by Alan Baxter
Crowley grinned. “True. But the future is never fast enough. Look at this though.” He pointed to the screen. “Listen to this. I’ll read from Cameron’s email. ‘By the way, this Denver airport, it’s weird. I mean really weird. Look it up so you know what you’re headed into. Or at least what this girl is into.’” He looked up at Rose. “Sounds ominous.”
Rose frowned. “How weird can an airport be?”
“Who knows? Ah, the clip is ready.”
He double-clicked in the icon and the video started. It was slightly grainy and stuttered occasionally, but the clarity was still impressive. The vision showed a young woman who looked a lot like Rose, along with a tall, dark-haired man, that hair gathered on top of his head, standing in front of a truly disturbing mural.
“That’s her!” Rose said. “It’s really Lily.”
“And that tall fellow must be the companion we’ve been hearing about.”
“What are they looking at?”
The CCTV angle was slightly oblique, but the mural was partially visible. It showed a man in a Nazi uniform, wearing a gas mask, armed with a rifle and scimitar, standing over dead children.
“That’s one of the most disturbing images I’ve seen in a while,” Crowley said.
“Why is that in an airport?” Rose asked.
Crowley shook his head. “I guess this is what Cameron was talking about when he said it was weird.”
As they watched, Lily moved to the right and knelt to inspect something in the bottom corner of the mural. Crowley couldn’t make out what it was in the small video window, but Lily took great interest, snapping photos with her phone and then taking out a notepad and scribbling furiously. Her companion glanced around, then leaned down and tapped Lily on the shoulder. The two stood and hurried away. The clip ended.
Crowley backed it up, paused it with Lily crouched down and pointed at the corner of the mural. “We need to find out what’s there that’s so interesting.”
“Look it up online,” Rose said. “There must be photos others have taken that are better resolution. Or pictures on the airport website.”
The airplane PA crackled and the pilot came on to announce they were beginning their descent into New York. Tray tables up, seats up and seat belts on and in-flight wifi was being turned off.
“I guess,” Crowley said, closing his laptop, “that when we land in New York we need to find a connection directly to Denver and check that out in person.”
Chapter 23
Denver International Airport
When they arrived in Denver International Airport, fatigue had set in again. They traveled with carry-on bags only, a few changes of clothes and other essentials in order to stay light. They grabbed them from the overhead locker and buffeted along with the line of people deplaning.
“All this running around and then sitting on planes is exhausting,” Rose said with a laugh.
Crowley pointed to a refreshments cart in the gate area as they emerged from the tunnel off the plane. “Coffee, yeah?”
“Good idea!”
They ordered coffees and snacks and then sat with them at a small plastic table. Crowley pulled out his laptop and fired it up.
“Let’s follow up on what Cameron said about this place. Check out what we can learn before we look around aimlessly.” He started an online search and soon his eyebrows rose and he was shaking his head.
Rose shifted her chair next to his to see the screen. “What is it?”
“This place is nuts. The murals we saw in the clip are in the baggage claim area, so we can go and look for those in a while. But this is bizarre.”
He pointed to a statue of a huge horse, a giant blue mustang with fiery red eyes, rearing up on its hide legs, kicking at the air.
“That’s here?” Rose asked.
“Right out front. Meet Blucifer.”
Rose laughed. “Blucifer?”
Crowley laughed with her, scanning the text. “That’s what the locals call it. It’s actually called Blue Mustang, but it has a bloody history. It’s thirty-two feet high and weighs nine thousand pounds. Those red eyes light up at night like some kind of demon horse.”
“Denver Broncos though, right?” Rose said. “That’s a local team.”
“Sure, but blue with glowing red eyes?”
“Good point. What do you mean by a bloody history?”
Crowley grinned. “Old Blucifer here killed his creator.”
“What?”
“The commissioned artist was a guy called Luis Jimenez. But before the thing was even unveiled, a section of it fell and severed an artery in Luis’s leg and he died!”
Rose grimaced. “That’s awful.”
Crowley read on then said, “A lot of people seem to think the sculpture is a representation of one of the horses of the apocalypse.”
Rose gave him a skeptical look. “That’s a bit far-fetched.”
“I don’t know. Maybe not when you hear what else is going on here. There’s a lot here that doesn’t make much sense. There was already a perfectly good airport only six miles from Denver, then this one was commissioned and it’s twenty-five miles from the city. It’s the biggest airport in the US, the second biggest in the world. Seriously, this place is insanely big. It’s fifty-three square miles!”
Rose whistled softly. “That’s…” She shrugged. “Why?”
“Exactly. As of 2010, it’s the fifth busiest in the world, so I guess it needs to be big. But this big? It cost a fortune, came in two billion dollars over budget.”
“Sounds like typical politicians wasting the public’s money,” Rose said with a sneer.
“You don’t know the half of it. Apparently there were five original buildings that were completely constructed but then those in charge decided they were incorrectly positioned. So they buried them.”
“Buried them? They didn’t knock them down to start again?”
Crowley raised his hands, genuinely nonplussed by what he was reading. “Yep. They were buried and the airport built on top, leading many people to think they’re deliberately constructed bunkers in case of some catastrophic event.”
