The Lost Book of Wonders

by Chad Brecher

  He took inventory of his squad. The loss of Martin was devastating. He was the computer genius, but what Solomon most needed now were men with good intuition and muscle. He had it in the remaining four members of his team. He looked at the heavily armed men and weighed his options.

  “I’m leaving you two here to watch the entrance.” He nodded to two of the youngest members of his outfit, Bryce and Fredrick. “Watch each other’s back. Remember what those animals did to Martin. The Darkhad have played their hands too early. They’ve lost the element of surprise. Stay sharp and if you see anybody coming this way, take them down. I don’t care if it’s a park ranger or a little green alien. Just shoot.”

  The men nodded silently and tried to hide their apprehension about being left on the desolate perch to face an unseen enemy. Solomon watched as they climbed up onto the outcropping and disappeared from view. He patted Ox on the back and winked at Pieter. “You two are coming with me.” Solomon bent down and unzipped the side of his backpack enough to reveal the Sentex explosives and a number of intricate timer mechanisms within it before zipping the bag up and slinging it over his shoulder.

  “Ox, you lead the way,” Solomon ordered and watched as the bear-like man gripped the rope suspended into the hole. With a grunt, Ox began to climb down into the darkness. Within several seconds the rope relaxed and Solomon peered into the hole. He could see the bald man holding up the green stick.

  “Ready when you are,” Ox bellowed with a smile.

  Alex felt unsettled as Solomon motioned with his flashlight for the rest to queue up by the rope.

  Solomon bit his fingernail as Alex dangled his feet into the hole and seized the rope. He reached down and tightly gripped Alex’s wrist for a moment.

  “Professor, this better be worth all the trouble,” Solomon muttered.

  Alex caught a glimpse of Clay as he began to wiggle awkwardly down the rope. He could see a twinkle in Clay’s eye and could almost read his mind — we are walking in the footsteps of Polo…all the way to the gates of Paradise.

  Ellie looked up at the sky above her as her boots swung free of the rope. A thick fog was settling over the mountainside and she struggled to see the blue sky through the gray mist. She dug her fingernails into the rope and steadied herself. She could hear the wind howl a final time — an eerie wail of deep foreboding, a banshee’s scream. She tried to shake off a growing sense of uneasiness the further she descended along the rope. She had never felt out of place on an archeological dig, but as her feet made contact with the hard ground below she realized what bothered her most. Here they were…trespassers…interlopers.

  She blindly reached in front of her and walked forward like a lumbering zombie. She bumped up against Clay’s back. She could see up ahead in the darkness the bouncing beam of a flashlight. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized that they had entered a long dank tunnel that was carved deep into the side of Burkhan Khaldun. Despite the light provided by the two flashlights, the tunnel remained disquietingly dark and still. She took a deep breath and found the air stale and cold — tomblike. Ellie drew her jacket tightly against her body in a fruitless attempt to ward off the cold. She could see her breath float in front of her face and drift away.

  Phillip shined the flashlight along the ceiling and walls of the tunnel and paused upon spotting an unlit torch resting in an iron holder fastened to the wall. He pulled the torch free with a vigorous tug and withdrew a small metallic lighter from the pocket of his pants. With the snap of the lighter, a blue flame danced in front of him as he struggled to light the torch. With a whoosh, the torch ignited, filling the tunnel with a flickering orange and red light.

  “Nice torch. Now I feel like a real explorer, china — a real Alan Quartermain,” Solomon said as he released his hold of the rope and stepped into the tunnel.

  Ellie examined her surroundings more closely. They were in a stone-walled tunnel that was at least ten meters across. The ceiling loomed high above, nearly twenty meters. The walls were gray and monotonous in the dark but gave off an incandescent sparkle when the light hit them.

  Phillip held aloft the torch and advanced further into the tunnel while Ox cautiously trained his gun ahead. Alex ran his finger across the surface of the wall and pulled away. The stone was cold and damp.

  “Look at this!” Phillip urged.

  The group gathered around him as he waved the torch in front of a portion of the wall.

  “It’s some kind of writing.”

  Ellie pushed forward until she was next to Phillip. Etched into the stone surface was an assortment of symbols. Lines, arrows, circles, and pictograms filled the wall from floor to ceiling.

