The Jar of Nephren-Ka

Plantation

Vacherie, Louisiana: 11:15 PM, Sunday, June 24th, 1984

When the car stopped, I snapped to full alertness. Despite being battered and bruised from my fall and then stuffed into a trunk, I was so exhausted, and the Rolls' ride so smooth, that I had dozed almost the entire way.

I heard a door open and shut, then the muffled crunching of gravel and another door opened. I heard Coventry exit the vehicle, then say something unintelligible to Barnes.

The door shut, and more crunching occurred as someone walked around to the rear of the Rolls. There was the sound of a key being jammed in a lock, then a series of clicks and the trunk lid raised to reveal Barnes.

I had wanted to do something clever, like lash out with my feet when the trunk opened, but I was jammed into the trunk so tightly that I didn't have any room to maneuver.

Barnes was standing over the trunk, my revolver leveled at my chest. He backed up and made a waving motion for me to get out of the car. With my bound hands and the confined space, this was a challenge, but after a few moments I squirmed my way out.

As I got vertical again, I glanced around. I was standing on a gravel drive that ran straight as an arrow across a perfectly manicured lawn to an enormous plantation house. To either side of the lawn were great, moss-covered Oak trees, limbs stretching across the drive and providing a canopy that sucked nearly all the moonlight out of the night.

We stood at the end of the drive nearest the house, and here the drive made a small loop, resembling an aerial sculpture of a lollipop.

The house itself was a looming plantation house built in the style of the Greek revival; Square, two-story, with both upper and lower porches and broad, white-washed columns supporting the roof from each side. Coventry was nowhere to be seen, but lights were on inside the house.

Barnes gestured for me to turn around, using almost the exact same spinning movement with the revolver I had used with Turbo. It felt like decades since I took Turbo on that little field trip, and I shook my head in wonder.

Misinterpreting my head shake, Barnes pulled back the hammer and leveled my Smith and Wesson at me, eyes cold and hard. I turned around.

Barnes shoved the barrel into the center of my back and pushed me forward, steering me by applying pressure in different directions.

We entered the structure, and I faced a long hallway, floored in hardwood covered with patterned rugs. A large staircase began around the center of the hall, and an identical double door was at the far end. Doorways led off to the right and left of the hallway just before the staircase.

Barnes marched me through the hallway, and when we reached the opposite end, he directed me into the corner, nose against the wall. Behind me, I heard him unlock and open the door, then he walked back over and the barrel resumed its place on my back.

He prodded me to the left until I got the idea that I was supposed to exit the corner and walk towards the door. I did so, and found myself once again outside, this time in some kind of garden.

There was a rectangular area one hundred feet long by fifty feet wide, bordered by stone paths. Additional stone paths went through the rectangle at the exact mid-point on both the long and short sides, and culminated in a cobblestoned square in the middle of the rectangle. Surrounding the square were various decorative plants.

At the corners of the square were four stone plinths on which sat marble obelisks, each at least ten feet tall, and covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs. The interior of the square was paved in pristine white marble tiles, placed with such precision that the seams were undetectable.