Batman: A Dark Knight in the Life

(I obviously lay no claim to Batman or the characters in his world and I do not own their rights in any way. I also lay no claim to any other DC characters I mention in the story and have no intention whatsoever of profiting in any way from what I've written. I'm just a dumb cluck that loves superhero stuff and wanted to write a Batman short story.)


Batman: A Dark Knight in the Life


Just past midnight, three stories up, nestled in a recess near a shattered window of the former Gotham City East End Lumber and Steel Co., the bat roosted, rabid, not by condition but by ferociously disciplined choice; rabid for blood, the blood of criminals, the diseased blood that perpetually infested the city, his city, the diseased blood of Gotham only he and a small few others could consume without shriveling into nothingness. He roosted in the abandoned warehouse he knew well in Gotham's filthy, crime infested East End, invisible in the pitch black building in the near pitch black area he had, in the recent past, tried to save, not as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne. He stayed alert, repeatedly scanning the area with his night vision tech and waited. Three years earlier, he had, as Bruce Wayne, founded the business he greatly hoped would help end poverty in the East End, a business that began with such promise, attracting new workers and their families to the area and providing an instant boost to Gotham's economy in that sector. But crime had won out, despite Bruce Wayne's best efforts. The local street gangs grew instead of faltered, the violence increased instead of abated, and the recently arrived families left the area in droves. All that remained were a lot of young, single, predominately male workers who were easily eaten up by the gangs, joining in bunches, swelling their ranks to new levels and driving away all of Bruce Wayne’s partners until he remained, alone, forced to scrap the idea he had so greatly hoped would succeed, the idea he hoped would make Batman less necessary.

He had been too ambitious; too much too soon. That was his positive view of the situation, even though, in truth, it had come way too late. That was Bruce Wayne's view. But Bruce Wayne had failed and now it was Batman's responsibility to pick up the pieces. Not only had he inadvertently swelled the ranks of the local gangs, he had provided them with a meeting place, this cleared out, partially demolished warehouse complex. Most street lamps busted and lightless, the poorly lit area had seen covert business transactions from local gangs rise dramatically in the last few months. Busy with the Justice League, Batman had left the matter largely to Gordon but was recently informed by the Commissioner that a new gang element, a group boldly calling themselves the Young Dictators, had arrived in Gotham and were looking to make a big mark, a big bang, in their new environment. Through Gotham PD infiltration, they had learned that the newcomers were being recruited by Roman Sionis's False Face Society and that an arms deal with some of the strongest muscle not associated with Black Mask or the Falcone Crime Family, the Gotham City Killers, was in the works. Expecting fireworks beyond the average meetup, Gordon and the Dark Knight agreed it was time for the Batman to get involved and that's why we was there, just past midnight, roosted three stories up in one of the old warehouses, warehouses he had built with such hope, waiting, the predator of predators, the dictator of dictators, the killer of killers, for his quarry to arrive.

Twenty minutes later, pulling up in a large, no doubt bullet proof black Hummer, the Gotham City Killer's contingent arrived, regurgitating five men, three conspicuously armed with AK-47 assault rifles, two with no visible weapons but with a few certainly tucked away. The Killers had been around for a few years and Batman, knowing them well, recognized their leader, a man named Joe Argento, a tough Italian-American not above getting into fistfights or even the occasional gunfight. He had been arrested several times but no major charges had stuck. The Killers also knew the Batman well, well enough that it was odd they would meet in Gotham at night, anywhere in Gotham at night. Some of the gangs were so punchy about Batman they planned and carried out business in the daytime, much preferring to face Gordon and an army of cops rather face even the possibility of coming up against the Dark Knight. Batman loved that, loved the fear he instilled in the gangs. It was better for Gotham PD that any gang hits, drug or weapons transactions, or any other organized crime business was carried out in the daytime because Gordon and his men were more than up to the challenge and most of the gangs with less influence and power had taken major hits with high arrest rates, mostly foot soldiers but some in higher ranking positions, as well. That left Batman to his JLA duties in matters of national and worldwide importance. These lower level gangs didn't have the umbrella of protection of Falcone or Sionis and it showed. However, they weren't groups without that strange code of honor certain gangs, seemingly as a matter of pride, preferred to operate under. It had become so cliché that the local gangs had mindlessly taken it on as a duty, like something they’d seen on TV. It’s what gangs did so they did it, too. At various times, Batman had stepped in to collect information from the Killers as only he could, information that Gordon and the cops couldn’t get. They gave Batman information; he didn't crush them into the pavement. That the only deal the Dark Knight had ever agreed to.

Joe Argento was the Killer’s go to man when it came to weapons transactions and Batman was sure that was the business, at least the agreed upon business, that he was to see that night. Joe was an asset to the Killers but also somewhat expendable because he was mostly a foot solider uninvolved in the gang’s decision making circle. A night deal…this was no doubt insisted upon by the Young Dictators, the fresh blood he longed to taste, to sink his sharp teeth into. That told him they were an arrogant bunch; no other gang would risk a major arms deal at night unless absolutely necessary or only agreed upon because one side demanded it. No, the Dictators pushed it and the Killers, probably selling to the newcomers, in all likelihood needed the money.

Two of the three men armed with the AK-47s took up positions on either side of the Hummer with the third gunman in front. Joe Argento and the fifth man, a probable foot soldier Batman didn’t recognize, stood about ten steps ahead of the third gunman and waited. Ten minutes later, a beat up Mustang entered the compound from the opposite side; five men, two with ancient looking assault rifles that resembled old WWII, obsolete, German produced StG 45s, and two with less than trustworthy AMT AutoMag handguns climbed out. No wonder they wanted to buy weapons. The two men with the 45s took up positions on either side of the Mustang while the two men with the handguns gravitated to the back near the trunk. Five to a side was no doubt agreed upon by the two gangs. Obviously, the Killers, no doubt with some intel on the Dictators, had no problems with the arrangement. If a gunfight ensued, the Dictators would be routed. Batman also deduced that the warehouse was partially agreed upon because of the space and opposite entrances. It was an excellent place to make a deal and get out. He could have punched himself in the face. The whole meeting place was his fault. All of it.

The fifth Dictator was an unkempt punk oozing arrogance and, probably, a major stench, wearing a wide, toothy grin and with both hands in the pockets of a worn leather jacket. It was the kind of smile Batman had seen hundreds of times. It revolted him the first time he'd seen it and every time since. The Joker had that look right before Joker venom or some other death dealing threat came his way. Barbara Gordon and Jason Todd had no doubt seen that look, too…

The Young Dictators were, literally, young, none of the five looking older than 25 years old; each of the Killers each had at least a decade on them. Batman used the ear microphone in his cowl to listen in as Joe Argento and the unkempt leader of the Dictators, a man Batman would come to know as Brian Brannon, joined each other almost exactly in the middle between the two cars, the gun men on both sides confidently eyeing each other. Joe Argento spoke first. It made sense that the more experienced gang in town would speak first.

"Okay, this is how it's going down," he said. Brian Brannon had closed his mouth, though it still wore the kind of grin you'd love to smack off someone's face. He had bent slightly forward with his head a few inches lower than Argento's, implying he was receptive to the commentary.

"Two of your boys are going to come take the weapons out of our car," he said, “in multiple trips if necessary, and move them to yours. Your other boys can keep their guns ready if they choose. My four men will be ready to use their guns at a moment's notice without command. You’re outgunned if you start anything. Now let’s see the money.”

The details made perfect sense. The Killers, the more experienced group, were the prime moves and had the advantages. The leader of the Dictators whistled to one of his men, who produced a large envelope which he tossed to the unkempt thug. Joe Argento recoiled at the lack of professionalism.

"You know, it can go much quicker if you let me use all four of my guys,” Brian Brannon said as he handed Joe Argento the envelope. Argento handed it to the soldier Batman hadn’t seen before and told him to count it. After doing so and informing Joe Argento it was all there, he took it casually back to the Hummer and put it in the front seat. He pulled out a Walther P99 semi-automatic handgun, held it against his chest and took up a position in front of the car next to the third gunman.

