Chapter Fifty

Falling…Air whooshed past Caleb as he fell for several seconds. His heart threatening to burst, he had never felt so much terror as he braced for impact. It came too fast. He plunged into deep water and blacked out.

When he came to, he was lying on a boat that bobbed up and down. It was sunny, the first glorious daylight he’d seen in days. Seagulls flew overhead, cawing in the wind. He smelled the saltiness of sea air. Waves splashed against the hull.

How did I get to the ocean? Have I died? Is this heaven?

A crew of hooded figures in slick gray fisherman coats was moving about the boat. Rubber boots stepped past his head. One boatman dropped an anchor. A second turned on a noisy piece of machinery that vibrated the floorboards. A third mariner approached Caleb, holding a large copper mask – the Siebe Gorman deep-sea diving helmet with round faceplates on the front and sides. The mere sight of it caused Caleb’s throat to constrict. It was then he realized he was fully dressed in a diving suit. Tubes had already been hooked into his suit. He held up his gloved hands. “What’s going on?”

The crewmen didn’t speak as they went about the boat. The one holding the helmet had webbed hands with long fingers. Caleb turned to where the sun shined on the lower half of the crewman’s face. He reeled at its hideousness. The boatman wasn’t human. Its pale skin was spotted and slick, the lipless mouth sewn shut with fishhooks. Where a nose should have been, it had two air holes. Its eyes were hidden by the hood of the coat. The creature’s ribbed throat breathed with gills. It stank of dead fish that had been left to dry in the wind.

Assaulted by the stench, Caleb jerked away from the strange being. It’s not real. I’m dreaming, suffering some sort of nightmare. Wake up! Wake up! Nothing changed. The boat continued to float up and down, the sun bobbing with it. He felt seasick and rolled over and vomited. He tried to sit up in the bulky diving suit. His heavy weighted boots anchored his legs to the floor. Another boatman hurried over and held Caleb down.

“Let me go,” he pleaded.

They put the heavy metal helmet over his head and locked it on. His world reduced to staring out of three small round faceplates, Caleb struggled to breathe. Claustrophobia kicked in, reminding him of the dreadful hours he’d spent inside a decompression chamber. He shook on the floor of the boat. “Get me out of this damned suit!”

Several boatmen helped him to his feet. The suit, attached to the air pump by a long hose, began to inflate with air. Caleb continued to scream, but the creatures ignored him. They switched on a light inside his helmet and a flashlight mounted on his shoulder. They walked him to the edge of the boat. He stared down at the dark blue water. He recognized the rock formations that curved around the boat. Egypt’s Blue Hole. The place of his nightmares.

Caleb panicked and fought against the boatmen. They pushed him off the boat and he sank underwater. Like anchors tied to his feet, the heavy boots pulled him down, deeper and deeper, past cavern walls and coral fish. Sunlight faded to a cold, empty darkness. Two deep-sea divers emerged from the black and grabbed hold of Caleb. He couldn’t see anything through their faceplates, but saw their names stenciled on their suits, Nikolai and Christoph, the Greeks he’d abandoned here. They pulled Caleb deeper into the abyss, to the underwater cemetery where skeletons drifted for eternity. Going mad, Caleb screamed inside his helmet.

* * *

Imogen remained lost in her own world as she sat on the floor in the corner of the lift. She couldn’t believe Caleb was gone. Over the course of a few days, she’d grown to care about the American journalist. He’d risked his life for her more than once. He’d confided in her. His unyielding faith had been a source of hope in her darkest moment. He’d even kissed her. Although she had been confused at how to handle his sudden affection, she had felt more bonded to him since. Her heart now ached with a fresh wound to accompany many others. When she had set out on this journey, she never dreamed she would watch so many people die. She felt guilty for all of their deaths. Trummel, her partner in tragedy, seemed unaffected by Caleb’s loss or any others. All he cares about is finding bloody relics. How could I have ever loved such a callous man? The foolish woman who had been seduced by him and carried on a sordid affair seemed so far away now.

Trummel felt no remorse over the loss of the Yank. In fact, it was good riddance. Caleb had been nothing but a thorn in Trummel’s side. Now that his team had been reduced to the only three people he really needed for his mission, Trummel turned his focus on getting up to the next level.

He looked around the magnificent cube they were in. “This elevator, if that’s what it is, seems impossible. Its technology and design are beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” Trummel said excitedly. “Simply marvelous.” The black metal walls embedded with tiny crystals and flecks of gold gave off a reflective sheen. In a multitude of perfectly square panels, circuitry lines networked with alien hieroglyphs, labyrinthine conduits, and octagonal buttons.

