"Oh, my God!" she cried, her eyes darting between the windshield and the sheet of paper in her lap. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, could that be it?”
Dan skidded to a halt and craned his neck over the steering wheel for a look. As before, the trailing dust cloud caught up to them and he could see nothing while they were engulfed. But as it cleared . . .
"I'll be damned," Dan muttered.
No, he thought. It's got to be a mistake. The sun is directly ahead, it's glaring off the dirt on the windshield. A trick of the light. Got to be.
Hoping, praying that his eyes were suffering from too much glare, Dan opened the door and stepped out for a better look. He shielded his eyes against the sun which was sitting on the flat ledge atop a huge outcropping of stone ahead of them, and blinked into the light. He still couldn't tell if it—
And then the sun dipped below the ledge, silhouetting the outcropping in brilliant light. Suddenly Dan could see that the ledge ran rightward to merge with the wall of the mountain of which the outcropping was a part, and leftward to a rocky lip which overhung a sheer precipice that bellied gently outward about halfway down its fall.
Damned if it didn't look just like. . . a tav.
"Do you see it, Dan?"
He glanced right and there was Carrie, out of the cab, holding the yellow sheet of paper at arms length before her and jumping up and down like a preschooler who'd just spotted Barney.
He hesitated, unsure of what to say. As much as he wanted to avoid reinforcing her fantasies, he could not deny the resemblance of the cliff face to the Hebrew letter he'd drawn for her.
"Well, I see something that might remotely—"
"Remotely, shlemotely! That cliff looks exactly like what you drew here, which is exactly the way it was described in the scroll!"
"The forged scroll, Carrie. Don't forget that the source of all these factoids is a confirmed hoax."
"How could I possibly forget when you keep reminding me every ten minutes?"
He hated to sound like a broken record, but he felt he had to keep the facts before her. The scroll and everything in it was bogus. And truthfully, right now he needed a little reminder himself. Because finding the tav rock had shaken him up more than he wished to admit.
"Sorry, Carrie. I just—"
"I know," she said. "But you've got to believe, Dan. There's truth in that scroll." She pointed at the tav rock looming before them. "Look. We're not imagining that. It's there."
Dan wanted to say, Yes, but if you want to perpetrate a hoax, you salt the lies with neutral truths, and the most easily verifiable neutral truths are simple geological formations. But he held his tongue. This was Carrie's show.
"What are we waiting for?" she said.
Dan shrugged and got back in behind the wheel. The incline ahead was extra steep so he pressed the LOW RANGE button on the dashboard.
"Can you believe it?" Carrie said, bubbling with excitement as they started the final climb. "We're traveling the same route as St. James and the members of the Jerusalem Church when they carried Mary's body here."
"No, Carrie," he said softly. "I can't believe it. I want to believe it. I'd give almost anything to have it be true. But I can't believe it."
"You will, Danny, me boy-o," she said, smiling that smile. "Before the day is out, you will."
The closer they got to the rock, the less and less it resembled a tav . . . and the more formidable it looked. Fifty feet high at the very least, with sheer walls that would have challenged an experienced rock climber even if they were straight; but the outward bulge and the sharp overhang at the crest made ascent all but impossible.
As they rounded the outcropping, Dan realized they'd entered the mouth of a canyon. The deep passage narrowed and curved off to the left about a quarter of a mile north. He stopped the Explorer in the middle of the dry wadi running along the eastern wall. Cooler here. The canyon floor had been resting in the shadow of its western wall for a while. To his left he spotted a cluster of stunted trees.
"Aren't those fig trees?" Carrie said.
"Not sure," Dan said. "Could be. Whatever they are, they don't look too healthy."
"They look old. Old fig trees . . . didn't the scroll writer said he was subsisting on locusts, honey, and wild figs?"
"Yeah, but those trees don't look wild. Looks like somebody planted them there."
"Exactly!" Carrie said, grinning.
