Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set Read Free Page A

quivering to his knees in the dust. 
    “Allah be praised!  He has led us here!”
    Nabil lifted the lid of the second urn and beamed the light into its mouth.
    “More scrolls!  Achmed, they will be singing our names around the night fires for generations!”
    “Allah be praised!”  Achmed was too overcome to think of anything else too say.
    Nabil replaced the lid and swung the flashlight beam back to the broken urn.
    “You take that one.  It’s already broken but be careful!   We don’t want to do any more damage to that scroll.  I’ll take the unbroken one.”
    Achmed bent, slipped his sweating, trembling palms under the broken urn, and gently lifted it into his arms as if it were a cranky infant brother who had finally fallen asleep.  He rose to his feet and edged toward the mouth of the cave.  He didn’t need the flashlight beam to light his exit—after the deep night of this tiny cave, the moonlit canyon outside seemed noon bright.  He stepped carefully over the jumbled rocks outside the mouth, then waited on level ground for Nabil.
    This is wonderful, he thought.  Our family will be rich, and Nabil and I will be famous.
    He saw the hand of Allah in this, rewarding him for his daily prayers, his fasting, and his strict observance of Holy Days.  He turned and faced south, toward Mecca, and said a silent prayer of thanksgiving.  Then he looked at the moon, thanking Allah for making it bright tonight.
    But the prayer choked in his throat and he nearly dropped the treasure in his arms when he noticed a figure standing atop the far cliff they had skirted to reach this canyon.  Silhouetted against the moonlit sky, it seemed to be watching him.  For a moment he was transfixed with fear, then he heard Nabil behind him.  He turned to see his brother stepping over the rubble before the cave mouth.
    “Nabil!”
    His brother looked up and stumbled, but caught himself before he fell.
    “What is it?” he said between his teeth.
    “Up on the cliff...”  Achmed turned to look and saw that the upper edge of the cliff was now empty.  The sentinel figure had vanished.
    “What?” Nabil said, the irritation mounting in his tone.  “Finish what you begin!”
    “Nothing.”
    “Then why are you standing there like a blind camel?  Move!  We’ll take these back to the donkey then search the cave for more.”
    They had just reached the donkey and were laying their treasures in the sand when Achmed heard something.  He lifted his head and listened.  A low hum.  No...a pulsating thrum .
    “ Tayya’ra! ”
    Nabil leapt into motion.   “Quickly!  The scrolls!  Bundle them up!”
    They pulled the blankets they had brought, wrapped the urns in them, then slung them over the donkey’s back.  
    “Let’s go!”
    “What about the metal?” Achmed cried.
    “Forget the metal!  We have a far greater treasure!  But if the Israelis find us, they’ll steal it!  Hurry!”
    With Nabil pulling from the front and Achmed again switching from behind, they drove the donkey down the bank and across the wadi.  As they slipped around the leading edge of the outcrop, the sound of the helicopter grew louder.
    ‡
    “It could be anywhere down there,” the copilot said.
    Kesev stared below, watching the bright beam of the searchlight lance the darkness and dance along the peaks, plateaus, and crevasses that dominated this area of the Wilderness.  They had been running a crisscrossing search pattern for thirty minutes now.
    “I think we can be pretty sure no one was hurt by this thing,” the pilot said after a few more minutes of searching.  “Maybe we’d better put this off, come back when it’s light and—”
    “Keep going.” Kesev was getting the lay of the land now.  “Follow this canyon south.”
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw the pilot and copilot exchange glances and discreet shrugs, but neither challenged his authority.
    The canyon widened below them, and then the search beam picked up