Trek

By Sloane Golden

In a time before time—a stone age family struggles against the ice age, and a tribe of cannibalistic Neanderthals, in their trek from the old world to the new.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728366852

Sloane Golden

Sloane Golden, grandson of NYTimes bestselling writer, Harry Golden, is a Professor of English, author, screenwriter of film and television (IMDB) and scion of an old, revered literary family.

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2020 Sloane Golden. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/15/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-6686-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-6684-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-6685-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020913303

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

PROLOGUE THE CAVE ARTIST

CHAPTER 1 FIRST TO FIND

CHAPTER 2 SHADOW OF FEAR

CHAPTER 3 ECHOES OF THE PAST

CHAPTER 4 THE OLD WORLD

CHAPTER 5 NO MAN’S LAND

CHAPTER 6 PREDATOR AND PREY

CHAPTER 7 DEATH OF THE FATHER

CHAPTER 8 HEARTHSTONE

CHAPTER 9 STARCHASER

CHAPTER 10 WILDLANDS

CHAPTER 11 RAIN

CHAPTER 12 BLOODLINE

CHAPTER 13 WHITEOUT

CHAPTER 14 CAVE OF THE MOUNTAIN KING

CHAPTER 15 SHADOW LAND

CHAPTER 16 BLACK WATER, WHITE DEATH

CHAPTER 17 THE RETURN OF RUACHK

CHAPTER 18 ON THE EDGE

CHAPTER 19 A LIVING HEARTH

CHAPTER 20 ANGER MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 21 NO TURNING BACK

CHAPTER 22 STARCHASER

CHAPTER 23 THE DARK WOOD

CHAPTER 24 WOLVES

CHAPTER 25 LORD OF THE OLD WORLD

CHAPTER 26 MASTADON HOUSE

CHAPTER 27 KING OF THE SHADOW PEOPLE

CHAPTER 28 BONES FOR BURIAL

CHAPTER 29 PARTING GIFTS

CHAPTER 30 LOOKING AHEAD, LOOKING BEHIND

CHAPTER 31 BERINGIA

CHAPTER 32 BELLA DONNA

CHAPTER 33 BURIED ALIVE

CHAPTER 34 HOME AND HEARTH

CHAPTER 35 OUT OF THE RAIN

CHAPTER 36 GUARDIANS

CHAPTER 37 LEVIATHAN: SONG OF THE WHALES

CHAPTER 38 THE FAR REACHES

CHAPTER 39 THE BEAUTIFUL VALLEY

CHAPTER 40 THE STORY OF LIFE

CHAPTER 41 LOST AT SEA

CHAPTER 42 AND FOUND

CHAPTER 43 FALLING DOWN

CHAPTER 44 DIAMONDS AS BIG AS THE RITZ

CHAPTER 45 ON THE RUN

CHAPTER 46 DIAMONDS

CHAPTER 47 FRIGHT OR -

CHAPTER 48 TRUE RICHES

CHAPTER 49 FLIGHT

CHAPTER 50 FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE

BOOK TWO A NEW WORLD

CHAPTER 51 DARK MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER 52 BIGFOOT

CHAPTER 53 DANCE OF THE BUTTERFLIES

CHAPTER 54 FORTUNE’S FOOL

CHAPTER 55 OH, GREAT SPIRIT

CHAPTER 56 PROVING GROUND

CHAPTER 57 THE JABERWOCKY

CHAPTER 58 RAINING FIRE

CHAPTER 59 THE SNICKER SNACK MAN

CHAPTER 60 DARKEST FEARS

CHAPTER 61 INTO THE FIRE

CHAPTER 62 TAR PITS

CHAPTER 63 CEASE AND DESIST

CHAPTER 64 ON THE TRAIL

CHAPTER 65 A HOLE IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER 66 SACRED POINT

CHAPTER 67 FROM FATHER TO SON

CHAPTER 68 GO ON

CHAPTER 69 MAN’S BEST FRIEND

CHAPTER 70 HOME AND HEARTH

CHAPTER 71 PALEOLITHIC GRAVEYARD

CHAPTER 72 WOLF CUBS

CHAPTER 73 FISHING

CHAPTER 74 A CRY IN THE NIGHT

CHAPTER 75 GLORY DAYS

CHAPTER 76 THE SHADOW PEOPLE

CHAPTER 77 THE HEARTH

CHAPTER 78 THE DEATH OF WHITE EYE

Dedicated to all the victims and the doctors, nurses and first responders of the Coronavirus of 2020 and to Jim & Cheryl Of Hawthorne, FL. A good man and woman in hard times.

PROLOGUE

THE CAVE ARTIST

A bright, incandescent spark illuminated the darkness, and flickered into flame, casting the cave into dancing shadow. Huddled near the light of a tallow candle, a young man knelt and unrolled a leather pouch. He removed a reed brush, together with a few shards of charcoal gathered from the smoldering ashes of the hearth, and laid them out in rows on the cave floor. He ground red and yellow ochre pigment, dug from the earth with his hands, and sprinkled them onto a wooden palette.

