Primordia_In Search of the Lost World Read online

  She folded her arms. “One more thing, the Pemon still exist, are still used as guides, and I can arrange for them to be with us.”

  “It’s all lining up, buddy.” Dan’s smile widened.

  Emma pushed her dark hair back off her forehead. “The wide-eyed kid in me says, go, go, go! But the adult, the one who’s supposed to be sensible, is asking, do we really think we can find this plateau with just a few notes?”

  Ben leaned forward to carefully flip pages again, first of the old edition of the Lost World. He came to a hand-drawn map. Then he did the same to the notebook. “A few notes, and this.”

  There was a map, hand-drawn, but surprisingly detailed. There were even longitude and latitude coordinates. He turned a few more pages. “And this, and this, and this.” There were more maps, just as detailed as the first.

  “Oh my God,” Jenny breathed. “This can work. It can really work.”

  Ben nodded. “The ones in the novel and my ancestor’s notebook aren’t the same. Maybe Doyle decided to keep some things secret, huh?”

  “Ho-ooo-ley shit,” Steve said with a broad grin. “He knew it was real.”

  Ben sat forward and clasped his fingers together. “If we go, we run this like a military operation. Agreed?”

  Everyone enthusiastically agreed.

  “I’ve been on jungle missions before; it’s damn hard work. We’re gonna need a plan, and some serious kit.”

  “The kit I can take care of,” Dan said. “You just give me a shopping list.”

  “I’ll help,” Steve said.

  “Me too,” said Emma.

  “I’ll make contact with my friends in Venezuela and let them know we’ll need local guides and transportation.”

  Andrea smiled. “And I better call my agent. This is gonna be fun.”

  Ben sighed and put his hand on the book. “And I need to study this and draw out anything and everything we need to know.”

  The group broke up quickly, each excited and eager to get their allotted tasks in motion.

  Ben climbed to his room, sat on the bed, and kicked off his shoes. He punched both pillows into a single mound and stuffed them behind his head and shoulders, and then opened the notebook to read.

  As he read, the drawings, the words, and descriptions all began to transport him back over a hundred years to that fateful expedition of 1908.

  CHAPTER 13

  1908 – South America – somewhere in South Eastern Venezuela

  The torrential rain had finally eased back to a greasy drizzle. Benjamin Cartwright raised a hand to his small party. The smell of death was growing stronger. Last night’s storm had passed over, but the ever-present cloud cover remained.

  The stories had been true; the once in a half-generation wet season was here, and that meant in this area apparently the sun never shone much above a twilight, rendering everything damp, humid, and like a bottled greenhouse covered in shade-cloth.

  They had been following a game trail for days, and still were, even though he knew it was a dangerous ploy in that the smell of carrion usually attracted large predators. But they had no choice. The jungle here was near impenetrable, and it was either hack, hour by hour, through the green morass, moving ahead at only a few feet every hour, or burrow along readymade caves.

  In amongst the constant drip of water on large broad leaves, Cartwright overheard the Pemon guides muttering their discontent – coming this far had meant entering lands that were taboo to them. He was now leading them closer to a sacred plateau that rose over a thousand feet from the floor of the jungle and up into the clouds.

  It was his destination, and home he had been told of a civilization older than the Egyptian pyramids, and a place of flora and fauna not seen since the dawn of time. As a rising archeologist, he’d be famous overnight. But it wasn’t fame or riches that drove him forward, but a curiosity that had burned within him since he was just a small boy.

  Cartwright looked up at the cloud cover. He had wanted to bring a hot air balloon to traverse the jungle and also raise them to the plateau. But the cloud would make navigation impossible, plus the fact that for some strange reason his compass had gone haywire.

  He sighed. If they ever found a way up to this secret land, they’d have to climb hand over hand. He’d never done that before but would meet that challenge when it came.

  Cartwright rested beneath the huge trunks of trees that defied any known classification – their massive trunks were covered in hair, or the bark that coated them was like wooden scales. They were close; he knew it.

