The Guardian (43 page)

The old man nodded.

“Could you maybe help me and my friend?” He stepped onto the porch.

The old man looked Jason up and down and in a thick accent asked, “Now why would I want to do that?”

It caught Jason off guard. “I’m sorry. It’s just—” “Only one reason you come out here,” the old man pointed at him with a raised eyebrow. “You think you can find it?” Jason looked back at Anna for help.

“Well, let me tell you,” the old man continued. “Is nothing out there! Better men than you have tried. They’re all dead. They spend their whole lives looking through that desert trying to find a fairy tale. Every one of them. And they all have fancy equipment. Look at you!” the old man spat. “You show up here with your beat-up Jeep and pretty girlfriend. You have no supplies! What! You just sniff it out? Go back to wherever it is you came from. Forget this fairy tale!”

“Thanks for your help,” Jason said sourly.

He walked back to the Jeep, took out his backpack, got his map, and spread it out on the hood. Anna stood next to him, looking over his shoulder.

“If the map’s correct,” he said, “we should be here.” He pointed with his finger. “According to where Thomas thought the garden should be”—he marked it with his other hand—”we need to walk that way.” He pointed in the direction of the old man’s shack. “It looks like it could be a long walk. Maybe a couple of hours.”

“Well then,” Anna said and slung her backpack over her shoulder, “let’s get moving.”

They could feel the old man’s beady eyes watching them as they walked through the village. Jason was right. It took almost two and a half hours to get to their destination. The first hour they climbed over rocky terrain, stopping every so often to rub out a cramp or get a drink from the canteen. After that, they spent the next hour climbing sand dunes. The sand made breathing difficult, so Jason took an old shirt out of his bag and ripped it into strips that they tied around their heads. It wasn’t the most brilliant invention, but

it did the trick. The last half hour they walked across a barren strip of desert, the sun beating down on them and the temperature rising with every step. They both thought they would soon pass out when finally, on the horizon, they could see the dark waters of the Persian Gulf.

As they approached the beach, the waves crashed against the sand like cymbals in a performance of a John Phillips Sousa march. They stood at the shoreline, letting mist cool them off. Jason sat down in the sand and retrieved the map.

“Now all we have to do is find the river channel,” he said.

“Oh right! There couldn’t be more than a couple thousand miles of coastline here!” Anna said sarcastically. “Shouldn’t take us but a couple of minutes.”

Jason smiled and pulled out a small GPS device from his pack. “Actually, it may take about ten to twenty,” he said, pushing a couple of buttons on the contraption.

Anna looked closer and said, “Where did you get that?”

“I found it inside a lamp in the study.” He saw the questions on her face. “Don’t ask! Thomas already has four places marked for examination. It’s tracking right now to let us know exactly where we are in relation to those marks. If we followed our map and compass right, we should be right here.” He pointed to the farthest southern point marked. “From here, we can work our way north.”

Anna rubbed the sweat from her forehead. “Jason, this garden was lost how long ago?”

“Long, long, long time ago,” he said.

“And how are we going to find a riverbed that has eroded away for the last however many years? We’re talking thousands of years, right?”

“Yep! Pretty exciting, huh?”

“Pretty unrealistic!” She plopped down in the sand beside him.

“Seriously! How are we supposed to find a riverbed that’s been buried by sandstorms?”

“We don’t.” He continued fidgeting with the gadget.

Anna threw up her arms in surrender. “What am I doing here! This is ridiculous!”

Ignoring her, Jason stood up and began walking down the beach. “Relax,” he called over his shoulder. “We don’t have to. Thomas already did it for us.”

Now she was totally confused. What was he talking about? She grabbed her backpack and chased after him. “Hey! Wait up!” She jogged the twenty-yard gap between them. When she caught up, she said, “What do you mean?”

Jason removed his backpack as he kept walking. He took out a few photos and handed them to Anna.

“What are these?”

“Those are satellite imaging photos that your granddad had done right before he died. Also in the lamp. I already told you—Don’t ask! I’m telling you, Anna, he knew. He had it figured out.

