2040 Revelations

by Robert Storey

  ‘I think there’s something under this,’ he said at last, showing Sarah and Trish the scanner’s display screen.

  ‘Another chamber?’ Sarah asked him as she peered over his shoulder for a look.

  ‘No, I’m not sure what it is. The setting it’s on identifies ceramics, so it’s not metal or bone.’

  ‘It’s relatively close to the surface,’ Sarah said, ‘a few feet down. I’ll go grab some tools.’

  Rushing off, she was soon back laden with a couple of shovels and some smaller hand tools, plus a lamp, which she placed on the ground atop a small tripod for elevation.

  After excavating the stone, which didn’t take long, they lifted it up and moved it to one side; it was heavy, but between the three of them they were able to manhandle it well enough.

  A few hours of digging eventually revealed a dense mosaic of interlocking stones. Tightly wedged against each other, the blocks had been adorned with deeply carved hieroglyphs akin to the stelae back in Copán, with a single distinct image formed in their centre.

  ‘Is it me or does that look like the Aztec calendar stone to you?’ Jason said, as they looked down on their discovery.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Sarah said, ‘albeit on a smaller scale.’

  ‘So what’s it doing here made up of Mayan markings?’

  ‘They’re not Mayan,’ Trish told him, ‘they’re Olmec, and by the look of them they could be well over three thousand years old. The fact that they resemble the Aztec design is,’ – she paused, her brow furrowing – ‘disturbing.’

  ‘How so?’ Jason asked her.

  ‘The Olmecs predated the Aztecs by a good two thousand years; for this design to appear here throws up some problematic questions about how the Mesoamerican civilisations interacted with one another.’

  Sarah wasn’t interested in the historical human connotations; she wanted evidence of a far older origin. ‘I think this might be a tomb,’ she said. ‘This looks like a cover stone, don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jason said, ‘but if it is, they weren’t very tall, definitely not of gigantis proportions, anyway.’

  ‘Unless they were curled up in a foetal position,’ Trish suggested.

  He looked sceptical. ‘Hmm, even then—’

  Bending down, Sarah withdrew her trowel. ‘Only one way to find out,’ she said, and placed its blade between a couple of edging stones, before forcing it down with a few strikes from a hammer in an attempt to prise one out. They were well lodged in, however, and refused to budge, but after inserting another trowel, she managed to loosen one. Levering it out with care, she noted its thickness and weight, just under a foot and a good fifteen kilos, a substantial covering by anyone’s book.

  ‘There’s something odd under here,’ Sarah said, as she probed the dirt beneath with her fingers. Using a soft brush she dusted off the loose earth, revealing a shiny substrate. ‘Help me get the rest of these off,’ she said, moving to the next piece.

  It took some time to remove all the blocks and, when the task was finally completed, they retreated from the trench to admire their labour. Below them rested a strange, perfectly smooth, oblong slab. It certainly wasn’t stone, as it had an opalescent sheen to it almost resembling glass, the faint reflection from the branches of a nearby tree just discernable on its surface.

  ‘Not a tomb, then,’ Trish said.

  ‘Well, this explains the signal I got from the scanner,’ Jason said, ‘although it doesn’t look like any ceramic I’ve ever seen before.’

  Sarah dropped back down to run her palm across it. ‘It’s completely uniform – absolutely flat.’

  ‘What the hell is it?’ Jason said, joining her as he too bent down to feel the odd-looking substrate.

  Trish moved to dig around one end to try and expose the bottom edge. ‘Guys, there’s another section here,’ she said, as her trowel met with resistance.

  They worked on the new area for a further half an hour until it was free of soil. ‘It looks like some kind of platform,’ Jason said, looking down at it.

  Sarah had to agree. The new section sat a foot lower than the main object, although the two were clearly connected and of the same material. Their latest discovery was also perfectly square; however, one faultless feature stood out from all the rest – a large sunken circle, positioned in its centre.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Sarah looked at the unearthed circle and instinctively knew what she had to do. Taking off her jacket and laying it on the ground, she sat down on it and removed her shoes and socks.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Trish asked her, curious.

