Blood and Sand

by Matthew James

  The pilots blank, not responding, so I do the only thing I can think of. I lunge over the Captain and push in the yoke, making us dive.

  The Captain snaps out of it, understanding my thinking and joins in. We shove hard dropping the aircraft underneath the main wave of water, still getting hit with a healthy dose. Thankfully, it was close to the amount of a heavy rainstorm, something these guys deal with regularly.

  We stare in silence watching the rest of the free falling wall of water blow away with the ocean breeze and get swept away back from whence it came. I don’t pretend to be a meteorologist on my days off so I’m just going to file this one into my freaking weird category and head back to my seat.

  Before I leave the cockpit, I pat each pilot on the shoulder, tell them good job and that I appreciate them not getting me killed.

  I go to turn away, but the Captain glances up at my obviously beat and disheveled exterior with a confused look on his face.

  “Holy shit son. What the hell happened to you?

  Feeling like I just went a few rounds with a brick wall, all I can do is laugh.

  A few minutes later I exit the cockpit. Everything and everyone seems to be fine. Everyone except for the stewardess it appears, but Dad is seeing to her just fine.

  Dr. William Boyd is a lot of things, but a being ladies’ man is definitely not one of them. He’s a very bright man and handsome in an “active dad” kind of way I guess. Except, the best part of his physical anatomy is his brain and that just makes him awkward, especially around anyone of the opposite sex. He would generally steer the conversation into his wheel house, world history, and then…off a cliff.

  I try to squeeze by them, but I can’t get through. So I say the only thing that I know will break up this little pow-wow.

  “Give it up old man, you’re twice her age.”

  I don’t know what my Dad’s face looks like, but the desired effect is obvious, he moves and lets me pass.

  I take my seat and attempt to shut my eyes. Instead, I get a hand across the back of my already pulsating head, the knock I got from the camera case even left a lump. I flinch, the person hitting the aforementioned knot, and mutter an incoherent curse, but I know who it is and sigh.

  “Was that really necessary, Harrison?”

  He’s the only one who calls me by my given name, especially whenever I upset him, which is to say, all the time. Personally I like ‘Hank.’ It’s short and sweet and doesn’t sound as vanilla as Harrison.

  I try to hold back a smile, but fail miserably.

  “I wasn’t hitting on her. I was just making sure she was okay!”

  By the tone in his voice I think he is trying to persuade himself into believing it. Now it’s his turn to hold back a smile, of which he is also unsuccessful.

  We both give a hearty laugh laced with exhaustion. It’s one of those laughs where you’re way more tired than the joke was actually funny.

  “But seriously, Dad, what the hell happened out there?” I say, pointing a finger towards the front of the plane. “I’ve never heard of, or seen anything like that before. That was something out of an Abrams movie or from the front page of the tabloids.”

  I can see he’s trying to come up with an answer, but he’s just as confused as I am.

  “Son,” he finally says. “Do you know why we are going where we’re going?” he asks.

  Okay, not the answer I was looking for, but he has my attention none-the-less.

  “No, not really,” I honestly say. “All you mentioned was a job in Algeria. You have refused to tell me anything else.” Which is the truth. Normally I wouldn’t care where we are going, but in this case he has intentionally dodged the question every time it has come up, which means if I had known I would still be in the Florida Keys being served by scantily clad women, sipping fruity liquored-up beverages with tiny umbrellas.

  “I did try to talk to you about it,” he says. “But you dozed off, remember?”

  I give him a sheepish grin. Now that he mentions it he did look pretty grim before I nodded off.

  “Okay Dad, well, I’m all ears now,” I say cupping my hands around my ears and flapping them like I’m an elephant fanning himself.

  This doesn’t get the reaction I was looking for.

  “Are things always a joke with you?” he retorts.

  That hurt. He should know by now that when it’s all said and done I’m in it till the end, no matter what, but I have to do things my way, which is to say, a little laid back.