Bowing his head, he uttered a silent prayer to the spirits, and blew upon the colors, imparting unto them—a sacred magic. In all the earth, he alone walked between two worlds, the first of his kind to conjure forth his sacred dreams and dark visions in the leap of artistic expression bestowing upon his creation, like a god -- the very breath of life.

His eyes swept the contours of the cave until he found a smooth, bare wall. The reed brush hovered in his hand, awaiting the lonely stir of creation, which, like the shadows, came and went and sprung to life like the animals he had seen on the hunt, along with other fleeting, enigmatic images and symbols for which he had as yet, no expression.

He began to sketch in the outlines of things seen and unseen from his imagination, lightly at first with charcoal, then in vivid, bolder strokes of color, a series of life-like images on the walls of the cave, recreating the fears and wonders of his long and arduous trek from the old world to the new…

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CHAPTER 1

FIRST TO FIND

Hurtling through space, a GPS satellite picked up a signal, and transmitted a series of geographical coordinates back to earth. Intermittent flashes of lightning lit the jagged, wind-swept peaks of the Andes Mountains, as the signal was partially picked up by Dr. Will Celestian.

Darkness was falling fast—too fast. The forest canopy had dissolved into bands of swirling mist, which obscured the path back down the mountain, across the plains to base camp, where a distant fire beckoned, a mere ember on the horizon. Strange how the presence of fire still conferred the comfort and reassurance of home, even from the Rooftop of the World.

Along with his 12 year old son, Skyler and Gabriel—his Peruvian guide, Will had struggled all afternoon to scale the heights along the northern ridge of the Andes Range, a chain forged eons ago in a massive collision of the earth’s geological plates. The strain of the collision had trapped South American waters in an inland sea, until the floodwaters had overflowed its banks and snaked toward the Atlantic Ocean, like a giant, winding Anaconda, to form the Amazon River.

It was this inland sea, not far from the mountain, where they now stood that interested Will -- for the ancient sea, long desiccated, was found on all the old maps. It was up to them to find what was not on any of the maps. Before time had carved a new realm out of the mists.

It had all begun back in the states, just before summer vacation when his son had mysteriously received a series of coordinates from an on-line gamer, directing them close to this site in a virtual treasure hunt.

It had coincided with a project Will was working on, so they packed their bags, hopped a plane and here they were clinging to the face of the mountain, a bad storm coming on. So far, they had managed to navigate the slopes with the help of Skyler’s hand-held GPS, but the storm was now interfering with the satellite transmisson, and having come this far, Will was of two minds, to turn back to the safety of base camp or continue to the top. At this altitude, the shifting winds, which swept across the slopes in gales, amid flashes of lightning, and heart-stopping thunder, made climbing any higher suicidal.

Maybe we should turn back admitted Will through clenched teeth. It’s getting kind of dark and dangerous. Tethered together, Will was in the lead with Skyler not far behind, with Gabriel bringing up the rear.

No way! This is extreme! Skyler grinned, clearly enjoying every minute of it.

Will tried not to look down into the shadows of the abyss below. The top was closer to the bottom at this point. They might as well go for it!

This isn’t a video game, Will shouted over the winds.

It’s better! Skyler grinned.

Kids! Will glanced at Gabriel and shook his head, trying to make light of it; the old Indian nodded, but did not smile. One look at the Indian, however, was all he needed to know the guide was troubled.

Gabriel knew these mountains by heart, and had agreed to show them the way, but his passive face was dark, apprehensive—full of doubt, perhaps even fear, which for a seasoned guide, was troubling.

We can always come back tomorrow. Will shouted, struggling to be heard above the winds.

Not if I get there first. Impatiently, Skyler climbed nimbly around his father, and clawed his way up a rocky outcropping, which jutted out just above their heads.

Skyler! Will was incensed. The muscles in his jaw tightened. The boy never listened to anyone.

With a thrust, Skyler pulled himself over and landed on solid ground, sat back against a tree, and scanned the cobalt sky for signs of rain. Ominous clouds spread out, riding the winds in treacherous black bands.

Skyler punched in several coordinates on his hand-held GPS. If he could just find the last…

A violent burst of thunder shook the mountainside.

Gabriel sighed and crossed himself. The Americans did not understand this mountain as he did. He had climbed the Andes since boyhood. One had to show respect to the mountain. He never would have climbed this high in a storm of this magnitude. He would not have agreed except for the map. He had heard of this map, from the ancestors.

This particular mountain in the Andes Range had given them reason to hope that the journey, begun earlier that spring in Washington DC at the National Archives, was approaching its end, and that with every step, the site on the ancient map drew nearer.

