The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman (30 page)

Steve knelt down and took a look. He was silent
for a few seconds, but then raised himself up. "Well, I seen a lot
a shit... seen two violent, senseless killings in the last fifteen
minutes, but if that don't beat all."

"What is it?!" Bob said. "And more importantly,
can we get some cash out of it?!"

Steve nodded. "Does the scrap yard take solid
gold?"

"What?!" Bob took a look and came up with the
same look on his face. "That's gold, ain't it? Them shapes in
there, like big coffins, that's solid gold."

"Even if it's just gold over wood or somethin',
we're still talkin' pounds of it," Steve said.

Jerry had to see for himself. "I... there's too
much," he said. "We cain't get rid a that much gold. All of us got
records, there ain't no body gonna believe we just found it."

"I think we can sure as hell try," Larry said.
"That guy at the Corner Three pawn shop might take it; I sold him
some watches one time and I know what he's buyin' around the back
door he's shippin' to Detroit. Come on, y'all stand back and me and
Steve will take the picks to it again so we can get in there." He
swung and smiled. "See there, it's chippin' off easy, now."

Steve took a swing and Larry followed quickly
with another and with just a few more swings it was easily big
enough for all of them to crawl through.

"Woohey! Hold up, you got it!" Jerry said. He
dropped down on his knees and put both arms and his head through
the hole. "See?" he said, his voice was muffled but seemed to
reverberate like he was in a large room or hall. "This room is
fuckin' ginormous!"

"Get on in there," Steve said, "so we can follow
you in."

He pulled himself in with his hands and stood
up. "First one in! That means I get a bigger cut, right?" He lifted
the lantern and took a quick look around. It was a well-made room,
though crumbling and dilapidated now, plastered and painted white
with red and blue decorations or perhaps writings, all over the
walls. And portions, mostly pillars and corner ornaments, were
either painted gold or were gold-plated. If the designs were
writing, he had never seen the language before, and he knew what
Egyptian and Greek looked like from working in the prison library
for ten years; this was something different, more primitive and
ancient.

"Ya still living?" someone yelled from
outside.

"Yeah, y'all come on in," Jerry said. "Plenty a
room."

Steve poked his head through, then wriggled the
rest of the way and jumped up quickly. "Hey Larry, put me another
lantern in here, will ya?" He knelt down and grabbed it through the
hole and with two bright lights in the room, it came alive with
color and reflections. "Holy..."

"Fuckin'..."

"Shit!" Larry said as his gut got caught in the
hole. "Y'all grab my arms and help pull me in!"

"Come on fat ass, suck in your gut!" Jerry said.
And with another tug, they managed to birth him into the room, more
accurately called a tomb now that they had taken a quick look
around.

Bob, the smallest of the four, came through with
no problems at all, and they all stood for a moment and looked
around, speechless as four lanterns lit the place. It was a tomb,
but not like anything any of them had ever seen, even in books or
on television. Disregarding the presumed inscriptions, even the
scrolls and decorations on the funerary furnishings, chairs,
statues, jars and vases, even what seemed to be toys, seemed
completely foreign, and not just foreign to the area, foreign to
anything they could even imagine existing. Jerry took a closer look
at one of the large inscriptions carved into the top of a marble
table... animals, they seemed, birds, but oddly not birds, more
like planes or spaceships. There were trees, or perhaps spindly
arms with outstretched fingers. And occasionally in the script, a
completely unrecognizable symbol dominated his attention,
presumably a letter from some forgotten alphabet.

"What is that, like French or somethin'?" Larry
said as he looked over Jerry's shoulder.

"It ain't French, but hell if I know what it
is," he said. "Somebody took a long time carving that in, though,
so they musta thought it were important to write down."

"Plane tree berry tree plane bars," Larry said
as he tried to make sense of it. "Maybe I just ordered tacos in
Spanish or somethin'."

"Or woke the dead what's in them coffins," Bob
said. Everyone laughed.

"Hey, give me a hand here, I wanna pop the lid
off this'un," Steve said. He was tugging at the heavy gold-plated
wooden lid of what appeared to be a sarcophagus, decorated as an
effigy, but poorly done if the body was supposed to be human.

"I think that three year old boy a mine coulda
sculptured a human face better'n that," Bob said.

