“An adder stone is used to protect a person from evil charms or nightmares. Since it is formed from the venom of adders, it can also prevent death from snakebite,” Amon explained.
“There’s one!” Dr. Hassan cried. “We need one for each of us, so keep searching,” he added as Amon fished the floating rock from the pool.
Several handfuls later, we had a second stone, which Dr. Hassan told me to keep in my pocket. The sun would be up any moment, and the Egyptologist was throwing handfuls in a frenzy. Finally, a third rock rose from the depths, and Dr. Hassan leapt into the pool like a cat scooping up a fat fish for dinner.
Staggering out of the pool, he led us to a clearing, where he held his rock up to the rising sun. As dawn broke over the horizon, light shone through the hole in the stone and a pinprick of white light hit the water, angling up slowly as the sun rose higher in the sky. When the ray of light hit the mountain, I looked at Dr. Hassan.
All of his attention was focused on the mountain. “Come on now,” he whispered. “We must find the opening.” A few seconds later, he shouted triumphantly, “There! There it is!”
I saw a flash on the stony hill on the other side of the pool, as if a mirror were reflecting the light cast by the hole in Dr. Hassan’s adder stone. The mountain rumbled, and I waited for something strange to happen—a skeleton army to appear, a mass of scurrying scarab beetles looking for someone to devour, some kind of sign of the Egyptian apocalypse—but the mountain settled and nothing happened. I peered across the water, but the shimmering light was gone. Pocketing his adder stone, the doctor stumbled down to the pool and started making his way around it.
“Why did we each need a stone if yours did the trick?” I asked him as we carefully made our way across the slick stones.
“You’ll see,” he answered cryptically.
Before long, we arrived at the foot of the mountain. A waterfall cascaded down the steep rocks, its spray wetting our skin. Dr Hassan came to a stop and lifted his stone to his eye. “Here we are, at last,” he declared.
“Uh, where would that be?” I asked.
“Use your stone,” he answered. “Look through it and you will see our path.”
Pulling my stone from my pocket, I peered through the tiny hole and gasped when I saw an opening in the mountain. When I looked at the mountain without the stone, I saw nothing. Taking a step forward, I patted the mountain and found it as hard and impenetrable as it appeared, but then Dr. Hassan, stone still to his eye, stepped right through it and called out for us to follow.
I took a deep breath, positioning the adder stone so I could see through its hole, and murmured sarcastically, “What could possibly go wrong?” as I walked through a mountain.
Absolute silence descended. Stone as thick and as solid as a tombstone pressed against me on all sides. Above was a rocky ceiling that seemed to lower with every step I took. The horror of being buried alive wasn’t even the worst part. What really freaked me out was that I wasn’t in a secret cave hidden within a mountain, I was passing through solid rock.
Mineral formations slowly moved over me as if my body was seeping into the rock itself, and there was a heaviness, like I was wading in a strong current. The only explanation I could come up with was that I had moved into a different phase or dimension from the one the rock existed in. My fingers pressing the stone to my eye shook, and I closed the other eye so I didn’t have to see the mountain as I passed through it. My pulse felt thick as my heart beat in a noisy rhythm.