"Two of your men. That was the deal. We have tenure here and we’re pulling rank. Now hurry up. We do these deals as fast as possible, doubly so at night.”

Brian Brannon smiled his toothiest smile yet. "You mean 'him'?" the Young Dictator asked with a laugh. "Yeah, we've heard plenty. We ain't afraid of him or no one else. Even if he's as tough as they say, what are the odds he'd catch onto this deal? It's a big city. Besides, we hear he’s out of town. We have feelers, too.”

Joe Argento flinched like remembering a hard shot to his jaw, one that Batman had indeed delivered a few years ago when Argento had gotten overly comfortable during an impromptu questioning from the Dark Knight.

“He’s never out of town,” Joe Argento said hauntingly. That was what Batman had done to the established criminal element. Creeping movements, even occasional business paralysis. Argento started looking left and right at the empty warehouses. "He may be here right now, waiting to pounce on us. He comes out of nowhere, no matter where you are. He's like poisoned wind. Blows in and makes you regret you're breathing." Joe Argento kept looking around, not like he saw a ghost but like he knew one, a living wraith, a solid specter over his shoulder.

"You're fucking punchy," the Young Dictator said with a laugh. "We got ten guys here and all armed. He shoots down two or three of us and the rest take him out."

"He doesn't use guns," Joe Argento said.

he Young Dictator laughed. "And you're afraid of this guy?! A guy with no gun? It’s lucky we’re here. Gotham needs some new blood." Joe Argento looked at the man with a look of sympathy. If they lasted in Gotham, they'd learn. They all learned, even Falcone and Sionis. He'd learn, too.

Brian Brannon turned and waved his right hand towards the men by the trunk, who nodded, opened the trunk up and began to walk towards the Hummer, their AutoMag handguns visible in their hands.

“Guns away,” Joe Argento told Brian Brannon sternly. “Even if they’re crap.”

The leader of the Dictators seemed to be playing Joe Argento for all he could get, a little game of push/pull between newly meeting gang representatives. Nodding pleasantly, he motioned again to the two men who put their guns in their weather beaten jacket pockets. The Dictators seemed like homeless men at a shelter in desperate need of everything. It took the two men several trips, gingerly carrying two guns at a time. It was an impressive array of rifles and handguns, not as up to date as the Killers’ weapons but a drastic upgrade from the Dictator’s own mess. No machine guns were included.

Upon the first passing, the Dictator’s leader asked, “Can I inspect them?”

“No,” Joe Argento said dourly.

Yes, he was in a big hurry. Batman watched and listened to all this with a mixture of pride and disinterest. Perhaps the recent JLA business had spoiled him to the kind of low level thuggery he was witnessing. No. He was as hungry as ever. Even when physically burned out, his mission burned deeper, that burning in his gut that would never die, that had him out every night, even if not in Gotham. He’d forgotten about what a bed was at night, what a sleep cycle was. In the end, national problems, worldwide problems, universal problems…none compared to his city, none were as important as his city. No, his disinterest came from the routine flavor of the deal. No fireworks, possibly none coming, either. He was going to wait for the guns to be loaded, for the deal to be completely transacted, before striking. He was armed with his usual array of weaponry for situations like this: Multiple batarangs, two loaded with tear gas, one resonating an ear shattering sonic pulse when activated, two programmable batarangs capable of locking onto whatever heat signatures Batman chose, two ninja throwing star batarangs and two hard plastic ones for concussive actions. At the Hall of Justice, he had recently been working on a revolutionary cutting fluid and electrical delivery system that could shrink and expand metal instantly. Among other uses, such technology would greatly affect his weaponry, making it possible to store more material on his utility belt. That was for the near future, though. Tonight, he had his usual array including his grappling gun and Batline. He did opt for one deviance from the usual: Due to the decent sized distance between warehouses, he opted to use a heavy weighted drone he had stored in the nearby Batmobile. The programmable drone could link up with the Bathook from his grappling gun, allowing him to use the Batline to swing down in areas where nothing to connect the Bathook to like a rooftop or fire escape was available. The drone also allowed for much greater freedom of movement with his aerial attacks and, utilizing 3-D visual technology, could instantly adapt and camouflage itself in any environment. Using the coordinating touchpad on his left gauntlet, he activated and steered the black drone, perfectly camouflaged in the night, over the area, close enough for his own use but out of sight of the two gang contingents.

As he readied himself, one of the Dictators loading the weapons dropped a handgun on his last trip. Though no damage was done, it got under the skin of Joe Argento.

"Hurry it up!" the leader of the Killers shouted at him. Irritated, the leader of the Young Dictators moved within a foot of Argento's face.

"You don't say shit to my men,” Brian Brannon snarled. “I talk to my men. Understand?"

Unwilling to get into it with this young punk and still edgy and nervous about unseen potentialities, Joe Argento smirked impatiently. However, his comment had had its desired result and the two men with the last load of weapons shuffled towards their Mustang with more alacrity than before. Soon, they were finished and both groups stood at strength again by their respective vehicles.

"We'll be paying attention to you," Joe Argento firmly told Brian Brannon. We're always open to deal if it fits our purpose. If you fuck with us, you’ll wish you never left Central City and you don’t have the muscle to stop us. Understand?”

Brian Brannon smiled, shrugged his shoulders and walked back towards the Dictator’s car, sitting calmly on the edge of the hood, hands in his pockets. Taking that as a ‘yes,’ Joe Argento turned and walked back towards the Killer’s Hummer. His men made motions that they were ready to get in the car and leave.

"One more thing, Joe!” Brian Brannon shouted at Joe Argento, who turned towards him with irritation. more. "I forgot to tell you something!”

The instant his last word was uttered, machine gunfire from the first floors of both warehouses sprayed like horizontal rain in the direction of Joe Argento and his men, joined immediately by gunfire from all four armed members by the Dictator's car. Caught unaware, Joe and his men were finished in seconds. Batman tensed, right hand on a tear gas batarang, but it was over before he could intervene. Once it was clear all the Killers were dead, two men, members of the Young Dictators, came out from each warehouse's first floor on either side. Batman had been there for two hours. The Dictators had planned this well, both ambushers planted silently, undetectably, before he got there. He felt a little sorry for Joe Argento. Though part of the trash polluting his city, Joe had been one of the easier thugs to work with and was nearly always forthcoming with any information he needed, though once a right hand had been needed to set him straight.

Brian Brannon had watched it all smiling, his rear end never leaving the hood of the car, his hands never leaving his jacket pockets. That look of joy at men being killed in bunches…Batman had seen that look so many times. Brian Brannon wore it, not with pride, but with excitement. Batman now believed the rumors of the False Face Society’s recruitment of the Dictators. Brian Brannon’s face told the story. These guys weren’t interested in business. They were interested in killing. That attitude paid big dividends for Roman Sionis. He ruled by terror and here, clearly, were more monsters for his flock.

Brian Brannon coolly detached from the Mustang and walked casually towards the dead men. One of the thugs by the trunk, his just fired AutoMag in his right hand, pulled a large burlap sack from the back seat with his left hand and joined Brian Brannon by the bullet riddled corpse of Joe Argento while one of the warehouse gunmen relieved the Hummer of the envelope stuffed with cash and took it back to the Mustang where he put it in the passenger seat. He then joined the other warehouse gunman in between both vehicles. The mood was light now, the two gunmen joking and congratulating each other on how easy and efficient the attack had been. Batman sat tight, waiting for what Brian Brannon would do next, a final drama to play out. Squatting down next to Joe Argento’s body, Brian Brannon reached out his hand. Receiving a large butcher knife from his lackey, he stared into Joe Argento’s dead eyes, eerily chatting with him like he was still alive.

"What I forgot to tell you, Joe, was we don't bend over for nobody. Yeah, we're new in town but we got connections. Unlike you, we're hungry. We're out to make a name. Ain’t nobody going to get in our way. Nobody. See, we got a special request from a special person to fuck you up and bring back proof, Joe, so that's what we're going to do. Our special person is going to be one happy mother fucker when I show him what he wants."

