The Messengers: Fire of the Gods

By Shawn O'Bryhim

An incompetent professor of Biblical studies stumbles upon an ancient scroll during an excavation in the Middle East. Unable to translate the text, he enlists the aid of a brilliant young graduate student who uses code-breaking techniques to reveal its awful secrets. If her translation falls into the wrong hands, it will release dark forces that have been suppressed since the beginning of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawn O'Bryhim
• Release date: Nov 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452492230

Shawn O'Bryhim

Shawn O'Bryhim is a professor of Classics who specializes in Mediterranean religion and ancient comedy--both of which figure prominently in "The Messengers." He lives on the East Coast, but enjoys going back to his farm in the Midwest as much as possible to hone his chainsawing technique. Look for his "Greek and Roman Comedy" at the University of Texas Press and on Amazon.

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THE MESSENGERS

Fire of the Gods

Shawn O’Bryhim

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by Shawn O’Bryhim on Smashwords

The Messengers: Fire of the Gods

Copyright 2009 by Shawn O’Bryhim

All rights reserved

All characters are fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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For my son, Caelan Alexander Patrick O’Bryhim, the smartest person I know.

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Prologue

The Levant, c. 1100 B.C.

The walls of the city have now fallen. The troops of Azazel are pouring through the streets, relentlessly seeking what they must never find. My people, decimated by starvation and disease, rush headlong through the gates of the Great Temple and cry out to me, demanding that I save them. But I must resist, no matter how terrible the cost.

The high priest drops his stylus, shaken by the terrible din outside. He looks down from the summit of the Great Temple and sees Azazel’s army entering the sacred precinct at the crown of the citadel below him. There the soldiers begin a methodical slaughter, a hideous display of carnage carefully orchestrated to weaken his resolve. They hack off the genitals of the men, slice away the noses of the women, and burn the children alive on the great altar. The priest turns away from this sickening spectacle, desperately wanting to end the suffering of his people, but knowing that he must find the courage to let them die.

Suddenly the screaming ends, leaving a dreadful silence in its wake. The priest peers down from the temple, trying to divine what new atrocity lies in store for him. Roughly thrust aside by its butchers, the crowd parts to reveal a tall, muscular man dragging a struggling boy by his long hair. The priest’s heart froze. Azazel has found his son! He watches as the merciless beast drags him to the foot of the temple, grabs him by the wrist, and lifts him high into the air. Holding the child over the smoking altar, he pulls a razor-sharp dagger from his belt and slowly cuts a deep gash from palm to elbow, laying bare the white bone. The boy shrieks as the knife rips through his flesh. The blood of the innocent spurts onto Azazel’s face, covering it with a dark, red mask from which his sharpened teeth gleam menacingly.

Looking toward the temple for his one hope of salvation, the boy screams, Father, please! Make him stop! Azazel follows his gaze and locates the priest. He lifts the boy high over his head and bellows: You can end this. If you care nothing for your people, at least save your son. Give me the scroll!

Azazel has left him no choice. The priest turns away from the window and motions to his servants, who strain to open the massive double doors that guard the inner sanctum of the temple, forbidden to all but the high priest. The doors close behind him with a thunderous boom as he descends through the darkness into an underground chamber illuminated by a single oil lamp. The priest approaches a low wooden podium that holds an unadorned metal box. He kneels and carefully removes an ancient scroll from the box, which records the incantation that had not been uttered since the establishment of the priesthood countless generations ago.

As he begins to chant, I call upon the Messengers of the Most High, the slender flame of the lamp begins to flicker in a faint breeze. A dull rumbling commences, heralding the appearance of a point of blue light on the wall opposite him. As the rumbling grows louder and the light more intense, he keeps his eyes locked on the scroll and continues to read in spite of his fear. The words of the incantation swell the breeze into a howling blast that spins the light into a column of blue flame. As if drawn by his words, it creeps slowly toward the priest. He struggles to his feet, covers his eyes against the blinding light, and shouts the final phrase just as the flame engulfs him.

