“Are you nuts?” Mack whispered back. “I’m not getting in there! It’s tiny! We could be locked in there forever. No air. Suffocating! I won’t be able to breathe. . . . Already I can’t breathe. . . . Like being buried alive! I can’t!”
Running footsteps were approaching. Flashlight beams cast skittery pools of light by the nearest entryway.
“Dude!” Stefan hissed. “Where did the Tong Elves hit you?”
Mack pointed to his left temple. So Stefan hit him in his right temple.
It was a while before Mack regained consciousness.
It was a while longer before he realized he had his head in Stefan’s armpit. And Jarrah’s head between his ankles.
Then it really hit him.
Mack opened his mouth to scream, but Stefan’s hand was clasped firmly over it, so all he could do was yell, “Mmmm! Mmmmm! Mph-puh-rrrnnn!”
“I think the coast is clear,” Jarrah said.
“Mmmm mmmm hhhrrggh!” Mack shouted as Stefan and Jarrah unpacked themselves.
“I’m going to take my hand away, Mack,” Stefan said. “No screaming, okay?”
Stefan released Mack, who sucked air for several minutes, like Nine Iron Trout after a marathon.
“Sorry,” Mack said. “I realize I’m nuts. Okay? I know it’s craziness.”
Jarrah patted him on the back. “No worries, mate; we’re all nuts or we wouldn’t be here, would we?” Then, more serious, she said, “I felt something in there. Something carved inside the cabinet. Give us the phone light for a minute.” She aimed his phone light into the cabinet. “Yeah. You can’t see it; it’s carved in bas-relief.”
She fumbled for Mack’s hand and pressed it against the carving. Mack felt intricate bumps and swirls.
“It’s decoration,” he hissed.
“Nah. I don’t think so. It was squashed into me bum for the better part of half an hour.”
Mack focused and ran his fingers carefully, delicately over the carved area. “It’s like letters.”
Jarrah looked over Mack’s shoulder, then reached past him to feel the letters. “I think it’s Vargran. It has the same letters.”
“Can you read it?”
“Not all of it. Just a bit. Feel that? That’s the number nine. Nine snakes? Nine snakes on a wall?”
“I saw that movie. Awesome!” Stefan said.
Mack listened hard. No more footsteps. The guards had definitely gone on to search the other 9,998 rooms.
“Yeah, that’s Vargran,” Jarrah said. “Nine hidden snakes. I think. And then a math problem.”
“A what?”
“A math problem: what is three fours?”
“Eight?” Stefan guessed. Then, in the embarrassed silence, “I’m not that good at math.”
“Twelve,” Jarrah said. She squeezed Stefan’s arm, comforting. “You’re good at other things.”
“How do we get out of here, that’s the question,” Mack said.
He turned reluctantly from the clock cabinet and stood up, sore knees cracking. Just in time to see Nine Iron thrust with his cane-sword.