Deep Sea One (18 page)

Blots of dark sand appeared all around their feet as the giant raindrops commenced their pelting. Above them the swiftly floating clouds had now calmed and hovered in their place to accommodate the coming downpour. Instinctively the group sought shelter under the trees surrounding the shrine, but they kept at the mantra until the four of them found their unison, even throwing in a tempo as they grew comfortable with the words. The thunder growled so loud that the mountain shook under them and sent them cowering in fear of a rock fall. But the party soon realized that the thunder did not come from the heavens above them, but emanated deep from the bowels of the mighty peak that towered so high that optical illusion provided a terrifying impression of it falling forward over them.

"Oh my God, we're going to die," Sam shouted at Nina and grabbed her arm firmly against him. Calisto lowered her head to avoid any injury she might sustain from whatever the earth had planned for them. Purdue hid behind a tree trunk nearby, waiting it out.

In front of them the gargantuan face began to move, not as a face should, but instead rearranging its features by shifting the marble blocks that it consisted of into some portal or doorway. Moving simultaneously by the hand of some ancient engineering genius, the giant slabs of white stone parted. Purdue and his group stood in dumbstruck awe and no small amount of fear, beholding the wondrous transformation without a thought for the Spear they had come to find.

"I told you its face changed," Calisto shouted with newfound vigor, as she moved forward to where Nina and Sam stood to fully regard the majestic event. Nina was mute, not in awe, but in concern for not knowing if she would have to face a cramped dark space again. Behind the open doorway it was black as coal. There could be nothing but a constrictive chute to usher her inside and who knew what was waiting there? What if she got stuck in a confined doorway and found herself unable to breathe properly? All these intimidating notions swam through her mind, but only the thought of the money and academically kicking Matlock in the balls drove her to cultivate some emergency courage. Sam had his high-definition camera out and recorded every shift in the slabs as it happened.

Purdue smiled. He felt regal and invincible now, having attained the goal of finding the shrine that was so carefully hidden in surreptitious clues. The showering rain did not perturb any of them and Gary stole closer to the others when he finally relaxed from his agitation. By the time the structure had completed its metamorphosis it looked nothing like a face, save for the glaring multicolored eyes, which remained intact with the forehead. It had formed a stunning entranceway adorned around the edges with a plethora of decorations, etched on the opposite sides of each slab, now turned to face outward.

Sam captured the detail with his extended lens and asked Nina to find his video camera in his bag. It also had an infrared/ thermal interface for filming in the dark. Purdue stepped forward where the entrance beckoned, stunned slightly by the awful stench of rotten plant matter, old air and guano released for the first time in decades. The others followed him into the rocky corridor that led into the darkness. Tapping Calisto on the arm, Sam pointed to a pile of old tarnished copper bowls and goblets, an old bent gong and a stack of folded rotten cloths, which might have been the attire of priests a very long time ago. It was all left there in an old forgotten corner of excavated rock that functioned as a small room a good century ago, by the looks of it. From inside the chamber the light coming from outside hardly illuminated more than three meters past the threshold, lending them no visibility whatsoever.

"Flashlights, people," Purdue said in a low voice. He was wary of speaking too loudly and drawing attention from whatever was inside, if anything. Also knowing how old the shrine was, and that it responded to sound to open and close, he was reluctant to tempt fate by emitting above normal sonic waves. His company was equally careful at this and within moments they were reduced to five floating orbs of light inside the enormous cavernous chamber known as the Godwomb.

"It is quite imperative that we keep our voices as low as possible. The acoustics in this cavern are extremely sensitive to aural vibrations. The very walls in here reverberate our energy and I don't even want to know what will happen if we speak up. So please, people, whispers," Purdue informed his party before continuing into the passage.

