Evil in the Beginning (The God Tools Book 2)

by Gary Williams

  Save for a small clump of weeds here and there, the expansive, flat area was barren. Tolen moved to the center. He turned in a circle and imagined the structure in his mind. Was it possible that it had been constructed right here, right where he stood? If so, what had become of it?

  Tolen surveyed the area, walking from one edge of the rise to the other, searching for any signs of building material, anything anchored in the ground to support a structure. He pulled out a small metal coat hanger that he’d tucked into his waders at his father’s house. He used it to stab the ground randomly in search of anything solid. For more than 45 minutes, Samuel Tolen examined the plateau. To his chagrin, he found no evidence of a manmade structure. He did find footprints, which, judging by the size and depth of the tracks, appeared to belong to two males. Again he wondered about Dr. Lohan and Mr. Marks and whether they had been searching this area as well.

  His next move was to ease back down the embankment and search the area at the base of the plateau on all sides. If the ancient structure had crumbled naturally over time, surely he would find some evidence of the building material that had come to rest in the lower area of marsh. Yet after an exhaustive and messy search at the foot of the rise on all sides, Tolen discovered no remnants of manmade building materials; nothing but soggy vegetation and a water moccasin – which struck at his waders but did not penetrate the thick layer of rubber.

  He wondered if, instead of natural erosion, the structure had been purposely disassembled, possibly by the original builders. Another possibility was that the writing on the stone on the riverbed had been faked. Given that it matched the text on the front of Monty Jackson’s stone tablet, however, meant that it would have to be a very elaborate deception. In his heart, he wanted to believe it was real.

  Discouraged, Tolen made the difficult trek back up the rise. Once there, he pulled a small pair of binoculars from the pocket of his waders and scanned the flat swampland below. To the east side, something white in the distance caught his eye. He focused, but was unable to make out the aberration. Whatever it was, it wasn’t indigenous to the point.

  Tolen moved off the plateau, half stepping, half sliding down the embankment until he reached the base of the rise on the east side. He had visually marked the position and knew the large white object lay somewhere directly ahead. Tolen wiped the sweat from his brow. The heat was excruciating.

  Slowly, he trudged over the mushy terrain which led him through the underbrush, briars, and pine trees, which obscured his view. He estimated that he had traveled approximately 150 yards out from the base of the rise when he entered a clearing. He knew immediately this was not a natural glade. Foliage had been eradicated, branches and bushes ripped from the ground and thrown in every direction. Ahead lay the damaged fuselage of a small Cessna plane. The tail section was gone. The pilot’s door was open. The grass and brush on the right side of the plane was dead, scorched by the gas which had leaked out. The plane registration number on the aft fuselage was scuffed but readable. Tolen slowly approached the plane, pulling his smart phone from a plastic bag in his pocket and dialed.

  “Monsieur Tolen. How may I be of assistance?” Bar answered.

  “Tiffany, I need you to run the N number for a civilian aircraft; a Cessna.”

  “Go.”

  “N3456K.”

  After several seconds of silence, she spoke. “Ah ha! You found Clarence Little’s plane. Which airfield?”

  “It crashed at Bayard Point southwest of Green Cove Springs.”

  “Whoa, so how did Clarence Little get from there to the springs in town?”

  Tolen exhaled. “That is the question. It must be six miles to Spring Park from here, and that’s flying in a straight line.”

  “Is the plane destroyed?”

  “Not completely. I’ll get back to you, Tiff.”

  “Tolen, before you go, you were right about the picture you texted me. It’s hers; which, by the way, is utterly amazing.”

  He allowed the words to sink in for a second and ended the call. Tolen moved toward the open pilot’s door. There were blood stains on the inside of the door and inside the small cockpit. He tried turning on the radio, but it was dead.

  Tolen looked to the ground, and knelt down. They were faint, but he found blood clots leading away from the craft.

