One Minute to Midnight (19 page)

Soon a tunnel was formed and supports had to
be cut to prevent the roof from caving in, but after almost a week
of digging and relentless frustration they struck something
solid.

"
Dr. Phillips! We’ve
got something here!
"
Dave
shouted.
Further excavation revealed what was a door with symbols inscribed
on it, and it appeared to have been buried for hundreds, or maybe
thousands of years.
"
Let’s get in there. Do you see the markings on
this door?
"
Henry asked
Muluk.

“
I never seen carvings like
this, maybe chief knows.” Muluk replied, and related the inquiry to
Acotas.
Acotas shrugged and replied to Muluk in Bahasa, "Those may be bad
omens, but we have never seen such inscriptions." Muluk translated
this to Henry.
"
Bad
omens? I think we’ll take our chances.
"
Henry said. He laughed it
off.

Acotas said something more to Muluk and Bakti,
and then turned to go leaving them in the tunnel.
"
What did he say?
"
Henry asked.

"
He said if you open
door and demon comes out he and village will seal you inside.”
Bakti said.
"
We have
our money now, please? Before you go in temple.” Muluk
asked.

"
If I pay you now
you’ll take off and leave us here.
"
Henry said.

“
Nah sir, we are right outside and
guide you back when you return, but we not going inside temple.”
Bakti said.

The young man was smiling, but there was
trepidation in his voice, as if he knew opening that door would
unleash an unseen terror onto the party and people of Karyamukti.
Henry rolled his eyes and agreed, handing Muluk and Bakti their pay
and Hamzah’s as well.

"
Make sure Hamzah’s
family gets this money.
"
Henry said.

Ornate characters adorned the golden door.
Snakes, birds, foxes, and what looked like a brontosaur with a
pterodactyl, were arranged in complex patterns.

"
You ready for this,
Dave?
"
Henry
asked.

Dave smiled.

"
Let’s go in,
sir.
"
Dave said.

With a hard tug from both men, the door
creaked and groaned, dropping a small avalanche of dirt to the
ground. A dank, wet air wafted out of the long, dark tunnel within,
reminding them of wet basements. Henry lit his lantern, shining his
light on a skeleton inside the doorway. Beside the skeleton was a
jeweled dagger with a triangular shaped crystal on the hilt. Henry
picked it up, tucking the artifact inside his belt.
"We may need this." Henry said, and they began to move
forward.

They followed a tunnel deep underground, and
made many turns in a spiral that seemed unending. Once at the
bottom, the tunnel straightened out, opening to a room at the end.
Henry and Dave slowly crept into a large chamber beneath the
pyramid, and in each corner was a pile of skeletons. Corridors
diverged in many directions along the walls of the chamber, and the
walls were painted with depictions of past events.

"There are people kneeling before a volcano on
this wall." Dave said.

"I see airships and people flying overhead on
this wall over here."

"Henry, come take a look at this. I think that
dagger you picked up may be a key." Dave said.
In the smooth, granite-block-constructed wall was a
triangular-shaped hole that looked like it would accommodate
Henry's dagger. He slid the pointed end into the hole, and when he
did the jewels on the handle began to glow. A section of the solid
wall slid to the side, creaking and rumbling the ground beneath
their feet. Next, a loud moan, like the howl of outraged souls,
exploded from the wall as another room was revealed.

"It looks like this room was dug out of the
earth below the temple or maybe the pyramid was built on top of a
mass grave. Something bad must have happened down here." Dave
said.

Broken sabers and spears littered the ground,
and they could see them sticking out of burial mounds. Wooden
chests, overflowing with gold and jewels were stacked one atop the
other. Dave ventured forward into the room, and picked up a
conquistador’s helmet, turning it over in his hands.
"Amazing." He whispered.

A blood-chilling scream echoed through the
darkness, freezing them in their tracks. Dave looked around for the
source of the sound, but there was nothing. His heart was beating
faster now, and the thought of running for the entrance became more
appealing by the moment.

"Look at the wall over here." Henry
said.
A mural of the stepped pyramid in all its glory had been painted on
the wall and high above it was a large sun, with rays of light
emanating from it. Below the pyramid, and covering the terraces,
were thousands of bodies lying in twisted positions, their blood
spilling into a river downhill. High atop the temple a shaman, his
arms spread in a wide ‘V’, held the severed head of a sacrificial
victim while the devoted bowed in a childlike posture, facing the
ground. Odd cylindrical shapes floated in the sky above the mural,
appearing to attend the mass genocide.

"My god, what happened here?" Henry
whispered.
"What screamed a few minutes ago is my primary concern." Dave
replied.

"Good point, let's grab some of these
artifacts to prove they exist, and get out of here." Henry
said.
As they turned to leave, the earth suddenly began to writhe and
undulate underneath them as skeletal hands broke the surface, next
arms, and skulls, then torsos.
"You will both stay here...forever!" Something croaked.
Dave turned and in the room behind them stood a skeletal phantom,
garbed in beads and tattered leather pants and vest. It was
pointing their direction. More skeletons began to emerge from their
burial mounds, wailing into the darkness with dreadful
shrieks.
"Run!" Henry yelled.

The skeletal figure began to laugh and mock
them as they ran through the tunnel and back to the surface. When
they reached the door it had already been sealed from outside, and
they could hear the faint sounds of shovels scraping and dirt being
thrown up against it. Henry slammed his body into the door but it
would not budge. Then Dave joined in as the two men desperately
tried to shove their way to freedom. From outside they could hear
the voice of their guide Bakti, but it was so muffled they had to
put their heads to the door.

