Angels of Apocalypse, Part I: Alignment

by J. J. Harkin

  Muhammad blinked his weary eyes. Surely it was deepest night outside, but here the lamps burned still, bright as day. He was glad of the comfort of the long red robe, a perfect insulation against the crypt-like clamminess of the cave. All was silent and still as the platform continued to fall, now at the center of a cavern so large its furthest walls could not be seen. It was like some sort of creepy amusement park attraction, aside from the fact that such a thing could not be – never on a scale this large. Wishing once again that he had brought a watch, Muhammad turned to the next page of the Codex, and found several more lines of Joseph’s hurried transcriptions of Araya’s words:

  The next pages contain letters as yet unknown to myself and my Nephilim scribe, though we have taken great care to reproduce them exactly as they have been revealed to me. As they are not Cuneiform, they have been completed with the sharpened edge of his stylus, and we hope they prove legible in the distant times when their languages become well known.

  Not sure what to make of this, he turned the page as quickly as the gentleness required would allow. What he saw there yanked his heart into his throat. It was the Torah, and it was in modern Hebrew – a language that had not even existed at the time the author claimed the manuscript was written! There were some letters which never seemed to be formed quite correctly, and what he thought were a few misspellings due to omitted letters, yet there it was. It was not the complete work – more of an overview or detailed outline – but the whole first five books of the modern Bible were there, described in great detail, in a fairly recognizable rendition of Hebrew.

  This lasted quite a few pages, and increasingly his hand began to shake as he turned them. As what he knew to be Deuteronomy ended, Muhammad held his breath, wondering what might come next. He turned the page and, to his lasting bafflement, found the following section to be written in modern English! It was, in fact, a summary of the New Testament. The text was much shorter as, for example, there was only one chronological description of the life of Jesus, yet it all aligned perfectly with everything he had ever read before. Muhammad skimmed the selection rapidly, his eyes racing back and forth. As in the last section, there were some spelling mistakes, but there was no doubt in his mind about what he was looking at. If he escaped the cave, and if the book could ever be duly authenticated, he would become the most celebrated archeological scholar in the history of the planet, for he had found the Rosetta Stone of modern religious ideology!

  By this time Muhammad felt sure he knew what would come next, though he dared not hope. Again he had to remind himself to turn the pages gently. Then, as his eyes fell upon the next section, and took in the sea of modern Arabic letters inscribed thereupon, he knew he had guessed right. Indeed, the next bit was none other than a detailed summary of the Quran, and it was all quite accurate; he had studied it countless times. But a sinking feeling infected Muhammad at that moment, as cold logic stole over him once more. He sighed and shook his head as he looked up from his reading.

  He wanted to believe the book – he really did – but there was no way around the truth. From a scholarly point of view, the possibility that the book might be genuine was utterly inconceivable. Believing in the miracle of the Codex was absolutely out of the question, as the possibility it might pass the tests of authentication remained far too remote. What a farce! It was all quite a disappointment, as he had so wanted to believe – needed to, even. A cruel joke was what this was! What kind of awful person could afford to waste the time and effort it must have taken to put all this together? Was this some sort of sick modern thrill ride based on ancient themes, placed here to trick him into some foolish new ideology? This seemed likely, and immediately he thought of Talman, wondering if the man might have had something to do with it all.

  Muhammad stood to pace back and forth angrily. The realization that this halted the platform’s progress did not improve his temper. Rushing to the side, he leaned over as far as he dared, but still could not see the bottom. Livid rage possessed him completely for a moment. “I WANT OUT!” he exclaimed, stomping his feet madly as he did so. Yet this had no effect whatever. Echoes were the only answer returned his plea.

  Muhammad hated everything at that moment. He hurled threats in every direction, insulting every power which might possibly be responsible for his bizarre imprisonment. His mind raced for some time, desperately reanalyzing the situation, but in the end there was nothing for it. He had struggled until he could struggle no more. So, at last, he turned back to the chair, desk, lamps, mirror, and book, to finish the horrid test. He would sit there until the cruel joke ended; he could think of no better alternative, even if he never finished the book. Muhammad threw himself exasperatedly onto the chair, therefore, and proceeded to wait, fuming. At least this would get the platform moving again.

  He stared across at himself in the black stone mirror. His reflected image was truly bleak in appearance. He very much needed to shower, and brush his teeth. He had been driven from his home in Medina, and chased through the streets of Mecca. He had crossed a desert and several seas. Then, after all that, he had arrived in Damascus to find everyone believing more than ever that he was al-Mahdi! What was Allah doing to him?! Now he had fallen down a well into a subterranean rabbit hole filled with some idiot’s idea of a funny spiritual joke!

  His angst found no reflection or reciprocation, however. The platform simply continued to fall smoothly and slowly through the cavern. Eventually he relented just a bit, as he started to cool down. Thinking it could not possibly make things any worse, Muhammad reluctantly turned to the next page of the Codex, wondering if it might include a helpful schedule of popular television programs. Such an entry would have proved no crazier than everything else he had just finished reading, after all. Yet the dratted forger had scribbled only a brief passage on the next page, written once again in hieratic, and supposedly from Joseph:

  Do not worry, Muhammad Abdullah. You will not need the light you have lost. You are al-Mahdi, dear to the One True God. Take this book to be examined, and you will be vindicated from doubt. Your shining hour approaches, for the Son of God is not far off. Now sleep.

