Chadwick turned. “It is.”
“Come on, time to go,” Paul announced again, this time with a little more urgency.
John walked over to where Chadwick had dropped Ronald’s book and picked it up.
Chadwick asked, “What about the sword?”
Nick smirked. “Would you rather carry the sword or the gun?”
A quick look back to the forest. “Definitely the gun.” And he dropped the sword, leaving it behind in favor of the submachine gun, though deep down, he wasn’t so sure even that could protect him from the presence he’d just felt in the woods.
****
As they left the mysteriously empty beach and its giant sword behind, they eventually had to enter the edge of the cedar forest to avoid more mangrove swamps that had come up to engulf the coast. Paul walked out in the lead, never taking his eyes from the wildlife around them, searching for any sign of a hidden presence. All of them were on guard, the altar, the crystal arrow, and the sword resonating in the collective center of their apprehension.
John walked up closer to Chadwick, his own eyes scanning the treetops, wondering when he would begin hearing thunder again. “Ronald said that demons are actually benevolent spirits disembodied from a golden age,” he said softly.
Chadwick nodded and then almost slipped on a wet rock. “Hesiod. Works and Days.”
“Yeah well, I think he was trying to say that those spirits were once people on the earth during Satan’s reign.”
“If you Google it, you’ll find a similar theory about the Atlanteans.”
John thought back to the books on Ronald’s shelf, the map that included Atlantis, Chadwick’s reference to Thoth the Atlantean, and the 9600 BC date for the sinking of the island. “Does Atlantis play into the golden age scheme?”
“Oh, yeah,” Chadwick answered enthusiastically. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “According to Plato’s Critias and Timoeus, the gods divvied up the earth among themselves in the first ages, Poseidon being given the sea and a large island continent. He divided the continent into ten kingdoms, giving one to each of his ten sons, but made his oldest son, Atlas, ruler over all of them. He named the continent and its surrounding seas after him.
“To make a long story short, the first ten kings inscribed a code within Poseidon’s temple that was to be followed by all the kings and kingdoms of Atlantis, but future generations of evil kings ignored it and tried instead to conquer the whole world. As an apparent act of judgment on the island, which had become full of evil sorcerers, Zeus sent earthquakes that sank the island.” He wiped sweat from his brow before putting his glasses back on. “The account of its sinking was passed down to Solon, the Athenian statesman who died in 558 BC, by an Egyptian priest. The priest told Solon that the earth had actually gone through many catastrophes, the most recent being a great flood around 9600 BC. The Greek philosopher Proclus reported that Plato’s student, Crantor, visited Egypt in 300 BC and actually saw for himself two pillars that had been inscribed with the Atlantis story.”
The more Chadwick talked, the more uneasy Hunter became, chills racing up and down his spine. “How’s Atlantis connected to Egypt?”
“The Egyptian priest told Solon that his Greeks were only children in the realms of wisdom, because unlike them, they didn’t have an ancient system of wisdom that was handed down to them, a wisdom that contained the earth’s cataclysmic history and the Atlantis account.”
“Wait,” Nick interrupted. “Are you saying that Plato got the Atlantis story from the Egyptians?”
“Certain esoteric traditions claim that the illuminated initiates of Atlantis knew their continent was going to be destroyed and that they fled the island beforehand. They established themselves in Egypt as the land’s first divine rulers and the originators of the ancient teachings Solon was told about. The very center of the Atlantean wisdom-religion was a great pyramid temple that stood in the midst of the City of the Golden Gates. It was from that pyramid that the initiated priests of the Sacred Feather went out into the rest of the earth with the keys of universal wisdom, building pyramids and temples wherever they proselytized.”
Hunter was confused. “So then all this pyramid stuff did originate with Atlantis?”
But before Chadwick could attempt to clarify, John asked about the Sacred Feather. “Didn’t you mention something about a feather before?”
“The plumed serpent.” He swatted some dangling leaves out of his face. “A civilizer, astronomer, and builder who taught religion and wisdom during Central America’s golden age — the wisdom of which is detectable within the Olmec, Mayan, Chiapa, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.” He shrugged. “Some believe Quetzalcoatl and Noah to be the same person described by different cultures in the re-civilization stories. Whether Noah, Xisuthius, the great father of the Thlinkithians, Quetzalcoatl, or the Seven Sages, they all appear as the great civilizer who rebuilt the kingdom of man in the wake of global apocalypse. What’s interesting is that the account of the Seven Sages leaving Atlantis and arriving in Egypt correlates with the 10500 date of First Time.”
Hunter asked his question again. “And Atlantis is the lost civilization that all this stuff originated from?”
Chadwick raised his shoulders again. He was enjoying talking because it was taking his mind off their predicament. “It’s one of the theories. The priests who fled Atlantis took their advanced wisdom and knowledge of the sciences and established themselves as deities all over the world. They marked sacred sites and built on them in ways that were recorded by the constellations some nine hundred years before the Flood. Some of the ruins may still exist, like the Temple Valley and maybe the Great Pyramid, but probably in most, like in Angkor and Baalbek, initiates of the surviving Craft built on the sacred sites long after their original structures were wiped out by the Flood. So according to one view, Atlantis was destroyed by the cataclysmic Flood that ended the first half of the precessional cycle, but its wisdom was preserved and reestablished in specific places afterward, whether in Central America under Quetzalcoatl or Viracocha, or in Egypt by Osiris. All three of them, among plenty of others, share similar characteristics as great civilizers appearing after a flood. All of them are associated in some way or another with serpents, statues of feathered serpents appearing everywhere from Egypt to South America.”
