Indisputable Proof

by Gary Williams

  Anxiously, he knelt down beside her and touched her wrist. Thankfully, he felt a strong pulse.

  “Jade?” he said, laying a hand on her back. Her face was pressed to the rumpled floor, which Tolen realized was a bed of sticks and dried leaves. She roused, sat up in a daze, and brushed the natural debris from the side of her cheek.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I remember...falling,” she stammered, pushing her dark bangs out of her eyes. “Where are we?”

  “At the end of a secondary tunnel, deep inside the Petra. It appears we’re in another cavern,” he said, helping her to her feet. Leaves and twigs clung to her clothes and her bare skin. She took a moment to brush them off.

  “The floor is covered in dried debris which cushioned your fall and may have saved your life.”

  “Tolen, did you find Jade?” Diaz’s voice echoed down through the wormhole.

  “Yes, she’s safe.” Tolen reached down and found his pistol among the branches. He latched the safety back on and reholstered it.

  A few seconds later, Diaz popped out of the hole, turning his body awkwardly to reach the floor, nearly falling.

  “What is this place?” Jade mused, turning her flashlight about the round room.

  “Hell,” Diaz scoffed, rising beside her.

  The circular room was rather small. It had a domed ceiling adorned with a mosaic of vibrant colors, artwork as impressive as the cathedral cave in Costa Rica. A dozen carved pilasters ran up the walls, equally spaced around the room. Thankfully, there was no water to contend with here. Beyond that, the chamber was reminiscent of the Costa Rican cave, except on a smaller scale, and with pilasters instead of the niche altars.

  Jade shined her flashlight on the nearest pilaster and drew in a sharp breath. “Look at the faces.”

  The pilaster was a mass of distraught and tortured expressions formed with such precision that Tolen could see rivulets of sweat running down some of the cheeks. Fused faces were elongated, twisted in agony. It was as if they had all just experienced some cataclysmic torment which was so horrifying, so painful, they had lost their minds.

  “That’s disturbing,” Diaz remarked.

  Tolen turned his flashlight to the floor and began walking. The dry twigs and branches snapped crisply with the weight of each step, and he got the distinct impression he was moving across thick padding. He stopped and tried to locate the true floor. Even after kicking close to six inches of debris aside, all Tolen found were more layers of thin, brittle sticks and dried, rotting leaves. There was no telling how much natural debris coated the austere cave floor. Oddly, the smell of decaying wood and rot remained tinged with an unusual musky fragrance.

  Three beams of light lanced about the cavern. Except for the debris lining the floor and the pilasters nestled against the walls, the room was empty. Tolen spotted a fissure in the far side of the room which sliced up to the ceiling. A gap of at least two feet led into total darkness.

  “There,” he called to the others, focusing his light on it.

  The threesome approached the vertical crevice. It was jagged and crusty; lichen caked at the edges. Jade shined her flashlight inside, where a long, dark corridor stretched into the distance. Unlike the underground chamber in Costa Rica, this hallway had a warren of doorways carved on both sides; at least ten, maybe more. The ground coating of dried twigs, leaves, and small limbs continued into the passageway.

  “We must be under the Petra. This corridor might even extend under the bay,” Jade remarked. She slid through the crevice first, followed by Diaz, then Tolen. The ground continued to crunch sharply beneath their feet as they walked. Ahead, the openings to either side were staggered. The first one they came to was on the left and cut perfectly through four inches of stone. It was approximately the size and shape of a house doorway.

  Jade turned her light into the room. They were met with a surprising sight.

  The stone floor was clear and visible, and at least a foot below where they stood in the passageway. There was a narrow threshold across the entrance that reached up twelve inches and prevented the branches and twigs in the corridor from spilling into the room. The small enclosure was void, save for a six-foot-long, white, rectangular stone box that was perched low on a gray, stone pedestal in the center of the room. It was fitted on top with a lid which overhung by no more than an inch on all sides.