“Bunkers for whom?”
Crowley grinned again. “The elite!” he said melodramatically. At Rose’s frown, he went on. “There’s a massive network of tunnels left underneath that airport which officials maintain are used to ferry baggage around. Much safer than driving it around on the runways above, apparently.”
“Well, that makes sense.”
“I guess. But it still doesn’t explain why there are these huge, multiple story buildings under there. The airport says they’re four stories deep, but some theorists maintain there are blueprints showing them to be six stories.”
“Maybe some enterprising billionaires are preparing for the apocalypse,” Rose said.
“They might be.”
“But who might those enterprising billionaires be?”
“Just a sec.” Crowley did a couple of extra searches, double-checking what he had read. “Well, there are several sources here looking at the Illuminati.”
Rose made a disdainful sound and sat back in her seat. “Seriously?”
Crowley pointed to the screen and she leaned back in to see. He showed her a photo of a square block, carved with the Masonic symbol of the set square and compass. At the top of the block, five lines radiated downward like the sun’s rays. Beneath that was written Denver International Airport Dedication Capstone. Two names were recorded lower down, both listed as Grand Master Masons, then the date of March 19, 1994.
Rose laughed. “Masons aren’t automatically Illuminati.”
Crowley pointed to a small line of text carved into the stone below the date. “Look there.”
Rose read aloud. “New World Airport Commission. Like New World Order? What the hell? Why would you call yourself that? No one’s that stupid, surely.”
“And there’s no record anywhere else in the world, except for the capstone, of that name.”
; Rose was shaking her head, still looking at the photo. “So why be so blatant?”
“Maybe it’s a misdirection.”
Rose looked from the photo to Crowley then back again. “A misdirection from what?”
Crowley flicked over his browser windows to show an aerial photograph of the entire airport. “Look at the layout of the runways.”
Rose gaped. “A swastika.” She shook her head again, as if trying to clear it. “This place can’t be real. Maybe we’re still on the plane and I’m having a vivid dream.”
Crowley chuckled. “And all this is only the tip of the iceberg.” He drained his coffee and put the laptop back into his bag. “Come on. Let’s check this crazy place out.”
Chapter 24
Denver International Airport
Crowley and Rose shouldered their messenger bags and towed their carry-on cases behind them as they strolled at random through the huge airport. Rose was eager to see the mural that had so captured Lily’s attention and Crowley understood her enthusiasm for that, but he needed to see more. Everything he had learned about the place gave him the creeps and unsettled him in ways he couldn’t articulate. There were any number of reasons for the strangeness of the Denver International Airport, lots of them completely benign. But the conspiracy theorists had a lot of meat on the bones they were chewing and after everything that had happened last time he and Rose had found themselves working together, Crowley was reluctant to write anything off. Something was hugely awry here and he didn’t want to miss any small detail that might be important later on.
“Look at that!” Rose pointed up to the wall to their left.
Atop a pillar against the marble wall, just below the high ceiling, stood a grotesque sculpture. It depicted a suitcase, sat on its base and opened, with a gargoyle of some kind sitting in it. The creature had large wings and a horned head, its knees drawn up to its chest and its head resting disconsolately in its hands.
“Why the hell would they have something like that just randomly sitting up the wall?” Rose asked.
Crowley shook his head, looking up at the thing. “It looks kinda sad, don’t you think?”
Rose smiled. “Lost luggage? Maybe he expected to go somewhere else, and doesn’t want to be in Denver.”
“He’d be more at home on the roof of a church in England.”
Rose sighed, looked away. “It’s bizarre. I can’t imagine why anyone would put that in an airport.”
They walked on and Crowley pointed to the marble surface beneath their feet. “Look at all these symbols embossed in gold in the floor.”
Some of the designs were obvious, the kind of thing a person might expect to see, like the outline of an airplane. But others were patterns less readily understood, the meaning obscure. Rose used her phone to snap pictures of each of them. A security guard leaning against one wall noticed and smiled, ruefully shook his head.
“Apparently we aren’t the first to take an interest in the oddities of this place,” Crowley said. “And I’m not surprised. Honestly, it’s a conspiracy theorist’s nirvana.
Rose pointed out one pattern on the ground ahead of them. “Is it me or does that look familiar?”
Crowley paused, staring down at the strange design. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place why. He walked around the uneven square, lines branching out all around. As he got to the other side, he had a moment of revelation.
“Hey, look up on your phone. That diagram you found of the passageways underneath the Black Pyramid.”
“Oh yeah.” Rose flicked up her camera app and started swiping through her saved photos. She moved around to stand next to Crowley and they compared the two images.
Crowley looked from the design to Rose’s phone, then up to catch her eye. “I’m not mad, am I?”
“Nope. That’s it, almost exactly. Just represented two-dimensionally.”
They continued on, Rose taking pictures of all the odd-looking shapes in the floor. They came to one area with a huge design of overlapping circles, different colored stone making a kind of interlocking geometric design.
“That part looks like a black disc eclipsing the sun,” Crowley said. “The Nazis revered a black sun.”