Gosswick touched an ankh symbol and frowned. “Don’t tell me this lift was built during ancient Egyptian times. The technology looks more advanced than anything invented in our century.”

“I’m not sure we’re still on Earth in 1937,” Trummel said. “When we crossed through the portal into Duat, I believe we left earth and time far behind. Harlan told me the higher he ascended through the gates, the greater the technologies he encountered.”

“And who built these technologies?” Dyfan asked. “Have you considered that?”

“That’s all I’ve thought about since Harlan came back covered in glyphs and speaking that strange tongue.”

Imogen, who was still sitting in a corner, wallowing in grief, glared up at Trummel. “After all we’ve been through, the people we’ve lost, do we really want to ascend any higher? I’m frightened at what we might find.”

“I’m feeling apprehensive myself,” Dyfan admitted. “I vote we search for a portal that provides an exit.”

“This is no time for losing sight of our purpose,” Trummel said. “Besides, the bridge that got us here is gone. We already know what kinds of demons reside in the lower realms. The only way to go from here is up.” He pulled a lever multiple times, but the lift wouldn’t budge.

“Just our bloody luck,” Gosswick grumbled. “We’re trapped in a box on the side of a cliff.”

“This lift was clearly engineered to be operational,” Trummel said. “There’s got to be a way to get it running, a pulley system, a power source, something.” He tried all the octagonal buttons, but pushing them had no effect. “Maybe it requires a coded sequence like the gates.” Trummel flipped through the diary and studied the inscriptions on the panels. “Harlan’s codex doesn’t help. None of these codes match the symbols in the book.” He tossed it on the floor.

Imogen grabbed the journal and put it in her satchel. “Perhaps whoever built the lift abandoned it and took its power source.”

“You’re not helping.” Trummel frantically pushed the buttons again. The panels remained lifeless. He slammed his fist against them and cursed.

At the back of the cube, Gosswick pried open double doors that were closest to the stone wall. “There’s a ladder that runs up the shaft. Maybe we could climb it.”

“We’d never make it,” Dyfan said with certainty. “I can already see us falling to our deaths.”

Gosswick kicked the wall. “Then this box is our coffin.”

“Not necessarily,” Dyfan said, sounding hopeful. “The naturu guide sent us to this lift for a reason. As I was walking away from her, she told me ‘Across the bridge is our transport to take us up or down.’”

“Great,” Trummel said. “Did she tell you how to power up the damn thing?”

“No. But I know it’s possible. Imogen, I sense that you are the key to getting this running.”

“Me? What do I know about operating lifts?”

“Forget trying to figure out how to make it work. Use your intuition. Mine tells me we’ll get along faster if you help.”

“I can barely even think straight after what just happened.”

Dyfan put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m devastated by Caleb’s loss just as you, but we’ll have to mourn him later. Right now, we need you.”

Dyfan was right. Sitting on the floor and beating herself up wasn’t getting them anywhere. She didn’t come all this way to die in a box with this lot. She stood and helped the others search for a way to get the lift working.

* * *

Floating in a void amid plankton-covered skeletons, Caleb had yelled for so long his throat hurt. Nothing changed. He didn’t suffocate and die. But the terror of being trapped in a confined space wouldn’t leave him. He could feel madness setting in. He shook inside the suit. “Let me out! Let me out!” The movements caused the surrounding skeletons to crowd around him. His screams turned to tears and then to maniacal laughter until he fell silent and settled into a deep depression. He couldn’t believe that after a life of praying to God and his faith that he’d been sentenced to suffer in his own personal hell.

“Our sins will eventually catch up with us,” Dyfan had said.

Caleb stared out of his faceplate at the Greek divers. Nicolai and Christoph drifted quietly next to him in their dive suits. Their deaths are my sins.

He had hired them to teach him a single diving lesson in shallow water, then take him down into the Blue Hole. He had lied and told them he was diving to photograph coral fish. What he’d really been after was to capture photos of the Blue Hole’s greater mystery – the floating skeletons he’d heard stories about. All that had mattered then was getting a feature story in the magazine. My careless ambition pushed us all to dive too far down.

The guilt he’d carried since that day constricted his chest until he couldn’t breathe. He no longer had his St. Michael pendant to pray to. You left it behind at the altar, thinking that would appease the higher power overseeing these realms. He feared now that he may have honored the wrong deity. Was this underworld the devil’s realm? Were the red nuns and the boatmen Satan’s servants?

