Copyright and Publisher Information
Something Coming Book One: The Sacred Mountain
By J.M. DeBord
Copyright © 2010 by J.M. DeBord.
Published by J.M. DeBord at Smashwords.
All rights reserved by the author.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced for commercial purposes without permission of the author, except in the use of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. However, this digital copy is free to be shared for non-commercial purposes.
For information go to GroovyWriter.com, or visit the author's Smashwords profile:
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COVER DESIGN BY ELI NEY
PRINT LAYOUT DESIGN BY BE. {be@be-what-you-are.com}
ISBN: 1442106166
EAN: 9781442106161
Dedication
A big thank you to everyone who encouraged me to write this novel. Thanks especially to the friends who said quit talking about the idea and get to work. Eleven years later, I present the finished product, dedicated to my father, keeper of my writer’s haven and #1 fan. I would also like to recognize everyone who believes that a story can change our understanding of our world and ourselves. In these pages you will find a blueprint.
1.
Akbar woke up in the dark, his heart pounding furiously, and struggled to remember the dream that startled him from sleep. In it, a towering statue sprang to life announcing great tidings that the simple villager failed to understand. He recognized the haunting face belonging to one of the monumental statues he knew well at Mt. Nemrut. The lifelike visage, solemn mouth, and eyes set in eternal observance were unforgettable, but the message of the elusive dream vanished. Gone like a ghost.
A strong feeling compelled Akbar out of bed before dawn to visit the sanctuary where the statue in his dream waited for him, high in the mountains of southeastern Turkey. Less than an hour’s hike from his village. The rest of the world forgot the sacred mountain, too scared to pay tribute near a war zone. Not Akbar. He dressed in ragged khaki trousers and a collared shirt and ignited a lantern, disturbing his younger brother Abby in the cot next to his.
“What are you doing?” Abby complained groggily. “Quench that light.”
“It’s going with me,” Akbar said softly.
“Where?”
“The mountaintop. Nemrut.”
Abby snapped open his dovish eyes. Out of habit, he rubbed his cheeks to check if his fuzzy whiskers had grown more overnight. “Good idea. I’ll join you,” he said while throwing off wool blankets, then hugged his slender brown arms to his chest against the cold. “Brr! Chilly night for mid-July, wouldn’t you say?”
“I want to be alone.” Akbar avoided eye contact as he buckled his sandals. Abby thought twice after seeing the troubled look on his face.
“More sleep sounds better, anyway.” For Abby the growing teenager, precious rest was more valuable than chasing his moody older brother on a cold night. “Before you woke me, I was dreaming that I had a pretty wife who was cooking something she promised I’d like. Maybe she’ll be waiting when I return.”
Abby fell back to sleep as Akbar slipped on a heavy windbreaker and grabbed the lantern, ready to chase his own dream. Outside in the quiet village, a dull bell clanked, wrapped around the neck of a neighbor’s alarmed goat. After recognizing the nighttime intruder, the goat chomped at a tuft of frost-covered grass, uninterested. Akbar stalked into moonlit stillness beyond the last of the village’s simple homes, following a familiar shortcut to the sanctuary left behind long ago by wise kings on the peak of Mt. Nemrut.
The villager’s many worries crowded his mind during the hike. Tourism evaporated when Turkey threatened to invade and annex northern Iraq, nearby to the southeast. His income as a tour guide dried up with the wary tourists. Even with his determination to provide for Abby, the brothers were faced with staying in their village—Karadut—and hoping against all odds for a last-minute peace deal, or journeying to the city in hope that their uncle would rehire Akbar as a livestock handler, maybe hire Abby too, now that he was old enough. After five years in their family home with only each other, orphans, both brothers wanted to stay, but the impending war in their area stole that choice.
The eastern sky warmed with hues of violet and red. After exiting the hiking trail, Akbar climbed a steep path of loose stones the rest of the way to the mountaintop. At the north terrace he greeted a processional way lined with the rubble of limestone columns and tablets. The villager circled around the humongous mountain peak shaped like a pyramid from millions of fist-sized stones piled fifteen stories tall. Once reaching the east side, he avoided peering at the statue with the face from his dream, afraid that seeing it lifeless on the ground might spoil the magic.
Instead he zipped across the wide terrace carved into the mountaintop and aimed straight for the far edge of the Fire Altar, a low, stepped pyramid once used for elaborate ceremonies, eager to pray away his many worries.
Thin clouds floated closely overhead. Akbar dropped to his knees, faced the coming sun and pressed his forehead to the ground, seeking supplication for a poor villager and his dependent brother wedged between poverty and war.
He felt sunlight strike the top of his head moments later, and lifted his eyes to catch the first rays shooting between two distant peaks. Rippling mountains sprang into view, the tops glazed reddish orange, breathtaking. Before the exploding conflict with the Kurds scared them away, tens of thousands of tourists used to flock every summer for the spectacular view of the sunrise, advertised as the best in the world. Akbar thought nothing could compare with what he beheld that moment. Planet Earth yawned and said good morning.
Blinding light suddenly whitewashed his sight. The peaks and valleys disappeared, even the rising sun blotted out. His mouth quivered and instantly dried to paste. Veins of fear clawed his scalp.
“BEHOLD!”
The mighty word skipped the villager’s heart. Not a request, he heard an order in his mind to turn around and face the light. No human mouth could have uttered it, yet the voice conveyed a distinct tone of intelligence and an absolute awareness. Trembling, he obeyed.
Akbar held up his hands to shield his eyes from the intense multicolored light. After a second glance he recognized the statue head from his dream towering disembodied overhead, possessing authority to command stars to fall from the sky. “A slumbering mountain God has awakened,” was all he could think. Nothing else could display such power. Swallowing terror, he dared to speak.
“Please, Great One, what do you wa-want from little me?”
In reply, Akbar heard two words:
You know.
The same voice had spoken to him previously. It encouraged him to follow his heart and stay in his village, messages beamed from the mountain. It tried to tell him a secret in his sleep, but his dreaming mind refused to accept the knowledge that went against everything he believed. Humans only live once and wait for Judgment Day. They do not return. Akbar had never been an important person in history.
Remember.