  He pulled out his notebook to look briefly at the maps he had made – all crude and sketched from conversations he had with the Pemon village elders. What he sought was something that was at the foot of a sacred tabletop mountain, or tepui – they were called various names from sky lands, houses of the gods, and cloud kingdoms, and all of them were taboo. The unique geological formations were massive flat-topped mountains and were composed of sheer blocks of Precambrian quartz arenite sandstone that rose abruptly from the jungle, and for some that was a half a mile into the air.

  But the one he searched for was supposedly so tall it was hidden in a thick cloud cover that constantly masked its roof. The massive vertical walls sealed off whatever was up there from life on the ground, and also vice versa.

  Climbing them was said to be impossible, but paradoxically, it was strictly forbidden to even try. According to the Pemon, legend had it that generations ago, a young, foolish man had climbed up, and within a day, his remains were flung back down, missing limbs and head. So, as far as the Pemon were concerned, whatever was up there, having it cut off from them was a good thing.

  Cartwright jumped as a hand alighted on his shoulder.

  “Goddamit, Baxter, creeping up on me.” He shrugged it off and turned an indignant glare on his friend.

  Douglas Baxter chuckled. “So, you step over giant spiders, alligators, poisonous vines, and sucking bogs, but it’s my hand that makes you jumpy?”

  Cartwright grinned and pushed his notebook back into the pouch. “Yeah, well, if it wasn’t raining, after eight weeks without a bath, I should have smelled you creeping up on me.”

  “Who needs a bath?” Baxter snorted. “And the only reason we can’t smell each other is because of that stink.”

  Cartwright’s face became serious as he looked back out to the jungle. “Some sort of big animal, I guess. Dead leopard, maybe? You tell me, you’re the hunter.”

  Baxter straightened and also scanned the dripping jungle. He was the archetypical outdoor’s man and adventurer. He was also a renowned game hunter on several continents, and from a wealthy family – it was his family’s money that was financing their expedition – a grand adventure not to be missed, he had called it.

  Baxter sniffed deeply. “Can’t place it, but doesn’t smell like game.” He inhaled again. “More like dead fish.”

  Cartwright turned back to the jungle. “Yeah, maybe.” It did smell a little like the ammonia corruption of something washed up on a beach at low tide. He looked over his shoulder. “Pemon won’t be with us much longer.”

  Baxter crossed his arms, cradling his Springfield rifle, and glanced over his shoulder to the huddled group of natives. “Yeah, I think you’re right; surprised they hung on this long. My friend, if they turn back, we’re gonna have to make a call on it.” He turned about. “Without our supplies, it’s going to be a long trek back…with little food. There’s no damn game.” He nosed towards the jungle. “Other than whatever that stink is from.”

  Cartwright sighed. “According to the maps, we should have found something by now.” He turned about. “We’ll try for another few miles, and see how much longer they stay with us.”

  “Works for me.” He shouldered his rifle. “Lead on, sir.”

  In another 30 minutes of burrowing through the wet, green caves, the smell had become so strong that the very air around them felt like it was coating them in rank oil. Cartwright started to think it mig
ht have been some sort of mass death area, like an elephant’s graveyard or the like. It only made him more interested and determined.

  He pushed through the curtain of vines and froze. His second guess was that the thing was of such a great size that it produced the massive amounts of rotten gas. And this turned out to be the correct one, as framed in the green tunnel, the thing was revealed.

  The creature was, or had been, enormous. It was a small mountain of decaying, mottled flesh. There were clouds of furious black flies crawling over and swarming around the beast, and Cartwright had to shut his lips tight to keep them out. For several more seconds, all he could do was stare.

  “Well, holy hell,” Baxter scoffed.

  “Hell is right,” Cartwright replied softly.

