DARK VISIONS

by James Byron Huggins

  Scowling, Marvin turned the paper this way and that. His brow was hard, and his jaw was set, and for a long minute Jodi didn’t think he’d have any answer before he said, “Where did you find this?”

  “At the home of the man who’s been killing all these people. Do you have any idea what it means?”

  “Yeah,” Marvin said with confidence. “This is a place for human sacrifice.” He opened his eyes wider. “For … a lot … of … human … sacrifice.”

  “Let’s go to your office.”

  “Good idea.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were sitting in Marvin’s makeshift office, and he spread the paper on his plywood desk. He took a large magnifying glass and went over the map inch by inch until he asked, “Where did you say you got this?”

  “At the killer’s house,” said Jodi. “Out on Long Island.”

  “No way,” he shook his head. “That’s not the starting point for this map. This has a different starting point.”

  “What’s it a map of?”

  Joe Mac was sitting much closer to the desk than the first time he’d been inside the museum. It was as if he didn’t want to miss a single syllable of what Marvin had to say. His face was lifted and he had both hands cradling his cane.

  “Okay,” Marvin began, “you see these small circles? These are what we call ‘ritual shafts.’ They’re holes dug exactly twenty-five feet deep with stakes sticking up at the bottom. Druids used to throw people into the shafts as human sacrifices. Obviously, the person would land on the spike, get killed, and their bodies would stay down there.”

  Jodi pointed to the largest circle. “What’s this?”

  “This looks like a scale replica of Stonehenge,” Marvin answered. “You’ve got five large trilithons surrounding by fifteen more trilithons. I don’t know that Stonehenge ever had a spike in the center but, then again, neither does anybody else. Nobody even has an iron-clad theory on who built the thing.”

  Jodi said, “I thought the Druids built it.”

  “Yeah, people say that, but it’s sort of a misnomer. Most archeologists agree that the people who built it lived in Britain around eight thousand BC, but the Druids didn’t possess enough knowledge of architecture to have built it. You see, Stonehenge dates all the way back to a period of Europe when people existed just by hunting and foraging. They knew nothing about agriculture or keeping flocks. They hunted what they could kill and they picked berries or tomatoes or whatever else they came across to survive. But Stonehenge – as we know it – was built by a fairly sophisticated civilization that survived some kind of global holocaust and migrated into Britain around eight thousand BC.”

  After staring, Jodi asked, “What kind of ‘global holocaust?’”

  Marvin looked her in the eyes. “Look, there’s indisputable archeological evidence that a devastating flood covered about one hundred-fifty thousand square miles of Mesopotamia around eight thousand BC. It was somewhere around the time that the last Ice Age retreated. You gotta think: Places like Great Britain or North America were buried under a mile of ice at the time. Then all that ice melted, the water table rose all over the world, and lots of places got flooded. I mean, it doesn’t quite rise to the mythological ‘Noah’s Flood’ that covered the entire world, but it sure covered the entire world as they knew it. They’ve even – and this was just recently discovered – found the old Black Sea shoreline four hundred feet beneath the surface of the current shoreline, and it dates to eight thousand BC.”

  “And this Ice Age flood was the global holocaust?” asked Jodi.

  “Yeah,” Marvin nodded. “Now, some scientists infer that the civilization that domesticated Britain and Western Europe were the survivors of that flood. Archeologists conjecture that this nation migrated north after the flood receded in search of greener pastures and eventually settled in France, Germany, and Britain. Some say they taught the indigenous food gatherers – or the earliest ‘Druids,’ – a better way of life. And there’s no doubt that a civilization savvy enough to survive a quasi-global apocalypse would also be well versed in architecture, so there’s every possibility that they might have taught the ancient Druids how to build Stonehenge. And, over time, the two nations just naturally merged into one single civilization.”

  Joe Mac asked, “How does any of that help us solve this murder?”

  “Wait a minute, Joe,” said Jodi. “Would these people who migrated north have been familiar with the Jews?”