  I flinch, a little taken back. He must see the hurt etched on my face because he gives me that slight fatherly smile that says sorry without having to actually say it.

  “Look Dad,” I start, leaning forward all business. “Why are we going to northern Africa?”

  He looks down at his hands which are fidgeting nervously in his lap then back up at me. He answers me in the most deadpan look I’ve ever seen,

  “Atlantis…we are here to unearth Atlantis.”

  3

  “Atlantis? You have got to be shitting me!” I bark, taking off my overly abused Detroit Tigers baseball cap. I comb through my matted down hair with my fingers, itching my head in the process. I can’t believe what I’ve just heard.

  Dad isn’t too thrilled with my choice of words, but he’s heard worse come out of my mouth. Like that time I jabbed a shovel into my big toe. I must have used every curse word in the English language. I felt much better afterwards, but the crew working with us—including my father—looked mortified.

  “No, I am not shitting you!” he replies.

  Hearing him openly curse like that is telling in itself that he is sincere. The man has the foul-mouthed linguistic skills of a ninety year old, saying darn-it and shoot all the time instead of the ones I’d use.

  He unlatches the tray table and reaches into his carry-on, removing a folder and opening it, laying it down. Within the file is a variety of newspaper clippings, printouts and handwritten notes. He grabs a newspaper clipping and hands it to me. I see that it’s dated six days ago and look it over.

  “This is a news report of a record breaking sandstorm in southern Algeria,” he says while I read.

  I scan the article. I think I saw a blurb about this on the Yahoo homepage and remember thinking nothing of it. The article describes record wind speeds and a massive amount of displaced sand in a localized area of desert a few miles outside of the small town of Djanet.

  “Sounds like a standard weather event to me,” I say. “Huge, but otherwise pretty normal.” I’m so engrossed with the newspaper clipping that I fail to notice the smirk forming on my dad’s face.

  I look up and take notice.

  “What?”

  I see the twinkle in his eye. The look that says, ‘I know something that you don’t.’

  He looks over his shoulder, sees that no one is listening and then leans in close to me.

  “I have a contact in the area that tells me a newly discovered landmark was uncovered by the storm and that the ruin is not in any kind of withered state. In fact, it doesn’t look ruined at all, it appears to be in perfect condition.” He smiles wide, not being able to contain his excitement. “It’s like it was carved yesterday! I’m assuming that since it’s been buried beneath tons of sand, it was blocked from the elements, preserving it.” I’m impressed with this find so far, but not completely buying it.

  “Come on Dad, Atlantis?” I ask. I mean he might as well have told me he caught Nessy in Lake Okeechobee. “What makes you think this is the lost city—of which is supposed to be buried underwater not sand.”

  He looks up at me with a look of triumph, not defeat, “Do you remember that Indiana Jones game you used to play on the office computer?”

  I want to argue that 1992’s, ‘Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,’ was just that, a game. I’m about to comment but he beats me to it.

  “Did you know that game was based on a possible Atlantis location myth?”

  He’s got me there.

/>   “Yes,” he says. “The most common answer to the location of Atlantis is under the ocean somewhere, and some even say it’s the island of Santorini, but to some the second most frequent spot is under an area of the great Sahara, specifically south-east Algeria. Now, the rumored site is supposedly under the Tassili n’Ajjer mountain range, but the entrance has never been found.” He takes a sip of water.

  I lean forward a little giving him more, hmmm.

  “By the way, the name Tassili n’Ajjer literally translates to ‘Plateau of Rivers’ which suggests that there was once water flowing through the region.” He pauses, the gleam in his eye indicating that he’s about to make his point.

  “Now, I think the location is correct, but the entrance is in fact not in the mountains, it’s in an undiscovered tunnel entrance that stretches out into the barren desert, such as the one we’re going to investigate.”

  He stares at me obviously in his comfort zone.

