‘There’s always a way out, but if you believe there isn’t, then there isn’t. Sometimes we just have to try harder. If there’s something in you that you can’t control, then that’s a positive. If you know you have a problem, focus all your energy on defeating it and you will. Anything is possible if you believe, Sarah – anything.’ Trish grasped her chin and looked her in the eye. ‘Do you hear me? Anything.’
‘You sound like Ruben.’
‘The monk?’
Sarah nodded.
Trish kissed Sarah’s forehead. ‘Or maybe, he sounds like me.’
Sarah looked into her friend’s eyes and frowned. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it. ‘Who are you?’
Trish smiled. ‘I’m your friend, Sarah.’ She put her hands to Sarah’s head. ‘I will always be your friend. Now, close your eyes.’
‘How did you know about that dog? I never told you about that. I was only twelve. I didn’t even know you then.’
‘Shhh, close your eyes. It’s time to go back.’
Sarah felt her eyelids droop as Trish stood behind her, with her palms at Sarah’s temples.
‘Just try and feel your body,’ Trish said. ‘Remember the sensations of your arms, legs, hands and feet. Remember the feeling as your breath goes in and out of your lungs ...’
Sarah didn’t know why, but she did as she was bid. At first, she felt nothing, but after a while a jolt of electricity shot through her.
‘Just feel and remember, Sarah,’ Trish said, her voice sounding far away. ‘Just feel and remember.’
A flash of light made Sarah’s head jerk back. ‘I can see the chamber.’
‘Stop talking and keep trying. It’s working.’
Sarah slowed her breathing and concentrated on the sensations of her body. She could feel her feet on the ground, her legs moving, her lungs breathing, her hand grasping ... her eyes seeing ...
‘Remember,’ Trish said, her voice sounding far away, ‘remember – remember to pray.’
Images flashed before Sarah’s eyes and she plunged into the darkest night.
A swirling pool of light swept over her and the Anakim giant’s eyes stared into hers as it held her forehead with its massive hand. An image of asteroids impacting the Earth lit up her mind, animals and plants withered and died, and then the scene changed to inside the chamber with the mirrored walls. A ceremony was being held inside the stone pyramid, conducted by tall figures dressed in black hooded robes. These willowy beings stood in a circle around an altar, and from the chamber beyond, more of their number dragged two smaller figures towards the pyramid entrance, an Anakim man and woman. One of the figures stood aside, allowing the couple to be hauled to the altar, where they were stripped of their animal-skin clothing. The man thrashed and fought to escape, but his captors were too strong and he was manoeuvred to a statue of a large Anakim sphinx, where he was secured by shackles to a stone throne between its outstretched legs. Meanwhile, the woman had been spread-eagled, face up, on the altar, each of her four limbs held taut by a robed figure. One of the beings removed their hood to reveal cruel, sunken features and dark, translucent skin. They weren’t Anakim; or at least, not like any Anakim Sarah had seen. The tall figure raised a knife and cut open the woman from stem to stern, her screams of agony making her Anakim mate cry out in despair.
The tall figure then slit the woman’s throat and blood gushed, flowing over the altar and onto the floor. The altar sank down into the ground, revealing a hole that shone with an eerie glow. A fearsome roar echoed through the chamber, and the scene changed.
A giant priestess, dressed in strange robes, stood alone inside the pyramid. She made a series of movements across the altar with her hands. She then removed a pentagonal pendant from around her neck, looked at it for a moment, then turned and cast it into a mirrored wall, which rippled like water as the pendant passed through the surface. The giant then extinguished two of the torches lining the walls, removed a third, and left the pyramid. Once outside, she manipulated the monument’s stone exterior, causing a large stone block from within to shift outwards and seal shut the angular entrance. Alone in the fire-lit chamber, the Anakim paused, then suddenly looked up, as if knowing she was being watched from afar.
‘She sees me,’ Sarah said, her voice sounding far away, and then she realised she recognised the woman’s face. It was the giant from the train! A flash of darkness thrust Sarah back into her body, but before she could draw breath she was flung back into another vision:
Sarah lay on the floor at the centre of a pyramid, her life’s blood pooling on a large silver pentagram set into a dark metal surface. Trish struggled nearby as she was held back by Jason. ‘Sarah, no!’ Trish screamed, fighting to free herself.