  “I don’t recognize the language,” Ellie announced. She pointed at the symbols. “It has elements of cuneiform, but it’s a totally different language. This is amazing. Cuneiform is one of the oldest known forms of written human expression in the world. The Sumerians were writing cuneiform back in 3000 B.C.” She turned to Alex, her eyes filled with excitement. “What if this predates cuneiform? This could be from a culture that preceded the Sumerians. This could be the greatest linguistic finding since…since…the Rosetta Stone? We need to study this.”

  “There’ll be time enough for that. This is not why we are here,” Phillip impatiently answered, and waved the torch in the air.

  Alex walked along the wall and knelt down. “This is interesting.” He focused on a series of images painted across the bottom of the wall. It seemed to tell the story of a man wounded in battle who is found by his comrades. Two men appeared to lift the injured man into the air, carry him to the base of a giant tree, and prop him up against the tree. They retrieve a white leaf, which is ground up in a bowl and feed it to the wounded man. The final image showed the man hunting, apparently healed and whole once again.

  “I get the story, but it’s no apple,” Jonas said.

  “That’s what Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge. You’re getting your trees of the Bible mixed up,” Clay scolded. “This is the healing tree…the Tree of Life.” He turned to Alex, glowing. “Alex, we are so close. I can feel it in my bones.” Clay patted Alex on the back and left him kneeling by the wall. Alex glanced back at Clay and wondered if the man was not crazy after all.

  “We need to keep moving,” Phillip urged and advanced further down the tunnel, leaving Ellie, exasperated, behind. As the light gradually faded from the walls, the carvings were swallowed piecemeal by the darkness.

  “Just a little bit longer,” Ellie protested.

  Alex rose and followed Phillip down into the shadowy tunnel. With each step forward, Phillip’s torch illuminated farther and farther into the passage ahead. He could see the man pause and lift the torch high in the air.

  “Uh…Ellie…you may just want to pace yourself,” Alex nearly whispered.

  “What’s that?” Ellie replied. She shook her head back and forth, displeased with the group’s willingness to simply pass by the intricate carvings in the wall. Ellie pushed past Alex and stopped.

  “Take a look for yourself,” Alex muttered behind her as if in a trance.

  “Wow,” was all Ellie could muster.

  The walls and ceilings of the tunnel were completely covered with writing. Though at first overwhelming, it soon became clear as they neared the wall that the writing etched into the stone surface consisted of four repeating pictograms.

  “What does it mean?” asked Phillip. He looked at Ellie. She frowned.

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t know. It’s obviously a word of some importance. Maybe it’s a meditative word or a blessing.”

  “Or a curse,” Jonas snickered.

  Phillip slowly advanced down the tunnel, peering up at the ceiling and down along the walls. The writing was so intricate and uniform it reminded him of an Arabesque mosaic. As the flame of the torch flickered back and forth, the dark edges of the etching appeared fluid, as if ripples in water drifting to and fro. He felt giddy at the sight, turned back to the rest of
the group, and walked backwards for several steps.

  “It makes you feel like you are in the presence of God himself,” Phillip said with a queasy-looking smile.

  “If these etchings are as old as they appear, you might want to say gods,” Ellie responded. “Monotheism is a relatively new phenomenon. Much of human history was polytheistic and much more was simply animistic. Everyday objects of nature had souls and spirits — rocks, rivers, mountains… trees. Worship was not necessarily directed at a single being but at life-forces that occupied all parts of this earth.”

  Alex thought of what the Mongolian guide had said about the significance of Burkhan Khaldun — that it was close to the spirit of the world. As Alex walked through the tunnel, the writings seemed to swirl. He felt that he was traveling back in time, back to the beginning of things as they once were. Is this what Polo felt? he wondered.

  “Well, I for one am not ready to worship a rock,” Phillip responded with a chuckle and turned around. As he pivoted, two twisted faces stared back at him from out of the blackness.

  Phillip jumped back with a startle, knocking into Ox who sent off a round from his gun into the ground with a ping. The sound echoed throughout the tunnel. Phillip regained his composure as the light from the torch flickered back and forth in his shaking hand.

  “Oh for Christ-sakes,” Solomon wailed. He walked by Phillip and snatched the torch from his trembling hands. “They’re a bunch of statues, you baby. They’re not going to bite you.”

