Progeny

by Shawn Hopkins

  John followed Chris out of the taxi and to the ferry terminal, oblivious to the multitudes of shops around him, focusing instead on the SEALs’ choice of clothing and wondering if the impending weather was really to blame for it.

  Hunter was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and a dark blue denim jacket over a black t-shirt. A desert bush hat hung loosely from his neck and was resting between his shoulder blades. He looked ready for some jungle hiking… if only Bermuda had a jungle.

  Chris’ face was hidden beneath the brim of a baseball cap, and his black ribbed tank top was mostly concealed by a gray hooded sweatshirt. Loose khakis and combat boots suggested that he was ready for some off-roading as well.

  Nick and Paul were both wearing camouflage pants and zipped polyester jackets. Boots also covered their feet, black bush hats hanging from their necks.

  Moving his scrutiny away from the four men walking beside him, John looked up to the darkening sky, again wondering if the forecast alone could account for their choice of attire. And then, as they approached a couple of benches, Paul stepped in front of him.

  There was no mistaking the bulge positioned at the small of his back. A gun.

  But just then, the ferry appeared from the west, leading a wake of churning water toward them. Shifting his eyes from the ferry back to the gun and then back to the ferry again, John sensed that the boat was bringing more than just the dark storm clouds with it. He quickly pondered Paul’s pistol. It implied a more physical threat than the one he’d been fearing from the shadow stalkers. And, actually, it was a development that he almost welcomed. Unlike ancient gods trying to swat him out of the sky, he had been trained to survive bullets. He chose to sit on the discovery for now, unwilling to get into a confrontation with Paul until he had a better understanding of what he should be trying to get out of it.

  After the ferry unloaded its passengers, the five men boarded with a crowd of other tourists. Paul led the search party up to the second level, and John took a seat by the rail. When Paul sat down in front of him, he turned his attention to the crew helping an elderly couple onto the boat so as to not stare at the shape of Paul’s pistol. Boring of that event, he allowed his eyes to drift away and caught Hunter staring at him from across the aisle. It was an odd look that John couldn’t interpret. He held Hunter’s stare until Hunter was forced to look away.

  Thirty-five minutes later, they were leaving the ferry at Watford Bridge and walking up Middle Road toward the bus stop. The wait was a short one, and soon John was standing in the aisle of the crowded bus, holding on to the metal bar above him. An old dark-skinned Bermudian actually stood up and offered him his seat, but John politely declined.

  Stepping off the bus, Hunter took a moment to look around and gather his bearings. “Okay. We follow that street into Somerset Village. His house is pink with white shutters and a white roof. Should be on the right.”

  With the bus pulling away from the curb behind them, Nick asked, “How far?”

  “How should I know?”

  They walked in single file along the road for nearly ten minutes before they came to a row of houses. The pink house with the white roof had a brick-enclosed driveway with a small black car parked in it.

  “Guess this is it,” Chris commented as he skipped up the steps and knocked on the door before anyone could even think to stop him.

  As they waited, everyone took notice of a subtle change in the air. The leaves on the trees were beginning to rustle, pine branches gently swaying back and forth in the breeze. The bad weather was starting to fidget in its sleep.

  When the door finally opened, but before John could see whoever had opened it, he was struck by a sudden thought. What if Ronald had actually killed Henry and now Henry’s friends, one of which was presently armed, were about to exact vengeance on the murderer? And what if the reason they had wanted him to come so badly was for the sole purpose of getting away with it, making it look like he was avenging his brother? It was something he didn’t think they’d mind pinning on a soldier turned conscientious objector.

  A raindrop struck him in the forehead as Ronald appeared in the doorway, Hunter attempting to explain who they were and why they were there. Not paying attention to the exchange, John looked more closely at Ronald and noticed that he didn’t appear a day older than in the picture on the back of his books.

  “Come on, Johnny,” Nick said, motioning him up the stairs with his handless arm.

