Ancient Echoes (22 page)

I beg your indulgence, My Future Would-Be Reader (if you
do exist), as I recount some of the History of this time, for I have not the
foresight to know how much of it has become common knowledge.

When Jefferson sojourned in Paris some years before his
Presidency, he met a group of Occultists. It was our misfortune that Jefferson
took little notice that Occultists often involved themselves in the Study of
Evil. If he had, perhaps our adventure would not have come to this frightening
condition.

He continued this association into his presidency. Among
those Occultists was a
Medieval
scholar who had
studied the ancient practice of Alchemy. The man told Jefferson that one of the
most important Alchemical texts of all time may have been brought to America by
a Frenchman. The man, said to be a Seer and an Alchemist, ventured into the
area the French explored, but which was now under dispute between the English
and the Americans after the Emperor’s sale of Louisiana.

Desiring the land, the text, and the Alchemist’s gold (if
it did exist), Jefferson contacted Ezra Crouch, a retired Captain in the Army
of the United States of America as well as a student of Freemasonry and
Rosicrucian history, to pursue the matter.

Captain Crouch learned that a French explorer had indeed
discovered Pure Gold as well as Arcane and Magical materials and symbols near
the Nez Perce nation. The Indians refused to touch it, insisting it ensured
Death to anyone who did so. Included in the findings was a most peculiar
Symbol:

Jianjun scarcely believed his eyes. The journal contained
the same symbol Michael had found in Mongolia.

Jianjun continued to read.

Jefferson dispatched to the
Medieval
scholar a finely wrought drawing of the symbol. He foreswore mention of the
Gold.

The man replied with clear excitement, saying the symbol
was from the selfsame Alchemical text he had spoken of, the one that taught the
sorcerer Nicolas Flamel the Art of Transmutation.

In Great Secret, Jefferson gathered our little group with
Captain Crouch as our leader. We were given one Mission: to go to the locale
where the Alchemical symbol had been found, and bring back all that was there,
including the Gold.

He then organized the Corps of Discovery which would be
led by Captains William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. Our duty was to follow
them. Of course, it could not become General Knowledge that Jefferson was
spending the Public Treasury for our Mystical adventure. Thus, we were
dispatched in complete secret from everyone we knew and from all we held dear
on this Earth.

I can little convey the excitement with which our most
Remarkable
expedition set out. My particular friend, Noah
Handy, was well versed in the study of Astrology and the Heavens. He
entertained us with
Numerous
stories about the Stars
and their meaning. Reuben Hale was an older man, perhaps in his fifties, and I
feared for his Health on this journey. He was a devotee of
Medieval
sorcery and knew a great deal about cures and potions. I found him amiable, but
strange. I will confess to little amity with Orril and Asa Munroe, who were
first cousins, and who professed to be practitioners of Mentalist Powers. They
held themselves as Superior to me in every way simply because they were skilled
Hunters and Frontiersmen. I found their constant prying about my Thoughts and
ridicule of my Weakness as destructive to our mission, and often wished they
would leave the group. I feared their hearts were corrupted by Vice and
Arrogance.

I shall admit, although I enjoy good health, I am not as
physically strong as most men for I have spent the majority of my twenty-eight
years in the pursuit of knowledge. I am a writer. I have published several
books on the Occult, not as a believer, but as a scholar. The books sold only
passably well in our practical America, but I have a devoted following in
England. The public there are especially curious to learn of the beliefs and
practices of the American aboriginals. Mine was to be one of the first learned
books on the subject when we returned.

I shall not recount here, as we followed Lewis and Clark,
of our troubles with the fiercesome Lakota Sioux, or of the hardships of our
first
Winter
on the plains. Suffice it to say that
without our Guides, Eli Borah and Miles Weiser, fine men with good knowledge of
survival in the Implacable Wilderness, we would be long dead.

Instead, I shall proceed forward to the fateful day when
Noah Handy peered through his spyglass and saw that Captain Clark was
separating from Captain Lewis, who seemed to be in ill Health. By this time, we
believed we must be near the Nez Perce land, for we had traveled far longer
without falling off the edge of the continent than we imagined was possible. We
looked forward to achieving our Goal and returning Home.

I longed for Home. My own Susannah Revere, the truest,
most honorable woman I have been privileged to meet, had promised her hand to
me before I left Maryland. I vowed that after I returned, I would never again
leave her side.

Upon Captain Crouch’s order, we followed William Clark
and his small band. I should have known, as soon as we entered this strange
Land, that something was dreadfully amiss. The mountains, tall, and blood-red
at sunset as a Beast’s maw, stretched farther than I ever imagined they would,
and were far more
Barren
and Inhospitable. We were at
such an altitude the Air was thin and we struggled to breath.

If the land our Ancestors had found in the New World had
been as empty and forbidding as this, with murderous aboriginals and monstrous,
ferocious bears called Grizzlies whose roar caused men to fall to the ground
quaking in terror, they never would have settled it, but would have fled back
to England and kissed the ground with gratitude for their deliverance.

Our group was forced to lag some distance behind Captain
Clark because we knew Scouts would travel between his camp and that of Captain
Lewis. For the first time, we were unable to simply follow the trail the Corps
of Discovery had created, because to do so would have placed us in the path of
the Scouts. We were forced to blaze our own trail.

