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  PILLARS OF THE DEEP

  Harper Alexander

  Pillars of the Deep © copyright 2018 Harper Alexander

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Chapter 1

  There are moments in your life when you come to wonder: How did it come to this?

  How did I end up here?

  It was one such moment when I awoke out of a dead sleep to a cold, quiet-as-a-tomb existence, chained to the bottom of the ocean, bloody chunks of unmentionable something strung around my form to lure the sharks.

  Not something I ever could have anticipated.

  Not a thrill you ever hope to check off your bucket list.

  But in the minutes that followed, it would seem I would be neatly–and terribly, terribly messily–checked off someone’s hit list.

  * * *

  An indeterminate number of days earlier:

  Afterward, I would swear that instead of static glitching across the screen as Professor Brexton jiggled the antennae, I had seen a rush of bubbles. It was probably just a 21st century mirage, of course–crammed in the trailer with a dozen other sweaty interns caked in dust and parched from the outdoor blast furnace that was Egypt, every last one of us could have been caught in an underwater fantasy.

  “Ordinarily, I’d let you cookies bake out there until dear old Gram turns over in her grave, God rest her soul,” Professor Brexton grumbled as he continued to adjust the quality of the reception. It was hard to say if it was the unbearable heat, or his ultra-thick British accent that made half the girls in the room swoon. “But today we break for something arguably as groundbreaking as our own work here, so thank your lucky pores for presumptuous pricks who think there’s anything as paramount as our beloved crockery in the dirt.”

  I bit back a snicker at the obstinate undertones evident in his commentary. The professor of archaeology from the University of Durham would never deem anything as important as his precious ‘crockery in the dirt’. Sometimes I wondered if there was more to his fixation than met the eye–if it was merely on the record that he was out here for shards and remnants, but was really searching for one of the legendary resurrection crypts rumored to be buried in the area, or some such epic conquest. His dedication bordered on obsession, like he considered our expedition the most groundbreaking thing since the moon landing.

  And yet something had drawn us away from our excavating for the day and rallied us here in front of this glitching old screen.

  The static cleared, and suddenly we were all staring at a news broadcast of a nautical crane hauling a giant piece of wreckage out of the ocean. As it emerged from the water, it took on a distinctly architectural shape, what looked like barnacle-encrusted coral pillars unsheathing themselves from the waves.

  I cocked my head in wonder, surprised but intrigued that it was an aquatic discovery that had interrupted our dig. An unruly dark curl fell in my eyes, and I gave what Axel liked to call my ‘overbite huff’ to blow it out of my face, jutting out my jaw and pursing my lips in an ogre-like expression to expel a gust upward.

  The broadcast cut to a visual of the fully-extracted relic, perched upright and dripping onto the retrieval vessel’s deck. It was a cluster of pillars–a ring of them, as if the frame of some ancient gazebo, but most had broken off in a tapering fashion from the beam shown at center, creating an almost symmetrical stair-step effect on either side. Embedded at the top of the central pillar was a faint gleam, something that might have been blue crystal or glass, beneath the twisted dreadlocks of seaweed.

  Dressed to the nines, a model-worthy female newscaster panned into the picture, gesturing to the exotic hubbub taking place behind her. “As you can see, what appears to be a sizable specimen of ancient architecture has been recovered from the sea floor, and already we’re hearing the superstitious whispers of Atlantis from many of the locals we’ve interviewed here and throughout the Maldives…”

  Atlantis. So that was why it was arguably relevant enough to draw us away from our own work. While we specialized in dirt, the unearthing of the ancient world was our muse. That something was discovered buried underwater instead of beneath our precious Egyptian sand was an annoying technicality, a matter of elemental pride to be debated over drinks by wayward freshmen colleagues turned experts in their own fields.

  A reactive murmur rippled through the ranks of the archaeological interns, equal parts astonished and skeptical.

  “One coral gazebo surfaces from the depths, and everyone starts off on Atlantis.” Axel rolled his amber eyes beside me, joining the skeptics in the room.

  I, for one, said nothing. A tickle nagged at my spine. Probably just a bead of sweat, but pressing my back into the fabric of my tunic-like attire did nothing to absorb it. I ran my gaze over the pillars, scanning what details I could make out from the limited vantage point of the camera. I wasn’t even sure what I was seeking, until one of the recovery team was shown rescuing a turtle from a seaweed cluster that clung to the base of a pillar, and as the man tore away the web-like strings, it revealed a mother-of-pearl mosaic inlaid in the coral underneath.

  Familiarity clicked into place, startling me.

  “Um, I’m sorry, a gazebo?” came Tara’s response to Axel’s comment, from his other side. She tucked a strand of honey-blonde hair behind her ear, always her tell that she was gearing up for a conflict. “Could you pick a more demeaning understatement? Atlantis or not, at least have the sensitivity to acknowledge what it inarguably is: a piece of a flipping underwater palace.”

  “Oh, and if I ever drown while taking a dip, and my body is hauled out of the ocean likewise, are they going to call me the ‘underwater man’?”