  One thing he knew for sure: Clarence Little had been too injured to make it to Spring Park from here. So how did his organs come up with the flowing water on Friday?

  CHAPTER 25

  Fawn arrived at the Second Coming Presbyterian Church on the outskirts of Green Cove Springs late Sunday morning after navigating a washboard road through the woods. She had once done a story on southern country churches and knew some of the architectural nuances. The structure before her had been updated and covered with modern siding, but the Gothic Revival architectural style, with its stained glass windows, signified the structure dated to the late 1800s.

  Out front, there was a bevy of activity. The police had finally released the name of the victim at Spring Park on Friday, although they had said little else. An investigation was still under way. Police had yet to label it as foul play at this point.

  Right, Fawn thought.

  Fawn couldn’t discount as coincidence the timing between Clarence Little’s remains floating up through the springs and the disappearance of the couple in the church sanctuary floor occurring just several hours apart. Her reporter’s curiosity had taken hold last night while lying in the motel room bed, and she decided to follow up this morning.

  A horde of service vehicles—county utility trucks, a fire engine, ambulance, police cruisers—crowded the front parking area. She also saw at least two news station vans. Obviously, church services had been suspended this morning with the attempted rescue efforts by emergency personnel still under way. It had been nearly forty hours since Jack and Tonya Turner were sucked into the earth by what authorities deemed a sink hole. Sadly, Fawn knew the odds were overwhelming against finding either one alive. What had happened at the church was not without precedence. Last March, a man in Tampa, Florida, was asleep when a sinkhole opened up underneath his bed and swallowed him. Rescue crews worked for several days, but were unable to recover the body.

  She parked and approached the structure. Deep in the woods, the heat was broiling. She could feel the perspiration form on her face the moment she left her car.

  Fawn reached the open sanctuary doors. Inside, she saw the backs of several people. Beyond, the brilliant glow of construction lights aimed downward in the center aisle where pew benches had been cleared away to reveal a large chasm in the earth. Men and women were standing around talking. A man in a chair sat at a makeshift desk typing away at a computer. A coil of what looked like thin cable was attached to some sort of device standing upright nearby.

  A uniformed officer stepped in front of her just inside the doorway. “I’m sorry, no one is allowed inside.”

  She had anticipated this. “Can I please speak to Reverend Reed?” She had looked his name up on the Internet this morning.

  The officer hesitated.

  “Please, it’s a personal matter,” Fawn said, causing her eyes to rim with tears.

  The officer turned, as if scanning the people inside. He lifted his hand to get someone’s attention.

  A moment later, a haggard-looking man arrived at the doorway. The 40-something-year-old reverend with severely thinning red hair was clad in dark pants, a wrinkled dress shirt, and black tie loosened at the collar. “Yes?” he said looking from the officer to Fawn.

  “Father, I’d like a word with you,” Fawn said.

  “Are you with the press? I’ve already said all there is to say.” There was a deep sadness in the man’s voice.

  “No, Father, I’m here of my own accord out of concern for a friend.”

  “Well, if you knew the Turners personally, there’s been n
o news.”

  Fawn pressed to offer a smile. She could almost feel the man’s deep sorrow over the fate of his parishioners. “Can we please talk in private?”

  Reverend Reed started to object, “I don’t have anything…I can’t help you…” Then he took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’ll be right back,” he told the officer still standing nearby. Then Reverend Reed turned to Fawn. “Please follow me, but I promise you, if I find out you’re a reporter, I’ll have you removed from the property.”

  He led Fawn away from the sanctuary, across the parking lot and into a small, brown, free-standing structure. Fawn could tell the edifice had been a fairly recent addition to the grounds. Reverend Reed pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, allowing Fawn inside. After moving through a brief hallway, he turned and waved her into a room. “This is my office. We can talk privately in here.” He took a seat behind a large oak desk and folded his hands in front of him. Fawn sat in a hard wooden chair across from him.

