The atlantean artifact, p.2
The Atlantean Artifact, page 2
“Impressive, no?”
She turned her head and remembered that there were three other people at the table. “Sorry,” she replied, “I just now noticed it. It’s — phenomenal.”
“It is,” the man said. “Henrique Waltham Joaquin,” he said, over-enunciating each syllable as if he was simultaneously sucking on a marble. “A French-born sculptor who has made his home in Greece these last few decades. He is sitting right over there, directly next to the piece.”
He pointed across the room and Jenny saw the man. Joaquin was hunched over a glass of champagne, both elbows on the table. His hair looked dirty and disheveled, but he wore an impeccable tuxedo, complete with tails. “Interesting,” she said.
“Quite interesting,” the actor continued. “To gather such a fine assortment of men and women, well — it’s really quite remarkable.”
Jenny didn’t necessarily feel the same way. With enough money on the table, anyone can get some famous people together for a night.
The man pushing the wheeled cart stopped in front of the giant bell, looking straight at it. He wore a permanent frown, his eyebrows crusty and thick, dark and brooding.
“It’s just a fundraiser,” she said.
“Just a fundraiser — ha!” The movie star was apparently a jovial man, and he let out a few more chuckles before explaining himself. “This event is certainly a fundraiser, my dear,” he said. “But it’s a fundraiser for more than just a sense of pride.”
“Oh?” Jenny looked over at her husband. He had his trademark grin plastered on his face, the one that said to the world I have no idea what’s happening but you’ll never be able to tell. He shrugged.
He’d told her earlier that evening that the fundraiser was simply a way of keeping the museum in the black for the next fiscal year. The country had been thrust into a bit of a depression following the economic collapse that occurred a couple of years ago, so many of the nonprofit institutions like this one had worked toward increasing their donation support.
“Yes, of course,” the man said, now addressing Jonathan as well. “The museum will benefit from the support of the fine people here, but it is not intended to be an altruistic effort. There is something quite valuable on the line for the auction.”
“The auction?” Jenny looked at the tower of antiquities on the table in the center of the room.
“Not for those piddly objects,” he said. “They will live here, like all the other pots and pans from centuries ago. No, some of the museum’s silent partners have the distinct privilege of owning some offshore interests it is hoping to sell tonight.”
Jonathan was now intrigued, Jenny noticed. He sat up straighter in his chair, leaning slightly inward toward the actor sitting across the table from him.
“For the past five years or so, they have owned a moderately sized parcel of land on the island of Santorini.”
Jenny knew of Santorini. Jonathan had been there twice on ‘business’ while working with the Greek government the past two years, though she suspected that what he meant by ‘business’ had an entirely different meaning to him than it did to the rest of world.
“They excavated some of these items from that land, but the pressures of the government as well as a waning interest in the Aegean region for geological history has led them to believe that it is time for a new chapter in their own history. They hope the new owner will take care of the land, even possibly open it to the public as a park or wildlife sanctuary, though they have been quite vague in their descriptions.”
It sounded familiar now. She thought she had read something about that in one of the local papers their doorman brought up to the hotel that morning. Something about a museum hoping to cash in a nice piece of land for short-term profit. The paper had taken an anti-capitalism slant, but had ultimately ended with the optimistic statement that Greece would rise again through a focus on the historic past it had come from, not from importing the histories of other nations.
Jenny looked up again at the bell in the center of the room. The staff member who had been pushing the cart toward the bell had stopped directly in front of it, and was now pouring some sort of liquid into a cavity at the bottom of the antique object. He was focusing intently, unaware of the two other museum security guards approaching him from behind.
She frowned. Odd, she thought. The guards were in a hurry, one of them taking into a radio while the other had a hand on his side.
Gripping a gun.
CHAPTER 3
JENNIFER
She squeezed the edge of the table. The movie star was still yammering on, apparently bored of the philanthropic talk and now onto the subject he was really interested in: himself. Her husband was still wearing the goofy smile, using what little self-control she knew he had to focus on the actor and his story.
The guard with the huge eyebrows finished pouring the vase of liquid into the crevice and tipped the jar back onto his cart. He reached down into the front pocket of his shirt as he knelt down, pushing aside a sheet that had been concealing the lower section of the cart.
Jenny watched closely, but couldn’t see what it was the man was fiddling with beneath the sheet. He took a tiny device out of the shirt pocket and set it down next to something larger, but his body was obscuring the view.
The two guards were nearly on him now, approaching silently. Apparently the security lead had ordered them to keep their appraisal of the situation quiet, so as not to disturb the growing number of VIP guests in the room. Jenny imagined their supervisor watching on from a closed-circuit television system in a back room somewhere, communicating with the man holding the walkie-talkie.
She looked at the actor’s wife — she was listening intently to her husband’s retelling of how they’d met — either doing a great job of pretending as though it were the first time she’d heard the story or it was, in fact, the first time she’d heard it. She looked at the actor himself, suddenly having the strange urge to tell him to shut up, to interrupt him and ask the table to watch what was happening in the center of the room.