The coordinates, from the mystery source, had been in such close in alignment to the actual map, they had discovered in the archives, that Will immediately applied for a grant to travel to South America to search for the site.

Already, they had unearthed the camps of ancient fisherman along the coast of South America, all the way down to Tierra Del Fuego, but now, like a hound sensing prey, Will knew in his gut they were closing in. They were close. Very close. To something life changing. He could feel it.

Let’s go to the top! He pointed ahead with finality.

But the storm, it is growing worse, senior, Gabriel murmured. If it begins to rain… His words were cut short by another lightning flash, followed by the deafening roar of a thunder-clap, which unfurled above their heads, and left Will clinging to the side of the mountain, his heart racing, his senses struck dumb. The thunder claps were growing in intensity— the worst of the storm was nearly overhead.

The thunder made Will feel faint, and worse— dizzy, which he knew from experience, could lead to a loss of balance… Tragic this high up.

Jesus, Maria! And all the saints, Gabriel cried, as he climbed alongside Will in an effort to make him understand the seriousness of their situation. This is the worst storm I have seen in many years on the mountain. We must find shelter—soon!

Will hovered over empty space, belayed to Gabriel by a slender thread suspended above a deep gorge, which fell away into blackness. Buffeted by high winds, he was busy mapping coordinates on his own hand-held GIS, and cursing his luck. The electrical interference from the storm was interfering with the signal.

I’m going to try to get the coordinates before it breaks up. Will shouted with determination.

He wanted to get there first, to show his son he still had a step or two on him. The coordinates were coming through: a site high on the mountain, the exact coordinates -- then it was gone in a blitz of electronic snow. Damn!

I’m going to find it first, Dad! Skyler’s voice reached him from above, as his he watched his son, with the nimbleness of youth, scramble up over the rocks.

Once Sky had reached the top, he took a deep breath and let his fingers fly across the keyboard. Sky watched the screen light up with an X, which matched a tangled mass of vines directly in front of his face. Sky pumped his fist.

Yes!!!"

Will knew what that meant. His son had found something.

The winds were mounting, and from the look of it, the clouds were getting ready to rip wide open, and drown them in a great deluge, but the competitive drive was strong, and he kept going.

A lightning-bolt struck the side of the mountain above him, bathing Will in a shower of sparks, which singed the hair along his arms. He could feel the heat as he started to climb higher. A strong surge of adrenelin shot though him, which for a moment shut down his heart. He waited, in fear; it skipped a beat, then returned to normal. Irregular heartbeat, his doctor had told him earlier this year. He must slow down. But any slower and he’d be dead.

Close one. He shouted down to Gabriel."

The first raindrops began to fall.

Gabriel hovered on a natural ledge, overlooking a vast, primeval world. Through the mists, a dense forest swallowed an entire continent, its secrets buried in a shroud of green. Every year it seemed something new was unearthed in the vast tract of jungle.

Without waiting, Skyler brushed aside the tangle of vines, looped the end of a rope around the trunk of a giant tree and cinched it tight. He yanked the rope to make sure it would hold. As he the vines drew aside, he saw something that took his breath away. He was staring into the mouth of a vast cave, spiraling downward.

He culled his memory. The map his father had found in the Library of Congress matched the coordinates of the cache. Almost exactly, but not quite.

The archives in the Library showed an ancient parchment, which depicted a desert – The Patagonian Desert – a line of demarcation running southwest towards Chile, through vast tracks of rainforest, upwards into the Andes Mountains to a cave on the northern slope, which overlooked what was once the ancient, inland sea.

According to the map, the cave was partially covered by a tree— a unique and particular kind of tree. The kind of tree Skyler was now tied to.

Dad? Although he was still struggling with the coordinates, Will’s head snapped upwards. There was something about the tone of Skyler’s voice. A barely contained excitement—mingled with fear.

Will’s heart raced – he whispered, half- afraid to ask. Skyler? What is it? What do you see?

You’re not going to believe this! Sky leaped into the darkness.

A long winding root, dangled down in front of Will’s eyes. With the last reserves of his strength, he gripped the root, and climbed straight up into the face of the howling wind.

Skyler, Is there a tree? Will shouted above the wind. At this altitude, in an area this remote area, any cave would be unexplored. And unexplored caves, as Will knew from experience, held many of the earth’s most enigmatic and mysterious artifacts: pieces to a puzzle, illuminating life before written history, before the foundation of the world had been laid. A time of great geological transformation, dramatic cultural and climatic change. But was this the cave?

Skyler!

No answer.

The wind flailed the windswept heights as Will breached the outcropping and flung himself sharply over the side. He breathed in, and looked for a sign of his son.

Skyler was gone!

Gabriel climbed up and dropped onto his side. They followed each other’s gaze to a tangle of vines, swept aside to reveal a cleft – half-hidden in the mountainside. Will’s hands trembled as he unfurled the map. This had to be the cave, passed down through myth and legend—the lost cave of the Andes.

