Robbing the Temple, part 1

You have to be careful about who you bring with you to rob a temple for treasure. Dean thought wistfully that it would have been nice to have his best pal Ian, who was always good for a laugh and who was on the high school football team with him and fit enough to lug pounds of gold down a mountain. Or any of his other friends, for that matter. But they all had a troublesome habit of having their own opinions and wouldn’t do as they were told. Plus, they would have all expected an equal division of the treasure and Dean figured he deserved at least a seventy percent cut for doing the research and heading up the expedition.

So that left him with Neil. Neil had the advantage of living two doors down and of being pathetic and easily influenced.  Useful qualities for sure, Dean thought, surveying his chosen partner the morning of the adventure, but lacking in zest. The boys stood in Dean’s attic. Dean’s backpack was neatly packed by his feet; Neil’s was listing to the side, unevenly packed and still half empty while Neil fiddled with a rope.  

“Give that.” Dean snatched the rope out of the smaller boy’s hands and began winding it efficiently. “I honestly do not know how you put one foot in front of the other to even get here, Neil. You’re lucky I’m even asking for your help with this.” There was a mirror propped up against the wall amongst the junk of the attic and as he coiled, he glanced at himself and flexed, smirking.

Neil let his hands drop and stared blankly at the rope as it was swiftly coiled in Dean’s hands. His limp brown hair hung over his eyes so that he peered out at the world through a part in the curtain of his bangs. Morning light streamed in through the cobwebs of a small attic window, lighting the wooden boards, the dust motes, the piles of supplies and the boys themselves with a divine glow. Their intentions, however, were purely secular.

“Now look,” said Dean, as he packed the rope with a businesslike efficiency, and turned to pick up a large pack, “This temple is I guess three miles away? Maybe more. You’ll carry the shovel and the crowbar. In this pack, we’ve got the climbing ropes, the crampons, and the picks. We might not need any of this stuff, but we have to be prepared. Think you can manage without dropping it?”

“And the food.” Said Neil, who seemed to be made of a collection of sunken hollows and freckles. His shoulders were pointy under his shirt.

Dean rolled his eyes, “Yes, of course, the food. Honestly. I offer you the opportunity to get rich beyond your wildest dreams and all you can think about is the snacks.” He sighed, flicked a hand through his blond curls and hefted the first pack on his shoulder. “I’ll carry this pack; you grab the other. And we’ve got the bags for carrying stuff out, right?”

Neil nodded and clambered to his feet. His Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt wafted around his skinny body as he pulled the pack onto his back. “Um…how do you know there’s treasure there?”

“I ran across a reference to it when I was studying for history.” Dean said, hefting the pack over his shoulder. “Looked up more stuff about it when I realized the temple would be nearby. Apparently, it’s for some god that people worshipped way back when, and these people were noted for being really enthusiastic about this god. And you know, what better way to be enthusiastic than by giving gold and jewels?”

Neil looked hesitantly over at Dean, his mouth open like he was going to object, but then he shut it quickly. He’d been surprised when Dean deigned to invite him on this expedition, and if some of Dean’s conclusions seemed a little wildly optimistic, it wasn’t like Neil knew anything about anything, let alone treasure hunting. “Okay.”

Their development was on the edge of town; an orderly swathe of tan or grey houses dotting alongside the curve of pale cement road. The boys tromped down the road from Dean’s manicured lawn, past the scraggly lawn where Neil lived, and jumped over the culvert at the end of the road.

They clambered under a barbed wire fence (Neil got stuck) and finally began tramping forward through the woods, pushing aside branches (Dean) and getting whacked in the face (Neil). Neil kept glancing around him nervously, unable to shake the feeling that they had been swallowed whole into another world. He was not a boy that spent a lot of time outside. Sunlight shot through the leaves in beams, making patterns of golden and green against mossy darkness.

“Dean,” he whispered, because he felt like something might overhear him, “You don’t think the god might…get mad at us? For looting?”

Dean ran a hand through his mass of blonde curls and sighed. “It’s the twenty-first century. Are you seriously asking me that? That’s like, Stone Age stuff. Nobody believes in gods anymore.”

They continued, jumping over logs, crossing streamlets, and steadily climbing higher. Initially the morning breeze brought fresh air and the birds sang in the trees and even Neil seemed to perk up a bit. But as they hiked, he began to droop, breathing heavily and going white around the lips. Dean ploughed forward oblivious to his companion’s distress. Finally, after at least an hour, he said: “We’re here.”

A lone pillar of stone stood upright in front of them. Moss crept up its base. The only noise was their own breathing; the birds had gone silent. The breeze paused, and the leaves on the trees held still. Neil rubbed sweaty hands on his jeans and hunched his shoulders up around his ears. A little bit too loudly, Dean said, “It should be right up here—”

He stepped out of the trees into a clearing. A stone edifice loomed out of a fold in the mountain. It was rounded and weathered with age, and it frowned heavy stone brows at them. The column furthest away from the boys had crumbled and split the slab roof in two; some moss and pine trees jutted out of the crack. Neil pushed out behind him and bent over with his hands on his knees, panting. A breath of cold cave air blew over them.

