16 Apr Return the Slab

Part I

The tomb was not where it had been.

That was Marcus’s first thought as he stood in the moonlit dunes, the wind scraping sand across his boots and the legs of his pants. Each shift of his weight caused him to sink slightly into the crust, but he didn’t move. There had been no map and no GPS coordinates—only three fragmented documents from a defunct museum and a coded message buried in the records of the Cairo Antiquities Office. The excavation that had uncovered the slab—the slab—had been publicized. But what had not been shared, what had instead been quietly omitted from official accounts, was what followed.

That was what Marcus had come to find.

Jonah crouched beside him, scanning the dark horizon through a pair of scratched binoculars. He was younger and already restless, his anxiety visible in the way his shoulders tightened with every gust. Though the desert was warm, a fine vapor still curled from his lips as he breathed.

“You’re sure this is the place?” Jonah asked.

Marcus didn’t respond immediately. He was examining the stones protruding from the sand. Most were misshapen and worn, jagged remnants of something far older than the dunes themselves. Some were clearly architectural—angled and deliberately hewn. Others had been cracked by time and half-buried by the wind, their surfaces etched with symbols that had not seen daylight in centuries.

He stepped forward and knelt beside the nearest cluster, brushing aside a thin veil of sediment with one gloved hand. Beneath it, a seam appeared—too straight to be natural.

Marcus turned his head toward Jonah.

“Start digging.”

Jonah hesitated. “You think Evelyn was right?”

Marcus remained focused on the ground in front of him.

“She always believed the slab was a seal. Not a relic.”

“She said breaking it would let something out.”

“She also said we’d never find it.” Marcus drove the shovel into the sand. “She was half right.”

Jonah lingered at the edge of the excavation, his grip tightening on the handle of his own shovel.

“And what about the guy in Chicago?” he muttered. “You really think he knows what this is?”

Marcus didn’t look at him. “He knows it’s valuable. That’s all he needs to know.”

* * * * * *

They dug in silence for hours, their muscles aching and their hands blistered. The wind died gradually until the night stood utterly still. There were no insects. No birdcalls. Not even the faint rustle of dune grass. Every sound had receded into the darkness.

Eventually, the buried structure revealed itself: a stairwell carved into the stone beneath the sand, leading downward into the earth. At its top rested an enormous slab of rock that had been placed across the opening like a lid. Deep gouges scarred its surface, as if someone had tried—desperately—to force it open from below.

Marcus ran his palm along the edge. The stone was unnaturally cold.

Jonah swallowed hard. “This is where they reburied it, isn’t it? After that incident… with the farmhouse in Kansas?”

Marcus didn’t answer.

Jonah pressed further. “The old guy and his wife. Their dog. The one where the slab showed up out of nowhere. They tried to sell it, and then came the plagues. This is the same one, right?”

Marcus turned to him with a grim look. “It wasn’t a myth. There were affidavits. Forensic photos. Government suppression orders. Do you think they bulldozed that house because of storm damage?”

Jonah looked down at the sealed stairwell and then quickly averted his gaze.

Marcus retrieved the pry bar and wedged it beneath the edge of the stone. With a strained groan and Jonah’s help, the slab shifted.

The odor that emerged was foul—a mixture of desiccated rot, ancient mildew, and something sharper, like burned resin. Jonah staggered backward and turned his face away, gagging.

The stairwell below opened wide. It led downward into pure darkness.

Marcus clicked on his headlamp.

They descended without speaking.

* * * * * *

The crypt extended farther than either of them had expected. Carved directly into the bedrock, its walls displayed glyphs of varying age and familiarity. Some resembled symbols Marcus had studied before. Others were more recent, scratched over the older carvings in layers. And some were entirely alien.

As they moved deeper into the chamber, the markings became more chaotic. At the center of the floor stood a low, rectangular slab of blackened stone, its edges worn but intact.

Resting atop it was the object they had come for.

It was unmistakable.

Heavy, uneven, and dulled at its corners, the slab’s face remained polished and gleamed under the beam of Marcus’s headlamp. Intricate carvings had been etched into the surface—three symbols arranged in a triangular pattern: waves, a phonograph, and a locust. At the center of the triangle, a single figure had been rendered in far greater detail than the others.

Jonah stepped closer. When he saw the figure clearly, he recoiled.

“That’s not a pharaoh,” he said quietly. “That’s a man.”

He was right. The central figure lacked the idealized proportions of a deity or king. Instead, it depicted a tall, gaunt man caught mid-motion, his body twisted as if trying to flee. His mouth was open in a scream. His jaw sagged. His eyes were wide with panic, framed by round spectacles, and a flat cap was pressed firmly to his scalp. His arms were raised to protect his face.

