Lost Scrolls of the Holy Beclay (Special Edition) (J. K. Haugen's Lost Scrolls Series Book 1)

by J. K. Haugen

  And then…pure silence…

  John opened his eyes. He wasn’t quite sure where he was and he could feel a slight pinch in his right arm. “What happened?” he murmured. “Did I fall asleep?” Just then his mind began to focus and he started to remember scenes from the crash.

  He began remembering the fear that overcame him right before the end, and how it had just subsided without reason. Most of all, he remembered the absolute peace that he felt just before the chopper hit the ground. As if, somehow, he knew that he would survive the crash. Or at least if he didn’t, he knew he would be moving on to be with God. And that seemed to give him great comfort.

  He was now lying on his back and was no longer inside the helicopter. He looked around and didn’t see Sarah anywhere. The air was crisp and sweet. He could smell the familiar odor of evergreens and campfires.

  “Well, I guess we made it home.” he said to himself as he rolled over and got to his knees. “SARAH!!” He yelled, “Sarah! Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “Hi.” she said. “Good you’re finally awake.” Sarah came walking towards him from the tree line. Her hands were full of twigs and branches. “I was get’n kinda worried ‘bout ya there for a while. How ya feel’n anyway?” she asked him. “I was just grabbing some firewood. We'll need to stay the night here and we'll try to walk down off the mountain in the morning.”

  “But won’t they send a rescue party looking for us?” asked John. “Yup,” she answered, “but they'll be looking in the wrong place. I didn’t have a chance to broadcast our final position. The radio's out and I think something was screwy with the choppers navigation compass.” she said, banging her hand against the side of the radio that she removed from the choppers main console.

  “We ended up about 500 miles off our flight path and we’re way north of where we were supposed to be. So they won’t even know where to look. Our best chance for survival is to hike down and try to find help. No worries! We’ll be fine!” she said.

  “Yeah,” said John, “that’s what you said about fly’n in the chopper and look at us now.”

  “Hey! This isn't my fault,” she snapped back at him, “we’re alive, aren’t we? You can thank me for that later.” she said with a smug look on her face. “Right now, we need to get some rest. We've got a hell of a hike in the morning.”

  Chapter 2

  The Hike...

  The ground was freezing cold and John was pretty sure he had been laying on a pointed rock for most of the night. As he opened his eyes he noticed that he had a face full of long soft red curls that smelled like floral shampoo. Sarah had cuddled up to him as he slept. Her head was on his chest and her body snuggled under his left arm.

  Even though his fingers had begun to tingle from his hand falling asleep, he couldn’t bear to wake her up. She looked so peaceful, and it felt really good to have her body nestled up so close to his. “Not to mention, she did save our lives in the chopper.” he thought to himself. “The least I could do is let her sleep just a few more minutes, right?” he said to himself as it brought a smile to his face.

  He felt her begin to stir. Her head tilted back and she looked up into his eyes. With a sweet smile on her lips, she said, “Hey, good morning sunshine.” By this time he had absolutely no feeling in his hand.

  “Good morning, pretty girl.” he said in a playful tone as he looked back. Again, he felt himself get just a little bit lost, as he looked into her eyes.

  “Well...we better get going.” she said, after a couple seconds of awkward silence. She then jumped up to her feet, brushed herself off, and pulled her hair back behind her shoulders.

  John couldn’t believe how amazing she looked or how happy, energetic and refreshed she seemed. Especially after crashing in a helicopter and then sleeping in the forest all night. “Wow,” he thought to himself, as he watched her.

  John grew up in Washington, so to him this was home. “God I love these trees,” he thought aloud, as he took a deep breath of the morning air. He'd often hiked and played in the woods behind his house as a kid. This was the only place he actually felt free. To his surprise he felt just as happy and refreshed as she did.

  “Thanks for keeping me warm last night.” said Sarah, squeezing his arm as she brushed by him. They began to head down the trail with her in the lead.

  “My pleasure.” he answered quickly.

  “We have quite a long day ahead of us.” she said as they began to hike. “So, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?” she asked.

  “Oh... uh... not much to tell.” he answered back.

  This was the part of the day that John was looking forward to the least. The hike was going to be the easy part, but John never really liked talking about himself. He'd had some pretty amazing accomplishments in his 24 years, but when he talked about his life people often felt that he was being arrogant.

  He loved telling people about his adventures. However, when he had told those stories in the past, people often would believe that he was making it all up. He had been to so many interesting places and seen so many incredible things from all around the world that it was hard for even him to believe.

  “Come on Johnny, please?” she said in a begging tone of voice. “I really am interested.”

  “Johnny?” he asked himself, “I kinda like that coming from her.” even though he didn’t like anyone else calling him that. He hadn’t been called Johnny since he was a kid. But for some reason, falling off her lips, it sounded pretty good, he thought. “Well, what do ya wanna know?” he asked, rolling his eyes.

  “For example,” she said, “you can see I’m pretty much a tom boy, but every great once in a while I love to get all dressed up, nice and pretty, throw on my little black dress, and go out dance’n. So...what do you do for fun?”