“There it is.” Dean said. “Not so scary, huh? We are going to be rich, rich, rich, buddy. Look, we might even get to go in the front door, just up there.” And he bounded forward through the chicory and tall grass. Neil followed, slower, still breathing heavily. Neither of them noticed that even the buzzing of the insects had silenced.

The stone was rough and cool under their hands—Dean scrambled up a fallen brick half as tall as he was, and then paused, sighing irritably, to wait for Neil to struggle up. The door had fallen off its hinges ages ago and lay in a rotting heap. Goosebumps rose on their skin as another breath of cool, mossy air rushed out of the

opening.

“Why is it…breathing?” Neil said.

“That means there’s not poisonous gasses inside,” Dean informed him. “That’s a big thing to worry about when you’re potentially going underground.”

“Underground?” Neil said, eyes wide.

“Well, duh.” Dean strode through the door. “Why would they keep treasure lying out in the main room?” He shrugged his pack further onto his back and strode inside.

Neil glanced behind him, bit his lip, and followed, head down.

Dean flicked on his flashlight and played it over the crumbling rocks, the fissures in the floor, and the tree roots bursting in through the cracks. It was a smaller temple than it looked; there was some type of stone altar at the back, half buried under a slide of rocks that let in a little hole of sunlight. And there was a shelf on the far wall with boxes and containers on it.

“Ah-ha.” Dean said smugly, and strode over to it. He scanned the shelf, a light of delight in his eyes, Neil at his shoulder, eyes owl-wide with suspense. Then he removed a single box, staggered a bit under the unexpected weight—he threw an excited glance over at Neil. The kid needed to show a little more enthusiasm, he thought. This was going spectacularly well.

The box was made of some kind of heavy wood with gilt edging on it. “Wouldya look at that?” He said, “Treasure in the front room? Guess even I can’t be right all the time.” The lid did not open easily. He pressed his thumbs under the lid, and with a moment of effort, the box creaked open.

He breathed a swear as the lid revealed dark, solid coins. Both boys reached in and touched them; heavy, gold coins. Authenticity communicated even in the press of their fingers. Dean giggled, “Holy mo—"

Then the floor shook. He staggered, grabbing at the box. Neil squeaked in fear. “We gotta get out of here!”

But the floor rolled beneath their feet, marble crumbling, roots splitting as the mountain itself shifted beneath them. Dean staggered and landed hard on his arm, dropping the casket of gold coins. There was a roar of shifting stone. The boys tried to run for the door, but their feet slid backwards as the stone slab they were standing on wrenched upwards, buckling as something shoved the temple walls in towards the mountain.

Dean yelled, his leg pinned. “Help me, Neil!” But Neil was pinned as well, blank eyed with shock. Marble dust and dirt filled the air. The door vanished with a crunch.

And then it was over. The mountain stopped shaking. The dust floated in the air. But it was replaced with something worse. A presence. Something immense was there, outside, pressing its thought on them with the effortless power of a boot against a couple of ants. Neither of them spoke or breathed or looked at each other for fear that the noise of their eyes moving in their sockets would draw its attention.

Footsteps. A rock skittered loose and went tumbling down the wreckage. A small opening was directly in front of Dean’s face. He watched, trembling, afraid to look but even more afraid to close his eyes and not see what was out there.

Then the thing passed in front of him; a blackness that resolved into a familiar shape; the smooth side of a horse. 

“It’s a horse,” Dean gasped, relieved to be able to contain this experience in words, already figuring to himself how their fear must have been simply a byproduct of being crushed by half a ton of marble. And then the horse turned its head and looked at him.

Dean screamed.  Galaxies of thought pressed in on him, overwhelmed him. He was lost under the gaze of an immeasurable eternity. Its voice entered his brain like a hail of spears, piercing him through. “I only choose to appear as a mortal creature at the moment. If I appeared as I am, you would instantly die.”

“Please,” whimpered Dean, “Please look away from me.”

The horse-god turned so he saw only the edge of its eye and the corner of its ear. It was, Dean realized, larger than anything he’d ever seen before; a horse that would dwarf an elephant. Somewhere below him he heard Neil whimpering, but he had no thought to spare for his erstwhile partner, not even contempt.

“You have transgressed my temple.” The god continued, and the stones trembled when he spoke. “Your lives are forfeit.” Fear seized both the boys in an iron grip. Dean was openly crying. Somewhere in the rubble, Neil was, too.

“I could kill you,” the god said, “But I think I will find you more useful as servants. After all, you have destroyed my temple. It must be made whole again.”

“Sir…” Dean gasped, “We don’t know anything about working marble.”

“You will be back. You will learn how.”

Then suddenly the pressure on his chest went away. The rocks were not shoving into his spine. His leg was whole and solid beneath him, and he was standing at the edge of the clearing beside Neil. They were both still covered in marble dust, and the temple lay in ruins beneath them. The horse was gone. Dean looked at the tear tracks running down Neil’s dusty face and scrubbed at his own, embarrassed. Without a word to each other, they turned and went down the mountain.