“And how would I stop somebody?”
“I don’t know, flash them or something.” Curt began scratching the blade along the edge of the slab, chiseling away the grout. It was an arduously slow and time-consuming process. Curt and Scott alternated, one working away the grout while the other guarded the entrance. Four times people attempted to enter only to be stopped by Scott or Curt identifying themselves as park rangers and declaring the room was temporarily closed.
After 15 minutes of scraping on all four sides, the gritty residue wore down well below the surface level. Curt wedged the steel blade into the newly formed crevice and, using an adjoining slab as a brace, attempted to pry the stone upward. The tight formation of the stones and grout over time had created an unyielding seal. On several attempts, the blade bowed and nearly snapped. Finally, to their elation, the tile gave way with a pop and a slight hiss of escaping air. Curt sat back and released a long exhale.
Scott wondered if their anticipation had been anticlimactic. He had no idea what they could possibly hope to find underneath the stone slab, but surely it was not going to be a fish. It seemed a bit ridiculous that he had allowed his imagination to become so rabid.
The two men stared at each other before turning back to the stone tile. The slab had dislodged and fallen back precisely in place, but the airlock had been broken. They moved in closer. Curt eased the tip of the knife into the crack again and gently pried up one side. Scott slid his fingers underneath to ensure the slab did not fall back. Curt withdrew the knife and moved around to the other side and repeated the process, holding the side up after it was raised.
In unison, Scott and Curt lifted the stone and moved it to the side. As they did, a rush of dust rose from the opening and dispersed around them. Both men momentarily choked on the thick air. Scott wiped his eyes clear. The square opening revealed a flat, dirt surface three inches below the bottom of the surrounding stone layer, but nothing more.
Excitement was immediately replaced with immense disappointment.
“Nothing but enough dust to give us both black lung,” Scott said.
They continued to eye the small enclosure. From Scott’s vantage point, the angled light from the end wall left a small section of the dirt surface obscured. Something must have caught Curt’s attention in the shadows, though, because he pulled a penlight from his pocket. He guided the light inside the cavity to illuminate the near edge. Both men stared in amazement as the glow came to rest on what appeared to be a small skeleton propped against the side.
“What is it?” Scott asked, leaning forward.
“A skeleton, and it is a fish, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Curt replied, his tone escalating. He reached into the opening. He carefully touched the ashen object then pulled away.
“What’s the matter?” Scott asked.
“Nothing. Just checking,” Curt replied.
“Checking what? For a pulse?”
“Here, hold the light,” Curt said.
Scott lit the skeleton as Curt again reached inside. Not as hesitant, he grabbed the head and lifted very slowly. Once clear of the opening, he placed his other hand underneath the midsection for support and brought it up horizontally for them to examine. It had an oversized head with a mouthful of jutting teeth connected to an abbreviated arch of a body. The tail section was split, with the narrow top bone longer than the lower extension. A series of bones connected to the spinal column bowed inward to form a perfect ribcage. The intact skeleton had a smooth surface and was amazingly sturdy. Curt turned the skeleton vertically and, with one hand, held it up by the head.
“It doesn’t feel real. It’s too light; no more than an ounce or so,” Curt said.
Scott watched as Curt gently wiped dirt away from the tail section. He chipped away several small clots housed within the ribcage by wedging his fingers inside. The entire skeleton was roughly eight inches long.
“What in God’s name is this thing?” Curt said. He was still attempting to reach the last small clot of dirt embedded in the ribcage when they heard a noise outside the entrance. It quickly grew louder, evidence someone was coming. Curt hurriedly stretched out his collar and shoved the small skeleton down between his shirt and tee shirt. He cringed.
Scott reached over and grabbed the tile, placing it back over the opening. It slid neatly into place.
A sound of footsteps drew closer.
“Let’s go,” Scott said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Monday, August 15, 1:11 p.m. – St. Augustine, Florida
Professor Marvin Sellon sat in his living room eating a bowl of soup and watching a series on The Learning Channel that compared and contrasted biblical events with historical facts. It was a subject near and dear to his heart. He continually found it a challenge to reconcile biblical stories he learned as a child to factual archaeological evidence. He also recognized that it was this conflict which had led to his friend, Scott Marks’, withering faith in God. Yet Marvin remained a spiritual man, despite his chosen calling which often suggested otherwise. He was comfortable knowing that faith is nothing more than blind belief in that which cannot be described in scientific terms.
He rose to put the empty bowl in the sink just as the phone rang.
****
They elected to take Scott’s Tahoe and leave Curt’s Mustang in the Castillo parking lot. Once inside the vehicle, with the welcome relief of air conditioning, Scott placed a call.
“Marvin, this is Scott. Curt and I are in town. Are you free? Okay, good. We’ll tell you when we get there.” He hung up.
Sitting in the Castillo de San Marcos parking lot, Curt reached into his shirt and dug out the skeleton of the fish. It looked much whiter now in the daylight. He turned the skeleton over, studying the bowed ribs on either side. Whatever this thing is, it had some girth for such a small creature. “Incredible.”
Scott spoke. “Being an anthropologist, Marvin’s going to drool when he sees this fish.”