Marcus didn’t respond. He reached out and laid his gloved fingers across the stone. The surface was cold—unnaturally so—and the engraved lines shimmered faintly beneath his touch, as if slick with moisture.

“Is that him?” Jonah whispered. “The farmer from Kansas?”

Marcus gave a slight nod.

“They said he tried to sell it. Refused to give it back. Thought he could make a profit.” Jonah lowered his voice. “And then…”

“The plagues came,” Marcus finished. “Water. Sound. Flesh.”

“And the slab vanished.”

Marcus lifted it carefully from the stone platform. It groaned under its own weight but came free without resistance.

As Jonah stood frozen, the light in the chamber dimmed inexplicably.

And then they heard it.

“Reeeeetuuurn… the slaaaab…”

The voice—one that didn’t belong in the world of the living—rolled through the stone around them.

Jonah gasped and backed away from the platform.

“What the hell was that?”

Marcus didn’t reply. He wrapped the slab in padded cloth and slid it into a reinforced crate. Jonah remained tense and wide-eyed, watching the darkness as if expecting it to move.

Neither of them spoke again until they had climbed back to the surface.

Marcus opened the rear hatch of the vehicle. Jonah secured the crate and slammed the door shut. As they climbed into the cab, the engine hesitated once before finally turning over.

Marcus looked back through the window, checking the rear doors.

That was when he saw it.

A figure stood atop the nearest dune, still and upright.

It was tall and emaciated, wrapped in tattered linen strips that moved gently despite the absence of breeze. Its face was covered by a blank death mask, carved from pale wood, with exaggerated downward-sloping eyes and a featureless mouth.

Two long, red cords—like withered tendrils or veins—trailed from either side of its skull and floated behind it as if suspended in liquid.

The figure raised one hand, and the voice came again.

“Return… the slab… or suffer my curse…”

Marcus slammed the door shut. “Go.”

Jonah floored the gas pedal. The vehicle bucked as it launched forward, wheels cutting into the sand. The crate in the rear shifted with a low, hollow thud.

They drove for miles without exchanging a word.

Behind them, the desert reclaimed the tomb. The figure vanished from view.

But the voice lingered.

It echoed from nowhere and everywhere, impossibly close despite the distance.

“Return… the slab…”

* * * * * *

They reached the U.S. two days later. They had taken the long route, carefully avoiding customs hubs, major airports, and weigh stations. Evelyn had warned them from the beginning—warned Marcus directly—not to disturb the tomb. He had called her from a burner phone while they were still en route, but her response had been swift and unequivocal.

“You’re not stealing from a grave, Marcus. You’re breaking a seal.”

He had ended the call, and she hadn’t answered since.

Now they were headed to Chicago, toward a collector who didn’t care what they’d done or where the slab came from. A buyer who didn’t ask questions.

The route north had been passable until recent storms flooded out half the county—and the slab had started to hum again.

They pulled over in southern Iowa to regroup, just for the night.

They didn’t realize the first plague had already begun.

Part II

The farmhouse sat alone at the end of a narrow back road in southern Iowa, fifteen miles from the nearest town and even farther from any neighbors. The windows were boarded, the porch sagged visibly under its own weight, and mold bloomed in the corners of every room. Paint had peeled from every wall in curling strips, and the floorboards creaked with each step. The house had been foreclosed years earlier and left to rot. It was not where Marcus and Jonah had planned to stop, but the highway from Missouri had flooded out, and the slab had begun to vibrate.

They parked the 4×4 in the barn and covered it with decaying tarps. With care, they wheeled the crate into the basement using a borrowed dolly. Neither of them spoke during the process. Their movements were slow and deliberate, not out of reverence, but caution. The slab had begun to hum in the back of the truck, and both men had heard it.

Jonah was the first to speak his mind.

“We shouldn’t have taken it.”

Marcus ignored him. He had spent the last hour trying and failing to reestablish contact with the buyer in Chicago. No replies. No pings. No signal on any of the channels he had relied on before. The network had gone cold.

That night, Marcus couldn’t sleep.

He stood in the doorway of the basement for over an hour, staring at the slab where it sat wrapped in canvas and foam. The crate, tucked into the far corner, resembled a coffin awaiting its occupant. A low vibration came from within, settling deep in the jaw and behind the eyes, like tinnitus embedded in bone.

The basement was far colder than it should have been.

