Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (31 page)

She sighs and, despite feeling sick with worry, steps over. “It’s Latin, although I’m not sure what these other etchings are,” she reports.

“Please tell me you know Latin.”

“Of course, Father taught it to me. He
is
a professor of paleo-linguistics.” She leans in for a closer look, and after a few false starts, translates, “It says: ‘Here lies the great wizard’.”

“The great wizard, as in… Merlin?”

“Who?”

“You know, King Arthur? Lancelot? Excalibur?”

“Oh,
Merlin
,” she pronounces with a French lilt. “Do you think it’s really him?”

Clifton shrugs. “Dunno.”

Monique next examines the candles, her curiosity once again getting the better of her. “How long do you suppose they have been burning?”

“A long time, would be my guess. Like I said, maybe they’re magic.”

Monique takes a step back. “I don’t like this. I think we should leave. In fact, we need to leave
now
. I’m getting really, really scared.”

“And face the wrath of Uncle Gerard? No thank you. I would rather be down here in this stuffy old crypt.”

Something suddenly occurs to her, and she heads back to the sarcophagus lid, motioning for Clifton to give her some light. He does so, and she examines the markings more closely.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“I just realized what these other markings are. They’re runes.”

“What’re those?”

“Ancient Celtic writing.”

“Let me guess: you can read those, too?”

“Good guess.”

“So what do they say?”

She frowns. “I can’t read all of it.”

“Well, what does some of it say?”

Monique runs her now-dirty forefinger over the engravings. “It’s some type of spell.”

“A spell? Like a magic spell?”

“Yeah.” She stands back. “This isn’t a crypt, Clifton.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s a prison.”

The dark-haired boy makes his way cautiously down the narrow flight of stairs, holding a single wooden match before him. After a God-awful length of time—and many more matches—he finally reaches the bottom. He peers cautiously into the long hallway, wondering what lies ahead. Wondering, too, where the two younger kids have gone. The match burns his fingers, and he yelps. All goes black. He feels around in the box… and produces his last match. He swallows hard, lights it, and follows the tunnel…

“An
eternal
prison,” Monique whispers, reading the runes. She looks up. “But I don’t understand.”

“I do,” says Clifton. “Merlin can’t die. He’s immortal. Like a vampire or something. He lives forever. And all of these candles, and the spells, and the hidden tomb… all of this is to keep him in his coffin.”

“But I thought was a good wizard?”

“Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. No one really knows.”

“Okay, now you’re really scaring me.”

“I’m scaring myself, too.”

As Monique backs away, her foot knocks over one of the candles. It falls to the stone floor… and winks out.

“That can’t be good,” says Clifton.

Indeed, in rapid succession, all candles begin going out, leaving only a hissing trail of black smoke. If not for Clifton’s torch, they would have found themselves in utter darkness.

“Light them again,” urges Monique. “With the torch. Hurry!”

Just as Clifton picks up a candle, hands fumbling, a strange noise jars him from his task.

“What was that?” asks Monique. The color has drained from her face.

“I don’t know.” Here it comes again. Scraping… from within the sarcophagus.

Clifton nearly drops his torch. “Holy crap!”

“Merde!”

And that’s when the lid to the sarcophagus shifts.

No, not shifts,
Monique realizes to her horror.
It’s beginning to open.

The final match has long since gone out.

The dark-haired boy continues along in complete darkness, running his hand along the smooth stone wall, feeling his way. The two kids have gone on before him, he’s certain of it. Indeed, this is the
only
way they could have gone. If they can do it, so can he.

He takes in a breath of cool air, then forges on into the inky blackness.

As they stare, dumbstruck, a dried-out, bony finger emerges from beneath the sarcophagus lid. It’s followed by three more… and a husk of a thumb. All curled out, gripping the heavy stone.

That’s when Monique screams. She screams and screams and screams. In fact, she can’t stop screaming.

Clifton grabs her hand, pulls her, unresisting, to the exit. And just as they reach the arched opening—an opening that leads back into the circular room, now a dead end—something heavy crashes to the stone floor.

It is the sarcophagus lid.

Whatever was inside is now free.

Both kids pause, and gasping and hyperventilating, turn to watch a white-haired man sit up.

Not a man,
thinks Clifton.
A mummy!

The dark-haired boy hears the heavy crash, and picks up his pace as much as he dares, stumbling in the darkness.

And there, far ahead of him, is his saving grace: a faint glow in the depths of the tunnel.

“Danke!”
he whispers, and sprints forward.

The thing that sits up is not human.

At least, not anymore. It has bleached-white skin, long gray hair, and, remarkably, an elegant purple robe. As it sits up, it pauses briefly, and Monique thinks:
It’s confused. It doesn’t know where it is.

Then she sees something else, something that terrifies her well nigh into incoherence.

Its eyes glow red.

It’s a demon,
she thinks.
We are alone with a demon!
Clifton tugs at her hard. Thank God for Clifton. Without him, she would have been incapable of moving. She stumbles and trips, falling to her knees. But her cousin holds her tight, never letting go.

Bless him
.

She finds her feet, and soon they are racing back toward the archway, which leads into the circular room… their only escape, temporary as it may be.

No, not temporary,
thinks Clifton.
We can pull the handle again!

And just as they reach the doorway, the floor beneath them begins to rumble and shake. It is a familiar sound to the cousins. It means, of course, that the circular room is rotating.

Indeed, the arched opening before them disappears as the room within spins. Where there was an opening, a wall shifts into being.

The cousins pick up their speed… but not before the opening disappears completely, trapping them within.

The dark-haired boy reaches the end of the hallway and steps out of the darkness and into a circular room, which is lit, amazingly, by torches ensconced along the curved wall.

What in the world is this?More muffled screaming comes from behind the wall. Where, exactly, from, he doesn’t know… but he’s going to find out.