  Taking a deep breath and saying a silent prayer, John passed Nick and entered the house. He knew there was no turning back now, though he hadn’t completely ruled out trying.

  Ronald Douglas Carter looked to be somewhere in his mid-thirties. He had a handsome face that was decorated with black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was almost as tall as Jackson, and the British accent in which he spoke only made his persona all the more exquisite. He seemed to be the perfect gentleman, walking smoothly right out of a Hollywood set. He smiled at his unexpected company as they came and stood in the little foyer of his dwelling place.

  “Well, you fellows are a menacing sight, aren’t you?” he said, noting their own physical presence. “And just what is it that you think I can do for you?”

  Hunter stepped forward. “A friend of ours sailed here a few weeks ago. Had some things he wanted to talk to you about. We’re wondering if he ever showed up and if you know where he went after he left.”

  Ronald put a hand to his chin, his striking blue eyes narrowing with thought. “Believe it or not, quite a few people show up at my door wanting to talk about my writings. What was his name?”

  “Henry,” John said. “Henry Carter.”

  Ronald moved his head slightly to the side so that he could get a better view of who had spoken. When his eyes fell on John, a delicate grin turned the corner of his mouth. Then he turned away from them and began walking into another room. “Come in. I have some tea on.”

  As they all gathered around the kitchen table, some sitting and some leaning against the wall, Paul asked again if he had met with Henry.

  “As a matter of fact, I do recall our conversation.” He poured some tea into a few teacups and handed them to whoever was polite enough to reach out for them.

  John wasn’t. There was something about Ronald that he didn’t like, and as he adjusted his backpack and folded his arms, he asked, “And what was that like?”

  “Oh, why he had some questions about certain things he’d read in my books.”

  John was about to pursue the issue some more, but a picture hanging on a wall in the next room suddenly caught his attention. Without realizing it, his feet began taking him closer to the framed black and white photograph and away from the new conversation that another of Paul’s questions had just spawned. Stealing a glance over his shoulder, it appeared as though he’d escaped the kitchen unnoticed.

  When he stood before the picture, his hands began shaking.

  It was an old photograph of a fossilized body lying inside a wooden casket, its hands resting on its stomach. Only, the casket was standing up on its end and leaning against the back of a railroad car. Both the casket and the person within it stood taller than the car, even at such an angle. In order to communicate scale, there was a ladder standing straight up alongside the train car and the casket. John held out his trembling finger and touched the glass. As soon as his flesh made contact with the image, a sudden voice came from behind, nearly startling him to death. Somehow, he was able to keep himself from turning around.

  “Twelve feet and two inches tall, if you believe it,” Ronald commented from an awkward distance comprising of just two feet. “Discovered in Ireland in 1895 but supposedly disappeared after the picture was taken, though it was said to have made its rounds in Dublin, Manchester, and Liverpool first.”

  “Is it real?” he asked, still staring at it.

  His large shoulders shrugged under the blue polo sweater he was wearing. “That depends on who you ask.” He paused and, before taking a sip of tea, added w
ith the faintest whisper of a smile, “There are six toes on its right foot.”

  Though John did the best he could to hide the surprise he felt explode in his chest, he knew he’d failed miserably.

  Ronald’s ghost of a smile now materialized in the flesh. “It’s hard to say whether or not it’s a fake. There have certainly been a few of them, fakes that is. The Cardiff Giant, in 1869, was one of the biggest hoaxes in US history.”

  John managed to pry his eyes off the image, finally turning to see Ronald standing there rocking back and forth on his heels in anticipation of the next question. He was still standing just two feet away. John could actually taste him, whatever cologne he was wearing attacking the roof of his mouth. But his back was to the wall, and he wasn’t sure the invasion of personal space warranted a violent separation. “Cardiff Giant?” he managed to ask, playing right into the author’s rather large hands.

