The Shadow of Isis

By Joel Zarley

The history of the world has always been told in a prescribed course; with each great civilization leading to the next. The Babylonians...the Egyptians..the Greeks...the Romans—all leading to the modern world as we know it today. But what if the truth of our shared history was not as neat and tidy as the conventional wisdom would have us believe?
When Gabriel Patrick gets a call from his good friend Molly asking for his help in finding her missing brother Mark, he knows that he will drop everything and do anything he can to help her. Mark has disappeared while on an anthropological expedition searching for the existence of ancient Egyptian treasure buried deep within the Grand Canyon. While Gabe is skeptical of the legend, they soon find themselves embroiled in an ancient mystery—deep as the canyon itself—and whose coverup reaches the highest levels of power.
Gabe, Molly and her FBI partner set off on a cross-country pursuit of clues which hold the key to Mark’s fate. Can Gabe and his friends find the missing man and uncover the mystery of the lost history of civilization, or will they fall to the same tragic end of those who sought the answers before them?
This is the second novel in the Gabriel Patrick “Lost Loves” series and is the follow-up to Chasing the Light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joel Zarley
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780982652343

Joel Zarley

I've wanted to be a writer since crafting my first work of fiction in second grade. Titled "Susie and the Bunnies" it was a direct rip-off of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" that I had seen the previous Summer. But, even though "inspired" by the work of others, it showed me the great power of how you could create people, places and events by doing little more than just imagining them and writing them down. It took 35 years from that first short story to the publication of my first book.My first novel, "Chasing the Light" at its most basic level is intended to be a fun, adventurous "beach" or "airplane" book; the historical mystery/treasure hunt genre of which I've always been fond. But, on another level, I hope it strikes a chord of the importance of faith and hope and the belief that the universe unfolds as it does for a reason; and that everything will be ok. As it says in the book, "sometimes , all any of us need is just to feel that everything will be ok."I have spent the majority of my adult career in workplace learning and performance (more commonly known as corporate training and development) specializing in learning technologies. My experience includes managing training projects for businesses ranging from small start-ups to large international corporations. My experience writing and publishing my novel caused me think about how the eBook format (and eReader devices) could be used in organizations for publishing training content. This led to my second book, "eBook Publication for Training".I reside in Columbus, OH with my partner of sixteen years. I'm currently working on a second novel that will continue the treasure hunting adventures of Gabriel Patrick.My website is http://www.purplepalmmedia.com

Book preview

Chapter 1

Grand Canyon, Arizona (March 1909)

The sun beat down without mercy on the small wooden boat as it slowly navigated through the Colorado River. It was technically still late Winter, yet it already felt to Kincaid like the heat of July. He looked up at the four thousand feet of sheer cliff face surrounding him. He was not positive, but he thought he could see snow coating the rim of the canyon nearly one mile above him. His eyes returned to the river, and the delicate navigation he must perform to avoid crashing onto one of the many rocks that lay in the rushing water in front of him.

He had started his journey on the water in the Green River near Vernal, Utah. Once in the Green River he journeyed slowly southward until he met the confluence of the Colorado. From there he headed southwest, until he was deep with the canyon. Gerald Edward (known as G.E. by most acquaintances) Kincaid had lost track of exactly how long he had been on this river journey, but he knew that the time measured in weeks at this point. Early in the journey he thought he might freeze to death, but now heat and sun caused him discomfort.

He had not intended to begin an epic journey down the river and into the Grand Canyon. But, then again, he had never intended to find himself in Vernal either. He had run off to one of the few towns in Utah not founded and controlled by the Mormons, after an unfortunate business deal with the church in Salt Lake City had gone south. Despite the calm and polite demeanor of the Mormons, Kincaid knew that they did not take well to being cheated in business. Technically, Kincaid believed he hadn’t actually cheated the Mormons—sometimes a deal just goes bad and people lose their investment. Still, he thought it valuable to his own well being if he put as much distance between himself and The Great Salt Lake as possible.

He spent just a few days in Vernal. Despite the abundance of saloons and friendly women, he knew that his options were limited there. He ended up winning a boat in a crooked poker game, and thought it best to take his new bounty and flow out of town with the river.

Calling his winning a boat might be an overly generous description. It was nearly twenty feet long, and about eight feet wide, and constructed entirely from wood. (Of which, about one third had the beginnings of pretty severe wood rot.) There was a small cabin built into the back third of the craft that was just large enough for a cot and a small stove. Kincaid thought it looked like a shack hastily built on a poorly constructed raft.

