by Robert Ryan
Throughout, Lynch used words like wondrous, somber, unnatural, to describe the sea. Zeke came to the passage that had so intrigued him. Lynch wrote of a fiercely hot day during his exploration, when he and a handful of his men were sailing in a small boat:
“In the awful aspect which this sea presented…I seemed to read the inscription over the gates of Dante’s Inferno:—‘Ye who enter here, leave hope behind.’”
Before long Lynch was the only one left awake; the others had all fallen into a stuporous sleep. As he glided slowly and silently through the water, looking at his unnaturally dozing men, “…there was something fearful in the expression of their inflamed and swollen visages. The fierce angel of disease seemed hovering over them, and I read the forerunner of his presence in their flushed and feverish sleep…some, upon whose faces shone the reflected light from the water, looked ghastly…”
Feeling almost as though he were in the boat with him, Zeke felt an unsettling thrill when Lynch finally wrote:
“The solitude, the scene, my own thoughts, were too much; I felt, as I sat thus, steering the drowsily-moving boat, as if I were a Charon, ferrying not the souls, but the bodies, of the departed and the damned, over some infernal lake…”
At the bottom of the page, Zeke had written an explanatory footnote for himself: Charon was the aged boatman who ferried the souls of the dead across the River Styx to the gates of Hades.
He laid the paper aside, still dissatisfied. There had been more to his dream than Lynch’s hallucination. Something else to do with faces, something troubling…Slipping on shorts and a T-shirt, he went onto the balcony.
A gentle breeze caressed him as he leaned against the railing and stared out at the Dead Sea in the distance. The crescent moon and an explosion of stars cast a soft glow on its gently undulating surface, making it appear as though the sea itself were breathing. Zeke thought of going for a swim to tire himself out, but remembered that the water wasn’t really pleasant; all the salt and chemicals gave it a filmy, almost oily feel. Still, he was wide awake.
Maybe the long walk to the shore and back would help him sleep. He could certainly use the exercise. Anticipating the battle he might be in for, he’d been spending as much time as he could in the weight room. He’d been running, too, but with the possibility of finding the tunnel tomorrow, it was time to intensify his training. A hike down what might be an extremely long tunnel with a forty-pound backpack would be strenuous enough, but the return trip would be worse. All uphill. He needed to start working the steeper hills into his running. He was in great shape, but he needed to get into Delta shape.
He went inside, pulled sweatpants over his shorts, put on socks and running shoes, and went to the lounge to tell Leah where he was going.
It was only nine-thirty, but the party was over when he got there. Leah and Hassan were the only ones left. They sat at one of the smaller tables, chatting and having a beer.
Zeke gently caressed Leah’s shoulder. “Looks like everybody but you two party animals gave it up early.”
She stood and hugged him. “Hi, sweetie. Yeah, they couldn’t hang with the big dogs. Some left real early. I think everybody was just tired. Grab a beer and join us. We’re having a nightcap.”
“Normally I’d love to, but I’m too wound up to sit still. I’m going to go for a walk, get some exercise, see if it’ll tire me out.”
“Where are you going?”
“Down to the water and back.”
“Aren’t you and Mordecai and Hassan going out early in the morning?”
“I won’t be long.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Not tonight. I need to think, clear my head. I’m not good company right now.” He saw her look of concern and began to have doubts about leaving her alone.
Hassan must have sensed it. “Don’t worry, Zeke. I’ll make sure she gets home safely. Don’t forget, Mordecai and myself are right across the hall from you two. A Jew and a Muslim watching for trouble with the eyes of a falcon.”
“Well,” Zeke said, “when you put it like that…”
Hassan flashed a rare smile. “She is our heartbeat, Zeke. We will guard her with our life.”
Heartbeat. He remembered staring at hers on the monitor in her hospital room. Remembered it stopping.
Leah’s kiss on the cheek brought him back from that precipice. “Go do what you gotta do,” she said. “I’ll keep your spot warm.”