Before the armies of Greece and Rome marched across the ancient world, a great kingdom descended like a ram out of the high Iranian plateaus, battering down lesser foes, teaching the religion of the One God, and instituting advanced government and legal systems everywhere it went. The ram’s culture spread west into Greece and east into the Indian subcontinent. The first civilization which rose to the rank of empire, ruled by a king so proven, so wise, so ahead of his time, his epitaph demanded place above all others who had ruled previously: King of Kings. A title later applied to the Christian God-Child, Jesus.
The great King’s name announced itself to Akbar, but the unfamiliar sound slipped back under his unconscious mind, and the harder he forced himself to remember the deeper it fled. The name was his, something inside of him instantly recognized; he had been that exalted man from history! The statue knew. It told him:
The knowledge of your true Self must be earned, and even then you might fail for forgetting why you want to know.
Akbar threw himself to the ground, prostrate before the radiant statue and the voice speaking through it.
A new era begins today. An important role you can have.
“You want me?” Akbar lifted from the ground hopefully, feeling strong hands beneath his shoulders.
Bring my people here. Your reward will be great.
“We are desperate.”
Heaven appeared to answer his prayers, but Akbar hesitated. He had heard warnings against false messiahs. The all-knowing presence inside the light read his thoughts.
Remember scripture: What is called the King who rises again?
The young man thought of Moses, who received the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai and departed life at Mt. Nebo. Noah landed the Ark on the other sacred mountain in Turkey—Mt. Ararat—and repopulated the planet after The Flood. Jesus was a risen prophet, some say the Son of God. The Prophet Mohamed rose in body to Heaven from Mt. Moria. Many Muslims believed Mohamed and Jesus would return together, but Akbar knew little else about the intricacies of his native religion, a low priority for the orphan with many earthly responsibilities. He looked up tentatively and answered best he could, the first words with any chance of encompassing the reality confronting him.
“It is a miracle.”
You have your answer.
Urine squirted down Akbar’s leg. Could it be? The words came out of his mouth, and the truth rang in his heart. The voice from the light proclaimed:
A ruler returns to fulfill the prophecies. No war will consume this land. Today dawns a new kingdom, risen from the old. My kingdom. The world!
Akbar could hardly begin to grasp what he witnessed. He suddenly had to know, “Why me? I’m just a villager.”
The insistent light illuminated the homestead of his soul. Right before begging to be forgiven for asking such a stupid question, he received the answer.
Because you too are a king, you have this honor. But learn from the blind man whose eyes were healed, and only speak after the miracle is recognized.
Akbar felt his bowels warm, his trousers wet, his knees knocking. A simple villager chosen to witness. Chosen to serve. And he hoped, chosen to be richly rewarded! A one-named man, ragged determination his only virtue, appreciated in his own little world but of no importance beyond Karadut. Until now.
“No one would believe me anyway,” he said glumly.
His answer pleased the light. It lowered the wattage to a sparkling afterglow. Carved in stone, the statue from his dream stood there, lording. Its expressive eyes watched over the entire expanse of the spacious terrace from a commanding location in the middle of five massive limestone thrones lined side by side. Risen again. It told Akbar:
Hurry home now. Someone is coming and the time is short!
The supernatural light winked off, but a hint of watchfulness and residue of power remained in the majestic face.
Akbar suspected that he might be experiencing a dream within a dream, lying on his cot about to wake up and begin another normal morning with only the usual troubles to occupy his mind. The miraculous event he witnessed was too big to comprehend. “Move,” he told himself. “Go. Do as told. Don’t think.”
He staggered back toward the north terrace, back the way he came, atop the sacred heights of Nemrut Dag on the morning of the Festival of Lights, which dawned bright and promising for a desperately poor Turkish villager named Akbar.
Chapter 2
Peter Vandermill stroked his gray-flecked beard while studying the statue head balanced on the middle throne high above him. The mid-morning sun bronzed the few patches of white skin left uncovered by his standard field outfit: loose flannel shirt and utility vest over several light layers, enlarging his already jovial girth, cargo shorts, and what he liked to call his Indiana Jones hat.
Peter had outgrown the possibility of grand adventure. Or so he thought until recently. The hat felt more snug as all sorts of possibilities teased his mind. The archaeologist in him tended to be a rationalist who believed only in chance, science and diligence, but coincidences piled up, he had to admit. The date happened to be the most important day of the year in Mt. Nemrut mythology, the Festival of Lights. An interesting discovery was made under the mountain. And the Turkish government suddenly got involved, all within a few days. None of which took into account, the statue weighed ten tons, and the loose rocks and debris scattered around the east terrace made the job of lifting it high off the ground in the middle of the night and balancing it a feat almost too difficult to fathom.
Standing beside him, Peter’s wife Darianna had a knowing look on her face like she could explain the moving head as the cosmic flow or The Force, terminology foreign to Peter’s mind. He left the mystical stuff to her. That dawn, Darianna shot awake and cried a name that raised goosebumps. Despite the circumstantial evidence, he still had his doubts, confirmed when he noticed the flaw.
“What’s wrong with this picture? You should see it by now.”
Darianna locked eyes on the statue staring over them, reminding Peter of how effortlessly mysterious she could be, with raven-colored hair and olive skin like a Mediterranean princess—his way of describing the lucky feeling of having such a beautiful woman at his ordinary, expansive side. Darianna saw herself as middle age, no longer sexy or concerned about appearance. She wore tan jeans with scuffed hiking boots and a men’s button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Her attention focused inside on what she felt rather than what she saw.
“...The head of King Antiochus is on the body of Zeus. Whoever pulled this prank fouled up,” said Peter, amused by the irony.
Darianna finally noticed, and her expression lit similar to the first time they visited the mountain deep in Turkey, not as researchers but as tourists. The fallen head spoke to her from a place she had to find. Her life changed that moment, and Peter’s, who found a pursuit worthy of his academic training. Wherever in the world they happened to be after summers of research at Nemrut Dag—anywhere their vagabond lifestyles took them—a part of her communicated with the presence at the mountain that she felt closer to as her psychic abilities improved. She explained as best she could to her traditional, older husband that some spirits are fiendishly clever and like nothing more than to pull along an unsuspecting psychic for amusement or worse. Her guiding spirit, though, had proven itself in so many ways. The mystery only deepened.