“And this area is called the Great Hall,” Rose said. “Which is what Masons call their meeting halls.”
Crowley shook his head, paused walking to turn in a slow circle on the spot. “Masons and Nazis. Swastika runways. Massive underground bunkers.”
“Gargoyles and maps of pyramid catacombs,” Rose said, taking up the litany of the bizarre. “What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know.” And he genuinely didn’t, but he also realized they were being distracted. It was too much information to process. “Besides, you were right before. We need to focus on the main problem, which is finding your sister. Let’s look at that mural.”
When they had seen the painting in part from Cameron’s clip, Crowley had found it discomforting. Standing before it, in all its full-color glory and size, it was truly disturbing. The soldier wore a Nazi-style uniform with an eagle on the hat. It was hard to tell if he was wearing a gas mask or if his face was, in fact, a gas mask. He held a rifle in his left hand, its bayonet pointing at the sky. In his left, pointing down, he held a huge, curved scimitar. He stood among ruined buildings, the point of the scimitar stabbing a white dove. The sharp edge of the blade hovered above supine children, their eyes closed, either in terror or death. To the left, a sweeping design of a terrified woman clutching her dead infant repeated ad infinitum into the distance. Bizarrely, sweeping out from under the large skirts of the Nazi’s greatcoat, a brightly colored rainbow arced off to the top left of the mural.
“This is just about the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Rose said.
Crowley could only mutely agree, nodding as he looked the terrible image over again and again.
“That scimitar reminds me of another Masonic symbol,” Rose said quietly. She tapped on her phone for a moment, then turned the screen for Crowley to see. It showed an image of a curved blade, beneath which was suspended a star, a crescent moon, and the head of a pharaoh.
“More Masonic and Egyptian connections,” Crowley said. The small symbol disturbed him almost as much as the huge mural, though he couldn’t say why. He noticed an image in the bottom right of the mural, a page with writing on it. He moved closer and read it aloud for Rose. “I was once a little child who longed for other worlds. But I am no more a child for I have known fear. I have learned to hate… How tragic, then, is youth which lives with enemies, with gallows ropes. Yet, I still believe I only sleep today, that I’ll wake up, a child again, and start to laugh and play.” He looked up at Rose, knew his expression was haunted.
“That’s terrible,” Rose said quietly.
Crowley frowned, looked down at the floor while he racked his brains. “It’s familiar,” he muttered. He took out his phone, dialed up a browser and typed in the first line. Numerous results came back. “Of course. I knew I’d read that before.”
“What is it?”
“No less terrible, I’m afraid. That’s word for word from an actual letter written by a fourteen-year-old child named Hama Herchenberg, who died December 18, 1943, in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.”
Rose blanched, looked away from the mural with one hand over her mouth. After a moment she looked back at Crowley. “Humanity sucks,” she said, voice constricted with referred grief.
He nodded, lost for words.
Rose pointed to the rainbow-colored ribbon, stretching across the background and wrapping around behind the dark figure. “You think that’s maybe a symbol of hope?”
Crowley wanted to reassure her, but he didn’t think it was. “Look at how the colors fade, turning to a silvery gray, and come to a point like a sword under the soldier. I guess maybe it depends which way you look at it. I can’t help thinking the rainbow is fading out if we read the image left to right.”
Rose frowned, shook her head. “Look at
those children under the Nazi. There are no marks of violence on them. No bullet wounds or sword cuts. They’re just… dead.”
Crowley nodded slowly. “And the Nazi is stabbing a dove of peace. The rainbow fades to gray, the children die, peace dies. Good grief, this is horrible.”
“Some people say the rainbow represents a chemical agent.”
Crowley and Rose both jumped, and turned around quickly.
An old Latino man, clad in an airport janitor’s uniform, stood right behind them. His nametag read, ‘Mike’. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Crowley smiled, taking a breath to calm his racing heart. Everything about this place was putting him on edge. “That’s okay. You know a bit about this?”
Mike shouldered a mop, and moved his bucket nearer to the wall to avoid blocking passersby. “I’ve worked here a long time, heard a lot of stuff. You two were paying some serious attention to the mural.”
“Most people don’t stop to look?” Rose asked.
“Oh, just about everybody stops to look. But not for long. It was interesting to hear you try to figure out the meaning, though.”
“What do you think they mean?” Crowley asked.
Mike smiled, shook his head. He avoided the question. “You know, there are four murals, all painted by a guy named Leo Tanguma. They’re supposed to represent peace, harmony and nature. But it doesn’t look that way, does it? Everybody says that Tanguma was given guidelines for all four paintings and they paid him big.” Mike rubbed his thumb and forefingers together for emphasis. “But when they asked him about it later, he was all, ‘No way.’ He said there aren’t any hidden meanings in his work. But if you look up his other stuff? Very different, like it’s not even by the same guy.”
“You said the rainbow represents a chemical agent?” Rose prompted.
Mike shrugged. “That’s what they say. Like you said, the dead children aren’t hurt or nothing, just dead. Like they’re sleeping, you know? And the dude’s wearing a gas mask.” He pointed up at the soldier.
“So the children were gassed and the rainbow represents that?” Crowley asked.