Then the voice came again. It did not travel through the air, and it did not emerge from the mouth of any living thing. It rose from the walls and the pipes and the ancient stone foundation. It seemed to originate from the house itself.

“This night… you will be visited by the first of three plagues… Reeeeturn the slaaaaab…”

Marcus did not move. He stood frozen in the stairwell for a moment, his hand resting against the doorframe, and then closed the basement door and slid the bolt into place.

* * * * * *

The next morning, the faucets began to leak.

It started in the kitchen, where a rhythmic dripping echoed through the empty house. Jonah twisted the handles tightly shut, but the water continued to flow in intermittent pulses. It was cloudy, tinged green and gray, and carried a sour smell that reminded him of old copper and rainwater.

He filled a glass and held it up to the light.

Suspended inside the water were thin strands—filamentous and pale, almost translucent. They writhed as if stirred by an unseen current.

Jonah dumped the glass in the sink. “That’s not rust.”

By noon, both bathrooms had been affected. The tub gurgled continuously, the toilets flushed and refilled of their own accord, and the pipes vibrated with increasing urgency. The floor beneath the refrigerator had begun to swell outward, the wood darkening to the color of wet cardboard.

Marcus entered the kitchen just as Jonah opened the oven door and stepped back in surprise. The interior of the appliance was covered in condensation, as though steam had built up from within and settled on every surface. Even the burner coils were wet.

“This place is rotting from the inside out,” Jonah said, his voice low.

Marcus didn’t answer. He was staring at the far wall, where the plaster had split to reveal soaked insulation. No burst pipe. No weather damage. But the damage continued to spread.

That night, it began to rain inside the house.

* * * * * *

Jonah woke to the sound of water dripping onto his forehead. When he sat up, he saw that the ceiling above him had bowed inward, swollen with moisture. A slow, steady trickle ran down the wall beside the closet.

He padded into the hallway barefoot and froze in place.

There were puddles forming along the floorboards—not around the baseboards or in the corners, but at the center of the hall, as if the water was rising from beneath the floor.

He found Marcus in the living room, sitting upright in a torn armchair, the phone receiver still pressed to his ear. His expression was blank.

Jonah hesitated. “You called her, didn’t you? Evelyn. From the Institute.”

Marcus didn’t look away from the dead television screen. “She hung up after six seconds.”

Jonah approached slowly. “Did you tell her what we found?”

“I didn’t have to.”

A low, distant rumble passed through the house, shaking the floorboards. The walls shuddered as a sharp crack echoed from the foundation below. A moment later, they both heard the unmistakable sound of a faucet turning on upstairs.

The pipes began to wail.

Then the voice returned.

“Return the slab…”

This time, the sound came from the kitchen vent. The syllables dragged unnaturally, as though stretched thin across the air itself. The tone was hollow, almost mechanical, but tinged with something else—an ancient grief, a ritual repetition of meaning.

Jonah paled.

“You heard that too, right?”

Marcus rose and walked to the front closet. He pushed aside a pile of old coats and retrieved a crowbar.

Jonah took a step back. “What are you doing?”

“I want to see where it’s coming from.”

“In the basement?”

“If something intends to drown us, I want to know how it’s getting the water in.”

Jonah didn’t argue. He followed.

* * * * * *

The basement stairs groaned beneath their weight as they descended. The lightbulbs in the ceiling had long since burned out, leaving the space below in complete darkness. Marcus flicked on his headlamp and swept the beam across the walls.

The crate was still where they had left it, but the concrete around it had changed.

A fine sheet of water covered the floor in a perfect, shallow layer. It glistened in the lamplight, perfectly still. As Marcus stepped forward, the light caught something beyond the slab: a thin fracture running the length of the back wall. From it oozed a stream of dark fluid, slow and steady.

It was not clear.

It was yellow-brown and thick, with the consistency of oil.

Jonah turned away. “That smells like piss and iron.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes. “That crack goes through solid bedrock. This shouldn’t be possible.”

Beneath the crate, the water began to bubble.

Jonah stumbled backward.

The crate trembled slightly.

With a slow, deliberate motion, the wrapping began to unravel, peeling back one fold at a time as though invisible hands were working from within. The stone emerged from the cloth, its carved face glistening under the headlamp. The man’s expression had not changed, but the shadows made the contours seem deeper. His scream looked more pronounced.

Then the voice returned, clearer than before.

“Return… the slab…”

The sound issued from the slab itself—immediate and final.

Jonah turned and bolted for the stairs.

Marcus remained where he was, the air growing denser by the second. A low vibration spread through the foundation and into the floor, rattling the walls above them. The pipes screamed.

