Preston W. Child
The Quest for Valhalla
Chapter 1
“How do you know that?” Williams asked his colleague, as they walked the corridor of the Department of Prints and Drawings. It was just after 2am and they decided to combat their boredom by making their rounds together. Williams and his shift partner, Jeffreys, had been arguing about everything from the footie to the state of politics in Paraguay.
“I read. I read a lot. Me mum taught me to be inquisitive and always know what is going on in the world,” Jeffreys insisted defensively to his podgy colleague who was beginning to test his patience with his blatant disregard for common knowledge. To make matters worse, the man chuckled in response to his latest reply and he gave Williams a look of steely cold disdain while his back was to him. Williams had gaited ahead somewhat in a childish ploy to bow out of the conversation entirely. Yet still, he didn’t stop his incessant babbling of ignorant opinions. Jeffreys sighed. It was another seven hours of this, he thought, and he had best make the best of it. Silent treatment was not only juvenile, but also a tedious way to spend night shift in the godforsaken halls of the British Museum. Having been a security guard for almost 15 years, he had to admit that this was his best gig thus far and that he had better not rock the boat because of some ignorant twat he had to work with. He could not allow Williams to get under his skin, so he elected to tolerate the idiot and his know-it-all bullshit. “… so you had better watch your diet, she told me. Can you believe that?” Williams’ words cut into his ears as he completed what was apparently a long and informative story about his girlfriend trying to tactfully advise him that his lard was swallowing up his skeleton. Resisting the urge to bring to Williams’ attention that he was, in fact, a shamefully obese bastard, Jeffreys simply shook his head at the audacity of the woman Williams was complaining about. His own wife would never have bothered, he figured, and he pretended as best he could to look sympathetic to Williams’ plight.
Jeffreys had his right hand upon the blunt head of his sheathed baton as he walked and soon found, among the intelligible barrage of his colleague’s jabbering, that his fingers had begun to tap and play inadvertently against the shaft of the weapon the farther they went through the Department. It would be so easy, he reckoned. Williams would never see it coming.
‘Stop it! What kind of animal are you?’ his conscience protested through the cloudy haze of impatience he harbored. Immediately, his fingers ceased in their ominous activity and he cleared his mind to catch up to the tail of the current torrent of domestic complaints Williams was reporting.
From outside, the thunder rumbled as the two guards passed Room 18. Jeffreys never ceased to be in awe of the Parthenon marbles from the Acropolis of Athens, even though he had seen them a million times on his patrols through the museum.
“Did you hear that?” Williams gloated as he turned to face Jeffreys with a smug grin on his hair thin lips. Jeffreys wished he could sweep his baton across that self-assured expression with the force of a garbage truck, but he refrained from such perversely delicious considerations.
“Hear what?” he pretended, adamant on not giving Williams his way so easily. “The thunder! I told you we’d have rain tonight, didn’t I?” Williams reiterated. “Didn’t I? Earlier? Right? Now see? I was right,” he said with a smirk on his fat face which made his colleague cringe with unsettling urges. Jeffreys had to concede that Williams had indeed told him that it would rain later, even though the skies over Great Russell Street had been clear for a change. Still, he refused Williams the accolade and remained quiet on the subject.
“Just walk. We have to get back to the screens,” Jeffreys mumbled.
For once, Williams was quiet. No words echoed through the ambient hallways as they walked in the gathering roar of the thunder. Both had their own thoughts on the way in which the angry bellows from the heavens lent a foreboding air to their surroundings. Jeffreys, especially, with his book smart knowledge of ancient history and other less tangible subjects, found the thunderous soundtrack a bit too intimidating. While his eyes fell on relics and objects older than London itself, he was reminded that a lot of the items around him were in fact, already in existence during eras where the thunder was still worshipped by man.
In his silent contemplation, he wondered if something, some inkling, some spark of being within these museum pieces still came to life when the skies screamed. He wondered if some inanimate version of a soul lived in them, from where they came alive to remember their infancy when the world was emptier and less complex. Did they wake up when the thunder commanded it?
A hefty slap on the arm jolted Jeffreys from his wonder and it evoked a raging fury in him to be so rudely lifted from his thoughts. He looked at Williams with a wince just short of homicidal threat, but as always, Williams was too thick skinned to recognize contempt when he was presented with it.
“Come, let’s eat. I’m starving,” he suggested jovially. ‘Like you need more calories… ’ came the insensitive judgment from the pit of Jeffreys’ being again.
The tiny monitor in the office, where Williams kept his nightly stash of trans-fats and sugar drinks, played aimlessly on in their absence. Only when they came to sit down did they ever cast a glance to the screen. “Want some?” Williams offered a spoiled donut with peeling frosting in his palm for the taking. But Jeffreys gave him a wry smile and just shook his head, choosing to direct his attention to the little television screen instead. On the weather report, the satellite footage showed no sign of rain for London whatsoever for that night. Eager to get his own back, he tugged at Williams’ shirt to show him the screen, now gloating himself. “No!” Williams responded with chunks of dry donut falling from the corners of his stuffed mouth. “Bullshit.”
“How can it be bullshit? I can’t tell Mary-Ann what to say on TV, can I? It’s a fact, old boy. There is no rain tonight. Not even cloud cover,” he laughed heartily at his colleague’s sinking expression. As if by a sweep of logic, both men suddenly stared at one another in astonished confusion, realizing now that what they had heard pulsing through the cold interior of the British Museum was not a force of nature after all. If not, then, what was it?
“Williams, what did we hear then?” Jeffreys asked reluctantly. He never cared much for his colleague’s assessments, but now he needed to know that his sentiments were shared, that his concern was valid. Williams stood frozen in inner conflict, his cheeks still bulging. Only his eyes moved. They darted to his partner, overflowing with confirmation.
“Let’s go,” Jeffreys said ominously and Williams swallowed everything without bothering to chew any further.
The sound had been so powerful that they knew now it had to come from somewhere within the vast 990,000 square foot area of the complex. Jeffreys immediately established radio contact with the other posts on the premises, but both men found that their radios suffered severe interference, cutting off any communication with other guards to alert them.
The two hurried down the long stretch of the second floor galleries where the Egyptian mummies and coffins left them no more at ease than they already felt at the thought of facing an unknown threat somewhere in the gaping darkness of the next room.
“Why is it dark in there?” Williams whispered, wiping the sweat from his reddening brow with his sleeve. “Jeffreys!” he insisted with a hoarse undertone at his partner, who was locked in concentration and fear.
“Shut the fuck up!” Jeffreys grunted as quietly as he could, “I am trying to think. Maybe it is just a power problem in this part of the department.”