Ruben stood over Sarah with a sword in his hand, the blade slick with blood, and Trish screamed again.
‘She’s dead! The one person who could have saved you,’ – Avery pointed at Ruben with righteous fury – ‘and you killed her!’
Sarah looked down at her blood-soaked hands and her eyelids drooped and closed. The vision faded, and with a roar of sound she re-entered her body, just as her arm plunged down towards Avery’s head. She cried out and diverted the attack, sending the knife in her hand skimming past his face and into a stone wall, where it connected in a shower of sparks.
Avery stumbled back and a Swiss guard leapt forward and swung his sword, the flaming tip whistling past Sarah’s chest as she dived away.
‘STOP!’ Avery said, as the guard advanced on her. ‘Stop! Stay your weapon!!’
The Swiss guard looked round at the Irish cardinal in confusion and ceased his attack.
‘She tried to murder Cantrell!’ Zinetti said, terrified, and motioned to Lanter. ‘Shoot her! Shoot her now!!’
Major Lanter raised his sidearm and Sarah closed her eyes; her time had finally come.
Chapter Two Hundred Forty-Seven
‘No one is shooting anyone!’ Avery said, and Sarah opened her eyes to see the Irish cardinal push Major Lanter’s gun towards the floor.
‘She slipped by me.’ Ruben appeared at the pyramid’s entrance, out of breath. ‘Stay where you are!’ he said to Sarah, and positioned himself protectively in front of the two cardinals.
Sarah dropped the blade she’d found herself wielding. ‘Ruben, no, please, it wasn’t me!’
The Swiss guard holding the sword forced her back with its tip.
‘It wasn’t me,’ she said again to Avery, who motioned for the guard to lower his weapon.
The Irish cardinal eased past Ruben and approached with his hands raised, to show he meant her no harm.
Sarah backed away towards the altar, scared at what the entity possessing her might make her do next. Her feet brushed a raised lip in the floor and a layer of dust sank down into the pit beneath, the tiny grains funnelling down like sand in a sinkhole. A new section of the metal latticework was revealed, depicting a bestial creature with a gaping maw, the mouth a larger hole than those around it – a hole large enough for someone to fall through.
Avery saw the danger and beckoned Sarah away from the sheer drop she hadn’t seen.
‘Avery, I’m so sorry,’ she said, looking at him. ‘It wasn’t me, please believe me.’
‘Shhh, I know.’ He moved closer. ‘Come away from the hole, Sarah.’
Sarah took another step back, her foot resting at the very edge of the bottomless pit.
She glanced down into its depths. A hand grasped her arm and Avery dragged her to safety, his grip surprisingly strong for one nearing his seventieth year.
‘It wasn’t me,’ she said again, avoiding Ruben’s angry gaze.
‘I know, my dear,’ Avery said, giving her a hug. ‘I know, be calm. You’re not yourself.’
Sarah felt helpless and it didn’t help that she found herself cast back into the grip of her body’s addiction, as the desire for another shot made her legs go weak. ‘I’m losing control,’ she said in despair, and sagged against Avery, who helpe
d her towards the altar. ‘I just tried to kill you.’
‘It’s the thing inside you,’ Avery said, gently lowering her to the floor. ‘The drugs will keep it in check, but right now, we really need you to open the gate.’
Sarah looked up at him, her world in confusion. One minute she was with Trish, in loving friendship, and now she was thrust into chaos where she was hated by most and feared by all. ‘The gate?’ she said.
‘There’s an altar.’ He pointed at it. ‘Like the one you used in Sanctuary to ignite its ceiling and bring light to the dark.’
‘We need you to activate it,’ Zinetti said, smoothing out the creases in his red cassock. ‘So, do whatever you did before, and then we can stop the asteroid and be on our way.’
She looked at the altar and then noticed something glinting on the floor beside her. Getting to her knees, she brushed away a layer of black dust. ‘It’s a silver pentagram,’ she murmured. ‘Like in my vision.’
