Hidden Gods

by Anthony Masters

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘I-I had to call.’

  ‘Yes? Yes – what is it?’

  ‘Brent is dead.’

  Hugo could not register the words at all. They did not mean anything.

  ‘I can’t hear.’

  ‘I said, Brent is dead. Dead.’ Her voice was shrill now. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hugo was shaking so violently that he was barely able to hold the receiver.

  ‘He killed himself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh yes, he did.’ She was absurdly truculent and self-righteous, as if he was doubting her word. ‘He threw himself over the cliffs – the one that looks across to the island. To Tiderace.’

  ‘Not there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy yelled down the phone. ‘There!’ She struggled to control herself. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this way. He left a note. He said he couldn’t stand the pressure – didn’t want to wake up to another day of it.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Hugo? Are you there?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘When are you coming home?’

  ‘As soon as I can.’ His mind was dull and grey and Hugo felt that it didn’t matter whether he lived or died. Brent. He mouthed the name. He heard the voice in his mind again. ‘The tide’s going out. It’s going to be OK. The castle walls will stand, Dad. We’ve beaten the waves.’

  ‘Brent killed himself – there’s not the slightest doubt,’ Lucy repeated tonelessly.

  ‘Don’t say any more, Lucy, not now.’ He didn’t want to hear her voice again – didn’t want to believe anything she said.

  7

  Earth to Earth

  The graveyard overlooked Tiderace, standing in a bowl-shaped hollow in the cliffs. The church tower was short and stunted but the nave was long and rather grand as befitted the worshipping place of so many wealthy, long-established Cornish families.

  The interior of St Lynton’s was crowded with members of the hospital staff – nurses, doctors and administrators – as well as a large contingent from the village and friends of the family.

  Hugo and Lucy sat in the front pew, facing Brent’s coffin just below the altar steps. At the back of the church were a number of reporters and photographers, there to record the headline news of Hugo’s release from the Gulf, and the domestic tragedy that had awaited him. He had, however, turned down all requests for television and radio interviews so the rat pack had to content themselves with a sighting only.

  Philippa, who had returned from Iran with him, was staying in Bodwell, a small town a few miles up the coast. They had both decided that her presence at the funeral would not be productive, and now, as he stood beside Lucy, he felt grateful that her new partner was also sufficiently tactful to have decided to stay away.

  Hugo studied the solid and reassuring face of the Anglican church – so far removed from the Middle Eastern wilderness of uncertainties. The pale stone of the altar, the carvings in the transepts, the stained glass showing Christ and his disciples on a lake, the restrained wall plaques, the muted flowers, the brass engravings on the stone-flagged floor – all gave him a degree of comfort. Here there were no visions of pyramids and winged serpents, no arid desert sand, no beatings and starvation, no ambiguity – nothing but solid sanctuary to the accompaniment of gulls and the pounding of surf on Cornish rock.

  His sense of loss for Brent was absolute, and the devastation inside him was increasing – an all-embracing misery that he knew Lucy shared. As the organ began to play Hugo turned his gaze on the natural wood coffin of his only child. A visionary, a dreamer, a guide; his gifts had destroyed him.

  After the news of Brent’s death there had been no opposition to their return, and he and Philippa had only re-encountered Ibrahim briefly before they left for the airport. He had been conciliatory, seemingly genuinely shocked and concerned at what had happened so far away in England. Hugo was surprised that he had given up and let them go so easily. At the same time, he knew instinctively that the unfinished business between them had to be resumed, although he had no idea how or when.

  Once in the air, without any sense of relief at being released, Hugo had wept for Brent and Philippa had made no attempt to comfort him, allowing his grief to spill over in the fortunately near-empty Club Class section of the Boeing.

  When he was at last drained of tears, Hugo had said, ‘He came to me – during Ibrahim’s hypnosis – and told me about our sandcasde and the incoming waves and then the miraculously retreating tide.’