  “Are you implying your theory is that this is a piece of a regular palace that ‘took a dip’?”

  “I’m just saying it could have come from anywhere. My sister went to one of those weddings-on-a-yacht, and the couple tied the knot in a pretty underwater-kingdom-inspired gazebo just like this. A little ornate in the exhibition department if you ask me, but do you know how much the average wedding costs? Anyway, it’s probably the same thing–just some fancy Little-Mermaid-themed ceremony arch that had an accident and fell overboard. Every wedding has a good accident.”

  “Some ancient-world-lorist you are,” she muttered.

  “I just don’t think it’s going to end up being worth dragging us away from our own work.”

  “A student after Professor Brexton’s own heart.”

  “It isn’t a piece of architecture,” I heard myself murmur before I even knew I planned to speak. I felt both Axel’s and Tara’s eyes swivel to me, bemused by my contribution to the controversy. But I was riveted to the screen, hardly aware that my thoughts were seeping out through my lips. It was no longer a screen that I saw, though. It was dust-smudged paper. Charcoal pencil and crisp black ink. Sketchy lines and the half-formed shapes that result from trying to capture something from a dream.

  Doodles from my own sketchbook, drawn bet
ween pages of pyramids and artifacts and sphinxes and a general compilation of my quirky renditions of all things Egyptian lore. And though the dream doodles were only half-formed, the distinctive details were there–the tapered pillars, the gem at top-center, the opaline mosaic creating a glitter effect across the bases of the pillars.

  Pillars that sat atop an exotic brow-line, over a pair of murky abyssal eyes.

  It was as if under a spell that I finished the thought, failing to consider the aftermath of what I was about to claim: “It’s a crown.”

  Chapter 2

  “What?” my two colleagues blurted together, united for once in their perplexity.

  I blinked, realizing I’d spoken aloud. How to smooth that over… I shook myself out of my hypnosis with the screen, wondering if the heat really had gotten to me.

  But the heat would never explain that other thing–other things–that had haunted me my whole life.

  “I, ah–nothing,” I deflected lamely. “I didn’t say anything.”

  Axel stared at me dully. “You did. You just did.”

  “I…didn’t,” I maintained with awkward persistence, as if to say, I don’t know what else to tell you.

  Tara scrunched her brow into a ridiculous knot at my antics, but chose not to press me. Just stood there grimacing in hideous skepticism as if to say right back, I’m onto you, Sayler.

  I felt the overwhelming compulsion to make a quick escape. Laundry-chute or fire-pole style. Unfortunately, the only way out was through the front door.

  I wrapped my arms around my ribcage–my go-to gesture when I was feeling vulnerable. I started to feign a queasy spell, tucking my chin into the folds of the cowl that hung around my neck, but realized quickly I didn’t have to fake it. My stomach really was twisting, unnerved by the day’s turn of events. “It’s nothing–I’m just really not feeling well.”

  Tara’s grimace turned concerned, her hazel eyes crinkling. “You do look pale–I mean, paler than usual. Mocha with a little too much cream.”

  Now Axel was frowning, his dark brows a perfect match to his enviously perfect head of short, stylish curls. “As nice as that sounds, I’m pretty sure you still just called her some form of chocolate.”

  “Shut up, Axel. Come on, Sayler, let’s get you out of here. Time to sic Professor Brexton’s dear old Gram on him, because you look like one overdone cookie.”

  “Don’t leave on my account,” I dissuaded their loyal comradery, really just wanting to be alone. “You’ll miss the rest of this laughable prank.” I tried to play it off like I was right up there with the rest of the skeptics, like the phenomenon on exhibit meant nothing and would just amount to one big elaborate hoax.

  Because I knew in my bones that wasn’t the case, and I wasn’t ready to face the implications it posed for a girl who thought herself far out of the ocean’s mystical reach, buried in the dunes and dust-storms and denial of Egypt.

  * * *

  Though the midday heat was like a full-blown crematorium in my tent, I zipped myself away and tried to ignore the faintness and nausea that closed in on me. I could hardly stand it, much the same way one could hardly stand being smothered by an old wool blanket soaked in hot oil.

  Raking the back of my forearm through the damp, kinky curls that fell across my brow, I pushed back the springy nest and stared down at my travel bag. All earthen tones and worn, supple folds, it stared back like a wilted potato.

  And inside was the rotten sketchbook.

  At least, inside the sketchbook were the rotten nightmares. Sometimes I just wanted to douse those pages with my canteen and watch the lines smudge and the ink blot, but if I ever added water I was afraid the drawings would do the opposite, and come alive.

  It would have to be fire, then. I could burn them into a heap of ashes until they were no more than waif-like dust bunnies.

  And still I knew they would whisper to me, turning up beneath household furniture and in forgotten corners.

  In the end, I hadn’t come to my tent to destroy them. Sometimes, omens were better left undisturbed. I just had to stand there a moment and denounce their power over me, before taking them out to pore over them once more.

