FORTY-THREE

KNIGHT CONTINUED THROUGH the tunnel, his path dimly lit by the glowing bandanna laden with the phosphorescent algae. Despite his instincts telling him to turn back, that traveling deeper into the mountain was a bad idea, he pushed forward, driven by a desire to see where the tunnel led. That, and the tunnel had been blessedly free of savage ape-women. The smooth layer of dust on the floor gave him comfort as well. The tunnel hadn’t been used for some time. Whatever was down here was no use to beasts, and that made it a welcome place for what they no doubt saw as a small Korean snack.

He did his best to tread lightly, hiding his footprints in the dust, but his injured and splinted leg, which clicked and echoed in the tunnel with every footfall, made stealth rather tricky. But he held on to hope. He’d escaped the necropolis without confrontation and, unless this tunnel was a dead end, felt confident he would make it back to the jungle.

When the tunnel leveled out, his hope grew. When a breeze tickled his nose, his hope soared. The clack, clack, clack of his bone splint sped up as he limped forward like a sprinting gimp.

Then the tunnel opened up and he froze.

Another chamber lay before him, but it was nothing like the necropolis. The floor dropped away, six feet down. The ceiling was eight feet above him and the space appeared to be a baseball-diamond-sized square. A staircase carved into the stone floor descended into a maze straight out of Greek mythology. But this wasn’t Greece and there was no Minotaur at the center of the labyrinth. Instead there was a large crystal, taller than Knight, rising out of the floor like some kind of Egyptian obelisk. The crystal held his gaze. Light radiated from inside the polished monolithic object and filled the space. Then the light shifted, shimmering like the aurora borealis. As the glow moved about the space, he noticed twin streams of dusty radiance that appeared brighter than the glow coming from the crystal. Knight followed the light’s path back to the source—two holes in the far wall. But the holes were partially covered by circular hatches.

Rising from the base of each wooden shade was a thin rope that attached to the ceiling through a series of stone loops. The lines ended above the entrance and hung down, weighted by two stones tied to the ends. The heavy stones kept the hatches slightly open and allowed the sliver of light into the chamber . . . a sliver of light that became amplified by the crystal at the center of the hewn-out space.

Knight squinted at the hanging ropes, then glanced back at the crystal. The whole contraption appeared to be a primitive light switch. “Can’t be.”

But it was. Knight pulled the cords down and, once in motion, the weight of the stones pulled them to the floor. The hatches sprang open, allowing the daylight beyond to pour in, where it struck the crystal, refracted, split, and dispersed around the room as shimmering colors.

Details leaped out. The labyrinth was much more than a simple maze. The one-foot-thick stone walls were covered, front and back, by Somi’s proto-Chinese. Each symbol took up a four-inch-square space in a grid that was perfectly measured and even. It looked like an ancient Vietnam War Memorial, wrapped around and throughout the room instead of a straight line. Knight descended the staircase and entered the maze.

He imagined that with time he might even be able to figure out what some of the symbols meant. If this really was the precursor language to Chinese, then the four percent Chinese that is pictorial might actually be found on these walls. And if that was true, he might be able to figure out more symbol meanings based on their surrounding context. But that would take years. With no understanding of the language, Knight made his way toward the center of the maze. He was tempted to climb on top of the maze and cheat his way through, but his memory of the view from above served him well. He reached the center, and the massive crystal, in just a few minutes.

As his gaze was drawn by the crystal he failed to notice the debris surrounding it, and tripped. He’d normally have turned the fall into a graceful leap followed by a roll and bounce back to his feet, but his bound ankle caused him to fall like a drunk squirrel. He landed facedown but softened the impact with his hands. Exhaustion claimed him as he lay there, annoyed by his clumsiness. He kept his eyes closed, listening to his breathing. It rattled.

No, not his breathing. Something else.

Knight opened his eyes. The top corner page of a red-ringed notepad fluttered with each of his breaths. He launched up into a sitting position. The notebook sat open with a pen dropped casually upon it. A slim coat of dust covered both. They’d been discarded long ago, but they belonged to modern man. Someone had been here before him. Someone knew about this place. The question on Knight’s mind was: Did that person survive?

The area surrounding the notepad was covered in rubbings made from the maze walls. Smudges of charcoal filled large sheets of drawing paper. They littered the floor. Knight saw the now-empty sketchpad resting against a nearby wall. Whoever had been here spent a substantial time studying the language, but did they finish?

Knight picked up the notebook, flipped to the first page, and was surprised to see the college-ruled lines filled with English. The writing was chicken scratches, really, but readable. He started to read the first entry.

