The Medusa Stone

pause next to the bodies. No attempts had been made to give the children any kind of burial. They had been abandoned, worked to death, and left to rot where they’d died. Selome began praying.

Still in shock, Mercer forced himself to make a closer examination of one of the bodies, wanting to know the exact cause of death. He didn’t dare disturb the fragile corpse, but from the areas he could study, he saw no signs of injury; no broken bones or blunt trauma. The only bizarre feature was the unnatural curling of its hands, arms, and feet. They were coiled so tightly they looked as if they had no bones in them at all. Mercer noted that the other bodies were all in similar positions.

What the hell could have done this? he thought. He noted the child still had its teeth, so he discounted scurvy, but rickets was a possible candidate. Then the clinical side of his brain shut down and he felt pity wash over him in tidal surges. What did it matter how they died? They were gone, murdered by a nameless slave master long ago who’d probably been rewarded for his efficiency. Mercer had to force himself to breathe. He said a silent prayer for the children, and when he raised his eyes and took note of the vein of ore they’d been working, a sickening realization came to him.

He wanted to escape this macabre cave, but the scientist in him had to be sure, even if he knew the results could be a death sentence for him and Selome. She continued to pray as he crushed down a small sample of the ore left on the footwall. He unclipped the protective steel casing off the boxy flashlight and poured a measure of the ore into it. He ignored the coils of fuse in the bag and withdrew a stick of dynamite. He worked the explosive until he could pour the powder onto the ground beneath the container. Only when he was finished did she notice his efforts and join him.

“What are you doing?”

“An experiment,” he replied, and Selome recognized the fear in his voice.

He laid their full canteen onto the metal case so it acted as a lid. “Do you remember what Brother Ephraim said about the children who worked the mine being killed by sin?”

Without a tight constraint, the explosive burst into flame when he touched it off with his lighter, illuminating the cavern in harsh white light. When the fire burned out, he tapped the canteen several times and stuck it back into his bag. The reddish ore in his makeshift apparatus had darkened considerably. He dumped it onto a jagged rock and waited. It took just a few seconds for silvery beads to ooze out of the ore and pool on the ground next to him.

“He wasn’t warning us about sin with a S, but sin with a C, as in cinnabar, also called red mercuric sulfide. It’s the principal ore stone for raw mercury.” They both stared at the shimmering pool of liquid metal.

“But isn’t mercury—”

“One of the most toxic substances on the planet. It can cripple, paralyze, or kill just by breathing its fumes.”

“That’s what killed the children?”

“That’s what going to kill us, too, if we don’t get out of here. It’s so deadly that miners who dig this stuff today only work eight days a month. Every second we delay can have permanent effects.” He was already leading Selome down another tunnel.

“Is there anything we can do?”

“Yeah, sweat a lot. Believe it or not, perspiration can cleanse the body of mercury if it’s not allowed to bond to the cell proteins. After every shift, miners spend time in a room called ‘the beach’ to sweat out the toxins under powerful heat lamps.”

The mine was stuffy and hot already, so there wasn’t a problem keeping their pores open, but they only had that single canteen of water, and when that ran out, their bodies would no longer waste fluids on temperature control. The mercury would then begin its absorption process, and the consequences after that might be irreversible.

They encountered several more horror chambers as they wound through the mine, one of them containing at least a hundred mummified victims. Mercer could see that many of the children had been exposed to mercury through their mothers when they were in the womb. The poison had done terrible damage to their chromosomes, and they suffered horrifying malformations. Some were barely recognizable as human.

“Somehow the kimberlite vent came up through a vein of mercuric sulfide. I’ve never heard of a geologic feature like this but I can understand why they thought the Ark of the Covenant may have helped the children,” Mercer said.

“How?”

“Even at the time the Ark was brought to Africa, metallurgists knew that mercury bonded with gold. I think they were hoping it would absorb the mercury vapor and stop its debilitating effects. Remember, apart from any mythical properties it may have had, the Ark was covered with gold.”

“But this much mercury?”

“I didn’t say it was a good idea.”

They continued through more endless passages for another hour until Selome had a disturbing thought. “Mercer, the tunnel leading to the working pit was about a mile and a half long, and even at a slow crawl, we must have covered five times that distance on our way back.” Her voice was muffled by the tight passage as the walls soaked up the sound.

“You noticed that, too?” he replied. “I’m beginning to get a little concerned myself. These tunnels were constructed through softer material to make the mining easier, but it doesn’t seem possible that they’d meander as badly as this. I’m starting to think we may be in another dead end.”

“We’re lost?” She started to panic.

Mercer stopped, twisted around so he could see her with the flashlight. Her face was tiger-striped by beads of sweat cutting runnels through the dust caked to her skin. He could see she was starting to lose confidence. Mercer cupped her chin in his palm. “There are two inevitabilities in life, death and taxes. You have my word that come next April, you’ll be cutting a big check.”

She forced bravery into her voice. “Americans pay taxes in April. I’m Eritrean.”

The next chamber they found was high enough for them to stand, and unlike the others, it was enormous. Their flashlight could penetrate only a fraction of the way across, but by gauging the echoes, Mercer estimated the cavity was nearly the size of a football field. He immediately recognized the mining technique used to excavate the space. Room and pillar mining called for huge spaces to be gouged into the ore while leaving support columns of undisturbed rock to hold up the hanging wall. It was a common technique in coal mining, but not very efficient in a diamond mine, and he was surprised it had been used to work this kimberlite vein. The pillars were so numerous, it felt as if they were walking among the trunks of a dense petrified forest or in the eerie catacombs under an ancient cathedral. He was stunned that the mine overseers had conceived and engineered the system as he led Selome across the expanse. Over their heads, the hanging wall was in terrible shape, cracked and scored by the enormous pressure of the earth bearing down on it. He guessed that in another hundred years or so, the pillars would succumb to the strain and the entire room would collapse.

Halfway to the other side of the room a shadow caught Mercer’s eye, and when he turned to investigate, Selome gave a startled scream and was thrown to the floor. Mercer was flattened by a rushing apparition that materialized out of the darkness. His head cracked against the ground, his mind spinning. It was impossible that anything alive could be down here with them; the mine had been sealed for thousands of years. A vicious kick to his stomach pulled him back to reality. It didn’t matter who or what was with them, they were about to be killed. A knife glinted sharply in the beam of the flashlight that had flown from his stunned hands. The AK-47 lay out of reach beyond the penumbra.

The thing jumped on Mercer as he lay stunned. He managed to raise a hand and deflect the blade plunging at his chest. He twisted his assailant enough for him to counter with a crushing punch, the blow snapping a couple of short ribs. Rather than being slowed by the shot, the attacker went wild, striking Mercer across the jaw with his elbow, and the darkness of the cavern rushed into Mercer’s brain. He would have lost the fight right then had Selome not leaped on the assailant’s back, drawing him off Mercer for a moment.

For her effort, Mercer saw her catch a savage punch in the face that sent her reeling, her body falling like a deflated balloon. He scrambled to find his assault rifle and the attacker was on him again, this time sinking the knife into the fleshy part of Mercer’s thigh. Screaming with the needle-hot pain, Mercer torqued and back-handed the creature across the cheek. To his horror, he felt his hand sink into its putrid face and saw a chunk of flesh fly off. The wound did nothing to deter the assault and Mercer realized he really was fighting some demon who roamed the