“Thus suggesting a connection between them and the Sacred Feather priest-craft from Atlantis,” mumbled John. He found it rather disturbing that all these legends were crediting a serpent for their past golden age.
“Seems that way,” Chadwick replied. His shoe slipped off and he had to go back and pick it up.
Paul turned and waited for him before continuing. He didn’t trust their surroundings at all and, though Chadwick may be finding this dialogue familiar and a source of some comfort, all the talk of cataclysm was putting him on edge.
“However,” Chadwick stated, hurrying to catch up, “The book of Genesis says that God gave a one hundred and twenty-year warning of the Flood, not a nine hundred-year warning.”
“What are you saying?” Nick asked. The weapon was growing heavy in his one hand, and he was forced to rest its barrel in the crook of his handless arm.
“I’m saying that trying to make everything fit into one scenario will give you a migraine. But like I said, it’s not the differences that are important. It’s the similarities that prove there is an element of truth that propelled the stories in the first place.”
John was getting the distinct feeling that all of this was somehow directly related to his present state, encompassing everything from Ronald’s writings and the VHS tape, to what he’d seen in Afghanistan. He wasn’t exactly sure why, other than the obvious connection between Ronald’s writings and this strange place he was captive in. He asked Chadwick if he thought the things they had just seen were connected to the esoteric wisdom supposedly passed down from the other side of the Flood.
“A trademark of this esoteric wisdom is the seeming obsession with
the sky. It was said of Quetzalcoatl that he taught man science, showing him the way to measure time and study the revolutions of the stars. It’s this intimate astronomical knowledge introduced to mankind that explains how the Mayan pyramids could be aligned with certain constellations, and the Great Pyramid could summarize the entire northern hemisphere with atomic-clock precision using methods that, to this day, baffle engineers, astronomers, mathematicians, and archeologists.” He nodded cautiously, as if admitting it might actually bring it into existence. “I’m pretty sure that the site we just came from has the same astronomical characteristics.”
John had one more question left, something that had been nagging the back of his consciousness throughout the length of their entire conversation. “Is it true that Poseidon is analogous to Neptune?”
Chadwick looked at him strangely, not comprehending the origin of such a question. “Yeah,” he answered.
John stared down at his moving feet, watching the terrain pass beneath them. “I saw a statue of Neptune in Bermuda…” But he couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought, so instead he asked, “Did Poseidon happen to father children by a human woman?”
“Of course.”
“Any chance they were giants?”
“He fathered a lot of strange things, and with a lot of different creatures, but yes, he had giants as offspring.”
“So the Atlantis story would fit with the giant legends, too.”
“Actually, the war instigated by the evil Atlantean successors is thought to be a parallel to the story of Cain’s line, the giants, and Noah’s righteous family, the conflict climaxing with the Flood.”
Wonderful, John thought.
“The City of the Golden Gates, Atlantis’ capitol, is also believed by some to be the archetype of the New Jerusalem. Man chased from the Garden of Eden by a flaming sword, the Genesis flood, and the serpent on the cross — which is an Atlantean emblem of divine wisdom — are all suspected to have arisen from the Atlantis account. A mountain in the middle of the island was supposedly the basis for the stories of Olympus, Meru, and Asgard.”
John wondered if the City of the Golden Gates could be related to the Ezekiel passage, of Satan’s surroundings in Eden. The VHS tape, the giants in Genesis six, fallen angels, the Bermuda Triangle, Satan appearing to Eve in the form of a serpent… what did all of it have to do with him, with everything that was happening?
Hunter’s voice interrupted his thoughts as he looked up from the map and announced that Higgs’ and Horseshoe Island were just ahead of them.
But it was Nick’s voice that captured their attention. “What is that?” he asked, stepping closer to the bank and peering through the mangroves. “Look, on the tip of the island, you see it?”
“I see it,” Chris agreed. “Looks like a bunch of rocks.”
“No.” The now-familiar sense of awe had swept back over Chadwick, perplexity moving his feet toward it despite a significant channel of water standing in the way. “They’re monoliths. Like the Moai of Easter Island.”
“You mean that row of statues?” Chris questioned. Why not, he thought. Soon they’d probably be coming across a flying saucer, too.
“Actually,” he whispered in response, “there are eight hundred and eighty-seven of them.”
“Never understood why they called it Easter Island,” Chris remarked, placing his hands on his hips and letting the wind pull at his hair.
Even as he responded, his eyes were glued to the distant piece of land. “Because Jacob Roggeveen’s crew came across it on Easter Sunday in 1722. Researchers think it might’ve actually been called ‘eyes looking to the sky’ before that.” He started taking his shoes off.