Water erupted from the far wall in a sudden burst. Marcus stumbled back, then turned and raced up the stairs. By the time he reached the first floor, water was falling from the ceiling. It surged from the light fixtures, spilled from vents, and ran in thick streams along every crack in the drywall. The electrical outlets hissed with blue sparks as the water forced its way into the wiring.

Jonah was already in the hallway, unfolding the attic ladder.

“Up!” he shouted. “Marcus, move!”

They climbed quickly and slammed the hatch shut behind them as the rising water surged up the stairwell—but the house did not stop filling.

The noise was deafening, like the slow collapse of a dam. The attic walls wept moisture. Rain pounded the inside of the roof with impossible force, though the shingles remained intact.

Marcus leaned over a knothole in the floor and stared down into the rising water. The level continued to climb, swallowing furniture. He watched old photo frames drift past, bobbing like wreckage.

Then he saw the crate. It floated. The stone, still unwrapped, had risen free and now drifted on the surface.

It did not sink. It stared upward, face turned to the attic above.

* * * * * *

The water reached the hatch just before dawn.

Marcus and Jonah had wedged themselves into opposite corners of the attic, soaked and shivering. The air had grown thick with humidity, and breathing felt like inhaling through a wet cloth. Mold had begun to bloom across the wooden beams, spreading in spiral patterns with unnatural speed.

Jonah’s voice trembled. “We’re going to die in here.”

Marcus didn’t answer. He stared at the trapdoor, one hand wrapped around the crowbar.

Then the sound changed. The flood had stopped rising—and the house fell silent. Water lapped gently against the underside of the hatch, but the pressure did not increase. The walls creaked, but they held.

Jonah looked up. “Why did it stop?”

From beneath them, something tapped against the door. A hollow clack. Then another.

Marcus leaned forward and pressed his ear to the wood.

The voice spoke again, barely muffled now. “Return… the slab…”

He pulled away and sat back.

Jonah was pale. “We have to get rid of it.”

* * * * * *

They stayed in the attic until full daylight.

By morning, the water had vanished. There was no trail. No break. No source. Only rot. The kitchen had collapsed. The main hallway had caved in. The basement was still flooded. The walls were buckled. The ceilings were soft with mildew.

But the slab remained.

It sat calmly on the living room rug, clean and dry, surrounded by wreckage.

Jonah refused to approach it.

Marcus stood over it for a long time, staring down with a hollow expression.

Jonah stepped forward. “We should take it back and seal the tomb again. If this is what happens after one night—”

“We’re not going back,” Marcus said with finality.

“It wants to be returned.”

“So do a lot of things.”

“You know I’m right,” Jonah said. “Evelyn warned you. You heard the same voice I did. You saw what it did to this place.”

Marcus didn’t look at him. “If we try to cross back into the Valley, we’ll be arrested before we even hit customs. That slab’s marked six different ways. And if the buyer finds out we bailed—”

“I’d rather face prison than a curse.”

Marcus turned to him then. His eyes were bloodshot, his voice cold. “We’re three hours from Chicago. You want to throw away seven figures and confess to international theft because the plumbing went sideways?”

Jonah opened his mouth, but no words came. Eventually, he turned and walked away.

They packed the slab again in silence, wrapping it in the same damp canvas.

Neither of them spoke as they lifted it into the truck.

As they pulled out of the driveway, Marcus checked the rearview mirror.

In the distance, standing in the field behind the ruined house, he saw a figure—tall and thin, wrapped in strips of linen—standing motionless, watching them leave.

Part III

They left the wreckage of the farmhouse just after nine o’clock in the morning, taking a backroad that skirted the county line. The pavement remained soft from days of flooding, veined with cracks and pitted with shallow divots. Despite this, the 4×4 held steady as it wound through the rolling farmland. Neither man spoke during the first hour.

The slab, secured once more inside its crate, rode in the bed of the truck.

Jonah found himself glancing into the passenger-side mirror more often than he wanted to admit. He wasn’t looking for a car. He wasn’t even sure what he expected to see. But each time his gaze slid toward the glass, he caught fleeting impressions—something pale moving in the trees beyond the shoulder, or a thread of fabric curling like smoke through the undergrowth. When he turned to look directly, there was nothing there.

By the time they crossed into Illinois, the sun had climbed into a gray sky. A thick veil of clouds obscured the light, casting the landscape in a dim, directionless glow. The air had grown uncomfortably calm. There was no breeze. No insects. No birdsong. Only the low hum of the tires on damp asphalt and the occasional creak of suspension.