Dan had to admit—to himself only—that she had a point. It looked as if someone had moved a bunch of wild fig trees to this spot and started a makeshift grove . . . out here ... in the middle of nowhere.
But that only meant the forger of the scroll had to have been here in order to describe it; it didn't mean St. James had been here, or that the Virgin Mary was hidden away atop the tav rock.
But a big question still remained: Who had planted those fig trees?
He turned to Carrie but her seat was empty. She was walking across the wadi toward the tav rock. Dan turned off the motor and ran around to catch up to her.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Looking for a way up," she said, studying the cliff face as she walked. "The scroll says there's a path."
Dan scanned the steep wall looming before them.
"Good luck."
"Well, this isn't nearly as smooth as the far side. There could be a way up. There has to be. We simply have to find it."
Dan saw countless jagged cracks and mini-ledges protruding randomly from the surface, but nothing that even vaguely resembled a path. This looked hopeless, but the scroll had been accurate on so many other points already, there just might be a path to the top.
He veered off to the left.
"Giving up so soon?" Carrie said.
"If there is a path," he said, "you won't spot it from straight on. It'll only be visible from a sharp angle. You didn't spot one as we rounded the front of the cliff, so let's see what things look like from the back end."
She nodded, smiling. "Smart. I knew I loved you for some reason."
Dan figured he'd done enough nay-saying. The only way to get this over with was to find a path to the top—if there was one—and convince Carrie once and for all that there was no cave up there and that the Virgin Mary was not lying on a bier inside waiting to be discovered. Then maybe they could get their lives back to normal—that is, as normal as life could be for a priest and a nun who were lovers.
He reached the northern end of the outcropping and wound his way through the brush clustered around its base. When he was within arm's reach of the base itself, he looked south along the cliff wall.
"I'll be damned . . ."
Carrie hurried to his side. "What? Did you find it? Is it there?"
He guided her in front of him and pointed ahead. Starting a dozen feet behind them and running up the face of the cliff at a thirty-degree angle was a narrow, broken, jagged ledge. It averaged only two feet or so in width.
Carrie whirled and hugged him. "That's it! You found it! See? All you need is a little faith!" She grabbed his hand and began dragging him from the brush. "Let's go!"
He followed her at a walk as she ran back to where the ledge slanted into the floor of the canyon floor. By the time he reached it she was already on her way, scrabbling upward along the narrow ledge like a lithe, graceful cat.
"Slow down, Carrie."
"Speed up, slowpoke!" She laughed.
She's going to kill herself, he thought as he began his own upward course along the ledge. He glanced down at the jagged rubble on the hard floor of the wadi below and quickly pulled his gaze away. Maybe we're both going to get killed.
He wasn't good with heights—not phobic about them, but not the least bit fond of them. He concentrated on staying on the ledge. Shale, sand, and gravel littered the narrow, uneven surface before him, tilting toward the cliff wall for half a dozen feet or so, then a crack or a narrow gap, or a step up or down, then it continued upward, now sloping away from the wall. These away sections were the w
orse. Dan's sneakers tended to slip on the sand and he had visions of himself sliding off into—
"Dan!"
A high-pitched squeal of terror from up ahead. He looked up and saw Carrie down on one knee, her right leg dangling over the edge, her fingers clawing at the cliff wall for purchase. She'd climbed back into the sunlight and it looked as if her sharp-edged shadow was trying to push her off.
Oh my God! "Carrie! Hang on!"
He hurried toward her as quickly as he dared but she was back on the ledge and on her feet again by the time he reached her.
"What happened?"
Pale, panting, she leaned against the cliff wall, hugging it. "I slipped, but I'm okay."
Suddenly he was angry. His heart was pounding, his hands were trembling . . .
"You almost killed yourself, dammit!"
"Sorry," she said softly. "That wasn't my intention, I assure you."
"Just slow down, will you? I don't want to lose you."
That smile. "That's nice to hear."
"Here. Let me slide past you and I'll lead the way."
"Not a chance. I'll take my time from here on up." She held up two fingers. "Promise."