  She had been silent for a while. Then Philippa had said, ‘If ever I doubted – which I don’t think I have – then that’s the surest piece of evidence I’ve heard. You must be so proud of him, Hugo.’

  ‘I let him down badly.’

  ‘Yes – you did. But his love came through – and yours for him. Besides, he’s merely discarded one life for another.’

  But Hugo had not been able to respond. He felt empty, her words meaningless.

  ‘He’ll make contact,’ she had persisted. ‘I know he will.’

  *

  As Brent’s coffin was lowered into the ground, Hugo and Lucy each dropped a single rose and hurried away, avoiding the vicar, mourners and the press who only managed a few shots whilst they ran towards the car and drove off at high speed. There was to be no wake, no baked meats, nothing – even for those who had travelled long distances and were already looking martyred. Hugo had been adamant and Lucy had readily agreed.

  As she drove him through the narrow Cornish lanes, she said, ‘I was going to come to Lizards and make you some tea.’

  ‘Not necessary.’

  ‘I don’t have to – ‘

  ’ – get to Tim’s house immediately.’ Hugo was patient. ‘I know – but if you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone.’ ‘That’s unlike you,’ said Lucy with brutal frankness.

  ‘I’ve learned to have some inner resources.’

  ‘Out there?’ Hugo was silent.

  ‘You don’t want to talk about it?’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Hugo replied woodenly.

  ‘I quite understand.’ But she sounded as if she did not. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Philippa Neville. The woman you shared the experiences with – the one who perhaps helped with the inner resources.’ She paused, regretting the cheap remark.

  ‘Yes?’ Hugo was too locked up in his own misery to notice.

  ‘Are you friends?’

  ‘Just fellow travellers.’

  She changed the subject quickly. ‘Did I tell you Brent went back to writing his journal again?’

  ‘No, you didn’t tell me. What was he writing about?’ Hugo was grateful for her generosity.

  ‘Reincarnation.’

  Hugo said nothing, but for a moment a tiny spark of hope sprang up inside him.

  As Lucy pulled into the driveway of Lizards, she rummaged on the back seat and produced a crumpled exercise book. ‘You’d better take a look.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I got supplies in, and all the beds have been – ’ She broke off, floundering, as Hugo laid a gentle hand on her wrist.

  ‘I’m going to be all right,’ he said, as firmly as he could.

  Hugo took the exercise book into his study, switched on the electric fire, poured out a large vodka and went to the window, looking out across the cliffs to Tiderace. He would scan the journal and ring Philippa later. It was a gusty evening and the grasses were streaming in the wind; he could almost hear them rustling and rasping above the surging of the sea against the rocks. Rain began to spit over the headland and gradually mist stole across Tiderace, blotting out the foreshore.

  After a while he returned to the fire and the chair and the drink. Opening the exercise book with its tightly scribbled pages, he studied it carefully. At first he had some difficulty in understanding the handwriting, but after a while he had the feeling of being drawn into the text.

&nbs
p; The Great Pyramid, a survivor of the Flood, was placed at the centre of the earth as a living model of man’s destiny to a higher evolution. Once man can centre his solar and magnetic energy and align this energy with the pyramid, he can be synthesized into new forms of light to go beyond our solar system to other star systems in the universe.

  The Great Pyramid is part of a universal grid of ancient religious, political and oracular sites. The frequencies of other planets communicate through crystalline sound devices built into the stone passageways between the royal chambers. A calendar is implanted within the steps to the King’s Chamber, and the Queen’s Chamber has the perfect measurements for deciding the best time to communicate with other worlds.

  The Great Pyramid was conceived of by Thoth the Adantean, and built by Hermes and Isis for the mysteries of space guidance and secrets of impregnable defence. It houses every device needed to calculate the range of stars, the earth’s latitude and longitude, the diameter and the thickness of the earth’s crust as well as the inner earth.

