Henry shook his head, forgetting that so many of their conversations had excluded Paul and Hunter. So he started from the beginning. “Satan’s original rebellion resulted in his fall, as well as a third of the angels that, for some unknown reason, decided to follow him. Then, in the time of Jared, certain of these fallen angels committed an even greater sin by defying the laws of nature and putting on some sort of human physicality in order to comingle with humanity. The Flood destroyed all of that. But we know from both the Bible and history that there were giants after the Flood as well. That can only mean one of two things. Either one of Noah’s sons was corrupted or there was a second event in which fallen angels descended to earth and had sexual relations with women.”
Paul sneered. “Must’ve been sick the day they covered this crap in school.”
Chadwick smiled. “You wouldn’t get this in school. Not unless you were raised in the 1800s. In which case you’d have known that Pliny spoke of two giants, Pusio and Secundilla, who led Augustus’ armies into battle. Maybe you’d have heard of the Patagonian Giants in the San Julian region that were seen by Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, and Anthony Knyvet. Or that later, the crew of a Dutch schooner found several skeletons between ten and eleven feet tall — Commodore Byron, in 1764, writing that he, too, found giants there. Maybe you’d have had a test on the story of the Pawnee coming into Wild Bill’s camp with a giant thigh bone and telling him that a race of giants had lived in the area, their denial of a Great Spirit bringing a flood that destroyed them.”
“Yeah, right,” Paul replied.
Chadwick shrugged. “The Piute Indians of Nevada had a legend of red-haired, freckled giants that roamed the Humboldt Sink area of northern Nevada. They were cannibals.”
Hunter looked skeptical. “How would red-haired, freckled giants get to North America?”
“Actually, the DNA of some Native Americans shows close ties to Europeans. Seems they had contact with each other at some point. Some of the Native American tribes claimed to have descended from light-skinned people that lived on an island east of America. They called it, ‘White Man’s Island’ and claimed a race of white giants lived there, that before the island sank, they were able to build a canoe and reach the mainland. Quetzalcoatl was white with European features, too.” He adjusted his glasses and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Anyway, the Celtic Benediguidfran was supposedly a giant that no ship was large enough to carry—”
“The Celtic what?” George interrupted.
Chadwick smiled again. “The Scandinavian city of Jotunheim was said to be full of giants…”
“What about the Chronicle of Akakor?” Henry asked.
“Yeah, that, too.”
“Which is?” Patrick urged, spreading cedar branches out of his way.
Henry replied, “It told of golden airships that arrived in the New World. The occupants had white skin, black hair, and six fingers on each hand and foot. They supposedly built massive stone cities and could fling lightning and melt stone. The cities were destroyed by a flood. And ancient statues still standing in Amazon’s city of Tiahuanaco have six fingers and toes.”
Chadwick adjusted the MP5 as they climbed over a rock formation, something about what Henry said tickling the back of his mind.
“The Chippewas were said to hack giants into smaller pieces,” Henry was saying as John helped him up the rocky slope.
“Okay,” Paul stopped him. “I get the point.”
“Wait,” George pleaded in his pubescent voice. “Are there more?”
Paul sighed.
Chadwick managed to pull himself away from whatever was nagging in his brain and nod. “Yeah, DeSoto’s expeditions encountered giants. Narvaez found giants along the Mississippi, one of his men writing that they were excellent archers, incapable of missing anything within two hundred paces and with such force that red oaks could be pierced straight through.”
“I’ve seen that,” mumbled Patrick. And whatever the memory, it caused him to tighten his grip on the 12-guage shotgun he was carrying.
Then Hunter leaned in and whispered to Chadwick, “You know the kid has no idea what you’re talking about. None of us do. Ever.”
Chadwick realized that he was probably right. The kid was no doubt born in this place and wouldn’t know anything about world history, let alone who Narvaez was.