Then another sound joined the silence.

At first, Jonah thought it was the truck’s speakers—perhaps interference or feedback—but the stereo was off. The hum persisted, faint but steady, as if a single sustained note had begun to rise from somewhere behind them.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

Marcus did not respond, but his hands tightened slightly on the wheel.

The hum grew louder as they approached the city.

* * * * * *

They stopped for gas on the outskirts of Galesburg. The station stood alone at the intersection of two empty county roads, its sign half-collapsed and its convenience store windows dark. Marcus stepped out to refuel while Jonah walked around the side of the building to relieve himself.

The place was deserted. There were no other vehicles, no clerk inside the station, and no movement on the road in either direction.

Jonah stood behind the concrete block wall, staring at a patch of weeds growing through the gravel. The hum had returned, clearer this time. It was no longer just a tone; it had begun to take shape—melodic, layered, and oddly familiar.

It was music. Or something close to it.

High-pitched notes looped in uneven intervals, like the fragments of a lullaby played at the wrong speed. The sound was slightly warped, and the longer Jonah listened, the more it resembled a song remembered imperfectly—like a tune recalled from a dream.

He shook his head, trying to focus. That was when he noticed the insects.

A perfect ring of dead bugs circled the crate in the truck bed. Flies, beetles, cicadas—all lay on their backs, legs curled inward. None had been crushed or visibly injured. Some still twitched slightly, as if caught in the moment of death.

They had not been poisoned. They had been vibrated to death.

Jonah turned toward the building.

The windows had cracked.

Each pane of glass bore a circular fracture at its center, as though struck by a tuning fork. None of them had shattered completely, but every window bore the same radial pattern.

“Marcus,” he called. “Something’s wrong.”

Marcus appeared from the opposite side of the truck, wiping his hands on a fuel rag. “What now?”

Jonah pointed to the glass.

Marcus followed his gaze, then slowly turned to look at the back of the truck. The crate was vibrating—barely, but visibly.

“Get in,” he said.

They did not stop again.

* * * * * *

The sound followed them.

It began as static, barely audible at first, but growing steadily. It came through the truck’s speakers even though the stereo remained off. Marcus tried shutting down the entire system and eventually pulled the fuse, but the noise persisted. It wasn’t coming from the truck’s electronics.

It was coming from the slab.

Jonah pressed his palms against his ears. “Turn it off.”

“I told you it’s not the radio.”

The static shifted pitch. Beneath the white noise, voices emerged—distorted, distant, submerged in layers of interference. They resembled speech, but the words were impossible to isolate, as if a crowd were shouting from underwater.

Jonah reached into the glove compartment and retrieved a pair of old earbuds. He shoved them into his ears and closed his eyes. The silence brought momentary relief.

Then the vibrations began.

The rearview mirror rattled against the windshield. The power door locks clicked up and down without input. Jonah flinched and clenched his jaw as a sharp ache spread through his molars.

“My teeth hurt,” he muttered. “Marcus, pull over.”

“We’re almost through Peoria.”

Jonah’s voice broke into a near-shout. “Pull over!”

Marcus slammed the brakes. The truck skidded slightly as it came to a stop on the shoulder just outside the city limits. Vehicles passed on the main road, but no one slowed down.

Jonah opened the door and stumbled out, dropping to his knees on the gravel. He pressed his hands over his ears and screamed into the dirt, his body curling inward as the sound intensified.

Inside the truck, the static sharpened.

Then a new voice joined it—high, soft, female.

“Reeeeturn… the slaaaaab…”

Marcus remained behind the wheel, unmoving, his eyes fixed on the side mirror.

He saw nothing behind them.

But the melody began again.

* * * * * *

They reached a motel east of Joliet just after sunset. Marcus paid in cash and signed the registry under a false name. The man at the front desk wore noise-canceling headphones and never spoke. His hands trembled as he slid the key across the counter.

Room 6 was stale and dimly lit. One lamp flickered; the other did not work. The television buzzed faintly and had no remote. The air smelled faintly of mildew and dryer sheets.

Jonah dropped his bag and collapsed onto the nearest bed, burying his face in a pillow. Marcus sat down near the window and lit a cigarette. Neither man spoke for nearly twenty minutes.

Then music began to play.

It came from somewhere outside the building, though no source was visible. It was not projected from a speaker or a phone. It hung in the air itself, thin and invasive.

The melody was the same as before—layered, slow, and broken. Some notes bent in unnatural ways, while others repeated themselves without variation. The harmony drifted in and out of key, a song that resolved and unraveled simultaneously.