With that, using the butcher knife, Brian Brannon quickly and savagely sawed off the right hand of Joe Argento, easily identifiable by a large, crooked scar on the palm, and put it casually in the bag. That was all the Dark Knight needed to see. Quickly readying the two programmable batarangs, he attached both on either side of his utility belt then moved the drone silently to the position he wanted it, high up almost exactly between the two vehicles, the drone partly shading black for the night and soft yellow from where the few street lamps hit it. Ready for his assault, he withdrew his sonic batarang and hurled it at Brian Brannon and his man holding the burlap sack, a sharp corner sticking firm in the impacted dirt. Upon contact, an earsplitting audio wave sounded that froze both men as well as the two warehouse gunmen, holding their ears in agonized paralysis. A thrown tear gas batarang slammed into the hood of the Mustang and exploded, spraying the vehicle and the three gunmen surrounding it with the noxious powder, sending them to their knees in coughing fits. Shooting his grappling gun, the Bathook connected with the drone. Batman then connected the grappling gun to the front of his utility belt, leaving both arms free and, with one massive movement, swooped down onto the two warehouse gunmen, felling the first with a left boot to the face and the second with a right boot to the face. Working the touchpad while in midair with his free hands, Batman maneuvered it sharply over the Dictator’s car, creating a whiplash effect that propelled him in that direction. Swinging towards the Mustang, he disconnected himself from the grappling gun and Batline while lifting his legs, landing back first on the car’s top and sliding smoothly, feet first, from the top to the back while ejecting the programmable batarangs from his utility belt, sending them hurtling into the foreheads of the two side gunmen still staggered by the tear gas, knocking both men down and out. Sliding down the trunk, he planted his feet on the end of the car and snapped his body forward head over heels into a perfect somersault, the weighted bottom of his cape slamming into the face of the final gunman, also knocking him out flat. The Dark Knight completed the somersault perfectly and landed on his feet. The whole thing had taken less than 30 seconds. Brian Brannon, still shocked by the pain of the sonic batarang and holding his ears, managed to rise and look towards the action, greeted by the awesome sight of Batman stomping over the top and hood of the Mustang towards him in small plumes of tear gas, his cape spread and flowing like a nightmarish vampire. The two warehouse gunmen Batman had kicked had risen shakily, still influenced by the sonic batarang. Batman, impervious to the pulse because of his cowl’s ability to mute sound, knocked one silly with an uppercut then hurled him into the second gunman, putting them both down. Batman then put the lackey that had held the burlap sack down with a hard batarang to the forehead, a strong metal base in the batarang instantly recoiling it back into the magnetized hand of the Dark Knight, who reattached it to his utility belt. Six down and only Brian Brannon tenuously on his feet. Batman picked up the sonic batarang and disarmed it, putting it also back onto his utility belt. Free of the paralyzing sound, Brian Brannon immediately went for and grabbed his unconscious lackey’s fallen AutoMag from where the man had dropped it and tried aiming it at his adversary, who smacked it out of the gang leader’s hands with ease. Grabbing him by the jacket collar, Batman yanked him into the air and carried him to the Gotham City Killer’s Hummer, Brian Brannon’s feet never touching the ground the whole way. Slamming the now freshly educated gang leader’s back into the car’s grill sent him to the ground on his ass. Batman, towering over him, spoke, his voice a little more threatening and aggressive than usual as this was the first time he’d had the displeasure of meeting the man.

“I want all information you know about your gang; who’s in charge, how many men you have, and why you’ve come to Gotham. Then I want all information and contacts you’ve had with Black Mask and his False Face Society.”

“What the fuck is a Black Mask?” Brian Brannon said with defiance, a broad smile on his face.

“How about the False Face Society?” Batman asked.

“Man, you’re fucked in the head!” Brian Brannon cracked with that smile, that smile was now finished. Batman slowly positioned his right index finger level with the man’s mouth and pointed it at that intolerable smile. Brian Brannon seemed to hypnotically enjoy the motion, like Batman was some weirdo who liked pointless hand gestures. That was his last enjoyment. Suddenly, the Dark Knight’s finger jabbed into Brian Brannon’s front teeth like a lightning bolt, knocking one of them out and into his throat, sending the man into a coughing fit that eventually regurgitated the tooth in a spew of blood, easily swatted out of the way by the Dark Knight. Rabid for blood, he had drawn it, the diseased blood of Gotham’s freshest disease, the Young Dictators. Blood began to spurt from the wound onto Brian Brannon’s lips and chin. Shocked into insensibility, he had a look of stunned disbelief. Batman cocked his index finger again like he was aiming a missile.

“Care for an eyeball?” he asked casually. Brian Brannon broke like a cardboard dam and babbled like a terrified child.

“We’re new, man! We’ve only got 12 guys right now, man! We’re just doing what we need to do, you know?! We’re from Central City. We started in Central City. We just…we did some shit, you know, then we came here. We’re just here for some business, man!”

“You ‘came’ from Central City? You mean the Flash ran you out of town,” Batman said coolly. “He’s a good friend of mine. Nice guy. Has compassion.” Batman gripped Brian Brannon’s collar hard at the neck, almost cutting off his breathing. “I’m not a nice guy.”

“Yeah, whatever the fuck!” the thug sputtered. “Whatever! Yeah, we had a run in with the guy. We got a few guys in jail there but who gives a shit?! We were approached by this guy saying he was a member of a False Face gang or whatever the fuck. Said they’d been watching us and we had potential and his boss liked our style and would we want to come to Gotham. Anything was better than having that Flash guy around so we took him up on it. Hey, it’s a fucking job, right? You’d do it if you were in our place.”

Batman ignored the man’s attempt to gain his empathy or sympathy.

“So Black Mask wants a bloodbath and you bring him back Joe Argento’s hand as proof,” Batman said. Not being able to fit seven guys in the Mustang, Batman also concluded they planned on stealing the Killer’s Hummer, too.

“They wanted proof that we rolled these fuckers, yeah. They wanted us to show we could be vicious. Fuckers are dead, right?! Who cares if we take trophies?! It’s what Black Mask wanted. We arrange a deal and jack the guys and roll them. Bring back trophies and work your way into a better gang. That’s business.”

Brian Brannon was whimpering now, the pain of his dislodged tooth clearly agonizing. Batman let that pain sink in more and more as the conversation continued. More pain meant more revelation.

“Now who runs the show?” Batman asked.

Words choked in Brian Brannon’s throat, though not for physical reasons, as if saying the bosses’ name meant an automatic death sentence. Batman raised his index finger again.

“His name is Slobodon Jovick, alright?!” Brian Brannon spit out, his mind already seeming to leave town like his feet needed to. Batman knew the name. It was from a relatively respected, though smaller time, crime family from Eastern Europe. Slobodon was the family scion. He’d cast off his family ties to go on his own, earning his infamous family’s enmity. So this was where he’d ended up. This was a greater haul than expected. Information about a new gang, their connections to the False Face Society, the arrest of at least one that knew the gang’s activities AND finding the whereabouts of Slobodon Jovick.

“Where and when were you supposed to meet the representative of the False Face Society?”

“Tomorrow at 1 PM in the Brookville building. We’re supposed to meet the guy in a back entrance and into some kind of board room.”

So Sionis and his slime had infiltrated the prestigious Gotham Brookville building. The contact much be someone in a high place because everyone in the Brookville building was a high roller. More high end corruption in his city. Bold, too, considering this punk was going to show up in broad daylight with someone’s severed hand. Now he knew and Gordon would soon know, too.

“Is that all you have to offer?” Batman sneered. “You better tell me everything or I’ll visit you in your soon to be jail cell and leave your mouth to where you’ll have to gum everything you eat for the rest of your life.”

“That’s it man, I swear!” Bob Smith didn’t fear anything in Gotham a half hour before. Now he would be cowed everywhere he went from then on. “I just know a few things but that’s it! I’m just a soldier, man. I ain’t the boss.”

Satisfied the man had sung the whole song, Batman cuffed Brian Brannon to the grill of the Killer’s car and cuffed the other unconscious gang members to the nearest vehicle. They weren’t going anywhere under their own power. He activated the two way radio in his cowl and connected with Gotham PD. The contact was private between he and James Gordon.

“What have you got?” Gordon asked.