John frowned as he remembered something from Ronald’s house. “Ronald had an old book about giants and some kind of age of enlightenment. And I swear it was written in the same handwriting as his list of names on the map.”
Henry shook his head and looked over at Jackson. “Should’ve never trusted him.”
Jackson just looked away.
“Here we are,” muttered Patrick as they approached the edge of the forest, the giant wall still standing in the midst of the clearing.
Jackson, who hadn’t uttered a word the entire trip, began walking into the clearing ahead of everyone.
“Strange character, your friend is,” Patrick remarked to Hunter while nodding ahead to Jackson.
Hunter didn’t comment.
Chadwick was still amazed by the wall’s scale and the impossibility of its construction. “You have any idea how these were built?” he asked the three residents as they approached the tall entranceway.
Paul spit on the ground. “You just said giants built them.”
“Well…” In actuality, he’d never given much credence to those stories. He figured they were simply romanticized accounts of the “builder gods” spun by the primitive populations under their rule. But now he wasn’t so sure. That there were giants was indisputable; however, what these giants actually were or could do… well, that had been a more clouded issue — even for someone as “fringe” as himself. “It’s true that the legends of Viracocha and the myths of the Andes tell how ‘shining ones’ built them by magic, that Viracocha created giant men to build his temples. Pedro de Castaeda wrote that the Cocopa Indians were giants that could carry logs six ordinary men couldn’t budge.”
Charles shrugged as he lifted his eyes to the rock geometry and the conundrum he simply knew to be a wall. “Sometimes we hear strange sounds, and then the next day there’s a pillar of stone standing in the middle of an empty field.”
“Strange sounds?” Jackson asked, startling everyone. He was staring at the wall.
“Actually,” Chadwick said, “ancient legends, like those of the Pyramid of the Magician in Central America and the Andean city of Tiahuanaco, do tell of strange sounds that could elevate huge stones.”
“Sound?” John asked, skeptical.
“Hey, trumpets made the walls of Jericho come down, right?” he retorted, appealing to John’s faith. “In fact…” he whispered while running a hand over the impossible seam separating a rock standing twice as tall as him from others stacked up alongside it. He couldn’t even get his fingernail into the crack, and yet there was no mortar of any kind, just huge rocks cut in perfect synchronicity with each other. As with the stones in the Great Pyramid, the tolerances would leave modern stone cutters incredulous. “—the acoustics of the Great Pyramid are perfect, like a concert hall. It’s said that F-sharp, which Egyptian texts say is the harmonic of the planet, is sounded by the wind blowing across the ends of the star chambers. Sacred flutes of Native Americans were tuned to F-sharp, too. Anyway, the whole pyramid is designed like the Whispering Gallery in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.”
Hunter stepped away from the wall, an eerie feeling making him want to distance himself from it. “What’re you saying, Chad?”
“Just that sound is an element included within the literature. Some kind of sonic purpose incorporated into the system. Maybe, if what Charles said is accurate, the sounds they hear somehow play a part in the building of these impossible structures. I mean, what’s more implausible, that some sonic technology exists that can move two thousand-ton stones, or that, as is believed to be the case in Peru, they were quarried over two hundred miles away from the site and
rolled on stones or wooden poles up and down the sides of mountains?”
“Or maybe ‘technology’ is the wrong word,” John suggested. “Perhaps it was just the same demonic power that allowed the Pharaoh’s sorcerers to imitate God’s miracles. The same power that allowed demon-possessed men to break through chains of iron, or how Satan was able to show all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus in one instant.”
“Or,” Henry stated soberly, “maybe the two are a lot more closely related than we’d like to think.”
As they walked away from the wall and toward the temple, John asked if anyone knew the purpose of the wall, since it seemed unlikely that such a fortification would be needed on an island ruled by giants.
“We think the walls are built to separate certain classes of giants,” Patrick explained.
Henry nodded. “The Book of Enoch indicates three different species of giants. And, like in the mythology accounts, they started warring with each other—”
“—what the…” Chadwick cut him off.
