End in the Beginning (The God Tools Book 3)

by Gary Williams

  Curt eased down the long wall, examining the dowels. When he reached the end, he rose, turned, and went to the opposite wall. He knelt again. “Huh, same holes here, but no wooden rods.”

  Fawn inspected the two shorter walls at the ends. “There’re no dowels or holes in these walls.”

  Curt dug through a pile of chalky dust at the base of the low wall. He sniffed his finger and recoiled.

  “I told you,” Fawn commented.

  He faced Fawn with a bleak expression.

  “What?”

  Curt stood, holding something in his hand. He showed it to her.

  Fawn couldn’t identify the substance. At first, she thought it was a collection of fibers, but it was too long, too inconsistent. “What is that?”

  “Hair.” Curt regarded the ceiling. “This wasn’t a church. This was a sacrificial temple.”

  Fawn felt a cold chill rise up her back. “A sacrificial temple? Are you sure?”

  “The Aztecs had a device similar to this for human offerings.” His eyes lit up as if he recalled some buried knowledge.

  “What?”

  “It’s…this is remarkable if it’s true.”

  “If what’s true?”

  “Several years ago, the memoirs of a man came to light, found hidden in the walls of a turn-of-the-century house in Arkansas. The man, Phinean Steerman, died in early 1920 at the age of ninety-six. At the time of his passing, he had long since developed dementia, and most of his memoirs were unfocused ramblings recounting his life, from his birth in 1826 through the early 1900s. Of particular interest to historians was that he talked of being a laborer involved with the building of an unnamed military structure on United States soil, although he remained unclear as to exactly where or when this had occurred. The fascinating, if not crazy, part of his story is that he mentioned an underground chamber discovered during construction. The chamber contained evidence of an Aztec structure and occupation. According to Steerman, documentation was found in the chamber which suggested Spaniards in the 1500s had shanghaied fifty Aztec men to work on an undermanned ship to sail back to Spain as they looted gold from the Mesoamerican people. Once at sea, the Aztecs used their superior numbers to mutiny and seize control of the ship, but it shipwrecked on an island where they built the underground sacrificial temple, slowly sacrificing each Spaniard on board: some two dozen in all. As part of the haul, the Spaniards had stolen treasure from the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, but Steerman said none was found when the Aztec chamber was discovered. The sacrifices were done to appease the gods for an unnamed item taken from the pyramid. Steerman mentioned that his commander had them build a secret access to the underground Aztec sacrificial temple in case it ever had to be used for hiding in the event the military post was overrun by the enemy.

  “Although wildly fascinating, authorities considered Steerman’s memoirs a work of fiction. While sections were concise and lucid, other parts were scattered, incongruent thoughts. Based on the Spanish shipping routes from Mexico to Spain via the Gulf Stream, though, the viable locations were the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico and the east side of Florida, so I’d say Mr. Steerman’s account was spot on after all.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “So where’s the sword?” Fawn asked.

  “Well,” Curt said as he raised his lantern higher, “that’s a good question.”

  “What if the builders of Fort Clinch, maybe even Steerman himself, already found it?”

  “I don’t think so. The text from the scroll has been accurate and seems to apply to the present. If it says the third Tool is here, then it’s here. You search that side of the room,” he pointed right, “and I’ll check this side. Examine the benches and walls. My guess is that it’s secured but can be accessed. Look for outlines in the rock that suggest an opening.”

  Fawn did as instructed, moving up and down the benches on her side until she had scrutinized each one. She then went to the side wall, roving the light back and forth, but found no lines to indicate the wall was anything but solid. Nearly twenty minutes passed. “Maybe it’s in the outer corridor where the images are?”

  Curt spun toward her then wheeled to his left, toward the front of the room. His attention seemed to shift focus.

  “What?” Fawn asked.

  Silently, Curt walked toward the narrow pulpit. Fawn joined him.

  “If this is a sacrificial chamber, there’s no need for a pulpit,” Curt stated.

  “You think the sword’s inside this?”

  Curt didn’t respond. He had already knelt to examine the four-foot-tall, eighteen-inch-square rectangular block. He rose smiling. “I found an opening.”

