“No!” she cried in anguish.
Emotionally exhausted, she didn’t even bother bringing her hands up to protect her ears against the constant ringing. Her last drop of energy was used to punch the floor with both fists and shout out into oblivion: “I know! I know! Please stop it: I know!”
As the final word left her lips she collapsed against the floor. Know what? She thought briefly, but she was too tired to try and understand what she had said, and why. At the same time, the noise stopped, and the red glow through her closed eyelids told her that the darkness had been replaced by light.
Chapter 46
What was the exact opposite of complete and utter darkness? She wondered. Complete and utter light?
The last time she had tried to open her eyes, the receptors in her brain had been so confused by the absence of any light that they had forced her to try opening her eyes again, as if the human psyche was not capable of understanding such an environment. Even at night-time, there was always some light, some reflected glimmer with which the fully dilated pupil could function.
For some reason, she thought of bats, bouncing sound waves off obstacles and prey within a cave. Blind as a bat, the expression went, but even Gail knew that that was a fallacy: bats used sight for many things and rarely relied on sonar alone. She wondered if bat-like ability would have helped her to see earlier.
Earlier. The concept of time struck her suddenly, and her mind shot back to the dark room – could she be sure it was a room? – that she had been in before, and the bright screen of her mobile phone: Thursday, November 16th 2045 – 2:05pm. The time flashed repeatedly in her mind’s eye, and as she held the thought it changed to 2:06pm. Her attention moved to the date. Thursday the 16th? In a flash the phone display disappeared and she found herself back at Heathrow Airport, standing in front of the automated ticket assistant. She tapped the screen and was rewarded with a pre-punched card that fell from a slot beneath. The date on the boarding-chip jumped up at her: Monday, November 13th 2045.
She’d lost more than two entire days.
The Professor was standing beside her now, and she was at the entrance to the Library in Amarna. The hot winter sun bathed the archaeological excavation in bright warm light. Behind her she could feel the eyes of the other students burning into her back. They must hate me for going in first, she thought as she descended the steps cut into the bedrock. She ducked as the passageway swallowed her – surely it’s smaller than it used to be?
From outside, she heard Ben’s laugh, joined shortly after by her husband’s. George! She turned to run back up to see him, but was met by a wall of darkness; the steps leading up were gone. She span round again in a panic, to find that the stairs leading down had also disappeared, replaced by the smooth sandstone of the Library floor.
She was now inside the Library, walking slowly past the rows of bookcases. On the end of each row the engraved symbol of the Stickman drew her eyes from the path ahead, until she had passed the final row and was standing in front of the stone plinth.
Behind it stood a man, shorter than her, and dressed in an off-white robe that fell from his shoulders down to his sandals. His wispy hair was thick with dust and sweat after a long day’s work. He was looking at the plinth eagerly, his hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer.
Gail stopped.
“Who are you?” she heard herself say. The sound of her voice surprised her; although she knew what she had wanted to ask, she hadn’t spoken in English.
The man behind the plinth looked at her, puzzled. He was about to hazard an answer when she spoke again.
“What is going on?” Still the words were not English, although for some reason she understood them all.
“I am showing you the plinth, where the books will be placed,” he said nervously.
Ancient Egyptian, she realised with a start. But what a strange accent? The man’s hands un-clasped and demonstrated the stone surface in front of him. It was unremarkable, but he seemed proud, as if it was exactly what had been ordered.
“What books?” she asked.
“The book of Aniquilus, and the book of Xynutians,” he replied tentatively under the interrogation.
Her ears prickled as the sentence reached them. Aniquilus and Xynutians. His accent was softer than she had imagined an Egyptian’s would be, and she wondered if she had misunderstood the words.
“An-ee-qwe-lous?” She broke the word down into phonemes; she’d worry about writing it later.
The man shifted uneasily. He looked like he was running over the question and its possible answers in his head before offering an answer, like a chess player would mull over possible moves to avoid falling prey to a dangerous rook. After a while, he pointed to the bookcase behind her and repeated the word.
She followed his trembling finger to the edge of the bookcase, where she found the symbol of the Stickman. Looking from the nervous man to the symbol etched into the wood and back again, her eyes widened.
“Aniquilus?” she gasped. So the Stickman was ‘Aniquilus’!
At this the man looked positively frightened, as if what he thought to be Aniquilus had in fact turned out to be something entirely different, and his engravings inside the Library had all been wrong. Gail reacted quickly, sensing her control over the small man.
“Aniquilus!” she repeated more authoritatively, confirming that the Stickman was indeed known by that name.
A smile broke out on his face as he started breathing once more. “Yes!” he said, bringing his hands together in front of his chest again.
She walked back towards the plinth and looked at it. There were no books on it now. This reminded her of the shelves she had just been looking at; twisting her head round, she noticed that they, too, were empty. She looked at the small man, who avoided her gaze as if his life depended on it.
“And Xy-New-Shuns?” Again, she pronounced it slowly, emphasising each phoneme. In her mind, there was no question that it had to be a person. “Who is Xy-New-Shuns?”
“What do you mean?” he replied. His nervousness had returned, and he held his hands together so tightly she could see his knuckles go white.
“Who is Xy-New-Shuns?” She repeated, saying each word individually, in case she had mispronounced them the first time. As she repeated the question she actually saw a bead of sweat run down his forehead, from his hair to the bridge of his nose. He looked left and right, as if trying to spot an escape route, his shadow dancing against the wall of the Library in the flickering light of an oil lamp next to the plinth.
Finding no way to avoid the question, and having exhausted all possible alternative responses in his mind beforehand, he turned his eyes solemnly to the floor and raised his arm. He was pointing straight over her left shoulder.
She turned on her heel, but just as she did the Library disappeared, and she slipped once more into darkness.
Chapter 47
Dr Patterson entered the Administrator’s office, leaving the door wide open behind him.