Progeny

by Shawn Hopkins

  The angel stood back and crossed his arms again, staring at John in shock. “You still aren’t getting it, are you?” He sighed. “There goes your A.” He snapped his fingers, and an image of Kristen leaning against the doorframe faded onto the glass. She was waving goodbye, a hand resting on her stomach.

  John didn’t remember seeing her do that. It was a strange gesture, like…

  And it clicked.

  Collapsing to his knees, he hugged himself against the shock. But it was an internal sensation, and such a position did nothing to alleviate the realization. He couldn’t catch his breath.

  The angel ran to him, pretending to be concerned, and tried helping him to his feet.

  “Get off of me,” John growled, shrugging him off and getting to his feet on his own. He grabbed the angel by the throat and pushed him all the way across the room and into the stone wall, squeezing his neck with every bit of strength he could muster.

  “Now, if I’m not mistaken,” the angel said without the slightest sense of pain or discomfort in his voice, “you vowed to God that you’d never raise a hand against anyone ever again.”

  “You’re not anyone,” he seethed.

  The angel sighed, suddenly bored. He lifted a finger, and John was instantly thrown across the room and slammed into a stone pillar. He crumbled to the floor.

  “So, obviously it’s a boy. Congratulations.” Osiris walked slowly and methodically around the room, keeping a narrow eye on John.

  “What do you want?” John snapped, stumbling back to his feet and trying to bring his breathing under control.

  “A deal.” He stopped and sat down in a chair that had just materialized beneath him. He crossed his legs. “You see, I am very close to getting out of here. Unfortunately, I was sort of depending on that giant’s spirit entering your world. There is just one last thing that I need, and the pureblooded people on this island somehow seem to know it.”

  John spit blood onto the floor. “And you need it before the solstice.”

  He clenched his jaw. “You see, that’s what happens when I delay too long in bringing my offspring to me. They intermingle with the purebloods and tell them everything!” He took a breath, continuing to make a performance of it. “It doesn’t matter. In exchange for your life and your son’s, you will simply prevent any further interruptions so that I can finish my work.”

  “So that you can escape and await Apollo’s rise from the deep and the resurrection of Satan’s reign on earth? I don’t think I can do that. Besides, not my life, or any son I may have, is yours to control.”

  A conceited shadow fell across his face, and for the first time, John got the impression that this was indeed one of the deities the Egyptians had worshipped at the dawn of civilization (or post-Flood re-civilization, as he’d indicated). “Are you sure about that, Johnny?”

  And then he disappeared.

  John looked around the room, but he was alone. The mirrors had vanished as well. He was sweating, adrenaline fueling his pounding heart. He needed to find a way out of this place, to get back to Kristen. As he ran back and forth through the room, he began praying, tears running down his face. The entranceway that had stood next to the mirrors was gone, too. Sprinting from one end of the long room to the other, he ran his hands over the smooth stone blocks, barely feeling the grooves where they were joined. “Come on!” he screamed. And then his hand suddenly plunged into the wall and disappeared up to his elbow. He quickly retracted his arm, stepping back from the wall. A dark circle swam in the stone. He touched it again and watched it erase his fingers. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he threw his whole body into the wall, not having any idea of what doing so might introduce next.

  ****

  He found himself in another room, this one with heavy curtains hanging from the ceiling and flickering ceremonial candles stacked throughout. But the main source of light seemed to be emanating from elongated glass tubes that were mysteriously fixed to the limestone walls. Wires of some sort were going out from them and entering straight into the limestone. There was also a long rectangular pool in the center of the room with columns all around it reaching up to the ceiling. Lounging on the pool’s ledge and swimming carefree in the water were naked women.

  John turned his head to the left and right, taking in the enormous surroundings. He could hear the girls giggling and splashing and was able to see a few of them caressing each other. And suddenly there was a giant standing beside the pool. Where it came from, John didn’t know; he figured it could have walked right out of the wall. It grabbed one of the women by the hair and, as if she were a rag doll, carried her away, dragging her across the floor behind it. He could hear the girl’s laughter echoing off the walls as she struggled, thrashing her legs and sliding wet across the stone surface.

  John ran to a pillar, looking around the room for another way out. There was a doorway on the other side of the room, but it was all the way behind the pool. He began to skirt around the outside of the columns. When he reached the far wall, he saw that there was another giant present. It was engaged with a whole handful of women. John spun his back up against the pillar, hoping he hadn’t been seen.

  A woman’s voice hade him jump.

  “Ah, the master has brought us another one of his relatives, has he?” She grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him up against the pillar. “Don’t be shy, dear.” She leaned up and kissed him vehemently on the lips.

  John didn’t know where she came from, but he was amazed at how strong she was. He could feel her pressing into him, almost crushing him with her force. He tried to pull away, but she reached up and held his face with her hands. She bit his lip, and he tasted blood. He tried to pull away again, but this time she put her palm on his forehead and smashed his skull into the stone. He squeezed his eyes shut, seeing stars. He felt her hands navigating across his body. He tried to grab her wrists but then she lunged upward and bit his neck. She kept pressing her body against him, grunting in lustful anticipation.