“Could be deliberate,” Darianna proposed. “The head of the divine King on the throne of the father God?” Just the way she expected this spirit to proclaim itself.
Peter caught a secretive hint in his wife’s voice and asked, “Got a better explanation?”
“I don’t see how this could have been done in such a short time. We were here yesterday afternoon,” Darianna dodged, unable to say what she really thought. Her husband had to understand rationally, and what she sensed presented no rational explanation.
Peter peered toward the sun. “Sixteen hours ago. You’d think the pranksters would have left behind a clue.”
From the far side of Peter and Darianna sneaked a brown-haired, clean-cut man dressed in khaki shorts and a white-striped golf shirt that accented his summer tan. Creeping closer, he carefully watched his targets.
Peter spotted Akbar’s lantern the other direction on the Fire Altar, thought it could be a clue, but quickly realized a lot more than a lantern would be needed to light the terrace well enough at night to set up pulleys and ladders and hoist the gargantuan head of King Antiochus. Heavy equipment was out of the question at that altitude on treacherous roads. A prank to draw attention? Nothing else made sense.
The previous night, Darianna sat for hours by the hotel room window, her face bathed in moonlight and deep contemplation. Peter tried to read a book in bed, but tension stuffed the air so he went for a long swim. Darianna was asleep in the chair by the window when he returned. At dawn she bolted upright and startled him from a sound slumber with her cry of “Antiochus!” Peter figured weirder things had happened lately. Much weirder.
“Give it up,” he said. “I know you too well.”
Darianna held back her true thoughts. Even after all their time together, and all that Peter knew and accepted about his enigmatic spouse, he would second guess her. “Some things aren’t explainable with equations or theories,” she finally answered, “but I do feel His hand at work.”
His. Peter distinguished Darianna’s use of the strong pronoun to describe the spirit that guided her in their pursuit to answer one of archeology’s great remaining questions: Who was buried beneath Nemrut Dag? They had opened the burial chamber, found the father and son kings from the ancient Seleucid dynasty as expected, and documented everything for an initial report. Then they discovered an odd astrological mechanism that could unlock lost secrets, or could be an elaborate decoration. Too many coincidences. Peter anticipated more to find; Darianna was sure of it. Rarely was the husband-wife team wrong when they agreed. Peter hinted at disappointment.
“Your choice ... if you want to keep it to yourself.”
Darianna, surrounded by dark waters of unknown, had to wait. She’d been distant from Peter romantically as strong feelings and intuitions increasingly consumed her attention. Something earth-shaking was building to a climax, but the rumbles were undetectable with the feet and inaudible to the ears. She knew that her reticence made Peter—who only asked difficult question when needed—curious to the point of concern. But no matter what, she could not serve her thoughts half-baked. She knew why the statue head stood high above them: A sign. A proclamation. A beacon for the world to seek there for answers. Peter needed proof.
“People will call it a miracle,” predicted Darianna.
“Only if you believe in such nonsense,” said the sneaky man, right behind Peter and Darianna. Professor Marc Reynolds stood there triumphantly, his hands on his hips and a cocky grin on his face reminiscent of a late-night comedy show host. Husband and wife both jumped at the sudden sound and cried out “Marc!” His presence broke the moment.
“Science is my miracle. You guys seen the roads? Twice I was stopped at checkpoints, and the military goons were curious about a Westerner in a rented car. I got your message at the hotel. Sorry I didn’t call.” Marc kept talking, attention short as usual. “Can you believe no tourist buses are running out here? War, man, what’s it for? My parents chanted that stuff in the ‘60s.”
Peter and Darianna cracked up laughing. They loved their energetic companion, Marc, a welcome counterpoint to the couple’s mostly predictable existence. The young professor had a way of lightening any mood. He ignored whatever they found so amusing.
“What the heck were you staring at, anyway? You two should be ashamed for letting me surprise you like that.”
Peter lifted a hand toward the risen statue. “Don’t you see it?”
Marc saw everything but the obvious, then crowed, “Oh my god! Who put that up there?”
“Good question. We were just discussing it,” Peter said with a glance toward Darianna.
“I can see calling it interesting, explainable of course,” Marc waved with a flick of his hand, “but a miracle? Come on.”
Darianna said, “Expect to see it on the front page real soon. You explain. Did a group of people come out here in the middle of the night and somehow lift it up there?”
“It can be done,” Marc asserted. “Let’s see, the statue weighs about as much as a semi without a trailer. Has to be moved twenty meters up over rocky ground. Lowered into place. Your average crane could handle it, or a winch on a really big truck. Would be a tough job though, all of the way up here.”
“We found no tell-tale signs,” Peter informed the professor, “no tracks, chains, ropes, just a lone lantern. You’d think the pranksters would betray their presence somehow. A small army would be needed. The Kurds, maybe?”
“There’s no such thing as miracles.” Marc felt that Peter secretly supported Darianna’s hypothesis. Miracles, huh. Marc could tell by the look on her face what Darianna really thought.
“It’s explainable, we just haven’t explained it yet,” agreed Peter.
“I’ll include that in my letter to the Nobel Committee,” Marc dead-panned.
“Oh Marc,” said Darianna, “one day you’ll learn to see the world with something other than the eyes on your handsome face.”
“What else are eyes good for? Miracles imply a God that intervenes in human affairs, and I don’t believe in God.” Marc ran his fingers through his always-perfect black hair, signifying the finality of his statement.
“There are other powers in the universe.”
“Show me and I’ll bow down on my knees,” Marc challenged Darianna, then turned on the risen statue. As a successful academic blessed with looks, brains and charm, Marc thought he had the world by the tail. And as a Jersey boy, his hen house cock jumped at every opportunity to strut through the barnyard.
The soaring face carved in limestone remained mute to the challenge, but Darianna sensed watchfulness, more so than ever. Marc looked impatient. “That’s what I thought. We can get moving.”
“We’re waiting for a Turkish colonel. The government insisted that he accompany us,” Peter explained.
“This date requires a chaperon?”
“We got a last-minute call from the Interior Ministry, claiming our permits are expired. Which they aren’t.”
The professor kept his eyes on both Peter and Darianna as he asked, “Does it have something to do with why I’m here? You know how much I hate dealing with bureaucratic pinheads.”
