The Dark Rift: The Supernatural Grail Quest Zombie Apocalypse (The Last Artifact Trilogy Book 1)

by Gilliam Ness

  THE LAST ARTIFACT

  by GILLIAM NESS

  Published by

  POLYMATH PUBLISHING

  Toronto, Canada.

  Kindle Edition

  All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance they might have to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9917265-5-4

  Copyright 2016 Gilliam Ness

  All rights reserved

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ~CAST OF CHARACTERS~

  FRIGHTENING CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT APPEAR IN THIS NOVEL

  Sign up for the author’s New Releases mailing list and get a free audiobook of: Book One - The Dark Rift.

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  DEDICATION

  This trilogy is dedicated to the 28% of voters who believe that a secretive, powerful elite is conspiring to rule the world through an authoritarian world government (or New World Order). It is also dedicated to the 14% of citizens who believe that there is at least a small chance of a zombie apocalypse actually happening, as well as the 13% of voters who think that the President of the United States is the anti-Christ, and the 4% of voters who believe that “lizard people” really do control our society.*

  *U.S. Public Policy Poling - April 02, 2013

  U.S. YouGov Omnibus - May 17, 2013

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  After the many years of deep contemplation that have brought me to this, my Opus Magnum Unifying Theory Of All Things Light And Dark, my best advice to you, my esteemed reader, can only be this: Stockpile Kraft Dinner. You’ll be able to trade it for all kinds of stuff when the zombies come, and if everything goes wrong, and the apocalypse never happens, then it’ll all get eaten anyway. That crap never goes bad.

  —GILLIAM NESS

  BOOK I - THE DARK RIFT

  …And then the final days arrived,

  When all the wild imaginings of men came to pass.

  When the myths, theories, and legends were made manifest,

  And the prophecies and suspicions were fulfilled.

  In those final days they trembled and cried:

  “How came we to conceive of such monstrous inventions?”

  For the gods and demons they had imagined were all realized.

  And a great shadow spread across the world.

  -The Great Fall of the Angels

  (From the Compostela Manuscripts, circa 865A.D.)

  PROLOGUE

  The Cantabrian Mountains – 2243 B.C.

  A heavy mantle of fog clung to the surface of the small mountain lake, its dark waters emitting a profound stillness. Amid the gurgle of a slow moving paddle, a primitive dugout made its way out into the gloom, its two occupants dwarfed by the looming peaks that encased it on all sides. There was not a soul in sight.

  The boy with the paddle completed another stroke, the boat sliding effortlessly forward. Their destination lay just ahead; a tiny island enshrouded in mist.

  “It is strange here,” said the girl in the boat, “but it does not seem as dangerous as they say.”

  There was something otherworldly about this place. It was sending waves of excitement through her. Like the boy, she too had turned twelve that day, and to celebrate their birthdays they had decided to investigate the mysterious island, knowing full well that they were forbidden to do so. She studied its dense tangle of trees.

  “I want to go ashore.”

  The boy frowned.

  “That was not the plan,” he said. “We only came to look.”

  “We do not have to go into the shrine. We can just find it and see what it looks like.”

  The boy shot a suspicious glance at the island and then made up his mind.

  “Very well,” he said. “We go.”

  They circled the island until they had found a place to land. Above them a veiled sun was already beginning to dip behind the mountains, and the girl felt a sudden twinge of fear. The shadowy trees were dense and ominous.

  “It is getting dark too quickly,” she said. “We should go back.”

  “We are here,” said the boy. “We will look.”

  He jumped from the primitive dugout and dragged it up onto the rocks, holding out his hand for the girl to take.

  “Very well,” she said. “But only for a moment.”

  The island was unkempt, and the vegetation quite dense. Lush ferns covered most of the ground, and many of the rocks were rounded over with moss. From where they stood, a path could be seen climbing into the foliage. It picked its way through the rocky terrain in a series of natural steps and landings. The two were soon finding it quite easy to navigate their way up.

  “My love,” said the girl, following behind.

  The boy frowned.

  “Do not call me that.”

  She shrugged.

  “This was a mistake.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked the boy.

  She peered into the woods. She thought she had seen a shadowy figure moving through the trees.

  “I feel we are in danger,” she said. “What if the Druid Fathers are not mistaken?”

  “The Druid Fathers are old fools,” said the boy. “People no longer believe their stories. Come along. Let us see for ourselves.”