  ‘There’s no hysterical people round here, you know,’ Jason said, also intrigued by her actions.

  ‘It’s a circle,’ she told them by way of explanation.

  ‘Yeah, so what?’ Jason said, clearly not realising her intention.

  She stood up and wiggled her toes in the cold air, a ticklish breeze flowing over them. ‘Where have we seen circles before?’

  ‘The parchments, of course!’ Trish said, catching on.

  ‘You think this is a big version?’ Jason said.

  Sarah grinned at him and stepped onto the circle. The surface felt surprisingly cold on her skin and she padded about on it for a moment as her feet adjusted to the temperature. When she stood in one place she thought she could feel a tingling sensation on the soles of her feet, but it could just have been excitement flushing through her system. Rolling up her sleeves, she then released the smaller pendant from her neck chain and secured it in a zipped trouser pocket, allowing the larger pendant to touch the skin on her chest without interference. ‘Hold my arms,’ she told them.

  Jason took off his left glove and placed his hand on her right arm.

  ‘Trish?’ Sarah said, looking to her friend.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Trish looked at the object they had unearthed with trepidation. ‘We don’t know what it does.’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on, it’ll be fine.’ She gave her friend an encouraging nudge with an elbow. Trish took off her gloves and reluctantly put her right hand on Sarah’s left arm, but as soon as she did so a sensation swept past beneath Sarah’s feet, making her jump.

  Trish snatched her hand away. ‘What’s wrong!?’ she said in alarm.

  ‘Sorry.’ Sarah looked down at the platform. ‘It got warm.’

  ‘What did, the circle?’ Jason asked her.

  ‘No – yes,’ she said in surprise, ‘both, in fact, the circle and the pendant.’ She touched the now cold metal pentagonal disc at her neck. ‘Come on, let’s try again.’

  They put their hands back on her arms and again Sarah felt the pendant and circle heat up. Nothing else happened at first, but as the warmth slowly increased an indistinct glow began to emanate from the larger slab in front of them, gradually increasing in intensity. The three friends looked on mesmerised as the surface shimmered and shifted, and faint colours crept to the fore, swirling and writhing in a myriad of intertwining patterns. Darker shades formed to coalesce in its centre, while light now poured out from the edges. Sarah felt Trish’s fingers slipping off her arm and she caught them with her right hand, keeping them firmly in place. The light show continued to build, then vanished, plunging them into darkness, and a great rush of air blew past them into the sky.

  As their eyes adjusted back to the small single lamp positioned nearby they saw that, where before there had been the ceramic slab, there was now a dark, forbidding hole.

  ‘Give me a torch,’ Sarah said to no one in particular as she looked into the darkness below. A torch appeared under her nose as Jason passed her his. Taking it, she clicked it on and pointed it into the opening. The light revealed a vertical shaft hewn out of the bedrock. Ten feet from the surface a side wall had collapsed inwards, sealing whatever lay beyond it beneath an immovable mass of stone.

  ‘It doesn’t look like it goes anywhere,’ Trish said, disappointed, ‘but this mechanism or door
way is just – well – it’s the crowning glory isn’t it? Who could dispute this?’ She looked to her friends in expectation, waiting for the celebrations to begin. Sarah and Jason, however still peered intently down into the shaft.

  ‘I think there’s a way through.’ Sarah moved around the opening to get a better look. ‘Yes, look, just there, there’s a hole.’

  ‘At the bottom, on the left?’ Jason said, as he moved to Sarah’s side; both were now crouching down.

  ‘Yes, it’s definitely big enough to drop through. We’ll need a rope.’

  ‘On it,’ Jason said, and hurried away towards their camp.

  After putting her socks and shoes back on Sarah didn’t have to wait long for Jason to return. Securing the short rope he gave her to a tree, Sarah lowered herself down inside, while Trish and Jason lit her way. Gaining her footing at the bottom, she withdrew her own torch and investigated the gap in the rocks. Unlike the unstable ceiling in the South African cave, the collapsed wall consisted of hard, dense stone with no signs of loose sediment. Satisfied it wasn’t going anywhere, she switched on her head torch and clambered lower, positioning herself over the hole.