Peter answered, “Beats me. I didn’t expect to draw this kind of interest from the government.”
“You were rather mysterious on the phone.”
“You’ll see,” said Peter, looking to Darianna for confirmation of their shared feeling. “If you’d already flown back, I would have just emailed you the video. I’ll explain what we think after you see for yourself. It’s quite exciting.”
Darianna squinted and saw dust rising in the distance from the main road, stirred by a fast-approaching caravan. “That must be our colonel,” she murmured. “Or some kind of wind devil.”
Three jeeps labored up the incline to the parking area and fanned out into defensive positions. Watchful soldiers armed with AK-47 rifles scanned the surroundings, backed by mounted machine guns in the rear two jeeps. A dark, compact man hopped out of the passenger side of the front jeep, his face half consumed by Wayfarer sunglasses, lips pressed hard together, back perfectly straight. He moved crisply. Peter, Darianna, and Marc approached him from the path leading to the mountaintop sanctuary as the commander surveyed the terrain. Peter extended his hand; it was dismissed.
“I am Colonel Muhammed,” said the commander, addressing them in clipped English. “You are Peter Vandermill, archaeologist and leader of the Nemrut Project. With you is Marc Reynolds, professor of geophysics, listed as a consultant. Never found them very useful, but always expensive. And then your wife, Mrs. Vandermill, said to be a psychic. Never found them useful, either.”
“Perhaps not to you. Call me Darianna.” Darianna opened her inner senses to Colonel Muhammed and registered only darkness.
“Mrs. Vandermill will do. Be clear about this: I am in charge here. Nothing happens from now on without my order. Questions?”
“I have one.” Marc lifted his hand like a schoolboy. “Do I need a hall pass to take a tinkle?”
Peter discerned from the colonel’s flat face that he probably did not understand exactly what Marc meant, but the tone was clear. The high-ranking officer could instantly shut down their research and kick them out of the country, the military being uniquely powerful in the Turkish system of governance. Peter quickly intervened.
“Colonel, we understand, but why come with all these soldiers? We’ve seen nothing up here lately except mountain goats and tribesman.”
While the colonel faced Peter, behind the sunglasses his eyes locked on Marc as he answered, “Kurds are in this territory, I know it. They’ve infiltrated everywhere.”
“Further to the southeast, and you’re not at war. Not officially,” added Peter.
“Not yet.” Colonel Muhammed switched to Turkish and barked, “Sergeant!” A barrel-chested officer lumbered forward. “Secure a perimeter. This area is off-limits.”
“Yes sir.” The sergeant waited for more orders, then with a booming voice he propelled the squad of soldiers into motion.
Colonel Muhammed returned his attention to the Westerners. Scowling, he already appeared to dislike his assignment.
“Now you will lead me to your discovery.”
Chapter 3
The sanctuary of Nemrut Dag sits well over a mile high on the peak of Mt. Nemrut, topped by a 150 meter-tall funerary mound—a tumulus—shaped like a pyramid. The north terrace splits east and west, connected by walking paths around the tumulus. The terraces on the east and west faces are almost identically decorated with magnificent statues, columns, tablets and reliefs, all weathered mercilessly by the wind-swept environment. A grand, ancient culture left behind Nemrut Dag for the West to rediscover in 1875, when German surveyor Karl Sester stumbled upon it, and the spot was forever after marked on the map when the first expedition team reached the mountaintop sanctuary in 1881.
Around the corner from the Fire Altar, below the furthest southern edge of the east terrace, the entrance to beneath the mountain awaited: a round titanium door, strong as a bank vault and painted tan to blend with the landscape. Darianna and Peter removed keys from around their necks and released the locking mechanism. Heavy thuds sounded deep inside the rock. Peter heaved on the handle and opened the door to reveal a roughly circular tunnel bored straight into the mountain.
“You first, Mr. Reynolds, then Mr. Vandermill. I follow Mrs. Vandermill,” said Colonel Muhammed. “Now you will give me those keys.”
Darianna shot Peter a warning glance that stopped an objection in his throat. They complied.
One at a time the maw enveloped the group as they hunched over to leave the bright sunlight and noises of the upper world for stifling darkness. Their flashlight beams reflected off fine dust hanging blissfully in the air until disturbed into eddies. Only their deadened footfalls and breathing made any sound.
Darianna felt lighter with each step into the mountain. She had a sense of being watched, the spirit stronger than ever leading the way. A whisper beckoned. It carried her along by a tickle on her inner senses, taken away from awareness of the moment into dreamy reflection. Then she touched the sides of the tunnel with both hands to get her balance and recoiled. Her knees buckled; she yelped.
Out of the solid rock flashed into her mind the image of a king on a balcony, proudly overlooking an assembly of citizens gathered in his name. A ruler worshiped as divine. He sent Darianna a reminder of why she was there.
Peter bent down to help. While concerned, strange things tended to happen around his wife. Besides, whatever had pained her was something he probably wouldn’t understand, even if she could explain. Colonel Muhammed removed his sunglasses—finally, considering the dark of the tunnel. His hostile brown eyes reminded Marc of the bad colonel in the movie Romancing the Stone.
“Honey?” Peter questioned as he reached for Darianna.
“Give me a moment, please,” she said, her hands clutched to her chest.
Marc figured he’d help by filling the moment, his voice sounding hollow in the tight confines.
“Here’s where my consulting paid off, Colonel. Right now we’re beneath the tumulus. That’s the big pile of rocks you might have noticed at the surface. The burial chamber is at the bottom in the middle. It remained undisturbed for more than 2,000 years, because getting through those rocks would be like emptying a lake with a spoon. People have tried. One of the researchers in the early days even used explosives that created a slump on one side. I figured, why go through when we can go beneath? We needed the exact location of the chamber, and Darianna solved that problem when she had one of those visions. Correct me if I'm wrong.”
Darianna regained a hold on herself, the inner pressure of the past few days loosed, freeing her to tackle whatever lay ahead. “Vision is accurate enough,” she said.
“Is that what just happened to you,” Colonel Muhammed demanded.
“I broke a nail. We can keep moving, thank you.”
Be ready for anything, Darianna told herself.