  Fawn saw a rectangular cutout that ran just inside the perimeter of the rear of the stand.

  “I need something to wedge into this groove.” Curt patted his pants and pulled the Indian arrowhead from his pocket. “My lucky rabbit’s foot,” he said, showing the relic to Fawn. Curt angled the point of the arrowhead into the horizontal groove on top. When it caught in the lip, he leveraged against the outer stone and pried. The front facing gave way at the top, yet remained hinged at the bottom of the stand. Fawn raised her lantern to reveal the tantalizing gleam of a gold object fitted within the stone slot.

  Curt started to reach in, but Fawn grabbed his arm. “Wait. If this is truly a God Tool, we don’t know what triggers its creature form. It could activate by human touch like the Staff.”

  “If there’s one thing I’m certain of, none of these three Tools have the same characteristic. I doubt that either water or touch will turn this thing into an aggressive bird.”

  She let go reluctantly. Curt reached for the handle then stopped. “Well, I’m relatively certain they each have unique traits.” Curt drew in a deep breath and exhaled. He reached forward and touched the gold pommel at the end. Fawn breathed easier once it became apparent this thing was unfazed by human touch. Slowly, Curt slipped his fingers onto the grip and pulled the sword. The weapon released, accompanied by the elegant acoustic of precious metal slipping from its scabbard, the wide guard, fuller blade, and finally the point pulled from its masonry case. It was a magnificent sword unlike any Fawn had ever seen. Bathed in yellow gold from end to end, it reflected light brilliantly. The blade was pristine with a mirror-like shine.

  Curt carefully laid it on the ground before them. “Remarkable,” he said in awe.

  “Wow…a sword that belonged to an angel,” Fawn spoke in a reverent tone.

  A shuffling noise near the back of the room caused her to jump. In unison, she and Curt held their lanterns high to spread light. Fawn nearly screamed when she saw a figure ambling up the center aisle. The features took form. Before them was a haggard-looking female with blonde hair. As the woman moved farther into the light, Fawn recognized her.

  “Lindsey? My God, Lindsey!” Fawn ran down the aisle, gripping her friend in an embrace. “What are you doing here? What happened to you?” Fawn pulled away.

  Lindsey was sobbing. Dirt and makeup streamed down her face, and her cheeks were bruised and swollen.

  Curt came up behind the two women.

  “Lindsey, what happened? Where have you been?”

  “All excellent questions,” a male voice reached them as the bald man entered the room. He was followed by a behemoth of a man.

  As the two men approached, Fawn saw that the bald man had a gun leveled at them in one hand. In the other, he held a thick, black sack.

  Last summer she had almost been killed in the room on the first underground level. Now, it appeared death was getting a second crack at her underneath Fort Clinch. Her blood turned to ice.

  “While we did send some bullets your way on the river, we haven’t been properly introduced,” the bald man began. “I’m Carr Nash. This is my colleague, Jed Rassle.”

  Rassle sneered down at Fawn and patted a long, sheathed knife at his side. His clothes were tattered, his arms and face full of scrapes. It must have been a real struggle for the big man to pass through the na
rrow tunnel.

  “Cult of the End,” Curt responded.

  Nash offered a wry smile. “You got me. I can’t deny it. I now know you’re Dr. Curt Lohan, an asshole archaeologist.” Nash focused back on Fawn. “Ah, yes, and this is the reporter causing us all this trouble.”

  Nash reached out and pulled Lindsey McSweet away from Fawn. The woman made no attempt to break free. Fawn caught a brief glimpse of a strange design, a tattoo perhaps, on Nash’s forearm.

  Fawn welled with anger, “Leave her alone.”

  Nash only laughed. Abruptly, he struck Lindsey in the face with the butt of the pistol, sending her sprawling over a pew.

  Curt took a step past Fawn as if to intercede, but Rassle pulled the long hunting knife from the sheath, and Nash aimed the gun back at him. Curt stopped in his tracks, hands spread in supplication.