  I sat in the burnt-sienna shadows that haunted the corner of the tent and turned to the most recent documentation of the dreams. Instant chills permeated the heat. It hadn’t been a mirage warping my interpretation of Professor Brexton’s little interlude today, because there it was. The pillar-lined relic that might as well have been copied and pasted from my sketchbook onto the deck of that fateful recovery boat.

  The gazebo-that-was-a-crown, underneath which I had shaded some charcoal murk so you might not even notice the eyes that stared out, at first, but once you caught it, you couldn’t un-see it. Like a predator lurking undetected in the shadows, a shark beneath the camouflage waves.

  If she’d wanted you dead, you would have been.

  “Hello, Calypso,” I murmured just because it rhymed–and then, for good measure, “You ancient piece of caviar.” They found your crown.

  On impulse I fished out a pencil and sketched a little ship–a little, little ship–above the crown on a squiggly line designated as the surface of the water. I couldn’t help it. If it really was a crown, it was far bigger than even I had imagined, and I had to take a moment to flesh out what that meant for the bearer of such a headdress.

  Okay, so my sea-queen-to-ship ratio was a bit exaggerated, but still. None of my dreams or drawings had ever shown the vision relative to anything else, so laying eyes on the real thing had me in awe of the implications.

  There was still a perfectly reasonable explanation even if it was a crown, of course. It could just be an accessory for an oversized statue. A larger-than-life sea queen representation that guarded the gates of Atlantis, or some such scenario.

  Still, I couldn’t get over the possibility. That was one hulking mer-diva.

  Through the paper I could see the faint watermark of the next page’s sketches, another vague impression of a motif I often glimpsed in my dreams before bubbles rushed in to obscure it and I was whisked into a surface-bound current of consciousness.

  But suddenly I’d seen enough, didn’t want to dwell on these ghosts of the abyss any longer. I had thought them starved out here in the desert, their watery power nothing but a dehydrated shell lost among the sandy dunes.

  If ever an analogy carried with it the essence of irony, however, it was that one–for a seashell is right at home amongst miles of sand, which I would have realized if I’d bothered to envision any beach that had ever graced the face of the earth. Instead, I slammed shut the book convinced I’d outrun the tide’s reach, and learned firsthand the folly of my oversight the following day when, returning to our excavation like nothing had happened, I uncovered exactly that which I had fancied:

  A perfect, wayward seashell, lost amongst the fragments and shards of the desert.

  * * *

  Why I had ever thought I’d escaped the whispers of the ocean was anyone’s guess, given that Egypt was flanked by not one, but two of its own seas. That I was immersed in the thick of the desert was just a technicality, an illusion of self-imposed exile that posed no challenge to the range of the paranormal.

  Upon unearthing the shell–a pretty, peach-colored cockle–I froze for all of five glacial seconds before glancing around like a criminal and stashing it in a pocket so no one else would see. If I was ever caught pilfering artifacts from our dig, I would be in a stinking heap of trouble, but these oceanic taunts had stirred something frantic and paranoid inside me, and it was pure impulse that acted on my behalf. And anyway, if anyone ‘caught’ me, who would readily suspect a seashell had come from our dig? Egypt may have had its seas, but we were nowhere near the coast, and it was a perfect seashell to boot. No way in the nine circles of hell would this brittle thing have survived through the ages alongside the rest of the shrapnel mosaic that was our treasure trove.

  My mouth was dry for the rest of our work hours tha
t day, and it had nothing to do with the climate. When we were done I marched straight to my tent and unloaded the treacherous token from my pocket, wrapping it in a scarf and burying it at the bottom of my travel sack.

  Leave me alone, you washed-up dreg of exoskeleton. These are not your stomping grounds. This was my territory. Once upon a time I may have flounced in the salty, cold waves of California and welcomed the call of the sea like a bred-and-born Thalassophile–a term my adoptive mother Sandy had taught me for ‘lover of the sea’–until adventures in first grade science had changed all that. I would never forget it, the day we learned about vertebrates and invertebrates, the difference between mammals, aquatic creatures, and amphibians, and, most notably in my case, the lesson on ‘gills’ that was included in the bullet points for aquatic species. After that, the salty taste of the ocean had turned sour for me, and I had cast off my Thalassophile predilection like it suddenly brought back a deep-seeded trauma.

  Baffled by my sudden aversion to what I once revered, Sandy probed time and again as to what prompted the shift, but I had put up walls and grew increasingly agitated by the coastal culture until my fits finally prodded her to get me counseling. I went to therapy for three months, but to no avail–and Sandy, always a tad flighty and ready for a new adventure, decided to up and relocate us to the arid red plains of Arizona, where my aunt and uncle and adorable twin cousins lived. It was there, safely 400 miles away from the ocean, that I’d first found my escape in the polar opposite element that was the dirt and developed my fascination with the ancient artifacts of the southwestern Native American tribes.

  From there it was no huge leap that saw me digging up clay pots as an archaeological intern in Egypt in my twenties, but it would seem the seaside lore of my childhood had crept out of the sunken-ship woodwork to remind me of my roots. I could stand there stubbornly insistent that my seashell discovery was nothing but a misplaced fish out of water all I wanted, but the truth was…