She didn’t need to look at Jonathan — he hadn’t moved since the story had begun, holding his frozen look of interest since they’d sat down. So she glanced around the room to see if anyone else was aware that there was something strange taking place.
The only person she saw watching the scene unfold with her was the artist, Henrique Waltham Joaquin, who was sitting cross-legged across the room from her, his head cocked sideways a bit as the man with the eyebrows knelt in front of his cart.
The first guard was on him at that moment. He grabbed the man’s shoulder, urging him upward, and the man obliged. He stood, just as the second guard reached him.
She could see them exchanging words, though she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of Mozart and pre-dinner chatter that reached her ears. The thick-browed man shrugged a bit and she could imagine him saying, I don’t know what the problem is. I just came in to check the bell-thingy.
She looked at the object that had been the subject of the man’s focus since entering the room with his cart. It was worn, and shaped like a ceramic cap that had once been covering a tinged metallic bell. It was about six feet tall, four feet in diameter. There were no markings large enough to be visible from where she sat, but the metal structure seemed to have small scratches on it, like writing, around the exterior.
One of the guards inspected the bell while the other continued to question the staffer who had been working on it. She couldn’t read lips, but she could tell they weren’t speaking English.
The guard inspecting the artifact knelt down and spread the sheet away from the cart and peered in. She watched his back as he studied whatever it was inside.
Jenny waited a few seconds as the man froze, then lifted the radio to his lips and began to speak.
“Jonathan,” she whispered, interrupting the actor’s story. “We need to go.”
“What?” Jonathan asked.
“We need to leave. Now.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer. At that moment the man who had brought the cart inside fell to the ground and stabbed through the sheet with his hand. He pulled out the small device that had been sitting on the bottom shelf of the cart and pressed a button on its side.
Jenny heard the guard’s radio squawk to life. “Confirmed,” a voice said, crackling in English. “Locating the nearest support.”
The first guard jumped backwards and pulled the pistol from his belt. He shouted something in another language toward the man on the ground, but the man just lay flat on the floor.
Jonathan and the actor were now watching the drama, as well as a few other tables nearby. Jenny started to stand up involuntarily, but Jonathan gripped her wrist.
“Stay down, honey,” he said. “We don’t know —”
“I don’t need to know what it is,” she hissed. “I don’t want to be around it.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but Jenny rose before he could speak. She whirled around and started toward the edge of the hall, where she’d seen an exit sign above a doorway that was partially hidden behind an archway.
She heard the guards both shouting now, the tables of guests growing quiet as they turned to watch the action. Glasses stopped clinking and silverware lay silent, but the two guards continued rattling off orders to the man on the ground and into their radios.
Jenny picked up her pace, nearing the archway and door to the exit. She assumed it led outside, but it didn’t appear to be a door meant for guests, as it was flanked on both sides by a trash receptacle and a table full of dinnerware.
She was almost at the door when she heard it. A high-pitched hum, throbbing as it rose in pitch and intensity. It sounded like a dog whistle, just a piercing, shrill note, at the stratosphere of her hearing. It continued upward and she found herself trying to pop her ears.
Jenny made it to the door and reached down to the handle. She grabbed it, but her hand slipped as she lost focus.
She stepped back, suddenly unsure of her footing. Was the floor moving? She couldn’t tell. She felt drunk, as if she’d been drugged or given some sort of sedative.
She struggled back toward the door, finally getting a hand around the knob. She turned it.
Locked.
She screamed as the sound rose even higher, now so high in pitch there was no sound at all — but she could feel it. The pressure level of the sound wave felt like a fork was stabbing at her eyes from inside her head. Her body felt heavy, weighted down by an invisible force, like a thick layer of blankets had been draped over her.
She tried to turn around, to see what might be causing the sound. Her vision grew blurry, but she fought it back. It took all of her focus, and she realized after a few seconds that she was having difficulty breathing.
She fell to one knee.
Through her blurry vision, the peripherals receding into blackness, she saw her table. Jonathan and the actor and his wife. All of them were holding their heads, mouths open wide.
She felt sick to her stomach now, but she couldn’t stop watching them. The pain grew to an enormous level, and then she noticed the guards and the man who’d wheeled in the cart. The cart sat idly by the huge bell, but the bell itself seemed to be throbbing. It was moving, pulsating in time with the pressure waves reaching her body, gently pushing the waves out into the room.
What the hell?
She had no idea what to make of that, or if it was just an illusion created by her failing vision. But regardless of what might be happening to the artifact, there was definitely something happening to the three men closest to it.
The man laying on the ground was still, looking as though he were asleep, but the two guards next to him were on their knees, their arms hanging at their sides.
Both of them were facing her.
Both of them had a shocked expression on their faces.
And both of them seemed to be made of liquid.
