The Devil's Paradise Page 2

  “I’ll be right there, Jackie, so don’t mess with anything just yet,” said Jeremy.

  He ran back upstairs, his footfalls moving toward the front of the house. A brief stillness followed, and then floorboard creaks announced Jeremy’s imminent return to the basement.

  “I made sure the front door is locked since it looks like we’ll be down here awhile,” he explained once he rejoined Jack, who was busy looking inside the crate on the table closest to the stairway.

  Portions of the crate’s wooden slats had rotted away, and the lid was missing. Along the crate’s sides were symbols Jack thought could be Arabic.

  “It’s modern Sanskrit,” Jeremy told him. “I might be able to decipher most of this. Oscar should have some journals with cross-references to these crates somewhere in the house. Probably in that desk over there, which has got to be the one you told me about.”

  Under the tutelage of Dr. Mensch for much of the past three years and touted as one of the professor’s brightest students, he seemed especially excited to test his translation skills. He peered inside the crate with Jack.

  Filled with a mixture of white marble shards and shiny black fragments, likely onyx, the marble contained green veins and was streaked with dark rust. Jeremy read the inscription on the crate’s side. Fairly certain part of the inscription said ‘star-point’ or something similar, the rest of the inscription was much harder to discern, except for what appeared to be ancient Greek. That part said ‘Mithra’.

  “So, ‘Mithra’s star-point’ is what this says?” whispered Jack, following Jeremy’s mumbled translation.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I can only identify part of the inscription’s meaning. Once the entire inscription is translated, it might mean something totally different.”

  They moved to the next table on their right. Inside its crate were more broken stone pieces. Glistening orange and white gem fragments shimmered amid the rust-streaked marble. After examining the crate’s inscription, Jeremy stepped back, a puzzled look on his face.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” He took a moment to read the inscription again, shaking his head when finished.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The symbols don’t fit.” he explained. “The ‘star-point’, or whatever that part of the Sanskrit translates to, is the same as before. But the rest of the writing looks Chinese. It’s like whoever labeled these crates used a mixture of languages. I’ve never heard of Sanskrit used this way.”

  Jeremy reached into the crate and grabbed a palm-sized gem fragment.

  “That’s not the only thing that bothers me, Jackie,” he continued. “You see this thing? Fire opal—I’m pretty sure. If it is, then this jagged piece is worth some serious cash. That alone would account for why someone wanted to kill Oscar.”

  Jack nodded thoughtfully, beginning to see why the professor compared his appointed task to figuring out a giant jigsaw puzzle.

  “Can you decipher the Chinese-looking stuff, Jeremy?”

  “Nah. I’m not familiar enough with oriental symbols to even have a clue on that.”

  He put the gem piece back into the crate and walked over to the next crate on the right. By the time Jack joined him, he held a fairly large piece of amethyst in his hand. Unusually clear, many similar pieces were piled inside the crate, along with more marble fragments.

  “This is getting weirder by the moment.”

  Jeremy sighed as he studied the side of the crate, rubbing his eyes while silently mouthing his translation.

  “Same inscription, but with Hebrew in it. I can read Hebrew, man. There’s no doubt the name written here is ‘Jehovah’.

  “So, this has something to do with God or the Bible?” asked Jack, looking over his brother’s shoulder to get a closer look at the inscription.

  “Perhaps, bro. Perhaps,” agreed Jeremy. “But, at least one of the other two names from the other crates belongs to another deity as well, and that one would have nothing to do with either Jehovah or the Bible. Mithra was the foremost deity of ancient Persia, and the Romans later incorporated a version of Mithra in a religion that in many ways resembled early Christianity.”

  Jack immediately thought about his conversation with Agent McNamee the night before, and the classified information the agent shared with him. Peter claimed eight giant towers, each one looming more than a thousand feet high and nearly a mile wide, were presently on the move from around the world and heading toward Alabama. Perhaps to this very spot while he and Jeremy investigated the strange circle of crates on tables. He shivered. Maybe we shouldn’t be here.

  “‘Tell you what,” said Jeremy, slapping him on the shoulder to interrupt his thoughts. “Let’s take a quick gander at the rest of these tables and then move on to that desk. ‘Could save some time and help us make more sense of this shit.”

  Jack agreed, though exhausted and ready to shut down this investigation for the night just as soon as the last table was examined. He’d napped a few times on the trip back home, while Jeremy hadn’t slept at all in nearly two days. Despite his uneasiness about the menace on its way to Tuscaloosa, the mysteries within Dr. Mensch’s desk, including his journals, could wait until they recovered some of the sleep they’d lost. It didn’t make sense to try and sort through everything without clear minds to work with.

  Jeremy moved over to the next table in the circle, farthest from the basement stairs, nearly two hundred feet away. Busy deciphering the inscription on the crate’s side when Jack caught up with him, large topaz shards and marble fragments filled the crate.

  “How much are these worth, do you think?” asked Jack, lifting one of the medium-sized yellow gems.

