Roads To Hell: A Horror Anthology

Part 15 - The Vault - Part 1

God, how late was it? Allison closed her burning eyes and pressed the tips of her fingers to the fluttering lids. Shoulders hunched, she gave herself a few seconds of rest, letting the music pumping through her headphones fill her ears. The music helped her focus. And when she spent all day and sometimes half the night cataloging the size, shape, material and defining features of hundreds of clay fragments, Allison needed all the focus she could get.

The work was sometimes mind-numbing, tedious and repetitive, but that was archaeology. She counted herself lucky to be working - sort of - in her field. The offshoot of a private think-tank, the Jones Institute handled the research, restoration and display preparation of the ancient treasures in the hands of various wealthy families and huge corporations. Museums also offloaded some of their cataloging work to the Institute, which is where the twenty boxes of stone and clay fragments came from.

Dr Allison Reed, PhD, she told herself. The sorely needed money from this job was funding her PhD studies. Just a few more months and then I can work on becoming Dr Allison Reed.

She tilted her neck from side to side, stretching the tight muscles there, and then refocused. Her supervisor, Dr Gabrielle Lee, had said she was free to go when she finished this box. Only five more pieces to catalogue. She picked up the next one, holding it gently in her gloved hands, and then felt a light touch to the back of her shoulder.

"Shit!" Her whole body jerked and she whipped around instantly, only to see Dr Lee behind her with a bemused expression on her face.

Allison plucked out one of the headphones and apologised with a whisper, conscious of the two others working near her.

"Sorry I scared you, but, here." Dr Lee handed over a small box, covered with international postage stamps and fragile stickers. It had been hand couriered. "Your interest is in the Judaean Desert, right? This just arrived. Thought you'd like the first look."

Allison looked up at her wide-eyed. "Really?"

"Really. You're more than ready. Store it with high-value pieces before you leave, okay?"

Allison watched the older archaeologist leave, all tiredness seeming to have lifted from her exhausted body by the excitement of discovery. She replaced the clay piece, deciding to come in early tomorrow to finish them off, and set to work extricating whatever mysterious item was inside. She had no doubt that Dr Lee would be testing her on her conclusions tomorrow.

The box was heavy, but as Allison discovered, that was not only due to the wooden crate, but also due to the item itself. Wrapped in gossamer and surrounded by layers of packing material, was a stone mask.

Allison gently laid the piece on her workstation, brushing the dark hairs of her overgrown fringe out of the way as she leant over it. Blank, with no discernible markings, the stone was a mottled grey colour. She assumed limestone, based on the area it was found. She ran her finger lightly around the edge of the large, round eye-holes and down the slight ridge of the nose area.

Below that was a cavernous mouth, carved with grinning teeth. The edges had been filed, and she had to be careful not to catch her fabric gloves on them. Holes had been drilled around the edges, evenly placed. Probably to tie the mask to the wearer's face, or perhaps to a larger headpiece made of material that had not survived.

She turned the mask over, investigating the side that had touched the face of a person born thousands of years ago. She frowned. No markings, nothing to give her information. Aside from a few strange stains on the inside, the mask was near featureless.

She leant back in her chair. Hmm. No markings or writing, a featureless design and stone material. It had to be Neolithic, Allison decided. A burial or ritual mask, but then again, were masks used for anything else back then?

Satisfied with her initial conclusions should Dr Lee quiz her the next day, Allison was about to begin measuring and photographing the piece when a hand reached in front of her and swooped it right off her workstation.

"Hey!" She stood, chair rolling back and headphones clattering onto the desk. "What the hell, Craig!"

Craig Evans pranced just out of reach, holding the mask up with one hand. "What have we here? I thought you were still measuring clay shards?"

Allison crossed her arms and frowned at him. Craig was an older student and had almost finished his PhD. Tall, tan and too smart for his own good, he swanned about the climate controlled laboratory they called The Vault as if he owned it. He was still upset about her rejecting his advances.

"Dr Lee asked me to catalogue it," she challenged, then lurched as Craig pretended to lose his grip. "Please be careful!"

The other archaeology student, Julie, was looking at them but Allison knew she was too shy to step in. She also knew that Craig had no intention of damaging the piece, he just wanted to scare her. Well, she had no intention of giving him the satisfaction.

"Just give it back, Craig. It's late."

"Oooh, a scary mask!" Craig held it up before his face, peering through the eyeholes and warbled sounds that Allison assumed he thought were creepy. She rolled her eyes.

"Craig," she said firmly. "Seriously. Hand it over."

"You want the mask? Come and get it!" he jeered and used both hands to press the stone against his face, waggling his tongue behind the teeth.

Then he started screaming. Allison sighed. Craig really thought he was some kind of genius prankster. He'd probably call it a social experiment later. She tapped her foot, waiting for him to get tired. Julie hadn't even noticed - she had her own headphones in.

The screaming became high-pitched and primal, one long note of pain. Craig started trying to pull the mask off, but it seemed seared to his skin. His fingers couldn't get a grip under the edges. Behind the mask, she could see the whites of his eyes, wide with fear. He fell to his knees, head bowed, hands clawing at his face. Allison began to get concerned. This more than Craig being a jackass. Was he having some kind of psychotic break?

The lights flickered, distorting the shadows and disorientating Allison. She blinked furiously. Craig seemed to have multiple shadows. The shadows were moving.

"Craig?"

The lights went completely out and the room felt like the inside a tomb.

"Shit. Craig cut this shit out now!" she yelled, before telling Julie to stay where she was and wait for the emergency generator to kick in.

A few torturous heartbeats later the electricity was back, powering the emergency lighting automatically, covering the room in shades of ghastly orange.

Craig was standing. Still. Too still.

Allison took a half step toward him, but a sick feeling in her gut stopped her going further. Something was wrong.

"Craig?" she bleated.

His head whipped up, staring at her out of dark and bloody eye sockets. Allison's heart skipped a beat and in a half-second she knew, despite her scientific mind wanting to reject the idea out of hand, that whatever standing before her was no longer Craig.

It raised its arms high and began to chant. Allison was gone, running to the exit and grabbing a petrified Julie along the way. She slowed her down, but Allison couldn't leave her with that...thing. She only had one thought in her mind - escape.

To be continued....

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Also any mistakes about the field of archeology are mine.