Nina remembered reading the same warning in the grimoire before she knew exactly what the Godwomb was. It read that the mountain consisted of various geomorphological agents, some of which were potent conductors of sound. Now she knew why the mantra was the key. Sound was the language of the mountain. In a straight line they walked behind Purdue and Nina, Sam and Gary with Calisto lagging behind. Her face was pallid and her breathing labored, but she walked on her own without much discomfort. Sam, the gentleman that he was when the mood took him, carried part of her pack with his to alleviate the weight from her weak body.

In the stale white beams of their flashlights they moved slowly, careful not to tread too loudly. Their torches explored every crevice along the walls and clay-like ceiling no more than a meter above Gary, the tallest of the group. Trying with all her will to ignore the narrowing tunnel she navigated, Nina studied the terrain on which they were walking. The cavern floor was immensely slippery, the product of guano and trapped permeating water similar to the nature of the walls. Fighting her impending claustrophobia, Nina busied her mind with thoughts of what they might discover and what it would mean to her career, but just underneath her positive aspirations lurked the constricting threat of the gradually shrinking passage of cold wet rock and infinite darkness around her. She dared not show it. Another meltdown was out of the question this time, she had promised herself before she came on this expedition.

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Chapter 23

Calisto kept watching their rear, as was her habit of hypervigilance when in an unfamiliar or perilous environment. Perhaps she was paranoid or maybe the altitude illness had spun her imagination into a full-force carnival, but she could have sworn she heard movement behind them. On the winding path up she did the same, taking stock of any followers, but there was no one on the higher path they were on. All the people they encountered were using the lower, broader gravel road, so there was a very slim chance that they were being trailed. Then again, she was the only one who noticed the shrine's face moving while the others remained oblivious and blamed it on her less-than-sharp perceptions. Her training and her innate distrust for everything made her an excellent sentinel.

Suddenly the group ahead of her stopped and she almost walked into Gary's heel.

"What's going on?" she asked Nina, as quietly as she could.

"Drop," Nina whispered from the mouth of the tunnel.

Below the sudden absence of floor, a vast and deep grotto rested in the bowels of the mighty mountain. So enormous was it, that the beams from their torches vanished midway through the air without falling on any object. It made it impossible for them to determine the nature of their environment.

"It's like standing in the middle of a black hole," Sam remarked, as he looked around in the pitch darkness, hoping to hone in on anything solid.

"Yes. Just reach out in front of you. It is as if the dark is solid, as if you can touch it with your fingertips," Nina added.

"As if it is alive," Purdue unsettled them, his voice seeping with wonderment. "Come, we have to make more light. Where are the flares, Gary?"

"Hang on," Gary said, and placed one of the smaller duffle bags on the ground to retrieve a flare for both of them. Purdue volunteered to descend the drop of the wall face first and Gary agreed to follow close behind him.

"My God, this place is colossal," Gary remarked, as he helped Sam tie the rip cord to a jutting stalagmite farther back in the tunnel. Nina shivered from a chill that stung her as she still dealt with the enclosed space they were in. She watched Purdue and Gary disappear over the edge of the tunnel. It was not far, but the step down was deep enough for them to use climbing equipment to abseil to the floor of the Godwomb. Sam passed the remaining flares to the two women and took one for himself. They cracked the flares almost simultaneously. With blinding colored light the cavern lit up. It had a strange moving shimmer to its surfaces, which reminded Nina of liquid phosphorus. One by one they climbed down to the floor a few meters under the tunnel mouth.

"Nothing," Purdue scoffed as he turned to light the place and seek out anything that resembled the object he was looking for. He grimaced with defeat, the disappointment overwhelming him, but he did not show it.

"Calisto wants to stay up there," Sam told the others when he came down. "She says someone should guard the tunnel."

"Good idea," Gary said to himself. Even though Purdue's bodyguard was female, and ill, he had seen her in action and felt assured that she could hold her own and warn them if anything suspicious happened. Purdue kept spinning around, looking in every crevice and crater for a chest or some sort of antique containment device that could possibly hold the Spear of Destiny.

"Okay, I'll just say it," Nina whispered, as her light yielded nothing but rock formation and bat shit, "I don't think there is anything here. How do we know it had not been discovered by someone else before us and removed?"