“Arms deal gone bad. Five men killed. Seven gang members ages 20 to 30 apprehended and secured. Location is between the two largest warehouses of the old Gotham East End Lumber and Steel Co.” Saying the name of one of Bruce Wayne’s biggest failures again tugged at his heart.

“What’s their condition?” Gordon asked.

“Poor,” was the reply. A slight chuckle from Gordon was audible through the connection.

“I’ll have some men over shortly with the appropriate measures. About ten minutes,” Gordon said. “Are you going to stay out longer?”

Batman looked at all the dead and apprehended bodies. He wasn’t satisfied. He was never satisfied.

“Yeah. Think I’ll be out all night tonight. Do you have anything interesting?”

“Possible drug deal going down in an hour between the All-Americans and the Free Men in the Bowery near the old football stadium in Crown Point. Doesn’t sound suspicious like you’ve had. We were going to send a team down there but we’ll pull out if you want to take care of it. There are two missing persons reports and a sighting of John Lennon down by the Riverfront Center so that may mean Cornelius Stirk is back. Ask around and I’m sure you’ll get plenty of information. We’ve also found a greenhouse on the West Side of Robinson Park with some wild plant experiments that reek of Poison Ivy. We’ve done the usual work but I’m sure you’d like a look at it. It’s near the intersection of 5th and Mason. We have it blocked off so it’s contained. That’s all we have right now.”

“I’ll handle the drug deal and the missing persons reports,” Batman replied. “I may not make it to the greenhouse until tomorrow night.”

Gordon responded affirmatively. “No problem. It seems clear that Ivy hasn’t been to that greenhouse in at least a month so I doubt it’s pressing. Drop a line if you need us. Good hunting.”

The Dark Knight turned off his radio and headed for the handcuffed Brian Brannon. The separation from Batman as he contacted Gordon had provided the Dictator with a heavenly respite. His young bravado having returned somewhat in the moment, even one tooth less and blood on his face, he decided to talk tough again, the intention of overcoming his freshly created fear being the reason.

“You can’t be everywhere at once,” Brannon said, using the obvious common sense that had no relevance in Gotham City. Yes, Batman was everywhere at once. He filled every atom of the night and every crevice of every building, street and alleyway. The Dictators would soon learn all about that. Right now, he had a final message to send.

“What you going to do now?” Brannon asked defiantly. The Dark Knight leaned down to within two inches of the thug’s face.

“I forgot to tell you something,” Batman whispered. “I’m in your way.” With that, a right cross smashed hard into Brian Brannon’s jaw, knocking him out upon impact, putting all seven members of the Dictators in dreamland. Once he’d detached from it, the grappling gun and Batline had recoiled up and attached to the drone. Now, utilizing the touch pad on his left gauntlet, Batman maneuvered the hovering drone down to his level and detached the grappling gun into his right hand. Maneuvering the drone back overhead, Batman shot the grappling gun’s Bathook into it, secured the gun to his utility belt as before and, steering with the touch pad, shot into the air and flew towards where he had left the Batmobile. Landing safely, the drone once more stored away, the Batmobile and the Dark Knight sped towards the Bowery and the soon to be drug deal. A very productive evening so far but always more on the plate. More hunting to be done, always more hunting in the big city. His city. His time. His life.

Lost Tomb of the Damned - A Horror Short Story

 

In the time of the Pharaoh Shoshenq II, shortly after the end of the grandeur of Egypt’s New Kingdom, a time when the ordinary were ignored and their activities long since forgotten, lived a resourceful, scribal young man named Anseb; resourceful because the early death of his father, which had left the family poor, had forced the development of such traits and scribal because his still young, well-meaning mother, attractive though talentless, had managed to pay for her son’s education by way of a very loose and distant connection to royalty which afforded her the company of wealthy men, one of whom, taking a passing interest in the son though overwhelmingly in the mother, had agreed to fund his education to the top scribal school in Memphis as a present to her for a short lived affair.   An intelligent, though some said, overly imaginative teenager of 18 years, Anseb thrived in his studies, learning to decipher the hieroglyphs of various texts; his morbid curiosity, fueled in part by a somewhat darker view of life which the children of parents who die young often develop, tilted towards the funeral texts, his young, imaginative and, frankly, bored need for titillation greatly satiated by the depictions of gods and goddesses aiding powerful figures in their battles against the monsters of the Underworld in texts like the Amduat and the later Book of the Dead.  He knew both ancient texts thoroughly and, hopefully, would one day translate such hieroglyphs to artists for painting and chiseling onto not only the walls of tombs but onto those of temples, monuments, statues and any number of other surfaces.  Such was the much sought after power of the scribe in an overwhelmingly uneducated world.  That future, however, hung in the balance, for his benefactor, a high ranking official in the Memphis city government, had recently grown tired of his aging mother and permanently left the scene on a moment’s notice, not even bothering to talk with Anseb or show the least concern for the final leg of his education.  The young scribe in training needed money desperately as his final term at school approached and the situation had become critical. 

          Wracking his excellent though financially inexperienced brain for ideas, he remembered what appeared to be an old tomb he’d come across after getting lost while hiking outside Memphis alone a few years before.  Lonely after first leaving home to live at school, he’d wandered into a virtually never travelled area and gotten lost in one of a large series of cliffs, a huge, rocky section of supposedly nothing.  There, in a winding series of passageways, he’d observed the outline of what was clearly a large cut space covered over by rubble.  In his anxious need to find his way back home, he hadn’t entertained any thought of entering at the time but now it blazoned across the landscape of his brain. 

Why build a tomb there?  Ostensibly to keep it hidden but why in such a forbidden place, far away from the main cemeteries on the Nile’s West Bank and even the main necropolises of Memphis?  His intellectual curiosity faded, replaced by normal human nature, when he considered the possible wealth contained inside.  Wealth.  Money just lying there in the middle of nowhere in a forgotten place, probably from a forgotten era.  He didn’t need it all.  Just enough.  All he wanted out of life was enough.  He’d do the rest; his drive and his work would do the rest.  Determined like never before, he committed himself to finding that tomb again and taking what he needed from it.  He didn’t consider it grave robbing.  He considered it surviving.  His father was dead and his mother was no help if she couldn’t find the right man for support at the right time and that time had gone.  He was a man now and he’d do what needed to be done.  All great men who came before would do the same. 

          He spent the next several days searching without success.  A week later, just on the verge of quitting, he found what he was looking for, once again essentially by accident, after walking up a path in one of the dozens of high cliffs in the target area then winding through the labyrinthine set of passageways which opened into a small clearing around a hundred feet above ground level.  A large overhang covered the clearing like a stone awning some fifty feet long; at its end, the cliff opened out into the countryside, providing the clearing’s only light.  The burial opening was cut into a deep recess in one of the walls of rock, still covered over by the same pile of rubble.  He noticed footprints, the only footprints, undisturbed in the thin layer of sand on the flat stone floor and deduced them as his own, left two years previously.   Though the large stone awning eventually reached out to the open air, because of the footprints he felt sure the area was insulated completely from the effects of the elements; he also felt confident that no one had entered the area since and, thanking his good fortune for both hiking in obscure places and easily getting lost, delighted that only he and the dead knew the place now.  He still didn’t think himself a tomb robber but he couldn’t shake off a slight sense of superstitious foreboding.  His education and imaginative nature made him wonder.  So many stories of gods and goddesses and monsters.  So many people believed it.  Checking himself, he was startled to realize he’d never even given it much thought, despite the heavy religious education Egyptian children received.  Gods.  Goddesses.  Monsters.  Protectors of tombs.  Destroyers of corrupters.  He shook his head.  Just stories. 

          Anseb returned with a hammer, chisel, two oil lamps and a flint and went to work over the next few days.  After some hard labor with the two former objects, he knew he was at the last layer of rubble blocking the entranceway.   The last layer contained hieroglyphic writing, a series of symbols at the top like the header on a roll of papyrus.  The symbols included a series of waves, a lion, an owl, several feathers, two vultures, two hands and two eyes.  A wave of fear surged into his heart when he translated, 

“Only the damned are here.”