‘Time’s running out,’ Zinetti said, coming to stand over her. ‘The asteroid approaches. Activate it – now.’
Sarah ran her hands over the metal pentagram, uncovering more of the symbol interweaved with the disturbing faces with their mouths open in a scream. She shook her head. ‘This isn’t the gate, the walls are the gate.’
Zinetti snorted. ‘What nonsense.’
She looked at Zinetti and then to the dark, mirrored wall and the sarcophagus positioned within, despite there being no real-life object from which to create its reflection. She then looked up at the gruesome metallic sculpture surrounding it. ‘It’s the wall from my vision,’ she said, recalling the Anakim woman casting her pendant into it.
‘Yes,’ Avery said, and pointed to where Lanter now inspected it with his torch. ‘The pendant is sealed within. You were just here, looking at it.’
Sarah knew that hadn’t been her, but they wouldn’t believe her if she told them where she’d really been. She wasn’t quite sure she believed it herself. She wasn’t even sure it was Trish she’d been speaking to within the wall. There had been something familiar about her friend, though, a presence that sparked a memory beyond her understanding. What she was certain of, however, was that right now it felt like she was slowly being erased, as if she was being hollowed out from within. She recalled her recent vision and knew that the giant on the train had been in the pyramid thousands of years in the past, before it had been frozen in time halfway around the world in Sanctuary. It had come to seal the pendant in the mirror. Sarah didn’t know how she knew; she just did, the same way she knew the giant’s intent had been to stop the pendant from being used, to secure it for eternity. But why? That was the question. Why did it want the pendant put beyond reach and, more importantly, why do I know what I do?
She stared at the wall, and the pendant, which glinted within. She couldn’t believe it was still in there, lying in wait for millennia for her to find it.
She suddenly realised something. It’s the giant that’s possessing me! All along, it had been the creature from another age that had manipulated her every move. That’s how I knew how to open the pyramid’s entrance in the cave. That’s how I knew how to read the Anakim text. That’s how I knew things I have no right to know. But why would it make me kill all those people? Is it evil? she wondered. Am I doing its bidding?
When it had grasped her head, something had transferred between them before it had died. Is its consciousness now merged with mine? Is the giant overwriting my mind with its own?! The thought was terrifying. If it wanted to survive, she thought, like any living thing would, what better way than to take the nearest available body?
It was the giant that was consuming her from the inside out.
She looked once more to the massive sculpture that lurked in the shadows and the giant Anakim forms that dwelt within it. Her eyes moved up through the scenes of lust to where the tortured souls devoured one another’s flesh. Memories of Sanctuary returned and she tried to focus her mind, as something tried to make itself known.
‘The land, through which we have gone to spy it out,’ she said.
‘What?’ Zinetti said. ‘What did you say?’ He looked at Avery. ‘What did she say?’
‘She quotes scripture,’ Avery said. ‘Numeri, chapter thirteen, verse thirty-two.’
‘The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants,’ Sarah said, gaining confidence. She stood up and Avery supported her as she regained her balance. ‘And all the people that we saw in it are of great height,’ she continued. ‘And there we saw the Nephilim, and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’
‘She quotes the English Standard Version,’ Zinetti said. ‘It’s of no consequence.’
Avery looked at Sarah and then at the sculpture. ‘The difference to the Latin Vulgate in this instance is minimal. “The land which we have viewed, devoureth its inhabitants: the people, that we beheld are of a tall stature. There we saw certain monsters of the sons of Enac, of the giant kind: in comparison of whom, we seemed like locusts.”’
‘I saw them,’ Sarah said, ‘the Nephilim. They were here in this pyramid, thousands of years ago, conducting a sacrifice.’
‘You saw into the past?’ Zinetti said with a shake of his head. ‘And how was this miracle achieved?’
‘Another vision,’ Sarah said, not caring if he believed her or not.
‘And how do you know these beings you envisioned were Nephilim?’ Avery said.
‘I just know.’
