Passage to Queen Mesentia (14 page)

Wade looked at Lilly. She was a good ways down, but still their eyes connected and he knew she thought Ben had killed her parents, too. “You son-of-a-bitch!” Wade tried to shout, but it came out muffled.

“Yes, my dear Stewards found my queen, so I will be forever grateful.” He closed his eyes for a second. “An unfortunate loss for which I am to blame.” He then walked behind Wade, out of his view. “I must leave now, but I will return when Hydra can be seen in the night sky.”

Wade tried to shout again, but it didn’t do any good. He heard footsteps and a loud noise like something large being scooted and pushed, and then a concrete-hitting-concrete sound. 

Chapter 16

Lilly watched Wade as he struggled with the ropes until he fell over with the chair. He mumbled, grumbled, and fought. And then she heard…

“P-huh… Got that stupid thing. Hey, Lilly! Try to get to me.” He began scooting on his side towards her.

She moved her body a little to see what would happen. Her chair made a loud screeching noise on the floor and actually moved a little bit. Another scoot, and then she saw that Wade had inched a little closer to her. She gave it a little more power. She would have smiled at her progress if her mouth wasn’t already as wide as it could be with the gag. With more haste, she began to move and twist and scoot… until she gave too big of a thrust and tumbled over onto the stone floor.  Sharp pain shot through her head and shoulder. She saw black dots in her teary eyes and heard Wade laughing.

“You all right?” he finally asked.

“I can’t believe you’re laughing at me,” she attempted to say.

“What? Mum mu mu mu mu mu ma?”

She knew what he was doing; he was trying to take the fear out of the room. It was actually working. She inhaled and regained her momentum. She found it easier to move on the floor by bending her knees and scooting on her side, but it was slow going. After what seemed forever, she felt her head run into something. She adjusted a little until she saw Wade right there, smiling at her. Tears poured from her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said.  “Okay? We’re going to get out of this.”

She didn’t see how.

“Lilly,” he said softly. “I promise.”

She nodded and tried to compose herself.

“You good?”

She nodded.

“Okay. I have a knife in my right boot. I need us to turn around so that your hands are near my feet. Okay?”

She nodded and they began to turn until she felt his leg.

“I know you wouldn’t normally do this, but I need you to stick your hand inside until you find the knife. It’s kind of far—almost to my foot.”

Lilly started pulling his jeans up until one side rested on the top of his boot. She tried to get her hand inside, but since both of her hands were tied together, she couldn’t fit one hand in by itself. She tried to tell him.

“Take your time,” he said. “You can do it.”

When she tried again, she managed to get one of her hands a little ways inside, but she didn’t feel anything. She kept reaching until she couldn’t hold her arms up any longer and her wrist felt like it was on fire. She dropped.

“Plan B,” Wade said. “Back yourself up to my back, and I’ll try to untie you.” They began scooting toward one another.

Every inch was a painful ordeal. Her head pounded, her shoulder and hip bone were bruised, and her right elbow was completely heavy, sound asleep, from being in-between the chair and the floor.

  Finally, she felt the warmth of Wade’s back against her back. When he held her hand for a second before he began to try and untie her, it was all she needed to gain enough strength to endure the pulls and tugs against her already rope-burned wrist. A few second later, her hands were completely free.

“See,” Wade said. “There you go.”

She reached around and removed her gag. She breathed through her mouth and then said, “Thank you.”

She untied her feet and then untied Wade. They stood up and looked at each other for a second, before Wade reached over and pulled her close. A rush of relief overcame her from the comfort of his arms, and she sobbed against his chest as he gently petted her hair. She cried, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Shhh,” he said. “No sorrys until we get out of here, all right?”

She nodded and sniffed and wiped at her tears. They weren’t out of danger yet. 

“Help me with this… door?” Wade said, his arms still around her.

She turned her head to see what he was talking about. There was a concrete barrier where the opening had been earlier. “That’s one massive stone they rolled in front of it.”

“All we can do is try to push it down,” he said.