I-I think this is it!

Many had attempted to uncover the mystery, but no one had ever had. So they said it did not exist, yet Will believed it lay out there somewhere, waiting, like so many discoveries, until the time was right to give up its secrets. And then the map in his hands blew away— they were flying blind.

Will and Gabriel had explored the depths of the rainforest, scoured the highest mountain peaks, wandered across deserts, canoed up streams and clear, blue lakes, searching a land so immense it seemed lost to time.

A website on the internet had traced the map back to an unnamed dealer in antiquities, who had acquired it from an anonymous source in the Middle East, to whom it had been traded through a spice merchant who plied the trade routes of the West Indies.

The merchant, claiming to have inherited it from a distant ancestor, a French cartographer, whom it was said, had hand-copied it from an original version of the mysterious Piri Reis Map, a map which graphically depicted an aerial view of the world, an image unobtainable until the modern era of NASA and satellites.

From there the mystery only deepened. Already ancient when it was first discovered, the map was reputed to have been directly copied by a sailor on his voyage to the new world, during the explorations of Christopher Columbus.

Further research uncovered data, suggesting the original map had been carved on stone then drawn over a grid of squares. Through a painstaking process of elimination, by comparison and contrast, Will discovered, that a later mapmaker, had made a small but crucial error when he copied the older stone map to paper, a mistake which had greatly exaggerated the miscalculation; instead of using the original square, the map-maker had used an oblong grid, which had created an error in latitude.

The degree of latitude was shorter than the degree of longitude, throwing early calculations off by approximately a quarter mile, which explained the discrepancy and the reason no one had discovered the cave – until now, when the technology existed to correct and recalculate the mapmaker’s error. The hand-held GPS. An anonymous internet source had done the work for them, now it was up to them…

Skyler! Will called his son’s name again, but the wind swallowed his words. It was blowing harder now, making climbing back down in the dark impossible.

They would have to spend the night on the mountain.

Will reached into his backpack, withdrew his wireless laptop, and switched it on. He wanted to try again. Hopefully the solar batteries still had enough juice. He plugged in the USB interface to his GPS.

Bathed in a blue neon glow, he typed in a series of coordinates to access the orbiting satellite on the global positioning system, and correctly recalculate longitude and latitude.

It could find coordinates from anywhere in the world to precisely within 100 m of accuracy.

Entering the data on a disc, he created a model of the surrounding terrain. The mountain and the cave itself appeared on screen just where it should be.

He looked up from the computer to the cave and checked the map again— not perfect, the topography had changed over the centuries— but close enough.

His eyes, trained to search for subtle clues that others missed, spotted something that made a smile crease his face. It was not only the cave -- they had discovered and discarded many false caves hidden in the remote regions of these mountains. It was a tree, the very roots of which they had used as a ladder to climb to the top.

Before the mouth of the cave, entangled in the dense thicket of foliage, several strands of twisted, gnarled vines, wound around the roots of an ancient tree. A Bristlecone Pine, one of the oldest known genera of tree in the world - it had almost certainly flowered from a seed before the foundations of the Egyptian pyramids had been laid.

The tree was the cache. His son was right; he had found it.

Evidence they had unearthed from a Stone Age site nearby, a quarry with flakes knapped from the raw materials to produce stone tools, and in close proximity, a primitive butchering station, confirmed this location as authentic. And among the debris of extinct, big-game animals, selected, tell-tale extremities of the animals were missing, which signified the presence of man, probably hewn off and hauled back to the original living floor of a cave nearby. But this cave?

Will’s eyes swept the site: food and shelter readily available, fish in the sea and with the mountains to the east, a run off of fresh water to irrigate the valley. Add to that a nearby quarry for making stone tools, and you had the classic environment of a New World settlement.

Except for the soft whisper of his fingers as they fluttered across the keys on the keyboard, no other sound stirred, only the wind as it whistled among the peaks, and the drum beat of the now steadily falling rain, intermingled with the snarl of a nocturnal predator in the distance, in tandem with the ever-present roar of thunder.

Deep in the depths of the cave, Skyler cracked a glow-stick. The caverns, bathed in its eerie glow, sprang to life. From all outward signs, his foot was the first to stir the echoes of the past inside this cave for thousands of years. Atop a circle of stones, in the center of the room, a skull glared back at him, its empty eye sockets secrets to the void.

He took two steps back, and turned. That is when, in the lambent glow of the neon light, he saw the walls.

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CHAPTER 2

SHADOW OF FEAR

Will cinched himself into a harness and shot a stern glance at Gabriel. I’m going after him. Wait here!

He trusted Gabe completely, yet the Indian, out of deference or tradition, kept a respectful distance. In the end, they had become friends, forced to depend on each other for survival under difficult and demanding circumstances.