With this, the fiery whirlwind roars up the stairs, crashes against the doors, and splinters the thick bolt. The massive doors careen across the room as the flame erupts into the temple and fills it with a blinding light. Outside, the people fall to their knees and raise their hands toward the light, believing that the priest has summoned their god to rescue them. Just then, the earth shakes and a great chasm opens beneath the courtyard, swallowing everyone indiscriminately. Filled with rage, Azazel smashes the boy’s head against the altar. It explodes into a mass of blood, bone, and brains. Looking up to the heavens, he shakes his fists at the light. This is but the beginning! We will return and you shall be cast out!

Azazel roars with anger as a red flame from deep inside him consumes his flesh and, like a comet, darts far out into the sky of the western desert. Deprived of their leader, his men mount their horses and ride at full speed toward the breach in the wall. Just before they reach safety, the temple explodes, showering down gigantic blocks of stone that impede their retreat. The blue flame rises high above the ruins and divides into slender fingers as it descends upon the city. Like the hand of a vengeful god, it courses swiftly through the streets, leaving nothing but smoldering heaps of rock and bone in its wake.

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PART I

The Discovery

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1

Sand poured in from the newly opened hole as the Arab workmen slid down a rope into the underground chamber. Their robes billowed around them as they dropped one by one onto the hard stone floor below. Next came the equipment: huge, battery-powered lamps that descended like one-eyed monsters sweeping down upon their human prey. They arranged them along the back wall, then shouted up in Arabic that it was safe for the excavator to descend: Inzel, ta’a inzel. Mafeesh shii khawt. They had forgotten that the American’s grasp of Arabic was tenuous at best. Quickly realizing their error, they translated: Down! Come down! There is nothing to fear!

A harness was lowered slowly through the hole, into which was stuffed the sweating, corpulent body of W. R. Dubois. He was an anachronism, a throwback to stereotypical archaeologists in B-movies who tried to kill lovelorn mummies with a pistol. While in the field, Dubois habitually dressed in a khaki outfit with matching bush jacket, pith helmet, and jackboots. To complete the ensemble, he sported a pencil-thin mustache that made him look like a cross between a silent-movie lothario and a sleazy used-car salesman.

When he was just 6 feet from the floor of the chamber, the rope caught in the pulley, leaving him suspended midway between the present and the past. The workmen above shouted at each other as they yanked the rope. In a desperate attempt to free the mechanism, they shoved any sharp object they could find into it and wrenched it back and forth as the metal creaked and groaned. The rope snapped without warning and Dubois came crashing down onto the stone pavement. To the great amusement of the workmen, he twisted and writhed on the floor until he finally managed to slough his bonds. Then, mustering up as much dignity as he could under the circumstances, he threw the harness aside, adjusted his thick, horn-rimmed glasses, dusted off his clothes, and signaled the workers to turn on the lights.

Dubois, a professor of Biblical Studies at Purvis University, had come to Lebanon for the first time the previous summer. He headed straight for the desert, where he wandered around alone like a pilgrim in search of sacred relics. After a month, he left as mysteriously as he had arrived. At the end of the next academic year, he returned for meetings with governmental officials to acquire a site for his own archaeological excavation. Ordinarily, his request would have been denied out of hand because he had no excavation experience and no academic credentials in Near Eastern archaeology. But his timing was fortuitous. Lebanon had just emerged from decades of civil war and was desperate for a renewal of tourism. Unfortunately, the world still viewed the country as a haven for terrorists, a perception that was most prevalent among Americans, whose citizens had been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by extremist groups for years. The Lebanese government wanted to find some way to bring the Americans back to what had once been known as the Paris of the Middle East. And along with the Americans would come their much-needed dollars. The grant of an archaeological site to an American professor might help them achieve their goal. If the Americans saw that Dubois was perfectly safe in Lebanon, more academics would come, followed by businessmen and finally by tourists. His request was virtually preapproved.