He squeezed her hand and left. Outside, heavy darkness settled over him as he began the long trek to the Dead Sea. He hadn’t been walking long when his dream of faces floated into his mind, followed closely by Michael Price’s warning about cracks in the earth being openings for the dead.
CHAPTER 53
Zeke made his way across the strange terrain that had once been sea bottom. The water glowed faintly in the distance under the light from the heavens. In the void between the hotel and the Dead Sea, however, far from any outposts of humanity, he was enveloped in a shroud of darkness. Barely able to see his feet, he wished he’d brought a flashlight. The thick gloom and otherworldly silence made him feel like the first human, walking through some primordial landscape before the planet had even fully formed.
He came to a fairly flat strip of craggy rock at the water’s edge. The light from the night sky was better here, where the ledge sloped downward a few feet and disappeared into the water. He found a reasonably smooth patch of ground and sat, legs dangling over the edge. Compared to the impenetrable darkness he’d just left, the visibility here was good. The crescent moon created a faint silvery path that illuminated the rise and fall of the water for at least half a mile. Tiny wavelets whispered against the rocks, but the smell of the sulfur-tinged salt air was a sensory intrusion into their soothing rhythm. Beyond this faint murmur and celestial glow, all was silence and shadow.
Again Zeke imagined himself as the only soul in the world. Not the first soul this time, but the last, drifting through the infinite void of space on a voyage of eternal darkness, save for the pinpoint lights of distant stars. Lulled by the hypnotic breathing of the sea, he fell into deep contemplation of his surroundings and his potentially pivotal role in human events.
Was he at the edge of the abyss Enoch referred to in his scroll, the threshold that believers in the 2012 predictions believed the human race was coming to? The point where we must finally choose good over evil or be hopelessly doomed? If so, according to Enoch, “one righteous soul” must blaze the trail for the final confrontation between the Messiah and Lucifer.
One righteous soul. Meaning me. Zeke. Ezekiel.
Lost in consideration of the divine visitations he’d had telling him he was the one, his trance was broken when, at the farthest edge of his vision, he thought he saw something moving in the water.
The way the light twinkled and flickered on the waves made it easy to believe it was an optical illusion. His eyes followed the movement for several minutes, until there could be no doubt.
Something on the horizon was moving. He squinted to make it out.
A dark silhouette—formless, shapeless, like a wisp of smoke—floated slowly closer. Evaporation? Steam rising from the water? No. He’d often seen an evaporation haze over the sea, but it tended to float more uniformly across the entire surface. And in the morning. Not on a clear night like this.
He stared harder. Whatever it was, there seemed to be several separate and distinct clumps or puffs of it that he hadn’t noticed before. Still too far away and indistinct to identify, they continued drifting toward him across the surface of the sea.
Suddenly something rose up from the water directly in front of him.
Glowing droplets slid off a roundish form as it leaned closer. When it was no more than five feet away he could finally make it out.
A ghostly face. Light partially shone through the opaque, smokelike head. Its features were vaguely human, but without substance. It was a spirit, a ghost.
A soul.
As it
hung suspended in air, Zeke saw only black holes where eyes might be, and yet those vacant shadows seemed to be staring at him. The ethereal face was etched with deep furrows of pain and suffering.
It inched closer, only a foot away now, until Zeke saw its lips moving, mouthing something. Finally he made it out.
“Help us.”
At the word “us” he noticed with alarm that the other shapes he’d seen earlier had drifted up to join this one. There were dozens of them, disembodied spirits, hovering just above the surface of the water, faces frozen in nightmarish expressions of eternal horror. The growing congregation crowded together, lips moving, all mouthing “help us, help us, help us”—a silent shriek of despair from beyond this world.
Spiders of ice scurried across Zeke’s back and scalp as though running to hide. More than fear, he felt a crushing sense of grief. These things weren’t threatening him. They were begging for help. Still, he instinctively scrambled to his feet and backed away.