Jonah sat up abruptly. “No. Not again.”

He stood and turned on the television.

Only white noise greeted him.

The melody continued beneath it.

He turned on the lamp.

The bulb flashed once, then exploded with a sharp pop.

Marcus moved to the window and yanked the curtain shut. The sound did not fade.

It grew stronger.

From the center of the motel room’s floor, the carpet began to rise in a slow bulge. Something beneath it pushed upward, swelling as if the subfloor had softened into liquid.

Jonah scrambled backward, pressing himself against the headboard.

The mound expanded.

From the far wall, a voice emerged.

“Return the slab…”

Then the song surged into full crescendo.

* * * * * *

The sound came from every direction.

The lamp base shook. The television bent inward at the screen, warping visibly as if impacted from the inside. Jonah screamed and curled into himself, clutching the sides of his head.

Marcus pressed his hands over his ears, but it was useless. The sound moved through his bones, not his hearing. His vision blurred. His lungs felt tight. The pressure had become internal.

Outside in the truck bed, the slab vibrated violently.

The melody grew more chaotic—dissonant and layered—a thousand voices rising in unison and falling out of rhythm again. It resembled every song ever sung, compressed and reversed and played forward at once. The drywall cracked. The mirror shattered. The light fixtures in the parking lot burst like overripe fruit.

And then—

Silence.

It arrived all at once.

The vibration ceased. The air fell still.

Jonah sat on the floor, blood at the corner of his mouth, and clenched his teeth. Marcus leaned against the wall, breathing hard, his face pale and damp with sweat.

Neither of them spoke.

From the parking lot, a faint voice slipped through the broken window.

It was low and final.

“Return the slab…”

Jonah turned to Marcus.

“We can’t deliver it.”

Marcus didn’t answer immediately.

“We don’t have a choice.”

Jonah wiped his face with shaking hands. “This buyer—do they even know what it is?”

“No.”

“Then what are we giving them?”

Marcus met his gaze across the dim room.

“Something they paid for.”

* * * * * *

Outside, the streetlight above the 4×4 flickered once.

Then it went dark.

The crate lay open in the truck bed. The slab had been unwrapped.

Its surface gleamed faintly in the moonlight, pulsing with the ghost of a tune that refused to fade.

Beyond the parking lot, just inside the treeline, something waited.

It stood tall and still, its form wrapped in faded linen, its face obscured.

It did not move.

But it watched.

Part IV

At sunrise, the slab was gone.

Marcus stood at the back of the truck, staring into the empty crate. He had parked under the only functioning streetlight. He had seen the stone resting there before they collapsed into the motel hours earlier. Now the canvas lay discarded on the pavement, damp and empty. The crate gaped open.

Jonah stepped outside barefoot, squinting against the pale morning light.

“Did you move it?”

“No.”

“Then is it gone?”

Marcus didn’t respond.

Jonah walked slowly around the truck. The pavement was covered with brittle black husks—moths, beetles, and other insects. Their bodies had curled inward as if they had been desiccated from within.

He crossed the road and stopped at the edge of the gravel. There, just beyond the ditch, a shallow depression marked the grass. It looked like something heavy had either fallen or risen.

He turned back to Marcus. “We need to leave. Right now.”

Marcus nodded.

They didn’t speak again until they were on the road.

* * * * * *

They pushed northeast through the outskirts of Joliet. The expressways grew narrower and more uneven the farther they traveled. Trees leaned over the road on both sides, their branches forming a tunnel that filtered the already dim light into shadow. The air remained unnaturally quiet. Even the sound of other vehicles diminished as they drew closer to the city, as if noise itself had begun to dissipate.

Jonah continued to scan the sky, though he did not know what he was looking for. Something felt wrong.

After several miles, he asked without turning his head, “Do you think the third plague is coming soon?”

Marcus kept his eyes on the road and said nothing.

Jonah leaned back in the seat. “Do you think it stops after three?”

Still no response came. They both understood what the question truly meant.

It hadn’t stopped last time.

* * * * * *

They reached the drop point at a warehouse on the southern fringe of Chicago’s industrial corridor just after noon. The location was unmarked except for coordinates and a code phrase—details Marcus had memorized months ago. He had followed the instructions exactly.

The dock sat behind a chain-link fence layered with rust and vines. The cargo doors were bolted shut with iron crossbars. No trucks were parked nearby. No workers moved inside. The building appeared long-abandoned.

Marcus parked and approached the loading bay on foot. He rang the buzzer, waited, and tried the service entrance. No response. He pulled out his burner phone and called the contact’s last number. Then the backup number. Then the encrypted line. He sent a message using the final failsafe: a secure channel labeled only DELIVERED.