She reluctantly left his arms and walked over to the stone door and started pushing. Wade joined her a second later. They pushed and grunted, with hands, then shoulders, then backs, until they both slid down the stone door and sat on the floor. 

“Plan B?” Lilly asked.

“I wonder how much time we have.”

“Well, at least until dark. I’m not an astronomer, but Ben was talking about the constellation Hydra. I believe that’s the snake.”

“Of course,” Wade said.

“If he’s waiting on that, most likely it will be like ten, eleven o’clock before it’s high in the sky. What time is it now?”

“I don’t have a watch.”

“I don’t either, I use my phone. My phone…” she said remembering they had taken her purse off of her right before they tied her up. She searched and noticed a heap a little ways down the corridor. “There it is! She ran to it. The bag’s contents were spilled all around it, including the cell phone, which was in pieces. So they had no watch and no phone. “It probably wouldn’t have gotten a signal out here anyways.” She put her belongings back into her purse and then wrapped her purse around her. When she turned around, Wade stared at her, a worried and weary expression on his face.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, not really. They just tied me up. The hardest part about it was wondering what happened to you. The last thing I remember was getting in that taxi on our way to the office. Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

He wiped at his forehead with the back of hand. “I’m fine. I’m sorry. I left you in the taxi. You had fallen asleep; you were so tired I thought I would let you sleep.”

“I understand. It’s okay. Besides you said no sorrys until we get out of here. So what happened to you? How did you find me?”

“After I went inside, I found some boxes in the office and was opening them. The next thing I knew I was being woken up by our driver, and you were gone.”

“I guess that’s where they found the statuette.”

“Yep. And that’s where it gets confusing. He left me a note telling me to come here. I don’t know why they took you and not me, when he obviously wanted me here, too.  Gives new meaning to hating someone with all your guts.”

“I guess it was the easiest way to get you here without a fight.”

“He knew I’d come for you.”

She whispered, “In a way, I hoped you wouldn’t. I hoped you still hated me so you wouldn’t be in danger. This is all my fault.”

 Wade shook his head slowly. “No. Let’s get on thing straight. I could never hate you. Come on, Lilly; let’s find our way out of here, so we can find our way back to one another.”

***

Wade grabbed one of the torches off the wall determined that this was not how it was going to end for him and Lilly. He started walking to where Lilly had been tied. Lilly followed closely behind. He stopped and looked down the long dark corridor. “What do you think is down there?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and they began to walk side by side. They walked until it turned to the left, and then they walked some more, and they turned to the left again. 

“It’s a freaking giant circle,” Wade said when he realized they ended up right where they had started.

Lilly felt around on the stone wall. “I bet there’s a room in the center.”

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for the door.”

“What’s that going to do? We need to get out of here, not further in.”

“I’m not sure,” she said moving down the wall, “but Ben was talking about getting to Hydra to become a God. Maybe there’s an opening so his soul can travel to the stars.”

“What?”

“The great pyramids in Giza, remember? They’re said to be aligned with Orion’s Belt. Archaeologists used to think that the openings in the top of the pyramids were airshafts. Now they think it was so the soul could pass to the after-world.”

“If that’s what Ben thinks he’s doing, there may be a way out… in there?”

“Right. There could be a way out through the roof.  ”

Wade helped her feel the walls. They searched until they made it around to the opposite wall from the front entrance. Lilly said, “Right here, right here!”

Wade held the light closer and saw a tall, rectangular indention.  Without a word, they both put a shoulder up to it and pushed. It didn’t give.

“Maybe there’s a secret brick like in the movies,” Wade said. “You know, you move it and then the wall opens up… ta-da! He pushed at the wall.

“That’s silly,” Lilly said but started helping Wade search.

When none of the bricks seemed to move, Wade ran the flame from the top of the wall to the bottom. After a few minutes, something sparkled. He moved in closer and saw a metal slit with a small circle in the middle. “Wait, what is that?” 

“Oh my goodness,” Lilly said. “It’s a keyhole.”

“We don’t have the key.  We need something small enough to fit down in the hole. Let me see one of your earrings.”

