The Atlantis Keystone (8 page)

The second he turned on the drill, everyone seemed to hold their breath in anticipation and to avoid breathing in the dust which quickly filled the whole room from the resulting air stream. The noise was ear-splitting and Emma wished that they, like the technicians, had been allocated some ear protection. He had survived. The whole drilling exercise had been over in just under a minute but they were struggling to see the result due to the dust cloud which had penetrated every inch of the constricted space. Emma thought she had heard something and looked behind her. Where was Erik? He had been standing immediately behind her. She followed the stairs down and was shocked to see Erik lying at the bottom of the stone stairs, bleeding from his head. He didn’t move. Emma shouted “Help!” at the top of her lungs.

Erik was soon surrounded by the whole group. One of the technicians started to check if he was unconscious, checking his eyes and feeling his pulse but Erik began to move and tried to get up. He was dazed and more than a little confused by what had happened so the technician with a first aid kit recommended they move him somewhere more comfortable and call a doctor to have a proper look. Seemingly from nowhere, the technician presented a stretcher like sheet that they all helped to get Erik onto. Erik’s mother acted quickly, making the way out clear and opening all the doors. They carried him across the bridge and courtyard towards the house. The persistent journalist who had remained outside rapidly got to his feet and started to frantically photograph the unexpected scene. One could almost imagine that he was already making up headlines: ‘The Torpa curse steals its last victim’ or ‘Always listen to the voices of legend’.

As it turned out, although Erik had had a bad fall down the stairs, he was fine, except for a sprained wrist. The doctor, who had arrived quickly, had told him to rest and to count himself lucky; someone more fragile may have been less fortunate under the circumstances.

“I don’t know what happened”, Erik said to Emma when they were talking in the library shortly after. “I couldn’t see and then took a step back, not realising how close I was to the stairs. The next thing I remember is being at the bottom and you all around me.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised”, Emma laughed. “You’re proving to be the most unobservant person I’ve ever met”.

“I know, I think it’s because I’m so tall.” He moved to the edge of his chair as if he was about to get up. “Anyway, no time to stay around here. We have things to do! A vacuum to check!”

“Are you sure you’re up to it? How are you feeling?” She leaned over and carefully touched his forehead.

“Fine, except for my pounding head and my wrist. It really hurts but I’m sure I’ll be fine. Let’s go.” He stood up and swallowed a headache tablet on the go. They went to the courtyard where everyone was standing, the remaining journalist photographing him frantically once again. “Let’s do it! Let’s have a look in that space!” Everyone looked up, surprised to see him up on his feet so quickly. They were all happy to get going, Paul in particular.

Everything was set up. Three screens displayed images from the camera as it was inserted into the newly drilled hole in the wall. Emma noticed that the wall was only about twenty centimetres thick, unlike the walls of the rest of the house. She could see Paul’s pulse pounding hard on the side of his neck. He was nervous. She felt oddly calm, only excited and relieved after the excitement just passed. For some reason she felt obliged to reach for Erik’s hand. Unfortunately she reached for his injured wrist and she could hear a muffled ‘ouch’ as he pulled it away.

“Sorry”, she whispered in his direction without taking her eyes off the screens. The initial images were unexciting. It was too dark to see anything at first. It was only when one of them turned on the camera light that they started to make out the room beyond.

P
aul had his nose up to the screen and was mumbling something about the recording being clear enough for later investigation. He had insisted that everything be recorded so they could provide evidence of whatever they found. Emma was equally transfixed. The number of spiders’ webs was truly staggering. The camera had to break through the mass of webs before it could see anything else. The initial images were uninspiring and Erik started to get worried that his worst fear would be true and the space would be empty. It was smaller than he had expected, only about half a meter deep and about a meter and a half wide. The walls were a drab grey and it was impossible to tell if there had ever been any colour due to the layers of dust that covered every square inch. As the camera panned the room, Paul suddenly jumped:

“Stop the camera! Just there! No, back a bit, I saw something.” The camera moved out and back slightly to take in more of the room. Paul was right. There in the middle of the room towards the back was a mouldy corner of a large piece of grey cloth. Erik’s first thought was of clothes hanging off a skeleton but they quickly realised that the cloth was in fact some sort of sheet covering something else, a box of some kind. The technician manoeuvred the camera around and down. The box seemed fairly large, well over a meter long, perhaps seventy centimetres wide and about seventy centimetres tall. They could all see what Paul was thinking: ‘certainly large enough to house the half tablet’. His face was elated.

“I think we now know that the space in the wall does hide something after all; it’s a chest,” Paul said confidently, barely able to keep the grin further across his face. “Go down to the bottom. I think you can just see the rusty hinges.” There was a hint of triumph in his voice now. “From its appearance and the state of the cloth, I think we can safely say that this is a very old ensemble. I suppose we know for certain that it must be at least six hundred years old, unless someone has opened this wall more recently. I say this is the chest this wall was built to hide. We still don’t know what it contains but whatever it is I’m sure it’s valuable.” Paul’s excitement was endearing. He was almost drooling from exhilaration, like a dog expecting a nice juicy bone any minute.

They spent another hour searching every inch of the space but other than spiders’ webs they didn’t find anything further. It was difficult to get an idea of what the chest looked like because of the cloth which covered it but they were all satisfied that their find would be enough to grant them planning permission to open the wall and look at it properly, in particular to see what was inside it.