Hurry. Soon the heavy rains will begin to fall, Suggested Gabriel diplomatically.

You mean these aren’t the heavy rains? Will laughed.

When they come we will be stuck up here for a week.

Summoning his courage, Will took a deep breath, then another. He knew what to expect down there in the darkness— there were always surprises. He uncoiled a rope and harness, and began the struggle with the fear and the excitement of rappelling down inside the cave.

His most compelling fear was of the dark, second only to the fear of falling. Two things, which a dedicated cave explorer should not count among his more serious issues. Definitely not. He thought, not for the first or last time.

As the time to begin his descent drew near, his hands began to quiver. Nothing noticeable, just a slight shake. But he knew. So did Gabriel. Are you all right, his guide asked.

Sure, answered Will, but the tone of his voice was as unsteady as the wind. He secured one end of the rope to the tree, and tugged on the other end.

He thought of his colleagues at the University, safe in their classrooms, secure in the dogma of conventional wisdom, textbook theoreticians who had never rappelled into the darkness of the unknown, down a slender life-line, the sound of their own irregular heartbeat ringing in their ears. Yet it was their names on the textbooks-not his!

That was all about to change.

Dr. Celestian! The night, it plays strange tricks. This game is not worth your lives. Let us wait until the light of day. Gabriel’s warning was punctuated by the sharp, piercing scream of a jaguar and its prey. A cold chill ran down Will’s spine.

I’m ready.

A wide grin split Gabriel’s sun-burnt face. Then I will remember you in my prayers.

What do you think is worth dying down there, Sir, William?

Will adjusted the head-lamp on his helmet. He switched it on – at once its powerful beam shot across the gnarled roots of the tree and flickered down into the shadows of the cave.

I don’t know. Will ratcheted the buckle on his harness tight. He took a deep breath. and that’s why I’m here.

Once again, Gabriel crossed himself and murmured something about the dead resting in peace.

Take these, Gabriel urged a fistful of neon-green glow-sticks into his hand. Batteries run out. He nodded at the headlamp. The Indian had a healthy skepticism regarding modern technology. How deep is it? Gabriel asked, relieved that his job was to stay up on top and keep watch.

Will smiled and cracked a glow stick. He dropped it down into the shadows of the cave, and watched the light recede into a spark then wink out as it fell away into complete darkness. He listened for a splash, but heard nothing…he counted to ten, still nothing. Perhaps it was bottomless.

Will shoved the rest of the glow-sticks into his backpack, and let himself down into the void. Doesn’t look too bad, Will lied.

Glancing at Gabriel Will signaled a salutatory thumbs up, and leapt over the edge downwards along the slender rope into the void. A sickening jolt brought a suffocating stranglehold deep inside his chest. Don’t look down, he told himself.

But the darkness played tricks on the mind. Water trickled from stalactite chandeliers, which dangled like unsheathed fangs from the ceiling, and the thunder above rang like an endless echo through the vastness of the cave.

Automatically, Will played out the dimensions in his head: at least 2,000 feet in length, maybe 400 - 500 feet high. Narrow passageways, which lead into lost labyrinths, caverns stretching away into vague chambers of night. The quiet was unbroken—darkness ruled in the land of shadow. A nightmare set in stone.

In the claustrophobic blackness Will’s conscious mind registered the fact that he was harnessed to a rope, with a good man standing at the other end, but slowly, as if conjured by his deepest fears, an irrational panic rose within his gorge.

The more he thought about it, the more it fed upon itself, until he could no longer resist the impulse to look down. What he saw made him suck in his breath. Utter blackness of an abyss falling away into utter nothingness. He could see the light stick far below, like a slumbering dragon’s fiery eye.

Fear rode in on the darkness and set his heart racing, the deafening, and rhythmic echo of his heartbeat reverberating in his ears. Sweat poured off his face and into his eyes, blinding him.

How many times had he dreamed of this— falling, then awakening in the indeterminate hours of darkness, between midnight, and an uncertain dawn, disoriented, lost and alone, seized with night-terrors.

In the throes of the fear of falling, which now gripped him, his heart began to skip a beat again and the quiver in his hand returned, migrated to the wrist and developed into a tremor, which ran up his arm.

He paused in mid descent, clenched and unclenched his hands, as he held on to the rope. His palms were sweaty. His confidence was slipping away with the darkness. He must do something fast.

He closed his eyes and waited for his runaway heartbeat to slow down. He inhaled and exhaled slowly in deep, measured breaths as he had learned in meditation. He tried to think of something else. Anything. Gradually his hands stopped shaking, his heartbeat slowed to normal.

He must go down. Farther into the blackness…Further back in time.

As he slid farther down the rope into the darkness, his toe touched something solid. He had landed on a stone ledge. He looked back up at a narrow, flu-like vent overhead, through which starlight shone through the driving rain.