They followed to the water’s edge. Worse, much worse, they began to emit sound. At first he wasn’t sure he heard it, but gradually it got louder and louder until there was no mistaking it.
They were moaning. Hideous, shuddering, pitiful wails of agony. The demonic sounds that had tormented him for weeks had been horrible, but this was worse. Demons could be dismissed as irredeemable evil. But these…In their vestiges of tortured humanity were souls that might yet be saved.
An ululating crescendo rose as from one voice, as if unfair cruelties inflicted on the living had left the dead only this last recourse, to bay for all eternity at an unjust God.
Zeke had to get away from there before his mind snapped. The mournful cries of the faces tore at him, but there was nothing he could do to help…ghosts. He turned and began to walk away.
Behind him the wailing faded, only to be replaced by the mournful cries he’d heard before: “help us, help us, help usss…”
I’m trying to, he wanted to tell them. By finding and defeating Satan, if I can.
He sensed movement to his left. Were the soul-things following him?
He looked toward the movement and thought he saw a dark shape the size of a man, standing partly concealed in a cove created by boulders. He stared intently into the shadowy darkness for at least a minute, but nothing moved. He took a couple steps as if to walk away, then stopped suddenly and looked back at the cove.
For a fraction of a second he thought he saw light glinting off a human face. In the next instant it disappeared below the rocks. He sprinted to the spot where the shape had been.
No one was there. He circled the large crescent formation of rocks.
Nothing. The ground was rock as well, so there were no footprints.
No longer sure what was real and what was unreal, Zeke looked back toward the water. The faces were gone. As he trudged grimly back to the room, their cries still reverberated inside his skull. The sound conjured an image of forlorn monks, their mournful Gregorian chant echoing hollowly off the walls of some monastery long abandoned by God.
A hymn of the damned, sung by a chorus of lost souls.
CHAPTER 54
Exactly at midnight, in the vacant room directly above Zeke’s, a small black votive candle cast a sinister light on a figure shrouded in black. On the middle finger of his left hand was his talisman: a ring containing a rare black mineral he had dubbed Luciferite, into which was perfectly carved the head of a goat framed by a pentagram. It was the symbol of Baphomet—the Judas Goat—and combined the Powers of Darkness with the fertility of the goat. The pentagram was inverted, so that its two upward points could receive the horns of the goat, while its three downward points proclaimed denial of the Holy Trinity. A very fitting talisman for bringing out his true self that he’d spent so long denying.
On his other hand was a ring made from bone, taken from the disinterred and violated corpse of a long-dead Archbishop. Having waited patiently for the witching hour, when his power would be the greatest, the black priest began to read the passage he had chosen for his incantation. It was one of the apocryphal keys of Enoch, once used by alchemists and later translated into Satanic hymns. By the light of the small candle he began his dreamlike and worshipful murmuring in an attempt to conjure the legions of Hell. He chanted the words over and over, each recitation increasing the fervor with which he spoke them. Finally, after thirteen repetitions had worked him into a controlled frenzy, in a vile whisper he exclaimed down at Zeke directly below him:
“Open and admit me! Open, in the name of Satan, so that I may come with you on your journey! Bring me into you!”
The black priest blew out the candle. Moonlight coming through the window illuminated the wraith of smoke from the extinguished flame. He watched it floating upward, as though an imprisoned spirit had been freed from its earthly bond. As he stared through the gathering darkness at the floor beneath which Zeke lay sleeping, the foul mockery of a gloating grin sullied the possessed being’s lips. With eyes attuned to the night, he left the room and headed for the stairway at the end of the hall.
He must find a way to neutralize the relics. When I’m through they will be worth nothing to you, Ezekiel. You will see who has the true power.
He silently crept up the stairs, becoming one with the blackness.