The temple area looked remarkably different than it had just a week ago. The strange henge-like circle that surrounded the altar was now covered in what Chadwick knew to be white gypsum. It was glowing under the midday sky in a ring of light, just as they were said to do in Neolithic Britain. However, even more startling was the assortment of monoliths stacked upon one another inside the circle and around the altar.
“It’s like Stonehenge,” Paul whispered, looking back and forth. “There’s more over there.”
They followed his gaze and saw that, indeed, all around the temple structure were circles covered in reflective gypsum. Each circle had two opposing entrances, some containing monoliths and some not.
“Where’d they get the stone?” Hunter wondered.
Jackson answered flatly, “The island consists of volcanic material that’s covered with a layer of limestone two hundred and fifty feet thick.”
“There must be a dozen of them,” John stated, sweeping his gaze over the landscape.
“Look.” Henry pointed. “There’s one huge avenue that goes through all of them.”
Chadwick whispered, “I wouldn’t be surprised if from above it formed some sort of pattern.”
“Like the Nazca Lines?” Henry asked.
“No, I was thinking more like the pyramids or the temple of Angkor. Maybe a reflection of a constellation. Though the Nazca Lines have a stellar orientation to Orion, too.”
“What are the Nazca Lines?” Hunter asked as they slowly approached the brown-red altar now resting beneath the shadows of large standing stones.
Chadwick answered offhandedly, his mind concentrating on something else. “The Nazca plateau in southern Peru is two hundred square miles of barren planes. Once aviation began, people flying over the region noticed hundreds of huge drawings on the ground — birds, animals, geometric shapes… an accurate portrayal of a spider species found only in remote parts of the Amazon rainforest…”
“This is in Peru?” asked Charles.
“Yeah. There’s a whale and monkey, too. A little out of place considering it’s one of the driest places on earth. Strange looking men in big boots…”
“How big are these drawings?” Patrick turned and cast a curious face at the archeologist.
“They vary. Some of the lines run perfectly straight for five miles. The hummingbird is one hundred and fifty feet long, the condor four hundred feet, the lizard — whose tail is now divided by the Pan-American highway — is over six hundred feet long.”
“Where’d they come from?”
“Local traditions credit the god, Viracocha.”
But they all fell silent as they came upon the altar, everyone watching rather carefully where they placed their feet.
“What did you want us to see?” John asked, noticing that the breeze had suddenly ceased.
Patrick nodded to George, and George began walking around in a circle, his eyes concentrating on the ground. Then, he bent over and began digging in the soft soil with his hands. A moment later, he stood with a giant skull in his hands.
“There’s more,” Patrick stated.
“It’s a giant,” Jackson mumbled, a bit surprised.
“Yeah, they sacrifice them.”
Hunter examined the skull. “Why would they do that?”
“To free their spirits. We think they can leave this place once they’re disembodied.”
“Why?”
Henry saw it immediately. “To help assist his effort from the other side.”
“And they willingly do this?” asked John.
“No, they usually end up killing a few of the men performing the sacrifice before they can be killed themselves.”
“Men?”
“Yeah, the giants don’t sacrifice each other. As far as we can tell, they don’t even seem to be aware of these spirit-freeing sacrifices. When Osiris summons, the men go and capture a giant, drag it to the altar, and sacrifice it, releasing its spiritual energy. On a few occasions, we’ve witnessed other giants intervening and wiping out an entire priesthood.” He shook his head. “The environment here is very unstable. That’s one of the reasons we’re able to survive, because they spend just as much time killing each other as they do searching for us.”
Chadwick crossed his arms, staring at the altar. “The only things that still remain of this old pagan sorcery are the Druid altars. Once the Celtae giants died off, because Ireland was never successfully invaded by the Romans, the Druids were the last to practice this stuff.” He paused. “According to Julius Caesar, the Gauls claimed to be descendants of Pluto. Other Romans recorded instances in which legions fought Celtic giants seventeen feet tall…”
John asked, “Pluto being a fallen angel?”