  “You want to give me a child?” she asked. “Give me a child!” And she tore at his belt.

  While both her hands were at his waist, John grabbed the back of her head and pulled it into his own, using the muscles in his neck to deliver a wrecking-ball blow to her forehead. Not waiting to find out if the impact knocked her out or just excited her more, he swung her around and slammed her into the stone. Then he pulled her forward and twisted her so that he was behind her, his arms around her neck in a sleeper hold. But she bent forward, lifting him off his feet, and carried him out of the shadows and closer to the busy giant.

  He swiftly grabbed her long hair and wrapped it around her neck, pulling it tight. She let go of his legs, trying instead to loosen the hair around her throat. Hopping down off her back, he spun and flipped her by her hair, slamming her into the ground. He knelt over her, grabbed a tuft of hair from the center of her head, and lifted her face right into a vicious blow that sent her skull rebounding off the limestone floor. She lay sprawled beneath him, finally unconscious. Or perhaps dead.

  He stood to his feet and ran as fast as he could, not caring now that his footsteps were echoing throughout the hall. But the loud sounds of corruption emanating from within the pool proved too loud for anyone to hear him anyway.

  He slipped back through the wall.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Midday. 29th day of May. Bermuda, Northwest end. The henges

  John found himself back at the huge fortress wall where all his “jumping” had started, the Neolithic circles sprawled out all around him. By now there were no signs of anything living, only piles of dismembered corpses. Hurrying away from the circle before something else could come out of it, he began searching the gruesome remains for a weapon. Finding a sword lodged in the head of a man that had been riddled with genetic defects — three thumbs, three eyes, one ear, and something growing from his neck — he pressed his foot against the mutated face and yanked the sword free.

  With no idea how the
network of circles worked, he was very fortunate to be sent here… to the only place on the island he knew how to get back to the caves from.

  As he navigated through the terrain, his mind kept replaying the encounter with Osiris, examining it from every possible angle. And a couple things stood out. For one, Patrick, Charles, and George didn’t lead them to the altar just so they could have a look at it. They had taken them there to intervene with the sacrifice, to keep the spirit of the Nephilim from making the journey into the real world. Another key point was Osiris’ reference to needing two relatives to get him here, Chadwick only making one. But the biggest thing the encounter introduced to his personal world was the news that he and Kristen were having a baby, making him all the more eager to leave this place.

  And he now had an idea how.

  But it entailed letting the angel finish his project, and he wasn’t so sure the pureblooded folks back in the caves would be too supportive of that.

  He had to find Henry and Chadwick.

  ****

  When he finally showed up at the entrance of the cave, he was greeted by a young, armed guard named, James.

  “You’re alive!” he exclaimed.

  Feeling as though he might collapse, he barely managed to reply, “Yeah, I’m alive. Where are the others?”

  “Which others?”

  “Henry, Chadwick, Paul—”

  “They’re inside. Everyone but Charles and that tall guy made it back already.”

  “Jackson?”

  He nodded. “He didn’t come back yet.”

  John sighed and patted him reassuringly on the arm as he entered the cave.

  ****

  He was immediately intercepted by a group of men walking down the corridor. They all began talking to him at the same time, excited about something John didn’t have time to care about. He held up his hands, waving the sword.

  “Shut up and listen.”

  They fell silent.

  “Osiris knows you know about the solstice, and I think he finally sees you as a threat.” He took a deep breath. “So go tell whoever you need to tell…”

  The two African Americans, Italian, and Brit turned without another word, running frantically down the corridor and disappearing around the bend.

  “John!”

  He turned toward the sound of his name and saw Henry coming at him with outspread arms.

  “Where’d you go?” Henry embraced him tightly. “I was so worried.”

  John stepped back, keeping his own emotions at bay. There wasn’t any time for that right now. “How’d you get back here?”

  “When we went through the circle, we ended up just west of here. Thankfully, nothing was there waiting for us.”

  “Is it true that Jackson didn’t come back?”

  He nodded.

  “I think we’re in danger here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Some people were walking close by, and John whispered, “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  Henry put a hand on his back and urged him forward. “Come with me.” He took him to the room he’d recovered in and closed the palmetto door behind them. “What is it?”

  “I met him.”

  Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “The angel. That’s where I went.”

  Henry looked confused. “That doesn’t make sense, you aren’t—”

  “I am. Or was.” And he explained the dreams, the giant, the tape, everything that proved he was somehow at the center of all this madness. He told him what the angel said about bringing his offspring into each other’s lives and how they seem to push each other to this place. “That’s why I was adopted into your family.”

  The look of stunned understanding settled across Henry’s face, and he sat down on the bed of palmetto leaves. “That’s how I ended up in SEAL Team One with Jackson, and he ended up running into Ronald in Bermuda.”

  “Henry, he told me that he needed two people on the boat to get me here.”

