Shamian Gate, page 7
Until now.
Ashley and Jeff traversed the remaining steps. Faced with the statues and stunning artifacts before them, it was difficult to focus on their task, for the silent army of stone was not all they discovered there.
A stone path led from the base of the stairs into the heart of the necropolis. While the stone sentinels stood rapt on either side of it, the path was inlaid with colorful fragments of something like porcelain, making a dusty but colorful walkway for the monks to follow. As they advanced, a structure in the center of the walkway, set upon a grand dais, soon became visible. The light from the torches quickly filled the immediate area with light.
What stood in the center of the dais was most stunning of all.
Many of the monks gasped, chattering in both Wu and Jianghuai, and cries of “Líu’an” and “Gōnglǜ Gǔndòng” rose amongst the group.
In the middle of the path, where four walkways intersected on the dais, stood a pavilion with golden pillars. Stairs led up each side of it, decorated with ornate carvings of dragons and nameless mythical beasts. Atop the stairs sat a magnificent throne of gold and jade. On the throne sat a mummified body of what appeared to be an emperor or wealthy king.
In the dried up husks of the dead king’s be-ringed hands was a large scroll.
It didn’t take much to connect the story of the old man’s Scroll of Power to what they saw here. Fu-Han had indeed been the key, and these men would now possess what they had sought for so long.
Jeff shuddered, standing in awe of the magnificent sight. Ashley came up beside him and urged him into an alcove that held another large statue of a decorated soldier, one of several overseers of this terra cotta army. Peeking around the statue’s leg, they watched and waited for a chance to move closer. All around them stood the silent clay army, detailed to the very last rivet in their armor. Weaponry of every kind was molded and sculpted and held fast in the immovable hands of these earthen soldiers that time had forgotten. Diverting his attention from the army of statues, back to the whispering monks, Jeff was afraid the monks would notice they were short two robed-men.
It was apparent they were not missed.
The group of monks chattered incessantly, whispering the name of Líu’an. They were wholly focused on the enthroned mummy, and, even moreso, what the lavishly dressed leathery body held in its time-crusted hands.
The Scroll of Power.
Chapter Eleven
The gold and crimson clad monk led the others in a cluster as they approached the mummy of Líu’an. They milled around apprehensively at the base of the pavilion, staring upward at the parched remains of the Prince of Huainan. Together, cautiously, they climbed the stairs toward the golden throne. The group fell silent. The closer they came to the seated husk, the slower they moved.
Jeff’s heart was pounding. His hands dripped with nervous perspiration. His eyes burned with the subterranean dust particles drifting in the air. He strained to take in everything happening around them. Suddenly and sharply, Ashley nudged him and pointed.
In his excitement to climb the stairs, the lead monk had released Fu-Han. The boy stood, looking terrified and alone, as the men who had used and forgotten him ascended the stairs toward the gold and jade throne of that great author of the Scroll of Power, Líu’an.
Jeff could tell Ashley wanted to dash over and gather Fu-Han into her arms, but they had to be careful. A slow and steady approach wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. They were too close to grabbing Fu-Han and getting the hell out of here to blow it now.
Moving steadily across the room, Jeff and Ashley headed toward Fu-Han. The small boy trembled, his cheeks wet with silent tears, looking up with bleak, dark eyes at the throne of the dead. The monks kneeled around the throne, subservient, awaiting the command of the monk in charge.
The lead monk approached the mummified figure and reached gingerly for the scroll in its hands.
Jeff seized Fu-Han’s little hand. Fu-Han didn’t know it was Jeff and Ashley at his side but there was no time to explain. His little shoulders slumped when the two new “monks” took control of him. Ashley peeked from behind her cowl toward Jeff, but didn’t let Fu-Han know it was her just yet. The three of them stood there, Jeff and Ashley on either side of little Fu-Han, staring up at the seated mummy and the chanting circle of monks. The monk in control dispensed with all ceremony, no longer able to control his lust for the item at hand. He lunged forward, grabbing the Gōnglǜ Gǔndòng out of the crackling hands of the mummy.
There was a collective gasp from the kneeling monks, but they resumed their chanting almost immediately. Jeff turned and looked at Ashley. All he could see was one eye behind her cowl, but there was enough terror in her visible eye to know she felt the same way he did.
The standing monk uncapped the container that held the scroll, and cast aside the golden tube. Another monk scurried to collect the cylinder. The chanting continued.
