in the occult. In his youth, Nokrum had traveled the world as something of a grave robber. His knowledge of bypassing booby traps had saved his skin time and again in his thirst for occult knowledge. And, while they were given that tour of the manor house, Rosa couldn’t help but notice the assorted hieroglyphs carved into the ceilings and walls. Something of a doodler, she put a few images down on paper and had them researched. The images were a mixture of Mayan and Egyptian incantations of a sacrificial nature. The experts she hired could not quite agree on what they would do.
As a result, Rosa decided to show up and see what would happen.
Somewhere around the half-hour mark, a burning body crashed through a second-floor window. Rosa picked up a pair of binoculars as the corpse hit the ground, riddled with multiple arrow-length projectiles. The remains were too charred to recognize. Murgathol consulted a map and figured that the deceased was either Peter or someone on his team. As the night progressed, they heard screams and the occasional explosion from inside the manor.
Sustained by Murgathol’s fine coffee, Rosa wondered if anyone would make it out.
Just before dawn, two team members exited the mansion through different first-floor windows and limped outside. One was a member of Rhea’s team. The other was a member of Todd’s team. Utterly terrified, they were covered with assorted cuts and burns. After the medics tended to the survivors, and gave each of them a pill for their nerves, Rosa asked them what happened.
The survivor from Todd’s team, a former marine demo expert, poured himself a stiff drink and then told his tale. He said that they encountered traps at every turn. About an hour into the search, Todd was sliced in half by a huge pendulum (hidden in the ceiling). With Todd dead, his former employees decided to abandon the search and backtrack through the traps they had already found and disarmed. The problem was that when they backtracked, they ran into new traps that they had not detected the first time through. In the end, he was the only survivor.
Rhea’s team member – a retired archaeologist – had also recounted his nightmarish experience of running into dozens of traps. They tried to talk Rhea into leaving but she ignored them. Two hours into the search, she had fallen through a section of the floor, down to her waist. While the deadfall trap was only three feet deep, it was halfway filled with hundreds of scorpions. By the time they managed to get her out, she had been stung dozens of times. They left her corpse behind and simply tried to find the nearest way out. However, the windows and doors were surrounded by ingenious traps, which slaughtered everyone else on the team.
Neither team found one single jewel.
Murgathol promised to “generously” compensate them for their troubles … once they signed a non-disclosure agreement. The pair of would-be treasure hunters regarded the lawyer with suspicion. Then they looked at the multi-million-dollar mansion behind him and reluctantly agreed. As the sun rose, Rosa asked Murgathol if he thought anyone else was still alive in there. The lawyer merely shook his head as he pulled out the remote and disarmed the security system.
Oddly enough, the front doors of the manor house swung open fifteen minutes after daybreak. A thin man with a nice black suit emerged. While Rosa had not attended his funeral, she did see a few recent photos of Hugh Nokrum. Unless he had another son she didn’t know about, the man exiting the manor house was indeed her father … only he now looked to be in his mid-thirties!
As if on cue, the medics and manservant whipped out silenced pistols and gunned down the two wounded survivors. Then they turned their weapons on Rosa, who glared at Murgathol as she raised her hands. The lawyer merely gave her a smug grin and signaled the gunmen to hold their fire.
Hale and hearty, Nokrum shook hands with Murgathol and thanked him for making the necessary arrangements. Nokrum then turned to Rosa and gave her a fatherly hug. She asked him what had just happened. Nokrum explained that he had learned of a way to cheat death long ago. All that was required was a voluntary sacrifice of sufficient size – say, at least three of his offspring (hence the large number of illegitimate children). Hugh explained that he didn’t raise any of his kids for fear of becoming too attached to any of them when the time came.
So, he concocted this plan and retained Murgathol – an old school chum – to enact it. Murgathol handled everything to perfection: from bringing the siblings together to having Nokrum’s body placed in the sub-basement ritual vault. Ironically, he found Reuben’s corpse just outside of the vault door. The clever lad had almost avoided the acid traps.
With the deaths of those five siblings, their combined life energies not only raised Hugh Nokrum back from the dead but (much to his surprise) made him roughly thirty years younger to boot. The billionaire figured that the two extra siblings were responsible for his renewed youth. Frankly, he was disappointed that so many of his children were foolish enough to participate in such a dangerous event.
Rosa asked him if there were really any precious stones in that death trap of a mansion. With a laugh, Nokrum admitted that they were all tucked away inside of a wall within the main foyer – just beyond the front doors! It was a neutral sector of the mansion that no one had apparently bothered to search. Each team passed right by the treasure last night, eager to get to their respective areas and begin the treasure hunt.
Rosa asked Nokrum what would happen next.
Nokrum explained that Murgathol would liquidate the mansion and all of his other hard assets. Then Hugh would get a facelift, run off with his wealth, and live comfortably abroad. And, of course, he’d design a new deathtrap of a mansion and sire more children for a rainy day.
Nokrum gave Rosa a peck on the forehead and confessed his pride that at least one of his children was worthy enough to bear his genes. But unfortunately, she’d have to die. With a cocky smile, he left the tent to bask in the warm fall morning. Rosa asked him what Hell was like. Nokrum’s smile abruptly vanished as he remembered the last six weeks of his death. His troubled expression shifted to one of anger as he ordered Murgathol’s goons to kill his only surviving child.
The trio of shooters stepped out of the tent, raised their pistols … and then died as eighteen silenced shots ripped through them from a distant tree line.
Murgathol dove to the ground with surprising speed.
Nokrum turned and ran for his mansion.
Rosa lifted her left wrist to her face and pointed at her father with her right index finger.
”Take him,” she said evenly into a small radio strapped under her blouse’s left sleeve.
Blood erupted from the back of Nokrum’s head from a well-placed round. The wealthy occultist fell over dead (again), his face a mask of shock and pain. From the manicured lawn, Murgathol could only gawk up at Rosa.
“I guess I did bring my own team,” Rosa admitted as she gestured for Murgathol to rise. “I wasn’t sure what would happen. But I figured I’d want some ‘experts’ of my own on standby, so I could keep my options open.”
Murgathol stood up, brushed a few lawn clippings from his suit, and took a few moments to compose himself. He had advised Nokrum to hire perimeter security for this function. But Nokrum refused, convinced that the fewer witnesses involved, the better.
“What would’ve happened if one of your siblings won the competition?”
“They would’ve been jacked,” Rosa grinned. “We’d take the stones. And they’d get the multi-billion-dollar estate.”
“That would’ve been … fair,” Murgathol replied with a forced smile.
“Give