And that was our Undoing.

To keep clear of the Scouts, we traveled far to the
South.

The second night, dry Lightning continued into the early
morning hours, and we awoke to a Sky yellow with smoke. The forest blazed, and
Fire progressed toward our camp with terrifying rapidity as if it were some
great Hellish demon devouring all in its wake.

The next day, we traveled south to avoid the path of the
rapidly approaching blaze.

We reached a deep canyon. The gorge precipitously yawned
straight down, and was impossible to descend. We were forced westward, following
the gorge, and hoping to find a way across. Once the fire diminished, we would
circumambulate back to regain Captain Clark's trail.

As we continued, however, hope of finding our way back to
Clark diminished, and should the fire be burning toward him, we knew not if he
would be able to return to Lewis, or if he would perish in the hellish flames.

That night we had recourse to prayer, a remarkable thing
for men who had turned our backs on the One God of our fathers, and had in truth
lived most of our lives in search of other, more
Aesthetically
pleasing, more Rational and Modern deities.

The Fire galloped at great speed with strength and
endurance. We ran, but it pursued, jumping boundaries and heading our way like
a ravenous monster in search of nourishment.

We crossed a wide creek only to watch in dismay as the
fire vaulted over it. Was there no safety from this monster? We could see the
crown of it, with flames higher than a hundred feet into the sky.

The blaze created a clime of its own. Furious
temperatures sucked the heated air into a column where updrafts whorled smoke
into a vertical cloud.

We could only shake our heads in frightful wonderment as
we watched in helpless awe at the power of nature and prayed that we not be consumed
within its cavernous maw.

After four days, we wondered if it would ever end. By the
eighth day, temperatures lowered and the moisture in the air increased contrary
to the usually blistering dryness of this climate. With this change, the rate
of combustion slowed.

The following morning, cloud edges had darkened to a
gentle gray, and by noon, a steady drizzle had become a drumming rain. Trees
and rocks grew cooler. By the next day, almost an inch of rain had fallen.

Like a giant beast that is spent, the fire burned itself
out as we slept.

As the overhead lights flickered on and off a couple of
times, Jianjun slowly returned to this time and place. The Institute was about
to close.

He slid the journal into the fake bottom in his laptop
computer case, the same secret compartment that held lock picks, key cards, SIM
cards, and other tools of his trade. He returned the boxes of materials to the
librarian,
then
calmly walked through security and out
the museum doors. As he tried to put the pieces of a nightmare puzzle together,
he wondered how the journal had been ignored.
Had it been
dismissed by hasty readers as crazed fiction?
A
frontier tall tale?
And he wondered who else had read it.

SOMETHING WAS TERRIBLY wrong here,
Michael thought as he perused the rugged terrain. The emptiness, untouched by
man, seemed to go on forever.

The previous day the group found nothing that could lead to
the pillars. At first light, they began again.

They stopped when they reached a location where the mountain
dropped away. They couldn’t see through the thick, high foliage to the bottom.
Something about it seemed familiar to Michael, however. He had never been there
before, yet it welcomed him.

“This is it,” he said quietly. “We’ve got to climb down the
mountain.”

“What makes you say that?” Quade’s dark gaze fixed on
Michael.

“I don’t know,” Michael admitted.

Jake and Charlotte exchanged worried glances. “Good enough
for me,” Charlotte said. Jake nodded.

Michael led them forward as anticipation, hope and fear
collided.
The possibility that Lionel and the students were
already dead, that he was chasing shadows, weighed heavily.

He realized the mountain’s relentless steepness and
treacherous footing would only increase the farther they went. They left the
horses on a flat pasture near a small stream, removed the saddlebags and filled
their backpacks with as much as they could carry, then crawled and slid down
the mountainside.

Michael stared into the distance with both satisfaction and
alarm. In the center of a long valley stood two pillars, taller and more
frighteningly unearthly than any of them ever imagined.

o0o

As they hiked toward the pillars, Jake found footprints
among the crushed scrub. “Look at this! They were here!” Joy filled him.

Michael said nothing. He had somehow known he would find the
pillars, had known they would find evidence that the university group had been
here. He felt as if he had been led here by a force beyond himself, but by who
or what, for good or evil, he had no idea.

He had turned his back on believing in such sixth senses,
turned his back on everything other than the here and now, the real and
concrete…until Mongolia.

“I've got to call this in.” Jake pulled out his satellite
phone. “I want a search team out here pronto.” He tried the phone. “Damn!
There's nothing but static. I've never had that happen before. What could be
causing interference way out here?” He walked back some distance to see if he
could get a better signal.

Charlotte followed him, unsure why since she found being
near him strangely unsettling yet somehow comforting. She also sensed that on
some level he enjoyed having her near. She stopped and called out, “Does it
work yet?”

“No. For all I know, the damn thing's broken. But I've got
backup
.” Jake dropped the phone back in its case and took
out a satellite messenger, capable of sending a distress signal with the
sender's location. It was as dead as the phone.

Michael reached for his sat phone. It had never failed him.
Besides, he should have already contacted Jianjun, told him where
he was, and asked him to be ready to send help if things grew any weirder.

He tried to find a signal, but his device also refused to
connect. The pillars had to be the cause.
But why?
What did they do? What was their purpose?