  “I won’t bore you with the details, but it concerned an atheist named George Hull who got into a discussion with a Christian minister over the Bible’s literal credibility. They were speaking specifically of the sixth chapter in Genesis, on whether or not there were really giants on the earth.”

  The odds that this particularly obscure passage would keep coming up like this, and within such a short period of time, were absurd even without allowing into the equation what he’d seen in Afghanistan. John was beginning to get the terrible feeling that somehow things might be more about him than Henry.

  Ronald continued, his accent polished with a sense of romanticism that made ignoring him impossible. He explained the entire hoax that had ended up involving P.T. Barnum and a court ruling.

  John gave the picture one last glance and shuddered before following Ronald back into the company of the other four guests.

  When they entered the kitchen, Hunter had a look waiting for John that rebuked him for wandering off. John gave him a wink.

  “So,” Nick said, trying again to discover what they’d come for, “do you know where he went?”

  “Who?” Ronald asked, taking a seat.

  “Henry.”

  “Ah. Henry Carter.” He drew out the phonetics of the name as he crossed one leg over the other, tilting his head back and staring in thought up to the ceiling. But before the ceiling gave way and the heavens parted to reveal an answer, a knock sounded at the door.

  “It seems as though I am a popular man today,” he smiled. “Excuse me.” He left the room.

  As he left, Chris whispered, “I bet he has no problem with getting the ladies,” referring to the suave sexuality that seemed to radiate from the author.

  Peeking his head back around the corner, and with a strange twinkle in his eye, Ronald exclaimed rather boldly, “You have no idea.”

  While Ronald was busy answering the door, John stepped back into the living room and began examining the titles of books that were stacked side by side within several tall bookshelves. The subject matter Ronald was apparently interested in stretched from one end of the Occult to the other end of science. Numerology, astral projection, psychokinesis… and then astrology and alchemy transitioned downward into quantum physics, wormholes, dark matter, string theory, time travel, alternate universe theories, geology, astronomy, and even underwater exploration. Turning to another bookshelf, John read even more strange titles, these encompassing more of history, philosophy, and literature than methodology and science — UFOs, secret societies, mystery religions, esoteric wisdom, ancient calendar systems, and megalithic archeology. But there was one shelf that contained only religious texts. The Book of the Dead, the Pyramid Texts, the Bible, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Koran, and a score of other religious accounts ranging from Roman, Greek, and Hindu mythologies to the sacred texts belonging to the Sumerians, Aztecs, Chinese, and Native Americans. There were two other bookshelves across the room, but John traded the knowledge of what they held for a specific book that caught his eye. He cautiously pulled it from the shelf, holding it in his hands. The title was in French and was perfectly handwritten, inlaid with gold. Though he couldn’t be exactly certain as to what it said, he knew as much as Giants… Civilization… and Age of Enlightenment. John opened the hardbound book and found the crisp pages to be yellow with age, the handwritten text faded in many spots. He searched the book for a date, a publisher, and even its place of origin, but there wasn’t even an author’s name to which the material had been credited. The book must have been rebound, perhaps even a few times. He carefully returned it to the shelf, painfully aware of the distinct — and even ancient — aura it seemed to have about it, afraid that if he opened it again, he might be sucked inside and lost forever in some dark fantasy.

  A commotion in the foyer drew his attention back to the aspects of reality he was accustomed to, and he went to investigate. As he entered one side of the kitchen, he was surprised to see Jackson and Ronald exchanging hugs and handshakes. Even the others seemed taken aback by this.

  “You two know each other?” Hunter asked, an expression of bewilderment painted across his dark features.

  Ronald smiled. “Of course! Jack and I spent many days together back in…” He looked at Jackson for help. “What year was that anyway?”

  Jackson laughed. “I see you’ve met my friends.”

  “Ah, yes. They were telling me about Henry. Is it true that he is missing?”

  Jackson nodded his head. “Yeah. So you talked to him?”