They approached the end of the tunnel with a ladder bolted onto the back wall. Marc grabbed a rung, pointed above and spoke toward Colonel Muhammed.
“I got it on the first try; drilled a test hole right here, snaked a camera through. Wouldn’t you know, we were right beneath the burial chamber, near an outer wall. Hot damn I’m a good consultant. And what did I cost, Peter? That’s right, I’m here for academic research; grants pay for my time. As I’ve said before, I want the fame. The fortune comes later.”
Marc caught Peter’s eye before ascending the ladder. The Turkish colonel appeared oblivious to the professor’s goad, but he certainly stored it away somewhere.
The ladder led to a long rectangular room with a low ceiling made of gigantic stone blocks supported by pillars, a marble platform located in the middle where two elaborately decorated sarcophagi lay side by side. Darianna flipped on a chain of work lights. Five life-sized statues on the back wall—smaller replicas of the ones above—burst into view. Their shiny silver surfaces reflected the light, beautiful colors exposed in the cool metal. The august faces stared forward at the visitors, presenting a formidable defensive line. Solemn silence stuffed the chamber.
Marc, eyes glinting mischievously, approached a tablet etched with ancient Greek writing that fronted the center platform. “Hey Pete, what’s that say again?” he asked.
“Taken a sudden interest in history?” Peter asked in reply.
“It’s more for the colonel’s sake.”
Of the seemingly endless proclamations, dedications, and ruminations left behind by the ancient kings, Peter knew this favorite by heart. He pretended to read in a deep voice but actually recited from memory:
“Whoever in the long time to come takes over this reign as king or dynast, may he, if he observes our law and guards my honor, enjoy, through our intercession, the favor of the deified ancestors and all the Gods. But if he, in folly of mind, undertakes measures contrary to the honor of the Gods, may he suffer my full wrath. And says here, valet service is available after five.”
Marc burst out laughing; Peter grinned at himself and chuckled.
Darianna got chills. She sensed a premonition rising from her gut. The spell cast by the words still had meaning—and power. She relaxed to open a channel. Colonel Muhammed spied the strange look on her face. Marc said, “Isn’t there a warning to all who enter this place that they’d better be right with the gods, or else they’ll be struck dead?”
“That’s on another inscription,” replied Peter.
“How ‘bout you?” Marc baited the colonel. “You right with the gods? Better be careful: Zeus might have a lightning bolt with your name on it.”
A tense and prolonged silence stopped the conversation. When Colonel Muhammed finally spoke, his words came out of nowhere.
“It sounds like whoever these people were, they give their blessing to the Kurds. Kurds try to claim this land as theirs, but it is not. They are no better than Gypsies. That is why we must stop them.”
Darianna felt the colonel’s dark presence fit the unfolding scene as a balance to the three researchers, but Peter and Marc appeared stunned.
“This was written a long time ago,” Peter tried to explain. “They’re saying to respect this place, be good citizens, honor your ancestors. You know: recognize that larger powers are at work.”
“Pete, your mind is turning to mush,” joked Marc, sorry he’d mentioned it in the first place.
“I’ve been learning from my wife. I can no longer deny the supernatural.”
Darianna channeled a voice deeper than hers, more authoritative, with a distinctly prophetic undercurrent. “Nor can the supernatural deny you, Peter Vandermill.”
Marc shuddered from a jolt of raw electricity running down his spine. What a witchy woman, he thought, like a cult priestess with a Ouija Board. Darianna could have ranked an 8.5 on the professor’s Hot-or-Not meter, especially for a woman older than him, but Peter grounded her with wry humor and sober analysis, diverting a more exotic potential. Something lurked beneath the surface though, and since Marc’s mind revolved around sex, he thought he saw a hint of fantasy potential in Darianna, who was a decade younger than Peter and perfectly matched, domestically. Marc respected Peter’s diligence and ability to deal with Byzantine Turkish regulations. But the man approaching retirement age seemed totally out of his league with her at his side.
The small muscle beneath Colonel Muhammed’s left eye twitched. Something struck him as out of place. Investigation of the researchers' discovery conveniently dovetailed with his true purpose: tracking down whatever created the enormous burst of light centered over Mt. Nemrut that dawn—not nuclear but similar intensity, he was told. He thought about the otherworldly voice he’d heard from Darianna’s mouth that almost gave him chills and decided to leave it unacknowledged, to stay a step ahead at their expense. He had a job to do. “Quit wasting my time,” he menaced.
“Over here.”
Peter squeezed around back of the row of statues into a cramped space against the outer wall. He shined a flashlight onto the middle statue of Zeus. Embedded into the flat surface below his eye level, a fist-sized, round blue sapphire sparkled. Four smaller round gems of different colors pointed downward in a straight line, each occupying the bottom of a concentric circle carved into the surface. Peter pushed the outer gem, a yellow sapphire; it moved like a planet in orbit. Marc whistled appreciatively. “What the heck is it?”
“A horoscope,” answered Peter. “That’s our hypothesis.”
“The gems all point south.”
“We think they move into place to correspond with a date.”
“Then what?”
“Darianna has a feeling,” Peter deflected to his wife.
“Oh great,” Marc rolled his eyes, “I get the feeling I’m not going to like this.”
Darianna hardly noticed the sarcasm, her attention focused inward on a flow of subtle perceptions. Between the colonel emanating hotly, the professor slyly checking out her ass and Peter showing signs of paternal protectiveness, she had a lot to process while remaining connected to the whisper calling her forward. To make it to the end, she sensed, required constant awareness, and more from herself than she’d ever dreamed possible. Once she spoke the words, their course was set.
“If we pick the right date, something will be revealed.”
“Quit being so mysterious. You’ve got that look in your eyes,” said Marc. “Ease off the magic mushrooms. Even my students know better these days.”
Peter stifled a guffaw. Darianna feigned insouciance.
“You too, eh? Well then, I’ll just keep my mouth shut from now on and let you walk into this like three blind mice.”
Colonel Muhammed eyed her closely. “Walk into what, Mrs. Vandermill?”
Darianna stumbled over his pressure and her inability to articulate. “I...I’m not sure, but I think it’s good. Not only for the Turks, or the Kurds—good for all of us. Look around. Open your inner vision. Doesn’t it make sense to you that the people who built this place might have left behind something extra special?”