"Sir, you anger the spirits of mountain and so
they no punish the villagers they sealing you inside. You be
atoning for your trespass. The chief say there is other way out,
but you have to go through catacombs. Sorry, Mr.
Phillips."

Henry and Dave stood for a moment, looking at
one another as moans from below began to grow louder.
"You think we can make it?" Dave asked.
"Looks like we may die trying, but let's go." Henry said.
They ran down the passageway, flashlights in hand, Henry waving his
Colt .45. They would do battle with the undead and go down fighting
like warriors.
A hundred years have passed since that day, and the great mountain
of Gunung Padang remains a mystery to all but those who were there
that day. No one knows what happened to the two men, and their
disappearance was ruled death by misadventure by the Indonesian
government.

the last in line

In an age of witches, dragons, and demons,
three knights will discover the true measure of their courage as
they confront an ancient evil.

Marcus, Roderick, and Filly rode silently through rain-soaked
Rendelshem forest in their homeland of Nodd as the sun began to set
on another long grey day. The rhythmic
clip-clop
of their horses’ hooves
over rocks echoed in the wet, dreary evening like the hypnotic tick
of a metronome. The air reeked of damp, rotting wood. Drops of
fresh water fell from their helmets and into the creases of their
armor causing damp, cold misery for the remaining knights of King
Edward’s court. Tired, hungry, grieving the loss of their fellow
soldiers, friends, and countrymen, the trio returned from their war
with the witch Dersha, vowing to return for revenge, but dreading
that they may have to face her again in combat. It was the
thirty-fifth century BC, and the world was turning upside
down.

Cataclysm was on the mind of every
townsperson. It was impending doom at the end of an era, and the
harbinger of their sorrow was a little old woman who resided just
outside the town of Tolamy. Dersha materialized one day like a fog,
and the trouble began. Some said there were demons in the woods
now, others saw deceased relatives rise from the grave and walk,
still more could hear ominous whispering as night fell in the
forest.

"Fifty of us rode out
yesterday. Three of us return. That woman is of the devil, I
promise you." Said Roderick.
"She is far too foul and wicked a wretch for the likes of Lucifer
to consort with. My guess is he's hiding from
her
, in Hell." Marcus
said.

"I just want sleep. My bones are
tired."

The castle of King Edward
was still miles away, and as the exhausted men passed through the
small hamlet of Warren, a two-story building with a sign above it
reading
Inn
was
irresistible. The buildings were rundown and ramshackle, as if no
one had stayed there in years, and it never occurred to the weary
knights that they saw no people outside, but then, it was raining
and they were exhausted.
"Sleep." Roderick moaned.

"We'll stop here and rest. Tomorrow
morning we ride for the castle, because we are all that remains to
warn the king of Dersha's plan." Marcus said.
"Did I hear her say she was raising an army of the undead?" Filly
asked.

"We fought enough of them back there,
so that doesn't surprise me in the least. I can still smell them."
Roderick said. He spit on the ground.
"Yeah, like rotting chicken and wet earth." Filly said.
"I don't want to talk about it anymore, not right now. Let's just
get out of this armor and rest." Marcus said.
They rode up to the inn as rain poured down upon them, and looked
around with disinterest at the few people who had decided to come
out in such weather. What the people of Warren saw were three gore
covered soldiers who appeared to have crawled out of the grave
themselves. With rumors of a witch about, and that she had been
raising the dead for her armies, a fear began to run through the
countryside as the trio dismounted. The innkeeper peered at them
from a window, and when Filly tried the door, he thought they would
not be allowed passage. There was a moment of strange tension as
they stood outside in the muddy, rutted road waiting for the inn
keeper to open his locked door.

"Are you cursed?" The man asked
through the door. The fear in his voice amused Filly.

"Innkeeper! The cursed seldom ride
horses or carry on conversation, now, please open up or we'll be
forced to spend our gold elsewhere." Marcus shouted.
With a click, the bolt slid aside, and the timid innkeeper opened
his door. He was a smallish man in his mid-fifties with a receding
hairline and crow's feet wrinkles around his eyes that were
spreading to his entire face as the skin sagged with the ravages of
time and gravity's relentless pull. Decades of poor posture had
given his shoulders and back a rounded hunch and a posture that
made him appear as if he were perpetually bending over to pick
something off the ground.
"Sir's, I apologize for being rude, but there are so many rumors
around lately and we have no defenses against what is said lives in
those woods."

"A slide bolt is no security against
the witch. Dersha rides on the wings of the night, and some say she
conjures up horrors that would raze a village in a day." Filly
said, as the kicked mud off their boots and entered the
inn.

The innkeeper was
frightened.

"Sir, may we have three rooms to rest
until morning?" Marcus smiled.

"There is a great evil living in those
woods. Half of Warren is empty because Dersha stole our children
three months back. Many of my people committed suicide at the word
that their children were ground into food for the witch's minions.
Others went to look for them and never returned."

"The dead hung from trees like
ornaments as her demons split our ranks like a wildfire. It was a
nightmare. What's your name old man?" Marcus asked.
"Delio, I’ve owned this inn since my father was killed by the demon
Dravex when he passed through here five years ago. Can you help us
to kill the witch?"
"We lost forty-seven of our brethren out there in those cursed
woods. I fear there is no hope, and we are on our way back to King
Edward’s castle to deliver the news." Filly said. His face was grim
as he recalled the fierce battle with Dersha's risen dead.
"We stood against winged demons from the underworld and lost
miserably. It was…" Roderick said. He trailed off as his mind
reeled back to the horror of his experience.