Carrie kept her word, taking it slow, watching her footing, with Dan close behind. They reached the summit without another mishap. He glanced around—no one else here, and no place to hide.
"Oh, Lord," Carrie said, wandering across the top of the tav toward the far edge. "Look at this!"
Dan caught up to her and put an arm around her shoulders, as much for a need to touch her as to stop her from getting too close to the edge. The sun cooked their backs while the desert wind dried the sweat from the climb, and before them stretched the eastern expanse of the Midbar Yehuda, all hills and mounds and shadowed crags, looking like a rumpled yellow-brown blanket after a night of passion, sloping down to the lowest point on earth where a sliver of the Dead Sea was visible, sparkling in the late afternoon sun.
Breathtaking, Dan thought. This almost makes the whole wild-goose chase worthwhile.
Together they turned from the vista and scanned the mini-plateau atop the tav. It ran two hundred feet from the front lip to the rear wall, and was perhaps a hundred and fifty feet wide. And against that rear wall, to the left of center, was a pile of rocks.
Carrie grabbed his upper arm. He felt her fingers sink into his biceps as she pointed to the rocks.
"Oh, God, Dan! There it is!"
"Just some rocks, Carrie. Doesn't mean—"
"She's there, Dan. We've found her! We've found her!"
She broke from him and dashed across the plateau. Dan hurried after her.
Here it comes, he thought. Here's where the roof falls in on Carrie's quest.
By the time he reached the pile, Carrie was on it, scrambling to the top. The pile was about eight feet high and she was already at work pulling at the uppermost rocks to dislodge them.
"Easy, Carrie," Dan said as he climbed to her side and joined her atop the pile. "The last thing we need is for you to slip and sprain an ankle. I have no idea how I'd get you back down."
"Help me," Carrie said, breathless with excitement. "She's just a few feet away. We're almost there! I can feel it!"
Dan joined her in dislodging the uppermost rocks and letting them roll to the base. The first were on the small side, cantaloupe-sized and easy to move. But they quickly graduated to watermelons.
Carrie groaned as she strained against one of the larger stones. "I can't budge this. Give me a hand, will you?"
Dan got a grip on the edge of the rock and put his back into it and together they got it overbalanced to the point where it tumbled down the pile.
Dan saw even bigger stones below.
"We're going to need help," he said, panting and straightening up. The sun was still actively baking the top of the tav rock and he was drenched. "A lever of some sort. We'll never move those lower rocks by ourselves. Maybe I can find a tree limb or something we can use to—"
"We've got to get in!" Carrie said. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes as she looked up at him. "We can't stop now. Not when we're this close. We can't let a bunch of lousy rocks keep us out when we're so close!”
With the last word she kicked at one of the larger stones directly below her—and cried out in alarm as it gave way beneath her. Dan grabbed her outflung hand and almost lost his own footing as the entire pile shuddered and settled under them with a rumble and a gush of dust.
"You all right?" Dan said, pulling Carrie closer.
She coughed. "I think so. What happened?"
"I'm not sure." The dust was settling, layering their skin, mixing with their sweat. Even with mud on her face Carrie was beautiful. Over her shoulder, down by Carrie's feet, Dan saw a dark crescent in the mountain wall. "Oh, Jesus."
Carrie turned and gasped. "The cave!"
Maybe, Dan thought. Maybe not. The only sure thing about it is it's a hole in the wall.
But he knew it was the upper rim of a cave mouth. Had to be. Everything else in this elaborate scam had followed true to the forged scroll. Why not the cave too?
But what sort of ugly surprise waited within?
Before he could stop her, Carrie had dropped prone and pushed her face into the opening.
"We left the flashlights in the car," she was saying. "And I can't see a thing."
Quickly he pulled her back. "Are you nuts?"
"What's the matter?"
"You don't know what's in there."
"What could be in there?"
"How about snakes or scorpions? Or how about bats? It's a cave, you know."
"I know that, but—"
"But nothing," he said, pulling her to her feet. "You keep your nose out of there while I go get the flashlights."