The sun was on its way down and the hallway outside the void had got darker. Content that they had achieved good results the technicians started to pack up. Erik almost had to drag Emma and Paul out of there. His mother stayed and oversaw the packing. Erik knew her well enough to understand that her motive for doing so was to keep an eye on her prize; to ensure that there were no attempts to open the wall. After all they probably had the necessary equipment. Erik thought that his mother’s mistrust towards the technicians was wholly unfounded; they had proved nothing but hard working, good humoured and diligent all throughout the day. She was also the one who locked up for the evening, adding an extra couple of locks. This had been Paul’s suggestion as he knew that with the publicity and the find the house would soon be a prime target for burglars.

▪ ▪ ▪

They had all been filled with hope and excitement after the discovery of the chest. Emma had not been surprised to see an article on the front page of the local paper the next morning. She laughed when she saw the large picture accompanying the article; of Erik being carried out of the old house on the stretcher-sheet. The article which followed exaggerated the whole incident and proclaimed that:

‘The Torpa heir was lucky to be alive following the dramatic events in the old house yesterday. Some speculate that his fall down some stairs was caused by the attempts to disturb the blocked up wall which according to legend houses the skeleton of a girl who had been cruelly buried alive behind the wall after having caught the plague in the 15th century. According to folklore, anyone who has attempted to open the wall has died. The fall happened during attempts to drill a hole in the wall….’

It went on with a detailed description of the fall and Erik’s condition and continued at the very end:

‘Scientists were yesterday able to examine the space where the girl was supposed to have been buried and although they could not find any visible human remains, they found a chest believed to be from the 15th century. The contents of the chest remains unknown pending the granting of planning permission to open the wall fully. Whether the chest, as claimed by Oxford professor Dr Paul Simmons, contains an ancient Egyptian tablet which may be the key to deciphering the ancient script of the Minoans on Crete, Linear A, remains to be seen….’

This was followed by two disappointments that day. Firstly, it was clear that planning permission to open the wall fully would not be granted immediately as they had all hoped. In fact, it was far from clear whether permission would be granted at all. The local authorities still had their reservations and needed to subject the matter to proper review and consultation. Paul had been openly annoyed, pacing up and down the library for a full hour before coming to terms with it. Emma had been equally aggravated at the news, asking how they could even contemplate letting the discovery of a six hundred year old chest pass them by. Secondly, Paul had had a phone call from Oxford. He was needed there urgently for his lectures. This came as no surprise. Paul had always known that he had to go back to Oxford around this time. What he found disappointing was that they still didn’t know whether they had found the tablet. Paul informed them that he would have to leave that very day, a few days earlier than they had previously agreed. He had already booked a flight back to Heathrow.

Emma was disappointed. It would be strange to stay on without Paul. Their relationship had got no further forward since the day of the kiss. In fact, he had done a sterling job of avoiding being alone with her, which suited Emma fine. Even though she had feelings for him, it was more infatuation than love, she reasoned. Paul’s taxi arrived later that afternoon. He said goodbye to everyone and then he was gone. It felt strange without him there. After all they had been there for nearly two weeks and in each other’s company almost constantly, except for at night. She certainly had got to know Paul much better during their stay in Sweden and they got on well. She suspected it was going to be strange seeing him back in Oxford later.

That evening Emma did not feel well and had gone to bed early, missing a party for the neighbours arranged by Erik’s mother. She woke up when it was still dark outside. She felt ill and rushed into the bathroom. After a while she decided she needed fresh air. Standing half asleep in her bedroom window looking out over the old white stone building she was absent-mindedly following a mosquito with her eyes when she again spotted a light in one of the rooms on the second floor of the old house. She was suddenly wide awake. As last time, she was sure she could see a woman standing in the window, with long almost grey hair wearing a white night gown which seemed to move in the wind. This time she wasn’t scared by the sight but decided to stay in the window and take a proper look. Moments after Emma had taken this brave decision, the woman in the window seemed to slowly turn her head in Emma’s direction. She imagined seeing a couple of bright eyes staring right at her, although she knew this was an impossibility given the distance between them. Her heart started to beat at record speed and her head was spinning but she forced herself to remain standing. Moments later the light in the room where the supposed ghost was standing went out and she could no longer see anything; just the old house in the calm summer’s night with the sound of crickets all around. It was as if the whole sighting had been a dream. She must have been hallucinating due to illness, she thought before she went back to sleep.

▪ ▪ ▪

It was almost ten by the time Erik finally got up the next morning. It had been a good evening although the alcohol consumption had been above average for some of the people there. His mother had at one point appeared to withstand the drinking remarkably well but it was only when he caught her reminiscing about her mother and how she had ruined her daughter’s happiness that he understood that she too was feeling the effects. His father was in the background as always, completely unaffected by the drinking and his wife’s complaining, quietly observing the goings on around him. Erik had managed to stay as good as sober, having been advised by the doctor not to drink any alcohol with the painkillers, although this morning he was suffering from a throbbing headache and pain in his wrist, all caused by his fall down the stairs.

As soon as he was out of bed he realised that something was wrong. He could hear upset voices from downstairs and a look out the window revealed a police car on the driveway, together with an ambulance. His first thought was of Emma but he was fairly certain that although she had been under the weather the night before it was nothing serious. His next thought was of his mother; could she have done something stupid? He doubted it. Oh no, he thought, please don’t let it be a break-in; could someone have stolen the chest? But why on earth would there be an ambulance there if that was it? He quickly got dressed and went downstairs.

Everyone had gathered in the breakfast room. Emma was not yet up. His mother was sitting on a chair at the table crying. His father stood behind her, trying to comfort her by massaging her shoulders. He didn’t seem bothered by a ray of sunshine illuminating his face. A young ambitious-looking police officer stared at them, helplessly wondering what to do next.

As Erik came into view, his father turned towards him and said with feeling, glancing quickly at the police officer as he said it: “Grandmother was found dead this morning…”