  And with that the poor man was overcome with weariness. He could resist the determined forces acting upon him no longer. He drew the Prophet’s robe around himself closely, and laid his head upon the book. The clouds of unconsciousness rolled in, and he was asleep. Bats and other night creatures of the cave wondered at the sight, for they were not used to seeing people, or even light. Now a weary student, clothed all in red, sat before them on an island of golden illumination, falling serenely toward the distant bottom of the cave.

  Muhammad was flying across the surface of some green, fertile land in his dream, somehow feeling both cool and toasty simultaneously. Then he was seated before a woman. Her arms were long, her fingers deft. Before her sat a massive loom, strung with red and gold threads, which she played like a harp. Fine linens ripened upon it before her sunny disposition, untwisting and spilling from it like grapes upon the vine, and she said: “I make this for you.”

  He was flying faster and faster, this time through a bustling city of yore, flickering with countless oil lamps. He fell through the roof of a certain house. A hammer fell mightily on the anvil before him there, showering the tiny room with sparks. The massive man had a beard right down to the floor, and his eyes burned bright in the dark forge. “You must take this with you,” he said.

  Then Muhammad stood upon the shore of the sea, watching the sun race the moon toward the horizon as they set together. Just in time the moon caught up, and there again he saw the eclipse halo. A hand thrust from the surface of the water just at that moment, to eclipse the eclipse, and clenched therein could be seen the standard Muhammad had come to know so well. The hand recoiled slightly, and tossed it to him. As he caught the standard easily, a voice floated back to him on the wind, saying: “Beware the Dragon Man. You know who I mean. The tall man…”

  All but the stars went dark as they crept out for th
eir nightly dance. The dream had slowed down so completely that it just might be real, leaving Muhammad reticent to awaken, for this was a blissful place. Far too soon came the light of dawn, and reluctantly he turned to view the opposite horizon. Yet, to his surprise, there was nothing there – no glorious sunrise to be seen. The brilliance grew brighter and brighter. Where was all the light coming from? He looked this way and that, still unable to find its source. Then he shut his eyes to ward off a blinding flash, and the dream ended.

  As Muhammad awoke refreshed, easily shaking off the vestiges of the dream, he realized there was still one last page he had not yet looked at, and turned to it. The letters there were no ordinary script. He had never seen them before – not in any book he had ever read – but to his surprise, he found that he could read them! Hungrily he consumed the words upon the last page of the Codex, and took them to heart, already deciding firmly to obey the final request they made of him. He had finished the book, and closing it, knew he would never be the same.

  “Wow!” he said to himself, looking up.

  But what was this?! Looking left and right, he saw that the gas lamps had gone out. Even better, the platform seemed to have reached the floor of the cave! Stalagmites shot up from the ground everywhere, and little pools of trickling water could be seen here and there between them. Then Muhammad realized the obvious problem with all this. How was he able to see if the lamps had gone out? Slowly his head turned back to gaze upon the black mirror, as he realized the purpose of its presence at last.

  There it was upon his head: the halo he had heard so much about, shining so brightly the dark tint of the mirror had become normalized to reproduce his reflection perfectly. He laughed at himself, for he was still wearing the royal red robe. What a funny getup! But really he knew his mirth to be flowing freely again for the finest of reasons. He could see himself clearly for the first time! He could finally see the halo everyone had pestered him about, and it really was beautiful, just like they had said!

  As he stowed the robe in his pack, he stood to have a better look around, wide-eyed rather than blinded somehow. The halo’s light filled the cave like the gas lamps never had. Crystals glittered back from every rock formation, and looking upward, Muhammad gasped to see just how far the platform had taken him. High above he could barely see the tiny hallway through which he had entered, a pinprick at the top of the conical cavern. Gently Muhammad lifted the book, and carried it like a babe-in-arms as he further examined his options for a dismount to the cave floor.

  At the rearward, left and right corners of the platform he could see short brick stairways leading downward. He began scampering down the rightward stair directly, but had reason to turn back quickly in response to an odd creaking sound. As soon as his weight left the platform, it had begun to roll on many tiny wheels. Now that it was gone he could see that guide grooves had been carved into the floor beneath them, leading down a gently sloping path into some other section of the cave. At the center of the indentation where the platform had just been – capped by stairs on its two back corners, and between the parallel groove lines which exited via its open side – Muhammad could see just the top of a massive post, which he was sure had been responsible for lowering the platform down to ground level.

  Its screeching wheels had already carried the platform out of sight, so he hurried back down the stairs and around to the front to see where it might have gotten to. As he followed the grooves, he could see that here and there a stalagmite had been knocked out of the way to make room for the cart-like platform, so that Muhammad began to wonder if he was indeed wandering toward a long lost way out. Shortly the path entered a branch of the cave that was more like a tunnel, and the main cavern was left behind. The tunnel sloped downward more steeply, though not dangerously so, and the walk proved refreshing after so many long hours of being seated.