“What’re you doing?” Paul asked.
“I’m going over there.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.” He took the gun off his shoulder and handed it to John.
“No you’re not.”
But it wasn’t Paul’s voice this time.
They all turned.
Standing there before them, chest heaving and covered with dirt, was Jackson. “You go over there, and they’ll eat you,” he said.
TEN
9:13 PM. 22nd day of May. Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Curled up in John’s favorite chair, Kristen sat staring through the blank television set that was positioned across from her. As if a looking glass into the deep territories of space, it provided a boundless eternity through which her thoughts could travel free. Her mind grappled ceaselessly with all the possible scenarios that might explain why John wasn’t calling or answering her calls. His last text message, sent this morning, was all she could think about. Was it just her emotions getting the best of her, or did the message contain a hint of finality to it? After spending the day cleaning the house in order to pass the time, she now found herself exhausted and left with nothing else to distract such worried thoughts. The idea of watching a movie was what brought her to the chair, but upon sitting down, she found that she was too physically and emotionally drained to even reach for the remote beside her.
Finally, as her eyes focused, exchanging one world for another, the television’s spell released her. And that’s when she noticed the VCR. It was resting on the floor beside the TV stand, the multicolored cables reaching up and into the side of the television. Strange, she thought. Because she knew the old machine should be in the attic where it had been stored ever since they moved in. How she missed it while cleaning was equally as puzzling. Finally, with curiosity now motivating her, she leaned forward and took the remotes from the small table next to her. She hit the play button, and the screen filled with static. So she rewound the tape, wondering why John had brought the relic down from its dusty home. After a few seconds, not waiting for the tape to reach the beginning and stop on its own, she randomly pressed the play button again.
A man wearing glasses instantly filled the screen. He was speaking rather animatedly about something she couldn’t determine, but after a few moments, she realized it had to be footage from an old university debate. Her curiosity rising, she watched as the man on the television retrieved a microphone from its stand and stepped in front of the table he’d been seated behind. He walked to the front of the stage, the microphone’s long wire chasing after his feet. She couldn’t say why she was so captivated by the man’s words, for she couldn’t even siphon a droplet of meaning from them. But still she leaned closer, drawn to the mysterious message — or perhaps the lips forming it.
“Professor Adler’s view assumes that the progeny of both Seth and Cain grew apart from one another, being segregated morally,” the man was saying. “It assumes that Cain’s descendants were universally characterized by godlessness and carnality, and it assumes that Cainite women were of a higher beautiful quality than those of the godly Sethites. And,” he added, “the view assumes that these characteristics were so universally well-known that the writer was doubtless as to what his readers’ interpretation of such a text would be. For at the time in which the author set down to describe this ancient event — many, many years later and from the other side of the Deluge — it is obvious that the universal fame surrounding the event of our passage was still very familiar to all and that all knew exactly what was meant by his specific descriptions of Bne-Ha-Elohim and Bnoth-Ha-Adam. The mighty men of old, heroes, men of renown…
“These were the ancient and legendary tales that stemmed from the unlawful unions spoken of, unions that required a universal flood to, in effect, return the production of the human race back to a single, pure family.” He frowned as if saying as much brought to mind pictures of what it must have been like to witness such universal death. “Again,” he breathed, “the words used at the time of this writing, and at the time of Job’s writing, were well-established and familiar ones that had been used to define a very specific class of beings. They were so familiar that the authors of both books took for granted their reader’s ability to decipher the true meaning of their words, which
, ironically in Job’s case, there is not even a debate today as to what the interpretation of the words should be. Indeed, if the ‘sons of God’ should be rendered as the ‘sons of holy or pious men,’ then why in other places where such classifications are more than obvious does this phrase not appear? Psalm 37:29, Proverbs 11:28, and Ezra 9:2 are examples of where one would expect Bne-Ha-Elohim to appear if this is indeed its true meaning.”
Kristen still had no idea what he was talking about and figured she should finish rewinding the tape if she really wanted to find out, but she couldn’t seem to move. She was so entranced by the man that understanding what his words actually meant wasn’t really a concern. But why? What was it that was provoking such a response from her? He was only as handsome as the poor quality of the recording allowed, so it wasn’t some physical attraction that was paralyzing her. His voice, however… It carried within it the tone of authority. And the way he moved seemed almost mystical, something slightly seductive even in the way he took a sip of water from the glass on the table.
“Even if you want to look to Cain’s settlement in the land of Nod, which is described as being over against Eden, you have to come up with an explanation as to how the close proximities of these two lineages managed to produce, over time, two separate and distinct races. And yes, I acknowledge the fact that Seth’s genealogy is set apart from Cain’s, but is it not for the simple reason of pointing out the Messiah’s line? The fact of the matter is, there is no scriptural evidence that Cain’s line was more wicked than any other line, either at the time of the Flood or some other point prior. And, on the other hand, if the sons of Seth were as godly as some would have you believe, how then did they come to be enamored by women who represented the very opposite of everything they held dear? That ‘they were fair’ is the only reason we are given as to why the sons of God took wives from the daughters of men. Are we really to believe that the females in Cain’s line were the only fair women in the world?”
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