  It was not long before they arrived at a small, circular clearing, not twenty feet in diameter. There was no visible shrine here, only what appeared to be a large flattened boulder located directly at its centre. As they made their way towards it they could see the weathered image of a maze carved into its surface, with a crude figure of a man standing at its entrance. The carving seemed ancient, and was covered in lichen and moss. More disturbing still was what lay at the outer extremities of the clearing: A grouping of fourteen standing stones, each as tall as a man, and forming a perfect circle around them.

  “What is this place?” asked the girl.

  The boy shook his head and frowned.

  “I do not know.”

  The sound of a large bird taking flight startled the girl. As her eyes followed it up through the tangled boughs she saw how dim the sky had become, and noticed only then the darkness that was growing in the woods. She found herself wishing that she were far aw
ay from the island, and more importantly, from this disturbing circle of stones.

  “I am frightened,” she said, clutching the boy. “Let us go now. I do not like the way this island makes me feel.”

  “Just a little while longer,” he said, taking her hand. “Come along. We are very close.”

  She followed him reluctantly, deeper and deeper into the thick. It seemed to her that the island was swallowing them alive. After a five minute hike the boy stopped suddenly, his heart pounding with excitement as he pulled her into yet another clearing.

  “This must be the place,” he said, oblivious to the paralyzing fear that had overtaken her.

  “Wait,” he muttered, his eyes straining. “What is this?”

  He could see the standing stones looming in a circle around them. They had somehow returned to the same place, and something felt terribly wrong. It was too dark. At some point the overcast sky had transformed into a starless void, and only the muted light of a crescent moon leaked through the twisted branches above.

  “We have been walking in circles,” he stammered.

  A shrill pitch of the purest fear was ringing through his body now. He could not understand. The air had become frigidly cold.

  “The Druid Fathers were right,” he whispered, shaking his head in horror. “By the gods, what have we done?”

  A deep and inky void had appeared where the central monolith had been, but just then, something even more unsettling came into view. Shadowy figures were materializing behind the standing stones. They were stumbling forward, their arms hanging limply at their sides, their gazes vacant and cold. The boy’s eyes opened wide with fear. These people were dead. Their flesh was crawling with worms, yet they somehow still walked.

  “No!” he grunted, unable to move. “This is impossible.”

  It was only then that it came. It was an invisible force of unimaginable potency. It moved over the two of them with the momentum of an ocean tide, forcing them both to the ground, and driving the sight from their eyes.

  CHAPTER 1

  Istanbul, Turkey.

  Professor Agardi Metrovich staggered out of the examination room and into the hall of the private Istanbul hospital. He was a large, bearded man, dressed in a tweed sports jacket with frayed cuffs. The door closed behind him as he exited, shutting out the chanting priests as they continued with their archaic ritual. Through the walls, the weary Professor could still hear the spitting curses coming from his patient, a sensation of pure evil crawling over his skin like a thousand insects.

  As he had expected, he was instantly approached by Isaac Rodchenko, the victim’s father. The latter was a patient himself, a decade younger than he, and stricken with paranoid schizophrenia. Over the course of the evening the unearthly cries had driven the poor man into a state of despair.

  “Professor Metrovich!” he whispered, his eyes straining with worry. “You must tell me what is happening to my child!”

  The Professor could only stare back at him, his own face pale and drawn with fear. After decades of medically overseeing exorcisms, the seasoned Professor had yet to overcome the horror that the rituals consistently provoked in him. He struggled with his emotions, finding comfort in the words of an ancient text he had long ago unearthed in his research.

  Fear is an illusion; a ghost without substance. It is easily dispelled.

  In many cases, suspected victims were merely suffering from severe psychotic dementia, but on rare occasions such as this, events could not be explained so readily. Demonic possession was an anomaly that defied all rational thought. It was something not of this earth.

  “Please, sit down, Mr. Rodchenko,” the Professor managed to say, and following his own advice, he collapsed heavily into one of the waiting armchairs. “You must give me a moment to regain my strength.”

  Isaac Rodchenko sat down at once. He had a healthy complexion for his sixty odd years, along with thick salt and pepper hair and black eyebrows. He wore an elegant charcoal grey suit, and had an air of humble confidence about him, despite his distress. For a long moment Isaac waited obediently, but could contain himself no longer.

  “My son has spent thirty-three years in a vegetative state,” he said, rubbing his hands together nervously. “How is it possible that he should have awakened from it now, and in this condition? I know you are keeping something from me, Professor. Have pity on a suffering father. Tell me, please!”

  The old Professor held Isaac’s gaze for a moment, but then let his eyes fall.

  How could I possibly tell this man what I suspect to be true?

  “Professor Metrovich!” insisted Isaac. “You must tell me at once!”