Through blind faith, Caleb had convinced himself he was following a soul’s journey that would bring him closer to God and heaven. It turned out, it was a path to perdition.

Is this all that’s left for me, God? Eternal suffering?

Closing his eyes, he focused on the archangel Michael’s image and prayed for answers.

A long-forgotten childhood memory surfaced in his mind. While living in Chicago, ten-year-old Caleb had attended a private Catholic school. In the schoolyard, he had gotten into an argument with one of the boys, Lenny Gilroy. Caleb got so mad he pushed the boy down onto the ground and stepped on his glasses, breaking them. Lenny had cried and run to tell the nuns. Caleb had felt guilty afterward, angry at himself for allowing his temper to make him do something so mean. The school’s headmaster, Father Victor, scorned him and lashed his palms with a ruler. The priest then told Caleb he would surely suffer in purgatory for his sins. “The devil’s turning you wicked. If you don’t repent now, you’ll burn in hell for eternity.”

Terrified, Caleb had run straight to Sister Maya, the one nun he’d grown close to. Whenever he had felt lost from God or confused about why there was so much evil in the world, Sister Maya always had the right words to say. He told her about the sin he’d committed against his classmate, and how badly he felt about hurting Lenny and destroying his glasses.

“Sister, I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. Father Victor said I’m gonna burn in hell.”

“Hmm,” said Sister Maya. “Let’s see if God has anything to say about that.” Holding her rosary, she had prayed with young Caleb for several moments. Then she said, “The good Lord has offered me some insight. You are to tell that boy you are sorry and ask for forgiveness, and then – and this is important, Caleb – you are to forgive yourself and surrender your heart to God.”

Remembering Sister Maya’s words was a jolt to Caleb’s brain. He had a sudden revelation. Ever since the accident, he had mentally tortured himself for the deaths of these two men, but never once had he asked for forgiveness. Shaking now, as he had the day he’d asked Lenny Gilroy to forgive him, Caleb faced Nicolai and Christoph. Their faces were hidden inside the darkness of their helmets. He imagined when the two men were alive, joking with each other in Greek, as they rode their boat out to the Blue Hole for a morning dive.

Caleb told them how badly he felt about what happened and asked them both to forgive him. The immense guilt of their deaths turned into a rush of tears. Over and over, he told them he was sorry. “Please forgive me.” Something miraculous happened after that. The lights turned on inside their helmets. No longer skeletons, Nicolai and Christoph looked like the young men who’d been very much alive before the dive. There was peace in their eyes. Then both divers floated backward and faded into the void.

Caleb’s eyes teared up as he looked upward and prayed to God for forgiveness; then he forgave himself and surrendered his soul to his Creator. A massive weight lifted from his heart. More cathartic tears streamed down his face. Next thing he knew, the air hose that tethered him to the boat began pulling him upward. He rose out of the floating cemetery, ascending to the surface. When his helmet and shoulders came out of the water, it was completely dark again, save for the light of a nearby boat. Arms of crewmen pulled him back onboard.

Laughing hysterically, Caleb had never felt so happy than to see the boatmen’s faces. No longer did they resemble hideous demons from the deep. When Caleb saw their luminous eyes, he swore they were angels. One of them kneeled beside him and lowered his hood. Caleb’s jaw dropped when he saw a familiar face.

Bakari smiled. “Welcome back, Caleb.”

* * *

Inside the cube-shaped elevator, Imogen, Trummel, and Gosswick tried every switch, but still nothing powered up the lift.

Dyfan said my intuition is the key. Think, Imogen, think.

No, don’t think – feel.

She closed her eyes and moved her attention to the center of her body. She couldn’t shake the feeling the cube was waiting for them to solve its riddle. She slowly spun around, opened her eyes, and noticed a pattern on one of the walls.

“It’s a puzzle.”

“What’s that?” Trummel asked.

“The pattern of the panels on this wall…they form a grid, but their designs are mismatched. The lines and dots look as if they should connect to form an image. And one square is missing. I think that’s where the puzzle begins.” It was like a tile puzzle game she used to play while sitting beside Grandfather in an aeroplane during long flights. Only now, she was standing in front of a wall-sized tile puzzle. She slid a panel toward an empty square. That made room to slide down another panel.

“Astounding,” Trummel breathed. He helped her choose which panels to slide where. It became a game and they were both enjoying themselves, like the old days when they made discoveries together. Imogen began to have hope again. A half hour later, the wall’s grid formed into a giant face made of circuit lines.