Nothing else.  No other markings, no incantations, blessings or curses.  Just an epitaph, a single, cryptic line perhaps meant to dissuade anyone from entering or, perhaps, just a final condemnation for those within.  Anseb stared at the symbols for several seconds, blinked hard twice then began angrily hacking away with his hammer and chisel, ashamed of his fear and unwilling to let anything stop him, least of all just words painted on rock.  Still, he waited until his bit of work to cut into the hieroglyphs, cracking several segments though not breaking clearly through.  Something seemed to be holding him off, preventing him from that last step.  The open air past the stone awning revealed the setting sun.  It was late and he suddenly wasn’t interested in staying.  Combined with the exhaustion of a long day of labor, the young man decided not to fully break through the final level until tomorrow.  Then he would have plenty of time to enter and explore.  Confidently leaving his objects there, he left for home, sliding through a crack in the rock wall into the first passageway, greatly excited for his return, when he expected to explore and hopefully find the wealth of dreams.  Then he heard it. 

“Awwwwwww.” 

A low though undeniable moan.  He froze as the haunting noise seemed to creep across the stone around him in a layer of cold, Nile slime, slime that then creeped up his back and shrouded him like a cloaked corpse.  He felt his ears stiffen defensively, stretching for any further sound, but only heard silence.  Looking in all directions, as people do when trying to locate a sound from nowhere, he eyed the crack in the wall leading back to the tomb and couldn’t resist a shudder.  With trepidation and a slight delay, he squeezed back into the clearing and noticed a small chunk of rock he’d chiseled had given way and fallen out, creating a small hole into the tomb’s main corridor.  Inching towards it, Anseb saw it was from a section of the painted hieroglyphs.  He picked up the fallen chunk and read it.  A hand, a vulture, an owl and a wave.  He dropped it like it had just fallen from the sun, fast walked then jogged then ran back into the passageway, not stopping his quickened pace until he’d exited the cliffs.  Painted on the chunk of rock he’d picked up was one word:   

“Damned.” 

 

He failed to return the next night nor over the next several days as the thought of being greeted with that moan again made a quick attempt to enter the tomb impossible.  All week, he tried to use his reason to explain the sound.  Had to be the wind.  The wind came and whistled in the crevice created by the fallen stone he’d chiseled.  That’s what happened.  Yet that area, completely isolated from the elements, seemingly had no wind.  His footprints from two years ago hadn’t been disturbed in any way.  No, it had to be…some kind of creaking in the rock when the stone gave way?  Some sort of phenomenon he didn’t understand which caused a moaning.  Yet how could it?  Maybe his ears had played tricks on him.  He was tired and he knew he was impressionable to an extent.  Maybe it was something else.  Yes, he’d heard wrong.  He wondered if he should plug the hole but, overcome by that odd sensation of suddenly not being alone, realized the last thing he wanted in the world was to approach that opening.    All those stories of gods and goddesses…and monsters.  No.  Couldn’t be true.   And the chunk of rock that had fallen out with that word painted on it?  Coincidence.  Yet, his reason couldn’t overcome his emotions, most specifically his sense of dread.  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t force himself to go back to that spot. 

          As the date for payment for what would be his final school term approached, he took to conducting long walks in the area of the cliff, trying to work up enough courage to continue on, knowing he’d need time to both inspect the tomb and work to extract any treasures inside but time was almost out.   Finally, with only a few days left before he’d have to have the money, he stiffened his backbone while on one of his walks, swallowed his apprehension and chose to enter and scout around.  His walk had begun in the early afternoon and, by the time he’d made his choice, the sun had begun to sink.  He cursed himself a fool.  The fear of a sound which probably came from the wind or something natural had kept him away until the very end and now here he stood, in an isolated place possibly only he, as a living person, knew the location of in a landscape soon to be consumed by night.  Whatever fear he’d felt before felt half what he felt now but he knew he’d never have the nerve to enter again if he left so he continued.  He was educated.  He didn’t believe in what he couldn’t see.  Moans couldn’t come out of nowhere.  He hadn’t felt or heard a wind but there must have been one and that’s all there is to it.  Given the circumstances, it had to be. 

He walked up the trail and accessed the passageways with the caution of one expecting a hail of arrows at any moment from an enemy army.  He entered the clearing and eyed the hole in the final layer blocking the burial chamber.  It seemed to widen as he stared, an imagined silent hiss from the visible mouth of a black viper which pulled him in, ready to consume and digest him.  He inched towards it as if to sneak up on it, taking it by surprise, fearing any further sound would shatter his will and send him fleeing back home, never to return.  Not willing to take his eyes from the opening, suspicious of something, nothing or everything, he crouched down to pick it up one of his oil lamps and inadvertently knocked it over, spilling large amounts of oil.  With an exclamation, he hurriedly groped for it and set it upright, some of the ooze getting on his hand, more than half its oil now staining the stone floor. 

Now aware that one of his lamps would provide him with little light if needed, anger at his clumsiness once again replaced fear as he picked up his hammer and chisel with disgust and began finishing his work on the rubble, taking care to hammer off each word of painted hieroglyph left in an act of defiance. He’d soon broken enough away to create enough space to wedge through, his anxiety to explore dissuading any further labor.  He carefully lit his full oil lamp with his flint, hovered it over the now large hole and recoiled when the flame snuffed out, as if the invisible black viper had flicked it with its tongue.  Clearly there was a breeze of some sort from within, which also explained the moan he’d heard several days before.   What did it matter if he’d felt none?  Wind was wind, whether he felt it or not.  He lit the lamp again, the light breaking through the weight of the heaviest darkness he’d ever put his arm through, illuminating a space a few feet in front of what appeared to be a hallway with a set of steps chiseled into the concrete, the top few still buried in rubble.  As he made his first move to enter, his eyes couldn’t help scanning for the chunk of rock marked with the hand, vulture, owl and hand.  He exhaled with relief when he couldn’t see it among the many chips and hunks he’d hacked through and thrown aside.  Picking up his second lamp, he set it just outside the entrance as he squeezed feet first inside, taking care to protect his light, his right then his left foot finding one of the bottom steps.  Dust soiled his tunic as he entered but, otherwise, he went in without a scratch.  He reached back for his second oil lamp as he tepidly tip toed down the bottom steps inside, pausing with each footfall before continuing.  Once fully inside, he set the unlit oil lamp down by the final step.  The arid place, devoid of water, smelled of nothing.  He manipulated his oil lamp high and low.  The hallway, seemingly carved into the rock haphazardly, had a short ceiling, only about six feet high, just enough to walk through but no more.  The immediate walls were bare but over the steps on the ceiling was painted a large representation of the god Geb, portrayed traditionally as a man holding a staff in one hand and an ankh in the other but also with a cobra looped around his throat like a necklace, its tail clasped in its mouth.  Geb, father of snakes and the one who caused earthquakes by his laughter.  His appearance puzzled Anseb for Geb had only scant influence on the dead and none on their final journey to the afterlife.  Why was he portrayed thusly at the tomb’s entrance?  Surely Anubis would be better…  Trying to keep his focus, Anseb shook his head and continued his search. 

He walked forward nearly thirty feet with more representations of Geb on the ceiling every five feet or so, giving the impression of a trail lain with bits of food.  He reached the end of the hall, only about another twenty feet down, with Geb’s painted eyes watching him each step.  The ceiling progressively tapered lower than his height, forcing him to stoop slightly, as he reached the end of the hall and into the burial chamber.  No rooms were cut to the sides, as was usually the case in the tombs of the most powerful and, by extension, the wealthiest.  Was there only one room here?  It was an older tomb, possibly a thousand years old or more.  His spirits began to sink.  Hastily carved with no consideration for proper measurements, possibly only one room and, as he noticed before crossing the threshold, no steps to descend going in.  Perhaps no treasure existed at all here.  Maybe they just dumped a body there and left.  Then again, he hadn’t explored anything yet.  Perhaps there were multiple rooms attached to this main room.  He entered the burial chamber like in a slow-motion trance, making sure to keep to the near wall to his left for safety, unwilling to wander into the middle for now.  He raised his lamp to get an idea of the surroundings.  His arm fully extended, the light barely shined on the ceiling so he estimated it to be around nine feet high, around the height of a regular Egyptian room.  The first thing he saw on the wall, which gave him a start, was an enormous representation of a snarling baboon, painted dark brown, perhaps twice as large as life size.  The baboon represented the “opener of the gates” for departed souls in texts like the Amduat, the Book of the Hidden Chamber, popular in older tombs, more recently surpassed in importance by the Book of the Dead.  The baboon began the process of allowing the spirit to advance through the waters of the Netherworld on the way to immortality.  Painted next to it where a set of hieroglyphs which, once translated, proved the opposite to be true. 