All of it.”

“Except the key.”

“Yeah, but he knew where the garden is.” He stopped walking. “It’s kind of a shame, you know.” “What’s that?” she asked.

“Thomas was a Christian. He should’ve been able to figure out what the ‘key’ was. He would’ve been the one to do this.”

“I wish it were him,” Anna said somberly.

Jason continued walking. “I’m sure he’s looking down on you right now, gathering all of his friends and family around to watch you make the most significant discovery in the history of mankind.” He stopped walking again. “This is the first one. We’re here.”

They both looked around. Nothing seemed special about the place. Just a stretch of beach. The shoreline was a mixture of rock and sand.

“So now what?”

“Well,” Jason sighed, “I’m not sure. The scroll says that God will open the way like He did at the point of no escape. The only thing that makes sense to me is the Israelites and the parting of the Red Sea. Apparently God will open the sea and we’ll find it.”

Anna stood there looking dumbfounded at him. “You’re serious.”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay. I know I’m new at the whole Christian thing, but parting the sea? Maybe back in Moses’ day that kind of thing happened all the time. Not so much these days.”

“And that’s where the key becomes the issue!” Jason said smiling. “Believing in Jesus Christ is a faith issue. We’re called to walk by faith, not by sight. And we have to have faith that it will happen. We need to pray.”

He took her hand, and they knelt on the sand. They both began to pray that God would open the waters for them. Anna wasn’t sure if it was because she was so new to this, but she found herself being distracted easily. Finally, she opened her eyes. Jason was still praying.

She sensed that there was something else vying for her attention. As she looked around, she saw a very strange thing. A dove sat perched atop a rock about a hundred feet away, looking straight at her. She didn’t know why, but she needed to go to it. She let go of Jason’s hand and started walking. She heard Jason stop praying, but he didn’t say anything to her. She could sense him behind her. Finally, she felt him take her hand as he caught up. Neither said anything.

As they got closer to the dove, it fluttered and took to the air. But it only flew another couple hundred feet down the beach before landing on another rock that jutted out from the sand. It sat there, as if beckoning them to it.

Again they followed the bird. It did this five more times, each time getting farther and farther away along the beach. Jason felt like he needed to say something. Ask what they were doing. But Anna seemed to be in some kind of trance.

At last the dove found a resting place. It sat, of all places, on a limb of a small olive branch sticking out of the sand. When they got there, Anna stuck out her finger, and the bird climbed on to her hand.

“This is it.” Anna said. “We’re here.”

Jason looked at her astonished. “You think? I mean a dove in the middle of the desert who leads us to a piece of vegetation that has absolutely no business growing here! Yeah, I’d say this is it!”

He checked his GPS system. They were directly on top of the third marked location. A sense of awe came over him. This was actually happening!

“So now what?” Anna asked.

Jason started to say something when the air all around them suddenly turned cool. Dark clouds whipped in from the east, covering the sky. The dove fluttered again, let out a squawk, and flew away. The atmosphere all around took on an ominous air.

“Jason,” Anna said shakily.

“I have no idea,” Jason said, stepping closer to her. A small tremor shook the ground beneath their feet. The waves splashed all around them from the beach. “It’s an earthquake!” “No,” Jason shouted back. “Worse!”

The ground shook violently. They couldn’t stand. She cupped

her hands over her mouth to yell something to him but never got the words out.

The blood drained from her face, and panic stopped her dead in her place as the ground suddenly split wide open. The crevice groaned. The earth tilted.

And into the crack in the earth, Jason vanished.

A
s suddenly as the tremors started, they disappeared, but the clouds remained and the air was still cool. Darkness had taken over the midday sun like an eclipse.

Anna had been violently thrown back against some rocks. Her ankle twisted, and she slammed her shoulder on the hard ground.

Shaking, she stood up and wiped the sand and dirt from her face. Her ankle immediately revolted against her, and she fell to one knee. The tears, she realized, weren’t coming from the pain, but from fear. She crawled over to the edge of the crevice and looked over. Jason lay unconscious about four feet down, wedged into the crack. His forehead was bleeding and his left arm looked to be bent in a direction it was never intended to be. She choked back a few tears and called out to him. Nothing. “God, please don’t let this be happening,” she cried. Again she shouted down to him. She watched as his eyes fluttered and opened.