  Suddenly a massive crashing noise from up ahead made him jump. Had the platform been knocked off the track somehow? He hurried forward and was greeted by a strange sight. The platform had collided with a wall at the end of the tunnel. Before it a large hole could be seen, and Muhammad thought he knew what that meant. Apparently the platform had been designed to careen down the shaft at just the right speed necessary to successfully punch a hole in the thin wall at its far end, possibly for the purpose of creating an exit. Arriving, Muhammad looked through the hole curiously, and found the space beyond to be nothing more than an extension of the cavern, though little lights had been installed everywhere for some reason. He stepped through easily to explore further, quite sure he was now entering parts of the cave that had already been discovered by someone else.

  His guess proved right. The cave was filled with little informative plaques describing its features. When it all eventually opened out into a small museum and gift shop, a sign clued him in to his location at last: Jebral’s Cave. As a scholar, the location was familiar to Muhammad, for this is where angels were said to have consoled Adam just after the death of Abel. That meant his long journey should have led him right down the mountain into the city of Damascus itself, and as he unlocked the front door to step into the street, Muhammad’s guess was confirmed.

  It was still night. The greenish glow of fluorescent streetlights would normally have lit the way sufficiently, but now his halo showered the street in a light so bright it might have been daytime. And he was free. Muhammad Abdullah knew exactly what he must do next. He would hurry to the university so that each page of the book could be scanned. They would need samples for carbon dating as well. Above all else, Muhammad did not intend to look for Talman. When he was done at the university he would continue on to Ummayad Mosque, where he was certain he would be wholeheartedly welcomed as imam. He would teach the world the truths of The Heretic’s Codex – apart from the contents of its final page, of course. Soon all would know of the true interconnectedness of their religions, and that the chain reaction of traditions was about to end. The Shining One was coming!

  Press Release: Children Missing!

  The mysterious disappearances of children in countries all across the Middle East has reached alarming proportions, Amnesty International said today. During the past three years, the incidence of kidnappings reported by parents from Iran to Turkey to Egypt – and seemingly everywhere in between – has increased astronomically. Estimates of the total number missing vary, but even the lowest now exceed twenty thousand per month. Though firm statistical data on missing children in the Middle East has always been scant, leadership at the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) and the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law agree that something both insidious and unprecedented is afoot.

  Stranger still are the mismatched sightings of unusual vehicles which have become associated with the disappearances. A group of twenty Lebanese parents and other relatives, who had been attending a family gathering near the city of Tyre, remain insistent that cloaked individuals on multiple “flying saucers” were spotted just after a confirmed abduction of five local children. Such claims were regarded as ludicrous until matching descriptions became associated with disappearances in Afghanistan, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. No photographic evidence has yet become available.

  Chapter XIII

  THE DEVIL & DEN

  Maria Archangeline and Mosi Mukasa had been talking for several hours, and nearly finished lunch, when Talman finally decided to return her calls. Maria raised a finger to her lips to beg silence of Mosi during the exchange. His nod reassured her, and she answered.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said, placing the little phone framing her father’s face on the table before her.

  “I am sorry to be so late in getting back to you, my flower.”

  “It’s okay, Daddy. What did you find out?” She thought it best not to ask where he was, as this would increase the likelihood that he would ask her the same question. Though Maria was not sure, she suspected that making unscheduled visits to strange men in the Persian Gulf might
arouse his anger.

  Talman took the hint immediately, and got straight down to business, having no desire to explain why he had been so slow to return her calls. “You were right to follow your instincts, Maria. Den has been hiding out somewhere rather unusual: a curious island in the South Pacific. Apparently it is an artificial isle which he recently inherited.” Talman waited momentarily for a response, before adding: “It seems his loyalties were well tested by the acquisition of new wealth, Maria. Has he still mentioned nothing to you of his whereabouts?”

  “No,” she admitted sadly, “nothing.”

  “I am emailing you the coordinates, as I know you won’t be satisfied until you find out for yourself what’s going on.”

  “It’s just strange that he wouldn’t want to let me know where he is.”

  “Take one of the family jets and a bodyguard,” Talman continued. “It is a small island, but my spies tell me there is more than enough flat space there for a safe landing.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. I know you probably don’t think it’s worth my time, but I have to go.”

  “I know you do. Just be safe, and guard your heart. See what there is to see, but be prepared for the worst.”

  As the screen went blank, Maria sprang into action putting things in motion for the following morning. Organizing transport to an uncharted island was by no means beyond her reach, obviously, but she remained quite busy calling one service after another for several minutes, so that all else was forgotten. All the while Mosi remained comfortably sitting across from Maria, silently watching her reactions. Studiously he looked upon her iconic face – the flagship of its own media empire – and knew that she cared for this man, Den, whomever he was. When Maria had at last finished rearranging her travel plans, she remembered suddenly that she was not alone. There was Mosi, still sitting across from her, watching intently.