The plastic bag we pulled from the viscous mixture of blood and ash had contained two things: a photograph and a folded piece of paper.
We placed each onto a side table in the parlor, and gathered around to examine our findings.
The photograph sent a cold shiver down my spine, despite the fact that I couldn’t tell exactly what the image was.
It was some sort of entrance. At first, I thought it was the stairs leading down into some crude basement, so dark was the center of the doorway. But once I spotted the dirt and dust on the margins of the picture, I thought perhaps a mine shaft.
I glanced as inconspicuously as I could at the faces peering over the photograph, and was somewhat disappointed, and simultaneously relieved. I didn’t see anything resembling recognition, or self-satisfaction, two things I might expect from the creator of the jar. Everyone’s expression seemed to pretty much match up to the one that I imagined graced my face—a look of cluelessness and uneasiness.
Except, of course, for Graham.
Graham Willoughby’s face had drained of all its color, and his lower lip trembled. Whatever this doorway was, he knew it well—and it frightened him to his very core.
“What is this?” William Pettigrew finally asked. He gave a tentative side glance to the shaken man. “Graham?”
“Read the paper,” Graham replied, in hoarse voice, barely above a whisper. It was as if he couldn’t tear his eyes from the photograph on the table, not even to read the words that came with it.
As William unfolded the paper, something fell out and quickly fluttered to the ground. He picked it up, and held it out for us to see: it was a small, red envelope, about the size of a business card.
He set it to the side, and held the paper up to his face. He cleared his throat.
“Graham Willoughby,
Confess your sins.
After your confession, open the envelope.
Accept your punishment.”
We waited in anxious silence, watching the mustached man. Beads of sweat were rising like dew across his creased forehead. He said nothing, only stared deeper and deeper into the photograph, the emptiness of the entry way reflected black and hollow in his pupils.
“I can’t.”
Although I had only heard his voice full of nothing but confidence and assuredness, this phrase parted from his lips with a whimper. It was the sound of defeat.
“You have to.” Greta said this with much less empathy than what the situation called for. “Or we’re all going to end up like that,” she added, pointing to the shriveled body of Lucas Hannigan that still lie in the sarcophagus. Ander winced.
Graham raised his eyes to the tomb, but quickly brought them back down to the photograph. He took a deep breath.
“As you all know; I was Regis’ business partner. He researched ancient cultures and civilizations, and I would help him organize archeological digs at locations his data led us to.” I looked to the photograph again, and I could see it now—not a mineshaft, but the entrance to an underground dig site.
“It was somewhere close to Abydos, in Egypt, about 15 years ago. Regis had found evidence that suggested of another ancient city somewhere close by. So, I secured him the logistical things he would need to sponsor a dig. I got a group of archeologists, kids from a university and their professors, looking to get their hands dirty at a real site. And I got other stuff ready, too.” He hesitated. “Including the equipment.”
He was obviously getting more agitated. He used one hand to wipe the excess sweat from his upper lip, and used his other to trace the outline of the dig entrance on the photo. “I had gotten a tip on some less expensive bracers. The things they use to keep tunnels supported during underground digs,” he clarified. “I had used the same supplier for years, but I thought I could save some money, and...” he trailed off, and started shaking his head.
“They had some success at the site, and they wanted permission to dig deeper. The bracers were new, and I only meant to try them out for an upper level dig, but...the more they find, the better for me so...”
“They were about seventy feet down when the tunnel collapsed.”
I could see his eyes glaze over, as he stared, transfixed, at the photograph. “The cheap bracers I bought failed, and the whole thing came crumbling down, one fall triggering the next. It took a few weeks to dig back down to them, but by then...”
He closed his eyes. “Everyone was already dead. Crushed by the rocks. They died immediately.”
No one said anything, not that I blamed them. What could you say, to something like that?
Instead, William solemnly offered the small red envelope. Graham took it.
We watched as he tore it open with shaky hands. His eyes moved, right to left, only once. There was a moment of confusion, as though he hadn’t quite understood what he read. Then, comprehension dawned, and the reaction was immediate.
His skin turned even paler, and his breath stopped short in his throat.
He very slowly placed the paper inside onto the table, next to the photo.
It read:
When buried deep within the darkness,
Consume more air to stay alive
Again, I monitored the expressions of the people around me, to see if this mean more to them than it did to me. This time, one other person besides Graham seemed different:
William Pettigrew.
His face was one of solemn pity mixed with disgust. He looked at Graham, who was still staring, dumbstruck, at the cryptic message he had just unveiled. “Graham? Are you sure you’ve told us everything?”
The other man shuddered, and turned his face partly away from the group. He looked to the sarcophagus, as though contemplating whether ending up like Ander’s father was a better fate than whatever the envelope’s message entailed for him. Then, he spoke:
“Like I said, it took about three weeks to get down to where the excavators were. And most of them were crushed as soon as the tunnel collapsed.” He hesitated.
“But, there was a small group that survived down there. A handful of the students survived around two weeks, the recovery team could see that much. But...” he paused, and my pounding heart beat filled his silence.
“They had eaten the dead.”
The reaction from his audience was noticeable. Fawn and Forrest both leaned slightly away from him in unison. Greta turned her head away, as though she had smelled something foul. Ander’s hand framed his forehead as he began to nervously rock back and forth.
Graham didn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he continued. “They had dug out the bodies from the soil, in an attempt to survive. But, they had no water so—none did ”
A wave of nausea swept over me so powerfully that I feared I would be sick.
Ander swallowed hard before posing a valid question: “So what does this mean? What’s your punishment?” He frowned at the smaller paper. “’Consume more air to stay alive’? But the archeologists didn’t suffocate, they died from dehydration and being crushed.”
Graham opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, as though no words would come out. Instead, William spoke for him.
“The canopic jar. It’s Hapi. The baboon-headed god.” William stated this slowly, as though with each word our understanding was meant to grow. I, however, was still lost. He sighed heavily, and gazed at Graham with something like sympathy in his eyes.
“It’s the jar that holds the lungs.”
That dark sludge that seeped out of the jar’s divide, the spongy bits that fell onto the carpet—pieces of human lungs. Whether they were Regis Hannigan’s or Lucas’, I had no idea.
“That’s horrible,” Fawn said, she and Forrest both looking reproachfully back at the fireplace.
“I still don’t think I get it,” Ander said, shaking his head.
“I do.” Wendy said suddenly. She exchanged glances with William, and looked to Graham, who was now holding his hands to either of his temples, as though trying to manually keep his body from trembling with horror.
“Graham’s greed turned those college kids into cannibals,” she said matter-of-factly. I blinked in surprise at her brashness, although she wasn’t wrong. “The punishment fits the crime.”
“Oh, shit,” Ander suddenly said, as though it had just hit him.
And just like that, it came to me too. My head shot back towards the hearth, to the thick, dark paste that had coagulated on the brick.
Consume more air to stay alive.
Graham Willoughby would have to eat the lungs.
---
Credits
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