  John smiled as he pictured Sarah in that dress. “I do like to sing I guess.” he said with a shy muffled voice. “My buddies and I go out to a karaoke bar sometimes. Oh and I love to travel, and I really love being outdoors too. Although, I usually don’t crash in a helicopter before go’n hiking.” he said with a grin.

  “Yeah, that’s a new one for me too.” said Sarah, with a crooked smile. John was beginning to love that crooked little smile too. But he didn’t share that piece of info about himself just yet.

  They continued to walk for several hours, chatting and laughing with each other. Time seemed to fly by. Sarah kept thinking about how nice it was to finally have someone to talk to, who actually seemed interested in what she was saying, rather than just someone nodding at her and saying “uh huh,” while staring at her breasts.

  To her, Johnny was cute, smart and funny, but it was more than that. He was also polite and respectful, and a little clumsy which she found kind of irresistible. Out of all the guys she could possibly be stuck in the woods with, she sure was happy that she was stuck here with him.

  They came to a small clearing in the woods. There were small bushes of huckleberries and a couple of fallen trees that seemed to have fallen perfectly into place. One tree fell a bit higher on top of the other, sort of resembling a small park bench. John sat down and asked Sarah if she was getting as hungry as he was.

  “I’m starving!” she answered.

  “These are ok to eat.” he said pointing at the huckleberries. “We used to pick baskets full every season when I was a kid.” They ate some of the berries and Sarah laughed at John because his lips and teeth had turned purple from all of the juices.

  “We only have a little water left.” she said. “These are just about empty.” She was pointing to her bag where she’d placed the two bottles of water she had brought with them, from her dad’s office.

  “Well, I think I heard running water from a spring or a creek. I think it was pretty close by.” said John. “I heard it as we were walking. I’ll go look and see if I can find it.” He turned and walked away saying, “Wait here and I’ll be right back.”

  John took Sarah’s bag and left his with her. He disappeared thr
ough the trees towards the whooshing sound of the water. Sarah finished eating the sweet berries that she had picked, and wiped her hands on her jeans. She grabbed John’s bag and carefully lifted the scrolls out of it and set them on her lap.

  “Unbelievable,” she said to herself, “we’ve had nothing but trouble since we pulled you outta the ice. I hope it’s all worth it.” she added with a smile, looking in the direction of where John had walked into the forest. She then pulled out the small box they had originally found the scrolls incased in.

  She closely examined it. It was about the same size as the shoebox her new boots came in. It was extremely lightweight like the scroll material but a bit different. It was smooth along the top and sides and rough along the bottom. The inside top edges of the left and right sides had slits in them. The slits allowed the lid to slide in and out to open and close the box.

  There were detailed carvings all over the outside of it. It looked as if they told a story of some kind. She wished that she could figure out what it said, because she loved a good puzzle. However, she didn’t even have a clue how to solve this one.

  “Maybe Johnny can figure out what the pictures mean,” she thought. “Wonder what’s take’n him so long?” She stood up and put the box and the scrolls back into John’s bag and threw it over her shoulder. “Huh, figures, I’ve been carrying the heavy water bottles all this way and he gets the light bag that might as well be empty. What a gentleman.” she said to herself sarcastically. She started towards the edge of the clearing just as John came into view.

  “Got the water!” he yelled, smiling as he walked towards her feeling like a hero.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “I guess sound travels a heck of a lot faster and farther than I thought it did.” he replied. “It is a spring, but it’s pretty far down that hill.”

  “Well, we're going that way anyway,” she said, “maybe we should just follow alongside the water. Anyone around will most likely be close to where water is. So that’s probably the best chance we have to find help.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” said John. “Follow me.”

  John took the lead this time using a long stick to knock back the twigs and brush as they walked down the hill toward the spring. He was swinging it back and forth like he had seen other guys do in the jungle with their machetes on T.V.

  Sarah giggled and laughed to herself every time one of the branches would snap back and whip him upside the head. She knew he was trying to impress her and didn’t want to embarrass him by laughing too loud.

  As they came up close to the spring, Sarah took both hands like a bowl and splashed the water over her face. She took out her pony tail and wet down her hair. “Boy, that feels better.” she said. She then took a drink from her hands. “Good thing you found this, we wouldn’t last long out here without water,” she added.

  The water was fresh and cool, like it had just come from the water cooler at the office. Only it tasted a lot cleaner and had absolutely no after taste. In fact, she was pretty sure it was the best water she had ever tasted. “Wow!” she said to John. “We should bottle this stuff, we'd be millionaires.”

  “I know, right?” he said back with a grin, as he sipped the rest of the water from his hands.

  “It'll be getting dark again soon. We should get go'n.” she said in a firm but muffled voice, as she slurped up the water from her hands one more time.

  They followed the water down the hill, for what seemed to John like another hour or so. Until he noticed that the color at the bottom of the spring had begun to change. It had started to turn to a white chalk-like color. It reminded him of the sidewalk cement in front of his house when he was a kid. “Look at that.” he said to Sarah, in a confused voice.