“I’m not wearing any jewelry, but I have my car keys and such.” She started rummaging through her bag as Wade held the torch close to help her see. She brought out her key ring and handed it to Wade, taking the torch.

“Crap,” he said after a few minutes. “They’re all too big to even fit in the slit, and then there’s a tiny circle right there in the middle. What kind of lock is that?”

“What about the end of the knife? It’s thin.”

He handed the keys back to Lilly and pulled the knife out of his boot. After opening it, he tried sticking it in the slot. “It’s too big, too.” As he stuck it in his pocket, he remembered something. He dug deeper. He felt it, and actually hesitated bringing it out of his pocket.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Wade brought out the small jewelry box. He felt a little pathetic, carrying the thing around for all that time.  When she didn’t say anything, he looked up at her.

She had been waiting on his attention. “You brought that all the way here?”

He shrugged his shoulders, not wanting to say he took it everywhere.

“Can I see it?”

After he opened the box, Lilly’s entire face lit up with a smile. “I forgot how beautiful it was.” She shook her head, her smile fading. “And I thought you weren’t romantic… I’m really stupid, huh?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry it’s so small.”

“It’s perfect. Go ahead… try it in the lock.”

He removed the diamond ring from its case. It fit snuggly inside the tiny opening. “It’s in there, but I can’t turn it. Here, hold it.” Lilly held onto it while he reached back in his pocket and pulled out his knife. He slipped the tip of the blade into the ring, and then turned it. Nothing happened. After Wade looked at Lilly, they started pushing at the door again. They felt air escape first as the door began to move and slowly it opened into a spacious room.

Wade closed the knife and dropped it and the ring into his pocket. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said and then whistled.

Rays from the late afternoon sunlight poured in from the ceiling causing the room full of jewels, gold statues and ornaments to glisten. The four columns in the corners had horizontal stripes in hunter green and burgundy, and every inch of the walls and ceiling had been covered in colorful Egyptian images and hieroglyphics. 

Lilly turned in circles, wide eyed, and seemed to be taking in the room. “It’s amazing. I can’t believe what’s he’s done here. He’s replicated the inside of an ancient burial chamber. Look at all this stuff.”

“Yeah, that he stole. If everything he says is true, not only was he searching tombs, he was stealing from them.”

“Oh… can you imagine my parents’ faces if they had seen this?  Oh…it’s one of those model boats, the statue of Horus, the canopic jars… sorry. Look at that ceremonial palette. My goodness, what if it predates or matches the Narmer Palette? That would make it at least five-thousand-years-old.”

But Wade stared up at the twenty-foot ceiling, his hopes of them getting out that way flying out the sun roof. When he noticed Lilly was silent, he walked over to where she stood, staring at a life-sized painting of a woman on the wall.  “Do you think that’s her? Mesentia?”

Lilly nodded. “She’s as lovely as Ben said.”

“She’s all right.”

Lilly smiled and then moved down the wall a bit, putting her hand on the hieroglyphics.

Wade asked, “Can you read any of that?”

“Since I was, like, seven, but I’m a little rusty.”

“What does it say?”

“Um, pretty much the story he told us and how he’s going to use the statuette to release his soul by using the same elements used to capture it. See here,” she pointed to a man and a woman. “I’m thinking that’s us.”

Wade stood with his mouth open. He didn’t have to be able to read hieroglyphics to understand the picture. It showed Lilly lying on one table, red blood ran from her stomach to the floor and a cloud went from her open wound to a Serpent’s head. On the other table someone had drawn him, cowboy hat and all. His picture also had the blood and the vapor, but an added bonus of his heart above his head. Wade shook his head. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to get out of here through the roof.” He tried to ignore the fact that the two tables in the middle of the room were exactly like the ones from the drawing. “Maybe if I…” He walked towards them.

“May he see his body, may he rest upon his …” Lilly read the wall as Wade climbed on top of one of the tables and tried to see how close he was to the opening.
Maybe I can hoist Lilly up on my shoulders.

“…to be said… over a soul of gold… or fire so hot the netherworld’s shining rays upon… body.”