‘Baboon,’ it read.  ‘You who makes music for those who begin their journey across the waters, instead of opening your mouth in harmony, close your mouth, withhold the secret language from the cowards buried here.  May they not learn the words to gain access to that which provides immortality.  May they be damned forever for their treachery.’

The word “damned” made him think of his recent pitfalls and the meaning of what he read.  He’d never studied any text with this message.  It seemed to be unique, perhaps created specifically for this tomb, but it was a good sign.  The tomb may have been carved abruptly and without care but the body or bodies there at least warranted a type of funeral text and those were not just for anybody.   But what of this magic invocation for the baboon?  Who was entombed here and why were their souls damned?   The soul could not attain eternal life with the gates closed.  Whoever lied there, they were certainly condemned. 

A few feet down from the baboon and its writing was the picture of twelve coiled uraeus serpents in three rows of four, one on top of the other.  In classic funeral texts, the uraeus serpent lit the way for the souls of the dead through the early stages of the Netherworld’s dark waters with their fiery breath, serving as living torches.  The magic command for these creatures in their subsequent hieroglyphs kept in the same line as that of the baboon. 

‘Serpents, who light the way of deserving souls, withhold your fiery breath as a beacon from these traitors.  Keep their Bas in darkness but use your flames to sear their bodies.  Keep them from peace as they burn in agony.’

Traitors?  So whoever lay there had incurred the wrath of powerful people and been condemned for their supposed treachery.  What did they do to deserve the punishment of spiritual non-existence, the worst punishment imaginable?

As he moved along to the next wall, his foot kicked what felt like a large chunk of rock in the corner, prompting an unavoidable curse from his lips.  A quick scan with his lamp showed what looked more like brick than stone.  Careful not to stub his toe again, he began looking over the next wall, his lamp lighting a complex set of hieroglyphs in pictures and characters painted from end to end which told a story of treason and betrayal, of a plot concocted by the vizier and queen of an unnamed pharaoh to seize power some eight hundred years earlier, prior even to the creation of the Theban Necropolis.  The painted pictures showed the two conspirators, lovers behind the king’s back, in bed, with the words,

‘They met and made love in his own bed chamber and conspired to take both his throne and his life.’ 

The next set of pictures showed the Queen addressing a woman, painted in the slightly smaller manner denoting lower status, who then addresses a man her size in the dress of a palace guard.

‘They poisoned the mind of the favorite concubine of Pharaoh against him and she in turn poisoned the mind of one of his trusted guardsmen.’ 

The next set showed the concubine and the guardsman again but with another man in guard’s clothes hiding behind a pillar.   It read,

‘But the traitors were overheard by another guard, who told their Captain, who informed Pharaoh.  Their plan to kill him on his own bed failed and they were arrested.’ 

 The corresponding set showed the results of the trap that was set; a man in royal garb, ostensibly the King, in the royal bed with the concubine.  The guard brought into the conspiracy stood behind another pillar, waiting for his best chance to attack and kill.  The set after that showed two new guards taking their treasonous comrade by each arm and another tying the concubine’s hands behind her back.  Pharoah stands at an elevated position to the side, his hieroglyph towering over the events, holding a Was scepter, the symbol emphasizing the power he still held. 

The next set of pictures chronicled in gory detail the gruesome torture and deaths of the conspirators, including a palace scribe outed by the torture of the others, who had been tasked to create a false record of what was to be the assassination to cover for those involved and fool the public.    The concubine had her ears and nose cut off before being smothered.  The palace guardsman was disemboweled and his guts, that part of the body seen as the center of the strength of soldiers to fight for Pharaoh, were ripped out while he was still alive.  The scribe’s hands, which were to pen the false narrative saying the King had died by drowning in the Nile, were cut off, leading to his rapid death from blood loss.  The Queen, befitting her status, received the quickest death, a swift one stroke beheading by ax; the Vizier, whose words were seen as the start of it all, received the worst.  Both sides of his mouth were slashed and his jaw yanked down until it ripped apart; his chest was then cut open and his heart gouged out.  For good measure, he had also been castrated while alive. 

‘Such is the punishment of the betrayers of Pharaoh, the Sungod on Earth,’ the funeral text laid out as the final punctuation on all the gruesomeness. 

Anseb closed his eyes at the horror of it all.  What vicious retribution.  The heinous plot deserved punishment, of course, but to that extent?  Such was his naivete of the power politics of his era, when the evil faced horrible punishments and, sometimes, the good faced even worse. 

Laid out in hieroglyphs on the next wall, the one opposite the entrance, were the condemnations and final judgments for the conspirators.  The scribe, guard and concubine, considered small fish doing what they were either told or manipulated to do, escaped damnation, their separate, brutal mutilations punishment enough.  The Vizier and Queen weren’t so lucky.  The hieroglyphs for their fates contained the following chilling proclamation:

          ‘For the former Queen and disgraced Grand Vizier, whose names do not deserve mention, eternal limbo, stuck in their bodies between Heaven and Hell, bathed in eternal darkness, always close to the light but unable to reach it.  Their bodies will be covered with broken lapis to prevent their souls from reaching freedom.  For them, the gates will be forever closed.  If either escapes their body, may Apophis, dreaded snake of the dark, deadly serpent of chaos, take each in the unbreakable strength of his muscular coils and burn them in the pitiless Lake of Fire as Sekhmet, that lion headed goddess and eye of Ra, bites their face and rips their head to pieces.’ 

          On the wall next to this final judgment, as a kind of frightening postscript, Anseb’s lamp lit the face of an enormous snake, presumably Apophis, normally the soul’s enemy in need of vanquishing in funeral texts, now invoked as an instrument of retribution should the souls of the Vizier and Queen escape their earthly remains.  Apophis’ likeness, coils upon coils stacking him high until his face reached the eye level of a regular human, glared out into the room with open mouth and forked tongue, looking ready to strike at an invisible victim.  Anseb thought of his impression while staring at the hole in the tomb’s opening earlier, giving him the impression of a deadly snake.  Now, here Apophis of the Amduat sat on layer upon layer of his coils, fangs bared as if looking for souls to eat.  He noted the absence of Sekhmet on the wall, which struck him as strange.  He then slowly shook his head in disbelief.  Surely what was thus chronicled could not have been acted upon. 

A few feet down on the next wall proved him wrong as his light shined on something leathery, something shriveled.  A sharp jolt of nausea hit his stomach as he examined closer.  Hanging on the wall by a rope at its waist like some slaughtered animal was the withered, long dead body of a woman, completely naked, perhaps as a form of debasement or insult, the arms angled slightly forward, rigid from where they’d hardened.  Anseb’s face pursed with revulsion when he saw she had no nose, ears or eyes, both former features hacked off and the latter rotted out with time.  No doubt the concubine of the story.  The weathered, dark brown skin clung to the skeleton like tight clothing and the mouth hung open in a final shriek of pain.  He’d never seen anything so terrible, never wanted to believe anything that terrible could exist.  A few feet down, his next discovery rivaled his first for shock for there hung a second body, this one a man, probably the guard by the looks of him, in a loin cloth.  A huge hole yawned in his stomach with bits of dried skin stiff around the edges and the remnants of snapped bones within, as if he’d been slit by a large knife and his ribs ripped apart by powerful hands.  An examination of the horribly contorted face made it obvious this man had died that way, cut open and disemboweled alive, just as the text said.  A few more few feet down hung the next and last of the trio, the scribe with no hands and a blank, empty facial expression like his soul had been sucked from his body by spiders draining him of blood.  A woman hacked to pieces and two men butchered like hogs.  Three people killed with savage brutality left to hang there in timeless shame.  Far from being among the sacred, Anseb had stepped into what was truly a chamber of horrors, of manmade monstrosities whose reality should only run amok in the imaginations of the most depraved. 