  “What can I help you with?”

  “Fawn.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “Fawn, this is a small town. I know you’re not from around here.”

  “Reverend, I realize how hard this must all be. I can tell that you’re exhausted, so I appreciate you taking the time.” Fawn paused, organizing her words carefully before continuing. “I have a friend who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, possibly taken by a nefarious person. She sent me notes regarding something she was working on. It seems to be tied to the bizarre incident at Spring Park on Friday, and I’m trying to determine if there’s any connection to what occurred here at the church.”

  Reverend Reed furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry that your friend has gone missing, I truly am, but what happened here was a natural disaster; a sinkhole. It’s no less a tragedy, but surely not an act of human wrongdoing.”

  “Still,” Fawn said in a diplomatic tone, “could you please recount what happened Friday?” Fawn knew she was pressing her luck. He had probably told the story a hundred times already.

  Reverend Reed exhaled. Age lines seemed to form on his weary face with each passing minute. “I really don’t have much to tell. We were having a food drive for the less fortunate. I was right here, in my office, not in the sanctuary at the time. When I heard the shouts and screams, I rushed over. By the time I got there, Jack and Tonya were gone, and there was a gaping hole in the floor, but it quickly closed up. I didn’t see anything more than that.”

  “Was anyone else in the sanctuary when it occurred?”

  Reverend Reed looked up in thought. “Well, Stuart and Barbara Ridmore went running in there about the same time I did. Sally Nordstrom was there. She had collapsed near the pulpit, but quickly came to. Everybody else was at the back of the sanctuary at the narthex. Oh, there was one person sitting in the pew against the left wall. I didn’t even notice him until sunlight reflected off of something he was holding and the light prismed on the side wall of the church. Come to think of it, he was the only one not frantically running around after the Turners disappeared. At some point, I’m not sure when, he left.”

  “Would you mind writing down the names of everyone who witnessed the event, including the man in the pew?”

  Reverend Reed scratched out six names on a sticky note and handed it to Fawn. “Besides Sally, there were five other men who were there when the Turners fell through the floor. The man in the pew is the last name.”

  Fawn took the piece of paper and looked over it. She was about to ask about the man in the pew when she heard a door open. A moment later, a middle-aged woman with curly blonde hair stuck her head into the open doorway of the office. “John, you said you wanted to be notified when they went in with the camera. They just started.”

  “Excuse me,” the reverend said, shuffling to his feet.

  The clergyman left the office, walking with a brisk but tired step as he followed the curly-haired woman. Fawn, thinking quickly, seized the opportunity and followed close behind. They quickly crossed the parking area and approached the open sanctuary doors. The policeman was still guarding the door, but stepped aside to allow the reverend and the woman to breeze past. Fawn never slowed, practically tripping over their heels, giving the impression her presence inside was sanctioned by the reverend. It worked. The policeman allowed her to pass without question. The threesome moved toward a group clustered around the desk where a technician was typing on a keyboard while everyone stared at the monitor. Fawn saw a closed-circuit image on screen but had no idea what she was looking at.

  “I’ve sent the camera down a small fissure,” the technician said for the benefit of everyone watching. “Fifty-two feet down, it broke through into an air pocket. What you see now is a large, underground chamber. We initially picked it up on ground-penetrating radar.”

  Fawn understood. A fiberoptic, lighted camera had been worked through the earth in hopes of finding the couple. They were watching a live feed.

  The technician typed in a command, and the view on screen slowly turned in a 360-degree circle.

  “Wait, go back,” one of the emergency workers said. “There’s something on the ground at the other end of the chamber.”

  Fawn had seen it, too: a pale flash of light.

  The technician quickly typed in a command. “Say when,” he said to the emergency worker. As the view oriented, with the camera spinning 52 feet below them, the weak flash of light appeared onscreen again.

  “There!”

  Several of the people crowded closer to the monitor, including Reverend Reed. Fawn nudged her way in to see.

