PROLOGUE
The cave was pitch black, which wasn’t surprising. The cave was some four-thousand feet in the Earth. But what wasn’t surprising was that it was warm and dry. From Rhavi Kumur’s experience, caves were always cold and damp…so this puzzled her.
Rhavi Kumur was a world renowned treasure hunter. Since childhood she’d enjoyed spelunking. She lived in a small town in North Eastern Tennessee. Before graduating from Ridgemont High, Rhavi had explored most of the caves that were within driving distance from her home.
At the young age of seventeen, Rhavi left home to attend college in Boulder, Colorado, where she majored in Archaeology and Geology, but her passions were exploration and discovery.
While in Colorado, Rhavi spent most of her free time combing through Colorado’s abandoned mine shafts and unexplored caves. This left Rhavi with very little time for personal relationships. Still, every now and then, she would eke out a little time for a boyfriend. And it was with one of her short lived relationships that she happened upon her first big find.
During her Senior year, Rhavi was dating one of her fellow classmates, Javier Martinez. One day they were out exploring abandoned mine shafts in the Durango area. In one of the mine shafts, they lucked upon a narrow passage that was hidden beneath a protruding rock face.
Rhavi slithered her way, some 200 feet plus feet, into a small rock cavern. Water, over years, had produced a small pocket in the rock, creating sort of a natural vault. The newly discovered crypt was just large enough to hold four normal sized adults.
Inside, water was flowing steadily from the rock ceiling, tirelessly working its’ way to enlarge the space. Using a glow stick, Rhavi perused the rock enclosure. Upon doing so, she discovered am unusual cavity.
Rhavi called out for Javier to join her. When he arrived, Rhavi showed Javier the out-of-place indentation in the rock. Upon closer examination they could see that there was something inside the cavity. Something about the size of a large shoebox.
Rhavi reached into the rock cavity to try and extract the object, but could not budge it. Javier being taller and stronger, reached in, and wrestled with the box for some time, before finally extracting it.
It turned out to be a rusted metal chest. Years of moisture and oxidation had sealed the box shut. Rhavi engineered a makeshift skid, using items from their backpack, and with it, was able to slide the chest out and back to the mine shaft, where they pried the chest open. Inside were bronze rectangular shaped bars.
Rhavi, using one of her survival knife, raked one of the bronze bars and was surprised to discover the bars true substance, Gold. The gold bars total value added three and a half million dollars, which Rhavi happily split with Javier.
Not long after her discovery, Rhavi moved on from Javier. She then dropped out of school and decided to travel the world. For the next
fourteen years, Rhavi traipsed valuable gemstones and raw minerals, which she used to finance her grand explorations and numerous adventures. Rhavi’s current adventure was different, though. In addition the caves conditions being extremely unusual, it was also illegal for her to be there. ‘Here’ was about three-quarters of a mile beneath the ancient Palestinian
city, Lachish, which was about thirty miles southwest of Jerusalem and the location of several archaeological sites that had been evacuated in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Those digs had identified the city as being one of the last cities of Judah to be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar around the same time that Jerusalem had fallen. Because of the materials found in the sites, which verified many events, names of places, people in the Bible and was written in the same language of the Old Testament Scriptures, the site was considered off limits to anyone expect by express permission by the Israeli government. Of course, with Rhavi’s background, she had no chance of getting permission. Besides, she didn’t really want it. This was not the first illegal excavation she’d been involved in, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
It was certainly one of the most important though. Rhavi had been in Jerusalem visiting an old friend from her college days They had been having a morning drink at the coffee shop when Rhavi had overheard two men talking about an exciting new discovery at Lachish. They had accidently broken through a wall and undiscovered an entire complex of tunnels. The men were speaking Turkish, which Rhavi understood, because of her father had been born and raised in Istanbul before immigrating to the United States of America during the turbulent times of the 1970’s She listened to the conversation, finding out the government had stalled the digging and would be sending experts from the University to help with verification and removal of anything of importance.