“They are dead,” he reasoned to himself, over and over.  “They are dead.  They have been dead many years and cannot hurt anyone.  Whatever they did once, it is unimportant now.  Unimportant because they are dead.  They are dead.  They are dead.”

He breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of writing or images on the last bit of wall next to the entrance as he finished his circuit.  The worst of this terrible place could only be over now.  Hopefully only treasure and the continuance of what was a bright future for him remained.  He turned towards the middle of the room to get a look at what he assumed would be the location of two caskets…and stared straight into the bug eyed, blood spattered, nightmarish face of a freshly dead man.  Anseb shouted loudly enough to wake the dead there.  His lamp flew out of his hands as he reflexively threw up his arms.  Terrified out of his reason, he ran towards the entrance in the now dark room, managed to find and get through it then sprinted towards the tomb opening as fast as he could.   One nightmare too many had revealed itself and he was finished.  He could choose another career.  Anything.  But he had to get out of there.  Moving with blind, thoughtless panic and unable to see anything in the dark hallway, he lost his sense of awareness and tripped over the tomb entrance’s first step.  His head slammed into the rubble burying the stop steps at the top and he crumbled to the floor, instantly unconscious. 

 

He awoke a half hour later, his opening right eyelid moving a thin bit of dust from where his head had lain on the stone floor, forcing him back to attention in order to rub it.  His forced sleep and current headache brought on a sense of reset to his situation, a sense of renewed sobriety that had been shattered by the terror of seeing…a dead body?  Had he truly seen a dead man, not one of the cadavers hanging on the wall, but a man like himself, a contemporary peer?  It still scared him to the point of fleeing but now his reason had returned due to the unplanned rest.  The matter of his schooling and the funding it desperately needed loomed larger and larger in his mind and the pressure wouldn’t allow him to leave.  He also felt a sense of connection to the place now, as if the death stored in the tomb walls had penetrated his body and possessed his spirit as he slept.  Rising gingerly, he felt the pain above his right eye, which forced him to concentrate; he realized he must find the second lamp and the flint he’d brought in to make further search possible.  Taking special care of his footfalls, he reached into the general area by the steps where he’d left it, near where he’d fallen unconscious, groping for it in the dark.  Spilled earlier, the lamp now had little oil left and one more mishap would finish it and him.  The darkness began to feel heavy, as it had when he first entered.  Exasperated, he timidly reached out and nearly burst into tears as his fingernails finally scraped against the clay object.  He managed to pick up both the lamp and flint and, moments later, had light again, albeit dim and sparse but he could see, if only barely. 

He creeped back to the chamber with a sense of awe, still skeptical his discovery of the recently dead body actually happened.  He stepped directly into the middle of the room, rigidly holding his lamp, afraid the slightest movement might make it go out again, more and more afraid for its precious supply of oil with each step.  Once, the light flickered and Anseb held his breath.  The light dimmed, dimmed, then returned to the previous level.  He must find another light source and fast.  Nearly the moment he thought it, the type of cauldron used to light large rooms appeared before him as if Renenet, goddess of good fortune, had sent it herself.  He very carefully tilted the lamp into what looked like charcoal with no luck on the first two tries then came up with an idea.  Taking a leap of faith in his own creativity, he blew out the light, poured the remaining oil on the charcoal and tried to light it with his flint.  After a few flicks of sparks, the charcoal ignited, the chamber finally illuminated well enough to see most of the room, save for a few shadowy spots here and there. 

 His eyes immediately bored into the sight of what was, indeed, a recently dead man near the cauldron, the flickering fire producing the eerie dance of light and shadows on the body, which stood upright next to one of two sarcophagi in the room’s center.  A large section of rock from the ceiling had showered down on the poor man, both trapping his right leg and opening up a huge gash on his forehead, which poured blood all over his face and down his chest.  It smelt only faintly like decomposing flesh, apparently the process of bodily decay having mostly taken place.  A quick look at the upper right leg made Anseb shiver and take a step back.  A gaping slash nearly five inches long and an inch wide was ripped to the bone.  The hideous wound, now crusted with mounds of scar tissue, had drenched the rest of the leg and the rocks burying it in red.  Trapped and desperate, unable to move inside a remote section of cliff in the desert, the dead man must have taken up a piece of rock from the pile and tried to cut his own leg off to escape, death probably occurring from blood loss.  As he bled out, his standing body just kind of leaned on some of the rocks which had buried him.  He couldn’t have been there longer than two weeks, the corpse still emanating a kind of life as if it would move, taking up the stone again, to continue frenziedly slicing at its own leg, the end goal being a one legged man hemorrhaging buckets of blood, each second crawling with his last strength for the entrance, not noticing or caring he’d still be too far away from civilization to make it back alive.  Anseb tried to close the man’s eyelids, both out of compassion and to end their hideous glare but couldn’t, the lids unmoving as if the eyes were fated to bore a hole into his every activity until he left that horrible place.    

As he moved over to the corner where he’d earlier kicked the chunk of what appeared to be brick, he noticed and counted seven large hieroglyphic representations of Geb covering every section of ceiling except for two areas; the one where the dead man had been trapped, which he assumed had also been adorned with the gods’ likeness before it caved in, the other in the corner he now moved to.  He observed an opening in the ceiling right above him, about three feet by three feet, two distant stars in the now night sky visible as tiny specks.  On the floor appeared to be broken clumps of mud mixed with straw, which could only be bricks.  He reasoned the tomb, possibly built on short notice, had been built too high to the top of the cliff in that section.  The builders had broken through the top and chose to cover up their masonry mistake with brick.  At some point, the bricks obviously had given way and collapsed, falling and breaking to pieces.  He also now observed a moderately long cord of rope on the floor.  He guessed the dead man, a rare soul like himself in that area of desert, had hiked to the top of the cliff and unwittingly stepped onto the bricked-up section, breaking part or all of it open.  The man, perhaps like he, realizing he’d found a lost tomb, had come back later to see if he could find anything of value, lowering himself down by the rope, which had given way.  Anseb again looked up over the dead man at the ceiling.  That section must have a large crag above, providing more than enough rock to bury the man.  The rocks had fallen but only from the underside.  How could this happen?  He couldn’t repress the idea of the supernatural once again.  Perplexed, his eyes danced around the hollowed-out section of ceiling.  Could the gods…somehow make rocks fall on people?

But now came the time to conduct his business.  He approached the two sarcophagi in the center, side by side and perpendicular to the room’s entrance, one open and one closed, the former with what appeared to be an undisturbed mummy lying inside.  The removed casket lid lay to its side; he’d narrowly avoided stepping on it during his first circuit.  Just past their feet in between the caskets and the second stretch of wall, as if reading his mind from earlier, stood a full-sized statue of Sekhmet, with the body of a woman and the head of a lion.  Sekhmet, the violent warrior goddess, avenger against all that is dark and disorderly.  A heroine of justice.  The circle seemed to be complete, with all interpretations of all the characters of the unique funeral text represented in some way in the chamber.  He passed over the closed casket, the one closest to the entrance, for the moment so he could focus on the open one.  The smaller body size made it likely to be the Queen.  The only thing visible on the outside of the body was a necklace of a thin, clearly worthless metal with empty sockets where possibly stones used to be, presumably the lapis lazuli mentioned in the text.  Anseb cursed as he looked over the open casket.  Nothing visible.  Why were the sockets in the necklace empty?  Where had the jewels gone?  The thought they could be hidden in the recently dead man’s loin cloth, which they in fact were, flashed across his mind but he hurriedly rejected such a search.  He wanted no part of that corpse.  Maybe after he looked over the body of the Vizier.  Maybe.   He lifted the mummy’s left hand to see if any rings adorned the fingers when the entire thing, every bit of wrapping and what could be inside, collapsed into dust.  Quick swipes of his hands proved there to be nothing in the wrappings, either.  Both agitated yet strangely tired, Anseb tried to think it through.