CHAPTER 55
The sun was just coming up as the boat reached the anomaly. They’d taken the 30-foot outboard for ease of maneuverability on this first exploratory dive.
Mordecai was at the wheel. Hassan stood beside him, staring at the GPS chart plotter mounted into the dash. A boat-shaped icon representing their craft showed their progress as they approached the beginning of the faint gray survey line they’d come here to investigate.
Mordecai nodded at the GPS unit. “Those things have come a long way. Even a small one like that is accurate to within a few feet.” He throttled back. “Only twenty-five more yards. We don’t know how deep the anomaly is buried, but my guess is five, ten yards at most.” He cut the engine. “Please drop the anchor, Hassan.”
Standing at the stern facing backwards, Zeke was so engrossed in the scene that he paid no attention to Hassan’s approach. The predawn light was painting the normally forbidding cliffs along the western shore a stunning soft pink. The briny odor was barely noticeable in the early morning air; the rotten-egg smell of sulfur was absent altogether. An evaporation haze gently fluttered and roiled as it hung suspended in a thick layer three feet above the water. After last night’s encounter with the faces, Zeke imagined the haze as the Dead Sea giving up its ghosts. The movements within the spectral cloud were the death throes of the departing spirits.
Last night when he’d told Leah of the faces she had said, “That’s it. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“As much as I’d like to, we can’t be together every second,” he’d said. “You’ve got to keep on top of things here. Don’t you remember what Hassan said? You’re the heartbeat of the operation. I’ll be careful.”
The splash of the anchor yanked him back into the moment. The three men ran final checks on their equipment and suited up. Mordecai kept a running commentary of safety reminders.
Hassan turned on the small portable airlift to make sure it was working. Its motor was fairly quiet, but in the preternatural calm it sounded like a scream in a graveyard. He quickly turned it off. “That could wake the dead.”
“Let’s hope not,” Mordecai said. “Come on. Time to move some mud.”
They entered the water from a small dive platform they’d affixed to the transom above the outboard motor. Normally, five-to-ten pounds of lead in a weight belt enabled a diver to sink, but in the Dead Sea, legendary for being unable to sink in, each man wore an unheard-of forty pounds. Rather than put all the lead into waist belts, some was affixed to their legs and arms to lessen the burden on their lower backs.
The water here was barely ten feet deep. They quickly reached bottom and adjusted their buoyancy compensators until they hovered just a
bove it.
Hassan carried a 200-foot reel of cord for marking off the boundaries of the first grid. After he and Zeke had strung a square 50 feet on each side, Zeke handled the airlift while Mordecai and Hassan began to dig. The four gloved hands dug much faster than they normally would; at this site, finding the tunnel took precedence over archaeology. The combined sound of the airlift and their breathing was only a soft drone.
The three men fell into a smooth working routine and relatively quick progress was made. In an hour they’d dug a trench about ten yards wide and two deep. A few yards before they reached the rope boundary to complete the first pass, Hassan’s voice broke the silence. “Come. Look at this.”
Zeke and Mordecai floated over.
Jutting through the mud about two inches was a slightly curved craggy black ridge, about three feet long. It reminded Zeke of lava rock he and Leah had seen in Maui.
Mordecai pulled off a glove and ran his fingertips across it, then squeezed to gauge its solidity. “Rock. Let’s see where it leads us.”
Following the curving line of the stony ridge, they uncovered a section about ten yards long to a depth of one yard.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Mordecai said.
He grabbed the rock with both hands and, gently at first, then with gradually increasing force, tugged on it to get a sense of how big it might be, and how deeply it might be embedded.
It wouldn’t budge. It gave the impression of being quite large. Possibly enormous. “Notice that it doesn’t stick straight up,” Mordecai said. “It’s at about a 45-degree angle.”
“Something that fell over in antiquity, maybe?” Hassan suggested.
“Maybe. If it continues to curve we might be looking at a circle.”