“Tell me exactly what to expect.” The colonel did not blink.
“It’s only a feeling. If we pick the right date, things are going to get interesting.”
Marc began to get annoyed. “Could you be more vague?”
“That’s the way these things work,” Darianna answered tentatively. “I don’t know where I’m going until I get there.”
Colonel Muhammed reached a decisive moment. The mystical talk, the inside jokes, the allusions to something beyond his control all made him uneasy. The mission stunk of a setup. His name topped the list for the next opening at the Big Table, and he had an opportunity to prove himself worthy in war with the hated Kurds. He agreed with Darianna on one point, though: There was more going on than met the eye, but he viewed the situation from an entirely different perspective: eyes forward, not on the side.
“You think your discovery is important but don’t say why, or how it works. Mr. Vandermill, your name is on the permits. You tell me if this is worth my time.”
“I’m sorry if we made you uneasy,” said Peter. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his bushy, graying hair. “We had no idea our find would be a big deal to your government. It was part of the regular paperwork. We really have no idea if we’re correct in our assumptions. We’re feeling our way in the dark.”
“What do you expect to find?” Colonel Muhammed’s tone demanded complete honesty.
“My suspicions go back to the kings who built Nemrut Dag. They would not waste the time and expense on an elaborate mechanism when something simpler would do. Plus, they were big on dates like births, coronations, deaths, victorious battles. And they tended to make grand gestures. We have a lot of hints.”
“Hints. You people are supposed to be experts, but you are sure of nothing,” the colonel insinuated. “At least tell me why the kings you speak of used a horoscope.”
“There is a famous relief on the surface, the oldest known use of a horoscope to commemorate a date. See?” Peter pushed a large milky pearl. “This is the moon.” He nudged the last gem, the brilliant yellow sapphire. “This one represents Jupiter. The emerald is Venus and the diamond is Mercury. Put the gems in the right positions and our mystery is solved, presuming there’s a mystery in the first place. I’m sorry that you feel like you’re wasting time, Colonel, but we never asked for company. We document everything and report it, as we have all along.”
Peter abruptly quit talking. Darianna shifted toward him.
Marc pawed at the ground, ready as usual to get started, his imagination captured by the mystery. “I assume you have some ideas on picking the date?”
“Already made a list,” Peter said, touching his vest pocket. “We start with dates associated with Antiochus I Theos and Mithradates, the two kings buried here. If that doesn’t work, I guess we work through the whole dynasty.”
“How will we know when we’ve picked the correct date?” Marc asked the next obvious question. All eyes turned to Darianna.
“A cute little rabbit will come along and take us to the Queen for tea.”
“Stop it,” said Marc, “you’re starting to scare me. Actually, you scared me a minute ago with that crazy voice. What you said about Peter was a joke, right?” He wanted to know for sure.
Darianna ignored him as she felt Colonel Muhammed attune to her, creating a high-pitched ring in her left ear. He psychically felt her over, searching for information, for clues to her intentions or reasons to be suspicious. No subtlety; the military man used only authority and rough force to get his way.
“This is our discovery,” Peter presented to him. “Do we have your permission to move forward with our research?”
The colonel swept their faces. An uneasy feeling nagged. He was an Intuitive of sorts like Darianna, but his abilities had been honed for his profession as an iron hand serving dark masters. He was no closer to accomplishing his mission. No further, either. Setting the researchers into motion provided time to confer with his superiors and check the results of his interrogation teams presently sweeping the countryside. The regular soldiers along with him were for show—his real business operated in the black. He inflected his imperfect English with a stern warning:
“I do not play games.”
“No games,” Peter affirmed.
“Report to me when you have something worthy. I will tell you this only once: no surprises,” the colonel said tersely. “Surprise me and you will pay for it.”
Chapter 4
Marc’s nemesis had disappeared for hours, but the very shadows hinted at Colonel Muhammed’s hardened eyes ringed by bruised smudges. The memory gave chills.
Peter entered a date on a notebook computer and charted the planetary positions. He and the professor had worked through dozens of dates in a few hours, time’s meaning lost in the underground chamber. Marc’s attention began to wander while waiting for something to happen. He returned to Colonel Muhammed, who had almost gotten under his skin earlier. Professor Reynolds had faced down his share of bullies in the academic world, but they did not carry a sidearm and travel with a contingent of soldiers. To keep his mind occupied he asked, “What do you make of the colonel?”
“I’m beginning to wonder why he’s really here,” Peter replied, voice hushed.
“Me too. The government had left us alone until now. I thought you had their trust.”
“Something has changed,” Peter said as he surveyed the statue and waited expectantly after sliding the final gem into position. “I could see them sending along a scientist, even a bureaucrat, but a military guy?”
Marc glanced around nervously. “What do you think they suspect? We’re scientists, not insurgents.”
“We know that, but apparently they don’t.” Peter looked at the floor without really seeing it. “I’ve got to tell you, this whole situation keeps getting deeper.”
“I don’t really want to talk about this.”
“You were the first person we brought in,” Peter reminded him.
“I could laugh off the weird stuff until people with guns started watching over us. I'm starting to get a bad feeling.”
“And my wife is turning into someone I do not know,” said Peter, voicing the thought unintentionally, but he had to explain himself. Ten meters away, seated in lotus posture on the edge of the center platform, Darianna meditated.
“She spends hours in trance, and sometimes has these long, lucid conversations in her sleep. I can hardly explain—like she’s talking to a Burning Bush or something. Really high-level stuff about afterlife, reincarnation, the cosmos. I know you don’t believe, but I’m not so certain anymore.”
Marc, captivated, also wished he was deaf to all of it. Hear no evil.
Peter continued, “The night after we opened the burial chamber, I woke from a dead sleep and a man stood at the foot of the bed. At first I thought he’d broken into our room so I reached for the phone. But I stopped. He said nothing, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, just looked straight at me. He was something Biblical. Jewish, I think. Don’t know exactly why. He smelled of oil and spice, and his dark eyes smoldered with ancient hatreds. Incredibly vivid. He seemed to warn me of something. Then he vanished. I thought it must be a dream, but I was awake. I even did the clock test.”
“Clock test?” Marc could only imagine.
