Chapter Twenty-Two
The light reveals the cavern we’re in. Arched ceilings, brick walls packed tight, rough floors, and no spiders, from what I can see. Against all common sense, we trudge through the tunnel. It curves, bringing us to a small chamber.
Shelves dug into the walls—several rows and stacked four high—encompass the room. Skeletal remains rest on each, bits of cloth that had once wrapped the bodies still clinging to the bones. A few of the bodies are more intact. Like they hadn’t died too long ago. Ancient artwork decorates the walls.
“We’re in a catacomb,” I say.
Marek slowly turns, holding up the lantern, casting the light over the many tombs. “I wonder who they are.”
“This is it?” I spin around with him. “I thought it was supposed to reveal all your answers. Actually, I’m not sure what the questions are.”
“I’m not sure on that one, either.”
I shuffle around, moving the dirt on the floor with the toe of my Vans. “Maybe it’s buried. There’s a pile of cigarette butts here. Why would anyone smoke down here? It’s already hard to breathe as it is.”
He comes to my side. “They look old. Probably didn’t know the health ramifications.”
I squat down, pick one up, and inspect it. “Whoever it was, she was staring at the artwork on the wall for a long time to smoke this many cigarettes.”
“How do you know it was a woman? And it could’ve been more than one person.”
Raising my arm up, a cigarette butt pinched between my fingers, I say, “Red lipstick. All the same brand. And there’s a broken fingernail with the same color polish.”
He ruffles his hair, then combs it in place, probably trying to shake off imaginary bugs again. Because I know I’m dying to scratch my head. I swear there are tiny, creepy-crawly legs skittering across my scalp.
“What was she trying to see in the artwork?” I sit a foot away from the discarded cigarettes. My legs are sore when I pull them into a pretzel position. All the running around and climbing gave them a workout they’ve never done before.
I imagine the woman with the red lipstick smoking and trying to figure out the scenes painted on the walls surrounding the tombs, a hazy cloud hovering over her head.
Marek places the lantern on the ground and grabs a seat on my other side.
“There has to be a message in the pictures,” I say. “I wonder what the writing is underneath them. Hmm…they must tell a story. Did your grandfather teach you any strange languages or how to uncover fables within the artwork of earlier times?”
He drops his head, a little laugh moving his shoulders. “That man had patience. He’d try to teach me stuff, but my mind was always distracted. Hopefully, I retained some of it.”
I rub an itch away from my nose. “My dad and I spent hours studying ancient paintings from books and museums. He used to say I was a natural. It’s pretty easy. Understanding a lot of the symbols just takes some common sense.”
“It sounds like he was preparing you, too.”
“He didn’t have to work hard at it,” I say. “All he had to do was say he liked something and I would bust my butt to be perfect at it. I wanted him to love me. So I thought if I was into the same things, he would. Maybe even more than Dalton. That’s pretty messed up, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “It’s called sibling rivalry. Trust me. My brothers, sisters, and I are always in competition for our parents’ attention. So don’t beat yourself up. You’re normal.”
I laugh. “Good to know.”
“Okay.” Marek stretches his legs out in front of him and crosses his ankles. “Let’s see if we can figure out the story.”
“All right.” My eyes burn against the dim light and the dust hanging in the air as I study the images on the wall. “The first set depicts gods with worshippers surrounding them, placing offerings at their feet—animals, grain, young women. There’re several of the same scenes representing different gods from around the world. The next set shows the people less interested in the gods. In the following group, the gods unleash their wrath on the people.”
Marek rubs his chin, nodding. “I get that. Good. There’s one almighty god that oversees them all. See him there on top?”
“I do,” I say. “He’s angry, his hand comes down, and he takes power away from the other, lesser gods. At least that’s what I think is happening. The painting shows light leaving the gods and going into what looks like a talisman in the mightier one’s hand. I think he’s like The God. Our God.”
“I see it,” he says.
“Next, a god is rising up from the grave. His palms are open, and there are skeletons on them. He’s a god of death. I’ve seen that image before. There’s a creepy painting of him in my dad’s office.”
“Who are the small people at his feet?”
“That’s the gods’ children. Gods had children with mortals all the time. Most are demigods.”
Marek pulls up his knees and rests his folded arms on them. “He really got around, didn’t he?”
I lean back on my arms, arching my back to stretch my muscles. “I wonder which god of death it is.”
“It’s Soranus,” Marek says. “He’s walking on fire, and there are wolves around him. The other death gods are in the underworld below him.”
I flash him a smile. “You listened to your grandfather more than you think.”
“I guess so.”
“Because no one worshipped him, Soranus didn’t lose his power.”
“There’s plenty of people into dark shit nowadays who would,” Marek says.
“I bet so.” Deciphering the artwork, I almost forget we’re in a creepy catacomb. “Because Soranus didn’t spite mortals, he was spared the others’ fate.”
The artwork wraps around the entire catacomb. I stand and pick up the lantern to get a better look at the other images. “The gods who lost their power raid Soranus’s grave to get the talisman. They need it to regain their magic. Before the gods reach Soranus, he breaks it into six pieces and gives it to his most beloved daughter.”
I point to the image of a woman. “See how her face is shaped like a heart and Soranus’s other children’s are boxes. That means she’s his favorite.”
“You’re good at this,” he says, getting up and following me around the catacomb.
“The daughter summons six elders from the mortals and anoints them and hands them each a piece of the talisman.”
“Whoa.” Marek grabs the back of his neck. “There’s some sort of battle over there.”