“How is there no body?” he thought.  “Surely a corpse cannot just turn to dust with no skin or bones?” 

The sense of the supernatural tugged stronger on his tunic than ever and he resolved to give the body of the Vizier a quick going over before getting out of there.  Whether he left with any prize or not, he couldn’t wait to put this whole night of fright behind him.  The Vizier’s casket lid was surprisingly light, made of something like balsa wood, completely free of any protective markings or representations.  It made only a tiny thump as he pushed it onto the floor, revealing a sloppily wrapped mummy inside.   He couldn’t contain a squeal of delight when he saw a similar necklace to the Queen’s, only this one with the lapis lazuli jewels intact; though still in the sockets, the gems were streaked with cleavages, probably done by a hammer.  Broken lapis covering the body, meant to block the transference of the soul to spiritual immortality.  Anseb felt both the burden and freedom of education, the burden being the knowledge of such things and the reservations of action they induced, the freedom being the instilled logical thought that led to those reservations being overcome.  Lapis lazuli, being highly valuable, in this amount would be more than enough to carry him through the end of his final semester.  He reached around the neck and felt a small clasp.  With this find, he chose not to search the recently dead man’s loin cloth.  He would be out of that place with his booty in mere seconds, none of it to be spoken of again.   He undid the clasp and took off the necklace, planning on taking the whole thing as the lapis nearly came apart in his hands as he cradled it.  With a smile, he took a step towards the exit. 

“AWWWWW!”

The sound erupted from the mummy, the exact same agonized moan Anseb had heard the night he first chiseled into the tomb, only several levels higher.  The shock made him drop the necklace, the compromised lapis breaking into tiny bits on the stone floor.  He backed up until he made contact with the Queen’s casket and sank to the floor as what can only be called a ghost, a filmy though distinguishable white, rose from out the mummy’s body, the first thing noticeable being the jaw ripped free from the upper skull, hanging all the way down against the neck like loose flab, the wounds of the slashed mouth visible from where it had been cut, just as the funeral text said the Vizier’s punishment had been.  The eyes showed the kind of fear experienced at the moment of violent death, as if the visage rising now existed exactly as he’d died, revealing the experience of his tortures.  The center of the ghostly white chest showed a hole where the heart had been ripped out.  The naked body also revealed its castration as it rose and floated above its mummy then looked down at the terrified Anseb as if noting his presence but not understanding it, the disconnected jaw hanging in a silent, eternal scream. 

The mutilated ghost then turned and slowly floated towards the entrance then made a slight adjustment towards what could only be the start of the funeral text, as if ready to merge with it on a journey into the Netherworld.  As it approached, the enormous baboon painted near the front of the text came alive as if its soul had resided in its painted representation all these years, its filmy white form blocking the only exit with a vicious, deep throated howl while repeatedly clapping its hands.  The twelve uraeus serpents followed suit in identical fashion, coming off the wall in murky white, each of the twelve spewing ethereal flames from their now open mouths.  They advanced on the Vizier’s ghost, forcing him back towards the room’s opposite wall, floating on a higher plane above the ground.  Anseb began shaking as he watched, unable to move his limbs in any other way.  The Vizier reached its translucent hands out several times, only to snap them back as they touched the fiery flames apparently only creatures of the spirit world could feel, emitting brief, pathetic yelps of pain. 

As the nightmarish visions floated above him, Anseb finally managed to move, scurrying away from the Queen’s casket until his back hit the side of wall containing the first part of the funeral text.  He continued watching as the representation of Apophis, the monstrous snake enlisted as the punisher of souls, next came off the wall as a giant, smoky white horror, its powerful coils growing larger and larger as if it breathed, moving up behind the oblivious Vizer.  Like lightning, the serpent wrapped itself around the man’s ghost, squeezing the hapless spirit from feet to chest, the Vizier’s head oscillating wildly, the ripped jaw grotesquely flopping loosely from side to side. 

But the worst horror was still to come for the statue of Sekhmet began to take on the same white, translucent quality and, moments later, the goddess of vengeance, goddess of violence, breather of the desert fires, the eyes in her lion head blazing red, her fangs bared, manifested in full, animated, otherworldly life, separating from the stone statue, her razor-sharp claws seeking ethereal blood.  She floated towards the entrapped Vizier’s ghost and, with one giant exhalation, vomited out a torrent of flame, the Lake of Fire punishing the unjust, enveloping the Vizier in fire while unaffected, fireproof Apophis continued his grip, the burning spirit of the Pharaoh’s traitor emitting an ear splitting, high-pitched wail.  The lion goddess then pounced like a giant cat, digging her claws into the Vizier’s ghostly shoulders as her opened mouth crunched down onto his head, fangs cracking into his skull, translucent bones being snapped like twigs.  Anseb screamed uncontrollably as the goddess finally bit off the top of the Vizier’s head, milky white blood and brains pouring down the front of his blazing body.  Apophis slithered his tongue and the baboon at the entrance hopped up and down with pleasure.  Sekhmet let the body loose, which disappeared, supposedly the end of its existence, the worst fate imaginable, and turned towards Anseb, who immediately went silent, now too frightened to even scream, acknowledging his presence for the first time.  Offended by a mortal witnessing this spiritual execution, she snarled then roared at him as he sat petrified, his mouth spasming.  Then each representation of Geb on the ceiling began to laugh, each of their mouths visibly moving, until the laughter united in one haunting, deafening chortle as if in a state of irresistible insanity.  Anseb desperately covered his ears as each representation glowed red as with heat and exploded one by one, the entire ceiling, thick with rock above outside of that one bricked section, soon raining rocks into the room.   The falling rocks and dust shook Anseb from his terror and to his feet as he ran towards the exit, suddenly unconcerned with the ghostly baboon.  He dodged the growing landslide as small bits of rock and dust peppered his head and shoulders as the entire chamber began to fill up, one large rock crushing the Vizier’s mummy to powder, another knocking over the cauldron and putting out its fire.  Sekhmet and Apophis, their duties ended, disappeared, as did the baboon with one last simian squeal.  Anseb dove through the opening just ahead of a series of enormous boulders which covered the chamber entrance forever.  He quickly got back on his feet and ran for the tomb’s main entrance as the laughing Geb hieroglyphs on the hall ceiling glowed red and detonated, Anseb barely ahead of each concussion and the subsequent deluge of debris.  Minding his earlier knockout, he timed a leap as best he could, taking flight just as the last representation of Geb exploded over the tomb entrance, showering him in stone as his hands groped for the exit…

 

When the dust had literally settled and all was quiet, a stunned Anseb checked his situation.  The entire hallway was buried in rock outside his position.  He’d been stopped just outside the hole in which he’d entered the tomb; his left leg and upper body were largely free but his right leg was buried from foot to upper thigh in rock, like the dead man in the burial chamber had been.  Anseb now realized the man must have gone through the same horrors as he, first removing the lapis stones from the Queen’s necklace, whose spirit undoubtedly rose, followed by the attacks of Apophis and Sekhmet.  The dead man no doubt watched the duo work their horrors as he had, after which the hieroglyph of Geb on the ceiling over him exploded, trapping him in that terrible place, that bit of Hell in the home of the dead, which now trapped him.  He tried to push the rubble which held his battered leg like a vice, jagged edges in spots digging into his calf and hamstring, drawing unseen blood, but couldn’t budge any of it save for a few small stones on top.  He could poke his hands and forearms outside the opening and see parts of the roof of the clearing if he shifted his body.  He began yelling loudly and often for help until his voice gave out, night turning to day then back to night in that empty place, for him the emptiest place in the emptiest desert in the world.  Perhaps he would find his voice again soon and someone would come like a miracle and help him.  Perhaps the dead man’s friends, looking for their lost brother, would find this stranger alive.  Perhaps.  Now, his chronic thirst irresistible, he opted for the last act of desperation, which he’d learned from the dead man in the burial chamber.  With tears and a sense of determination, he managed to grope for and seize a sharp rock and, with eyes closed and a prayer to Ra, who is Life, made the first cut into his upper right thigh.