The Sleeper in the Sands Read Free

share its weight at last.
    He reached for a scrap of paper, then unscrewed the lid from the top of his pen. ‘NOVEMBER 4TH,’ he wrote down. ‘1922. TO LORD CARNARVON, HIGHCLERE CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND.’ he paused a moment, then continued to write. ‘AT LAST HAVE MADE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY IN THE VALLEY. A MAGNIFICENT TOMB WITH SEALS INTACT. RE-COVERED SAME FOR YOUR ARRIVAL. CONGRATULATIONS. CARTER.’ He blotted the message. He would have the cable sent the following morning - as early as possible. Carter smiled grimly. He could endure to wait, but he had no wish needlessly to extend the torture of delay.
    Before he retired to bed, he reached once again for the statue of the king and placed it upon the message to serve as a paperweight. He was gazing into its face, holding the lantern aloft, when all of a sudden the eyes appeared to blink. A trick of the light, though -- for even as Carter inspected the face more closely, he saw how its stare grew blank once again, the blackness deeper and more pitted by shadow.

    There was much to keep him busy in the following days. Lord Carnarvon had wired back promptly: he would be arriving in Alexandria within the following fortnight, accompanied by his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. He had lately been ill, he confessed, and was still somewhat under the weather; yet news of the tomb had been just the tonic he had needed. Both he and Lady Evelyn were filled with the utmost excitement.
    That they might not be disappointed in their anticipation, Carter filled the two weeks with meticulous planning. There was equipment to be gathered and experts to be recruited, problems to be foreseen and opportunities second-guessed. Planning was all. Carter had not come so far, nor endured so long, to rush and stumble at the final fence. The steps to the doorway were buried under rubble; the tablet and his papers were locked within his drawer. In his mind too, he sought to keep them hidden, where they could not be disturbed nor even beheld.
    In his sleep, though, in his nightmares, the bonds of self-restraint were easier to slip. Again and again, Carter would dream that the steps had been unearthed. He would imagine himself standing before the doorway, now wholly exposed. In his hands would be the tablet, and its curse would seem written in symbols of blood. He would know that the seals had to stay unbroken -- but he would order the doorway opened all the same. As he did so, the tablet would shatter in his hands, and Carter would think himself suddenly awake. But the dust of the tablet would linger in the darkness, and seem to form the shadows of strange figures in his room.
    Such nightmares, when he truly awoke from them, angered Carter. Drawn so near at last to the object of his quest, he discovered that he could not endure to be reminded of that mystery which had led him to the very doorway of the tomb, and which he had chosen to keep locked within the drawer of his desk. He began to blame his sense of guilt that he had ever removed the tablet from the sands; yet he knew he could not return it there, nor announce its discovery, for he was still unwilling to provoke the workmen’s fears. Nor could he keep it upon his person, for he did not care to feel that he was somehow grown a thief. A vexing problem, exceedingly vexing -- and yet Carter knew that a solution had to be found.
    For all the while, as the date of Lord Carnarvon’s arrival drew nearer, so his dreams were growing steadily worse.

    He had regretted bringing it almost at once. As it had done before, when he had brought it from the site of the discovery, the tablet weighed heavily in his bag. Carter shifted it from one hand to the other. A boy approached him, offering to take the portmanteau; but the very prospect of surrendering his precious burden made Carter grip it all the more tightly. He ordered the boy away.
    He watched as the rest of his luggage was loaded upon the felucca. Only when all was readied did he prepare to board