Once he was sure he stood on solid ground, he flicked on his headlamp. Its pale beam shone across the walls, blackened with what appeared to be soot— smoke from the fires of an ancient hearth. There had been a fire in this cave, and that meant someone had lived here – original inhabitants.

He followed the beam of his light. To satisfy some morbid sense of curiosity, he picked up a stone and dropped it over the edge. One, two, three. Time passed. Nine, ten, eleven. Again, no bottom – Jesus!

Sky?

No answer.

He praised the uncommon good sense of his faithful friend and guide, Gabriel. A tent back at base camp and a hot cup of coffee sounded awfully good right now.

He took another step. Something became illuminated in the arc of his headlamp – a footprint embedded in stone. Someone had walked this way before. He knelt and ran his hand across the print.

He could feel the indention in the cup of the heel, worn smooth with time, the rim of five fossilized toes. Once, the limestone cave had been porous enough to make an impression of a human footprint. Over time it had calcified, the footprint caught in stone forever. Suddenly—it brought the cave to life.

He shone his headlamp downwards. Out of the shadows stone steps emerged, grooves cut into the limestone, which led, in the wake of his scattered beam, away into the darkness.

Will tugged on the rope. Gabe? He shouted, his voice hoarse.

Here, Amigo. Gabe was wet and miserable. You OK? Raining harder up here.

There’s a kind of a staircase. I’m going down.

Gabriel questioned what his ears had heard. A staircase -

The next words reached Gabriel in a whisper. And a footprint.

Jesu Christos! Gabe crossed himself, covering every station of the blessed cross and then some he had not thought of before. Gabe strolled over to the tree and methodically checked and re-checked the rope. He knew the legends of caves that were said to be bottomless, and of the spirits said to inhabit them. Do you have enough rope?

"Enough to hang myself with, Will laughed, pretending to possess a courage he did not possses. He swung himself backwards over the ledge, and walked backwards, feeling his way along, his toes in search of the next foothold on the stone steps below. One slip and—he preferred not to think about it.

His toes touched and held - another step - good. He dug his fingers into the ledge, and climbed down onto the next step. A rivulet of brackish water trickled down the third step, from underneath a ledge. The footing was treacherous.

He gripped the ledge with his fingertips to secure a handhold before moving onto a crevice in the next rung in the flight of steps. Again, his foot touched stone.

Before he could acquire a secure grasp, however, his foot, slipped on a wet stone, and shot out from under him— his fingers lost their grip.

Down he slid, his hands clawing the muck, bumping over the steps, until he was plunged into utter darkness. The nylon rope burned as it whizzed through his gloves.

His last conscious thought found him in the middle of his worst nightmare—falling— through the darkness. He screamed—only this time it was no dream.

Out on the mountain, a cold rain pelted Gabriel. The wind howled and moaned through the rocky ledges. He thought he heard a scream, but it might’ve been the thunder.

He waited a moment, then called Dr. Celestian’s name—no answer. And what of his son? Had he not warned them both…

Gabriel slid the ivory rosary out of his overalls and began to toll the beads, in fervent prayer. He had been on many adventures with Dr. Celestian up and down the coast— but none like this. These Americans! This time it had gone too far.

No further sound emerged from the depths of the cave. Gabriel knew he should go back down and find the others, yet he would remain, at least until daybreak, out of loyalty. If they were not back by then…

Gabriel pulled his rain-slicker over his head and sat down, his back to the tree, miserable and wet. It was going to be a long night.

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CHAPTER 3

ECHOES OF THE PAST

Will landed with a sharp thud— the impact knocked the wind out of him. He lay on the cave floor, and attempted to catch his breath. He dared not open his eyes.

He was lost in the darkness.

Sky? He whispered, his voice mocking him in a long, lingering echo.

He sat up, opened his eyes, and crawled along the floor on his hands and knees as the soft whisper of wings fluttered in the darkness around him, the touch of leathery wings brushing through his hair. It reminded him of something…

As a boy his family had lived in close proximity to the Grand Canyon. Although his father had told him never to go exploring alone, one exceptionally fine day, he and his dog had discovered a large cave in Bright Angel Canyon. The winding Canyon concealed a mysterious labyrinth of underground caverns, hidden by high vegetation and soaring waterfalls, which tumbled down the rocks in a thunder of mist and spray.

This particular day, preoccupied with the discovery of an immense shark’s tooth half as large as his hand, he had remained unusually late, well after sunset. At twilight, between the last light, and the onset of total darkness, in a moment of perfect clarity, he glimpsed a vast underground cavern beneath the waterfall, the flickering rays of the sun lighting, bone by bone, through the clear depths, the bleached ribcage of a giant sunken mastodon skeleton, embedded in the solid, subterranean bedrock of the foundation of the mountain itself, the curvature of its gargantuan tusks sweeping upwards to form an ivory arch, through which fish glided in and out, holding as it were, the whole vast mountain on its back.

