Primordia_In Search of the Lost World Read online

  PRIMORDIA

  In Search of the Lost World

  GREIG BECK

  www.severedpress.com

  COPYRIGHT GREIG BECK 2017

  What if it were true?

  What if it were all true?

  What if it was never make believe at all – that the Lost World was real? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t make it all up. I believe he was reading about a lost expedition that really happened. We need to find the notebook. And then we need to go there.

  Benjamin ‘Ben’ Cartwright, 2018

  A comet impact on the Earth would be devastating depending on its mass and composition. However, even if it didn’t make landfall, the full astral effects of a comet simply passing close to our planet are not yet known or fully understood.

  October 2014 – Approaching comet, C/2013-A1 (designate name: Siding Spring), has plunged the magnetic field around Mars into chaos.

  NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, Maryland

  PROLOGUE

  1908 – South America, somewhere in South Eastern Venezuela – the Wettest Season

  Benjamin Cartwright ran like never before in his life. Damp green fronds slapped at his face, thorns ripped his skin, and elastic vines tried to lasso every part of his body. But he barged, burrowed, and sprinted as if the devil was after him.

  Because it was.

  The thing that followed him pushed trees from its path, and its carnivore breath was like a steam train huffing and hissing as it bore down on him. He whimpered, pivoting at a boulder and changing direction. The roar came then, making leathery-winged avian creatures take flight from the canopy overhead, and causing his testicles to shrink in his sweat-soaked trousers.

  Cartwright accelerated, and immediately an explosive breeze hit his face as the jungle opened out. He skidded to a stop, squinting against it. He was at the cliff edge that dropped away to a green carpet over a thousand feet below.

  He stared for a split moment; the strange low cloud swirled all around him, and he knew he only had hours before he’d be trapped forever. He grimaced and turned. Already the trees were being pushed aside as his pursuer caught up to him. He’d seen what it did to Baxter, and the thought of it happening to him liquefied his bowels.

  Arm-thick creeper vines ran across the clearing and hung down over the edge of the cliff face but didn’t reach anywhere near safety. In the few seconds he had left, Benjamin Cartwright realised his choices were to be eaten, or suicide – death either way.

  The foliage burst open behind him, and the hissing-roar made him cringe back with fear. He couldn’t help but turn – the creature rose up, towering over him, all coiled muscle, glistening scales, and teeth as long as his arm. The remains of Baxter still hung ragged between those tusk-like fangs.

  Cartwright fired his last bullet from the gun he had almost forgotten in his hand – it had no effect, and he threw the Colt revolver to the ground. He turned back to the cliff edge, grabbed up one of the vines, said a silent prayer, and leapt.

  PART 1 – What if it were true?

  There's many a man who never tells his adventures, for he can't hope to be believed ―

  Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World.

  CHAPTER 01

  2018 – Greenberry Cemetery, Ohio – Today

  Benjamin Cartwright stood with his arm around his mother’s shoulders. It shoulda been raining, he thought. Instead, belying the somber mood, the sun shone gaily, and the verdant green lawn gave off a pleasant odor of cut grass and fresh soil. The leaves on the large trees ringing the cemetery quivered slightly as a soft breeze moved through their shimmering leaves.

  Perhaps it was fitting, as his father, Barry, was an outdoorsman ever since he was a kid. Being here, surrounded by this forest-like setting seemed, perfect.

  His mother sobbed again, and Ben squeezed her slim shoulders and felt her continuing to shudder as her tiny frame was wracked by sorrow. His own eyes blurred with tears momentarily, and he blinked several times to clear them.

  It was the surprise and suddenness of it all, he guessed. His dad was only 63, and he had seemed strong as an ox…right up until chopping wood had turned into a clutched chest, and then it was lights out big guy, forever.

  Cynthia, his mother, had called him first, telling him that Barry had a bad fall, very bad – that was it. Ben could tell by her voice that it was no simple fall. Both his parents were the type that brushed off trauma as a mere annoyance – even a broken wrist was described as just having a bit of a scrape. So Dad having a very bad fall set off alarms in Ben’s head.

  Her voice became tiny then. “I don’t know what to do,” she had said.

  Ben felt sick from fear then, but he swallowed it down. Trying to impart calm, he had told her to phone the police or an ambulance, or a neighbor, and he was on his way. He lived in Boulder, Colorado, and even though the flight was just a little over 2 hours, it would still take many hours on top of that to go point-to-point.

  “Keep him warm. And Mom, just stay calm, okay? I’ll be there soon.” He checked his watch, blew air through pressed lips, and ran to his room to grab a few things and stuff them into a bag. He snatched up his wallet and phone, and then ran to the door, praying there’d be a flight he could jump on.

  He’d phoned anyone and everyone he could think of; sending emergency services, plus Hank the neighbor. His mom sounded disorientated, having only said that Barry was still asleep and that she had placed his jacket over his shoulders to keep him warm.

  After the longest 5 hours of his life, he was there.

  When he arrived, he thankfully found that an ambulance had come and gone, but Hank from next door had grabbed his shoulders. “Sorry, Ben,” was all he’d said.

