The Vampire Murders: 5/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"That explains it," Clark said. "It's a burial ground. A crypt, of sorts. I'll bet if we were to explore this place, we'd find a lot of these."
"Yeah, well I'd like to get out of here," Lois said. "This is getting creepy."
"Yeah." Clark backed out of the room. They went on in silence, but a moment later their trip came to a stop. The tunnel ended in another room with more mummies, if that was what they were, Lois thought.
"I guess we go back the other way," Clark said after a moment.
"Yeah," Lois agreed. "Come on."
**********
And now, Part 5:
Clark shut off his light again as they approached the area of the small gap between the crypt and the Cost Mart tunnel. It was probably a good thing they had come when they did, Lois thought. The construction crew would probably seal up the small slide in a few days before they had a serious problem, like a collapse or something. They stood still in the dark, listening.
There was still motion in the tunnel. Lois checked the glowing dial of her watch. It had been a good half hour since they had entered this place. How long were they going to be out there?
Clark's hand touched her arm and they moved past the slide, careful to make no sound in the pitch blackness. A short distance on and the shrouded light of Clark's mag-light came on again.
"I wonder if there are any more 'rooms'," Lois whispered.
"We passed four on the way back," Clark said. "I was looking. I guess nobody had any idea this was here. Like I said, they leveled this area for construction quite a while back. Either no one knew about the Indian burial ground, or they didn't care. I guess by this time the record -- if there ever was one -- is long gone."
"Well, it'll make a good story," Lois said. "That is, after we figure out what else is going on here."
She saw her partner's silhouette nod against the faintly illuminated stone. "I just hope there's another way out of here," Clark said. "I kind of doubt it, though, or things would likely have been disturbed. We're probably going to have to wait until they get finished with whatever they're doing. I don't think it can be legal, though. Did you hear what that one guy said about a prowl car?"
"Yeah. But maybe that means they'll hurry," Lois said hopefully. "I never liked mummy and vampire movies. Exploring crypts kind of creeps me out."
"How many crypts have you explored?" Clark asked. Even his whisper sounded amused.
Lois resisted the temptation to elbow him in the ribs. "This one. And I'm creeped out, believe me. If we walk right into Dracula, I won't even be surprised at this point."
The light slid over another opening in the wall. Lois resolutely turned her face away until they had passed it. The tunnel continued on, growing narrower and more cramped. They passed several more of the small rooms. Finally, they reached the end, a circular chamber somewhat more distinctive than the others. This one held a disintegrating mat of dried reeds on the floor, and a rough, wooden box disturbingly similar to a coffin in Lois's estimation. The markings on the wall were thicker than they had been in the other rooms, and a cloth tapestry, thin and faded with age, was fastened to the stone wall behind it. Lois took one look and averted her eyes.
"Hmm," Clark said. "This must have been for some important personage in the group. I wonder who he was."
"Would you believe I don't care?" Lois said. "I guess we're going to have to go back and wait for those characters to leave if we're going to get out any time soon."
"I guess." Clark was squinting at the markings on the tapestry. "I must be wrong. That can't mean what it looks like."
"You read this stuff?" Lois asked, somewhat incredulously. "Just like you read Chinese?"
"Not exactly," Clark said. "One summer I worked at a dig with an archaeologist who was studying Native American artifacts. I picked up some of the simpler stuff, but I've got to be reading that wrong. Something about' the sleeping one.' or something."
"Maybe they just meant it as a polite way to say somebody important was dead," Lois said.
"No," Clark said. He pointed. "See that symbol right above the squiggly lines? That definitely means sleep. The symbol for death is different. Or at least I think it is. And the next one means to awake. The one after that is something like 'fate' or something. The one after that is the death symbol. That little hook on the end makes it different from the symbol for sleep."
"If you say so," Lois said. "I don't see the difference."
"Whichever it is, it doesn't make much sense." Clark repeated. "I must be reading it wrong. The cloth is in pretty poor condition. It might have damaged some of the symbols."
"I hope so," Lois said, "Otherwise, the natives were talking about whoever is in that coffin waking back up, and that isn't possible. How long do you think all this stuff has been here?"
"Good question," Clark said. "Three or four hundred years, probably. If somebody was asleep here, he'd be long dead by now."
"Maybe," Lois said, "somebody was imprisoned alive in here. An enemy leader or something."
"I don't think so," Clark said. "The place looks like it was just sealed up and nobody touched it again until we came in."
"You're right," Lois said. She gave a one sided smile. "I guess the creep factor is making my imagination go a little nuts."
"Well," Clark said, "there's one way to be sure." He stepped forward into the room.
"What are you going to do?" Lois asked.
Carefully, Clark surveyed the rough, oblong box. "This thing isn't even sealed," he said. He slipped his fingers under the lid and lifted. His eyebrows rose slightly.
"What is it?" Lois asked.
"Come see," he said.
Lois hesitated . Up until now she'd been halfway joking, but she was darned if she was going to admit to Clark how much the whole idea was really raising the hair on the back of her neck. Steeling herself, she stepped forward into the room and looked.
Nothing met her gaze but a few layers of coarse, wrinkled cloth. Carefully, she let out her breath. "Nothing. If there was ever anything in here, it's gone. Maybe we aren't the first ones here after all."
