Progeny

by Shawn Hopkins

  Chadwick frowned. “Wait. Are you saying that the airfield was never built?”

  “That would mean time travel, wouldn’t it?” Chris asked, evidently overhearing them.

  “I don’t know what it means,” John murmured. “Nothing makes sense.” But then Ronald’s history of the Bermuda Triangle began playing through his head. “I want to know why Henry’s name was the last on Ronald’s list of people claimed by the Triangle. And I want to know why, as he was taking us straight into the storm, Jackson said we were going to get Henry back.”

  “You think this was all Jackson’s plan? To get us to this place?” Paul asked, half serious.

  “What place?” Nick whined. “We’re in Bermuda!” He swore, the vulgar word echoing around them.

  Growing impatient with Nick’s refusal to accept that something was seriously wrong with their present predicament, John threw the map at him. “Show us where.” And then he turned his attention back to Paul’s question. “He made sure to have the guns, didn’t he?”

  So caught up in his thoughts, and still half convinced that he was dreaming, Chris forgot about the wallet Hunter had thrown him. Ignoring the conversation unraveling around him, he began rummaging through it… until he found himself holding the man’s driver’s license. He held it up, curious to know who the old man was. But the image on the plastic ID was not that of the old man. Chris stopped walking. “Holy—”

  The astonished perplexity in his voice made everyone stop and turn toward him.

  With everyone staring at him, all he could do was lift his hand, showing them the driver’s license.

  Henry’s driver’s license.

  NINE

  Early evening. 22nd day of May. Bermuda, Northeast end

  Following the tourist map along the coast, they came to a corner of the island that stared off into the open ocean. From this location, they were all forced to admit that the obvious geographical similarities between the map and their present position made the probability of them being anywhere other than on Bermuda’s most northern point extremely unlikely — if not altogether impossible. Except that there was no Fort St. Catherine towering above them as there had been just that morning when John stood with Jackson in the shallow surf of St. Catherine’s Beach.

  “Might as well stick to the coast, follow it around and back to the boat,” Hunter suggested, looking down at the map John had relinquished into his care. “Sun’s gonna be setting and the forest’ll be dark.” He looked up at the menacing sky sliding across the crystal waters. “We’ll take a rest when we get to the next beach. Looks like it should be about a mile.”

  They trekked on, skirting the rocky coast.

  While he walked, John stared down at Henry’s license, turning it over and over in his fingers.

  “Was it him?” Chadwick asked sensitively.

  John didn’t think so. “That guy was in his seventies.”

  Chadwick lapsed into silent contemplation. “But it at least proves that he’s here.”

  “Or was,” Paul said without taking his eyes off the tree line to their right. The strange feeling that John had awoken to had finally made its rounds through the others, everyone now willing to admit that something was wrong.

  Chris removed his baseball hat and stuck it into his back pocket. “You think the Triangle could’ve done something?” It was an absurd question, but yet so was their current situation.

  Chadwick shook his head. “It didn’t send us back in time, if that’s what you’re getting at. Bermuda’s never had these types of megalithic structures.” But then he recanted from the absoluteness that had carried his words. “Of course, I suppose there could’ve been anything here before the Great Flood.”

  “As in Noah’s Flood?” Chris asked, blonde eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah.”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said.

  “Conservative accounts taken from the genealogies in Genesis place the date at around sixteen or seventeen hundred years after creation. Some scientific estimates, coupled with ancient accounts — like Plato’s telling of the Egyptian priest who spoke to Solon in 600 BC — place the year to be around 9600 BC. It’s also the date generally given to the sinking of Atlantis.”

  Nick laughed. “Atlantis…”

  Chadwick shrugged. “Some people think that the waters in the Bermuda Triangle cover the ruins of Atlantis, that power crystals are somehow to blame for the phenomena.” Then the corner of his mouth turned upward with amusement. “In 1974, the Isis Center for Research and Study of the Esoteric Arts and Sciences took a cruise into the Triangle to run psychic tests. Trying to channel the lost Atlanteans from within the Triangle is more popular than you’d think.”

  John recalled Ronald’s book, The Bermuda Triangle and the Doorway to Hell. “Ronald mentioned that in his book… the Atlantis theory. Talked about the Bimini Road and all that stuff.”

  “Yeah, in fact there are megalithic ruins off the coast of Bimini, ruins that resemble the walls in Peru and Lebanon… and the walls we just saw. The native Taino tribe even refers to Bimini as the ‘Island of the Fallen Wall.’ And on the Piri Reis Map, there’s a row of polygonal stones drawn on the center of a large island in the Bahamas, indicating that the ruins were once above water…”

  “Ronald talked about that, too. Had it hanging on his wall.”

  “The Piri Reis Map?”

  “Along with a bunch of other ones that showed Antarctica without ice. He said one of them had Atlantis on it.”

  Nick scowled. “This when you went to the bathroom?”

  He nodded. “He gave me a presentation on ancient maps.”

  Chadwick scratched an imaginary itch on his cheek. “What else did he have?”