  Curved ribs as thick as tree trunks poked through torn flesh, a long tail trailed away into the ferns, but there were spikes showing from the grasses where it finished. The legs ended in stumps, with three horn-like nails on each and every one of them bigger than his fist.

  “Some type of dinosaurian,” Cartwright breathed. He followed the long neck to where it ended in a head that at first seemed equine, but was five times its size, and lined with ridged, flat teeth.

  Eager to see more, he pulled the vine curtain back a little further. He now saw there were gouges in the great beast’s side and how the ribs that poked through hadn’t just burst through the skin but looked raked out, as if by huge talons. The thing was a monster, but it had been attacked by something even more ferocious and formidable.

  “Attacked and killed,” Cartwright said. “But what would attack that? What could?”

  “By the look of those gouges in its flanks, I’d say something bigger and meaner – a carnivore, a hunter. And not sure about that being what killed it; look at the impact crater it’s lying in, and also the neck.” Baxter now held his gun ready in his hands. “It’s broken.”

  Cartwright looked heavenwards, but there was nothing but thick cloud above them. “Perhaps it was running away, running for its life, and then fell…from where?”

  “You did say we should have found something by now, right?” Baxter grinned. “Then we must be close.”

  Huge flies picked at Cartwright’s lips and he held a hand over his mouth and nose. “The stink – can barely breathe.”

  He and Baxter turned at the sound of a commotion behind him and expected to see the Pemon preparing to leave. But instead, their leader, a wiry young warrior by the name of Inxthca, was busy issuing rapid orders. His men scurried away, digging out dry tinder and wood.

  “Hey, don’t do that.” Cartwright held out an arm.

  They ignored him and began to cover the great beast over. Inxthca then called for the firestones to be struck – shards of chert and pyrite that gave a spark and then a flame.

  The small warrior drew closer to the pair and spoke rapidly. Cartwright could only speak a little of their language, but he got the gist of it.

  “He’s telling us, no; warning us not to go on. This was the place of bad gods, something called the Boraro.”

  Baxter snorted. “Then we’re very much at the right place.”

  They spun as a horrifying noise from within the flames turned their heads. From the swollen belly of the beast, something burst free, screeching its pain from within the fire. It was a vision straight from hell. Coiling and hissing, the enormous diamond-shaped head split open to reveal fang-lined jaws.

  Baxter raised his gun, sighting at the thing. From high above them, as if in answer, came a roaring hiss that shook the very trees around them. The Pemon jabbered and began to drop their packages.

  Cartwright spun to them. “Wait!” He knew what would happen.

  It was too late. They fled.

  Baxter watched them vanish for a moment and then turned back to the flames, thankfully, seeing the hideous thing also consumed.

  “What manner of place is this?”

  “One of gods and monsters.” Cartwright stared at the fire and grimaced. “Was that thing one of its young?”

  “Didn’t look like the dead animal. Might have been scavenging on it…or in it.” Baxter shrugged. “We should get moving.”

  “Yes.” Cartwright hurriedly pulled out his notebook and started to scribble in it. “Just…want to…make some notes. Describe the thing.”

  “Well, hurry it up.” He looked down at the leather-bound book, with the hand-drawn maps and notes tucked into it. “What are you going to do with all that stuff anyway?”

  Cartwright half smiled but kept writing. “I have a friend I correspond with. A famous author actually, a Brit named Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  Baxter’s mouth turned down. “Never heard of him.”

  Cartwright looked up. “He wrote Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Nope.” Baxter just shrugged. “Don’t read that much these days. Action is what I’m interested in.”

  Cartwright nodded. “Yeah, well, that reading thing is not for everyone, I guess.” He finished with his notes and shut the soft leather cover, sliding a string over it to keep it closed. He then pushed it into a leather satchel at his side.

  He waved Baxter on. “Come on. Like you said, we’ve got to be close now.”

  *****

  The rain had started to fall again. Heavy drops that drummed down on the broad leaves, their hats, and their shoulders. Underfoot, the ground squelched and sucked at their feet, every step becoming a battle against the mud and their fatigue.

