A bright light flashed in his eyes and images poured into his head.Fire surrounded him on all sides, creating an impenetrable wall of heat. He could see people standing around the lip of the shallow pit he found himself in, dark-skinned and dressed in animal hides with headdresses of brightly colored feathers on their heads. He felt his own throat constrict with laughter and watched those around him tremble at the sound. Flames licked his flesh, searing it, but he felt no pain. He pushed his hands forward, breaking free of their bonds, and lunged for the one standing closest to him, the one who chanted. He cleared the rim of the crater in a single leap, leaving the flames behind. His fingers, looking small, delicate, and slightly charred, wrapped around the man"s throat. He squeezed.
The scene shifted.Now he floated above the ground, bound and gagged, as those who"d been standing around the hollow now carried him. He struggled mightily, but there were too many of them. He twitched, forcing the veil from his eyes, and gazed at the canopy above, repulsed by the vibrant greens, reds, and violets which stared down at him. Then he felt himself being raised even higher into the air, then the sensation of falling. Fast. Then the violent impact as his body struck the ground. Stars in his vision now. Stars that would stop long after the dim point of light above him had been sealed over for good.
Laughter again escaped his lips.He tilted his head back in the darkness and let it come, wave after wave, like a frenzied carnival clown. A mantra repeated in his head, over and over and over.
The time wasn’t right, the time wasn’t right, the time wasn’t right…
As if struck by a bolt of lightning, he careened backwards, whacking the back of his head against the wall.Grogginess ensued; grogginess, and dizziness so complete it seemed like he was stuck on a carousel spinning out of control. He brought his hands to his head, cradled it, and rocked back and forth, trying to force away both the sensation and the vision through mindless repetition. Eventually his vertigo petered out like the last drips of water from a canteen.
His head still ached, his ears still buzzed, and his intellect couldn"t come to grips with what had happened to him, but still he wedged his palms into the ground and forced himself to his knees.He panted and tried the counting trick again. This time it couldn"t stop the rapidity of his heart. A sound emerged, something soft and scratchy, like dry hands rubbing against velvet.
He picked the flashlight off the ground beside him and scanned the chamber, from corpse to shrine to door and back again. Nothing moved. He cocked his head. It felt like he had water in his ears.
The sound grew in volume, and at that point Ken understood it for what it was; a whisper.It tickled at his inner ear like squirming maggots. Then a voice emerged, a sickly humming, female voice, getting louder with each passing moment. Only this wasn"t in his head.
This was behind him.
“Shit!” Ken yelped.He spun around, his knees worn and bleeding as they scraped against the rough dirt floor. His flashlight shone on the mummified little girl. The cadaver had developed a liquid sheen in the few seconds since he last illuminated it, as if someone had snuck in and covered it with grease. He thought briefly this had been the result of Raul, the driver, playing a practical joke on him, but that couldn"t explain the humming he that still invaded his hearing.
Closer he inched, his bloody knees smarting, only to stop when a rather large beetle scampered over the mummy"s shoulder.
“Shoo,” he said while waving his hand at it.The beetle lifted its pincers and snapped them together, then took off back from whence it came. What came next was the riot of a thousand tiny clackers. It sounded like game day at Wembley Stadium. He flashed the light over his shoulder. Perched on the edge of the door cut in the side of the chamber sat a horde of the insects from the passageway, too many to count, seemingly on the verge of joining him in a space that now seemed far too congested. They twitched and writhed.
Game day at Wembley, indeed.
A bone-jarring crack snapped his head back around, and his jaw dropped.The mummy-girl no longer gazed at the ceiling. Those empty eye sockets now stared directly at him, and though the mouth still hung open the way it had before, it no longer seemed to be screaming.
The mummy-girl was laughing at him.
Ken backed away.The mummy-girl"s head wobbled, furthering the image of laughter, and then split at the jaw. The part of the skull from disintegrated nose on up toppled off and rolled like a papier-maché ball until it rested against the wall. The lower jaw protruded from the top of a wrinkled, root-like neck. Insects of every species imaginable erupted from where the head had once been like magma from a volcano. They scampered the length of the mummy-girl"s body and fell in sheets. The body itself, rocked by the sheer violence of the tiny invaders, collapsed.
More bugs poured from the newly made orifice when it hit the floor. It seemed they would never end.