Weitzel moved forward feeling he had no choice. Whatever this thing was, he must see it through. No one outside of the fence had been the least help to him. As he moved ever closer to the deepest level of the construction area, Simon Weitzel passed silent machines that stood like sleeping bovines about him; he passed layer after layer, finding it mind-boggling that they'd persisted in digging so far, so deep. Architects must have required the pylons to be fitted at something like six hundred and fifty feet, if not more. Far below the sewer lines and the underground rail lines, and even the tunnels that ran between Manhattan and the mainland.
Weitzel found the blackness closing in all around him, but in the distance he saw what seemed like some strange, green firelight. It was the source, he told himself ... the source of all his months of grief. He heard the ommmmmmm of life here, like the pulsating electricity that would one day run through the building those fools proposed to build over this ... this thing. He heard the voices in his head struggling for dominance.
"Ooooooommmmmmmmm, a-way ... go/no ... here to-stay ... a-way ... commmmmmmm for-ward/away..."
Weitzel did not know anymore what he should or must do, but he did know that there was only one way to get an answer to the mystery plaguing his life. With the will and determination that had characterized his forefathers, Weitzel moved toward the green glow at the very deepest trailing of the tunnel. He passed concrete posts already embedded in the bedrock as he did so.
When he reached the light it had disappeared, sending him into total darkness. He stood, shaking, fearful and trying to ward off the incredible odor with a mere handkerchief when the light reappeared, diffusing all around him and entering him through every pore and fiber of his clothing and his being.
Now in his head he heard laughter, dizzying, bantering and then teasing laughter like that made by a man in the throes of sex. The laughter was in him and it came out through his throat. It was loud and brazen now and Weitzel's body glowed in the cavern like a green lantern, until suddenly something shouted that was not inside him, but outside and coming toward him. It was the watchman who was railing.
"It's you, you old bastard! I've called the cops and this time you're really in trouble! Damned old fool! I ought to shoot you dead for trespass!"
Weitzel's body collapsed before the watchman's eyes, the watchman shining a powerful beam on the old man's form. "Dammit, dammit, no!" But at the same instant, the watchman saw something skitter from the heap that Weitzel had become, rush to the dark corner of the tunnel and begin to burrow like a large rat.
The watchman's light tried to follow the thing but each time it darted out of the light until suddenly it was gone, beneath the earth.
"Damn ... damn. What was that thing?" the watchman asked himself when suddenly he saw that Weitzel was in some distress. He went to the old man, who was groaning, and roughly got him to his feet.
"Come on, you old fool. We've got a date with the cops."
Weitzel said nothing, his blank expression and dead eyes registering nothing. The zombielike appearance in the man's eyes startled the watchman for a moment before he said, "Drunk as a skunk, aren't you?" But smelling no booze, he amended his assessment of Weitzel. "Got into too much Geritol, or bought into some bad coke, huh?"
Weitzel said nothing and only moved along if directed and helped. When together they took a few steps, the watchman realized that he was surrounded by a strange, green fog that was somehow luminous. "What the hell?" he asked himself, letting Weitzel go and only half sensing that the other man sank to the earth. The watchman looked down between his feet at the peculiar two-headed, six-legged rodentlike creature between his legs that seemed to spit forth the green light. The watchman heard this thing talking to him deep within the coils of his brain, saying that in time he would be called upon to act, but for the time being, his power, his energy, was required by the thing between his legs, at his feet. As it ripped its way from the earth, it attached itself to the watchman's leg, and from there it began to drain him, not of blood or bodily fluids, but of his mind.
-1-
Nazlett el-Samman, Egypt, the same day
The working conditions were dismal and filth-ridden, a former stone "hut" of one of the city dwellers that happened to be situated above the dig; it was a place that seemed to have accommodated thousands of years of dust and sand flying through the door, seeping in through the cracks and the tiny, single window. Abraham Hale Stroud and the others on the archeological dig who worked at this terminus of the site had to do so under field lights powered by a generator brought with them. The lights illuminated the work and the stark environment. You could almost see the fleas in the sand that filled the cracks in floor and wall. Then they had the further inconvenience of the slag heap piled in the next room, filling it; shovel porters with rickety, noisy wheelbarrows went in and out all day long making room for more until the find was had.
Dirt and dust had long before taken possession of his lungs, and the marvelous and recent discoveries of Cheops's most secret, most hidden and most treasured of treasures had taken possession of his imagination. But at the moment, Abraham Stroud felt a wave of fatigue flushing through his veins, threatening nausea and dizziness. He'd topple if he didn't get any rest, and it was foolish to push himself to such a state, yet he felt a sense of urgency as if some great power beyond his control might at any moment snatch the prize of these days from him.
The discovery here at the foot of the great pyramids was the most significant find since the opening of Tut's tomb. He was very proud to have played a part in the new archeological endeavor which would dramatically call the world's attention to the Egyptian forebear of Tut, Cheops. Stroud's own fascination with the bevy of skulls fashioned from crystal and other minerals had already led him to make calls worldwide to inform colleagues that there appeared to be proof of a definite link between the Egyptian pyramid builders and those in Central America, as the Central Americans had been, to date, the only ones in possession of the mysterious crystal skulls which some believed to be psychic antennae.
Of course, there remained years of study, painstaking documentation, cataloguing, all the burdens of science, and yet Stroud knew he would not be allowed anywhere near the treasures of Cheops a day longer. So, working with Dr. Allulu Mamdoud and Dr. Ranjana Patel, both of the Cairo Institute for Egyptian Antiquities, and both fine archeologists, Abe Stroud had furiously worked through the last seventy-two hours to finish his abstract on the Crypt of Skulls, an impressive collection of crystal, onyx, gold, silver, balsalt and other minerals fashioned into the likeness of the human skull, an entire room full.
This portion of Cheops's burial chamber had had an instant attraction for Stroud, as the ornate skulls spoke to him. He heard lives--past and present and future--speaking through the skulls, saw life in the iridescent, jeweled eyes of some and in the simplicity of the completely crystal ones, which by all accounts could not possibly exist, either then or now! There was and remained no technology that could create them. Yet, here they were in his hands.
Staring into the depths of such crystal fashioned as a skull, Stroud saw and felt the time of Cheops, whose twenty-three-year reign ended in 2528 b.c. He marveled at the basalt skull, too. Basalt was rare, expensive and one of the most difficult stones to cut, reserved typically for the flooring of temples.
Now here they were, skulls of basalt and crystal ... in Abraham's hands, dug from the grave of Cheops, whose great pyramid was the largest ever built. Where did he get all the skulls? Had he collected them? Had he chosen to be buried with his collection? Was there some reason why?