  He had steeled himself, knowing what to expect, but it still hit him like a kick to the guts.

  He trudged up to the house, where a local police chief he remembered from when he was a kid waited on the porch. He saluted Ben and shook his hand.

  “Sorry for your loss, Ben. Your father was a personal friend of mine. He was a good man.” His jaw worked for a moment. “Massive heart attack. Probably never felt a thing.”

  Ben nodded. “Mom? Cynthia?”

  “Inside. She’s okay…wanted to wait for you.”

  Ben went past him and into the house. He found her in the family room, sitting on the sofa, just staring at the fireplace. He had sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Stupid old man; chopping wood like that,” she scolded, and then collapsed into tears.

  Ben felt his own eyes fill. Barry had been the perfect father – happy, strong, always there, and had taught him everything from how to do his shoelaces, to being able to drink from a soda bottle without the backwash sliding back into the bottle.

  Guilt nagged at him for not coming back sooner, to have one more laugh, one more beer, or maybe one more chance to tell him he loved him. All gone now.

  That all had been just two days ago. Now, family and friends were gathered at his funeral, staring at the polished coffin that gleamed in the sunlight. No one talked, and few even met his eyes after the initial handshake greeting – all bar one – Emma Wilson, a high school sweetheart. She nodded to him, and he gave her a flat smile of acknowledgment in return.

  He also turned slightly, hiding the scar on his cheek – a parting gift from a grenade-throwing ISIS asshole in Syria. The line down his face from temple to chin was a reminder of his time in the military. The grenade had been a lucky throw, and landed in the center of five of them – he dived for it, but his buddy, Mad Max Hertzog, had beat him to it, shouldering him aside and covering the frag device with his body.

  Then came the madness: t
he explosion, the smell of burning flesh, the warm wetness that rained sticky blood and flesh onto his face, his hands, and into his eyes and mouth. There was the siren sound of perforated eardrums and the faint shouts of men hauling him up.

  There wasn’t much left of Max, blown in half, and another of their team lay on his back with smoke rising from charred and ripped flesh. They were being overrun, and he was dragged away, but not before he thought he saw the dead man’s fingers twitch. He tried to pull away, tried to scream that the man needed help, but his mouth wouldn’t work.

  He was later told the man, Henderson, was dead. His head told him that was the truth, but his subconscious whispered that he had left a man behind and those bloody fingers twitching, beckoning to him, still haunted his dreams even today.

  The shrapnel had opened his face, but he knew he was one of the lucky ones; he served, and survived, with everything intact. Many others didn’t, or they came home missing pieces.

  Ben let his eyes drift again to Emma and didn’t realize his hand had reached up to touch the scar; his mother said it made him look handsome in a brutal sort of way. Others said it just made him look meaner, and that was fine by him.

  Ben continued to stare with dark brown eyes that had a hawk’s intensity. Years ago, he and Emma had dated. She was a cute girl then, but now had grown into a beautiful woman, and he wondered whether she had kept in contact with his family, or she was here just to catch a glimpse of him. You conceited ass, he thought, but then, I hope so.

  Afterwards, there was a wake planned at the family home, which was agonizing to endure, and then his mother asked could he stay for a few more days to help tidy things up, and to just be there.

  He knew what she had meant – tidy things up, meant to pack away objects she couldn’t bear to look at anymore. Of course he would. Besides, Ben was diplomatically termed between engagements right now.

  After the grenade, and then the two hundred and fifty plus internal micro-stitches to his face, he had left his Special Forces unit and the Army for good. He had felt like he was running away, and the guilt still hung over him like a shadow. But he knew then that he had seen enough, endured enough, and delivered enough violence to last a dozen lifetimes.

  Now, he just wanted peace and quiet, and may even resume his studies to become a vet – animals he loved; it was human beings that were capable of atrocities and that he had walked away from. He was like his dad, and his grandfather, and he guessed all the other Cartwrights who yearned to live life simply and in the sunshine. Even his namesake, Benjamin Cartwright, who died somewhere down in Venezuela in 1908 after trekking into the jungle, was just a dreamer with an adventurous soul.

  His mother came back into the living room and picked up an old photograph, stared for a moment, and then sobbed again.

  Ben sighed; yep, should be raining.

  CHAPTER 02

  Ben woke with a start. The house was quiet, and he turned his head slowly, wondering what woke him.

  He read somewhere once that if a person dies suddenly it could take days for their spirit to actually realize it. They’d carry on like nothing had happened, wandering along hallways, opening and shutting doors, and even trying to speak to their loved ones.

  “Goodbye, Dad. I love you,” he whispered to the still air.

  Ben sighed and sat there for a few more minutes; it was late, or rather way too early, and he silently got to his feet. He stepped carefully, trying to avoid squeaking floorboards that might wake his mother who had finally got off to sleep.

  He decided to continue with his tidying up and carried a box of his dad’s clothing under one arm and a beer in the other as he made his way up to the attic.