  “Dr. Lohan, I commend you,” Nash began. “We’ve been listening for a while. I overheard your assessment and agree: this must be the underground Aztec sacrificial temple that Phinean Steerman mentioned. I read his memoirs myself some number of years ago when I, too, was an archaeologist. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  Curt didn’t respond.

  Fawn watched Lindsey McSweet groggily rise to her feet. She sat on the pew, holding her face as blood dripped from a new gash on her cheekbone.

  “How did you find us?” Curt asked.

  “I had been unable to solve the Scroll of Edict text to locate the third God Tool. Then two of our members, Jason Goss and his girlfriend, here,” Nash pointed to Lindsey, “tried to help in their own stupid way.”

  Fawn couldn’t believe what Nash had just said. Could Lindsey have been a member of this maniacal cult?

  Nash spoke to Fawn. “You had a conversation last year with Lindsey about a discovery in Fort Clinch, and although you didn’t divulge everything, you did mention something about the four black bricks in the wall.”

  It was true. Fawn had been bound by authorities not to discuss the location or how to access the underground room for fear others might try. Yet Fawn had mentioned in a phone conversation with her reporter friend from Tallahassee that she’d been inside Fort Clinch and had found a hidden room, and in the room, there was a wall with four black bricks. That was all. She had not given Lindsey any information on where the room was or how it was accessed.

  Nash went on, “Lindsey told her boyfriend, Jason—or more appropriately, the late Jason Goss—that the information you mentioned about the four black bricks meshed perfectly with the text from the Scroll of Edict.

  “Now, why these two idiots didn’t just come and tell me, I’ll never know. I suspect Lindsey didn’t want me to abduct and torture you for the information. So they carried out a plan in secret. Lindsey mailed you the text as if they were her notes for a story and something had happened to her. She figured it would raise your curiosity, and you would also recognize the text regarding the third Tool, which would lead you here inside Fort Clinch. They would follow you, and you would eventually lead them to the four black squares. They’d retrieve the third Tool, and you’d be left unharmed. Alas, while it wasn’t a bad plan in itself, if they had told me what they knew earlier, we could have saved time. Besides,” Nash stared hard at Fawn, “you linked up with Lohan and that CIA agent, Tolen. All of this created undue disruption to our cause.”

  Fawn still had difficulty accepting that Lindsey was involved in all this and had deceived her with fake notes. The only redeeming part of Lindsey’s plot was that she had tried to do so in order to keep Fawn safe. Still, she felt so stupid, so gullible, at the ease with which Lindsey and her boyfriend had manipulated her.

  To the side, Lindsey had been crying ceaselessly since Nash referred to her boyfriend as the late Jason Goss. No doubt, Nash or Rassle had killed him. Nash directed venom toward Lindsey. “Enough of your incessant sobbing.”

  Lindsey’s crying stopped, although she was still sniffing, and she squinted up at Nash with indescribable fear in her eyes. Fawn felt her own stomach roll.

  The stern features on Nash’s face softened with effort. “You know, it actually did work. You’ve led us here, and you even found the sword for us.”

  Lindsey began to weep openly once again.

  Without hesitation, still focused on Fawn and Curt, Nash swung the pistol to the side and pulled the trigger twice. The deafening gunfire echoed in the enclosure. Fawn cringed and covered her ears as Lindsey McSweet slumped silently to the hard floor, blood spilling from her chest. She grabbed her chest and convulsed. She moaned briefly and then her body went still.

  Fear gripped Fawn like a vice. She was torn between whatever compassion she still felt for her old friend, and the horror of her own mortal predicament.

  To her surprise, Nash holstered the weapon under his arm. “That cleans up that mess.”

  Curt stood by Fawn’s side speechless. He appeared just as stunned as she was by the nonchalant way in which Nash had executed Lindsey.

  “Hold them here while I get the sword,” Nash said to Rassle.

  The big man nodded and re-gripped the long knife as if he were prepared to use it. The shimmering steel of the blade glinted in the dim light, casting ghostly images on the wall to the right. Nash walked over to the pulpit, reached down, and raised the sword. He slowly placed the Tool inside the thick, dark sack and tied the end. Then he contemplated the rectangular cut-out in the floor behind the pulpit. Silently he smiled, as if admiring the workmanship.

