The voice was deep and almost emotionless. It carried with it a menace and certain danger that I couldn’t express in words. It said ‘I don’t care about anyone or anything but myself, and you are nothing more than an insect I happen to trod on.

“John, it would seem that we have two thieves that stumbled into our little home. Do you remember what we did to the last intruder we found snooping around here?” The voice came from the left, which was the smaller of the two shadows. I could now make out that the one on the left was not only shorter, but skinnier then the one on the right, whose was evidently called John.

“No, the last little wimp who tried to steal from us hasn’t been seen again. It’s like he got so afraid that he curled into a little ball and just like… disappeared or something.” He laughed a slow simple laugh and I could see the flashlight weaving up and down with his laboured humour. I could feel Gales hand in mine, cold and gripping with all its strength. I sneaked a look at her and saw that her eyes were closed, almost as if in prayer, completely still and silent.

“No, he wasn’t ever seen again that’s for sure. That’s because we don’t allow anyone to come snooping around our house and walk around afterward to talk about it, isn’t that right John?” But John was still laughing and apparently lost in his own simpleton world. His big bulk was still going up and down and the smaller shape on the left took a step toward us. They had us completely cornered, out manned, a skinny boy and small girl against two grown men in a small room with one exit were not good odds.

Gale's hand was clamping my hand ever tighter and when the obvious leader gave a second step closer to us, I felt her hand squeeze tight. Once… Twice… and on the third squeeze, I could feel Gale shifting. She had held a bottle of water in her hand behind her back which she snapped up and threw straight at big John holding the flashlight. It struck the light, which he lost grip of and dropped to the floor. “Run!” Gale shouted, and I didn’t need a second invitation. As the flashlight hit the floor it spun around and for a second I saw the man running towards us, a small nondescript face pulled into a terrible sneer with heavy eyebrows that cast shadows over his eyes. The only noticeable feature I could see of him was a deep red scar on his left cheek, burning in the yellow light.

He was snatching toward me but I slammed my elbow down into his arm and kicked out towards his shin. The kick didn’t connect squarely, but the man tripped slightly and I took the chance to make for the door. Gale meanwhile had run straight at the large man, took him by the collar as he’d slowly bent down to pick up his flashlight and pulled him forward, using his own momentum to topple him forward. She ran through the door in front of me, stopped when I came out and slammed the door to the storeroom shut. Even though the door couldn’t lock, it still managed to stun the smaller scarred man who had been right behind me. We heard a dull thump as he ran into the door, but the noise was behind me as I made my way up the stairs.

“Shaun!” gale shouted, but her voice was fading away to the left. She must have taken the passageway connecting with the rest of the museum’s underworld. As I stopped and tried to turn back I heard the storeroom door fly open, and I knew I couldn’t change course now. The best I could do was lure him away up the staircase. “Gale! Keep running, I’ll meet you on the rocky roof!”

I couldn’t hear any reply from her and I had to assume she was already running away. I had turned and started to jump up the stairs two at a time, my legs trying to drive me up towards the lighted, open exhibition rooms where I stood a better chance.

“Go after the girl! She’ll soon get lost!” I heard the man behind me shout, and his voice was closer to me then I had thought it could be. He was more agile then I had thought. I bounded up the steps hit the landing and remembered that I had two more level steps before the stairs continued to my left, but I misjudged exactly where the steps were. My foot didn’t find the first or second step, but got stuck in the middle between them. I went crashing down and within a second I felt the man’s hands grab my outstretched right leg. I didn’t have a second to think, and it was pure instincts that made my left leg shoot out. I felt my foot connect something slightly hard which then gave way, but immediately I felt a pain shoot up my leg from my ankle. I yanked my leg back through the slackened grip of the scarred man whose nose I think I broke and hauled myself upright using the railing on my left.

The adrenalin helps to numb the pain, but at the least I know I had twisted my ankle. Every step I run up to the top hurts, and when I reach the top I keep my right hand to the wall and make a wobbly run towards the door I know Gale left open. The only problem is that I can’t see any light up ahead. The green emergency stickers on the floor appear to be emitting light in the complete darkness and I know I’m going in the right direction. However several steps later I find the door that should be open, but now it is definitely shut, and I couldn’t manage to pull it open. Think, think, think! I can’t go back the way I’d come. I don’t know where anything leads behind me and I don’t even know if the smaller man behind me was still conscious and creeping closer in the darkness.

I tried the door with all my strength for another half minute when any indecisions about going back or trying the door were cleared away. I could hear a snuffling behind me of someone struggling to breath. The man was up and coming towards me, so going back wasn’t an option anymore. My only way was forward.

I prayed to whoever would listen, anyone with the ability to open the door, and as I touched the door handle again, it came down smoothly and I pulled the door open. I slipped through the door, quickly closed it behind me, and took a split second to look around for anything that I could wedge under the door and use, but there was nothing. So I decided to make a run for the exit, bad ankle and all, hoping and praying I was fast enough to get away.

I was back in Ancient Egypt, quickly hobbling through the light that had been grey previously, but was now tinged with gold as if the air had come alive. I was next to the opening on my right that led to the room I’d wanted to enter earlier when I heard the service door behind me slam open. I knew I had a second before Scar rounded the corner and would spot me making for the exit. On my bad ankle it would be at least another 3 minutes to the exit if I was lucky, and even if I managed to outsprint him there, my chances outside the building didn’t look any better. My instincts therefore threw me sideways into the room with the gigantic black stone box and I sneaked as softly as I could to hide behind it.