"All right," she said reluctantly as she allowed him to guide her down to the bottom of the pile. "Can't see anything anyway."
"Precisely. So you just wait here while I go back to the Explorer."
"Okay, but hurry." She squeezed his hand. "Don't hurry so much you fall, but hurry."
Dan made the round trip as quickly as he could, hugging the cliff wall all the way down, concentrating on the path and not looking down. He did spot another cave in the far wall of the canyon—probably where the fictional author of the scrolls supposedly had lived. He reminded himself to check it out before they left.
The sun had continued its slide and the shadow of the canyon's western wall had crawled three-quarters of the way up the tav by the time he returned to the top with the two flashlights.
He stood there a moment, panting, sweating from the climb, before he realized he was alone on the plateau.
"Carrie?" He dashed toward the rock pile, shouting as he ran. "Carrie!”
"What?"
Her head popped up atop the rock pile, smiling at him, and as he clambered up the boulders he saw her lying on her belly with her legs and pelvis inside the opening. She looked like someone half-swallowed by a stony mouth.
"My God, Carrie, couldn't you wait? Get out of there!"
"I'm fine." She reached a hand out to him. "Flashlight please."
"I'll go first."
"No way. You didn't even want to come."
Dan was tempted to withhold the flashlight, make her climb out of there and let him flash a light around inside that hole before she crawled in. But the excitement, the childlike eagerness in her eyes weakened him. And after all, this was her show.
He flicked one on to make sure it worked, then slapped the handle into her waiting palm.
"Be careful. And wait right there. Don't go anywhere without me."
"Okay." Another smile, so confident looking, but Dan noticed the flashlight shaking in her hand. She pushed herself backward and slipped the rest of the way inside.
A chill of foreboding ran through Dan as he saw Carrie disappear into that hole, swallowed by the darkness. God knew what could be in there.
"Carrie? You there? You okay?"
Her face floated back into t
he light. "Of course I'm okay. Kind of cool in here, and dusty, and it looks . . . empty."
I could have told you that, Dan thought, but kept it to himself. He'd give anything to make this right for her, but that was impossible. So the least he could do was be there when the hurt hit.
"Stand back a little. I'm coming in."
Dan slid down onto his back and entered the opening feet first. A tight squeeze but he managed to wriggle through with only a few minor scrapes and scratches.
Carrie stood a few feet away, her back to him, playing her flashlight beam along the walls.
"You're right," he said, coughing as he brushed himself off. "A lot cooler in here. Almost cold."
Quickly he flashed his own beam around. Not a cave so much as a rocky alcove, maybe a dozen feet deep and fifteen wide, with rough, pocked walls. And no doubt about its being empty. Not even a spider. Just dust—dry, powdered rock—layering the floor. Only Carrie's footprints and his own marred the silky surface.
What do I say? he wondered. Do I say anything—or let Carrie say it first?
As he stepped toward her, Carrie suddenly moved away to the left.
"Look, Dan. I think there's a tunnel here."
Dan caught up to her, joined his flash beam to hers, and realized that what he had thought to be a pocket recess near the floor of the cave was actually an opening into another chamber.
Carrie dropped to her hands and knees and shone her light through.
"See anything?" Dan said, hovering over her.
"Looks like more of the same. Tunnels only a couple of feet long. I'm going in for a look."
Dan squatted behind her and gently patted her buttocks. "Right behind you."
Carrie began to crawl through, then stopped, freezing like a deer who's heard a twig break, then quickly scrambled the rest of the way through.
"Oh, Dan," he heard her say in a hoarse, quavering voice just above a whisper. "Oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan!"
He belly-crawled through as fast as his elbows and knees could propel him and bumped his head on the ceiling as he regained his feet on the other side.
But he instantly forgot the pain when he saw what lay in the wavering beam of Carrie's flashlight.
A woman.
An elderly woman lying supine in an oblong niche in the wall of the chamber.
F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 Page 12