“This thing is amazing. It feels petrified, but it’s not. This is bone; it hasn’t been calcified with minerals, so I can’t imagine why it didn’t disarticulate. If it’s as old as we think, I should be holding a pile of bones or even a pile of bone dust.”
Scott reached over and grasped the small skeleton. “I think we’re in agreement that the man sealed in the gunpowder magazine, who Father En claims to be Pinot LeFlore, placed this skeleton underneath the stone tile, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then the question becomes, and I can’t believe I’m about to say this: why? What does the skeleton of some prehistoric-looking fish have to do with a 16th-century French Huguenot?”
Curt shrugged. He leaned forward and pulled his shirt over his head, removing it completely and shaking it out over the floorboard. “Man, I feel gritty.” He undid the button on his jeans and yanked the zipper down. He arched his back, lifting his pelvis into the air and shoved his pants down to his knees. A woman in a white Ford Taurus who pulled into the parking space next to them gave Curt a disgusted look.
Scott caught the lady’s expression and nudged Curt.
“What?” Curt asked.
“I think you made a friend,” Scott said, pointing to the car next to them.
“She’ll get over it,” he replied, pulling his pants back up after brushing the dirt off his legs. He buttoned his pants and pulled his zipper up. “Let’s go.”
The woman in the Taurus got out of her car and started toward the fort’s entrance, glancing back at Curt suspiciously.
“I think she likes you,” Scott said as he handed Curt the skeleton. He started the engine and backed the Tahoe.
“Oh, speaking of women, remember the attractive redhead from the airport?”
“The one whose daughter you—”
“Yeah, that one. Get this. The City of St. Augustine has hired her public relations fi
rm, and I’m her resource. We had a rocky start, but I think I’m back in her good graces.”
“When’s the wedding?”
“Don’t even say that word to me.” Curt felt a vibration and reached for his pocket. He withdrew his cell phone and eyed the screen. “I missed a call from Lila. See? You say ‘wedding’ and my ex-wife calls.”
“You two on speaking terms? Where’d you go again with Lila earlier in the summer? Europe?”
“Canary Islands, off the African coast.”
“That’s right. It was in regard to some text you found in Egypt before you two divorced. You never explained it to me. Did you find anything of interest there?”
Curt momentarily bit his bottom lip. “Lila and I agreed not to mention it to anyone, but then again, I don’t really like her anymore.”
Scott laughed.
Curt resumed, “Hell yes, we found something. I’ve been dying to tell someone. You have to promise to keep this to yourself. Not even Kay.”
Scott nodded.
“Two years ago, I tagged along with Lila to Egypt, where she was a member of the project team attempting to convert the Codex Sinaiticus—a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in Greek during the middle of the fourth century—to digital form and make it available to the world. One day, while I was killing time going through unrelated manuscripts in the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai, I came across a single, loose page. Since Lila had often shown Codex Sinaiticus text to me, I instantly recognized the Greek handwriting, and Lila confirmed its authenticity. The page was from the Book of Genesis, but the verses were not numbered, so no one knew exactly what the page referenced, and apparently the entire text had been stricken from the Old Testament as we currently know it.
“We eventually figured out it was a verbal map giving directions to ‘scenes,’ although neither of us understood the meaning of the term ‘scenes’ in this context or could determine where the map led, so Lila soon abandoned efforts to decipher it and got back to the project at hand, while I continued to research it like a boy chasing lost treasure.
“Then, two months ago, I put the clues together and realized the ‘map’ led to the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa: Isla de la Palma, the most northwest island in the Canary Island chain. Since we had both been present when the page was discovered, we reluctantly agreed to search for the ‘scenes’ together. Neither wanted the other to take all the credit if an archaeological discovery was made.”
“Isla de la Palma,” Scott began. “Why have I heard of that place? The name sounds familiar.”
“It’s one of a few in the Atlantic Ocean with an active volcano: Cumbre Vieja.”
“That’s right,” Scott nodded.
Curt continued. “Anyway, the text led us to a small plateau about a third of the way up the southwestern flank of Isla de la Palma, nowhere near the Cumbre Vieja volcano, by the way. This, in turn, led to a small cave, where we eventually found the entrance to a large inner cathedral-like room. It was amazing; perfectly round with high walls and a domed ceiling; obviously manmade. On the walls were pictures, but they were hard to make out. All we could tell was that each one appeared to contain two images, each one a mirror image of the other. That is, until Lila found a word in Aramaic inscribed onto the wall: Ham.”
“What’s ham?”
“Not ‘what’ but ‘who?’ It’s the signature of the artist.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone named Ham, unless it’s short for Hamlet.”
“It’s not. Ham was the name of one of Noah’s three sons who set off to repopulate the world after the Great Flood. According to the Bible, Ham moved southwest to Africa and is the forefather of the people there, who are known as the Hamitic race, based on their supposed lineage to Ham.”
“You know I don’t believe in such stuff.”
“I’m just stating the information as I know it, Scott. Once we realized who was claiming responsibility for the room, we understood what the images on the walls depicted: pairs of animals, a male and female of each.”
“Passengers onboard the Ark?”