I reached the box at the far end of the room and hid behind it, with the golden flecks of sunlight from the window behind me throwing my shadow against the left hand side wall next to what I now saw was a very elaborate sarcophagus, small pictures depicting ancient Egypt carved into its side. I crouched as low as I could go and moved to the furthest right hand side of the tomb, but still my shadow sat on the left hand side wall, the angle of the sun too severe to escape. If I went any further to the right the man would be able to spot me, so my only hope was that he didn’t look for me in here.

My heart was banging against my chest as if it knew I was caught and it was trying to jump ship and save itself. I tried to silence it so that I could hear the man’s sniffling approach, but it was like wind was whistling through reeds in my ears and I couldn’t hear anything. I looked at my shadow on the wall, stark darkness against the sand coloured wall, glaringly conspicuous. I breathed through my nose in a way I thought should be very quiet, but to my singing ears it sounded like a jet aeroplane before take-off. My right hand rests on the side of the black stone tomb, small etchings visible through my splayed fingers, hieroglyphs thousands of years old telling stories millennia old to my nervous skin.

Suddenly I hear the snuffle of the man, a pig sniffing for truffles, right by the entrance to the room. If I moved now he would see my shadow. If I didn’t he could be creeping up to me right now, ready to grab me from the other side of the sarcophagus. What must be the last bit of adrenalin in my body bursts through me, straight to my heart which hammers away again. He’ll see my shadow for sure, and I prepare myself to launch straight over my shelter, when suddenly the light in the room goes deathly grey again. I see my shadow melt away against the wall, a cloud covering me from the light of the sun.

Seconds like hours pass as I listen to the laboured breathing of the scarred man who now hopefully had a permanently crumpled nose as well. “Did you get the other brat?” It was a deep voice which belonged to the large man, John, who’d come to help Scar face. He must have come to help his friend when he saw him struggling on the staircase.

“He must have made it straight for the exit. I thought I heard him in here, but there’s nothing.” Thank goodness! He hadn’t seen me…

“Did you lock the door behind you as I ordered?” he continues. Locked the door? Oh no, no, no…

“Yep, the girl won’t be able to get out, that was the only open door leading up from the basement…”

Their voices start retreating along with their footsteps and I had to strain my ears to make sure they had gone. When I heard the faraway sound of the service door slamming shut again, it felt like I took my first breath after minutes underwater.

My ears were humming, my ankle was throbbing and I felt something warm trickle into my eye. I touched a finger to my brow and brought a red stained finger back before my eyes. I must’ve hit my head on the stairway when the man made a grab for my leg, but that was the last thing on my mind. My head was clamouring with what felt like a thousand different voices, each shouting for my attention, but only one kept beating the rest. “I told you this would happen. I told you this would happen. I told you. I told you…”

I closed my eyes, pressed my thumbs into them and tried to silence everything, when I felt a strange warmth come over my body. My pounding heart slowed, caressed by the warm golden light of the sun, unfiltered by clouds again. I open my eyes and the world as I knew it is gone.

My hand is resting on the black box in front of me, but all around me is sand, and a ribbon of sparkling blue water on the horizon. I see pyramids in the distance, great large pyramids, each stone visible on their sides. The sun is blazing down with ferocious heat, and the only sounds come from the river where flocks of small birds fly from reeds whispering in the wind. I stare disbelieving at the sight, in awe of everything around me.

The sun seems to be setting quickly behind me. I look back and it blinds me as if the sun shone only on me. I have to look away, and when I do I see my hand still resting on the cold stone of the tomb.

I know this tomb. I know this land.

The thoughts feel strange and foreign, but not unwelcome. My hand caresses the sarcophagus slowly, and as I stare at it, the last light of day playing across my fingers, the pictures flow into words, and the words into sentences, and the sentences into understanding. It is as if my hand is brushing away a layer of dust to reveal old forgotten truths. The words burn golden against the deep black stone and scorch themselves on the inside of my eyes and mind.

“The Black has been summoned, and it is coming. Not only for man, nor for animal, but for all. It comes not in the middle of the night, but in the bright light of Day. It will swallow the Sun, it will drink all Light. It will douse the warmth of fire and in its place will be Nothing. The Black has been summoned, and it is coming."

“No!” a shout rings in my ears and I realise it was my own strangled voice, and as I do the light fades from my eyes and everything goes dark.

XxX

“We may have made an error in confronting him so quickly and so harshly. The truth is often a very hard substance for others unlike us to confront.”

“Whether it was an error is a truth that will be seen in time. There was no other way for us to bring the Truth. It would always be too much for the human system to handle, have we not seen it for eons?”

“That is a truth, though not the entire truth. What about his father?”

“His father had been… different.”

“Yes, and the blood of his father flows through his veins, and they share more than that. They share a resilience that is far more valuable than the blood he carries.”

There is a moment where the Thoughts are still, all sharing the same single flow of time they have seen for thousands of Earthly years.

“Only time will reveal the truth. So it will be.”

“Only time…” another Thought repeats.

“So it will be…” the last Thought finishes.