Demon by Erik Williams Page B

bothered him more. Mike read and spoke Arabic and Hebrew. This language resembled neither. Nor did it look anything like cuneiform. For this region, it was extremely out of place.
    The entrance to the tomb was a black rectangle in a sea of sand. He couldn’t make out anything beyond the surface. Like gazing into the mouth of a bottomless pit. A mouth with perfectly squared corners. After a few seconds, he looked away, his half-drunk mind losing to a bout of dizziness.
    â€œReady to go down?” Greengrass said.
    â€œLead the way.”
    Greengrass climbed down the ladder into the pit, followed by Lowe and then Mike. At the bottom, the fragments appeared less like metal than they had from above. They also lost their stone resemblance. Mike had never seen anything like it. Maybe the whiskey skewed his vision because, for a moment, he thought the surface of a piece rippled, like a calm pool of water that a pebble’s been dropped into. As he moved by it, though, the effect ceased.
    â€œWe found a journal on the dead archeologist,” Greengrass said.
    Mike turned and found Greengrass staring at the same fragment he had been hypnotized by. “What’d it say?”
    â€œHe noted the slab seemed to be made of a material neither metal nor stone. He wrote the surface looked both static and kinetic at the same time. Like water moving under ice.”
    â€œYou saw it, too?”
    â€œYep. Freaky.”
    Mike nodded. Good, I didn’t imagine it.
    â€œDid the archeologist say what writing this is, sir?” Lowe said.
    â€œHe couldn’t identify the language.”
    Mike rubbed the back of his neck. “This keeps getting better and better. Can’t wait to see what’s down there. Maybe a unicorn.”
    Lowe snorted.
    Greengrass walked over to the side of the tomb and shined a flashlight down. Mike followed and looked over the major’s shoulder.
    Below, the light illuminated a wall constructed of the same material. The surface seemed to dance as the beam passed over it. A flowing solid, if such a thing existed.
    As Greengrass swept the light back and forth, Lowe brought down a halogen lamp from above and set it up. He flicked the switch and the entirety of the tomb came into focus.
    Mike saw four walls and a floor, all constructed of the mysterious substance. The tomb, he estimated, was probably ten feet by ten feet by ten feet. Every square inch had the unknown language carved into it. It’s a box, Mike thought. A box that had been built and buried.
    â€œWant to go down?” Greengrass said.
    Mike hesitated, but his curiosity got the better of him and he eventually nodded. Lowe brought over the ladder they’d climbed down into the pit with and lowered it into the tomb.
    Greengrass motioned his hand down in a sweeping gesture. “Be my guest.”
    Mike smirked and stepped on the ladder and took the first couple rungs down. Cold air tickled his legs as he descended. As his waist and torso entered the tomb, the cold grew more intense. By the time he reached the bottom, Mike had to hug his chest, shivering uncontrollably.
    â€œHoly shit, it’s cold down here,” Greengrass said as he stepped off the ladder onto the floor of the tomb.
    Mike’s teeth chattered. “I didn’t feel the cold when we were looking down in here.”
    Greengrass shook his head. “Neither did I.”
    Lowe climbed down and shivered as well. “Jesus, it’s like the cold exists only in here.”
    It did feel like the cold couldn’t escape the tomb even with the cover gone, as if it existed in the tomb and nowhere else.
    Impossible, Mike thought. Hot air rose and cold air descended, but this was ridiculous. It sure as hell wasn’t cold on the surface, so Mike couldn’t even begin to imagine how it got like this.
    â€œMaybe an underground spring runs beneath here,” Greengrass said. “Keeps this place naturally cold.”
    â€œThat would have