  Well, at least he’s putting his PhD to use, I think.

  “What makes you think that this newly uncovered site is the way in?” I ask, honestly a little interested.

  His eyes light up that I’m actually going along with this and not automatically shooting it down. In the past he and the other Looney Toons at his office have come up with some real far out hypotheses so I would normally have my doubts. Like when Dad and a colleague of ours—a man named Dr. Ben Fehr—thought they found evidence to the location of El Dorado, but then realized their local contact was high on Methamphetamines and tweaked out of his mind. I thought it was funny…Dad, on the other hand, was utterly embarrassed.

  “Because,” he says. “My contact at the site sent me this.” He hands me one of the half-dozen computer print outs.

  I look over the full color picture not really understanding what I’m seeing. There are around half a dozen different, but very recognizable languages written on the polished facing. I can’t put my thoughts into words. It’s incredible and yet unnerving at the same time. I have never seen or heard of anything like this before in my time in the field or anywhere else for that matter. I can identify ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek, Chinese, Mayan, and what looks like Sumerian, but the languages are a little off. Maybe a different form of each? I think.

  I look up at my father’s shining smile.

  “What…How?”

  Dad puts the words together for me.

  “The WHAT is…” He holds up an index finger ticking off the answers. “This is the only relic anywhere in all of the world to have these languages inscribed on it together. He raises another finger, “Also, did you notice the material that the writing is engraved into?”

  I did. It’s a gleaming metal of some kind, which again stumps me completely.

  I look up from the print out, “…And the HOW?” I ask, completely shocked at what I’ve seen.

  He gives me the biggest Boyd grin I’ve ever seen, then sits back and crosses his legs looking very satisfied.

  “The HOW, my boy…is exactly what we are going to find out.”

  4

  While Dad goes back to his research, I pull out my iPad to do a little of my own. Connecting to the inflight Wi-Fi is immediate, as it should be flying first class.

  There are loads of websites pertaining to the Atlantis legend. I just need to find which ones involve Atlantis and its connection to the ancient languages engraved into the relief, I think to myself. Thankfully, there are a lot of Atlantean whack-jobs out there so finding information isn’t the issue. The problem is that most of the people are either guessing or completely bat-shit crazy. All I’m looking for is similarities.

  It takes me an hour or so, but I think I have what I need—at least, enough information to make sense of what’s going on. I run a Google search on all the historical accounts from all the major ancient empires as they relate to Atlantis. They all have the same round-about description of Atlantis and its destruction. This fact seems odd to me considering that most of these records are from people who lived thousands of miles away from each other. It’s not like they had planes and the internet to tell their tales and more than half of them didn’t sail either. A big thing called the ocean would have been in the way. Either way, the commonality is very interesting.

  The only problematic thing I see is that none of them are accounts of the actual city and its construction. The only thing I have found is a symbol and a general blueprint of its layout—of which, I have no idea if it’s accurate. This doesn’t surprise me since it is said that most of the historical records would have been destroyed when the city itself was.

  Just like the libraries at Alexandria to the Roman rulers in Egypt, I think. But even some of those were saved due to copies that were made and later found in other nations.

  I laugh a little on the inside remembering where I learned that. Mom, Dad and I were on Spaceship Earth at Epcot in Disney World when I was a teenager. The ride was always one of their favorites since it takes you through some of the major events in world history, which was and still is, Dad’s forte.

  I look back to my iPad and try to get Dame Judi Dench’s voice out of my head, her being the narrator of the story in the ride, and continue with my research.

  Atlantis was supposedly built in 3 ringed sections with mote-like channels separating each section, almost looking like a giant dart board. The reports—or in this case blueprints—indicate there was one long canal that allowed access to each divided segment.

  It seems that none of the descriptions are from within the city though. It’s like no one was ever allowed inside it or that they weren’t permitted to write about it. I think the latter to be the case since we are talking about an ancient, super-secret civilization after all.