“It appears so. Ham created a visual manifest of all the animals Noah and his sons gathered and brought aboard.”
“Is there any way to date the room?”
“If the pictures are frescoes of lime plaster painted with water-based pigments, they can be carbon dated, but we couldn’t even get high enough to tell. At the time, neither of us expected to find much there, and we weren’t prepared to establish an archaeological site. Lila flew out on Friday with several assistants and equipment. I was going to go with her, but I had a business meeting. It’s just as well, since I got the call from the Bolivian Monk. Depending on what Lila comes up with, we’ll probably go public with the discovery soon and share joint credit. It would be an amazing find in that it substantiates an Old Testament story.”
“Or it was simply conceived by someone who read the Old Testament fiction.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Monday, August 15, 1:28 p.m. – St. Augustine, Florida
Marvin lived six miles away on Anastasia Island across the bay from downtown St. Augustine in a quiet neighborhood not far from St. Augustine Beach. The ranch-style home was the perfect, simple dwelling for the retired professor.
Scott’s own father passed away from a heart attack when Scott was attending Florida State University. Although he was a business major, Scott had taken Professor Sellon’s anthropology class as an elective. The two quickly connected on a personal level, sharing an almost father/son kinship. Their relationship continued to flourish after Scott graduated. When Scott turned 27, Marvin’s wife passed away, and Scott drove back to Tallahassee for the funeral. As expected, Marvin took Julia’s death extremely hard. Shortly thereafter, Scott was surprised and elated when the professor told him he was moving to St. Augustine. With Curt also living in town, and both men holding doctorate degrees, Curt and Marvin quickly formed a close relationship, solidifying the threesome as friends who shared a common love of history. The Triad of Curiosity, as Marvin called them.
The 67-year-old Cornell graduate was an extremely bright and educated man who had connections everywhere. Whenever the professor needed information or esoteric knowledge outside his field of expertise, he had resources at his disposal. If anyone could help figure out what kind of fish they had found hidden in the gunpowder magazine, it would be Marvin.
On the drive over, Curt placed the skeleton in a shoebox he found in the back seat of Scott’s SUV.
“You know, Cody was going to make a lizard carrier out of that,” Scott said.
“I’ll buy him another one,” Curt said, placing the box on the floorboard at his feet. “I hope Marvin can ID this fish.”
“He’s not going to be happy about how we obtained it. The man is the very essence of scruples when it comes to archaeological protocol. Expect a tongue lashing for what we did lifting the tile from the stone floor in a National Monument.”
By the time they reached Marvin’s, the skies were turning cloudy. Scott pulled into the driveway. Marvin sat on the front porch, slowly rocking in his wicker chair with a newspaper in hand.
“About time,” Marvin quipped as the men climbed from the vehicle.
“What did you expect? Scott was driving,” Curt replied.
Marvin rose from his chair and extended a hand to Curt, who was carrying the shoebox in his left arm. Curt shook the outstretched hand, and Scott followed, giving the professor a hug. When the two men separated, Marvin pointed to the newspaper lying on the rocker.
“Now here’s my definition of an inept terrorist,” he began. “It’s a story about a man who mailed a letter-bomb and was killed when it was returned undelivered.”
The three laughed.
“C’mon inside,” Marvin said, motioning the men.
Scott and Curt followed Marvin into the dining
room where the three sat at the formal table.
“So what brings you to my neck of the woods?” Marvin asked.
Curt gently laid the closed shoebox on the table as Marvin looked on with interest. “Do you have some paper or cloth I can use?”
Marvin’s gaze turned deeply inquisitive. He went into the kitchen and returned momentarily with an old newspaper.
Curt took the newspaper and spread it on the table. He removed the box lid and lifted the skeleton. He carefully placed it on the newspaper directly before Marvin.
“Interesting,” the professor commented.
“Any idea what it is?” Curt said.
Marvin moved closer, studying the small skeleton. “This thing is most unusual. I can’t readily identify it.” He looked up over his glasses. “Where’d it come from?”
Curt cut Scott a furtive glance.
Over the next ten minutes, Curt summarized how Father En’s claim and then Marvin’s information on Subject X had convinced them to revisit the gunpowder magazine at the Castillo. They explained how they found two French words on the ceiling that led them to dislodge one of the stone tiles and find the skeleton.
Marvin listened intently the entire time without speaking.
When they finished, Scott waited for Marvin’s backlash regarding the structural damage they had caused to a national monument. To his surprise, the reprimand did not come.
“So it appears Subject X was French?” Marvin asked.
“Yes, but how could a man survive for more than a day or two in a sealed room?” Scott asked.
Marvin gave Curt a knowing stare. Curt looked back at the professor in resignation. Scott looked from one man to the other and saw the unspoken communication. “What? What are you two not telling me?”
“Scott,” Marvin began, “Curt and I talked this morning at length about creative alternatives to what you guys uncovered. Putting aside logic, if Subject X was a French Huguenot, and if he truly survived incarceration inside the gunpowder magazine for centuries, then we need to consider answers far beyond our current scientific understanding.”
Death in the Beginning (The God Tools Book 1) Page 10