  Cartwright, leading, snagged an ankle and fell forward, crashing through elephant ear palm fronds to sprawl onto the slimy, composting jungle floor.

  “Dammit.”

  Baxter followed and was beside him in an instant, but didn’t bend to help. Instead, he froze and just stared.

  “Hoo boy.”

  Cartwright wiped mud from his face and eyes and looked up. He saw what had grabbed Baxter’s attention and his mouth immediately split into a grin.

  “Oh my good God.” He got to his feet. “Oh my God!”

  There was a structure; temple-like, set into the side of a sheer rock face that vanished up into the clouds high above them. Holding it in a muscular embrace were gnarled tree roots as thick as his waist, and the heavy-cut stonework was moss-green with age. Everything about it exuded artistry, antiquity, and spiritual reverence.

  “Looks like a church, old man.” Baxter crossed his arms, cradling his rifle.

  “It does, doesn’t it? But there’s no religious icons, or at least none I recognize.”

  “Could it be Spanish?” Baxter asked.

  Cartwright wiped water and more mud from his eyes and took a few steps into the small clearing before the building.

  “Well, the Spanish have been here since the early 1500s. But this looks more like thousands of years old, rather than hundreds.” He pointed. “See that dead tree trunk that had thrown roots over the foundation stones? That’s an Acomat boucan tree; they can live to be over a thousand years old, and that huge guy looks to have died of old age.”

  Baxter whistled.

  Cartwright craned his neck, trying to take more of it in. “It’s not really my field, but looks a little like Mayan, but different.”

  “Check out the gargoyles.” Baxter flicked water from his hat and then jammed it back on sodden hair. “Or are they more of your dinosaurian beasts – with two heads?”

  Cartwright cast his eyes over the stone statues standing rampant on each side of a huge doorway. They were strange, wrong; they rose up on two muscular legs, but seemed to be wrestling with something – a long muscular body wrapped around them, fangs bared and with unblinking eyes.

  “No, not two heads, but two creatures, their gods maybe, or perhaps creatures from a superstitious culture.” Cartwright had done his paleontology subjects at university, and there was nothing like these described in the fossil record. “Usually designed to warn strangers away.”

  “Well, no wonder the Pemon said this land was taboo.” Baxter spat rainwater onto the ground.
r />   “Jesus.” Cartwright cringed as a roar blasted out from the clouds above them. Baxter’s arms unfolded in an instant, holding his gun ready. After another few seconds, the hunter relaxed.

  “What the hell is up there?” he asked.

  “Gods and monsters, remember?” Cartwright straightened.

  Baxter looked back and forth along the sheer wall. “No way up.”

  “And no way down…unless you fall.” Cartwright turned about. “Undoubtedly a good thing.”

  “Well, as a betting man, I’d lay money on someone having been up there,” Baxter observed.

  “What makes you think that?” Cartwright tilted his chin at the bigger man.

  “Those statues, for one. And I bet this temple, or whatever it is, has clues to find a way up there. We should check it out.”

  Cartwright licked lips wet from the rain and felt a knot of tension, or maybe excitement, coil in his belly. “Yeah, we should.”

  “Well, let’s go; I didn’t come all this way just to look at stuff.” Baxter gave him a lopsided grin. “There might be a secret passage, or treasure, or adventure.”

  “Well then; here’s to adventure.” Cartwright hefted his pack and sucked in a deep breath. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  *****

  There were several blank pages, and then when the notes resumed, Ben’s brows drew together as he noticed that the handwriting, word choice, and even grammar changed.

  Someone else was now writing – he quickly flicked to the end to find the signature notations. And then, there it was:

  Alonzo Borges, Capitán de Policía – El Callao, Eastern Venezuela.

  And a date indicating three months had passed. But what had happened? Ben quickly turned the pages back and began again. His heart sank as he read on.