  “Yes, he visited me. We spent the entire day in conversation. You were very wise to send him my way. He had lots of questions.”

  John saw Chris and Hunter looking at each other as if this was all new information to them.

  Nick held up his missing hand. “Hold on a sec. Jack, you wanna tell us just what’s going on?”

  “Later.” It was the impatient and hushing manner in which he spewed it that made Nick’s eyes turn cold.

  “Would you like some tea?” Ronald asked Jackson.

  “You have a bathroom that I can use?” John interrupted before Jackson could respond.

  Ronald pointed out of the kitchen. “Second door on your right side.”

  Once he was leaning over the sink and staring into the mirror, John began splashing cold water in his face. This just couldn’t be happening. It had to be a new part to his nightmare.

  Flushing the toilet, he walked back into the hallway, where he noticed that the door beside it stood slightly ajar. Not able to stifle his curiosity, he pushed it open and entered.

  There were books stacked in piles from one end of the room to the other. Atlases, maps, old shipping charts… There were maps pinned up on the walls, too, lines of string dividing them up into hundreds of shapes. Some of the maps were modern while others looked to have been preserved from the earliest days of sea exploration. One map in particular caught his attention. As he moved closer to it, he accidentally bumped into a wooden desk. Looking down, he discovered pages and pages of handwritten notes scattered across its surface. After quickly leafing through them, he discovered that the handwriting was exactly the same handwriting used in the old book out in the living room. And though these notes were mostly written in English, there were also phrases penned in French and some smaller footnotes in some kind of Hebrew or Aramaic.

  While sorting through the papers, he managed to catch a glimpse of what looked like a map beneath them. It seemed to cover the entire top of the desk. Quickly clearing the papers away, he saw that it was actually a map of the Atlantic. A red triangle was smeared over it, its sides extending from Bermuda to Miami to Puerto Rico and back up to Bermuda again. The top of the triangle was sectioned off by a line drawn parallel to its base. And, just like the reverse of the United States’ Great Seal, there was an eye floating within it. Only this eye resembled more of an Egyptian hieroglyphic than that of the Masonic art he’d witnessed in his grandfather’s house as a child. But even more disturbing was what was written around the triangle. Along the Bermuda-Miami line was written out, DOORWAY. Across the base
was the word, TO. And following the angle of the Bermuda-Puerto Rico line, it said, HELL. At the bottom of the map, and outside its blue boundaries, were very small columns of names written in all different languages. John knew them to be the names of ships and planes. Judging from Ronald’s book, he figured them to be the names of those gone missing. And then John noticed that a corner of the map was turned slightly upward, revealing more writing on its reverse. Grabbing the right end of the map, he pulled it back across the desk to reveal its blank underbelly — only it wasn’t blank. From one end of the map to the other, and from top to bottom, were lists of names… thousands of them. The print, however, was so miniscule that he could hardly read it. Dates were affixed to some of the names, the list chronological.

  John spotted the year 1945 and recognized the name beside it as belonging to one of the pilots from Flight 19. Strangely, though, if indeed this was a list compiled of those who had vanished along with their vessels, the rest of the pilots were nowhere to be seen. He followed his finger to the end of the last list, to the most recent date. His finger jumped off the paper as if electrocuted by the final name it touched.

  Hanging there at the end of the page, in small English print and staring directly at him, was his brother’s name.

  HENRY REVERE CARTER.

  Heart pounding in his chest and hands clenched into fists at his side, he stared ahead, peering into the other world the old map had suddenly opened a portal to, its oceans alive with a psychic tempest bombarding his sanity.

  “The 17th century Jesuit priest, Athanasius Kircher, drew that map.”

  Again, the sudden sound of Ronald’s voice made his heart stop. Slowly, and still shaking, he turned away from the map Ronald assumed he had been looking at. “It’s amazing,” he whispered. He had no idea why it would be amazing but needed to keep Ronald’s attention away from the desktop and the evidence of his snooping.