  They had come to a point in the trail where the land had evened out. “We must be getting close to civilization.” he said. “This part of the spring looks man made. It looks like some kind of small canal or aqueduct.”

  “No way,” she said, “we’re still less than a third of the way down the mountain. There hasn't been civilization up here since the native Indian tribes like the Nooksack, who used to hunt here in the 1800s.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” he said, looking very impressed.

  “That’s what I do.” she replied, “I have my doctorate in ancient culture studies, that's how I figured out where to look to find that shipping port in Greenland, where we found the scrolls.”

  “Wow, so it really is your book!” he said in a teasing manner.

  “No one has been here in centuries that could have had the knowledge it would take to make something like this.” she said, trying to understand how this could be possible.

  John looked through the heavy brush and trees and steep terrain and said, “I don’t think any modern people could drive a cement truck all the way up here either, so what is it, a natural phenomenon?”

  “I don’t think so.” she replied, “I've never seen anything like it, except for the aqueducts used in ancient Rome to give its citizens running water.”

  “What?” asked John? “They had running water in ancient Rome? I thought that was a pretty recent technology.”

  “Yeah,” she said,” in fact, many great civilizations, even long before that, had really advanced technologies, even power.”

  “How is political or military power a technology?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “I mean they used electricity.”

  “That’s crazy!” exclaimed John.

  “Wow for a boy genius who spends all his time studying ancient languages, you really haven’t seen the writing on the wall, as the saying goes.” she said, poking fun.

  “But in all seriousness, there are hieroglyphs in some of the darkest tombs in Egypt that actually show what seem to be large light bulbs. They provided light to write and draw on the tomb walls. They appeared to be long glass like encasements with filaments running down the center inside the bulb. They are held up off the ground with some kind of lamp stand and they have a line coming from the back like it was plugged into some kind of power source.”

  “Huh, that’s what you call proof?” he asked her in a sarcastic voice.

  “No!" she said scrunching her nose in disgust. “But it’s not so farfetched, when you look at what was discovered in Iraq from around the same time period, “Ummm, I think they call it…The Bagdad Battery.” she said in a smart aleck-like voice.

  “That’s not a real thing, right?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah,” she answered, “it's real. They found these big clay pots with copper lining and a lead insert. If filled with an acid, like grape juice or vinegar, it would produce an electrical current. This was well over 2000 years ago.”

  “That’s pretty hard to believe.” said John. “If it’s true, how come everyone doesn’t know that the light bulb or electricity was invented by the Egyptians or Sumerians long before Thomas Edison?” he asked.

  “Well,” she answered, “mainstream scientists say these batteries were used for gold plating through electrolysis. But the same exact devices were reproduced in a lab by scientists, who believe that they were used as actual batteries and light bulbs. Both devices worked together to produce light.”

  “So there’s no real proof then, that they were really light bulbs.” said John.

  “If they weren’t light bulbs, then how do you explain the ancients drawing paintings on the walls of a pitch black tomb, with no evidence of carbon from torches or fire of any kind?” she asked.

  John could see how excited she was, talking about the ancients and how her eyes lit up and her voice and body seemed more animated, as she continued. “Maybe that’s not proof, that ancient people were advanced like us,” she said, “but, if they understood that technology, then who’s to say what other technologies they may have used. Or even, what other ancient civilizations besides us, may have understood about science.”

  “Incredible!” thought John, “Could everything I hav
e read in the scrolls so far, actually be true?” He bent down on one knee, reached down and stuck his hand through the water. As his fingers touched the bottom he said, “It’s completely smooth, like polished marble!”

  “That just means that the water’s been running over the surface for a really long time,” she said, “even centuries.”

  “What is that?” he asked, looking at something shiny under the water.

  “It looks like some kinda name plate or plaque.” she answered back. She kneeled down next to him and reached into the water. She touched the shimmering plate and it slipped through her fingers and began sliding down the waterway. John quickly reached in and grabbed it from the stream.

  As he removed it from the water, they noticed what looked like a mountain shape etched into the face of it.

  “I've just seen that exact image!” Sarah said with surprise.

  “Where?” asked John.

  “Right underneath the lid of the box!” she said, pointing to the bag she placed on the ground next to them.

  John reached into the bag and pulled out the small box. He slid open the lid and flipped it over to see the design that Sarah described underneath.

  “Outrageous!” said Sarah, as they held the plate up next to the lid. The designs were almost identical; except that the circular etching in the box lid seemed to have an extra piece that was missing from the plaque.

  “Is it really possible?” she asked. "Could the two really be connected?” She couldn’t understand how the two pictures could be so similar, or if they were connected, how was it possible that they were found so far from each other. Or how it was possible for her to be the one to find them both. “Was someone playing a trick on them?” she wondered. “Okay where are the hidden camera’s?” she thought, looking off into the woods. “Maybe the scrolls aren’t as old as we first thought they were. If they are from the same people, then how did they get from a shipping port off the coast of Greenland, all the way across an ocean, to a mountain top in North America?”