I pass a group of shelves holding bodies on my way to where the story continues. “The paint is more vibrant here. It’s newer, or better materials were used. I don’t get it. Gods are fighting against other gods. Soranus’s children are there. See the square heads?” I point them out. “Who are these men? They don’t look like the humans in the other images. And they’re fighting gods.”
“Gods without power,” Marek adds.
“Could be.” I almost stumble at seeing the next painting. “Look here. Soranus’s favorite child has her hand on a man’s chest. He has Xs for eyes, meaning he’s dead. The next image shows him alive. And the next has him fighting a god with just as much strength as the god. He doesn’t look human. See his pointy teeth and long fingernails.”
“So is that it?” Marek glances back at the artwork we’ve just walked by.
“No.” I hold the lantern to a bleeding dove with a flock of burning birds flying up and over the adjacent tombs. “See this?”
“Yes.” His eyebrows pinch together as he studies it. “The symbol for war.”
“It is.” I point to the others after it. “Ares’s flaming spear, the Flower of Aphrodite, Inanna’s whip, Thor’s hammer, and so many more. It indicates a great war between all the gods.”
“Hey, look. There’s one of those moths that attacked you in the hotel lobby. See, it has a skull on its back.”
I lean closer to the wall. “It’s a death’s-head hawkmoth.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” My voice sounds far away, muffled in my ears. “But both times something came back to life—the doorman and the frog—they appeared.”
I don’t want to say out loud what I think it means. I don’t want to believe it. Because I don’t understand how it’s even possible.
“I remember part of a story my grandfather used to read to me.” His eyes go to the favorite child. “The death god, maybe Soranus, borrowed the freshly dead from the underworld to build an army. Something about the gods’ powers being taken away and them attacking the underworld to get it back. Soranus defeated them, and the gods scattered around the world, hiding among the mortals. There’s more to the story, but it’s foggy.”
I give him a how could you forget that look. “And this is something you just remembered now?”
“In all fairness,” Marek says, “I was really young. It’s just coming back to me after seeing all this.”
“How can this be real?”
I can’t ignore it anymore. Not now. I feel it in the pit of my soul. A darkness.
He puts an arm around my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Just letting it all settle in.” I can barely feel the weight of his arm. “How is it even possible. Raising the dead. Me. I’m just…well, me. Janus did say I would find my answers down here. So is this what he meant?”
“That doorman was dead. He didn’t have a pulse. You touched him, and he came back. Then those moths…”
“I think my dad’s been here before.” I rub the dust from my eyes. “These symbols are familiar to me. Maybe I’ve seen them in his things. In his sketch books.”
“Do you remember anything else?” he asks.
I inspect my hands. “No.”
They’re just normal hands. Nothing extraordinary about them. A blister forming from climbing down the ladder. I flip them over. The cuticle on my middle finger is torn from where I kept picking at it. How could they be powerful enough to bring someone or something back to life?
But I can’t ignore this nagging feeling. It started at the hotel after the doorman woke up from apparent death. There was a tugging feeling in my palms, and all the warmth in my hands left, leaving them icy cold.
Marek drops his arm from my shoulder and heads back the way we came, scanning the artwork. “I don’t see my answers down here. What’s my role in all this?”
“I’m sorry.” I join him where he’s staring at the death god. “Let’s search around some more.”
We comb the entire catacomb. It feels like I’ve breathed the same air twice or maybe ten times. It’s thick and dank.
“There’s nothing,” he says. “Let’s get out of here. Maybe Janus can help me.”
Beside one of the newer mummified bodies is another polished red nail. “I think this is our chain-smoker. She never got out.” My breath catches, and my heart speeds up. “What if we can’t?”
“We can’t get lost. There’s only one way in and out.”
“Then why didn’t she make it out?”
His eyes go to the pile of lipstick-stained cigeratte butts. “She probably smoked herself to death.”
“Who buried her, then?”
“Come on, before you start freaking me out,” he says. “I don’t see anything for me down here, anyway.”
I stay close to Marek through the corridor. We go around the curve, coming to a fork where two tunnels branch off in different directions—one left, the other right.
“That wasn’t here before,” he says.
“Is this a trick?”
“I don’t know.” Marek’s eyes go from one opening to the other. “The right looks like it goes nowhere. There’s a brick wall at the end.”
We go left. The tunnel is longer than the one we came in through. It twists and dips. We go up and down steps and around corners that weren’t here before, ending back in the catacomb with the ancient artwork.
“What the hell.” Marek stops in the middle of the room.
I bump into his arm. “Maybe we should’ve taken that right.”
“Okay, let’s try it.” He darts out of the catacomb with me on his heels.
We make it to the fork in the tunnel and go right. It’s a dead end. Marek pounds his fist on the bricks. I grab his arm and stop his next blow.
“You’re going to hurt your hand.” He already has. Blood trickles from his knuckles down his wrist.
“How do we get out? We’re going to run out of kerosene soon.” He kicks the dirt, trying to get rid of the rest of his frustrations.
“Are you sure your grandfather loved you?”
He shoots me a startled look. “Why do you ask that?”
“Well,” I say. “Because for one, if you didn’t accept this jacked-up legacy, he’d leave you and your grandmother penniless. And two, he sent you on this hunt and into this underground catacomb and no telling if there’s a way out. It doesn’t matter. We’ll probably die in here.”
My heart is beating at a breakneck speed, and I think it’ll rip out of my chest and find its own way out of this dismal crypt.
Morbid thoughts rush through my mind. Would we die of starvation first? Or lack of water? Will the air run out down here? When the lantern goes out, will a bunch of catacomb critters come out of hiding and eat us?
Any of those options sound like they’d be drawn-out deaths and possibly painful.