  His grandfather, Errol, had made his fortune in mining and left his father a sizeable inheritance and home on a gentle hilltop with 20 acres of surrounding land. The family home itself was impressive with plenty of sandstone and wood, filled with antiques, memories, and things the family had picked up over several generations.

  The third floor was all attic space and was filled with boxes, chests, and dustsheet-covered excess furniture. He flicked on the lights, placed his beer on a covered table, and hiked the box of clothing over to the existing pile of chronologically layered personal items.

  He still had much to bring up, but the man’s pictures would remain downstairs. He noticed his mother had turned them face down, as if even looking at him would cause her to crumble all over again. Ben figured his dad’s ghost would be in the house for a long time to come.

  He pulled a sheet off an armchair and sat down, breathing in the smell of dust, old wood, and aging papers. He put his feet up on a chest and just let his eyes move along the piled towers of their family history – like geological layers, Barry would now have his things added to the piles, joining those that belonged to grandfather Errol, great grandfather Julius, and his namesake, his great, great grandfather Benjamin.

  In a moment of feeling his mortality, he wondered whether one day someone would be sitting right here with their feet on his lifetime’s collection of papers, pictures, and old track and field trophies.

  Ben shifted his feet on the chest. When he was a kid, his dad had told him that they were all full of treasure. But upon opening a few of them, he had been disappointed to find that there was nothing but papers, old letters, antiquities, and faded photographs. Nothing a kid valued at all.

  His dad had just smiled at the downcast look on his face and told him that knowledge and information was the greatest treasure that a person could ever be given. Back then, he wasn’t impressed; but time has a way of changing perceptions.

  He lifted his feet from the ornate box and unlatched it so he could lift the lid. The hinges squealed in protest like tortured banshees, and he shushed them.

  He clasped large hands together and ran his eyes over the contents. This one belonged to his grandfather Errol and contained thick folders of papers and old books on geology and mining. He dug down; there were even sealed packages in a waxed paper and bound with string. He lifted several free and read the notes scribbled on the front in pencil. Some were addressed to Errol’s father, Benjamin, some to Errol, and some just to the Cartwright Estate, with a few dated as far back as 1912, well before Errol was even born. Another was inscribed 1930 and both felt like books, and both seemed to be from a similar source.

  He ran a hand up through his thick, dark hair and left the fingers there, massaging his scalp as he read the notations – they were from the Estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Being an avid adventure fiction reader, he recognized the name and his interest was immediately piqued. He unwrapped the first package dated 1912.

  “Whoa.” As he suspected, it was a book – but what a book – an immaculate first edition of The Lost World. The gilt and blue cloth-bound book was heavy in his hands.

  Ben didn’t even know Doyle had written the book. He always thought he was well known for his Sherlock Holmes adventures, but thought The Lost World was actually a Steven Spielberg movie.

  He lifted it to his nose and sniffed; he detected a slight mustiness, but overall, the dry attic coupled with the book’s wax paper covering had preserved it over the entire century.

  But why wouldn’t Errol have opened it? he wondered. Maybe because it came before he was born and wasn’t addressed to him? Or perhaps it had been put away and he hadn’t even known it existed?

  Ben opened the book and read the inscription. It was from the great man himself:

  To my good friend, Benjamin Cartwright,

  Your experiences ignited my imagination, and this is the result. Hope we can correspond again soon.

  Your friend, Arthur Conan Doyle

  Ben smiled wistfully; we Cartwrights had friends in high places, he thought and then sighed. The letter told him that Doyle obviously didn’t know that Benjamin died down in Venezuela some four years before the book was printed.

  He carefully began to read pages here and there, picking up the gist of the story – a newspaper reporter,
Edward Malone, is sent to interview a professor by the name of Challenger, who claims he knew of a hidden plateau in the South American Amazon that was inhabited by living dinosaurs.

  Ben smiled as he read. In no time, Challenger had convinced a small band of supporters to embark on a perilous adventure to find this plateau, where they certainly did discover creatures from the dawn of time.

  Well, of course they did, Ben thought dryly. He turned the book over in his hands, admiring the fine binding; he couldn’t imagine what the book was worth, but he’d certainly not let it linger in the old trunk any longer. He partially rewrapped it and placed it on the table beside his beer.

  The next package he drew forth was a bundle of letters tied together with age-stained string. He undid the knot and spread them out. He could see they represented earlier correspondence back and forth between Benjamin and Doyle.

  Ben snorted softly. So it was true then, he thought. He remembered his father regaling him with tales of Benjamin, the adventurer’s adventurer who went on many expeditions to remote corners of the globe, with the 1908 one being the fatal last. His wife had to organize recovery of his body from some remote village down in South America at the edge of the Amazon jungle.

  He opened the first letter dated 1906, prior to his ill-fated trip. It discussed his preparations for the expedition he was organizing. He even invited Arthur Conan Doyle to come along and document it.

  He read quickly; there were also meandering discussions about finances, who and what he should take with him, and then the rest settled on more mundane political matters of the time.

  Doyle’s response was to express a keen interest in the expedition, but he politely declined to join Benjamin. However, he did offer to finance part of the trip if Benjamin ran into difficulty raising funds.