  The rest of the flight goes as scheduled. With about five hours of air travel remaining, I finish up with my web-surfing and recline my chair. I lean my head back and shut my eyes, and try to picture the mysteries that await us.

  As I attempt to sleep, I flip through dozens of scenarios and situations in my head, but how do you put together a game plan for something that isn’t supposed to exist? Everything I have learned and been trained for has completely been thrown out the metaphorical window. This is truly an adventure in its purest sense.

  The Mystery.

  The Excitement.

  The Danger.

  And just like a lot of books and movies I’ve consumed over the years, I can only think of the many ways this can blow up in our faces.

  5

  I dream of baseball.

  I dream of clay infields, the smell of the freshly cut outfield grass, cheap hotdogs and stale popcorn. This is the life I should have had. The life I did have, but for a shorter time than I would have liked.

  I was once regarded as one of the top prospects in the game, a five tool player. To be viewed as a five tool athlete you must have above average speed, hitting, hitting with power, fielding and arm strength. I had a crap ton of all five at the ripe age of 18. At six-foot-two, 190 pounds, I was easily the pick of the baseball litter.

  My Grandfather once told me I reminded him of Mickey Mantle, the legendary New York Yankee. He was gritty, tough, and played with the same tenacity that I did. Plus, the guy was one of the best hitters to ever play the game, as well as a tremendous outfielder. Mick was a Hall of Famer for a reason. My ultimate goal.

  But, then it happened. Ten years ago this past spring I was playing in the fifth game of my second season in minor league ball. I was barely twenty years old at the time and already playing at Triple-A Toledo for the Detroit Tigers minor league affiliate, the Mud Hens. I was starting in centerfield, the position I mastered in high school while playing for the Wellington Wolverines in southern Florida. A bomb was hit over my head and I did the only thing I could do…I turned and hauled ass.

  “He got a hold of that one!” The announcer yelled. “Bradford crushed that ball to straight away center over the centerfielders head. Boyd is in a dead sprint tracking the ball. Man o’ man can he fly
out there. He’s like a gazelle in center, people! Ten feet from the warning track and closing in…”

  Now, they call it the ‘warning track’ for a reason. Basically, when you hit the fifteen foot wide expanse of dirt in front of the wall you are supposed to slow down. It warns you of an imminent impact.

  Well, I didn’t slow down. I never slow down. I’m always aggressive and as my coaches always used to say, “A little reckless at times.” But, I never cared. I, like most people my age, believed themselves to be indestructible—especially when there were big league scouts in the stands. If I tracked down this ball and hauled it in with them watching, I would have been a shoe-in to be called up to the majors for the weekend series against Chicago.

  “He’s not slowing down—oh my, that was a vicious collision! He caught the ball with two out at full speed, but hit the wall just left of the 412 sign. Boyd is down and not moving. Grillo, the left fielder, is checking on him. Now Grillo is waving for help from the Toledo bench! This can’t be good folks! Boyd is still down and not responding…”

  I don’t remember hitting the ground…or the wall for that matter.

  I’m told the play got a standing ovation from the near sellout crowd, but I didn’t hear them…I didn’t hear anything. The concussion I sustained was brutal. I woke up puking my guts out over the next couple of days.

  I’d trade back all the vomit in the world for a healthy shoulder. The concussion faded, but the pain from the torn ligaments and shredded muscles in my right shoulder never went away.

  Two surgeries and a year of useless therapy later, I’m out of baseball for good. The joint never healed properly and I can’t throw or swing without pain. I even had three second opinions. All three doctors said the scarring was too great and another round of surgeries wouldn’t have fixed it. Hell, one of them said a hundred surgeries wouldn’t have made a difference.

  The arthritis I developed from the trauma of hitting the wall will never go away, I was told. To this day I have to take anti-inflammatory medication just to sleep. If I roll over on it the wrong way I’ll wake up with a start.