Scar of Kemet Novel Excerpt
Excerpt 1 from the book Scar of Kemet: Yashibet’s Tomb Qena, Egypt; August 11th, 1965
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Four raring muscle men sweated and shoved and heaved and hoed, with rough hands and anchor pulleys, to edge for inches and budge the massive stone-block door away from its sill. The other scientists, laborers and journeymen, worked and waited outside. The ancient engineers of this forted structure had put so much care into keeping intruders away. It seemed as if the builders did not wish for company to grace the presence of the one who resided there. When they managed to squeeze into the gap they produced, the men were amazed at what they saw inside – nothing. No rich lavish furniture, belongings, or things of value, like the grave goods found on previous excursions. Well, if he was a poor man, why would the Egyptians build this person a tomb of this magnitude to leave it bare?
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The tomb had no visible name to trace the person’s geological whereabouts, ancestors or descendants. There were only the scriptures on the wall to depend on for reference. To a certain degree, the explorers deciphered the journey of the man confined, and subsequently found that the tomb was some form of stone incarceration. They studied painted illustrations of the man being killed and punished and scarred for eternity, with special attention paid to his heart. They also construed warnings so graphic a sane person’s curiosity would go crawling back inside of its hiding place – under a rock until the next adventure. In company with the narrative of hieroglyphics, there was further writing, foreign even to the Rosetta Stone. They didn’t understand it. Was it a spell or a prayer or something?
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Rambunctious bone collectors they were determined to be, ignoring the explicit warnings, eerie feelings, and their fear of the unknown. The four worked together, each grabbing and sliding the weighty lid of the sarcophagus off, with intention to slant it down to the floor. The carved serpent hissed at and threatened them to tremors, as it was a reaction of the protective spirits. Intruders had now stimulated unrest to the evil there, in hopes to find what was forbidden for them to claim. With all the men’s weight and might they pushed and pushed. The lid had just made it far enough to see evidence of a coffin inside. “I see it!” One of the men rejoiced and as he reached in for it, an ear- deafening, piercing hiss – like thunderous swarms of snakes and bees – resonated from the walls, vibrating everything around them, on them, and in them.
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Unpredictably, venomous needles blasted from a globe of directions like predators of flesh and blood, puncturing any vulnerable soft tissue and muscle. Billions of tiny javelins were dragging the four victims into an abrupt and horrifying death -- the outsiders heard the mortifying scrambling and screams. Some peeked inside the dark, dusty crypt to witness a porcupine massacre, which triggered much discord amongst those who were left of existing candidates. Some men were eager to continue, while others wouldn’t dare. The Rambo-hearted marched in and dragged out the instantly dead, former rambunctious bone collectors.
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The Rambos then carried out a list of booby trap tests in the tomb to insure all further trick catches were wrangled and snapped. They continued to remove the sarcophagus lid and worked carefully on unlocking the hinges of the coffin. When the men lifted that lid, all hell broke loose, literally. A geyser of ash and mouldy death exploded to the ceiling. The men ducked and screamed and cried out prayers for God to spare them. One would think they’d learned from the previous example. They had not. This may have meant they were at the mercy and fate of dangerous consequence.
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The walls hissed at the dust as the particles gathered together and then flew in unison out the opening, revealing light into the free world. Yashibet’s soul had been set free. Nothing more happened; at least not to those men. Grateful not to become a part of the corpse pile, they continued on – dismantling the historical mystery for the personal reasons of wealth, fame and credibility they had risked and loss lives for. Some immobile artifacts would remain in Kemet while others would be shipped to America for display at various museums of natural history.