  “Sure,” Marvin nodded. “They came from Mesopotamia. And there’s evidence that the book of Job was written somewhere around that period. In fact, some archeologists hypothesize that Job is the oldest book in the world. Even older than Gilgamesh. Older than anything. But that’s beside the point. To answer your question: Yes. Whatever civilization moved north after the flood would certainly have been familiar with the beliefs of bordering tribes and that would have included ancestors of Israel.”

  “Could Druids have come out of this civilization?” Jodi asked.

  “No, the Druids have been in Britain since the world began. But then this secondary civilization migrated north after the flood and they ‘absorbed’ the primitive Druids along with many of their shamanistic rituals. And this mingling created a new form of Druidism that was both very intelligent and very savage at the same time. It’s really the only way to describe how a group like the ancient Druids – a group that simultaneously operated at such a high level of sophistication while also practicing something as barbaric as human sacrifice – came to exist. This new civilization modernized the primitive Druids, but the Druids retrained all their gods and beliefs and rituals. Yeah, they became sophisticated enough to build Stonehenge, but they kept their more savage ceremonies – ceremonies like the Wicker Man. In fact, Caesar thought the Druids were so horrifying and savage that he was doing the world a favor by killing every single one of them.”

  Jodi sat back in her chair and stared for a long time at the map. “Stonehenge is in England, right?”

  “In Salisbury, yeah.”

  “So if a group of Druids built another Stonehenge in New York State would it serve the same purpose?”

  Marvin gazed up at the roof. “Well … not really,” he said at last. “The primary purpose of Stonehenge was astronomy because it rests on the fifty-first parallel. And I don’t think any part of New York State rests on the fifty-first parallel, and that location is critical.”

  “So if this is a map to a local replica of Stonehenge,” Jodi said slowly, “how do we use this map to locate it?”

  “You’d have to know the starting point on the map,” Joe Mac stated. “That’s what that little house is for. It’s the place where the map begins.”

  Jodi: “Could this place be underground?”

  “Stonehenge is bigger than people think. It’d have to be a huge cavern. Do you have any idea where the starting point for this map is?”

  Jodi had begun shaking her head before he was even finished. “No,” she said dejectedly, “but if this thing is underground, I suppose the starting point is underground, too.”

  “You’re supposing a lot,” said Joe Mac. “Why don’t we stick to what we know?”

  Jodi struck the paper. “I know this is a map! I know this represents a replica of Stonehenge! I know the people behind Aaron’s death are Druids, so I know that whoever gets together at this place with their ‘Druid beliefs’ are the same people who are responsible for killing twenty-four innocent people in my jurisdiction in the past four years! They may not have pulled the trigger, but they sure ordered it done, and I know that’s bad enough for some serious payback, Joe!”

  Joe Mac sat unmoving, his face slightly lifted to the light, before he said, “But we don’t know where to start looking for this place. We need to get some answers out of one of these people, and that means we have to capture one of them. And the only chance we have of doing that is to get to their next target before they do. Then we set up, wait for him, and snatch him up when he comes in.�
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  “That’s great, Joe. But that only brings us back to the fact that we don’t know who his next target is because we don’t know how he’s choosing them! We don’t have a motive! For all we know his motive is that he’s crazy and that means he’s picking them at random!”

  “He’s not picking them at random,” Joe Mac said, solid.

  Jodi collapsed back in her metal chair, legs sticking straight out, arms hanging at her sides. She blew out a long breath and didn’t move again. She saw only dust-caked gray metal racks and unorganized, black-pitted dinosaur bones.

  Joe Mac said, “Marvin? What kind of astronomy are you talking?”

  Marvin, who was bent in his chair, raised his face. “What?”

  “What kind of astronomy did these Druids do?”

  Marvin sighed, “Well, uh, that’s a really complicated question. And I’m not sure that anybody knows the answer.”

  “Give it your best shot.”

  Marvin stared at a distant wall, removed a pipe from his coat, and leaned back. “Okay,” he began, “the basic design of Stonehenge was to determine the dates for sacrifices by some kind of unknown –”

  He struck a match.