“Something Darianna taught me. If you think you might be dreaming, look at a clock, look away, and look back. If it’s a dream, the time will be different, or the clock itself, or the room. How I wanted something to be different,” wished Peter.
“So who was in your room?”
“Well, I’ve been reading Carl Jung lately, and he reported a similar experience to mine.”
“Isn’t he regarded as something of a quack?” Marc asked a little too loudly for the hushed chamber, where every sound was magnified.
“It’s not as far out as people think—especially us scientists.” Peter searched his mind for the right word. “...Apparitions, whether real or not, usually indicate the time is ripe with importance; larger forces are at work; Synchronicity. Look at what’s going on in the world. Nearby is the epicenter of a brewing war that will likely pull in all of the players, big and small. Something has to intervene.”
“Don’t tell me you are starting to believe in God.” Marc heard the sound of a scientist on the brink of apostasy.
Peter flicked his gaze toward Darianna across the room. “Not God in the traditional sense, but I have to admit there’s so much that we collectively don’t know. Darianna has demonstrated to us both that she’s tapped into something potent. And real.”
“Speaking of really potent,” Marc changed subjects, “I think our immediate concern is to watch out for that colonel.” “Quit antagonizing him,” warned Peter.
“He asked for it. What an asshole.”
“He’s a tool of war.”
“I’ll play nice, but I won’t kiss his ass.”
Peter watched the statue, suspense faded. Nothing happened. He exhaled wearily, saying, “We’ve tried every date on my list, and I’m going to have to really think to come up with more. What do you say we take a lunch break?”
While monitoring the situation from the shadows, Colonel Muhammed focused on Darianna as he crept along the outer wall behind the work lights. She sat serenely on the marble platform, eyes closed, spine straight, arms relaxed. She did not appear to even breathe. Normally, he would assess the men as the greater potential threat, but the woman had secrets. As a man who had many secrets of his own, the colonel could smell them in others.
He watched Peter and Marc walk to the other side of the room, and thought he saw Darianna barely crack open an eye. Then she rose silently and strolled the other direction.
The pieces of the story moved around the chessboard of the colonel’s mind as he tracked her. He’d found nothing to explain the burst of light that dawn. On the phone earlier, the prime minister’s chief of staff counseled to remain patient: everything would become clear. A strange pronouncement from the star political man in Ankara. Made the colonel suspect that his superior withheld knowledge. In his opinion, Turkey’s generals needed to depose the peace-loving Islamists in the executive branch as soon as possible, but for now at least he had no choice. Orders were orders.
Darianna used the computer, rearranged the gems and stepped back. Colonel Muhammed scrutinized her body language: calm, resolute, with a touch of anxiety in the lift of her shoulders. She mumbled under her breath, “If this is the correct date, you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
She stretched her arms above her head and down to her sides in a long sweeping movement. Without looking his direction, she pointed at Colonel Muhammed in the shadows.
He thrust forward and demanded, “What are you doing?” The sudden disruption of silence alerted Peter and Marc.
Darianna whiffed the colonel’s acrid breath, her attention locked on the base of the statue. He curiously followed her gaze and saw the big silver statue inching forward to reveal the dark outline of a passage beneath.
“Darianna?” Peter noticed her absent from the platform. He set aside a sandwich and hurried back toward the work area, followed by Marc.
Colonel Muhammed’s question lingered. Darianna met his hot stare by pulling him in, shaping herself around his agitated presence, and picturing herself as a pool of calm water to absorb any tossed stone. Even earlier that day she might have withered under the colonel’s intense scrutiny; however, a deeper sense of herself came alive during her meditation to meet any challenge, led the way by her guiding spirit.
“All is as it should be,” she replied.
“That is no answer.” The colonel appeared ready to lash out.
Peter and Marc arrived behind the statue, questions dying on their faces as Darianna stared far into the colonel and blasted him with her absolute conviction. She no longer cared who believed her. How could she explain that she followed a path of her soul’s choosing? As it is above, so it is below.
“Your answer,” insisted the colonel. “Now!”
“You have eyes. You see.”
Peter asked, “See what?”
Marc noticed the new position of the gems. He checked the computer. The date on the screen puzzled him. Could it be? For the second time that day, he finally noticed the obvious: the passage opening at the base of the statue, the date on the computer.
“Will someone please tell me what is going on,” pleaded Peter.
“Look,” Marc tugged.
Peter saw the statue inching forward, the dark passage revealed in fractions beneath its base.
“What date?” he asked Darianna. His professional and personal life culminated before his eyes. “I tried everything.”
“I remembered a dream from a few months ago, all but lost to memory until reminded,” Darianna answered, still locked in a battle of wills with Colonel Muhammed. “You and I were walking down an underground hallway, and all of a sudden a gnarled old man blocked our path. We could not pass until answering his riddle. I stepped forward to answer, but going further meant leaving you behind.” She regretted having to tell Peter that detail, knowing his unspoken fear.
“What’s the riddle?”
“What is the day after the day after the day before yesterday?”
Peter quickly followed the logic in his head. “That’s today,” he snorted. “No way! I could have answered that.”
“Impossible as it seems,” Marc pointed to the computer screen, “the planetary positions match.”
Peering at the screen, Peter confirmed for himself but said, “That’s not possible.”
“Someone long ago knew we were going to be here today. It was meant to be,” said Darianna.
“What’s down there?” The colonel pointed to the square hole coming gradually into full view. A part of his mind insisted that the Westerners could be faking. That side of the argument was losing to acceptance of something extraordinary. Perhaps he was the right man for the job after all.
“The spirit in this mountain,” Darianna answered. “Waiting for us.”
Marc recalled when Darianna conducted a psychic ritual asking the spirit to reveal the location of the burial chamber, a feat he unfortunately missed but heard about the details. She solved a problem which baffled the best science. Made sense now, sort of. The spirit gave her the vision in order to find the spirit. Professor Reynolds had pegged Darianna as the psychic detective-type who falls out of a tree as a kid and starts hearing voices. No rational person could deny that some people possess unique abilities, but proof stood before his eyes, opening a whole new dimension, and his comfort zone receded as his atheism wore away. He did not have to believe in God. Spirits he might have to accept.
“Spirit?” Colonel Muhammed said skeptically.