“Jason! Are you all right?”

“I can’t move my left arm.”

Anna ignored the pain from her ankle and swung her legs over the edge of the crack. There wasn’t any room for a foothold, so she used the other side of the crack as a leverage point. Straddling the chasm, she bent down and grabbed hold of Jason’s left arm, the only one visible. The second she took hold of his hand, he let out a cry.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “It’s the only thing I can grab on to.”

“It’s all right. Just do it quick. I think it’s already dislocated, so you can’t do much more damage to it. Just do it fast.”

“Okay. Here we go. One … two … three!” She pulled with as much strength as she could muster. Loose rocks, dirt, and sand fell on top of him as she pulled. Jason let out a blood-curdling scream. It scared her so much that she let go and fell backwards. She scrambled back to the edge to look. Jason was sitting up, holding himself with his right arm.

“Good work there, Hercules,” he said. “Now help me out of here.”

“Are you all right? Did I hurt your arm worse?” “I’ll live. Get me out of here.”

She planted her feet again and grabbed hold of his good arm this time and hauled him out of the crevice. They both stood on their knees trying to catch their breath.

“Your head’s bleeding.” Anna pressed her cloth face covering to the gash.

“Yeah, I feel kind of woozy. Probably a concussion.” “What if it’s worse?”

“We’ll deal with it later.” He sat and looked around. “What the heck was that?” “I think we’d rather not know,” Jason said. She narrowed her eyes, suspicious that he knew and just didn’t want to frighten her. But on second thought, she was already

frightened enough. “So, what now? If this isn’t the place, then we’ve just plain lost our minds.”

“You need to go in,” Jason said.

“What do you mean?”

“When God parted the Red Sea, he told Moses to touch his staff to the water and the water would part. God could’ve told Moses to stick his toe in the water. Would’ve made no difference. It was then, always has been since, and will be till the end of time, about faith. Moses had faith that his staff would part the water because God said it would. Same thing with Joshua and the Jordan River. You need to walk into the water and believe that God is going to part it and give you entry to the garden.”

“Yeah, I get all that,” she said dismissively. “What about you?”

Jason looked somberly at her. “Anna, I wish more than anything that I could be the one who sets the first foot, since Adam and Eve, in that place. But I’m not the keeper of the scroll. You are. You have to go alone. You’re the one who was chosen. I know Father Vin would say the same thing.”

Anna panicked. “I … I can’t! I can’t do that by myself. Jason, you have to go with me.”

He smiled at her and took her hand. “Living your life for Christ means living a life of faith. Walking into that water will definitely prove you have faith!” He chuckled.

“That’s not funny!” She poked him in his dislocated shoulder.

“Ow!” He half laughed, half winced. “I know. But it’s true.”

Anna was scared, but she knew Jason was right. She’d known all along that when it came time to do this, she would have to do it alone. She wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded. She let go of his hand and walked into the water. She was waist deep when she heard a guttural moan and turned back.

Jason was lying on the ground struggling with a huge snakelike

creature. It was squeezing the life out of him. His face was red and his eyes were bulging out. He saw her coming back out of the water toward him. He managed to shout, “No! Go! Right now! Go!” And then his eyes closed, and he slumped in the creature’s grasp, unconscious. Or maybe dead.

A
nna screamed as she splashed through the water back up onto the beach. Jason’s motionless body lay in the sand. A massive white serpent coiled itself next to him. Its eyes were black and its tongue was forked. Its head was raised at her and moving back and forth in a weaving motion. It hissed as she got close. And then it spoke.

“Surely you would rather save his life than drown yourself in that ocean.”

She should have been surprised. A talking snake! But somehow, it seemed natural. “What are you going on about?”

The serpent uncoiled itself and started to slither closer. “He’s not dead, you know. Not yet. You could still save him.”