She also heard that the government people would not be getting there until Monday afternoon, which was three days away.
This provided a great opportunity for her.
After finishing the morning with her friend, Rhavi went back to her hotel and started preparing for her journey to the dig site. First, she had gone on the internet and found exactly where the site was, then she’d looked up all the past finds there and printed out maps of the site in order to put together her strategy for exploring and bringing back anything from a site like this, so selling her finds would be no problem.
After her preparation were complete, she had driven to the site and had sneaked past the rudimentary security, then made her way down into the newly discovered tunnel systems, finding them there were six tunnels and twenty-five separate caves to explore. She had been in there for nearly three hours, sifting thru dozens of antiques and had collected three clay tablets and a beautiful whole clay pot, leaving the rest for the official group. She didn’t want anyone to know she had been there. She was getting ready to leave when she noticed something strange in one of the caves. There were dozens of footprints in there, and they all led to the south side, then stopped.
Rhavi had looked at the footprints closely, using a miner’s light attached to a headband around her forehead, and had noticed that some of the prints were cut in half or had only about two-thirds of a print, with the rest seeming to go under the cave wall. There was also some type of a symbol carved into the wall.
Although, she could see the symbol quite well, she could not figure out what it was. She took several pictures of it with her digital camera and examined the wall more closely.
She had been looking for several minutes and was about to give up when she discovered a hand-sized hole in the rock that had been plugged up with
stone that was slightly lighter in colour than the cave wall.
Rhavi had used her knife to pry out the plug, then, had carefully reached into the hole, where she found a lever. When she pulled it, there had been a thumping noise from the wall and it had moved forward a few inches.
Rhavi was completely astonished. These types of things never happened in real life. In books and movies, yes….. but never in real life. At least, never in her life, and never in any of the people’s lives she had spoken with over the years.
She had pushed open the wall, as if it were a door quite easily, which had to have been almost a miracle of engineering, given how large it was, about eight feet high by six feet wide and maybe four feet thick.
After she had opened the wall wide enough to walk through, Rhavi shined her light on the floor. The footprints were there. She slowly followed them, leaving the wall open for her return.
Once she was a few feet past the opening, Rhavi looked up from the footprints and directed her light in front of her. She was in another tunnel. The tunnel, however, was different than the others she had explored. The other tunnels had been level and man-made, while this one was natural and sloped downward, gently, at first, then to about a ten or fifteen degree slope. When she moved the light to shine in front of her, she couldn’t see any side openings, and she had the strongest feeling that this tunnel was extremely deep. She shuddered. Maybe it went all the way to the depths of Hell.
Rhavi stopped for a few moments to collect her wits, and took a few sips from her canteen. She stood where she was for a minute or so, then shifted her backpack with the artefacts in it a little to loosen some of the tension in her shoulders. She shook her head to dispel the gloomy thoughts, then, continued her downward trek.
It took her about ten minutes to reach the ‘bottom,’ where the tunnel levelled off, then led to the large cave where it was warm and dry.
Rhavi walked a few feet into the cave, shining her light in all directions, looking for anything interesting. She noticed that the rock in the cave was slightly different than the caves she had just left; it had mineral deposits and veins of quartz running through it, which was highly unusual for this area.
Rhavi was getting a small pick from her pack to cut off some pieces when she heard a noise that froze her in her tracks.
It was human voices.
Rhavi quickly reached up and turned off her head lamp, causing the darkness to engulf her. For a few moments, the only thing she could her was the sound of her heartbeat in her ears.