And serendipitously, his passion for cave exploration had begun.

It had not taken long to become obsessed with finding a way down to the underwater skeleton, yet it eluded him, tantalizingly out of reach. Too far below the water to access without scuba gear, at seven, he was too young to acquire a certification in scuba diving. He knew he would have to wait or find another way to access the hidden cache at the base of the mountain, under the hidden waterfall.

The sunset turned to darkness, and he had admitted defeat—this time. But always, his thoughts and dreams returned to the mysterious artifact, and he devised a plan. To search out and discover an alternative opening, to work his way downward into the earth toward the skeleton to examine it more closely. It would take a year of trial and error, but by the following summer, he had found a way into the heart of the mountain.

With a leap of faith, he had simply walked through the wall of thundering water, where to his amazement, he had not drowned, but stood on solid ground. Inside a cave for the first time in his life.

Bent double beneath the torrent of the roaring falls, he pushed his way through the rushing waters. Once inside, he sloshed up to his knees in frigid water, through a labyrinth of immense watery rooms, looking for the end of his search.

At last he uncovered a small circular cavity in the rock wall of the mountain, through which he was just large enough to barely squeeze. Another year and he would’ve been too big.

On the far side, he stood upright and shone his light down into a vast fissure, which the rushing water had opened up, into the depths of the underwater cavern.

Not pirate gold, or silver, nor rare jewels or precious gems, but the treasure cache of a massive, upright mammoth skeleton rooted to the spot, which ever after troubled his childhood dreams like a brightly shining white-hot sun in a swirling nebula of lesser stars and galaxies.

In the first, exultant rush of excitement, he had slipped and lost his footing. He slid all the way down to the bottom, spitting out mud, dimly aware that he could breathe underwater—and then a pocket opened up in the earth, and swallowed him alive.

He inched forward on his hands and knees through the shallow water, down a narrow, winding tunnel, and crawled towards a great rift in the earth, a crossroads in a vast system of underground caverns and tunnels.

Then—for the first time in his life he knew fear. He was lost. It crossed his mind that he might never find a way back out. And then the bats began to fly.

All around him, the flutter of wings, softly at first, then building into a crescendo of thunder as they filled the cave with the echo of their wings in flight. Thousands of them.

Dr. Will Celestian, boy to man, lay and clung to the cave floor until he heard the last of the wings depart. Then he was a boy again, and he knew his path lay through the darkness, and to reach the mammoth skeleton, he must overcome fear mingled with curiosity, but as he attempted to take the first step, he could not move.

A paralysis of will overwhelmed him.

He looked down the length of the tunnel towards the light, then back the other way into the void of utter darkness. He took a step…

Groping in absolute darkness, Will’s mind wandered in the void of Bright Angel Canyon. And as it wandered it began to take flight on the wings of the bats, which flew among the shadows, like a sigh of winged shadows. At last, unable to conquer his fears, he had taken the other tunnel out, which led toward the light of day and the sun. He had not looked back. But the loss of his courage and the lost skeleton haunted him. It was an issue that still haunted him to this day.

After a few years, however, he had grown too large to crawl through the opening, yet throughout his childhood and later into adulthood, the vision of the great, bleached bones of the mammoth under the mountain had held and transfixed his imagination, held it pinned down like the wings of a butterfly. He found that he could only spread his wings and fly again when he was in a cave, and that he would forever go on searching for that elusive something that remained just beyond his reach.

That was why he was here, once more crawling through the pillars of the earth in utter darkness, only this time he was searching for his son. One step at a time, Will told himself. One step at a time.

In the darkness something metallic touched his foot and rolled away. He stood still and listened, trying to discern the direction in which it had rolled. He reached down and touched it – his helmet and still attached, the headlamp. He clicked it on.

A massive circle of stones lay caught in the beam. Set on an austere, earthen floor the stones encompassed a crude hearth. On top of one of the largest stones a giant skull – human—gazed back. A skull from an unknown race of giants…

Will ticked off a list in his mind: an exceptionally large Neanderthal, or some other strange lineage, which went further back, a race before the Neanderthal… As far as he knew, nothing like it had ever been discovered in the New World –or any other world—but what was it?

He shuddered at the thought of coming face to face with it in real life,

God, help us! He cried aloud, all raw nerves in the unquiet darkness.

Will dusted himself off, adjusted his eyes to the room in which he now found himself. He stood transfixed. He walked over to what had to be the remains of a fishing net, pre-ceramic Columbian. Only shreds now remained, probably cotton, attached to small gourds, undoubtedly used as floats. So this was the settlement of an ancient fisherman. Yet this one had built his home in a cave. Why?

Dad? It was Sky, nonchalantly walking out of the darkness, his face, in the flashlight, white and drawn. Did you see the skull?

Skyler! You know the rules, you don’t go off exploring on your own.

