Cryptid Quest: A Supernatural Thriller (The John Decker Supernatural Thriller Series Book 8)

by Anthony M. Strong

  “Perfect.” Weatherby felt his spirits lift for the first time since they’d set out that morning. “What are we waiting for, then?”

  Granger didn’t reply. He turned back to the trail and motioned for the others to fall in and follow him. Then he set off again through the jungle with Darren Yates at his side, machetes hacking and chopping as they went.

  They continued for another hour. There was little conversation now. After such an arduous journey, they were all tired and thirsty. Later, as night fell, the temperature would drop by twenty degrees, but right now the tropical heat was taking its toll. At one point, they stopped to allow a snake to cross their path. A five-hundred-pound green anaconda longer than a bus. Which meant they weren’t too far from water, probably a tributary of the jungle’s namesake river. On land the snake was ponderous, but still deadly enough that the entire group held their breath as it slithered on its way. The bulging lump near the snake’s head was the only reason it ignored them. It wasn’t hungry.

  When the danger passed, they moved again. They continued for another hour, everyone more on edge after their brief encounter with the gargantuan snake. Then, as they drew close to the fortress identified during their lidar sweeps, the ground abruptly fell away as if a giant hand had reached out and scooped a chunk out of the earth.

  The group came to a stumbling halt.

  The forest floor ended ahead of them in a jagged, rocky drop. A precipice that ran for miles in each direction and fell a hundred feet straight down before disappearing into the canopy of trees populating the tropical basin spread out below them. To their left, a waterfall crashed over the edge and tumbled out of sight.

  “A cliff,” Weatherby said in awe. “A freaking cliff face in the middle of the Amazon.”

  “It doesn’t look like there’s a way around. We’ll have to go over and down if we want to continue,” Granger said, studying the terrain.

  “And how are we going to do that?” Weatherby stayed a safe distance from the edge. “I don’t see a trail leading down there, do you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. We came prepared.” Vance was already filming again, capturing the wide sweep of the forest below, and the impressive scale of the cliff to use for filler shots, known as B roll, later. “This is why we brought rope.”

  “Hell, no.” Weatherby looked green. “Not in a million years. You know I’m afraid of heights.”

  “Some adventurer, you are,” Vance snickered.

  “I’m an audio technician, not a mountaineer. I make sure the mics are working and we get lots of nice animal noises for the B roll. Did you forget that?”

  “You ever wonder if you chose the wrong production to work on,” Vance asked.

  “That’s enough, both of you,” Granger said. “Everyone’s going down. No excuses. We need our audio technician at the bottom of that cliff with the rest of us, not trembling with fear up here.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be fun. I promise.” Yates glanced toward the nervous audio technician.

  “Fun for you, maybe.” Weatherby didn’t look convinced.

  “Come on, suck it up, you’re with the big boys now,” Yates shot back, eyes alight with excitement. He clapped his hands. “What are we waiting for, people? Let’s break out that climbing gear. And keep the camera rolling too. I want close-ups as I go over. This is gold. Pure gold.”

  2

  It took over an hour to get the entire team and all their gear down the cliff and onto the forest floor below. With the climb behind them, the group wasted no time moving on. Once darkness fell, they wouldn’t be able to continue. No one wanted to camp a second night before reaching the fortress. Evan Granger and Darren Yates took the lead once again, their machetes whipping back and forth to clear a path. After a few miles of torturous going, they stopped to rest and passed water bottles around.

  “The forest feels different down here,” Yates said, taking a deep swig from his canteen. “Did you notice that?”

  “I feel it too,” Elijah Silverman, the team’s cryptozoologist, agreed.

  “And me.” Cassie nodded. “It’s quieter.”

  “No Birdsong,” Weatherby said. “And I don’t hear any monkeys in the trees.”

  “No insects either,” said Yates.

  “Creepy.” Cassie looked up toward the dense canopy of branches above them. “I’ve never been in a forest this silent.”