  A thunderous and bizarrely silent blast hit Jodi fully in the face and she was aware that she was in the air, the ground racing away beneath her even as dirt and dust rose from the floor enveloping her in a cocoon and then she suddenly stopped moving.

  She dimly sensed she was sliding down a wall.

  * * *

  Way too slowly, Jodi realized she was sitting and holding a cloth to her face, and her head was hurting.

  A lot.

  She heard Joe Mac’s familiar voice and gazed narrowly to the side simultaneously recognizing three things: first, Joe Mac and Captain Brightbarton were in a quiet conversation; second, she was still in the museum, but the surroundings were smoking; and third, firemen were casually roving to and fro.

  Amazingly, Jodi also realized she was not in any immediate danger because no one was moving with any display of alarm. Instead, they all seemed to be treating this like a dead crime scene rather than a potentially explosive situation.

  She wondered what had happened. Then an EMS guy came over to put a hand on her shoulder. “How you doing?” he asked.

  “Fine,” said Jodi on automatic pilot. “What happened?”

  “A gas leak blew up,” he answered. “But it was several street levels beneath you, so you guys didn’t get burned. You did get hit by the concussion – the change in air pressure. But that only lasted a split-second, and the medics said you were just stunned.”

  “What about a concussion?”

  “Both pupils are responsive. But I’d recommend you go to the ER and get an MRI. That’s standard procedure.”

  Jodi stood. “Screw standard procedure. Thanks.” She walked slowly to Joe Mac and Brightbarton and muttered, “I know Marvin’s okay because neither of you look too upset. I also know this was another attempt to kill us. What I don’t know is what do we know that makes us such a threat?”

  Brightbarton stated, “We were just discussing that.”

  “By the way, how is Marvin?”

  Joe Mac: “Like you said; he’s fine. He got knocked out by the explosion. ‘Bout like all of us. He’s in a meeting with the director.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Jodi chose to sit down beside Joe Mac; she didn’t wait, want, or care for an invitation to join this “strategy session” or whatever the hell it was. She figured she’d earned the right to join anything she felt like joining as far as this mess goes.

  “Huh,” grunted Brightbarton. “Well, as I was saying: You guys have stumbled onto something, and even you don’t know what it is or why it’s important. But it’s something critical to these people.” He hesitated a long time. “It could be a name. A location. Both.” With a sigh he added, “You already have the clue to find this guy if you can only figure out what it is. With luck, you could close out this case before daylight.”

  “We ain’t had too much luck,” mumbled Jodi. Then, “Oh, man, I feel bad that I’m only now thinking about this. But did anybody else get hurt?” She fixed on Brightbarton. “Was there any collateral damage? As they so callously say?”

  He shook his head. “Just you three. Possible concussions. Nothing serious.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re wasting time here,” Joe Mac stood. “Where’s Marvin?”

  Brightbarton scowled, “He’s upstairs. Why?”

  Joe Mac shook his head as he moved forward. “We’re not the ones who know what they’re afraid of.”

  Jodi closed her eyes; she should have seen it coming.

  “It’s Marvin,” said Joe Mac.

  * * *

  Remarkably, Marvin seemed to have recovered from the blast like a veteran World War II infantryman. He was covered in dust, a trace of dried blood marked his forehead, and a sling cradled his arm. And yet he seemed composed and alert as if getting blown up was an everyday thing.

  “Hey,” smiled Jodi. “Well, you look all right.”

  “I am,” said Marvin, a nod. “And they told me you two were okay, so I came up here to give a … what do they call it?”

  “A debriefing?”

  “Yeah. That.” He rolled a shoulder with a grimace. “Not surprisingly, Professor Graven was relieved that we came out okay. But he was genuinely thrilled that none of the fossils were damaged. I’ve never felt more expendable in my life.”

  “Where is he now?” asked Joe Mac.

  Glancing placidly around the room, Marvin replied, “I can’t tell you. He’s probably downstairs with the firemen.”