  He held up the torch to reveal two stone statues at the end of the tunnel. The two statues were nearly seven feet tall and framed each side of a door-like rectangular slab of stone like mirror images. The statues were of bull-like creatures reared up on their hind legs as if in anger. Stone wings sprouted from each side of the torso of the beasts and shot up towards the ceiling of the tunnel like tongues of fire. The hands appeared hoofed like those of a horse. The hand closest to the center of the tunnel held aloft an unlit torch. The hands closest to the wall were fused to the stone surface like a bas-relief.

  Solomon brought the torch closer to the face of one of the statues. The face was strangely human-like but contorted and grotesque like a gargoyle.

  “It’s the Cherubim,” Ellie whispered.

  “These are the feared guardians of the Garden of Eden…stone statues?” Phillip asked incredulously.

  “I thought cherubs were those cute little baby angels. These guys are pretty ugly if you ask me.” Jonas squinted at the statue closest to him.

  “It’s a common misconception, I’m afraid,” Ellie answered. “Those fat baby angels who seem to float weightlessly are actually called putti. In the Bible, the Cherubim are the guardians of the gates of the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, God placed the Cherubim at the gates to prevent humanity from re-entering. They are not meant to be cute or cuddly. They are powerful beings whose purpose is to act as a deterrent. Of course there is some historical basis for Cherubim in the Bible. The idea of the Cherub likely comes from ancient storm gods — forces of nature…powerful beings who were entrusted to protect a sacred site.”

  “Like an alarm system,” Solomon responded.

  “…of Biblical proportions,” Clay added and peered at the statues suspiciously.

  Ellie pointed to each of the statues flanking the end of the tunnel. “The way the statues are positioned, it calls to mind the shedu of the Sumerians — bull-like creatures with wings that were placed beside entranceways in palaces and houses to protect what was inside from…”

  “From what?” Solomon asked.

  “…intruders,” Ellie replied with a distracted look. She squatted and examined the ground in front of the statues. There were small diamond-like gems fastened into the stone surface of the ground. They glistened in the light of the torch.

  “This is it!” Phillip exclaimed. “This is the end of the tunnel. We need to open that door.” He walked across the square on the ground and approached the far end of the tunnel. The stone slab was taller than a man and appeared to be constructed of white marble with green veins running through it. Phillip pushed his shoulder against it and grunted. He placed the palms of his hands against the surface of the marble and tried to pull it aside like a sliding door. Alex watched as the back of his neck turned beet-red.

  Solomon sighed, looked at Ox, and flicked his head in the direction of the laboring man. “Ox, see if you can get that thing open, will you?”

  Alex watched as Ox slipped his semi-automatic gun from around his shoulder, leaned it against the base of one of the statues, and clapped his hands together like a weightlifter. He walked between the Cherubim and tapped Phillip on the shoulder.

  “Please, Sir. Step aside,” he bellowed and motioned for the older man to back away. Phillip nodded and walked back to the group mumbling, “…it’s not budging.”

  “Ox, how about more light?” Solomon asked rhetorically and approached the statues, holding the torch high in the air. He tilted the torch and brought the flame up against each of the dry torches held by the Cherubim. The end of the tunnel was suddenly illuminated in a fierce light.

  Ox began to push against the marble slab. They could hear a strange sizzle, followed by a whooshing noise. Solomon held up his hand to silence the group.

  “Do you hear that? Ox, are you doing that?” Solomon asked. Ox looked back, shrugged, and leaned further into the marble slab.

  The whooshing noise grew louder. Alex reached out, grabbed Ellie’s wrist, and tentatively took a step back. The flames dancing atop the torches held in the hands of the Cherubim lit up the faces of the stone beasts. The eyes of the statues glowed a brilliant scarlet and sparkled like jewels. Beyond the sound of the whooshing noise, he could hear something that sounded like a rope stretching taut. With a sense of panic, he thought back to what Polo had written in the fourth book: I finally approached the gates of the garden and saw the flaming eyes of the cherubs. I stopped… the fiery sword…

  “Wait! Stop!” Alex blurted out just as the Cherubim’s eyes appeared to pulsate a blinding red light.