  Atlanteans were sun worshippers and built their temples in the shape of pyramids. Solomon, Moses, Pythagoras and Apollonius were initiated in the Great Pyramid.

  The Egyptian Copt historian, Masudi, writing during the Middle Ages, recounted that the Great Pyramid was built during the reign of the sun gods, before the Great Flood, to safeguard ancient knowledge. It was built in limestone to stop erosion before the last geophysical shift. There is evidence that it has experienced one or more floods since fossils and shells from the sea have been found around the base, and indications of salt deposits have been discovered within the Queen’s Chamber.

  Hermes buried the secrets of Atlantis in the Chamber of Records under the Sphinx and the pyramid to be found before the next shift in the earth’s axis. The passageways between the two chambers record the ages of man upon the earth and predict the total numbers of years yet remaining before the new millennium.

  The earth is a gigantic magnet charged with electromagnetic force. Many prehistoric remains of buildings, walls and roads were once part of a planned instrument extending over parts of Great Britain and the rest of the world, as a means of marking and channelling lines of electromagnetic force.

  There is a startling resemblance between the ruins of the Inca and the Cyclopean ruins in Italy, Greece and different parts of the world. They may have belonged to the same world culture to not only mark but to control the magnetic field of the earth.

  Legends of space and cosmic exploration appear to have been current in the most remote periods of recorded civilization. According to the Secret Doctrine, based on the Stanzas of Dyzan, science does not deny the presence of man on earth from great antiquity, though that antiquity cannot be determined since that presence is conditioned on the unascertained age of geological periods. But mankind came from the stars, not from the primeval slime of earth, and has developed into the form now familiar to us. Men and women were not always of that shape. They were Atlanteans – wholly different from their human progeny.

  Zecharia Sitchin unearthed evidence in the Earth Chronicles of a superior race of beings who once inhabited our world; travellers from the stars who arrived aeons ago and planted the genetic seed that would ultimately blossom into mankind.

  There are references to space flights, space vehicles, and fairly accurate descriptions of how earth would look from space, again connected with gods and supernatural heroes. Descriptions in Indian writings of powered aircraft, air attacks on cities, radiation and radar, would be unbelievable had they not been written before their modern counterparts came into existence.

  According to Barbara Marciniak and the Pleiadians, earth is a cosmic library – a free-will zone, designed to be an intergalactic exchange centre of information shared through frequencies of the genetic process. The earth is a highway for energies to travel to our space zone – easy to reach from one galaxy to another.

  Hugo paused to switch on the light, his head reeling with Brent’s prose, but aware there was something very authoritative about the Journal.

  Thoth-Hermes came from Orion and materialized on earth approximately one and a half million years ago. He was able to communicate by thought and disassembled and reassembled the atoms and molecules of objects, lifting them from one place to another. Through this once simple method we have giant heads on Easter Island, the Great Pyramid of Egypt and other remnants of far greater civilizations than we know today.

  Thoth conquered the knowledge of the laws of time and space and his wisdom made him ruler over various Atlantean colonies, including the Mayans.

  Thoth took the Lemurians who wanted scientific power to an island continent named Atlantis. There they began to build a great technical civilization, linking their minds together and projecting holographic images which gradually solidified, took form and became real. It was not long before they started to export their civilization and wanted to rule not only the Lemurians, but the spirits of nature, the devas and the elementáis. Under Thoth’s rule the consciousness of his scientists grew darker, and their abuse of nature eventually changed the earth’s balance and was to destroy this advanced civilization.

  It was inevitable that war developed between the Atlanteans and the Lemurians, but also between the Atlanteans and nature. Thoth and his scientists created a crystal so finely chiselled as to absorb the sun’s rays for a new form of energy. There was an ample supply of quartz and for many years they experimented with various sizes until they captured nature’s secret of collective energy and smaller crystals began to propel small objects.