  “Almost like the jungle’s holding its breath,” Weatherby glanced around nervously, as if expecting something with big teeth to emerge from the surrounding foliage. “It’s not right.”

  Granger held a calming hand up. “All right, people. Let’s not give ourselves the heebie-jeebies. Keep all that good stuff for the camera.”

  “You want to have the conversation over again, boss?” Michael Vance asked, reaching for his camera. “It’ll be great footage, especially for the trailers.”

  “Shame you didn’t get it the first time.” Granger looked miffed. “All right, everyone. Let’s wind it back a minute and say it all a second time for the viewers at home. Brownie points for whoever hams it up the most.”

  “Do brownie points equate to real-world dollars in our paychecks?” Asked Weatherby.

  “You wish.” Granger looked at his watch, a Bell & Ross military style chronograph gifted him by the network at the end of season five. “I won’t fire you though, how about that?”

  “You’re all heart.” Weatherby fell in with the others, and they repeated their earlier exchange, this time with a little more panache. The cameraman gave a thumbs up once the rehashed conversation was done, and the group continued upon their way.

  As they walked, the forest remained eerily quiet. The fortress was less than a mile away now, but they still could not see it. The dense jungle vegetation covered everything in a thick carpet of green leaves and twisting vines that reduced visibility to only a few feet ahead. Which was why they didn’t notice the obelisk until they were right upon it.

  “What is that?” Cassie asked, spotting the strange and out-of-place object first.

  “I don’t believe this,” Yates said. He rushed forward and pulled foliage from the twenty-foot-tall stone monolith to expose the carved surface beneath. “There’s writing here.”

  “Is this what the lidar picked up?” Weatherby asked.

  “No. It’s much too small.” Cassie joined Yates and together they uncovered more of the towering needlelike four-sided column. “This is something else.”

  Weatherby stepped forward. It reminded him of a monument he’d seen on a trip overseas, many thousands of miles from this location. Cleopatra’s Needle, standing on Victoria Embankment in London. That obelisk was three times the height of the one they were currently looking at, but otherwise they might as well be twins, even down to the strange writing that covered all four tapered faces. He looked at Yates, his eyes wide with astonishment. “Are those Egyptian hieroglyphics?”

  “I don’t see how they can be.” Cassie was still tugging vines away from the face of the obelisk. “We’re six and a half thousand miles and an ocean away from Egypt.”

  “Except they are,” Yates said, running a hand along the stone surface, his fingers tracing the carved symbols.

  “It gets weirder, guys.” Elijah Silverman, the third of the three presenters, was on the other side of the monument. He peered back at the rest of the group. “I have linear B on this side.”

  “What?” Yates sounded incredulous. He moved to the other side of the column. “Let me see.”

  “What’s linear B?” Weatherby asked.

  “It’s an ancient syllabic script used by the Greeks starting around 1500 BC.” Yates answered without looking up. “And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Elijah is right. This is definitely linear B.”

  “Are we filming this?” Granger motioned toward Michael Vance. “For the love of God, please tell me you were rolling.”

  “Damned right.” Vance moved closer to get a better shot of the towering object.

&nbs
p; “There’s another one over here,” Cassie shouted, pushing her way through the greenery toward a second vine covered shaft fifteen feet from the first. She inspected it with growing excitement. “This one has hieroglyphics too.”

  “No way.” Yates stepped back and surveyed their surroundings. “Ladies and gentlemen, do you know what we found here?”

  “Not a clue.” Weatherby's eyes were still fixed on the strange, picture-like writing that adorned the obelisk’s closest face.

  “Gates.” A grin broke out on Yates’ face. “This is an entrance to something much bigger.”

  “But what?” Cassie asked.

  “The fortress, of course. The building we picked up on lidar.”

  “I still don’t get how there’s Greek and Egyptian writing here,” Cassie said. “It’s completely impossible. Neither culture traveled to South America, and certainly not together.”