  “What is that?” Diaz asked.

  “I…I think it’s a coffin,” Jade said.

  Tolen thought the same thing, yet he was having a hard time processing who might warrant such a secretive and exclusive tomb, unless, perhaps…

  They stepped down carefully into the room and walked up to the long stone box. There were no writings or markings on the top. Jade examined the barren sides. “There’s no indication who or what is inside.” She touched the surface. “It’s coarse. I think it’s made of limestone.”

  Tolen looked at Diaz. The unspoken message was received. Diaz went to one end, Tolen to the other. They grabbed the thick stone lid and slowly slid it to the side. It scraped like fingernails on a chalkboard. They stopped after only a few seconds to peer into a six-inch gap where Jade held the flashlight in place. The two men crowded beside her. The smell that reached them was harsh.

  Sure enough, they saw disarticulated human remains inside, replete with a skull lolled to the side, facing them. Tolen could tell by the pronounced, angular bone structure and narrow hips that it was a male.

  Diaz leaned back and crossed himself. “Why do we keep disturbing the dead?”

  “Any idea who this is?” Tolen asked Jade, disregarding Diaz’s comment.

  “Not a clue,” she turned her eyes to him as she spoke. She held his gaze for a moment, but said nothing more.

  “Let’s pull the lid back further,” Tolen said, anxious to know more about the man in the stone box.

  “Why?” Diaz contested. “We’re looking for a jar, no?”

  Surprising Diaz, Jade nudged the man aside and gripped the end of the heavy lid. Together, she and Tolen slid it further, angling one end off the stone box so they would have unimpeded access to the upper section of the remains where they could view the head and chest.

  Tolen leaned in. Although the skeleton was disjointed—the tendons and ligaments having decayed long ago—the bones had settled in place approximately where they had been during life. This meant the vertebrae, including the bones of the neck, lay in a nearly perfect line, but at the base of the skull, at least four vertebrae were missing.

  “Help me push it back,” Tolen said.

  This time, it was Jade who objected. “Already?”

  “Come on,” was all Tolen said in response.

  Diaz seemed relieved to cover the remains. It only took a few seconds to slide the stone lid back in place.

  Tolen quickly led the other two back to the doorway and left the room, stepping up to the passageway and producing the familiar crack of branches and twigs. With his flashlight beam knifing the darkness ahead, Tolen found the next doorway on the right. As he had expected, it led into a room identical to the first enclosure: same tall threshold of stone, which held the branches and debris out of the room, same barren floor, another unmarked stone coffin. Again, there were the skeletal remains of a man inside. This time, examination showed the man’s frontal skull bone had been caved in, cracked numerous times. Again, Tolen made no comment. He knew he was frustrating both Jade and Diaz, but he had to be sure.

  The third, fourth, and fifth rooms revealed identical situations. The enclosures and coffins were carbon copies. The only difference in each room was the male remains and their condition.

  CHAPTER 33

  September 13. Thursday – 12:56 a.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece

  Jade had had enough. “Stop, Tolen. No more until you explain wh
at’s going on.”

  To both Jade’s and Diaz’s mounting frustration, Tolen did not answer. Instead he stepped up into the crunchy corridor and shined his flashlight to one side of the long passageway and then the other, pausing on each doorway ahead.

  “What are you searching for?” Diaz asked.

  “One more, then I promise I’ll explain,” Tolen said, looking Jade squarely in the eyes. Unexpectedly, she saw a profound reverence there. She nodded her agreement almost involuntarily.

  “We’re wasting time, Tolen,” Diaz growled. “We should be looking for the second jar.”

  “How do you know the jar isn’t in one of the coffins?” Jade rebutted.

  Diaz said nothing.

  Tolen led them into the sixth room. When Diaz and Tolen moved the coffin lid aside, again they saw the remains of a man. Tolen leaned in with the flashlight and looked over the bones, eventually gliding the length of the stone coffin to examine the remains. At one point, he fanned his hand over the skeleton, causing a puff of dust to arise.