The scroll was gently unfurled. As the monk did so, Chinese characters began to glow on the scroll. The characters were projected supernaturally, in an eerie glow, into the air around them. Spinning letters wove themselves in ribbon-like strings in and around, over and between the seated monks. The standing man read loudly from the Scroll of Power, causing the characters to move faster until the glowing letters became a steady stream of blues, oranges, purples and greens. Jeff thought the streaks of letters looked like Fourth of July sparklers in the hands of children being waved quickly back and forth.
Jeff and Ashley looked to the ground as the stone floor trembled beneath their feet. Dust and earth rained upon them in a gentle spray as the walls quaked. Slowly, hand in hand, Jeff backed the three of them to the stairs. He didn’t want to risk the monks spotting them just yet, but hoped that whatever was happening around Líu’an’s throne would occupy the attention of the chanting group a little while longer.
“Jeff—” Ashley hissed.
“Ssh!” he hissed in return.
Fu-Han began to jabber in Mandarin in a frightened whisper, pulling on Ashley and Jeff’s hands.
“Jeff, look!”
Jeff turned his rapt gaze from the monks to his surroundings. At first, what he denied what he was seeing. But, holding perfectly still, he stared and there was no question—the stone army around them began to quiver.
Stiff hands that clutched spears, cold arms that held bows, motionless feet that stood for centuries rooted in the earth—all began to move. He watched a nearby spearman stretch his fingers and wiggle them as if loosening stiff joints long held in one position.
Clay horses twitched ears. One by one, the soldiers turned their colorless heads toward the throne of Líu’an.
Ashley was pulling Fu-Han along with her, up the steps leading out of the tomb. Jeff tried to follow, still watching, unable to look away from the animated stone army that filled the chamber. Up on the dais, the lead monk continued loudly reading from the Scroll of Power and the kneeling monks chanted on in a monotone drone which drowned out the creaks of the wheels, the soft nickering of the horses, and the stretching of the soldiers finding life within the accursed chamber.
“Jeff, come on!” Ashley demanded as she cleared another landing and wound her way up more stairs.
He finally turned and ran, following Fu-Han and his wife, hoping the soldiers would choose to ignore their flight and instead pursue the monks still busy reading Líu’an’s scroll in the center of the room.
On the next landing, Jeff couldn’t resist curiosity and turned one last time to face the spectacle below. Standing on the dais, before the gold and jade throne, was the mummy of Líu’an. His tattered, ancient clothes clung to his emaciated corpse in wisps as if any wind too-brisk might turn the fabric into dust. The mummy stood rigidly erect before the monks who were now prostrate on their faces on the floor around Líu’an’s throne. The monk in charge greedily clutched the Scroll of Power to his chest.
The army of clay soldiers moved toward the dais, some already ascending the steps, following the same path the monks had taken to reach the throne. All around them, the underground chamber quaked and trembled, larger chunks of stone and earth now fell from above, down onto the regiments.
“Holy shit—” Jeff cursed, letting out a low whisper.
“Come on!” Ashley called.
Jeff could see the hem of her robe clearing the next landing above. Then he saw the robe itself cast away and tossed over the edge of the stairs. They could make better time unbound by the loose layers of the robes. He wriggled free of the foul-smelling cloth and discarded his own robe.
The chamber swayed violently. The monks slowly emerged from their chanting oblivion and noticed the masses of animated clay soldiers closing in on them in droves. Líu’an stretched forth a thin arm, and opened his dead mouth. A shrill voice issued commands, which caused Jeff to shudder.
The screams of the monks filled their ears as the trio ran upward in a sprint, Ashley dragging Fu-Han behind. Jeff ran after them, no longer needing to satisfy his curiosity as the screams and war cries of the thieving monks and the attacking soldiers clashed in the air.
Up the stairs, out of the chamber, through the halls, into the temple and out of the main door, Jeff, Ashley and Fu-Han ran until they found themselves panting, clutching their sides, out in the open, on the mountain path along which they had been herded what seemed like so long ago.
The sky was filled with dark, roiling clouds. The mountain quaked. Rocks tumbled from above and cracks rent the earth to the sides and beneath their feet. Thunder echoed the roar of collapsing rock.
Jeff tossed Fu-Han to his shoulders and, with Ashley, ran down the mountain path as fast as they could go. The sky opened up with a torrential downpour, soaking them immediately, streaming along the path in muddy ruts. Behind them, they could feel the mountain collapse, engulfing the decaying temple and the ancient boundary that was Shamian Gate.