"You been sayin' your boy was three year old for
the last five years," Larry said.

"Well, however the fuck old he is, he could do
art better'n that."

"Unless whatever is in there looks just like
that," Jerry said. They all chuckled, but it was a nervous laugh. A
tomb buried so deeply into the ground and so full of weird and
strange things, maybe it
was
something different. "Y'all
ever read stories by that dude, Lovecraft?" Everyone else shook
their heads. "Always talking about old gods and ancient horrors and
stuff." He looked up at everyone. "The stories never end good."

"Well, this one here is gonna end good," Bob
said. "Just chop a bit a this here gold off, get me some cash money
for it, and stay drunk for a month solid." The other men allowed
themselves the same dream for a moment and all smiled and
sighed.

They all fitted their fingers around the bottom
edge of the lid and leaned toward Steve so they could concentrate
their energy on a smaller location, but no matter how hard they
tried, they could only raise the lid slightly out of its groove. It
was just too heavy.

"Down! Down!" Steve yelled, and they all let
go.

"Shit-fire!" Bob yelled and clapped his hands
together. "It's solid fuckin' gold, ain't it?!"

Larry swung his pick into the lid as the others
jumped back. "Warn us, dickhead!" They all got closer and looked
into the hole he had just made. There was no wood showing; it was
solid gold; the hole showed it was at least an inch thick.

They were all silent except for Bob who appeared
to be crying. "Let's just whack off a few big chunks and get outa
here for now," he said. "Even a hand-sized chunk's gotta be worth,
what, fifty dollars er more."

"Way more, "Jerry said. "Tens of thousands of
dollars."

"So, even
one
a these here lids would be
worth..."

"Millions," Jerry said. He looked around and
counted what he saw. "Four lids. Even split b'tween us, we're all
millionaires."

"You missed one," Steve said. He pointed to a
smaller one in the corner that everyone had missed on their first
examination of the room. It was leaned up instead of lying flat,
and had a somewhat different design and ornamentation. It seemed a
bit more ornate, more meticulously crafted, even the visage was
more human-like... a little human girl. There were also more
objects placed around the smaller casket, as if it had been
venerated, as if someone had made offerings around it. There were
wooden dolls, now mostly just cracked heads with rotted bodies and
clothes. There were cups and bowls, jewelry and small gold items,
even flint arrowheads.

"Hey!" Larry yelled. "Now there's somethin' more
my size!"

"Weren't that why you have to live under a
bridge now?" Jerry said.

"I mean we can carry that shit way easier than
these others," he said. "Ain't no body ever gonna find this place,
so let's grab the stuff we can carry, and we'll come back when we
need to with some crowbars and saws."

Jerry squatted down in front of the small
sarcophagus and touched it with his fingertips. "She looks like an
angel or somethin'," he said. Though gold, the face and body had
been painted in places. "She even has wings."

"I figure she's just a box full a dust, now,"
Larry said. "Anyways, that lid 'ill be easier to take off since
it's smaller and leanin' up."

"Reckon, so," Jerry said. "Almost seems wrong to
disturb her, though." He looked up at the other guys. "Don't
it?"

"All I'm seein' is a bunch a old shit that needs
to be converted to cash in my pocket," Larry said. The other two
nodded.

"Okay, okay," Jerry said. "Let's gather up this
small stuff first." He dropped down on his knees and started
picking up the jewelry. He held a necklace up so the others could
see."

"You think that's real jewels or just plastic?"
Larry said.

"It's gotta be real," Bob said. "They didn't
have plastic back then." He grabbed it as Jerry continued to dangle
it in his face. "But I
do
know that's a gold chain and
shit."

Everyone knelt down on the floor in front of the
small coffin and started grabbing things. Some they showed to the
rest, some were put quickly in a pocket before the others could see
it. "We need a bag for these gold cups," Steve said.

Larry stood up and stomped one. "Flat as a
wallet, now," he said and picked it up and slipped into his back
pocket. "Let's pull that lid off so I can break it up for us."

Everyone stood up and faced the little girl's
effigy. "Did that face change?" Jerry said.

"Change?" they all said together.

"It just looks different, now," he said. "I
thought she was smilin' before."

They all looked closer and shrugged. "Looks the
same as always far as I can say."

