Ancient Echoes

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Lionel Rempart’s chest nearly burst with pride, especially at the way his find had caused the obnoxious students to stare in silence. That morning, they had crawled down the mountainside to the secluded valley, and now marched closer to the pillars.

A perfectly shaped symmetrical mound of reddish-tan dirt, shaped like a pyramid with the top lopped off, stood over twenty feet tall and forty feet across. At the top, two granite pillars, charcoal gray in color, soared high into the sky. The pillars were stark, overwhelming, and frightening.

“We did it!” Rempart kept his voice hushed, as if in a cathedral, even as jubilation filled him. “It's not exactly Angkor Wat, but as close as we'll get in Idaho.” He chuckled at his own wit.

Melisse shook her head, her expression unreadable.

“It’s impossible,” Rachel murmured, her brow lined with worry.

“No way,” Devlin declared.

He had to admit that something eerie and surreal hovered over the area, making the small hairs on his arms stand on end. But he didn’t care.

“Could this be how Schliemann felt when he found Troy?” Vince wondered, his voice hushed, nervous.

“Or Bandyopadhyay at Mohenjo-daro,” Rachel added.

“Or what’s his name who found King Tut,” Ted said.

At the last, all went silent. The students all had learned about “the curse of the pharaohs”—that anyone who opened or desecrated a sacred site would die. They were also taught it wasn’t true, but Rempart loved the way the story kept students in check.

A cold wind whipped through the valley, chilling him.

“You can see the pillars for some distance around here,” he pronounced cheerfully, feeling magnanimous in victory, as the group walked toward the pillars, slower now. Merely waving the possibility of money and prestige had turned the students his way.

He intended to continue to use that tactic, and through it to put Melisse back in her place. His teaching assistant had become far too bossy, strutting around with her hard muscles and outdoor know-how. He couldn't stand her. “We'll make camp right beside them, and you'll always easily find your way back if you're tempted to wander off. Frankly, I wouldn't recommend going anywhere alone. Aside from the mountain lions and black bears you know about, wolf sightings are not unheard of in this area, and rattlesnakes.”

“Just watch where you step and you'll be fine.” Melisse snapped, no longer even trying to hide her irritation at Rempart. He gave a derisive snort.

No one spoke as they continued forward. Their earlier fatigue had vanished with the possibility of fame and fortune, but it returned now, four-fold. The air turned increasingly cold.

“A storm's coming.” Devlin shivered, folding his arms tight against his broad chest for warmth, and peering at the darkening sky. “That's all we need! We'll have to work to keep a fire lit.”

“At least rain water will be drinkable.” Ted licked his pudgy, parched lips. They hadn't been near a stream or pond all day and shared the couple of waters bottles that hadn't been stolen.

“How do we capture it? Stand around with our mouths open?” Vince's normally wiry, jumpy demeanor grew more frenzied with each step.

“I'm ready,” Ted replied.

A loud boom caused the group to freeze. The air felt still, yet the monoliths seemed to quiver before their eyes much as a desert seemed to ripple when heat rose off the ground.

“What was that?” Brandi whispered, her voice hushed and trembling.

“Thunder?” Rachel asked hopefully, although it didn't quite sound like thunder.

“Just the wind,” Rempart said. “Keep going.”

“We should go back to civilization and get equipment, supplies, and more people so we can do a proper study of the pillars and a search of the area,” Melisse suggested. “There must be a deserted settlement nearby, a place where the pillars were made. I can’t imagine anyone creating them elsewhere and then carrying them way out here to the middle of nowhere.”

Vince tapped the face of his watch. The second hand had stopped moving. He shook his wrist and checked his watch again.

Devlin saw him and checked his own watch. “My watch stopped,” he said softly.

“Mine’s the same,” Melisse said, wriggling her wrist. Then she looked at the sky. “I wonder if the pillars are emitting some sort of electro-magnetic charge.”

“Electro-magnetic?” Rempart whispered. “That isn’t good. Not good at all.” He started toward the mound, then stopped, staring at the ground. Out of nowhere, lightning flashed, and then a sound like rolling thunder.

“That was no wind,” Ted said nervously. “What was it?”

“I don’t know,” Rempart said, inching backwards.

“Not only is there the question of how those pillars got here,” Rachel said, “but what do they mean? Nothing like them exists in the native populations. Who would have built them?”

Nervous excitement caused more speculation. Stonehenge. The giant heads of Easter Island. The Nazca Lines of Peru.

“We need to go up there,” Devlin said. He shivered. “Inspect them. Take samples. Soil, scrapings, air. Plus whatever it is that made our batteries stop.”

No one answered. Rempart took a step toward the pillars and stopped again. “The ground…it flickered!” he called out. At the students' startled, confused expression, he asked, “Didn't you see it?”

The students shook their heads.

“Must have been an optical illusion, a glint from the sun.” He began, again, to walk closer to the mound, and then his steps grew faster. “There’s some kind of carving at the top of each pillar! I can’t make it out from this distance. This is miraculous!”

Another bolt of lightning lit the sky and thunder clapped, longer and louder this time as Rempart reached the bottom of the mound and began to climb up it.

“Professor,” Melisse called. “Do you want us to join you?”

Foolish question, Rempart thought. Why would he want her near?

“What’s wrong with him?” Ted asked nervously, watching the professor climb the mound without a word or glance back at any of them. Ted sat on the ground exhausted, his feet swollen, and his too stocky legs aching from the long trek.

“I want to see what’s up there,” Melisse said. She, too, began to climb.

All except Ted followed, ignoring another flash of light and boom of thunder. He watched the other students use their hands to make their way up the tightly packed, slippery earth. They quickly caught up to the slow moving professor.

Dark clouds gathered overhead, but it didn’t rain. Only lightning and the raucous, near continuous claps of thunder.

When the group reached the top of the mound, oddly, irrationally, the thunder and lightning stopped.

“Be careful, guys!” Ted called, his voice sharp and edged with fear. “Hurry back down!”

The group moved toward the pillars, which were over thirty feet tall and stood about fifteen feet apart. No one said a word.

“Guys!” Ted yelled as loud as he could, trying to get their attention. Something was very wrong. He got up and hobbled closer to the mound. “Guys, what're you doing? Do you see anything up there? Why aren’t any of you talking about it? Hey...GUYS!!”

Then, as he watched, the most incredible thing happened. They walked between the pillars.

And vanished.