Epilogue
After some confused villagers drove them back to Lu’an, Jeff, Ashley and Fu-Han found a very distraught agency worker named Peng waiting for them in the hotel. They made their flight to Guangzhou without incident and spent the final week in China secluded inside their hotel room. The BBC showed ghastly images of the earthquake devastation in Huoshan. Cameras panned over the entire side of the mountain revealing an avalanche of stone and vegetation. Mudslides covered primitive villages and, with each passing hour, the death toll was rising.
More than once, they thought they saw the mountain from which they’d run—thought they saw the swinging remnants of the rope and wooden rails, imagined they saw parts of the temple piled atop jumbled huts, crushed and overturned vehicles.
Days passed quickly and they boarded the airplane bound for home in an exhausted, whirlwind daze.
Once in the sky, flying over rice fields and purple mountains, Jeff watched Fu-Han playing “way too low” with Ashley beside him in their airplane seats. The boy smacked her hands with vigor—all of his fingers strong and well-formed with no sign of his past deformities. It was like nothing had ever been different. But, he, Ashley and Fu-Han knew better. He would catch the boy studying his hand in wonderment with an expression of surprise and curiosity, and sometimes fear. Fear that the hand may change back into the twisted, knotty star-shape that he had always known.
Ashley clicked to a news program showing yet more footage from the quake region. Fu-Han jabbered excitedly, pointing to the small screen mounted on the back of the airplane seat in front of them, playing the pre-recorded news story. A big hunk of decorated stone stuck out from the midst of a cluster of fallen trees on the screen. It looked like the Shamian Gate.
Ashley pulled a package of fruit sours decorated brightly with an illustration from the Chinese cartoon, Pleasant Goat and Big, Big Wolf, from her purse and passed it to Fu-Han. He struggled with the package.
“Nice diversion, Mama,” Jeff said, giving her a tired smile.
“We probably shouldn’t watch the news for a while.” She held up the control and clicked off the power button. “The faster we leave that place behind us, the better.”
Jeff nodded absently, but frowned. “I’ll certainly never forget what we saw there. What we went through.” A dark feeling overcame him for a moment. I killed men, he thought. The things we did… “I’d hate to think that this shadow will always be hovering over our relationship with Fu-Han. Do you think we can we ever really get past it?”
Fu-Han passed the difficult candy package to Ashley. She opened it with her teeth and returned it to the smiling boy. He promptly shoved a handful of the sugary globs of goo into his cavity-ridden mouth and smacked loudly to show his appreciation.
“Maybe. If we try hard enough. If we just stop talking about it.” Ashley licked glittery sugar from her fingertips. “I just don’t want to talk about it for a while.”
Jeff stared out the window into the vaporous clouds enveloping the wings of the plane. As the plane leaned slightly into a gentle curve, below, he saw the last specks of indigo mountain tops vanishing from view. China faded into the mists as quickly as Líu’an had faded into time: gone, but not entirely forgotten. His only prayer was for Fu-Han’s memories to fade as well, so he would not have to relive the terror, nor have the fear of those strange events forever haunt him.
Jeff prayed that Fu-Han would go forward and be happy with them in his new life, doing what he and Ashley could never do—forever forgetting the horror of Shamian Gate.
About the Authors
Angeline Hawkes holds a B.A. in Composite English Language Arts and Secondary Education from Texas A&M University-Commerce. A Bram Stoker Award nominated writer, Angeline works or has worked for such publishers as Delirium Books, Chaosium, Elder Signs Press, Dark Regions Press, DarkFuse and many others.
Christopher Fulbright is a former journalist turned technical writer with fiction published by DarkFuse, PS Publishing, Delirium Books, Elder Signs Press, Bad Moon Books, and several others. He is a recipient of the Richard Laymon President’s Award given by the Horror Writers Association, and is an active member of the International Thriller Writers organization.
They have four children, two of whom were adopted from Asian countries, one from China, and one from South Korea. They are pictured here with their daughter Anna-Ying on Shamian Island in Guangzhou, China in 2011.
For more information about them and their works, please visit their website at http://www.fulbrightandhawkes.com/.
Other eBooks by these Authors
Novels
Scavengers
Night Wraith
Novellas
Then Comes the Child
Blood Coven
Black Mercy Falls
Sorrow Creek
The Devil Behind Me
Elderwood Manor
Links to buy these ebooks in all available formats can be found at http://fulbrightandhawkes.com/?page_id=2
Christopher Fulbright, Shamian Gate