"She just looks angry, now," Jerry said. "Must
be the way the light is reflectin' on it." He ran his finger along
the edge. "Bob, you and Larry get back on your knees and pull on
the bottom edge and me and Steve will pull on the sides. I figure
if we can break it loose on bottom, it'll drop down off the coffin.
Just watch your fingers."

They all pulled, and the seal broke with a
little wisp of smoke rising from the top, then the whole lid
dropped to the floor just as he had said it would. They all grabbed
the top edge and started to pull it forward, but two small hands
suddenly reached out from the box and touched the backs of their
hands. They all panicked and jerked back.

"Fuck!"

There was no resistance from the tiny hands, but
the little fingernails scratched the backs of Larry's as he pulled
them free. Then the little ones disappeared back into the box.
"What in the fuck?!" he yelled. "They's something alive in there!"
He looked at his hands, several scratches were deep enough to draw
blood.

"Were it an animal of some kind?" Bob yelled.
"Scared the shit outa me!"

Steve seemed to be the most afraid. He backed
completely across the room, unable to speak, though he tried to
string together swear words as he pointed.

"It musta been some sorta ancient trap or
something," Jerry said. "Some sorta mechanized thing ta scare
people if they ever opened the lid, like in the movies where
someone grabs a piece a gold and a big rock chases 'em."

"Good fuckin' job!" Larry said. "They nailed
'scary' with a
hammer
!" He shook his hands and started
stomping around the room. "Damn, dudes, my hands is achin'
somethin' fierce!"

"Give me that pick-ax," Bob said. "I'll pull the
lid over so we can check out the inside."

"Guys, I just ain't feelin' good," Larry
said.

Steve bent over and picked up the pick-ax and
handed it to Bob. He and Jerry then stepped back and Bob hooked the
tip over the lid. "Ready?" They nodded.

The lid hadn't even hit the floor before all
three of the men stepped back, almost tripping over their own feet
to get away. "It's a doll," Bob said. "Right?"

"Guys!"

They all turned to look at Larry who was
suddenly jumping, almost vibrating across the floor. His hands were
oozing thick pus and blood and foam was coming out of his mouth.
And as his eyes rolled back in his head, he seemed to be lifted off
the floor a few inches by some unseen force, something arching his
back backwards until it snapped like a toothpick. He then collapsed
on the floor with the decay that started on his hands quickly
running up his arms and across his neck.

"Holy fuck!" Jerry yelled. "Holy..."

"It's not a fuckin' doll!" Bob yelled. He
pointed and the other men watched as the little girl's eyes opened.
They were solid, shiny jet-black. She raised both of her arms and
jumped toward Bob, as fast as a cat, but he managed to avoid her.
He backed up but tripped and fell on his butt, and the little girl
jumped again as he buried the pick-ax into the top of her head.
"What's happening?!"

"Guys!" Jerry pointed, but Bob and Steve were
already turned toward the large coffins as the lids began to
vibrate, then literally flew off as if a powerful blast from inside
had pushed them up. They stuck to the ceiling, not embedded, just
stuck with some sort of magic or hidden power, like magnets.

"Not good!" Bob yelled. He pulled the pick from
the little girl's head and held it in front of him like a weapon.
The little girl seemed to regain animation and literally wriggled
across the floor like a huge leach or slug, then stood in front of
the big coffins as four huge mummies slowly rose from their depths.
They were hideously deformed with bloody faces, misshapen, perhaps
once carved into that shape to represent something else, something
other than human, but the rest of their bodies, apart from their
unnaturally hulking size, was human. They moved slowly, ancient
linen wrappings snapping or cutting into their dry flesh, but they
were easily able to escape their coffins and get to their feet
behind the girl in only seconds.

"Plan?" Steve said.

"Run!" Jerry said.

But Bob had already figured that out and was on
his belly trying to get out through the hole in the wall. But he
failed. Even before he was halfway through, the little girl had
jumped and landed on his back. And almost instantly, with
incredible speed and strength, she rammed all of her fingers into
his flesh. His screaming, though muffled, was almost deafening as
the quick disease or curse flowed from her nails and into his
flesh, and his back, even through his old t-shirt, began to bubble
and boil before the wound swelled and popped through the thin cloth
and oozed out and onto the floor.