  “Books on the Bermuda Triangle, psychokinesis, quantum physics, string theory, time travel, megalithic cultures, UFOs…”

  “Pertinent things,” pondered Chadwick.

  Chris asked, “What do you mean?”

  “The Bermuda Triangle,” he waved his hand out to the ocean, though he realized that the traditional boundaries encompassed the waters below Bermuda and not the water beside them now, “megalithic sites, time travel theories…”

  “And he had a picture of a giant with six toes hanging on his wall.”

  “Of which your brother’s boat was named after,” Chadwick pointed out.

  John nodded. “And then there’s you, who just so happens to know all this stuff.”

  “There’s a design…” Chadwick admitted, mystified by his own statement.

  John was glad that someone other than himself realized it. He wondered if there was something in Chadwick’s past that had helped lead him to such a conclusion. There certainly was in his.

  Chadwick stepped closer to John. “Can I see the book?”

  John reluctantly unzipped his backpack and reached inside for Journey with the Gods.

  When he pulled it out, Chadwick caught a glimpse of the Bible that was also in the backpack. When he took the book from out of John’s hand, he asked, “Are you a religious person?”

  Though under normal circumstances he would prefer to define the question more clearly before answering, he just nodded. “Yeah.”

  Paul spoke up. “That would be the blinding light I was talking about.”

  Ignoring Paul, John flipped the question back around. “Are you?”

  Chadwick shook his head. “Not really.”

  “Atheist, agnostic?”

  “Neither. I’ve read most religious texts, and I’ve seen their sincerity materialized in the most incredible structures. I’ve also seen it behind the most disgusting practices the world’s ever seen. I’ve seen the beauty of certain belief systems and the insanity in others. As for your Bible… God choosing one people group to reveal Himself to while the rest of the world was left to frolic in human sacrifice and animal worship? Not a very fair picture.”

  John figured it was a reasonable observation, one that, at the end of the day, he probably didn’t have
a persuasive explanation for anyway. He kept his silence.

  Chadwick’s eyes turned to the book he was holding in his hands. He opened the first page and squinted, his brow furrowing. “That can’t be right,” he said to himself.

  “What?” John looked over.

  “The copyright is dated 1979.” He flipped it over so that he could see the picture on the back. “He looks exactly the same…”

  “It’s a third edition, probably a newer picture,” explained John.

  Chadwick looked at him with a hint of impatience. “So you’re saying he wrote this book when he was ten?”

  And then John remembered the book he’d seen at Ronald’s house, the one about giants and ancient civilizations, how it seemed incredibly old but somehow written by the same hand as Ronald’s notes. But he decided to keep that thought to himself, the conversation already well down the rabbit hole.

  Chadwick searched through the table of contents, circumnavigating around some rocks and nearly twisting an ankle.

  Chadwick’s fancy shoes triggered another thought in John’s mind. “You guys get Jackson’s instructions to dress appropriately?” he asked Hunter, Chris, Paul, and Nick.

  Hunter nodded. “Told us we might have to do some hiking.”

  “I thought he told you we were scuba diving?”

  Hunter just looked at him, no answers coming to mind — other than the one no one wanted to put in words.

  “Yeah, well I wish someone told me,” Chadwick complained. “You think this guy’s last name is really Carter?”

  John didn’t know.

  “That’s your last name, right? And I’m guessing your brother’s, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So are you related to this guy?”

  “I don’t know, ask them.”

  But they didn’t know either, though Chris hinted that Jackson might.

  Reaching the ledge of an outcropping, John hopped down and landed in the sand six feet below. Then he turned and watched the others do the same. “I saw Jackson at the Carter House this morning. Any idea why he’d go there?”

  “What is it?” Nick asked while being helped down by Hunter and Chris.

  “The house of Bermuda’s first settler.”

  “Bermuda’s first settler was a Carter?” Chadwick asked in surprise.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you related to him?”

  “No idea.”

  Chadwick looked back down to the soggy book. “Interesting…”

  It most certainly was, John thought. “When was Jackson in Bermuda before?”

  “Five years ago,” Hunter answered. “His honeymoon.”

  John hadn’t placed Jackson as being the type to even take a shot at marriage. “That’s how Henry discovered the guy?”

  “What do you think?” Paul sneered from his elevated position atop the rock outcropping, still massaging his head with one hand while training the MP5 on the woods with the other.

  John decided now was as good a time as any to bring up the whole Jackson thing. “Why is it that none of you trust Jackson?”

  No one answered him.

  John sighed. “Come on, I saw how apprehensive you were during the taxi ride. You knew he wasn’t giving you the whole story.” He pointed up at Paul. “And he was carrying a gun.”

  “It’s not a trust issue,” Hunter finally answered. “He would die for any one of us in a heartbeat, almost has a few times.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “It’s just… sometimes he can get a little… strange.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Forget it, Johnny!” Paul yelled. “Just forget it.” And then he shot a warning glare at Hunter, telling him he had no business disclosing such information to an outcast.

