"Well, that's a surprise!" he declared. Clad in loose flowing gowns, they seemed to have human bodies, but swanlike wings extending from their backs. "Angels… or devils?" he pondered aloud. Then he took several steps back. With his arms crossed and his chin cradled in one hand, he continued to regard the panel, whistling to himself all the while in his erratic, atonal way.
He stopped whistling. "Aha!" he yelled, remembering something. He hurriedly retrieved the Coprolite map from his pants pocket and unfolded it, then held it up before him. "I knew I'd seen you before!"
On the map, at the end of a long line representing what he assumed to be a tunnel or a track, and dotted with various symbols along its path, he saw something similar to the image in the panel. It was sketched in a much more simplistic way, with just a few pen strokes, but it, too, appeared to be some kind of opening in the ground. "Could they be one and the same?" he wondered aloud.
He went closer to the center panel and looked it over again. There was something more at the base, something he hadn't noticed under a crusty coating of a fungal growth. He feverishly scrubbed at it and found that it had been obscuring a line of cuneiform writing.
"Yes!" he bellowed exultantly, immediately flicking his journal open to the Dr. Burrows Stone page. It tallied with the script he'd already interpreted… he could translate it!
Squatting down, he wasted no time in getting started. The inscription consisted of five distinct words. He glanced repeatedly between the panel and his notebook, a huge self-satisfied grin forming on his face. He deciphered the first word: "GARDEN…"
He clucked impatiently, his eyes rapidly switching from his notebook to the script and back again. "Come on, come on," he urged himself. "What's the next word?"
Then he read, "TO… no, not TO, but OF! " And then, "That's an easy word… THE."
He took a breath and summarized his findings so far. "GARDEN OF THE…" he announced.
The next word stumped him. "Think, think, think!" he said, each time thwacking himself on the forehead. "Get your act together, Burrows, you numskull," he growled, annoyed that his mind wasn't firing on all four cylinders. "What's the rest?"
The remaining words weren't coming so easily, and he was frustrated that it was taking so long to translate them. He scanned the final part of the inscription, hoping that by some stroke of luck he would have a breakthrough.
Just then the fire flared, as a thick piece of kindling began to burn with a loud hiss. Dr. Burrows saw something from the corner of his eye and slowly turned his head away from the panel.
In the brighter light now being cast by the fire, he could see largish hollows, or perhaps holes, all over the side walls of the temple. Many of them.
"That's odd," he muttered, his brow creasing. "Didn't notice them before."
As he looked more closely, his heart missed several beats.
No, they weren't holes… they were moving.
He spun fully around.
He cried out in surprise.
Before him were many of the enormous dust mites, he couldn't even begin to count them. It was as though the one he had befriended had summoned its brethren, and now hundreds of them had gathered like an outrageous congregation in the interior of the temple. Among them were behemoths easily three or four times the size of the dust mite that had led him in here. They looked as big as Sherman tanks and just as heavily armored.
His cry stirred them into activity, and their mandibles clattered as if they were giving him a genteel round of applause. Several began to lumber toward him with that gradual and inhuman intent that only an insect possesses. It made his blood chill.
He hadn't felt threatened by the original dust mite, but this was an altogether different situation. There were too many of them, and they looked too big, and too darned hungry. He suddenly pictured himself as a king-sized food stick, poised invitingly on the altar before them.
Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes went over and over in his head.
Some of the largest ones, dangerous-looking brutes with dented and holed carapaces, began to advance more rapidly, ramming smaller dust mites out of their way. Their articulated legs thudded on the flagstones. Some reared up, their thick legs sweeping in the air, as they crawled over the backs of the pews, affording Dr. Burrows a flash of their glossy black underbellies.
He snatched up his rucksack, ramming his notebook into it and then swinging it onto his back, his mind racing. He needed a way out, and quick. But he was surrounded. They were everywhere; to his front and sides they were coming, like an advancing armored division of the flesh-tearing variety.
Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes.
He wondered wildly if he could just make a run for it over the dust mites, jumping from back to back as if he were leaping across the tops of cars in a traffic jam. No, nice idea, but he was sure they wouldn't just sit still and allow him to do that — it wasn't going to be that easy. And, anyway, he'd rather not go back out into the cavern, where the swooping creature might still be waiting for him.
He seized a boughlike piece of debris from the fire and waved it at the mite brigade, trying to scare them off with the flames. The nearest were only a few feet away from the base of the altar now, and others crept steadily toward him from the sides. The flames made no difference — indeed, quite the opposite: They appeared to be attracted by the fire, speeding up appreciably.
In desperation, he slung the bough with all his might at a large dust mite. It bounced harmlessly off its carapace and didn't slow the creature even a little.
Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes NO!
In an absolute panic, he spun around and tried to scramble up the center panel of the triptych. But he slipped and slid against the dusty face of the carving; he couldn't get a grip. "COME ON, YOU IDIOT!" he yelled at himself, his voice all but drowned out by the clacking of the dust mites — louder and faster now, as if they were aroused by the spectacle of their human food stick trying to make good its escape.
Then his fingers got a hold on the sides of the panel and, with the most immense effort, he lifted himself off the top of the altar. Panting and grunting, his hands and arms strained to their very limits, he held himself aloft, his feet scrabbling ineffectually under him.
"Please, please, please," he begged as his arms began to give out. Miraculously his toes found some sort of foothold in the carving. It was enough. He quickly ran his hands a little farther up, and then, hanging on just by his arms again, he found another foothold. By employing this alternating caterpillar-like locomotion — hands, toes, hands, toes — up he went, climbing for dear life.
He drew on the last of his hysterical strength to reach the top of the panel. Once there, he lodged his right foot in the carving of the huge hole. With this, and his fingers crooked over the top of the panel, he quickly took stock of his situation.
He was in an extremely precarious position, and one that he couldn't hold for much longer; his arms and legs were already exhausted form the effort of climbing. And there was no point in deceiving himself that the dust mites wouldn't be able to swarm up the wall below him — he'd seen them climbing across the sides of the temple. What could he do to defend himself? The only thing that occurred to him was that by kicking out with his heel, he might at least be able to impede the onslaught.
He peered around, frantically trying to formulate his next move. He felt the sweat soaking his brow and streaming down his back as, taking deep breaths to try to calm himself, he clung on with grim determination. Then he stiffly twisted his head around to look down at the bugs. As he moved, the orb hanging around his neck slipped out from under his jacket so that its light fell on their massed ranks. This caused quite a stir among them and they bobbed up and down, their mandibles clattering even louder, as if building to a frenzied crescendo of expectation.