When the Director of the Department of Antiquities asked with considerable trepidation what site he had in mind for his excavation, Dubois requested a few acres in the desert, which he had plotted on a map. To the great relief of the Director, there was no evidence whatsoever of a settlement at that location at any time in human history. Indeed, it appeared to be no more than a dry, desolate haven for snakes and scorpions. Dubois was given his excavation permit, along with several workmen and security guards who would protect him from harm—and report on his activities to the appropriate authorities.

For the first couple of months, there was little to report. Dubois’ excavation seemed to be following a random pattern: trenches were scattered throughout the site in such a way that it resembled an aerial-bombing range. The guards dismissed him as a buffoon who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He was clearly looking for something, but they had no idea what it could be. Then, contrary to all expectations, he began to uncover foundations, roads, skeletons—the type of discoveries that would send a real archaeologist into an orgasmic fit. Eventually he found so much that the Department of Antiquities began to get nervous. It appeared that he had stumbled upon a Lebanese Pompeii that had the potential to draw tourists from around the world. The only problem was that this bumbler—a lucky bumbler, but a bumbler nonetheless—might damage the site out of sheer ignorance. The Director of Antiquities was just about to cancel his excavation permit and reassign it to a local archaeologist when he saw Dubois on the World News Network. To his surprise, Dubois was announcing his discovery of an unopened chamber beneath a massive temple in a mysterious lost city in the Lebanese wilderness. Thanks to this report, Dubois and the site were now inextricably linked in the public imagination. It would be impossible to deprive him of his discovery without having to answer inconvenient questions about how such an unqualified individual received an excavation permit in the first place.

His heart racing, Dubois gave the order to turn on the lights in the chamber. Seeds, bone fragments, and pollen—the stuff of modern archaeology—were of no interest to him. Like the archaeologists of a bygone era, he was on a treasure hunt. If this excavation turned up a cache of jewelry or sculpture, his reputation and, more importantly, his financial future would be secure. Surely an underground chamber beneath a temple must hold something of inestimable value. He could hardly wait until the fruits of his labor were finally revealed.

The click of the switch echoed throughout the chamber as light flooded a room that had lain in darkness for millennia. Dubois squinted, expecting to be blinded by the dazzling light reflected from piles upon piles of gold. But there was no brilliant flash. Instead, the light was absorbed by bare stone walls encrusted with a thick layer of black soot. He saw nothing but a melted clump of metal atop a heap of ashes. No gold, no silver, not even a pathetic pot—just a chunk of worthless metal and some ashes.

Suddenly one of the workmen shouted. Dubois spun around to find him bent over the skeleton of a man, whose blackened bones must have been burned in the conflagration that destroyed the contents of the chamber. Its empty sockets stared back at Dubois, its mouth gaping in a silent scream. As his mind raced to manufacture a spellbinding story about the last moments of this unfortunate’s life, the type of story that might bring some profit on the lecture circuit, Dubois noticed that the skeleton’s hand was wrapped tightly around a cylindrical object. He wrenched the artifact from its bony grasp, tearing off its hand in the process. Picking off the fractured phalanges, he discovered that it was a rolled-up piece of hide, which had somehow survived the inferno without a trace of damage. He could barely contain his excitement as he unrolled it. Glued to the inside was a sheet of papyrus covered with neat rows of ancient characters. This, at least, had potential—if only he could read it.

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2

The administration building of Purvis University was abuzz with the news of Dr. Dubois’ discovery. The chancellor was particularly elated because he planned to use the professor’s notoriety to boost sagging enrollments and, thereby, ward off deep budget cuts that had been threatened by the state. Since Dubois was now a celebrity, he would draw new students to Purvis in droves, especially to the faculty-rich and student-poor Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Purvis University was the brainchild of Joseph Purvis, who had been eking out a living as a small-time farmer in the hills of southern Kentucky in the early 1900’s. During one of his regular late-night hunting trips to a nearby still, he fell into a newly formed sinkhole in front of his house. When Joe finally regained consciousness, he realized that he had stumbled upon his ticket to a life of leisure: a rich deposit of coal. Unfortunately, his scheme to exploit this windfall was hampered by an acute shortage of labor. Although there were plenty of potential employees in the area, they refused to work traditional jobs. Instead, they stayed close to their remote shacks in the mountains and tended their stills, which provided a reliable income during Prohibition. When running moonshine became considerably less lucrative after the repeal of the 18th Amendment, the staunchly independent hill folk preferred to remain self-employed rather than submit to someone else’s authority. Joe tried to change their minds by offering them something that they didn’t have, something that they would never have if they stayed on their isolated farms: civilization. With the help of a very large speculative loan from the nearest big-city bank, he built a company town with all the amenities. Single-family units were constructed on 1/4-acre plots, each with a kitchen, electric lights, furniture, a small front yard, and indoor plumbing. Several types of stores (all owned by Joe) lined the town square, which was also the location of the offices of the Purvis Mining Company/Town Hall, the company school, and the company-built Baptist church. The implications of this arrangement were clear to everyone, but just to drive the point home, Joe made sure that the lightning rod on the company headquarters was noticeably higher than the church steeple.