  Joe Mac pulled up a chair, and sat. “Marvin, we think you know something that these people don’t want us to know. It’s something that even you don’t know is important, and they don’t want you telling us because they think we’ll put two and two together. Can you remember what we were talking about before the explosion?”

  After slow blinks Marvin finally said, “I … I think so.”

  “Can you give it a try?”

  Jodi preferred to stand, and so she leaned against a wall as Marvin said, “Uh … we were talking about the purpose of Stonehenge.” He swallowed with difficulty. “Well, the most commonly held theory is based on the summer solstice. The entire structure was built directly on the perfect parallel, and the combination of the trilithons and fifty-six bluestones laid around two circles of trilithons was the most brilliant means of tracking the movements of the sun and moon. So, whoever built Stonehenge was aware of the ‘Metonic’ cycle, which is where both cycles of the sun and moon synchronize over a period of eighteen-point-six solar years with an error of only two hours.”

  “Stop right there.” Joe Mac raised a hand. “So this thing was basically a means to tell the longest day, the shortest, the seasons and stuff like that? And they timed their human and animal sacrifices by this calendar, right?”

  “Well … yeah. That’s what most archeologists think.”

  “But we don’t need Stonehenge to determine the seasons anymore,” Joe Mac said. “We’ve got satellites that tell us when the solstice is gonna be here or what time the moon is gonna rise, so let’s pretend for a moment these people who build this modern replica of Stonehenge – if that’s what this map reveals – didn’t build it with all these solar alignments in mind because they don’t need it for that anymore. We’ve got telescopes for that. What would be the other reason for building it?”

  “For rituals,” Marvin said plainly. “That would be the only reason to build it. And there’s good evidence to suggest that the original Druids were … well, let’s just say they were ‘primitive.’ And human sacrifice, decapitation, and cannibalism were part of their everyday belief system. Then this nation from Mesopotamia joined them and it was far more knowledgeable about astronomy and apparently more dedicated to sun worship. So, consequently, the primitive Druids’s practice of human sacrifice became a part of their sun worship and musical festivals, and, at
that point, the die-hard, bone-deep serious ancient Druids were basically created. It was a merging of two radically diverse cultures – the sophisticated and the savage – and it worked in some kind of one-out-of-a-million magical way that stayed strong for eight thousand years.”

  “Did you say they held music festivals?” asked Jodi.

  “Yeah,” Marvin nodded. “There’s theories that the artful design of Stonehenge was purposed so that the entire monument could be flooded with water to a depth of about six inches. Then two musical instruments would be simultaneously played on top of the water plain inside the trilithons, and the interplay of the music between the water and the stones would give the optical illusion of … of an invisible being … standing there.” Marvin stared as if waiting. “I mean, it’s just a theory. But it’s got respected backers. Some people say that the musical allusion of an otherworldly being standing inside the stones is the only reason they held musical festivals at all. And that kind of makes sense. Not to digress, but Jimi Hendrix experimented with water and music, too. Hendrix would flood his sound stage, and then he’d record on top of the water. He said it was ‘out of this world.’”

  Joe Mac was frowning. “What purpose would that serve?”

  Leaning back, Marvin said, “I have no idea. But anything is a viable theory with that place. I don’t think they’ve even scratched the surface of what it was built to achieve.” He gazed from Joe Mac to Jodi for ten seconds before he said in a sad voice, “But I do know this: If what you suspect is true, then you two are absolutely dealing with some very bad people who very likely practice human sacrifice, decapitation, and cannibalism to this day.” He paused. “Now I know you guys are cops, and you do this for a living, so you’re not scared of these people. But I bet you they’re not scared of you, either. I’m betting they’ll kill you just like they’ve killed that guy last night and not give it a second thought. So, are you sure you want to go to the wall with these people? I mean, you’re talking about an ancient culture that systematically killed tens of thousands of people by ritual sacrifice in an age where killing tens of thousands of people wasn’t an easy thing to do!”