Douglas Preston: Relic

His instincts were going off five-alarm, yet he couldn’t detect anything wrong or out of place. He slid forward, between the Museum cargo and the wall.

He stopped again. Something wasn’t right back here. Something wasn’t right at all.

He heard, rather than saw, something moving in the cramped space. The pungent odor welled forward, blanketing him with its rotten stench. Suddenly, he was slammed against the wall with terrific force. Pain exploded in his chest and gut. He opened his mouth to scream, but something was boiling in his throat, and then a stab like lightning tore through his skull, leaving only darkness behind.

PART ONE

MUSEUM OF

UNNATURAL

MYSTERY

= 3 =

New York, Present Day

The red-haired kid was clambering onto the platform, calling his younger brother a chicken, reaching toward the elephant’s foot. Juan eyed him silently, easing himself forward just as the kid’s hand touched the exhibit.

“Yo!” Juan yelled, breaking into a trot. “Hey, no touching the elephants.” The boy looked scared and snatched back his hand; he was still at an age where a uniform impressed him. Older ones—fifteen, sixteen—would give Juan the finger sometimes. They knew he was only a museum guard. Lousy fucking job. One of these days he was going to finish that equivalency shit and take the police exam.

He watched suspiciously as red-hair and little brother walked around the cases in the darkened hall, looking at the stuffed lions. At the case full of chimps, the boy started hooting and scratching under his arms, showing off for junior’s benefit. Where the hell were the parents?

Now Billy, the redhead, tugged his little brother into a chamber filled with African artifacts. A row of masks [18] with flat wooden teeth leered at them from a showcase. “Wow!” exclaimed Billy’s kid brother.

“That’s dumb ,” said Billy. “We’re going to see the dinosaurs.”

“Where’s Mommy?” said the kid, screwing his head around.

“Aw, she got lost,” said Billy. “Come on.”

They began to move through a vast, echoing hall filled with totem poles. At the far end, a woman holding a red flag was leading the final tour group of the day, her voice shrill. To Billy’s younger brother, the hall smelled faintly spooky, like smoke and old tree roots. When the group disappeared around a corner, the hall fell silent.

The last time they had been there, Billy remembered, they had seen the biggest brontosaurus in the world, and a tyrannosaurus and a trachydent. At least, that’s what he thought it was called, a trachydent. The teeth on the tyrannosaurus must have been ten feet long. That was just about the greatest thing Billy had ever seen. But he didn’t remember seeing these totem poles. Maybe the dinosaurs were through the next door. But that led only to the boring Hall of Pacific Peoples, full of jades and ivories and silks and bronze statues.

“Now look what you did,” said Billy.

“What?”

“You made me get lost, that’s what,” said Billy.

“Mommy’s gonna be real mad,” the kid said.

Billy snorted. They weren’t supposed to meet his parents until closing time, on the big front steps. He’d find his way out, no problem.

They wound through several more dusty rooms, down a narrow flight of stairs, and into a long dim hall. Thousands of little stuffed birds lined the walls from floor to ceiling, white cotton poking out of sightless eyes. The hall was empty and smelled of mothballs.

“I know where we are,” said Billy, hopefully, peering into the dimness.

The kid started to snuffle.

[19] “Shut up,” said Billy. The snuffling stopped.

The hall took a sharp dogleg, ending in a darkened cul-de-sac full of dust and empty display cases. There were no visible exits except back through the hall of dead birds. The footfalls of the children echoed hollowly, far from the other Sunday tourists. Against the far side of the chamber stood a rolling barricade of canvas and wood, pretending unsuccessfully to be a wall. Letting go of his brother’s hand, Billy walked up and peered behind the barricade.

“I been here before,” he said confidently. “They’ve closed this place off, but it was open last time. I bet we’re right below the dinosaurs. Lemme just see if there’s a way up.”

“You’re not supposed to go back there,” the kid brother warned.

“Listen, stupid, I’m going. And you’d better wait.” Billy ducked behind the barricade, and a few moments later the kid heard the squeal of metal as a door was pulled open.

“Hey!” came Billy’s voice. “There’s a spiral staircase here. It only goes down, but it’s cool. I’m gonna try it out.”

“Don’t! Billy!” the kid cried, but the only answer was retreating footsteps.

The kid started to bawl, his thin voice rising in the gloom of the hall. After a few minutes he fell to hiccupping, sniffed loudly, and sat down on the floor. He started pulling on a little flap of rubber that was coming off the toe of his sneaker, working it loose.

Suddenly, he looked up. The hall was silent and airless. The lights in the cases threw black shadows on the floor. A forced-air duct thumped and began to rumble somewhere. Billy was gone for real now. The kid started to cry again, louder this time.

Maybe it would be okay if he followed Billy. Maybe it wasn’t such a scary thing after all. Maybe Billy had gone ahead and found his parents, and they were waiting [20] for him, there on the other side. But he had to hurry. The Museum was probably closed by now.

He stood up and slipped behind the partition. The hall continued on, the cases filled with the dust and mold of long-neglected exhibits. An ancient metal door on one side of the hall was slightly ajar.

The kid walked up to it and peered in. Behind the door was the top landing of a narrow spiral staircase that circled downward out of sight. It was even dustier here, and there was a strange smell in the air that made his nose wrinkle. He didn’t want to stand on those steps, at all. But Billy was down there.

“Billy!” he called. “Billy, come up! Please!”

In the cavernous gloom, his echoes were the only answer. The child sniffled, then gripped the railing and began walking slowly down into darkness.

= 4 =

Monday

As Margo Green rounded the corner of West Seventy-second Street, the early morning sun struck her square in the face. She looked down a minute, blinking; then, tossing her brown hair back, she crossed the street. The New York Museum of Natural History loomed before her like an ancient fortress, its vast Beaux Arts facade climbing ponderously above a row of copper beeches.

Margo turned down the cobbled driveway that led to the staff entrance. She walked past a loading dock and headed for the granite tunnel leading to the interior courtyards of the Museum. Then she slowed, wary. Flickering stripes of red light were painting the mouth of the tunnel in front of her. At the far end, she could see ambulances, police cars, and an Emergency Services vehicle, all parked at random.

Margo entered the tunnel and walked toward a glass pillbox. Normally, old Curly the guard would be dozing in his chair at this time of the morning, propped up against the pillbox corner, a blackened calabash pipe [22] resting on his ample front. But today he was awake and standing. He slid the door open. “Morning, Doctor,” he said. He called everyone ‘doctor,’ from graduate students to the Museum Director, whether they owned that title or not.