  Jade could tell Tolen knew something. Even in the dim light, the knowledge brought a reflective gaze to the man’s blue eyes.

  She momentarily allowed the facts to stack up in her mind: a dozen or so rooms, each with a coffin containing the skeletal remains of a man, each seemed to have suffered varied afflictions…and then it struck her: of course!

  Tolen must have seen the recognition in her eyes. He nodded in agreement. “I believe we’ve found the bodies of the Apostles.”

  Jade looked at the skeleton in the coffin and then up at Tolen.

  “How can you be sure?” Diaz asked.

  “There are twelve rooms; catacombs, if you will. And although we haven’t examined all of them, we have looked at half. The types of wounds inflicted on the six bodies—or should I say, five—are consistent with the manner in which the Apostles are thought to have died. Only one Apostle’s death is specifically cited in the Bible. The death of James, son of Zebedee, is recorded in Acts 12:2. The Bible states he was, ‘put to death with the sword.’ The common belief now is that he was beheaded. The first skeleton was missing vertebrae, which is the result of being decapitated.”

  The words struck a morbid chord with Jade. The memory of Dr. Phillip Cherrigan’s brutal death by decapitation brought a lingering ache.

  Tolen continued. “The rest of the Apostles’ deaths are speculation based on church tradition and, in fact, vary widely.

  “The second body we examined had the skull crushed in; a style of death linked to several of the Apostles. One, the other Apostle named James, was said to have been thrown from a temple steeple and survived, only to be beaten to death with a club. The third, fourth, and fifth crypts also have injuries consistent with Apostles’ deaths.”

  Diaz’s face tightened. “You said five of the bodies had wounds indicative of the Apostles. What about the sixth one?”

  “This body,” Tolen said, pointing downward. He directed the light to the lumbar vertebral section of the spinal bones, which lay in a perfect line at the base of the stone box.

  Tolen looked to Jade. “Notice anything different about these bones compared to the other five bodies we looked at?”

  Jade was struggling to understand what Tolen wanted her to see. None of the bones were missing as far as she could tell.

  “Everything’s in place,” she said with a confused expression.

  “Look again.”

  Jade re-examined the remains. Suddenly, she understood. Rather than what might be missing, he wanted her to notice the condition of the lumbar bones.

  “This man had osteoporosis!” she blurted out. “It’s degenerative. The loss of bone substance is substantial. By the severity, I’d say he lived a very long life.”

  Tolen nodded. “There are no other visible injuries. I believe this is the Apostle John, the only Apostle to die of old age. Someone, most likely Joseph of Arimathea, took great care to assemble the twelve Apostles post-mortem here in these catacombs where they could be protected without reprisal from authorities who may have opposed Jesus’ teachings.”

  Diaz shook his head to the side as if he were choking on the information. “You’re saying this is the Apostle John…and the other eleven Apostles who served Jesus Christ? It can’t be. I know for a fact Peter is entombed in the crypts underneath the Vatican.”

  “There is no incontrovertible historical evidence to suggest Peter was ever in Rome,” Tolen said. “Also, there are supposedly tombs for other Apostles: John in Turkey; Thomas in India; James, son of Zebedee, in your home country of Spain. In each case, there is no conclusive archaeological evidence to confirm the bodies are there. Consider St. Philip Martyrium of Hierapolis, Turkey. He is claimed to be buried in the center of the building. Despite extensive efforts to find it, no grave has ever been discovered.”

  The three stood motionless gazing down at the remains of the man.

  This is the Apostle John! Jade thought. All twelve apostles are here! She could barely absorb the discovery. Of all the things they had come across in the last 48 hours, this was the most titillating and mind-boggling.

