As for the rest of the artwork, it was almost as if another hand had interceded. These pictures were more crudely drawn and rendered only in black and red; the people and animals were drawn like a child’s stick figures, and some of the scenes were even superimposed upon the others. All of them shared, however, a theme of violence and horror. Writhing pigs roasting on spits; the saint himself being torn to pieces by horned demons; skeletons with blood erupting from their bones. Was this last conceit a way of depicting death by a virulent skin disease? If so, it was odd, as the ministrations of Saint Anthony were supposed to be proof against such ailments.
“It’s in the corner,” she heard her father say, his voice filled with awe. “There. The ossuary.”
Tearing her eyes away from the troubling scenes above, Simone followed the glow of the lantern light to the farthest reach of the chamber, where a deep niche had been carved into the stone. In the ancient Hebrew tradition, kept by the Christians to come, these niches were called a kokh; in Latin a loculus. This one was arched, and held, on its ledge, a pair of red clay urns. One of them had lost its top, and Simone could make out the tip of a tightly rolled papyrus scroll inside. Her fingers itched to open it.
The real prize — an alabaster chest, with iron chains securing its ponderous lid to its lower portion — lay between the urns. It was no surprise she hadn’t seen it at first. The box was not only nestled as far into the niche as it could go, it seemed also to reside in a deeper and darker pool of shadow than was natural. It was almost as if it could disappear before one’s very eyes.
Even for someone accustomed to the mysteries of ancient artifacts, the ossuary cast a spell all its own. For the first time in her life, Simone felt an involuntary shudder run down her spine.
But Mustafa was plainly unaffected. Sensing there might still be some loot here, he scurried toward the urns, knocked the top off the sealed one, and glanced inside.
“More papers!” he declared in disgust. Then he went for the box. “What’s inside it?” he cried out enthusiastically, his voice booming around the otherwise empty chamber. Tugging at the chains, he said, “How do we get it open?”
“We don’t,” Simone replied. “Stop trying.”
“This is not a treasure hunt,” Dr. Rashid declared, bringing the lantern closer. “It’s an archaeological expedition.”
The distinction seemed to be lost on the young guide, who looked from Simone to her father, desperately awaiting a better explanation.
“We’re not in the Valley of the Kings,” Simone said. “This casket won’t hold golden masks or silver goblets. It holds bones.”
“That’s all?” Mustafa said. “Papers and bones? And we came all this way?” He stalked off, muttering, “The worst jobs — I always get the worst jobs.”
Simone bent her head toward the ossuary, where she could see in the lantern light a host of markings and inscriptions. It would be the work of many months — happy months, and maybe even longer — to decipher them all. Of one thing she was confident — she had found the tomb of Saint Anthony of Egypt, the reputed father of Christian monasticism, and battler of the demonic hordes sent to torture him and test his faith. Who knew what else the scrolls might be able to tell her?
Glancing up again at the pictures on the ceiling, she could almost believe that the cruder, crueler scenes had been scrawled there by those demons themselves.
Something else struck her as odd, too.
She could swear that in the picture of the saint being rent limb from limb, Anthony had been standing; now, he was prone on the ground, and a gibbering creature, like a monkey with a forked tail, was leaping on his back.
Instead of the Emperor Diocletian sitting on the throne, the seat was occupied by a grinning dog — or maybe it was meant to be a hyena — wearing a crown and holding a scepter.
Even stranger were the birds — flocks of little black birds — painted all across the white walls, and even the ceiling, of the chamber. Before she could ask her father, she saw that he, too, was staring at the birds, perturbed.
“Were they there,” Simone said, “before?”
Then they moved — not flying, but crawling, like insects more than sparrows. Creeping out from the crevices in the flowstone. Emerging from the sand.
Scorpions.
Dozens of them — hundreds — their lethal stinging tails quivering and erect. The single greatest scorpion colony Simone could ever have imagined — lying here, perhaps undisturbed for millennia.
A scream reverberated from the antechamber. Mustafa shouted, “Get them off of me! Help me! Get them off!”
Simone straightened up and ran back toward the tunnel, feeling the crunch of brittle carapaces under her boots. She could hear her father right behind her, but then he stumbled and fell, nearly knocking her over, too. He had gashed his leg on a jagged rock, and even as she helped him to his feet, Mustafa’s screams got louder.
Something dropped from the ceiling onto Simone’s hair, and a pincer nipped at her fingers as she brushed it off.
Grabbing the lantern with one hand and using the other to hold her hobbled father by his elbow, she moved down the tunnel, first right, then left, then into the front cavern, where Mustafa was all but unrecognizable. He rolled around on the floor of the cave beneath a seething swarm of scorpions. His arms flailed, his legs kicked out, and one of his sandals flew off his foot and over her head.
“Stop them! Stop them!” Mustafa screamed, but Simone couldn’t do anything to help him without letting go of her father, who was already leaning hard against her shoulder, and breathing even harder; she needed to get him out of the cave before he collapsed. She swung the lantern over Mustafa’s body as she passed by, hoping to knock loose at least a few of the creatures, and she stamped her boots on several more, but her father’s feet were dragging in the sand, and his weight was becoming too much for her to bear.
Mustafa’s hand lashed out and clutched at her ankle, but another scorpion promptly plunged its stinger into his wrist, and he yanked it away.
Dropping the lantern at the bottom of the ramp, she crawled up toward the mouth of the cave, pulling her father alongside. It was like dragging a bag of wet cement. The entrance was filled with the golden light of the morning sun, and Simone forced herself to stare into the blinding light — willed herself, step by step, to move toward it — until she suddenly emerged from the cave, feeling like some small fish that had wriggled free from the jaws of a crocodile. Her father fell in a heap on the sand, croaking for water. Blood was running down his leg.
She put her canteen to his lips. And then she turned back toward the entrance.
“No, no,” Dr. Rashid said, alarmed, the brackish water dribbling down his chin. “It’s too late.”
She had to try. She ducked back into the grotto, and aimed her flashlight into the antechamber of the tomb. She did not need to go any farther to see that Mustafa was lying dead — no one could have survived such a monstrous attack. The sight was obscene, and she knew she would never be able to forget it, or forgive herself. His body lay sprawled facedown on the sand, as dozens of the scorpions, some with their tails still coiled and pincers extended, roamed around on top of him, for all the world as if they were dancing in celebration of their kill.