"We would have heard of such a discovery, Nina. No, it has got to be here somewhere," Sam said.

"Great, why don't you go first?" she snapped at him, pointing at a huge heap of waste behind him. Gary walked from one side of the great hall to the other side, just to measure how big the cave really was. Counting his steps he reached the other side halfway between one hundred and sixty-two and one hundred and sixty-three approximate meters. From where he stood, the rest of the party was barely visible were it not for their handheld lights and the occasional pitch of voice echoing through the watery chamber. He waved his light from side to side to get their attention.

"What the hell is he doing way over there?" Nina asked.

"Well, we cannot shout to him, can we? Just keep looking for anything unusual," Purdue urged them, trying not to sound his frustration.

"Ummm . . ." Nina said, but refrained from anything more. Her eyes traveled somewhere in the air ahead, her countenance frozen in deep scrutiny. She saw something glimmer in a cavity formed by a collection of stalactites hanging from the high ceiling of the cavern.

It had not been there before. Moving slowly toward Gary, Nina kept her eyes fixed on the ethereal sheen above them, only occasionally darting her eyes to Gary to keep track of his position.

"Gary," her whisper echoed loudly across the floor of craters and mounds, "move toward me with your flare above your head."

"What?" he asked, unable to hear what she was saying.

"Shit. Come to me with your flare up like this," she mouthed her words for him to lip read and gestured what she wanted him to do. As the two of them approached each other, Sam and Purdue's attention was drawn to them. The two men abandoned their own seeking to join Nina with their lights and, looking up, they all beheld what looked like a star lodged in the rock.

"What on earth is that?" Purdue marveled.

"A piece of the sun, I venture to guess. Nothing on earth is that bright," Sam replied. They had no idea that the clouds had dissipated somewhat after the showers, so his theory was apt. Anyone who regarded what he did might very well have agreed without hesitation. As they gathered together under the remarkably radiant glare emanating through the rocks, they noticed that it was in fact a large drawing, concealed behind layers of residue accumulated over many years in isolation.

For a while they discussed how to reach the drawing in the rock to rid it of its moldy, layered captor in order to see what it depicted. Sam would also shoot a few frames of the drawing for their records. But suddenly the glare began to wane, abandoning the cave to shadow until finally it was drowned by the swelling clouds. With the powerful light gone the cavern became pitch dark once more.

☼

Chapter 24

Their lights were withering in their hands and the flashlights were useless at this distance, so Nina quickly made her way across the floor toward the tunnel's entrance where Calisto was waiting. She whispered hard, "Calisto, we need more flares!"

No response.

"Calisto?"

Silence.

"Sergeant Fernandez!" she tried. "Yeah, right, as if she would answer you if you addressed her differently. Fucking idiot," Nina cussed herself for the illogical attempt. Her eyes looked up to the silent passage and the dwindling light stirring shadows against the rock walls. She knew she would have to climb up the rope, which discouraged her utterly. Nina felt a wave of worry pulse through the pit of her stomach at Calisto's absence as she started climbing to where the last flares were. She did not know what to think. Purdue's bodyguard had the most difficult psychology to figure out, even by Nina, who was known for her dead-on judge of character. Calisto was polite enough and appeared to be easy to talk to, but there was something about her dark stare and her tough demeanor. It was obvious that she did not tolerate any shit from people, no matter what their status, but in contrast she seemed compassionate and humorous. The culmination of all these traits made her hard to read and Nina was not sure if she could trust her. Now she was gone from her post and it felt dangerously suspicious to the historian, who was laboriously pulling herself up by the rope.

As she reached the last part a hand fell over hers, tugging the unsuspecting Nina upward.

From sheer fright and instinct Nina screamed.

Her cry reverberated through the chasms and crevices, filling the hollow leviathan mountain with thunderous echo. Bewildered the men froze in their place, dying flares being extinguished with every second that passed under the taboo resonance haunting the sensitive stone.