“A male god’s face,” Trummel said, sounding delighted by the find.

“One more piece to the puzzle,” Imogen said. Moving the final panel into place revealed a secret compartment at the center of the face’s forehead.

Imogen smiled at what was hidden inside.

“Another silver disk,” Trummel said. From his satchel, he pulled out the disk he’d found in Nebenteru’s sarcophagus and held it up. “A perfect match.”

Imogen touched the center crystal. “I think it’s a kind of energy source.”

Trummel placed the disk toward the one fitted inside the wall. When the two center crystals got close, they began to glow brighter. Patterns on the disks lit up in a spiral sequence. Then the lift came to life with whirring machinery and blinking lights. The front and back double doors closed, securing them inside the cube. Each door had a small window. A single lever illuminated.

Trummel hugged Imogen. “Great work, Im. Sometimes you simply amaze me.”

The rare compliment made her beam. Dyfan whispered into her ear, “I knew it would be you to get us moving again.”

She smiled, feeling relieved that she had solved the cube’s riddle.

Trummel pushed the lever up and the lift ascended soundlessly. As they rode toward some unknown level, Imogen’s elation lasted only seconds before she was reminded that Caleb wouldn’t be going the rest of the way. Trummel and Gosswick leaned back against a wall, watching the doors. Dyfan rested with his eyes closed. They traveled higher and higher. More than five minutes passed. Finally, the lift slowed and came to a stop with a soft hiss. The double doors nearest the wall opened to a stone platform.

Trummel exited first. Imogen gasped as she tilted her head back. They approached the base of a brick wall that rose so high it disappeared into the infinite black above. Giant stones had been masoned to fit together with perfect precision.

“Some sort of fortress,” Trummel said.

Gosswick touched a brick that was taller than his six feet and longer than a car. “These stones must weigh several tons each. How do you suppose the builders stacked them?”

Trummel shook his head. “I’ve wondered the same about the pyramids.”

“This feels like our final destination,” Dyfan said. “We’re very close now.”

Other than the platform that led back to the elevator, there was no other way to go but through a colossal gate. Like many gates before it, the threshold was solid stone and required a code entered into a nearby panel. Imogen said, “We just have to figure out how to get inside.”

* * *

The night boat carrying its crew of mariners trundled through dark waters. Caleb was grateful to finally be out of that dive suit. He felt different inside. Lighter. He’d faced his greatest fears and lived. He still couldn’t explain the miracle that had given him another chance, only that Duat wasn’t just a hellish landscape full of demons and ghosts.

God and his angels are present here too.

When Bakari returned from spouting orders to the crew, Caleb looked at him in amazement. “I watched you die.”

Bakari smirked. “It will take more than a few shemayu to take me down.”

“How did you escape?”

The guide pulled out a necklace that contained a small silver disk. “I can call upon a portal to my world whenever I need one.” He turned and barked orders in another language. Two smaller boatmen came over. “Caleb, I’d like you to meet two of my sons, Toku and Benyi.” Like their father, they had glowing blue symbols on their foreheads and beneath their eyes. One boy looked seventeen, the other around age twelve.

Caleb shook their hands. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’m training them to be guides,” Bakari said with a father’s pride. Then he spoke in a commanding voice and the boys ran back to their duties.

“I don’t understand,” Caleb said. “Earlier your crew had hideous faces that looked like sea creatures. Their mouths were sewn shut with fishhooks.”

“Sometimes my kind only appear to humans as reflections of their inner demons. That you can see us in our true form is a sign that you’ve healed a dark part of your soul.”

“There’s so much I don’t understand about this underworld. Who’s controlling the Dark Realm? Is it God or some other form of higher intelligence?”

Bakari shrugged. “Who created this world is a mystery to my kind as much as it is to yours.”

The boat approached a high mountain wall that tapered off into the dark. Caleb recognized the ladder that ran up the elevator shaft. As the boat bumped against it, Bakari walked over to a panel and punched in a code. Moments passed as they waited.

Then, high up above, a cube outlined in lights began to descend. When it reached bottom and opened, Caleb was disappointed that the elevator was empty. He hoped he could find the others. Bakari helped him step inside and showed him how to work the lever. “Take the lift all the way to the top.”

“Can you go with me?” Caleb asked.

“This is as far as I can go.” Bakari held up his palm, a gesture of goodbye. “Best of luck on your journey, my friend.”

The double doors closed. Caleb peered out a small window and watched Bakari’s boat and crew growing smaller as the elevator carried him upward toward some unknown place.