No one answered.

Six hours passed.

Jonah paced silently in the lot while Marcus sat in the cab, watching the sun crawl behind the haze.

At some point, a small black bird fell from the sky and landed on the truck’s hood. Its feathers were intact, but its body had collapsed inward. The flesh had dried and shriveled as though drained of moisture through the pores.

Jonah stared at it.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s the last one.”

* * * * * *

The wind came suddenly.

It did not rise from any visible source, nor did it behave like natural weather. It blasted through the alley beside the warehouse in a straight, unbroken gust, carrying grit and torn paper. Loose objects rattled and spun through the air. The direction was impossible to predict. One moment, it pushed against the trees. The next, it circled behind them and rushed past the truck like a predator passing too close.

Then the sky darkened.

It wasn’t a cloud front. It was movement—layers of small, winged shapes converging in a slow spiral overhead.

Jonah stepped backward, tilting his head to the sky. “Marcus…”

Thousands of insects gathered in the air, forming a loose funnel that drifted with intelligence. Their wings glinted in the low sun like shards of obsidian.

The swarm moved as one.

Marcus opened the passenger door. “Inside. Now.”

They sprinted for the loading corridor. Marcus threw his shoulder into the steel door, forcing it open, and they slipped inside. He slammed it shut behind them as the wind intensified.

The windows began to shake.

Then the sound followed.

It was not a buzz. It was a tearing, grinding noise, like hundreds of strips of paper being shredded all at once. The walls vibrated beneath it. The overhead window cracked, spidering outward in a jagged web of fractures.

A single insect slipped through a seam. It was large, nearly the size of Marcus’s hand, with segmented legs and forward-facing jaws. It darted along the concrete and lunged.

Jonah stomped it, crushing it into a smear of black fluid that hissed on the floor.

Marcus backed away and retrieved the crowbar from their emergency bag.

Jonah stared at the spreading stain. “What are they?”

“They’re not locusts,” Marcus replied.

“How do you know?”

“Because locusts don’t eat metal.”

* * * * * *

The slab had returned.

It now stood upright against a stack of old crates in the warehouse interior. Neither of them had brought it inside.

The stone’s face had changed. The man in the carving—the same one whose scream had been immortalized in the slab—now appeared more contorted. His mouth gaped wider. The lines around his face had deepened. The carving of the flat cap had sharpened, and the edges of his raised hands had curled slightly inward, as though his final moment had been made even more desperate.

Jonah froze.

“It’s watching us.”

Marcus shook his head. “No. It’s waiting.”

Outside, the warehouse began to come apart.

The wood paneling splintered as the swarm struck the exterior in a coordinated strike. The overhead beams groaned under the weight of the assault. The sound was unbearable—wet, sharp, and erratic, like teeth grinding through plaster and glass.

The swarm was no longer outside.

It had found a way in.

Jonah ran toward the slab. He gripped its edge and attempted to lift it.

“We throw it out. Now!”

Marcus moved quickly and grabbed his shoulder. “They’ll tear us apart before we reach the door.”

Jonah rounded on him. “Then what the hell do we do?”

Marcus stared at the slab. “We finish the delivery.”

* * * * * *

They dragged the slab through the loading area, guiding it down a corridor toward the freight elevator. The contact had left specific instructions in the original manifest, referencing a sealed location labeled only as Protocol Drop-Point A.

Marcus had memorized the details long before they left Egypt.

The elevator doors opened with a groan. They wheeled the slab inside and descended into the lower level. As they sank, the lights flickered overhead. Below, the sub-basement smelled like rotting copper and wet cement.

The floor was cracked and pitted. Condensation ran down the cinderblock walls.

Jonah struggled to maintain his grip on the dolly. Behind them, the sounds of splintering wood and tearing insulation continued.

Then something changed.

The destruction stopped.

Not above them, but behind.

Marcus turned toward the shaft.

A new presence had entered.

Descending from the opening in the ceiling came a figure—not falling, but floating downward. It did not move with gravity. It did not belong to flesh.

The shape resembled what they had seen in the dunes and the mirror. It wore ancient, unraveling linen. Its limbs were long and slightly misaligned, as though copied incorrectly. Its face was hidden behind a bone-white death mask, carved with the same sloping eyes and featureless mouth. From the sides of its head trailed strands of faded red cloth that twisted slowly in the air.

It extended one hand.

And the voice returned.

“Return… the slab…”

Marcus stepped back. His grip tightened on the crowbar.