  In the centre of the capital of Atlantis, Poseidonis, a great event took place between the seven leaders in the Great Pyramid.

  Thoth visualized a form, a structure, and commanded his scientists to create the present form of man. They had seven models to work from which would represent the seven races. There is still in existence a crystal skeleton buried in South America which was the original blueprint for the human race as we know it today.

  Thoth said to his creations, ‘Go to new lands and I will give you great power.’

  Thus the struggle that began on Orion continued on earth, matching the narrative of good and evil recounted in the Bible. The story of Cain and Abel is the story of Sananda and Thoth, each competing for their version of the truth – the truth of love and light, or the truth of reason and technology. This was not a physical struggle, it was a struggle of thoughts and ideas.

  Mentally exhausted, Hugo rested again, walking to the window, looking out on to the misty headland. Brent. Which dark stranger had been commissioned to execute his son?

  Eventually Hugo returned to the journal and was riveted by the next few sentences.

  In the 1980s, through the agency of the Brotherhood of the Winged Disc, the Atlanteans contacted the Arab Federation, anxious to discover the identity of the reincarnation of Thoth. But they had no knowledge.

  The presence of the Atlanteans on earth has always been protected by the Brotherhood of the Winged Disc, based in the Middle East. Some members, however, in this generation have become self-interested and wish to harness the Atlanteans’ power for the military purposes of the Arab Federation.

  Now the Atlanteans are to leave earth at last, knowing their influence is needed elsewhere. They await the date of the change in the earth’s frequency that according to tradition can only be found in the Chamber of Records underneath the pyramid by Thoth or his designates, for only they can penetrate the chamber. Saddam Hussein, however, has pressurized members of the Disc to tell the Atlanteans that the discovery of the date is not just the prerogative of the delegates of Thoth. He has already searched the pyramid in great detail to no effect, but is still claiming that he can release the Atlanteans. In their desperation, and with the lack of any other obvious alternative, they are inclined to believe the Iraqi leader. In exchange for their escape they have promised to provide the Arab Federation with a formula for a particularly toxic nerve gas that could decimate thousands – a formula tha
t could be made in laboratories in the Middle East and was originally developed for the protection of Adantis.

  Hugo put the exercise book down. The significance of what they had to do overwhelmed him completely. Their journey, hardly begun, had to be completed.

  Resolutely, Hugo returned to the last paragraph in the journal.

  In the event of my premature death I designate my father, Hugo Fitzroy, and his companion, Philippa Neville, as the representatives of Thoth. They share the vision and its responsibilities.

  There was no more. Just a neat line under the word ‘responsibilities’. Hugo sat staring at the text. Then he went back to the window and gazed out yet again at the darkness. The mist had lifted and he could just see the rocks at the lowest point of Tiderace. Was that a boy waving to him? Was that his son?

  Philippa answered the phone immediately and he guessed straight away that she felt shut out. Feeling guilty for not having phoned her earlier, Hugo hurriedly explained the significance of what he had read the previous night. She heard him out without comment.

  ‘I’d like you to come here and read this for yourself.’

  ‘Now the Gulf War’s over,’ she said, ‘maybe Saddam will be executed – or assassinated.’

  ‘There’ll be someone to take over if he is,’ Hugo responded with bleak certainty. ‘His death won’t make the slightest difference to any bargains struck in the pyramid.’

  ‘I can hardly believe any of this,’ she muttered, and he wondered if she was experiencing what he had felt: belief was more difficult here, in the mundanity of the UK, than it had been in the emptiness of the desert. ‘It’s hard to accept the vastness of it all – the responsibilities we’ve got,’ she said slowly. ‘Winged serpents with nerve gas? It’s so bizarre, completely absurd. Yet I know it’s for real, as sure as I know what a Safeways supermarket trolley looks like. What’s more – it’s moving inside me, Hugo. All the time. And I heard its voice reaching me in the night’

  ‘For God’s sake – ‘