But, it would get him out of town, and that is all Kincaid cared about right now. He had heard rumors about recent gold discoveries in the Grand Canyon, and thought this sounded like as good of a plan as any. Maybe this would finally be the venture that paid off for him. God knows he was due. It seemed like no matter where he went, or what he did, things never worked out the way he planned. Just like the latest experience with the Mormons…

It never quite seemed fair. Even the times when he was playing by the rules and completely legal, he would still end up getting screwed on a deal. It didn’t seem like the right kind of life for the first white child ever born in Idaho…

He smiled to himself when he thought of that. Actually, he wasn’t even sure he was the first white child in Idaho. In fact, he knew it was pretty damn well impossible. But, that is what his daddy always told him—him and everyone else that would listen. Kincaid senior found early on that the fictional story of his son’s birth was always worth a free drink or two.

Of course, the man he called his daddy really wasn’t. William Kincaid was Gerald’s mother’s second husband. His real daddy had died in a Union prison during the war between the states. He had been found guilty of treason for supplying aid and comfort to the enemy. Technically, he had sold aid and comfort to the enemy, but that fact had held a very fine shade of difference for Mr. Lincoln’s government.

Gerald had not been quite two years old when his biological father died, and his mother married Kincaid not quite a month later. His stepfather had always been good to him; treating him like he was his own son. He had never formally adopted the boy, but had given him his name anyway. Kincaid had been an alcoholic and a con man, but he had never raised a hand to Gerald or his mother. After his mother died of the consumption when he was twelve, his stepfather never even once considered abandoning the boy.

G.E. wasn’t sure when the elder Kincaid came up with the story about him being the first white child born in Idaho, but he told it from the time the young boy could remember. After a while, Gerald began believing it himself and he continued the tradition. And the free drinks that went with it.

At almost 47 years of age, he was now the same age as his stepfather when he died, and nearly five years older than his birth father. He had promised himself that he would never die rotting in jail like his father. He might drink himself to death like daddy Willy (as he had affectionately called his stepfather), but he would never die as another man’s prisoner. That’s why he always kept moving; always just a few days ahead of whatever trouble he had caused most recently.

The rapids cleared, and Kincaid reached a rather calm pool in the river. He sat down on the hard wooden deck of the boat and wiped his sweaty brow. He put his hand inside his jacket, and felt the cool metal of his flask. It was nearly empty, but it would have to do for now. He had some more whiskey packed away in the cabin, and he could retrieve it when he stopped for the night.

He leaned his head back and took a deep swig from his flask. As he looked up, he saw a bright flash several hundred feet up from the canyon floor. He put the flask down and stared up at the cliff face, convinced the whiskey, the sun, and his mind were playing tricks on him. He stared for several minutes, and just when he was convinced it was nothing, he saw the flash again. G.E. Kincaid was not an educated man, but he knew a few things about the world. And one of the things he knew was that valuable things tended to shine.

He guided the boat over to a wide sandy area on the bank of the river. He hopped off and grabbed the front end of the boat and pulled it as far as he could onto the river bank. The last thing he needed was to lose his only means of transportation to this wretched river.

He found a small telescope packed away in one of the boxes in the boat’s cabin, and used it to peer into the direction where he saw the glint of light. The combination of the poor quality of the spyglass and the glare of the sun made it difficult to see well, but he could make out what looked to be an opening in the cliff face. It appeared to be a cave, but the opening seemed almost purposeful; more of an arched doorway than some naturally occurring hole.

It looked like it would be a steep climb up to the cave opening. His eyes scanned the area near the bottom of the canyon and noticed that there were a series of setbacks in the rocks that meandered up toward the cave. While not exactly a trail, it would none-the-less provide a path to his desired destination without requiring him to scale the face of the cliff walls.

He grabbed a canteen of water, a lantern, a pickaxe and a small length of rope. Not exactly mountain climbing equipment, but it was the best he had and it would have to do. He put on an extra shirt over his current one to help protect him from any jagged rocks he may encounter, and he set off on his quest.

Over the next two hours he scaled the steep path. At a few points in the journey the ledge he was following narrowed to just a few inches wide. During these times he would flatten his chest against the cliff as tightly as possible, and hugging the wall inch himself slowly along the path. Several times he was grateful for the fact that he did not possess a greater than normal fear of heights. Still, he consciously tried not to look down at the river flowing hundreds of feet below him.

Finally, he made it to a ledge about one hundred feet wide by twenty feet deep. He had no way of actually measuring, but he figured this ledge must be at least five to six hundred feet above the canyon floor. A large arched passage lay at the deepest part of the ledge, leading into the cliff wall. It appeared much larger at this vantage point than it had from river level. From here, he guessed that the arched entry was at least twenty feet tall, and about eight feet wide.