  Metrovich looked up, his tired eyes scanning the distressed face before him. He opened his mouth, as though to speak, but before he could do so an unearthly scream split the silence. It was followed immediately by a call from one of the priests inside.

  “Professor! Come quickly!”

  In one clumsy motion the Professor rose from his chair and passed into the examination room, a stench of rot and suffering engulfing him as he entered. There, in the half light, he could see two priests hunched over the possessed man, his repulsively obese body contorting in a series of slow and twisting seizures. Having already been severely deformed since birth, the effects of the possession had transformed the victim into something utterly horrific. Metrovich looked to the priests. They stood there in quiet resignation, praying silently over the hideous beast.

  “We are losing him, Professor,” whispered the ancient Father Franco.

  The Professor’s eyes found the electrocardiogram and saw that the old priest was not mistaken. The patient had entered into cardiac arrest. In his weakened state, there would be no way of saving him. His joints creaked woodenly as he lurched and twisted, his body becoming suddenly still before moving into a violent death rattle. When it was done, the heart monitor gave off a flat, uninterrupted tone, and crossing himself, Father Franco reached over and muted the alarm.

  With the death of the victim, a deep silence had fallen over the room, a residual feeling of the supernatural hanging in the air like a pall. In all his years of overseeing exorcisms, Metrovich had never witnessed a more ghastly case as this, and judging by the expressions on the two priests, he could see that they had not done so either.

  Metrovich moved towards the corpse. Ever since they had arrived earlier that evening, he had been plagued by a persistent gut feeling; it warned of something so unlikely that it seemed ludicrous that he should even be considering it.

  He took hold of the urine soaked gown that covered the victim’s lower torso, but froze instantly in the act. He thought he had felt a slight tremor running through the corpse, and in that instant, a wave of fear rippled through him. He looked more closely. The cadaver was visibly trembling. His eyes darted to the ECG. It was still showing a flat-line.

  This is impossible. The body is dead.

  Metrovich looked back in time to see the ghastly corpse jerk to life.

  “Ahreimanius!” it hissed menacingly, the upper body lurching violently toward him.

  All watched in horror as the restraining straps gave way, the thrashing corpse coming dangerously close to the Professor before collapsing back onto the bed. A final quake ran through the body.

  Struggling to keep himself composed, the Professor reached forward to resume his task, drawing slowly aside the gown that covered the lower half of its torso. What he saw filled him with horror and disgust. Behind him Father Franco gagged and coughed.

  Plainly visible in front of them, grotesque and utterly malformed, were a pair of lacerated genitals, disproportionately large, and belonging to both the male and female sexes. It was at that moment that a shaft of light split the darkness, and Isaac’s swaying silhouette appeared in the doorway. He stared blankly at the scene before him.

  “You did not tell us that your son was a hermaphrodite, Mr. Rodchenko,” said Metrovich softly, his eyes still glued to the victim.

  Isaac s
eemed to wince at the statement.

  “Is he dead?”

  The Professor turned to face the grieving father, but said nothing, his expression containing a mixture of compassion and confusion. With this latest development, twenty years of skepticism had been suddenly stripped from his mind. The evidence was now irrefutable; the coincidences far too numerous to discount. Through the death of this unfortunate victim, an ancient and obscure prophecy had somehow been made manifest. The impossible had somehow transpired.

  “I know this is difficult for you, Mr. Rodchenko,” said Metrovich slowly. “Can you remember where your son was conceived?”

  The Professor’s words struck Isaac like a dull blow. He was too drugged to sense any pain, but the question probed one of the primary causes of his illness. His wife had died while giving birth to their misshapen son, and he had never recovered from the loss of her. Over the years he had progressively lost his mind. He fell to his knees, rocking himself to and fro.

  “My wife and I were on a religious pilgrimage in the mountains of northern Spain,” he muttered, his eyes squinting ever so slightly as he remembered. “We were on a small lake. We had found a little island…”

  Metrovich tore his gaze from Isaac and turned to face Father Franco. The old priest looked back at him, his eyes alight with foreboding.

  “God help us all,” he said solemnly.

  Outside a rumbling chorus of thunder sounded. The storm that had long been approaching had finally arrived.

  CHAPTER 2

  Florence, Italy.

  The thirty-two year old Dr. Natasha Rossi sat amid the clutter of her small restoration shop. Before her on a battered workbench lay the ninth century tabernacle she had been working on. It was almost finished. Directly behind it, a large monitor displayed a three-dimensional, infrared scan of the piece. Her computer had just finished rendering it, and she was using it to spot tiny deposits that had been missed during the restoration process. Playing in the background, as usual, was one of her many self-help audiobooks.