‘She just knows!’ Zinetti said, and laughed. ‘She continues to expect us to believe her every word.’
‘The Nephilim are said to have been fallen angels who possessed men,’ Ruben said, looking at Sarah. ‘Perhaps they possess women, too.’
Sarah didn’t respond. She knew what they thought and nothing she said would convince them otherwise. Not after she’d tried to kill Avery. If they’d needed any more proof, which they didn’t, she’d just handed it to them on a plate; or rather, the giant within her had.
She thought back to how she’d felt sorry for the dying beast, but now she hated it for what it had done to her. What it had made her do. Driven her to the brink of insanity, alienated her friends, murdered and devoured. It had destroyed her whole life for a purpose unknown. She continued to stare at the sculpture and realised she was a living representation of the Anakim within, literally and metaphorically consuming those around her in a sea of despair. Not for the first time, she wondered what she’d done in a past life to deserve such torment, but the answer remained as elusive as the peace she craved. There was one thing she couldn’t fathom, though; if the giant wanted the pendant hidden, why go to all the trouble of seeking it out?
‘And how does the word of God have any bearing on this place?’ Zinetti said. ‘You have no proof, just meaningless references.’
‘It’s like I told you back in the Vatican,’ Sarah said. ‘A man called Richard Goodwin said those words in Sanctuary. He believed scripture and the Anakim were connected, somehow.’
‘An echo of the past,’ Avery said.
Zinetti muttered something in Italian and then said, ‘Despite what some may think,’ – he gave Avery a look of disdain – ‘our scholars have made no conclusive connection between the testaments of man and the Anakim.’
Sarah wasn’t listening; she turned away to inspect the rest of the pyramid’s interior. She needed to try and take her mind off what had just happened and all her woes. As always, the tonic to her misery was her passion: archaeology. She focused on the slightly domed floor surrounding the pentagram and altar. ‘It’s an Anakim eye,’ she said, brushing aside more dust. ‘The altar is the pupil, the outer circle of the pentagram is the iris, and the rest of the screaming faces,’ – she walked to its edge – ‘make up the upper and lower eyelids.’
‘What does it mean?’ Avery said.
‘It’s an eye within a triangular chamber, within a pyramid. It’s obvious isn’t?’
Everyone looked at her with blank expressions.
‘It’s the Eye of Horus, the Egyptian symbol for good health.’ Her eyes strayed to the plain wall containing the entrance, which sloped down to the ground from high up at the pyramid’s hidden zenith; its angled incline identical to the two mirrored walls, except it wasn’t as she’d first thought. Sarah took a step closer. ‘The Hindus speak of the third eye of Lord Shiva, and the Buddha is called the “the Eye of the World”.’ She waved to Major Lanter. ‘Bring your torch closer.’
Lanter looked at Avery, who nodded, and the major moved closer and held his torch up to the wall.
‘It’s not stone,’ Nicola Dowling said, amazed.
Sarah reached out and touched the matte surface, her fingers trembling as she did so. She clenched them into a fist and ignored the constant pain that throbbed through her body. ‘It’s a type of crystal, but it’s been covered with carvings.’
‘There are pictograms and inscriptions all over it,’ Avery said.
Dowling moved to Sarah’s side as they both looked up at the designs carved into the massive crystal blocks which lined the sloping wall. In the gloom, they’d been impossible to see, appearing like stone blocks, but with the flickering flames close to their crystal surface the intricate designs were clearly visible.
‘I can read this,’ Dowling said. She held her translation device up to the wall.
Zinetti joined them to add his light to the major’s. ‘Does it say how to open the gate?’
Dowling pointed to depictions of Anakim men and women dressed in elaborate clothing, as they held their arms aloft to an image of a pyramid, surrounded by tall faceless beings. ‘It says they used this place to communicate with the spirit world.’ Dowling moved the device to the next set of inscriptions beneath images of more Anakim, who gazed up at a sky filled with what could only be shooting stars. ‘It says that together, the larger pyramids form a powerful device to protect the planet against celestial threats.’
Ancient Origins: Books 4 - 6 (Ancient Origins Boxset Book 2) Page 124