After she calmed down, Rhavi opened her mouth and turned her head until she heard the voices again. When she figured out the direction, she turned that way, then reached into the cargo pockets of her pants and
pulled out a small night vision mono-scope she had purchased a few years before. She put the scope to her right eye, turned on the device, and scanned the cave. Rhavi estimated the cave was about thirty feet high, and close to fifty feet across. There wasn’t anything remarkable about it. There were no antiquities anywhere on the floor or any signs the cave had ever been occupied. In fact, the only thing she could make out that caught her attention was an opening in the wall from the direction she heard the voices. She walked toward the opening, carefully avoiding rocks and stones on the floor. When she got to the entrance, she moved to the left side and peeked around the edge of the opening, to see another tunnel. The tunnel was about ten feet long, then it turned sharply to the left. The voices were louder now, and they didn’t sound like they were talking. It sounded as if they were chanting.
She could also tell there were at least a dozen, maybe more, although the echoes from the chamber behind her and the tunnel in front of her made it hard to guess.
Rhavi started to turn around and leave, but her curiosity got the best of her. She edged her way into the tunnel and walked quietly to the turn. When she looked around the corner, she saw another section of the tunnel followed by a sharp turn, this time to the right. Again, she walked to the turn and looked around the edge, only to find another tunnel and a turn.
The twists and turns went on for about five more minutes, and Rhavi was wondering what purpose these tunnels could have been for. They were clearly man-made; she ran her hand down the side wall, feeling the chiselled marks and ridges there, then she stopped as she came to what was the final turn in the labyrinth. She looked around the corner and almost gasped at what she saw.
There was another cavern, about twenty feet high and forty feet wide and there were twelve, no, thirteen people, seven men and six women , standing around naked in a circle, holding hands and chanting. There were torches at head height all the way around the perimeter, giving light to the gathering.
Rhavi turned off her scope, placed it in her pocket and gasped at the scene. She noticed there was a hole in the centre of the circle about five feet in diameter and there was a large object in it.
At first, Rhavi thought the hole was a well or some place to store items or food, but that didn’t make any sense. As she continued to watch the strange gathering, she saw that there were strange symbols and what was called a magic square that looked freshly carved into the ground and painted on the walls. She got her phone and started to record the activity when she thought she saw a shimmering above the object in the hole.
Rhavi blinked and rubbed her eyes, but that didn’t stop the effect.
She was just starting to think that maybe she’d better leave, when something really strange happened.
The object floated up out of the hole.
Rhavi gasped in astonishment.
The object was some type of ancient water container with a smooth sealed top but it was larger than any she had ever seen. It looked large enough to contain over two hundred gallons of water. What was astonishing was that it was made of bronze, and it was untarnished, as if it had been placed in the hole earlier that day. The fire light and the bodies of the people reflected from the smooth polished surface.
As she watched, another amazing thing happened. The shimmering surrounded the container for a few moments and the chanting grew in
volume and the shimmering stopped and suddenly symbols appeared all over the container.
Rhavi gasped again. A strong sense of foreboding and fear struck her. Her mind told her it was time to leave, but her body was rooted to the spot, refusing to obey her thoughts.
The chanting continued for another minute or two. Rhavi couldn’t tell how long; time was feeling strange to her. Then the chanting stopped and darkness suddenly surrounded the top of the container. It stayed there for a moment, travelled down the sides like a dark fog, slowly covering the sides, then finally engulfing the entire container.
When the container was completely surrounded by the fog, the chanting continued, and was accompanied by a low rumbling. The rumbling became louder and the fog shrouded shape changed from that of a water container to a globe. The globe expanded until it filled all of the circle inside of the chanter’s arms, then started pulsing rhythmically with the chanting. It stayed that way for a few moments, then, expanded again, this time touching all of the chanters.
The chanting stopped suddenly and was replaced by screams, which were quickly ended as the dark fog completely engulfed all the people in the circle.
Rhavi was breathing hard and soaked in sweat as she waited for the fog to touch her, but it stopped expanding at the edge of the circle, and stayed there. Rhavi turned to move again but was still stuck in place. She sighed with relief when she saw the fog begin to shrink and move back toward the centre of the cavern.
Her relief was short lived when she saw what was left behind after the fog dissipated. Her screams echoed throughout the tunnel system as she was eaten slowly.