  “Maybe someone brought these here afterward?” Weatherby shrugged. “Didn’t the conquistadors explore up and down the coast?”

  “Sure.” Yates noted. “Francisco de Orellana navigated the Amazon River in the 1500s. In fact, he died here in 1546. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t bring along any ancient Egyptian or Greek relics.”

  “Well, somebody put them here and it sure as hell wasn’t the Greeks or the Egyptians,” Cassie said. “Unless our history of the ancient world is completely wrong.”

  “Then maybe it is. Because those obelisks look like they’ve been here for a long time.”

  “But what about the writing?” Weatherby asked. “How could there be Greek and Egyptian on the same stone?”

  “It’s not unheard of.” Cassie was still examining the second obelisk. “The Rosetta Stone was inscribed in hieroglyphics, Demotic script, and ancient Greek. It was instrumental in deciphering hieroglyphics, because scholars could read the Greek and all three languages said the same thing.”

  “And that isn’t the only one,” Yates said. “Other bilingual stele are known to exist.”

  “But nothing in the Amazon Jungle,” Cassie said.

  “Until now,” Granger said. “And if we’ve already made such an unbelievable discovery, doesn’t it make you wonder what’s waiting for us at the fortress?”

  “To quote Howard Carter,” Yates said with a flourish, “wonderful things. Which is why we should waste no more time here. I have a feeling there are bigger discoveries yet to be made.” And with that, he turned and strode off into the jungle, machete swinging.

  3

  Darren Yates was right. There were bigger discoveries waiting for them at the fortress, which turned out to be a towering, stepped pyramid structure with an exterior staircase on each face leading to its flat top. Overgrown with vines and foliage, just like the obelisks they had discovered earlier, the pyramid was reminiscent of Mesoamerican structures such as the Mayan Temple of Kukulkán at Chichen Itza. But what made this even more remarkable was the location. It sat straddling the banks of a fast-moving river. A tributary of the Amazon itself. The rushing water penetrated through the middle of the ancient building and emerged on the other side uninterrupted. If they followed the water back upstream, they would surely arrive at the waterfall they’d witnessed before descending the cliff.

  The purpose of this strange and architecturally difficult design was a mystery, but not so much as the hieroglyphics and Greek text that adorned the walls of the fortress, as they had on the twin monuments. It was impossible, but the evidence spoke for itself. Both the Greeks and ancient Egyptians had traveled here in the long distant past.

  “This building could be the missing link,” Darren Yates said as he studied the script carved into one of the building’s lower blocks. “Archaeologists have long wondered how ancient civilizations from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean developed pyramids. The Olmec, Aztecs, Inca, and the Maya, all built them. Some of the earliest date to one thousand BC.”

  “That’s still later than the Egyptians,” Cassie said. “They constructed the majority of their pyramids fifteen hundred years earlier.”

  “Which would make sense if the Egyptians came here and constructed a pyramid in the Amazon, which was later copied by other cultures.”

  “I don’t know.” Cassie didn’t look convinced. “It’s a leap. We don’t even know how old this pyramid is.”

  “The Greek writing would date it somewhere between fifteen and three hundred BCE, and probably closer to the former than the latter.” Yates moved on to another stone and continued his examination. “That’s toward the end of the Egyptian pyramid building boom. They only built two major pyramids after that date. Piye and Taharqua. But it doesn’t prevent the Egyptians having a hand in this construction.”

  “The hieroglyphics would appear to confirm they did,” said Granger. “Besides, the Greeks didn’t have the architectural knowledge or enthusiasm to erect a pyramid like this.”

  “Which means this was built approximately five-hundred years before the rise of pyramids like Chichen Itza. That adds credence to the theory of copycat construction by the indigenous peoples of the Americas.”