She tried to frown, to improve her vision enough to know if her eyes were playing tricks on her or not. It seemed to help, just a bit.
And that’s when she noticed.
The guards’ faces were melting. Their cheeks had slid downward, opening their eye sockets wider and wider, their bloodshot eyes now just empty, peering orbs, frozen in an electrified expression. Their chins drooped, their lips curling downward at the sides.
She tried to catch her breath. She tried to scream again, but it was impossible. The weight had increased to twice what it had been, and it was still increasing. The pressure wave throbbed around her, through her. It made her head feel mushy, as if someone had opened her skull and was stirring her brain around with a spoon.
She wanted to lie down, but she no longer had control of her muscles.
Oh God, what is happening?
It was the last thought she had.
With strength she didn’t know she had, Jenny reached up to her face, pushing against the great pressure of the bell’s pulsing wave, and pointed the fingers of her left hand to the side of her face.
A few more inches and she made contact. It was thick, a pudding-like substance, warm and syrupy.
She pressed on her jaw. Her cheek simply slid through her fingers and dripped onto the floor. It was happening to her, too. She didn’t feel it, couldn’t feel it, but she knew it was happening.
Her eyes closed then, her peripherals moving in sideways to block her vision completely, and she felt herself falling.
CHAPTER 4
SARAH
The wall swelled up above her, as if it were alive. It hadn’t moved, but in the baking sun and the hot, arid air swirling up around her only adding to the effect, she could have sworn the wall itself was the thing moving.
It was hot, and the humidity from the massive lake nearby — Lake Superior — didn’t help.
She reached a hand up and placed the back of it onto her forehead. She couldn’t tell if it was her hand or her head that felt hotter. She sighed, blinking a few times to fight away the brightness, then looked back down.
This had better be worth it, she thought. I’m not an archeologist. I’m an anthropologist.
The two fields were closely related, and ever since her doctoral dissertation and subsequent publications, academia seemed to have a hard time deciding which typecast to fit her to. Her father was an esteemed and well-known archeologist, and while she loved that line of work as much as her own, she’d chosen — or at least tried to choose — many years ago to forge her own path in the world.
It hadn’t worked.
Everyone she encountered who recognized her knew her because of her father, Professor Graham Lindgren. She was ‘that famous archeologist’s daughter,’ and her own credentials and degrees were merely an afterthought.
If there’s something here, let me find it, she willed. She and her team were digging around in the dirt of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan. The park, a 40-mile tract of land situated on Lake Superior, was a national protected area and one that had taken a bit of maneuvering to access. Natural archways, sandstone cliffs, plenty of hiking trails, and immaculate beaches made the park a destination for outdoorsy types, but it was a bit more difficult to gain access when ‘digging up artifacts’ was the reason for visiting.
Her father would have been able to simply pick up the phone or send an email and he’d have been granted access.
Sarah, on the other hand, had begged, pleaded, and borrowed favors from her crew and their teams as well as from her own superiors at her university, and even then she was given only a three-day OTG, or on-the-ground. It was hardly enough time to get a decent hole dug, never mind getting some useful data.
Her research hypothesis was fizzling out, and its demise was going to be slow, sad, and potentially dreadful for her career.
She slammed a shovel down into the gritty beach, the sun still bouncing off the cliff and directly onto the front of her body.
“Dr. Lindgren,” a voice called to her from behind.
Thank God, she thought. Anything to justify a break.
She unfastened the carabiner that held her water bottle from her pack, wondering if it was even worth the energy to trudge back to the tent. Maybe I can just have them come over here, she thought. This is technically my expedition.
But while she was the ‘boss’ and any of the three undergraduate field assistants she had under her employ would have rushed to her aide, she wasn’t about to lose the opportunity to stand inside the tent, in the shade, even for just a few minutes. Maybe she could even come up with some ideas for emails that just had to be written now, giving her a longer break…
“Coming,” she called back. She took a swig from the bottle and then screwed the cap back on. Every motion was calculated, measured, as every movement cost something. Energy was a resource now, every calorie of heat burned making her hotter still. She took a few steps forward, away from the towering rock wall where she had been working, eyeing the white canvas tent standing fifty yards away as though it were fifty miles distant.
This is the crap my dad put up with for forty years? she thought. She was happy to be an anthropologist — generally they got to stay inside, working with statistics and maps and other non-field data — but there were occasions, like this one, when the fieldwork could only be performed by her. This was her mission, so this was her field.
She reached the tent and considered collapsing into one of the four folding camp chairs that had been set up around the interior. She urged herself forward, ignoring the heat exhaustion. The student who had summoned her was standing over the folding table on the opposite of the tent, examining something in front of him.
The boy’s name was Alexander Whipple, and he stood nearly a foot taller than her, which was especially striking since she herself was quite tall. He was devilishly handsome, a dark complexion and deep-set features, and it was only by reminding herself that he was nearly a decade her junior — and her employee — that she was able to keep from testing the man’s interest in her.