Jonah remained still, eyes fixed on the figure.

The swarm followed.

It poured down the shaft like liquid, folding in on itself and crawling across every surface. The insects did not fly. They climbed. They coated the walls, the ceiling, and the exposed wires. They moved in unison toward the slab.

Then they stopped.

Every insect, every jaw, every twitching leg froze.

They did not turn toward Marcus or Jonah.

They turned toward the figure.

The death mask inclined slightly.

And the voice echoed once more, louder than before.

“Return… the slab…”

Marcus did not hesitate. He pushed the slab forward and let it fall flat in the center of the chamber.

The swarm surged. In an instant, the insects enveloped the stone. Their collective movement became a howl, not of wings or legs, but of something deeper—an anguish rendered in thousands of voices. The air pulsed with sound.

Then came the light, blindingly white, pouring from the engraving. The screaming face on the slab became a beacon as the swarm collapsed inward, pulled into the cracks and seams of the stone. The insects vanished, absorbed into the carving’s open mouth.

Jonah shielded his face with both arms, and Marcus staggered backward, staring through the glare.

Then, with a sound like the closing of a distant vault, everything stopped.

The swarm was gone.

So was the slab.

And so was the figure.

* * * * * *

They emerged from the sublevel in silence.

The parking lot outside the warehouse had been shredded. The truck’s windshield was shattered. Its roof had caved slightly under impact. Broken glass and insect husks littered the ground.

But the sky had cleared.

Birds had returned.

Jonah sat on the curb, letting the sun warm his face.

Marcus stood beside the open truck bed, staring into the empty crate. His eyes did not blink. His expression did not shift.

After several minutes, Jonah asked the question they had both been avoiding.

“Do you think it’s over?”

Marcus didn’t answer immediately.

When he did, he looked toward the horizon and spoke softly. “No. But we’re not the ones carrying it anymore.”

Epilogue

A month later, a package arrived at the Institute’s private wing.

It had no return address, no postage, and no visible signs of delivery. The security camera facing the side entrance had recorded nothing between midnight and dawn. No courier had been seen. No vehicle had approached.

The parcel had simply appeared, placed just inside the reinforced utility door sometime during the early morning hours.

It was wrapped in unmarked brown paper and sealed with ordinary twine. The label affixed to its surface bore only a name: Evelyn Osei. The writing had been done in graphite, scrawled with a hand she recognized instantly.

It was Marcus’s handwriting.

She stared at the package without touching it for several minutes.

When she finally opened it, she did so carefully, using a scalpel to cut the string and a gloved hand to lift the contents free. Inside, wrapped in layers of black cloth, was a single photograph.

It was a color print. Recent. Taken underground, judging by the stonework in the background and the quality of the light. It showed the slab—intact and fully restored—standing once again within the tomb beneath the Valley of the Kings. The dais upon which it rested had been cleared of debris. The walls around it had been cleaned and re-inscribed. The structure looked as it had when the original expedition first unearthed it two years earlier.

But one detail had changed.

The central carving—the man whose scream had been immortalized in stone—no longer bore the face of the Kansas farmer.

The features had been altered.

The new figure was thinner and more angular. The skin tone etched into the stone was darker, the bone structure sharper. He wore glasses. His mouth gaped in horror. His hands were raised in a final, defensive plea.

It was Marcus.

Evelyn dropped the photo and stumbled backward, one hand pressed to her chest.

She nearly overlooked the second item in the package.

Beneath the photograph, folded into quarters and tucked between the folds of black cloth, was a slip of notebook paper. The writing had been hurried, jagged with pressure. Only one sentence had been written:

It doesn’t want to be moved again.

* * * * * *

In rural Arizona, a family stopped for the night near the edge of a canyon.

Just before dusk, their youngest son wandered away from the trail. He later claimed to have followed a sound—something that resembled a radio playing from underground. It had led him down a narrow crevice he swore had not been there earlier.

When his father found him, the boy was curled up beside the trailhead. He was uninjured, but he refused to speak for two days. He neither ate nor slept, only stared at the corners of rooms and flinched at the sound of running water.

When he finally did speak, he told the ranger that he had found a room at the bottom of the canyon.

A stone room.

He said the walls had been covered in carvings—images of insects, floods, and speakers. One wall had shown a tall man in bandages with no mouth. At the center of the floor there had been a square hole, perfectly cut into the stone. It had been empty.

And it had been waiting.

The ranger, confused by the story, asked what he meant.

The boy pointed to the ground beneath them and said, “He’s going to climb out again.”