More memory. Dales had been looking at the readout screen of the magnetic-mass survey equipment. “It’s just the opposite, Prof. I’m getting a triple zero reading at a meter and a half.”
“What?” Fredrick had yelled.
“This isn’t a rockfall. There’s another room behind this.”
Another room, Fredrick recalled now. Another cenote.
The mummified hand emerging from the fissure had indeed been clawlike. Demonlike, he thought. “Be careful!” Dales had yelled at him when he began to squeeze himself into the fissure.
And that’s when he’d seen what was on the other side.
“Professor Fredrick?” The doctor again, in the tent. “Can you tell me what happened? Can you remember anything? Anything at all?”
Yes, the thought creaked like old wood.
He closed his eyes, thought harder, then began to see more. In another few seconds he remembered it all.
“Anything, sir? We need to know.”
Fredrick looked more closely at the man. There was someone else kneeling next to him, another doctor, he presumed.
“Who are you?” Fredrick asked.
“We’re an air-mobile emergency medical unit, sir,” he was told. “When the cave-in occurred, your people radioed the authorities on the federal distress band.”
Fredrick, now, could hear helicopters in the distance. A med-evac unit…
“What hospital are you from?”
“The LeMay Air Force Med Center,” the man said.
Air Force? Fredrick thought.
“We got the call because we could get out here faster than anyone else.”
It was Fredrick’s good fortune, or at least he thought so. He was alive, he was going to live, but—
Something’s just not right…
The first man persisted: “You went into the second cavern, right, Professor? What did you see?”
Fredrick remembered, he remembered everything now.
“Nothing,” he lied.
When he’d slipped through the fissure, he did indeed expect to find a second cenote, but that’s not what it was at all. He’d just stood there in shock, looking around, not believing it possible, and he remembered thinking, The priests outside thought they were incarnating a demon. He’d stared down at the rest of the perfectly preserved body on the floor. This is what they got instead.
It was not another cenote he’d squeezed himself into, it was some sort of a rimmed door. Inside was a cramped oval full of myriad apparatus that had long-since lost its lights. He was standing inside some sort of craft…
And the mummy on the floor? It was no demon, and it was no Ponoye Indian either.
His eyes darted back to the two Air Force men kneeling before the cot. “I didn’t see anything,” he lied again. “I don’t remember anything about a second cavern.” He feigned wince. “God, my head hurts. Can you get me something?”
“You may have a concussion, Professor, so we can’t give you any medications yet. Just try to relax, get some rest.”
Fredrick nodded, watched the pair of Air Force men rise and leave. It was the second one, the older one, who’d instantly given Fredrick the bad vibe. That’s why he’d lied.
Just something scary in his eyes…
He’d never forget the man’s nametag, either. A strange name, one he’d never heard of in his life. Winster.
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About the Author
Edward Lee is the author of almost fifty novels and numerous short stories and novellas (or is it novellae? Hmm.) Several of his properties have been optioned for film, while Header was released on DVD in 2009; also, he has been published in Germany, England, Romania, Greece, and Austria. Recent releases include Bullet Through Your Face and Brain Cheese Buffet (story collections), Header 2, and the hardcore Lovecraftian books The Innswich Horror, Trolley No. 1852, Pages Torn From A Travel Journal, Going Monstering, and Haunter of the Threshold. One of Lee’s creative ambitions is to one day write an effective M.R. James pastiche.
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Edward Lee eBooks from Necro/Bedlam
Brides of the Impaler
Cover
Creekers
Family Tradition
Flesh Gothic
Gast
Ghouls
Going Monstering
Goon
Grimoire Diabolique
Header 2
Incubi
Messenger
Monstrosity
Operator B
Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman
Quest for Sex, Truth & Reality
Shifters
Slither
Succubi
The Backwoods
The Bighead
The Chosen
The Haunter of the Threshold
The House
The Innswich Horror
The Minotauress
The Stickmen
The Teratologist
Trolley No. 1852
Witch Water
The Infernal Series
City Infernal (Book 1)
Infernal Angel (Book 1)
House Infernal (Book 3)
Lucifer’s Lottery (Book 4)