“This is a burial chamber,” Darianna reminded him. “Makes sense to me.”
“Is there anything else I should know?”
Their relationship subtly shifted as the colonel backed off.
“I have no foresight of what is to come.” Not quite true, but neither could Darianna explain the feeling that thousands of years of silence waited for them in the deep. Silence so old it’s alive.
The statue rolled all of the way forward, the square opening fully revealed. After a short drop, a narrow passage slanted down to a treacherous 45-degree angle toward the heart of the mountain.
“You first, Mr. Reynolds,” the colonel shifted back to order-giving mode. “Mrs. Vandermill, you stick close to me. Wait for my permission to act, and make no noise.”
He drew his sidearm, thumbed off the safety, and noticed a look flash across Darianna’s face.
“What is it?” His question, as usual, carried the tone of a demand. Darianna hesitated to say what she found amusing, but spoke anyway to avoid raising more suspicion.
“You tell us to be quiet, presuming that spirits are like humans, but do you think they listen with ears? There are no shadows to hide in down there, Colonel.”
Chapter 5
Darianna’s moment fast approached at the end of the steep passage into the heart of Mt. Nemrut. She heard wisps of a voice, and felt a soft touch of awareness beckon during the long descent. Vague impressions flitted through her mind of brown people working in the cold and dark, the passage built with their labor. She harnessed the visions and fed them into her sense of purpose, instead of overwhelming her like earlier in the upper passage. She felt strong, ready for anything. Anticipation filled her with energy.
Peter glanced back and saw that look again: Darianna’s face half light, half dark—two presences inhabiting the same body. He recognized the light half from nearly twenty years of marriage. The dark half, previously only a hint in her personality, came into focus. What he saw seemed less like his wife and more like a master leading initiates into the secret depths of a mystery religion.
“The passage levels off ahead,” Marc said from the front of the line, then more excitedly: “It gets bigger. The ceiling opens out!”
They walked into a long, expansive chamber hewn from rough rock. The sound of their shuffling footfalls abruptly shifted to scratchy echoes off high walls. Colonel Muhammed took the lead, drawn forward by a glint at the end of his flashlight beam, where white marble steps stacked up against the far wall. Wide and semicircular at the bottom, the steps narrowed to a point at the top.
To get there, they had to pass the monstrous figure blocking the path.
A few steps from the top, cleverly sculpted from one mass of smoky black quartz, a demonic-looking statue stood on goat legs, topped by the rippling torso of a male lion, eagle wings furled under, humanoid arms overstuffed with bulging muscles, and a grotesque head of a Hell Hound. It shared one snout sprouting two faces, sharp canine teeth bared. One face stretched back mockingly. The other face sneered savagely from beneath, both emerging from a central point as if frozen in a moment of vicious assault. Its talons thrust forward from skull-crushing hands to challenge all who dared approach.
Peter turned on a powerful battery-powered lantern and set it down at the base of the steps.
Colonel Muhammed charged up until unwillingly slowed, stopped cold, and with a mighty effort of will and raw strength climbed one more step. No matter how hard he tried though, further progress was denied. “What is this?” he demanded of the Westerners while pushing against the invisible force. “What holds me back!”
Darianna shut everything out of her mind to listen with her inner senses. A high-pitched buzz tickled the edge of her hearing. She felt two distinct personae behind the raw fear cast by the nightmarish Mesopotamian figure guarding the top of the steps.
“It’s like a forcefield or something,” Marc awed, “only it works from within. There’s no hard barrier, but I can go no further. My legs just won’t move forward. Incredible. How?”
“You’re the geophysicist, you tell us,” said Peter. “Does this sort of technology even exist?”
“Not to my knowledge. A colleague of mine who contracted for a secret program in the U.S. hinted that they’re pretty advanced with application of electromagnetic force, but this is way beyond a simple forcefield. Notice that the harder you push against it, the harder it pushes back? And do you hear a strange sound? Seems to be coming from that thing.”
“Impossible,” Colonel Muhammed said, but he also heard the buzzing just beyond recognition.
“Shh.” Darianna held a finger to her lips, concentrating with her eyes shut. She heard voices beneath the buzz, and thought out loud, “Two voices in perpetual argument.”
After a moment of total silence, everyone heard fragments of angry discourse bouncing down long tunnels into their minds. The fury stirred the dark muck of human existence—probing, seeking, demanding. The colonel did not like it at all. The natural reaction: block out, turn away, deny the challenge.
Darianna turned cold. “It’s a Guardian: a statue infused with spirit. Two spirits. Demons.”
“Please tell me you are kidding,” said Marc.
“How do you know?” Peter wondered, but was already convinced.
“I’ve heard of such power. Binding two is beyond anything I’ve ever encountered. Smoky quartz is usually a healing stone.”
Darianna saw their incomprehension. Her answer was important. Colonel Muhammed walked a razor’s edge, and might do something drastic if he objected to what she had to say. Like all Muslims, one way or the other he would have heard the story of Moses.
“You remember when Moses went to Pharaoh and performed miracles? Everything Moses could do, the Egyptian magicians could do. So you know magic was common, and some magicians were quite powerful. They used the Power of Command to bind a demon to an object, usually to guard a tomb or sacred place. Once bound, it remained until released or its task fulfilled. That’s my understanding. The knowledge is long lost.”
“Seems kind of weird to guard the church door with something evil,” said Marc. “Demons are bad, right?”
Darianna felt as sure about the subject as Marc did geophysics, Peter archeology, or Colonel Muhammed counterinsurgency. “Back then, evil and good were understood as two sides of the same coin. The power is neutral; depends upon the purpose for which it is used. For instance, God used Satan for a sort of good in Job’s story. Evil creatures can be used for godly purposes.”
Peter asked, “How do we get beyond it? I see a hint of another passageway.” “I will bind them under my power.” Darianna had encountered demonic forces during her soul journeys and avoided them. Here she was about to confront two of the most potent.
Marc wondered who would be first to say “Gotcha!” He harbored the hope, otherwise, he might witness something unfathomable until that moment. Darianna really believed what she said, and the professor had no better explanation for the force confronting them.
“It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” Peter asked, concerned.
“There is danger anytime dealing with these sorts of entities,” Darianna answered.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”