  ‘I’m going through,’ she told them, ‘Jason, get down here and tie me off with the longer rope.’

  Once secured, Sarah was soon dropping into the pitch-black fissure. With Jason ensuring she didn’t fall, Sarah helped herself move into the earth, close packed rock hemming her in on all sides. The stone around her didn’t open up again, as she’d expected, and after a few moments her feet found their way down onto a flat outcrop where water seeped in from an unknown source, soaking the area with a cold dampness. Able to scrunch down into a squat, she illuminated her surroundings. Initially she’d thought she was resting on a stone that blocked her way, but in fact it was a flat surface, the bottom of the shaft.

  Immediately in front of her face the dislodged rock wall, which had fallen to wedge itself against the opposite side of the shaft at her back, angled away down to this horizontal floor, creating a triangular space that led to a letterbox shaped hole. The collapse had reduced what must have been a tunnel to this slit of an entrance, the ceiling left hanging, precariously suspended above.

  ‘I’m at the bottom,’ she called up. ‘I’m taking the rope off and moving in further.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Jason’s voice came back as she unhitched the rope.

  Struggling in the limited space she pulled her shoulders round with difficulty and manoeuvred herself until she lay on her back inside the slot, the water saturating her top and clinging to her skin. The hole was so tight she had to angle her head to the side to stop her face touching the surface above. Thankfully she wasn’t claustrophobic, but even so she had to fight down that telltale sense of panic most people experienced when met with such confined quarters. The fear of not getting back out, of becoming trapped unable to move; tons of rock pinning you down, was powerful, tangible … primal. Forcing her mind to ignore such thoughts and to concentrate on the job in hand, she squirmed her way forwards an inch at a time.

  After what seemed like the length of a football pitch, but in actuality was about forty feet, she broke free. Getting to her feet, she now stood in a large tunnel. From this side it was clear to see that the ceiling had subsided from its original position to create the crawl space she’d just negotiated.

  Bending down, she called back to Jason. ‘I’m through, there’s a big tunnel down here!’

  ‘Great,’ she heard Jason say, ‘I’m coming down. Trish is staying up top to keep an eye on our gear.’

  ‘How are you with really tight spaces?’ she said.

  ‘Fine,’ came the response.

  Ten minutes later Jason was scrambling up alongside her. ‘You weren’t kidding about tight space. I thought I was gonna get stuck at one point.’

  ‘That’s all this paunch,’ she said, giving his stomach a pat.

  Jason looked down at his waist with an aggrieved expression.

  Sarah laughed and slapped him on the arm. ‘Come on, fatty, let’s take a look around.’

  ‘Fatty?!’ he squawked, making Sarah laugh even harder.

  Increasing the power of her torch she noted the tunnel’s high ceiling and the deep cracks throughout its structure. Water dripped in from above, trickling down the walls.

  ‘It goes on for quite a way,’ she said, her voice echoing slightly, ‘and it looks like it slopes down near the end, too.’

  Moving down the passage with Jason at her back, she clambered past a large chunk of rock which had fallen from the ceiling. As they made their way along, Sarah noticed the uneven surfaces of the walls altering, becoming smoother. The layers of different types of rock could still be identified, but they’d been rubbed down and polished. A lot of effort had gone into its construction.

  As they reached the slope, the tunnel took a sharp downwards turn to the left and, after angling the torch, it was apparent they needed to watch their step to keep from slipping over, as the surface glistened with a thin film of flowing water. Sarah weighed up the risks of continuing before deciding it wise to go back and get some more rope and a few supplies to aid their descent. After all, she thought, who knows what lies ahead?

  Retracing their steps, they made their way back through the hole and rejoined Trish, who waited anxiously for them above.

  At the camp they gathered up what they needed, put on more suitable clothing, and headed to the shaft once more. This time, however, Trish followed them in.

  ‘I thought you were going to guard our stuff?’ Jason asked her as she dropped down beside them.