  “It’s too far away,” the reverend remarked.

  “Easily solved,” the technician responded.

  He stood and adjusted a setting on an upright device that looked like an oversized CPU. Then he returned to his seat and started typing a new series of commands. Six stories below, the fiberoptic camera slowly targeted the chamber ground and moved downward toward it. An inch from the cave floor, it turned outward in the direction of the swell in the distance. It closed on the anomaly quickly. Seconds later, the light from the camera showed a glistening heap. It was no more than inches away from the indistinguishable mass on the chamber floor.

  “What in God’s name is that?” the technician said, squinting at the screen.

  “Oh, goddamn,” an emergency worker moaned and turned away.

  “God almighty,” Reverend Reed said, as he, too, turned away.

  “What?” the technician said. He navigated the camera around the grotesque pile. The fleshy, pink debris glistened in the light. Around the side, a withered, cylindrical object three inches long had been skinned, but its bulbous head was still intact.

  Fawn realized what they were looking at. She spoke, breathlessly, “Jesus Christ, they’re human organs.”

  “But what is that?” the technician said, pointing to the cylindrical object, then turning to everyone in attendance.

  An EMT standing nearby spoke glumly. “That’s a penis. I believe we’ve found pieces of Jack Turner.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Back at the house, Samuel Tolen called Smithsonian Director, Sheila Shaw.

  “Anything, Tolen?” she answered.

  “I know what drove Dr. Falls to relaunch in the Green Cove Springs area yesterday.” Tolen explained what he had discovered on the riverbed near Fort Caroline and how it had suggested that an Egyptian structure in antiquity had once been assembled atop the plateau on Bayard Point.

  Shaw was momentarily speechless. “Are you absolutely sure it’s Egyptian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you understand the enormity of such a discovery if it’s true?”

  “I searched the plateau on Bayard Point but found no evidence of the structure.”

  “Is it possible it’s a ruse?”

  “Absolutely, but the text seems to correlate to Monty Ja
ckson’s stone slab. Such an archaeological find would be very lucrative on the antiquities black market. Dr. Falls and the graduate assistant may have encountered unscrupulous parties, such as the men who stole Monty Jackson’s tablet.”

  Shaw spoke, “I’ll immediately gather resources to coordinate a full excavation by a team of archaeologists at the underwater site in the Fort Caroline area and a second team on Bayard Point. Evidence of Egyptian occupation of the area, even if briefly, would be monumental and would rewrite the history books. The effort to coordinate resources – expertise, manpower, and equipment – will take three to five days to organize, and another week to dispatch. Until then, Tolen, please remain in the area and continue to search for Dr. Lila Falls and Kira Compton.”

  Tolen hung up. The question now was why? Why would ancient Egyptians have made such a treacherous cross-oceanic journey, unless they intended to set up a permanent settlement, which didn’t appear to be their goal. Tolen had a theory, but it was speculation at this point. Hopefully, the archeological excavation would prove the legitimacy of the discovery and the motive behind the ancient expedition.

  Tolen walked into the garage. The trapped summer air felt like a furnace. He went to the cork board and removed the keys. Tolen stood before the metallic-blue 1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS looking at it with admiration. It was a classic design, restored to showroom quality, reminiscent of how it must have appeared when it rolled off the assembly line in the late 1960s. A true work of art, engineered in an era when muscle cars were more than just machines: they were a cultural icon.

  He had an overwhelming urge to take it out on its first run.

  Tolen opened the garage. He climbed in the driver’s seat and gently slid the key into the ignition. The moment represented the culmination of all the work he and his father had put into the car. He paused briefly in quiet reflection before turning the key.

  For a few seconds, the engine churned without catching. When it finally did, the 375-horsepower engine roared to life. Tolen allowed it to idle, savoring the rumble. It growled like a predatory animal restrained, waiting impatiently to be unleashed.