He lit his lantern and peered into the entry way. He could only see a few feet inside, but there appeared to be some sort of walkway that sloped downward into the cave. He swallowed hard and looked around him.

Well, shit, G.E., he said to himself. The gold ain’t gonna come find you.

He slowly began walking into the cave. Once inside the archway, the interior opened into a much larger room. The light from the lantern did not travel too far, but he could tell that the interior space was massive. Instead of traveling straight in and deeper into the cavern, he decided to find the side walls and work his way around from the outside edges. That would make it easier to systematically sweep the room searching for valuables. It would also allow him to retrace his steps along to the wall to find his way out quickly, if for some reason that should become necessary.

Even with the lantern, he only had about ten feet of visibility in any direction. Starting from the entry, he began heading left staying close to the front wall at all times. He began to count out the paces that he had walked. When he reached one hundred and sixty two paces, he saw the first corner of the room. He directed the lantern to the parallel wall, and saw an image painted in red:

He was not familiar with the symbol, but figured if someone had gone to all the trouble of getting up here to paint it on a wall, it must be important. He thought it resembled an odd shaped letter X.

X marks the spot, I guess, he said out loud, his voice echoing off the stone walls. He was startled by the reverberating echo throughout the cavernous space. Christ, he said in a now near whisper.

He continued to slowly move his way around the edges of the room. He was about twenty feet from the painted image on the wall when he encountered gold for the first time. But, it was not gold like he expected. Instead of finding a few nuggets embedded into a wall, he stumbled upon an gold figure that was a full head taller than himself.

He gasped at first, thinking that he had encountered another person in this dark cave. Then, he realized what he was actually seeing. It was a statue in the shape of a person, but made entirely out of gold.

He looks like a damn Oriental, Kincaid thought to himself.

His mind spun with the possibilities. His first thought was how much it must be worth. His second thought was how much it must weigh, and how would he ever get it out of the canyon?

He figured he could worry about those details later—right now he was concerned with what other treasures might await him. And, there were a considerable number of other treasures. He found multiple large gold statues like the first one he found, as well as smaller versions ranging from several inches to a few feet high. He also found small jewelry-like pieces made of gold and silver and encrusted with jewels.

G.E. Kincaid felt like pinching himself to make sure he was not dreaming; or even worse—had crashed his boat against some rocks in the river, hit his head, and was imagining this whole scene. But, it was real. He had finally found the treasure that had eluded him all of his life. Gerald Edward Kincaid was finally going to have the life he deserved.

He was examining strange, writing-like markings on yet another gold statue when he heard a noise. It was very faint at first, but it slowly grew in volume. It was the sound of voices—he was sure of that. He could not understand what the voices were saying, since they seemed to be in some strange language he had never heard before. But after a few moments he was positive that’s what he was hearing—coming from even deeper within the cavern. He felt the holster around his waist and realized for the first time that he had left his revolver on the boat.

Like most men who had spent the better part of their lives getting caught being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Kincaid’s first reaction was to run. However, he kept his wits about him long enough to pocket several pieces of the gem encrusted jewelry, and one of the very small gold statues. He extinguished the lantern, and moved quickly as he followed the side wall back to the entrance of the cave.

The climb up to the ledge holding the cave had taken him nearly two hours, but he made the trip back down in about one-fourth that time. Not only was gravity working for him on the return trip, he was also feeding off the adrenalin of a man who feared he had stumbled into a situation way above his head.

He returned to the river bank in a near run, threw the items he carried with him onto the boat deck, and pushed the craft into the river. He jumped onto the boat at the last moment as the current pulled it into the stream.

He did not even notice that he had dropped his daddy’s flask as he scurried onto the boat.

G.E. Kincaid had been drunk for the better part of two weeks.

After barely escaping the rapids of the river with his life, Kincaid abandoned the boat nearly immediately after getting out of the canyon. It was not that big of a loss—the boat had sustained quite a bit of damage during the journey, and probably would have never seen another voyage anyway.

After that, Kincaid had made his way down to Phoenix where he attempted to placate himself with whiskey and easy women.

Kincaid found that if he was drunk enough, he wouldn’t have the dreams. Every night when he slept he would hear those same voices from the cavern. And, while he could never quite remember their message the next morning, he knew in his heart the things they told him were not pleasant.

As unpleasant as the dreams were, the thought that he had abandoned what could have been millions of dollars in treasure was even more haunting. He had tried to convince himself that maybe he had imagined the cave—that he hadn’t really seen those things. But then, he would pull one of the small pieces from the stash he kept carefully hidden, and he knew that it was true. And, he feared that the thoughts of what he had lost would always torture him.

During those weeks he thought a lot about going back to retrieve the treasure. However, he realized there were