  Suddenly a screech erupted from each of the statues. Alex could see two crescent blades shoot out from each wall, slice through the flames of the torches held by each Cherubim, and nearly instantaneously retract into the opposite wall. Ox’s body remained upright for a moment before crashing to the floor. His decapitated head rolled backwards and settled between Phillip’s legs. Phillip jumped back in disgust. Ellie nervously peered at an irregular spot of red that was left on the white marble door.

  “Holy shit!” Solomon exclaimed and placed his hands on his knees as if out of breath. He looked at the headless body slumped awkwardly against the far wall.

  Phillip turned around in stunned silence and looked at the rest of the group with horror. A spray of blood speckled his face. He frantically wiped away the blood with the back of his hand.

  Solomon held up his right hand and regained his composure. “Calm down everyone,” he softly murmured. “Everyone just calm down!” he roared. He tentatively approached Ox’s head resting between the two Cherubim. With the tip of his boot against Ox’s right ear, he flicked the head aside. The head bounced over to the side of the tunnel, wobbled for a moment, and finally settled against the wall. Ox’s eyes remained opened and fixed in surprise. Solomon drove his fist against the wall in frustration.

  “What do we do now?” Phillip asked.

  Solomon glared at Alex. “Well, there has to be a way past these Cherubim. How do we do it, Professor?”

  Alex peered at Ox’s headless body and apprehensively swallowed. His throat was painfully dry.

  “I don’t know,” Alex replied.

  “What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?”

  “I mean, I don’t know.”

  Solomon looked away in anger. Phillip tapped Solomon on the shoulder. “You have explosives, don’t you? Can’t you blow apart that door?”

  Solomon slapped the wall with the palm
of his hand. “See this wall? These walls are made of Kimberlite. I happen to know a few things about it. My father ran a diamond mine back in Kimberly. Crack through this in the wrong way with explosives and you’ll release natural gas and then boom! If we are lucky, we may just cave in part of the tunnel. At worst we could be shot out of this tunnel like a cork. That said, I may be willing to take the risk if the Professor can’t figure this one out.”

  Ellie gripped Alex’s hand. “I’m not too eager to test the explosive thing out. There has to be a way to open that door. We can figure this out.” She looked into Alex’s eyes with determination.

  “You two start figuring it out then,” Solomon commanded. He turned to Pieter. “Go check on Bryce and Frederick outside, will you? Make sure they’re alright. This could take a while.”

  79

  Pieter slung the gun over his shoulder and pulled on the rope to make sure it was secure. Satisfied, he jumped a short distance, gripped the rope, and dug the heel of his boots against a knot formed in the rope. He shimmed his body quickly up and peered at the hole looming above. The fog that was just beginning to roll across the side of the mountain when they had first descended was now significantly thicker. Bryce and Frederick must be having a hell of a time seeing anything in this soup. They must be scared shitless, Pieter thought as he pulled himself the final way over the lip of the hole. With a quick motion, he sprang to his feet and slipped the gun from his shoulder.

  The excavated pit was eerily still. He called out to his compatriots and listened intently, but no answer was returned. He could feel the muscles in the back of his neck tense in response to the silence. This is not good. He climbed slowly out of the pit and onto the outcropping. The mist was disorienting. He immediately felt lost in the monotonous gray haze and struggled to see one foot ahead of him.

  “Bryce…Frederick? You guys alright?”

  Pieter trudged cautiously forward, the barrel of his gun blindly trained ahead into the mist. The wind began to whistle and as it died down, he could hear a soft flapping noise. As the fog momentarily began to dissipate in front of him, Pieter could see a long, silver spear driven into the hard ground of Burkhan Khaldun. An array of horsehair was tied to the shaft of the Spirit Banner, and he watched as the hair flapped back and forth. He slowly maneuvered around the spear as the air before him darkened once again. His index finger curled around the trigger of his gun as he moved carefully across the outcropping in silence. The tip of his boot suddenly struck a soft object and he squatted beside it, his gun braced against his flank, ready to fire. The mist floated above the ground, and as he lowered his body towards the surface the air became clearer. He could see the twisted forms of Bryce and Frederick splayed out side-by-side on the ground before him. He reached out and ran his fingers across their necks and found them pulseless and cold.