  “Let’s keep looking,” Tolen’s words drew Jade back to reality. He led them out of the room, stepping back up to the crinkling corridor of branches. Their flashlights danced over the gray walls and, as they came to each entryway, they momentarily peered inside the musty-smelling rooms. As expected, they found elevated stone coffins in the last six rooms identical to the previous rooms. Then the procession of rooms cut into the stone corridor ended. As Tolen had said, there were exactly twelve: twelve rooms for twelve apostles.

  The hallway continued into the distance. As lengthy as the underground corridor had been in Costa Rica, this passageway was even longer, with no end in sight. They moved cautiously, walking on the branches that littered the floor. Jade wondered for the umpteenth time why it was here. Equally as puzzling was why none of the debris from the hallway was inside the twelve rooms of the Apostles where low restraints had been fashioned at the entryways to hold it out.

  The musky smell Jade had first noticed in the circular room was still prevalent. Jade’s light skirted off the walls, probing ahead, yet could not reach the passageway’s end. “This is a long tunnel. Maybe we should go back and check the other six coffins to make sure the stone jar is not in one of them?”

  Tolen merely responded, “I don’t think it’ll be with any of the bodies.”

  They proceeded through the darkness, pressing farther and farther up the corridor. The ground debris was ever-present and crunched and cracked loudly with each step. They finally arrived at an intersection. A second corridor cut perpendicular to the main one, shooting off to the right and left. It, too, was flooded with a layer of the same detritus.

  “This is also laid out as a cruciform,” Diaz remarked, referring to the similarity to the Costa Rica catacomb.

  Jade extended her arm, shining her flashlight ahead up the main shaft. The beam struck a distant wall. “It’s a dead end. We need to search this intersecting corridor. Which way?”

  Tolen pointed, indicating the tunnel to the left.

  Jade took the lead. After a short distance, they reached a curve where the passageway leisurely banked right until it completed a ninety-degree angle. They were now paralleling the main passageway.

  “So much for the cruciform shape,” Jade said.

  In the distance, her light found a doorway. “Look!” she said excitedly, tromping ahead on the thick padding. She found herself jogging, her flashlight beam swaying across the floor and walls as she went. She could hear Tolen and Diaz crunching quickly behind her, keeping pace. There had been a flash of light, a reflection of some sort coming from inside the opening which had caught her attention. She dashed ahead and reached the opening, breathing heavily. Jade quickly guided her light about t
he interior of a room approximately the size of a master bedroom. Natural debris also covered the ground in this room, but it was otherwise empty. The ceiling was somewhere high overhead, lost in the murky darkness.

  Just as Tolen and Diaz joined her, their collective attention was immediately drawn to the back wall. A large flat area of yellowish hue shimmered back at them. It was approximately four feet tall and seven feet wide, shaped in a perfect rectangle. Jade rushed toward it, her heart pounding.

  She reached her hand out. Even as her fingers met the cold surface, she struggled to believe it. It was a thin sheet of lustrous metal, like a giant placard, embedded into the wall. Hebrew writing was etched into it, scribed in typical right to left fashion. Sentences were composed in a series of columns covering almost the entire surface area.

  She turned to Tolen and Diaz standing nearby, her mouth agape. “It’s the duplicate of the Copper Scroll! The one mentioned in line sixty-four. Except this time...it’s been etched on a sheet of gold!”

  CHAPTER 34

  September 13. Thursday – 1:18 a.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece

  Jade was so enthralled with the glimmering display that she failed to notice Diaz until he was standing in the left corner. His flashlight beam fell on a small object propped on a tiny shelf. He lifted it and turned back to Jade and Tolen, presenting the jar with a smile. “The wall is nice, but I believe this is what we came after.”

  Jade nodded. She was pleased they had found the stone jar, but at the moment, she continued to focus on the columns of text. “This is...not…right...,” she said in a confused voice as she slowly translated it in her mind.

  “What do you mean?” Tolen asked.

  Jade turned toward him. “This is supposed to be a duplicate of the Copper Scroll, but it’s… not. Yet…it is.”