  Henry nodded slowly. “It all makes sense,” he whispered, staring at the floor.

  “What does?”

  When he looked up again, his eyes were heavy with sadness. “Jackson.”

  And it did make sense.

  Jackson had been on the plane and the boat when the apparition appeared…

  “What did he tell you? He said you talked.”

  Henry shrugged and told him mostly the same things he’d heard for himself… until he got into the angel’s plan of escape.

  “He’s using an ancient ground plan that’s designed to interlock with the stars, creating a gateway out of this reality and into another.”

  “He said he’s only missing one piece now,” John said.

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “No.”

  Henry sat back in silence.

  “Did you have dreams, Henry, while you were growing up?”

  “Yeah. So did Dad and Grandpa. It’s one of the ways he drew us in, sparked a mystery we just couldn’t leave alone. It’s how he gets us here. You think it’s a coincidence that Chad’s obsessed with megalithic archeology? It’s in our DNA somewhere, attracting us to our heritage.”

  John sat beside Henry on the soft leaves, suddenly feeling the full effects of physical exhaustion. “He wants me to try to stop them from compromising his last move.”

  “What did he offer you in exchange?”

  “My life.” A pause. “And my son’s.”

  Shocked swept over Henry’s face. “You have a son?”

  “Kristen’s pregnant.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Neither did I… until he told me.”

  “The mirrors?”

  John nodded. “What are they?”

  “I don’t know. Legend has it that Tezcatilpoca, Quetzalcoatl’s archenemy, had a mirrored object that he watched men and gods in from afar. But scholars believe it was an obsidian stone used by wizards as an instrument of divination.”

  “So is this Quetzal-whatever guy supposed to be good?”

  He shrugged. “He supposedly taught love and condemned human sacrifice, but in some cases he appears to be interchangeable with the Babylonian god, Marduk.”

  John looked at his brother and began to wonder at the change in him. He seemed different, gentler somehow. “How do you know all this?”

  “Dad’s journal got me reading as much as I could, trying to connect all the dots.”

  “And did you?”

  “Enough of them, I think.”

  A moment of flickering torchlight popped in the silence.

  “What were you and Chadwick saying about ‘ley lines’? What are they?”

  “It’s believed there’s a series of ‘great circles’ that encompass the earth. They’re referred to as ‘ley lines’ or ‘lines of power.’ The alignments of ancient cities — the pyramids, Easter Island, Mayan and Inca cities — are all said to be built in relation to them, serving as portals connecting the different sites and allowing spirits the ability to travel back and forth between them.”

  John pondered this. “You’re saying the circles are ‘connected’ by these lines of power?”

  “Whether they built the circles according to the lines of power or whether the sites created them, I don’t know. I’m just saying there’s an esoteric tradition that claims these megalithic sites are interconnected by a spiritual force acting as a gateway for spirits.”

  “When were you confronted by Osiris?”

  “A week ago.”

  “How’d you escape?”

  “I don’t know. I just remember running down the steps of a ziggurat.”

  “You weren’t in the temple?”

  “No.”

  “I saw the giants taking women…” John said. “One of them tried to rape me.”

  A look of concern rose on Henry’s face. “A giant?”

  “No,” John chuckled, “one of the girls.”

  The tremendous strain squeezing their circumstanc
e somehow twisted the idea into something hysterical, and they erupted with exhausted laughter.

  A minute later, as they were wiping tears from their eyes, John said, “Chad talked about the pyramid-complex being a gateway.”

  Henry gingerly touched his injured ribs as he nodded, the amount of laughter not helping them heal any faster.

  “Do you think that’s how Osiris is planning to escape?” John asked.

  Nodding again, he answered, “He must’ve thought he was building a gateway to Tarturus, but the secret knowledge he used created this in-between instead.”

  “And the summer solstice will activate some kind of portal back? How?”

  Henry wagged his head. “I have no idea. I doubt even he knows for sure, but I’m guessing the door, if it works, will be in the pyramid. I think that’s its only true function.”

  “As a transporter?”

  “Chadwick thinks that it’ll draw power from all the other sites and link to a specific celestial position that’ll then act as a sort of relay station.”

  “This is ridiculous. You know that, right?”

  “We’re dealing with the spirit world, of course it’s ridiculous.”

  And then John told him his plan.

  Henry sat still for a long moment as his eyes stared through the wall. Finally, he shook his head. “There are a lot of unknowns, Johnny.”

  “I understand that, but are you ready to spend the rest of your life in this place?”

  “No, but if we don’t succeed, and we allow him to escape—”

  “Then this place could fold up and disappear altogether.”

  Henry nodded solemnly. “Which could either translate us back to our world, or take us with it into nonexistence.”

  “But if he doesn’t complete it, then we’re all stuck here anyway. We’ll have to fight. Or try sailing.”

  “There’s nothing to sail to. According to those who’ve tried, there isn’t anything outside the Triangle.” He stood. “I think we should go get the others now.”