Clark was frowning slightly. "There isn't even any dust on it," he said.
"Will you stop it?" Lois said, more sharply than she had intended. "I've seen enough of this place. After we wind up this thing, we can get experts in here and they can translate all of it. It ought to keep them busy for years. In the meantime, let's go back and wait for those guys to leave, okay?"
Clark glanced at her, and somehow she had the impression that he saw a good deal more than she wanted him to see, but all he said was, "Okay."
**********
The wait by the narrow slide area was shorter than Lois had expected, to her vast relief. She and Clark sat in utter silence on the tunnel floor, listening to the sounds of men transporting what must be fairly heavy boxes for perhaps fifteen minutes, and then the area grew quiet. Lois could see nothing in the pitch darkness, but after several minutes of silence, she felt Clark's hand on her wrist. "I think they're gone." His voice was a bare thread of sound. "I'm going to check."
"Be careful," she whispered.
He crawled past her, his legs brushing her jeans, She listened closely, but could hear only the very faintest of scraping sounds as he moved. Silence again.
Then his voice, pitched very low. "They're gone. Come on out."
The relief that surged through her was completely disproportional to the situation. Feeling with her hands, she found the opening and crawled through it. Light met her eyes at once as she emerged into the outer tunnel, and she knew that Clark had turned on his mag-light.
Her partner gave her a hand to her feet. "Shall we get out of here now?"
"Not a chance, Kent," she whispered. "I want to see where all that stuff came from. Let's go."
Clark shrugged. "Okay, but we don't know if anyone's still up there," he pointed out.
"So we'll be careful," Lois said. She turned back toward the bend in the tunnel and the ladder.
"At least let me go first," Clark said, as they paused at its foot.
"Okay, but watch your step."
"No, I was planning to go bursting up there like Rambo," he said dryly. Lois stifled a snort at the thought of Clark doing anything of the sort. Low key was her partner's specialty.
Clark handed her the light and went up the ladder with his own brand of silent grace. He paused at the top, evidently feeling around over his head, and then seemed to be listening. After several seconds, Lois heard a faint grating noise.
"Come on up," Clark's voice whispered. "There's nobody here."
Lois tucked the light into her pocket, felt around for the rungs and began to climb. Once, she banged her foot painfully on one of the metal rungs, but at last there were no more rungs, and Clark's hand was grasping hers as she emerged from the tunnel into a slightly less dark space of some kind, an alcove that opened into a larger room. A window opened on a palely lit stretch of sand, and she could see the reflection of the moon on water beyond it. To the right of the window was a closed and bolted door.
"Where are we?" she whispered.
"I'm not sure. Some kind of building." Clark carefully closed the trap door behind her.
"Let's take a look and see," Lois said.
Clark raised his head and then, so quickly she was startled, pulled her down against the wall, under the window.
A flashlight shone through the glass an instant later. It traveled across the floor and around the room for nearly a minute and just as suddenly was gone. Lois and Clark remained kneeling against the wall for a long count of one hundred and then Clark released her. "Sorry," he whispered. "There wasn't time to warn you."
Lois told her heart to stop racing. "No problem."
"Building Security, I think," Clark said. He got quietly to his feet, keeping out of the line of sight from the window, and carefully peeked around the edge of the frame. "Yeah, I thought so."
"What?"
"That's Mariner's Cove out there."
Mariner's Cove was a section of Hob's Bay that dipped inward from the main bay, with a sloping sandy beach, and the strip of land between Old Town and the beach itself had been turned into a small but elegant resort for some of the more well-off citizens of Metropolis.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"We're right on the water?" Lois whispered.
"Yeah. Take a look. There's the private pier for this duplex," he said.
"You know, I wondered if it might be smuggling," Lois said. "What could they be bringing in?"
"Could be anything," Clark said, "but whatever was in those boxes was heavy."
"Weapons? Drugs?"
"We're going to have to find out," Clark said. "But first we need to get out of here without getting caught. There's not supposed to be anyone in these places at this time of year."
"Which way did the security guy go?" Lois got to her feet, her rubber soles silent on the tile of the floor.
"I don't see him." Clark pressed his face to the glass, trying to see as much of the area as he could. "I don't see him." Clark pressed his face to the glass, trying to see as much of the area as he could. "There's a small house on one side of us, about a hundred feet away," he said. "It looks like this is the last house in the row. Wait -- I see a light. He's headed away to our left. Let's go."
"How about the prowl car?" Lois asked.
"The road's on the other side of the house, I think, but I don't see any headlights lighting up the place." Clark said. "My guess is that it's come and gone. Once we're out of here they at least can't charge us with breaking and entering if they catch us."
Lois had to agree with the reasoning. Clark opened the door silently, took another quick look around, and they slipped outside. Clark gently closed the door behind them.
Lois looked quickly around, but there was no sign of life. She almost jumped when a seagull screeched a minute later.
"Guess we're disturbing the wildlife," Clark whispered. "We'd better make tracks."
"Before we do I want to get this place's address," Lois said. "Just in case we have to come back."
"Okay, but hurry."
**********
tbc