  ‘It’ll be fine, there’s no one around. And anyway,’ she said, grinning, ‘I can’t let you two have all the fun.’

  Jason’s expression turned dubious. ‘It’s really narrow down there. I’m not sure you’ll like it.’

  Trish’s smile faded. ‘You think I can’t do it? That I’m some weak little woman?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, regretting the comment. ‘I know plenty of blokes who wouldn’t want to go down there, either. It is pretty tight.’

  ‘Well, if your lard arse can get through, then mine can.’ She pushed past him to follow Sarah, who had by now disappeared into the hole beneath.

  ‘What is this?’ he said in complaint and pulled up his shirt to look at his stomach. ‘I’m not sodding fat!’

  His complaints fell on deaf ears, however, as Trish had already gone down. ‘I’m not fat,’ he repeated by way of clarification. ‘I just like my food, there’s nothing wrong with that.’ Grumbling to himself, he followed the two women underground.

  ♦

  With all three of them now in the tunnel, they quickly came to the slope where Sarah and Jason had initially turned back.

  ‘Hold onto this,’ Sarah said, handing them the rope and taking one end for herself. Torch in hand, she moved round the corner, splashing through the trickling stream of water, and carefully made her way down the slick incline. Shining the torch ahead, she studied the new section of passageway as it shrank into the distance. ‘It levels out, but I can’t see the end, even with this torch.’

  ‘That’s ten thousand lumens isn’t it?’ Trish said.

  ‘Yeah, it goes a long way,’ Jason told her.

  ‘We’d better get walking then,’ Sarah said, and motioned for them to follow her down.

  After they’d regrouped, a half hour’s walk later they neared the end of the second part of the sodden tunnel, where it branched off in two directions.

  ‘Left or right?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Left,’ Jason said.

  ‘Right,’ Trish replied at the same time.

  ‘Can you two never agree on anything?’ Sarah said, exasperated.

  ‘Eeny meeny it,’ Jason told her.

  ‘Eh?’ Sarah wondered what on earth he was going on about.

  ‘Bloody hell, you must know eeny meeny miny moe,’ Jason said in disbelief.

  ‘Even I know eeny meeny,’ Trish said, piping up from the back.<
br />
  ‘Look, you freaks, I don’t know what sodding eeny meeny is; we’re going left.’ Sarah moved off in that direction.

  ‘Freaks?’ Jason said, as he trailed along behind. ‘Coming from the person who hasn’t heard of eeny meeny, I think that’s a pot kettle black job if ever I heard one.’

  As Jason chuntered on, Sarah pressed ahead, her concentration restored.

  The seemingly unending tunnel continued in a shallow downward slope, and the ever-present water had steadily increased in volume and now ran around their shoes, a small stream bubbling and burbling as it made its way over a less than even surface. The waterlogged path levelled off again as it twisted and turned more and more until they eventually walked, splashing, around a corner to find themselves in an enormous expanse. A massive drop to the left drew their eyes downwards. Far below, a dark waterfall could be seen cascading into a narrow, silky black lake; its faint roar drifting up to the three explorers high above. To the right, their torches highlighted a large cavern filled with stalagmites and stalactites that sought to greet one another to form a single dripstone pillar. But what lay ahead was spectacular, the remnants of a bridge spanning a great chasm.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Trish murmured in amazement as she took in the sight before them.

  Sarah had to agree; it was pretty special. The structure appeared to be a good hundred metres in length by about ten wide. It almost looked like a natural formation; a quick look from one side, however, indicated otherwise. A lack of any kind of natural support hinted that some kind of fabrication was at work. No other features caught the eye except for a tantalising object glinting on the far side. Intrigued, Sarah headed straight for it.

  ‘Sarah, STOP!’ Trish cried out, her voice echoing around the gigantic chamber.

  Sarah froze, her foot in mid-air. In her eagerness she’d let her caution slip, forgetting to watch her step. As she looked down she saw the reason for Trish’s warning, a long rift in the stone cut across her path, cleaving the bridge in two. It wasn’t that wide, perhaps a couple of metres, but considering the drop below she’d have fallen to certain death.