  “Mr. Rassle, please bring them here,” Nash called.

  With resignation, Fawn and Curt marched silently up the aisle and around the pulpit to where Nash stood.

  Nash grinned sardonically. “As I said, in a former life, like you, I was an archaeologist. I spent extensive time in Mexico studying Aztec history. As you noted, this room was a sacrificial chamber, and this,” he pointed down to the recessed area, “was where the human sacrifices of the Spanish occurred. You can see the remnants of what’s left of their bones, now dust, heaped around the edges.

  “Are you aware how this device worked?” Nash asked as he motioned for Curt to get into the pit.

  Curt complied, stepping into the depressed area. “Yes, the human sacrifice would lie down in this area. Then thick wooden rods, carved from trees, were fed through the holes in the side of this wall, and stretched all the way across until they locked into the holes on the other side. This created an impenetrable barrier, like the bars of a jail cell, by which the unfortunate person was trapped underneath as he lay flat on the floor looking up. Then slowly, using a system of weights and pulleys, most likely hidden behind the wall, a matching, heavy slab of rock was slowly lowered from the ceiling.”

  Fawn’s gaze was drawn upward and, for the first time, saw the outline of the large rectangular slab pressed into the ten-foot-high ceiling.

  “Correct,” Nash said following her gaze. “The slab above is slightly smaller in dimension than the area below. The restrained victim could only watch and wait for the slab to slowly fall. When it reached the wooden rods, the wood was crushed, but by that time, the slab had already sealed the enclosure. Then, as if in a large casket with a seven-ton lid compressing down, the victim was pulverized—skin, organs, even bones.”

  Fawn shuddered at the thought.

  “I have an idea,” Nash said with an uncomfortable exuberance. “Let’s test this thing out, if for no other reason than to ensure the Deliverer is disposed of.”

  She felt her stomach knot.

  “You can’t be serious,” Curt growled.

  Nash handed his gun to Rassle, who aimed at Curt and Fawn.

  “In the pit,” Nash ordered Fawn.

  Terror flooded Fawn’s body. “Curt?” she pleaded in a trembling voice, as if begging him to do something to save them.

  “Do what he says,” Curt whispered back.

  “Yes, do what he says,” Nash mocked. “Oh, and toss me your cell phones. In case there is any reception down here, we don’t need you calling 911.”

  T
hey both complied, tossing their phones at Nash. Fawn joined Curt in the depression. She could barely breathe. So this was going to be how her life and the life of her unborn child ended.

  Carr Nash studied the stand that had held the sword. “It’s got to be here somewhere….ah yes, here it is…on the ground.”

  Fawn looked at Curt in desperation. He seemed to be concentrating on something. “Curt?” she asked again. Her mouth went dry.

  “Lay down, Fawn,” Curt said softly.

  Fighting an urge to run and let that monster of a man end her life with a bullet, she nervously eased to the ground, as did Curt. It was terrifying to think she was lying in the spot where so many men had suffered horrific deaths.

  “Very good,” Nash said. “Now stay on your back and don’t move. I just hope the wooden dowels are still intact.”

  Fawn gazed up at the massive rectangular stone slab set into the ceiling above wondering if the device would really come down and crush them to death. “Curt, what the hell are we going to do?” Fawn whispered.

  In her peripheral view, Fawn saw Nash move his hand before hearing a muffled click.

  “Stay perfectly still,” Curt said.

  Wooden rods shot across her face so fast, she barely reacted. Frantic, Fawn craned her head several inches and saw they were trapped. The thick wooden dowels had come from the side wall and extended across, locking into the holes in the far wall just as Curt said they would. This shallow rectangular hold had just become their coffin.

  A soft rumble was followed by the groan of rock scraping against rock. Fawn’s thoughts clouded with fresh fear. She tried to swallow, but found only a dry lump to choke down. Above, the slab began to lower from its nest within the ceiling.

  Again, in her peripheral view, something caught her eye. With only a few inches clearance, she turned her head. She watched as Nash leaned down and picked up the dark sack.