I know, Dad! But you do it!

That’s different. I’m trained, and yes—I saw it, and I’ve never seen anything like it before!

Just wait. Skyler trained his beam across the walls of the cave. Look.

Will rubbed his eyes. He must be seeing things. His head throbbed. He touched his face. His fingers came away with a trickle of blood.

Probably sustained a concussion, he surmised, either that or the fear had driven him over the edge.

Father and son now stood looking at something, which transported them both with a surprising up-lifting joy un-experienced since childhood, and the hidden, unreachable home of all his thoughts, counterbalanced by fear and pain — a state of shock.

In silence, Will reached out and touched the wall, running his fingers over the cold, hard stone. He touched the handprint, fitting his own hand over the palm and fingers on the wall. A tingle ran up his spine. It was a perfect fit.

Will gazed around the chambers. Half-hidden among the weave of labyrinths and shadowed chambers, strange, un-bidden shapes undulated along the walls and sprang to life out of the darkness: a frieze of yellow cave lions stalked their prey; dire wolves, outlined in charcoal; brown ochre horses pranced across the plains; A Wooly Mammoth, its tusks upraised, charged through the eerie stillness as if suddenly, through the magic of the artist’s hand, it had come to life once more upon the walls of the cave.

Traveling across time, the beam of Will’s light embraced a thin, transparent coating, which sparkled like a spider’s web, adding luster to the surreal scene unfolding before their eyes.

Calcite, the crystalline form of calcium carbonate, the chief mineral composing limestone, Will’s scientific mind registered absently. It preserved the paint.

He touched a painting. A shudder ran through him. In a brief flash he glimpsed a vision of another eon, in a time before time. He was possessed by a sudden overwhelming feeling of being there, of feeling the light touch of another beside him, another hand, not his own, painting the walls of the cave, a stone candle flickering in another kind of darkness.

Art set in inanimate stone, the illusion of depth and movement complemented by the deliberate use of line and color, produced in him a sort of transference—an exchange of feeling his way backward through time, through the ages of iron, bronze, copper, all the way back to the age of Stone.

Will fumbled in his backpack and pulled out a digital camera purchased with the grant from the University. He spoke quickly, above the whir of the motor drive, trying to remain calm. "The caves at Altimira, and Lescaux in France, the Sistine Chapel of Quarternary Art, in beauty and style, this site surpasses both.

And the giant skull, he thought, his mind unable to let the vision of it go— how does it fit in? He pushed it from his mind, and tried to examined the site more objectively.

The cave paintings at Lescaux have been radiocarbon-dated to 15,000 years, but neither the Altimira site, nor Lescaux, are the oldest of the painted caves. The oldest site on record, Grotte Chauvet, is nearly twice as old, dating to about 30,000 years ago, an epoch known as the human revolution, when modern humans first appeared in the fossil record. They had a complex language, sophisticated art and advanced Stone Age technology. Everything here is older. Oh, and son?"

Yeah?

I’m glad you decided not to listen to me, just this once, and you went exploring on your own.

You’re welcome, dad.

But don’t do it again!

Lancing the dark like a surgeon’s scalpel, Will’s beam swept not only along great vistas of life-like animals, but a garishly brutal scene outlined against one vast wall. Two creatures, one hideously misshapen and ape-like, the other, the image of modern man himself, fought side by side to the death. Two species, locked in mortal combat, each vying for dominion.

From the pictorial images on the wall, one of the creatures had to be Neanderthal, perhaps the very one whose giant skull rested on the hearth, the other species, Homo Sapiens. What had happened in this cave? Was it a record of that titanic struggle for dominance, drawn by an eyewitness of that time, which had left such a huge gap in the written and un-written records of man?

Mysteriously emerging at the end of the last Ice Age, these early humans – Homo Sapiens had taken a sudden and dramatic turn into the era of the modern world, and along the way had become, not only the most adaptable, but the most dominant species on earth.

Will rehearsed the standard view of most of his colleagues. Cave art was the enactment of some kind of hunting ritual, a rite invoked to kill big game, but what about a record of man’s conquest? Certainly, it was well represented here. But there was more, abstract symbols and designs.

That theory failed to account for the fact that only ten percent of all animals in known cave art appear to be wounded or marked with images that resembled spears or arrows.

In fact, his research strongly suggested that most of the animals drawn by Stone Age cave artists, were not the animals they hunted daily, but other animals, drawings and these strange, abstract designs, which for reasons of their own, remained strangely elusive and altogether mysterious.

The paintings on these walls, as well as the pictorial images, drawn in charcoal, seemed more than mere decoration or reenactments of a primitive hunting ceremony, they appeared to be telling or retelling, in ritualistic detail, a story.

As Will’s beam flashed across the panoramic scenes on the walls, he seemed to be following in the footsteps of the artist. The long-ago artist had recreated a map of