  “Is that actually a theory?” Elijah Silverman shot Yates a quizzical look. “I thought it was just crackpots trying to make a link between cultures using ridiculous ancient alien theories.”

  “Except we’re standing here looking at the proof with our very own eyes.”

  “No. This building proves only that ancient Egyptians and Greeks had contact with the Americas. It does not prove that aliens had a hand in any of this.”

  “People.” Granger raised his voice to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s focus on what’s important. This is a huge archaeological discovery. It could be even bigger than Tutankhamen’s tomb, or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first evidence that early European and African civilizations crossed the Atlantic.”

  “What about the Vikings?” Weatherby asked. “There’s plenty of proof they visited America.”

  “North America. And that came much later. They made it to Greenland around the tenth century. There’s no evidence of Norse settlements on the mainland. Even the Vinland map is now considered fake,” Silverman said.

  “None of that matters.” Granger was pacing at the base of the pyramid. He squinted upward toward the top of the structure, which was hard to see among the trees that pressed around it on all sides. “Think of the kudos. The first show like ours to make a genuine discovery.”

  “Except we’re supposed to be finding monsters, not pyramids.”

  “Who cares?” Yates turned toward the group. “This is the real deal. Now maybe those snooty academics will actually take me seriously.”

  “Yeah, they’ll probably give you tenure at Yale,” Weatherby said with a chuckle.

  “All right, let’s all settle down.” Granger raised his eyes to the sky, where leaden clouds had closed in, blotting out the early evening sun. “It’ll be dark soon and there’s a storm approaching. I don’t want to be caught unprepared when the rain starts. Let’s set up the tents and call base camp to report what we’ve found.” He turned to Silverman. “You have the satellite phone?”

  “Right here, boss.” Silverman slipped his pack off and reached inside. He brought out a chunky handset. “I’ll make the call as soon as we make camp.”

  “Not likely.” Yates walked over to his co-host and relieved him of the phone. “If anyone’s going to make the call, it’ll be me. This is my show.”

  “Figures.” Silverman turned away, looking annoyed.

  “What does that mean?”

  “What do you think it means?” Silverman turned back to Yates and stared him down.

  “Stop it.” Granger stepped between the two men. “I don’t care who makes the call. Just get it done. There’s plenty of limelight to go around.”

  “Whatever.” Silverman folded his arms and stared off into the distance. At six-four, he was the tallest member of the team, yet right now he looked small. The pouty expression on his boyishly good-looking face—which had been a big f
actor in the casting director picking him for this job—didn’t help.

  “We all good here?”

  “Sure.” Silverman shrugged.

  “Peachy.” Yates lifted the phone and grinned.

  “Good.” Granger turned his attention back to the rest of the group. “I want those tents erected and a fire going within thirty minutes. That’s our priority. Then we eat. Tomorrow we’ll see if there’s a way into this building. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m burning with curiosity to see what’s inside.”

  “If it’s Egyptian, probably a mummy.” Weatherby shucked his pack from his shoulders and dropped it to the ground with a sigh of relief.

  “Or maybe a buttload of gold and precious stones.” Silverman’s eyes sparkled with excitement, his run in with Yates all but forgotten. “What are the rules in this country about finding stuff like that? Do we get to keep it?”

  “What do you think?” Granger stepped away from the building and threw his own pack on the ground. He kneeled and pulled out a lightweight military combat shelter tent, hurrying as a peal of distant thunder rumbled across the forest. “If we find anything of value, we catalog and leave it in place. Those are the rules.”

  “Your rules.”

  “The network’s rules. Not to mention those of our host government.”

  “Well, that sucks.” Silverman pulled a face.

  “I thought you were a professional,” Cassie said.

  “I am. I hold an advanced degree in Cryptozoology from the Vermont Institute of Metaphysics.”

  “Ah. The other Ivy League college.” Cassie tried to suppress a grin but failed. “I guess you’re hoping to add looter of antiquities to your heady resume.”