3. The Man In The Sarcophagus

The crate came late the next day. A large truck pulled up to her house and she had her large garage open. Her car parked over to the side. They didn’t say anything, but they shouldn’t. They were the ask no questions kind of people. They got paid to do jobs and then looked the other way. She was surprised when they pulled a ramp down and there was a small fork truck in the back. One man got on it and came down the ramp. The truck was low so it didn’t have a very steep angle anyways. 

She pointed to the garage and he dropped it off in there. They put the fork truck back on, got back into the vehicle and drove away. Barely two words were said and nothing was signed for. She looked at the crate and toward the truck turning left at the end of her driveway. She didn’t have any close neighbors. She pretty much lived in the middle of the woods in Maine of all places. It was a good place to work on dangerous objects. She went into the garage and closed the overhead door before moving over to the crate and biting her finger nails. 

Glancing over to where she had placed a mallet and crowbar she saw those stupid bowls were now sitting there. Seriously? She didn’t know if that should creep her out or not, but she looked back at the crate and curiosity got the better of her. The crate wasn’t very tall, maybe three feet, but it was eight feet long. She got the crowbar and mallet and proceeded to get the crate disassembled around the large kidney bean shaped item. Once the sides were off she took a step back and eyed the object.

Max hadn’t lied. It was as smooth as marble and black like obsidian glass. Light reflected off of it. There was gold lettering all over the thing. She could just barely feel a seam about an inch from the top which was flat. She stared at it for a while. The writing hard to decipher as it seemed a mix of Norse and something else. However she recognized a name that was written in an arch across the top.

The first one she read said Fenrisúlfr then Vánagandr, before Hróðvitnir. All names she’d seen in the research that she did. One phrase she picked out as well had a name in it. Stating that here within lay Fenrir, bound by glipenir and with blade and chain he would be held until Ragnarok. She was surprised she read it so well, like it clicked in her brain. Like she could always read it. Maybe that should have been a red flag to her, but she felt kind of excited and started to walk around the thing. That scientific geek part of her driving her onward. 

After about twenty minutes of reading it and the warning she ran her hand slowly around the lid. Stopped when she felt just the slightest difference. It didn’t feel like stone, it felt like metal. She scratched at it and pushed her thumb against it to see if there was actually something there. She jumped when it depressed and something shot out. A hilt of a sword. 

“Oh wow.” She said and wrapped a hand around the hilt, it was black and smooth. She pulled it out and it made noise as it slid against the stone. It was a very large broad sword that was a double edged black. The hilt a hand and a half width though hers fit on it just fine. The moment she pulled it all the way out, the weight made it fall more to the floor and tapped it slightly. There was a sudden crackle and the top of the lid looked to suddenly disintegrate and turn to black smoke that evaporated. She moved forward, she wasn’t too afraid. It was clearly sealed with magic, but no death curse that she could see or anything. Beside she had it open now.

Immediately she dropped the blade and gasped. It clanged to the floor and she was stunned, but was quick to move forward. She leaned in, because there was a man laying inside of the thing. She saw him take in a painful breath but he didn’t look awake, he did look emaciated. Like he was barely alive for the moment and she felt his head, he was cool to the touch. He had to be dehydrated and clearly starved. How long had he been in there? Who put him in there? Had Max actually stumbled onto some bizarre sacrificial chamber that people still practiced? 

“Oh my god.” Her first thought was to call an ambulance and get this man to a hospital. He shifted ever so slightly and she had no idea how he survived being in there. There couldn’t have been air left to breathe. The space was small and his body curved along the kidney shape. He was tall, clearly over six foot and nearly perfectly fit the space that was in there. 

“Wait don’t move!” She said when he started to open his eyes. He hadn’t made a sound other than to take in a breath. She was sure that he was going to be disorientated and confused. Hell, she didn’t even know if he could stand up with the state his body looked to be in. She could see his ribs and the skin looked like it was hanging off of him where muscle used to be. 

“Wait I said, let me get help you shouldn’t move!” She put a hand to his shoulder and tried to get him to stop and was surprised that he resisted. He looked like he should fall over at any second. He pushed at her hand and she tried again. His hair was a matted mess, and he had a good amount of facial hair. Like he hadn’t seen a comb or razor in years. 

“Look, stay here please. I’m going to call for help, you need to see a doctor.” She rushed into the house to where she had left her phone. She grabbed it and turned to run back through her kitchen to the hall that led to the garage. She had left the door open and was unlocking her phone as she ran forward and nearly ran him over. He was at the door and she gave a cry of alarm.

She hit him and he nearly went back. She grabbed for him instead to stop him from going down. Her phone went flying. It hit the concrete of the garage and just from the sound she knew it shattered. The screen at least. Damn it, perhaps she could get the voice activation to work or something to call 911. He leaned more on her and she helped to steady him and keep him up right.

“You shouldn’t be walking.” She told him but again he ignored her. Seriously, how was he standing with the state that he was in? She was starting to wonder if he understood her. Perhaps he spoke a different language so she tried in Old Norse. She was sure it would sound bad, but she did it anyway.

