Eric paused for a moment, drawing out his answer. “Yeah. You came down alright, and we had a conversation about you not going down to the site all by yourself, especially now that the crew has left. What happened down there, and why are you so on edge? Did you see a ghost?” Eric asked with a laugh.
Nat was about to respond when she caught a glimpse of a purple bracelet on her arm. She switched the phone to the other hand so she could get a closer look at it. It seemed to be made from some sort of dark blue obsidian. The edges were smooth and seemed to be perfectly symmetrical on all sides. Nat thought it was very beautiful for a moment, but then realized she didn’t remember buying it, so she quickly took it off and tossed it on the bed.
“Nat?” Eric called out.
“I’m here, sorry…Uh, did you go down to the site?”
“After you?”
“At all, today. Have you been there?” Nat asked.
“No, I was supposed to come join you, but you never picked up, so I thought you went in without me. Why? What did you see?”
Nat wanted to tell him, and the images of what she had seen flashed through her mind. A man with large scaly wings had flown into the corridor. Another one of them had breathed fire from his mouth, and the man—no, not man, monster—that they were fighting was far from human. It had claws and skin that looked like it had been burned from the inside and left to rot.
From what she had seen, Nat was certain that none of them were human. She remembered the way they had moved, so fast her eyes could barely follow them, until she had gotten knocked out. She paused for a moment, wondering how she would explain something like that to Eric. What could she say that would convince him that she wasn’t crazy?
“Nothing, I just…I’ll come down to the office soon, I need to check something out,” Nat finished, ending the call as she heard Eric muttering something on the other side.
What happened?
Nat got to her feet and walked to the bathroom. She turned on the tap and washed her face, trying to get a clear head. Realizing she had a headache, she reached for the cabinet behind the mirror and grabbed some aspirin, dropping a few into her palm. As she did, she noticed the bracelet was still on her wrist.
Quickly looking back at the bed, she tried to recall if she had put it on again during the call, but she couldn’t remember doing so. She took the bracelet off and placed it down on the counter, before giving herself a hot shower. She allowed the steam to soak into her body as she lay in the tub.
After half an hour of this, Nat got out with a plan in her head.
With all of the madness that had happened at the site, she was certain that somehow they would have left behind some signs. The fire they had used. The explosion that had sent them flying. There would be signs of a fight when she got there. She just had to head back out quickly.
Nat quickly got dressed, pulling a pair of combat jeans over her ample hips and thick thighs. She looked around to see that the top she had started the day wearing was now in the washing machine. She threw on a different top that accentuated her curves and voluptuous breasts. Satisfied with her new outfit, she grabbed her purse and keys from the table.
She had a knack for losing her car keys, so she always made sure she hung them on a rack in the living room each time she entered so she would never have to look for them. Seeing them on the table told her that someone had come in, and they had changed the way she liked things to be in the house.
Nat locked the door and walked to her car, taking a breath as she started the engine. Just as she began to back out of the driveway, her eyes caught sight of something on her wrist. Something she was certain she had taken off and dropped on the bathroom counter, and left there on purpose. She looked at her hand and slammed on the brakes, staring at it.
The bracelet was right there, fitting tightly around her wrist. She felt her heart rate quicken in her chest, and she quickly began to control her breathing as she stared at it.
“What are you?” she asked it, knowing it wouldn’t talk to her.
Nat was certain it had something to do with the dig site, and she was going to find out. She drove through the city, looking left and right, wondering if any of the people she passed on the road had anything to do with what she had witnessed.
They were monsters, but they walked around with perfectly normal, human faces. There was nothing about them that stood out, and if they could blend it that well, then she was sure that the monsters walked among everyday people. Finding them was a different story.
Nat ran her hand through her hair as she began piecing things together. She worked as an archeologist, unearthing secrets which were held down by the earth. During a recent study, she had realized that part of the canyon held the remains of early tribes of humans who were supposedly into the occult and other inhumane practices. She wasn’t certain of anything, but as soon as she got the project funded, and the dig had started, Nat realized that she had stumbled upon a gold mine of history, and was about to uncover untold secrets which were a lot older than herself and everyone she knew.
One slab of rock from one of the pedestals at the dig site had already been taken back to the office and put in holding for it to be translated, studied, and understood before they would send it to a museum for safekeeping. The rock had been broken open to reveal a wooden box with markings on it that dated several centuries ago. They were supposed to head back for the second one, but the diggers had decided to take a break from their digging, saying they had a bad feeling about the work, and throwing down their tools.
Nat had thought the men just wanted more pay for the work, but maybe they had seen the monsters too. Or maybe they had felt their presence like she did, but had no idea what they were, and just instinctively knew that they had to leave before they were hurt.
Whatever it was that had occurred in the caves, Nat was certain that uncovering the pedestal was what had created the monsters, or at least drawn them out of the shadows.
She pulled up to the building. It was a four-story building that served as a cultural heritage center, museum, and federal storage for unused artifacts.
She got out of the car and made her way up the stairs and into the building. The first floor was the museum, so she quickly made her way to the elevators and hurried up to the third floor where the offices and labs were. As she arrived, she saw Eric at his desk, typing up a report on what they had found at the scene.
Nat ignored him and hurried to her computer, knowing that if he saw her it would lead to a conversation she was not ready to have. She turned on her computer and pulled up all of the files she had on the site, quickly searching for keywords.
First, she triedmonsterand came up empty. She tried other synonyms for the word too, but nothing came up.