, she turned to face me.

“Ready?”

“Set.” I nodded.

“Let’s go!”

We bolted from the cover of the tree and Sam grabbed my arm, dragging me along after her. It was the fastest I’d managed to hobble all night. Even my “good” knee was skinned raw and my pant leg chafed with each step. Each step on my right leg brought a painful reminder that a thorn was still wedged into the joint. I kept up with Sam as best as I could, but it was easy to tell she was holding back. Before I could urge her to run ahead, wind whipped my back with renewed fury. Sand sliced at my skin, and the almost forgotten sandstorm was back, howling with as much intensity as ever.

My skin crawled when I heard the inhuman screech from behind us. Sam looked over her shoulder at me, eyes wide with terror. I was too afraid to follow her gaze. She shouted something to me, but the storm drowned out her words. I couldn’t hear her, but I could read the word fresh on her lips.

“Run.”

Adrenaline pulsed through my body. I forgot the state of my legs and ran for all I was worth. Still, I knew I was slowing Sam down. Thoughts of the thing from the tomb catching and killing us both, like it had Felix and Jorge, raced through my mind, all because Sam refused to leave me behind. I wanted to shout at her, tell her to run faster, to save herself, but the storm was too loud for that.

Sand blurred my vision. I remembered the goggles around my neck, but didn’t have a free hand to put them on. The lift was barely visible through the storm. Despite the ever-shrinking distance between us and the platform, it seemed farther away than ever. I choked on dust and struggled to breathe. Still, I willed my legs to carry me over the sand and loose gravel faster.

We were less than a hundred feet from the lift when Sam pulled away and hurdled over the platform’s railing. I knew I couldn’t lift my leg high enough for that. When the time came, I ended up flopping over the railing. I came down hard on the metal grate floor and some abandoned excavation tools. It knocked the air from my lungs and sent fresh pain through my already wrecked knee.

Sam scrambled to the control panel. She twisted the Master Power switch to “ON” and pulled the control lever to “UP”. Contacts shut. Steel cables rang as they were pulled taut by electric motors humming overhead.

For a moment, Sam’s eyes met mine. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew a laugh was escaping her lips as that too-big smile worked its way across her face. We had made it. Against all the odds, we were getting out of that terrible place.

Our moment of triumph was cut short when I looked back toward the trail and saw the blackened form approaching us. A towering wall of sand whirling behind it, rising in time with the entity’s outstretched arms. I grabbed the railing before screaming as loud as I could.

“Sam! Hold onto something!”