Chadwick shrugged. “Fallen angel, alien, god… Like I said, I think they’re all titles for the same thing. All three of them are known for conducting sexual experiments…” He tilted his head, noticing something lying next to the altar. He stepped forward through the blood-stained grass and picked it up.
Hunter stepped closer, until blood began to bubble up around his boots. “What is it?”
“A necklace,” he said in stunned fascination. He held it up to the light, examining the golden loop with puzzlement.
“The Anakim,” Henry said. “A race of giants in the Old Testament. In certain contexts, the word Anaq refers to a tight necklace.”
Chadwick nodded slowly, seeing the connection for himself. “The Celts wore them, too.”
“The Anakim were pushed out of Canaan by the Israelites. They then traveled through Europe, settling in Celtic territory.”
Chadwick handed the gold necklace to Patrick. “The Celts scalped their victims and made garments from their skins, prompting some to suggest a relationship between the Celts and the Native Americans.” He looked in Paul’s direction. “Like the red-haired, freckled giants.”
“They cherished the heads of their victims,” Henry continued, “making many of them into drinking bowls.”
A look of horror passed over Paul’s face. “Is that why that thing had Nick’s head hanging around its neck?”
Patrick looked up from the necklace, his eyes suddenly saddened. “We’ve seen them do that.” And then he held the necklace up to eyelevel, his gaze focusing on it. “I’m Irish, from Ireland. My great grandparents spoke Gaelic. Do you think it’s possible that I’m one of his descendants, too?”
At such a suggestion, Jackson turned and looked him over curiously.
Chadwick answered, “Or, maybe you’re descended from St. Patrick and, like your namesake, will play a similar role in eradicating such evils, ‘chasing the snakes into the sea.’”
Patrick smiled and dropped the necklace, crushing it under the heel of an old Converse sneaker.
But Paul was suspicious, not believing that the sole reason for the two-hour journey was so that they could stare at an altar they’d already seen. They could’ve just told them that giants were being sacrificed. “Wh
y’d you bring us here, Pat?”
Patrick stood back and paused. He spread his arms out at the design surrounding them. “Do you have any idea how it works?” There was a kind of hopeful anticipation in his eyes, as if maybe God did have a role for him to play in some coming intervention.
“How what works?”
“This, the complex.”
“What’re you talking about?” Chadwick whispered through a sea of spreading chills.
But before he could explain, a small army of men appeared before them, suddenly materializing out of thin air and occupying the center of the henge. The stunned looks on their twisted faces made it clear that they weren’t expecting the eight trespassers to be standing in their way. Their surprise faded quickly, however, as they raised an assortment of razor-sharp weapons…
And charged.
NINETEEN
Midday. 29th day of May. Bermuda, Northwest end. The Henges
Only those with their weapons already poised were able to fire immediately at the genetically damned, and the tropical air suddenly filled with impure blood.
One of the charging men leaped at Patrick, his sword held back and ready to swing. Patrick unloaded a barrel from the 12-guage pointblank into his face. The headless, loin-clothed body landed a few feet away before rolling to a stop against his leg. But before Patrick could slip his finger over the second trigger, another half-naked soldier jumped on him. The possessed man lifted his sword with a demonic shriek and was about to sever Patrick’s head in two, when Patrick’s finger finally found the trigger. The second barrel emptied into the attacker’s chest and blew him backward through the air, slamming him off a monolith. With no time to reload, Patrick tossed the shotgun aside and pulled an old revolver from his belt, backpedalling away from the attackers.
Paul was yelling, the veins in his neck and arms bulging beneath his tattoos as he held the trigger down and sprayed the MP5 back and forth. Hunter was standing beside him doing the same, but there were just too many of them. Eventually, their weapons ran empty, and they were forced to make a run for it.
Progeny Page 27