Dr. Anthony Weston

06/17/1995

 

The flight to Laos—awful. The food—abysmal. The adventure—high! Despite my poor accommodations I am nonetheless excited for my impending trip into the Annamite range. The wonders that are just waiting to be discovered in that deep, dark, and foreboding land will change the way the scientific community (and my ex-wife) view cryptozoology. To think that because we inhabit the land means we have seen everything on it is absurd! I may be fifty pounds lighter on my return trip back to Oregon, but I will make up for it with the weight of my discoveries. Discoveries that I hope will heal the pain of the past and make those missing the future proud of me. It is for this reason that I . . .

Knight stopped reading. It was clear that this Weston guy was going to continue his rant for several pages. He flipped through the notebook until he saw a drawing. He recognized the figure immediately as one of the primal woman, hunched in a mass of flattened reeds, as seen from a safe distance.

Knight read the text beneath the drawing.

In this, my fifth day of recording the activities of the Nguoi Rung, one of them sat still long enough for me to draw a picture. I have considered taking photos, but would most likely be detected. I have risked enough getting this close. If they find my perch high above them I fear they will flee.

Knight chuckled. The guy had no idea. Flee? They’d make a meal of him. Probably did.

He turned the pages, looking over more drawings and their accompanying notes. This Weston guy fancied himself as the next Jane Goodall, recording everything about the creatures he called the Nguoi Rung. When and how they hunted, which Knight had experienced firsthand. How they interacted with each other, what he believed to be a language. It was all there. He had chronicled everything about them that he could see without getting too close.

Knight turned the page and frowned. The wrinkled page lacked any text, but was covered in a mix of old mud and blood. He turned to the next page. Weston’s writing returned, but there was no date and the man’s written voice had changed.

Two months. God. I have been captive for two months and have only now retrieved my belongings. I have been humiliated, tortured, demoralized in unspeakable ways. The Nguoi are evil. God, please, kill me or save me.

He turned to the next page, expecting more of the same, but discovered something even more revolting.

A litter was born today. To the alpha female I have named Red. A true litter. Six tiny babies. I witnessed the birth, having gained some freedom of movement throughout the group. The gentleness of the mothers was impressive as they birthed the children one at a time, pausing between each so that each new child might have opportunity to suckle before the next arrived. I was allowed to see them after much complaining by the others, but Red allowed me closer. They were my children after all, and by God, they have my eyes!

Knight dropped the notebook. They had not only captured and raped Weston, but they had given birth to his children. It was unthinkable. Unbelievable. Tense and disturbed, Knight held his breath and listened. Shaken by what he’d read, he now feared that the Ngoui Rung would recapture him. And then what? Would a similar fate await him?

No, he thought, they were going to eat me.

And that was a preferable fate to what Weston described. It wasn’t just the things Weston had endured that disturbed him, it was the new change in his voice. He no longer mentioned being saved or killed. The half-human spawn were his children and had his eyes! Without needing to read any further Knight knew that Weston had stayed with the Ngoui Rung. Any good father would. With the notebook discarded in the maze long ago, he might now be dead, but Knight was positive that Weston had discovered the necropolis and this maze. He had become part of the Nguoi Rung and father to something inhuman.

Returning to the notebook, Knight skimmed through the pages, glimpsing keywords like “children,” “love,” and “happy.” He’d really gone native. And had learned to enjoy it. As he flipped through, Knight paused at another keyword, “fucking,” and read the entry.

The fucking old mothers beat me again today. They are teaching the children to behave like savages. Killing indiscriminately. Eating human flesh from the nearby villages. It is vile. I cannot stand it much longer. I must make a stand or flee this place . . . but I cannot bear to leave the children behind, not now, not with grandchildren being born.

Grandchildren? Knight thought. If this had been written this year the oldest child would only be fifteen years old. But the notebook had been discarded long ago, years ago. How could there already be grandchildren?

Knight pushed the thought from his mind. Dwelling on the twisted tale of Dr. Weston would have to wait. He was more interested in what Weston had discovered about the language filling this chamber. He flipped through the pages, not reading the text, just looking for images. He stopped at a page where a symbol had been drawn. The following pages documented how Weston had found the symbols inside the tunnels, his subsequent discovery of the necropolis and then this room, which he called the Rosetta Chamber.

Skimming again, Knight marveled as, over the course of one hundred notebook pages, Weston slowly worked out the symbols’ meanings. After what had to have been years of work, the last ten pages of the notebook were filled with a translation of the stones, which told a story starting on the maze wall on the left side of the staircase and read all the way through the maze until it ended back at the same staircase on the right side. Knight read the first line of the translation:

This is the history of the Nguoi Rung—Note: I cannot say what the name truly is, but I believe it was a tribal designation of some kind. Note! Having read further on I have deduced the Nguoi Rungs’ ancestry! Neanderthals!!!