“You need to sit down. You’re hurt.” Or at least that’s what she hoped she said because it had been a long time since her studies. Reading it in her opinion was easier than saying it. His head shook and she heard him inhale harshly. He turned and nearly collapsed as he shoved the door near them open, it was a small bathroom. He took a few steps forward with her help, even though she wanted him to go to her living room and lay down until she could call for help. He suddenly fell to his knees and for such an emaciated man he had strength. 

“What are you doing!” She exclaimed aghast as he dipped a hand in the toilet and cupped the water to his mouth. Clearly he was dying for water. She tried to stop him and what she got was a very quiet growl like sound. She darted from the room grabbed a couple large glasses and ran back filling them and giving him that as his face was now in the toilet. She’d have laughed if he didn’t look so pathetic and in need.

He downed the first glass, and she handed him the second. Clearly liking that water better even if he’d fought her at first when she tried to hand it to him. He drank four glasses, and she thought he was going to throw it back up to be honest. That was a lot of water to put into your stomach. He should take it slower, look at him! There was a proper medical way to hydrate him she was sure. She was scared he would put his system into shock.

“Let me get my phone, you need help.” She spoke as he sat back against the wall. He put a hand to his stomach which looked distended now with the amount of water in it. He just shook his head again. Okay so he did understand, or she hoped so. She had no idea, could just be shaking it for no reason she could name.

“Please don’t get up!” She said. She’d turned to leave but he moved to try and stand. She was to worried about leaving him knowing he was going to try so she helped him instead. She could tell that he didn’t really want her help holding him up but needed it. They went out of the bathroom and she heard him inhale again a few times. Kind of like he was trying to smell something. She was going to take him left down the hall, but he refused that direction. It felt like she was suddenly fighting with a wall. 

He wanted to go forward into the kitchen. It was no use fighting him clearly so she brought him in there and let him lean against the cupboard as that was where he stopped. She tried to look at his face as his hair was covering most of it, she could see that his eyes were a piercing silver color, intelligent. He didn’t look as disorientated as his body clearly was. He didn’t have any clothes on, and he was definitely dirty, she could see a good number of what looked like some odd scrolling tattoo over him but that wasn’t her concern at the moment.

“Stay here, I’ll be right back okay?” He just looked at her.

“Do you have a name?” He didn’t speak just looked past her this time inhaling again. 

“Just stay here.” He didn’t respond. Didn’t even open his mouth to say a word. She darted around him to the garage to get her phone. He needed help, she wasn’t sure if she should have let him drink so much. 

She jogged into the garage, spotted her phone near the step there and grabbed it. The screen was shattered but she could still see most of it. She came back in and dialed 911 but before it went through the phone shut down. 

“Are you kidding me!” She shouted at it, the thing had full battery. She’d pulled it off the charger. Yeah sure she dropped it, but it was still intact besides a busted screen. She heard a crash as she came back in the house and was quick to go to where he was. He was down on the floor in front of the fridge which was now open and he was grabbing things out of it and tearing at it with his teeth to get to the food like a ravenous animal. 

He was literally eating part of the package to get at what was inside. He downed a whole package of hot dogs before she could reach him and then tossed the shredded plastic before grabbing an orange out and eating that with the rind. 

“I know you are hungry but you will make yourself sick. Let me take you to the hospital.” She pleaded again having set her phone on the counter behind them. He shrugged her off finishing the oranges and going for the egg carton. She reached for them to stop him and he swiped at her with a show of teeth. She swore his nails looked like claws. She was shocked for a moment and sat there with him as he started to eat the eggs raw, shell and all. She glanced up at the counter and saw that her phone was back on. She reached for it and it shut off. Cursing she set it down and it turned back on.

Frustrated, she picked it up again only for the same thing to happen. So she left it on the counter and when she tried to dial it shut off. Which made her pause and look at the man who was eating through her fridge at a rapid rate. Her dozen eggs were gone, he was downing the milk she had in there and tossed the jug. He went for the lettuce eating that too. She didn’t know how he hadn’t thrown up yet. Nor how his stomach could possibly be handling all the food he was shoving in it. Not humanly possible.

She touched his arm though because it didn’t look so boney anymore. His stomach was distended but it looked like he had put on a couple pounds since starting to devour her fridge. This made her frown and then she glanced at her phone which was on again. Okay, something clearly wasn’t adding up here. The guy was in a coffin more or less and should be dead from the lack of air alone. Her phone wouldn’t work when she touched it to get help. He looked like he’d put on weight over the past five minutes eating food.

Her brain said that the man was cursed, and she knew nothing about him. Why he was cursed, because let’s face it not everybody was cursed by evil. Some were cursed by good to stop the evil that they might do. She figured that her best bet was to see just how evil the man was. She would see if the energy around him was dark. If not then she could always test to see if the curse around him was. She went over and grabbed a charm, it was a simple piece of paper and the fastest and easiest way to detect dark energy. Or evil as some would call it, now was the time to test him before this escalated.