“One, two, three, push!” Ivy directed.
Her team of burley, strapping archaeologist students grunted and groaned as they pushed against the limestone slab. Muscles strained against suntanned skin and sweat-soaked, rolled up sleeves. They huffed and puffed and fresh drops of sweat broke out across their brows.
A gust of wind kicked up the sand around Ivy clamped her hand down on the hat that shielded her from the afternoon sun.
“Come one,” she muttered to herself, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Crunch!
Crack!
The stone slab shifted and a gust of cool, stale air erupted from behind it.
“Yes!” Ivy pumped her fist in the air.
Her archeologist students waved her off. One collapsed onto his knees, breathing heavily.
“Alright, we’ll take a five-minute water break,” Ivy said kicking open the lid of the cooler. “Then we are going in.”
“Are you sure this is even what you’re looking for?” Mitchell asked holding a cool water bottle to the back of his neck.
Ivy glanced at the armed guard who lounged in the shade of his camel, large firearm draped across his lap.
For almost a decade, Ivy had been in these deserts helping to unearth treasures lost to time and sand. She’d never understood if the guard was there for protection or as a preventative, should one of her students see fit to pocket one of their rare findings.
The camel grunted and spit but the guard remained motionless.
Licking dry, cracked lips, Ivy pulled out her star chart. It had been left to her by her late archeologist professor. She’d had the chart authenticated and mapped out the alignment so she could locate it during the day.
“This is it,” she said, running her thumb over the gold embossed silhouette of a cat head in the upper, right corner.
“I’ll get the flashlights,” Mitchell said.
He handed flashlights around to the others, Deborah, Leon, and Joselyn.
Ivy stepped up to the open door and put her hand against the limestone. She took a deep breath, inhaling the musty, dusty air on the other side.
If this was what she thought it was, it would be the discovery of a lifetime.
She glanced over her shoulder at the assembling team and slipped through the open crack. On the other side of the door she peered into a black void. Ivy clicked the flashlight on and slowly splashed the beam on the walls.
“Oh,” she gasped.
Kicking up cool sand under her feet, Ivy raced to the nearest wall. She held the flashlight up and traced her hand over the massive mural of Bastet. Her sleek, black cat head and the golden hoop earring clipped in her ear. It was exactly as Ivy imagined it.
“Mroww.”
Ivy rolled her eyes and flicked the flashlight to the door. “That’s not fun… ny…” She narrowed her eyes.
None of her students had followed her inside yet.
“Mroww.”
“Is someone there?” Ivy asked. Gritting her teeth, she slapped her palm to her forehead.
Who would be lurking inside an ancient temple that hadn’t been opened for thousands of years.
“You’ve got to spend a little more time with people and less with ghosts,” Ivy muttered to herself.
“Professor, wait for us,” Deborah called, wiggling through the cracked door.
The others followed close behind. They immediately pulled out flashlights and battery powered lanterns. They set up camera equipment and got straight to work doing what she’d taught them.
“Leon, come with me, I want to check something out,” Ivy said, motioning to her most seasoned student.
“Do you really think this a lost temple of Bastet?” he asked as they moved down a narrow corridor, away from the entrance.
“I know it is. I just… feel it,” Ivy said. She waved her flashlight around.
Each wall was painted so decoratively. She’d have to spend a lifetime in there to understand the meaning of all the hieroglyphs and pictograms.
“Mroww.”
Ivy tensed.
“Did you hear that?” Leon asked, spinning around to look behind them.
“You heard it too?” Ivy asked.
“That was a car, right?” he asked back.
“That’s what it sounded like. But this temple has been sealed for ages,” Ivy said. Still, she moved the beam of her flashlight around looking for any sign of an interloper.
“I don’t see anything. Maybe the temple is just getting to us,” Leon suggested.
Ivy scoffed. “And we are both experiencing the same auditory hallucination?”
“Oh. Good point.”
“I have an idea of where it is coming from. Follow me.”
Ivy ducked down another corridor. As much as she wanted to stand and stare at the temple walls for hours and learn their secrets, as much as she wanted to comb through every grain of sand for long-lost pieces of history, she couldn’t let the matter of the phantom cat rest.
She led Leon to a central chamber deep in the bowels of the temple.
“Whoa,” he gasped, tilting his head back all the way.
“There,” Ivy said, flashing her light to the middle of the chamber.
A carved, limestone pillar rose out of the sand and sitting atop it was a dusty, faded, red silk cushion.
Curled on the cushion, a sleek, desert cat raised its head. Fur the color of sand, mottled with black spots that matched the tufts on its ears. The cat yawned, revealing fangs and a sandpaper tongue.
Green, slotted eyes blinked in the beam of the flashlight.
“How did you get in here?” Leon asked. He made kissing sounds at the cat and approached slowly, holding his hand out.
The cat turned up its nose. Promptly, the creature stood up, stuck it’s tail in Leon’s face, and then curled up, cleaning itself.
Ivy laughed. “Well, do you need anymore proof that this is a lost temple of Bastet?”
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