– there it could be, he corrected – almost in the palm of his hand, bathed in his flashlight"s beam.
Ken didn"t want to turn away from the book, but in the end he did just that.There were other things to see and he had to get a move on. Daylight wouldn"t last forever, and he didn"t want to risk driving through the jungle at night – especially with that defective kid behind the wheel.
The walls of the chamber were smooth, just as they"d been in the main hall and passageway.The whole place seemed constructed from a mold, if that were possible. Deep grooves marked the surface every so often, as if someone or something had tried to claw its way out. This gave him a sudden jolt of panic. The idea that something should be in there with him caused the dial on his fight or flight instinct to start wavering toward the latter.
He swallowed hard, closed his eyes, and counted to ten.This simple trick always worked in the past, and this time proved no different. His heart rate slowed to a steady thump-thump-thump. His breathing decelerated. His mind cleared, as though a soft voice whispered gentle comforts into it.
That voice told him, it’s time to come forward.
His feet shuffled onward over the dirt floor.He progressed toward the milky-black end of the chamber. Gradually, his flashlight picked up the vague outline of a shadowy object, and he realized why his light hadn"t been able to fully penetrate the air; a sheet of what seemed to be silk had been suspended from the ceiling, stretching the width of the chamber, fifteen feet fro m the small doorway. This struck him as odd – the voice of Cautious Ken urged him to be guarded and follow his logical instincts – but he gently pushed aside the curtain, used a fastener from his belt to hold it aside, and shone his light in nonetheless.
Wedged in the corner sat what appeared to be a primitively assembled church pew.The mummified remains of a small girl knelt upon it; hands clasped on a stone pillar as if she"d fallen asleep there and never woken up. Ken couldn"t believe his eyes.
He moved alongside the mummy, getting as close as he could without touching it.Judging by the diminutive stature of the corpse and the wisps of black hair – amazingly still in place after all these centuries – that draped over its shoulders to the middle of its back, he guessed the poor soul couldn"t have been older than ten-to-twelve years old at the time of her entombment. A split black veil hung from a headpiece of dried tree bark and dangled at the nape of her neck, framing her face.
And what a face it was.The neck had been craned back as if in an eternal scream. The hollow eye sockets gazed at the ceiling. The skin appeared cracked and brown, but amazingly conserved, and the mouth, which still had its teeth, hung open in a ghastly, undead expression of pain, as if offering one final holler of damnation to the heavens.
That"s when it hit him: the poor girl had been buried alive down here.
“Amazing,” Ken whispered with a touch of sadness.How it must have felt for her, to be trapped in this sinister place, all alone, left to wither away into the nothingness of time. He felt her loneliness and fear, and for a brief instant hated those he"d spent his life studying.
Very gently, Ken reached for the mummy-girl"s clasped hands.Confusion spiraled through his brain like an unstoppable whirlpool as he did this, for the logical portion of his brain knew the rules. Never, ever place your dirty hands on something as precious and fragile as this. Yet he couldn"t stop himself. His fingers brushed the mummy"s flesh. The texture reminded him of sandpaper. Then he grew bolder, rubbing the spot as if trying to ease the dead girl"s epoch of isolation with a well-deserved, loving caress. Stop it, man, what are you doing? his mind screamed, but he couldn"t pull himself away. His consciousness grew dim and his vision faded.