  John understood that he had crossed an invisible line and that by trying to turn them against one of their own, had threatened the integrity of the entire Team. He was an outsider, worse than an outsider, and had no right speaking of such things. They would handle Jackson themselves as they would their own business, which was fine with John. At least they recognized what was going on with their tall friend and that he would, eventually, have to be dealt with. For now, though, he dropped the pursuit of his investigation and turned his mind back to Chadwick, who, all things considered, was holding up rather well. Not too many people could take such a string of weird events in such patient stride. Or maybe, as John suspected, there was a reason for such acquiescence. Maybe there was, as Chadwick seemed to imply before they had jumped from The Gegenes, a reason they were the only ones who could see the monster in the storm.

  They all lapsed back into momentary silence, their minds doing what they could to process their shared dialogue. Five minutes later, and of all people, it was Nick who broke the stillness.

  “Maybe it’s like the Philadelphia Experiment,” he suggested, suddenly willing to entertain an unconventional theory. “You know, the stories of the ship in Philadelphia they were trying to cloak from radar, transporting it instead to Norfolk.”

  “Those are the two choices I gotta pick from?” Paul asked dryly. “Teleportation or time travel?”

  John finally inserted Henry’s license into the pocket of his wet jeans. “Even if it was possible, it wouldn’t explain where we are.”

  “What about space-time vertices?” Hunter cautiously suggested, mostly wanting to hear another mad idea debunked.

  Chris asked, “Alternate worlds? Different dimension stuff?”

  “If that’s the case, if some kind of quantum theory could be applied here, then that could have been Henry.” Hunter fell into contemplation before explaining. “At least according to some of the movies I’ve seen.”

  Chris was confused. “You mean the Triangle, or whatever, brought Henry to this place, but thirty years ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said unimpressed. “I saw that movie. I like the Philadelphia Experiment better.”

  John took the license back out again, examining it for another reason now. According to the issue date printed on it, the piece of plastic should only be three years old. If Hunter’s idea had any validity to it, then the ID would be around thirty-three years old and would have spent its entire life within the confines of the wallet. “Let me see the wallet.” He held his hand out to Chris.

  Chris tossed it to him just as a gust of wind tried to knock them down, pushing them all backward.

  The wallet fell at John’s feet, and he bent over to pick it up. Flipping through it, he found that it still contained one hundred and thirty-six dollars and some credit cards. None of which bore the markings of such an elapsed period of time. “There’s no way it spent thirty years on this island,” he concluded, tossing it back to Chris. He looked out to the water, watched a bolt of lightning strike the horizon. A rumble of thunder followed shortly after, elevating the eerie static buzzing in the air around them. “The doorway to hell,” he whispered.

  “What did you say?” Chadwick asked, looking up from the strange words still reflected in his glasses.

  “That’s what Ronald called the Bermuda Triangle.”

  And Chadwick’s own eyes darted to the rolling horizon.

  ****

  The rest of the island’s eastern coast was traversed in silence and without a single boat sighting. When their feet started trudging through pink sand, the terrain transitioning to that of a hotel’s private beach — minus the hotel, of course — Hunter announced the map’s failure to include the name of the beach, noting only that Alexandra Battery and Gates Fort should be present.

  “Let’s break,” Paul announced, collapsing to the sand. “Ten minutes max. Come sunset, we’re back on the boat.”

  And they all settled down, trying to get comfortable for a few seconds.

  Chadwick sat and opened Ronald’s book, letting the ocean breeze ruffle his hair while his eyes skimmed the mysterious text. He was in his own world, still trying to figure out where he was.

&nb
sp; Nick was exhausted and simply rolled onto his back, closing his eyes. All he wanted to do was wake up from the nightmare… if only he could fall asleep first.

  Removing his boots and rolling his khakis up to the knee, Chris walked out into the surf, his gaze locked onto where the sky touched the water so far away, wondering if there was still anything beyond it. The water felt good on his feet, and he crouched down to splash some of it in his face.

  Paul sat facing the forest, the MP5 lying ready across his lap. He wasn’t going to be turning his back to the woods anytime soon, not after the sounds they’d heard. So Hunter decided that he’d take advantage of his friend’s alertness by laying down beside him, maneuvering the bush hat over his face and creating a retreat center of his own.

  Unable to relax, himself, John retrieved the Bible from his backpack. Turning to the creation account in Genesis, he read over the verses that Ronald had suggested he pay closer attention to.

  And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse, “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the second day.

  What John was supposed to glean from that, he had no idea. Ronald suggested there was a particular reason why the “Hebrew” God didn’t pronounce this day’s work to be “good” as He had all the others. But just how these verses could be made to fit the context of what their conversation had been — demons actually being the disembodied spirits of those who had lived in some remote golden age — John was equally oblivious. He recalled Ronald’s other book that spoke of Satan’s earthly rule, a period of time he had referred to as such a golden age, and put the idea to Chadwick. “You know anything about a golden age?”