Men from the surrounding area flocked to Joe Purvis for jobs in his mines. Apparently, bright lights at night and an indoor toilet made working for an overseer almost tolerable. Besides, their children would get a good education and, just maybe, they would escape the hard life that awaited them in the mines. Hundreds of wagons laden with substantial families and their meager possessions followed the winding mountain road in a mass exodus from the hardscrabble hills to the Promised Land. What these people did not understand was that he who giveth, taketh away. Joe ruled the town with an iron fist. Under the town charter, he was mayor for life and could expel anyone for any reason from his job, his home, and his community. There was little dissent in Purvis, Kentucky while J. P. (as he was now known) was in charge. Prosperity came with a price, and Joseph led them straight into bondage.

The first problem that J. P. encountered in his Kentucky kingdom was a dearth of applicants for teaching positions at Purvis School. Teachers with a college education had no desire to move to the backwoods of Kentucky, no matter what the job paid. J. P. decided to rectify this situation by founding Purvis Teachers College to educate some of the brighter sons of his miners so that they could teach at Purvis School. This worked so well that, in 1950, J. P. expanded the college into a university, which he modestly called Purvis University. At the same time, Mayor J. P. Purvis added a new line to his resume: chancellor for life. He thought that such an august title would give him the air of sophistication required to mingle with the thin upper crust of Kentucky society. Fortunately, he never had the time to do so. If he had tried, he would have been rejected out of hand because he possessed indelible traits that tied him to the hills of southern Kentucky: a lack of breeding and a thick backwoods accent. But county judges and state legislators were more open-minded. They, at least, accepted him—and his cash—anywhere and anytime.

Purvis University had no problem attracting students for a teaching degree. All applicants were offered free tuition as long as they agreed to work in the Purvis school system for five years. However, applicants for the university’s other programs were painfully few. This was due in part to the fact that admission to Purvis University was restricted to men. There was not much to do in town and the students who came from outside of the area (usually in desperation because they had not been admitted anywhere else) soon got bored with the uncouth daughters of coal miners, whose social skills and educations—like their teeth—inevitably contained huge gaps. Eventually, they set their sights on the more refined ladies of Sacred Heart College for Women, fifty miles and a weekend road trip away. But the immaculate women of Sacred Heart held out little hope of relief to the men of Purvis University (or, as the Sacred Heart girls called it, Pervert U), so enrollments continued to dwindle. Out of desperation and in contradiction to his firm belief that nice girls need a husband, not an education, Chancellor Purvis allowed Purvis University to become a coeducational institution. Enrollments increased dramatically because of the irresistible lure of nearly unrestricted mixing of the sexes. In addition, the death of Chancellor Purvis left the university with a huge bequest of money, land, and mineral rights. This fund was christened The Purvis Endowment, an unfortunate choice of words that led to countless jokes about J. P.’s anatomy. With this gold mine from a coal mine, the new chancellor set up a generous scholarship fund and began to hire professors to staff the departments that he thought would be most attractive to Kentucky students.

One of these was the Department of Biblical Studies. The new chancellor thought that every Kentucky girl and boy would want to learn more about Biblical Studies (i.e., Christianity which, of course, meant the Baptist