  “Apiece? Quite a bit, I’m sure,” said Jeremy. “But, a damned bushel full? Let’s just say if you and I cashed these in, we could take several trips around the world and have plenty of money left over to live on for the next few years. Part of the inscription here is identical to the other ones, but with Egyptian hieroglyphs as well. I bet Oscar would’ve been surprised that I still remember the list of Egyptian gods and goddesses from both Upper and Lower Egypt he had a class of his memorize a few years ago. The name listed here is the first goddess we’ve encountered this evening, though a fairly formidable one according to ancient legend. Her name is Sekhnet.”

  Without waiting for Jack’s response, he walked over to the next table. This time, once he saw the crates contents, he wasn’t able to remove his gaze in order to examine the inscription.

  “What’s up?” asked Jack, when he arrived at the table.

  “Unbelievable…. Un-fucking unbelievable!!” he whispered in amazement. “They’re probably not real. They can’t possibly be real—no fucking way, man!”

  “What the hell are you talk—holy shit!”

  Neither one could pull their gaze away from the crate’s contents. Mixed in with the same marble pieces were crystal shards that looked like diamonds. Each glittering jagged shape was bigger than their hands. Garishly huge, the Regent and Cullinan Diamonds would be mere infant sisters in comparison.

  The diamonds looked ridiculously out of place, and any rational mind would’ve assumed they were fakes.

  “All right, all right.... This has gone on far enough, and it’s starting to really piss me off!” Jeremy fumed, and stormed away from the table.

  With his back turned to Jack, he started laughing. He laughed until it grew into an uproarious fit and he dropped to one knee while Jack stood nearby, still undecided as to what he thought about all of this.

  “They’re fakes—nothing but fucking fakes!” he roared, turning to face his brother, his eyes narrowed to bright green slants. His strong jaw-line predatory, his evenly white teeth gnashed together in anger. “I can’t believe we fell for this shit! And, I really can’t believe Oscar Mensch would pull such a con on you and me!!”

  Furious, he stood up and stormed toward the staircase across the room.

  “Jeremy, wait!” Jack called after him. His instincts said they n
eeded to stay. Too early to leave just yet. “Come back here, man! I can’t do this without you—Damn it, Wait!!”

  “What the hell for??” Jeremy replied over his shoulder. He stopped, but didn’t immediately turn to face him.

  “‘Cause I need you to!” shouted Jack.

  “No, Jack, that’s not what you need!” Jeremy retorted, grimacing while running his hands through his thick black hair. He gazed at him over his shoulder again. “What you need is what I need—a goddamned therapist!!

  “Well, then humor me, man!” Jack’s voice plaintive, it betrayed his weariness. “Regardless of how this shit appears, I need you here with me! There’s something important here—regardless of what it looks right now…. Humor me until we finish this little tour. If Oscar’s journals don’t alleviate yours and my doubts about what’s down here, we’ll be on our way. Okay? I mean, hell, we can pack up and move to Mexico if you’d like for all I care. But we need to try and figure this shit out first!!”

  Poised to leave the basement, Jeremy finally gave in, shrugging his shoulders and walking back to Jack.

  “Oh, what the hell,” he mumbled. “We’ll finish this, but I’ve got some sexy images of a Mexican white sand beach in my mind.”

  “Fair enough,” said Jack, grinning weakly. He motioned to the symbols inscribed on the side of the crate. “What does this say?”

  Jeremy silently studied the inscription. Unlike the others, it took a couple of minutes before he responded.

  “Man, all I can tell you is the symbols for this one’s name appear to be African,” he told him. “I wish I was a bit more schooled in this area, but I’m not. The Sanskrit part’s the same, though.”

  He moved away from the crate and walked over to the table in the middle of the circle.

  “Don’t worry, man, we’ll finish looking at the other tables soon enough,” he explained once he reached the center table. “But, I’ve just got to see what this one’s about. It’s that old thing with me, you know, like when we were kids and I could never wait long enough to get to the chocolate center of a Tootsie Pop.”

  He looked down into the crate and sifted through its contents. Suddenly he frowned, moving around the crate while looking for something.

  “Nothing’s written on this one, Jackie.”

  “What’s inside it?”

  “Bigger chunks of marble with darker stains than the ones we’ve seen so far,” he said, grimly. “I’m beginning to think this isn’t rust.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Curious, Jack walked over to where he stood.

  “It looks more like encrusted blood,” said Jeremy, running his fingers over one of the pieces. “I believe this crate contains the remains of an altar of some sort. I’ve seen similar staining first-hand on some Aztec and Inca altars I visited with Oscar last year. But they were made from stone, not marble. Marble almost never stains, so if this is blood, then we’re definitely seeing something very unusual.”

  “What a pretty picture that leaves in my head,” deadpanned Jack. “Let’s see if there’s anything else down here to piss you off.” He smiled impishly.

  “Very funny,” said Jeremy, smiling as well. But his tone clearly implied any more jokes at his expense would be inadvisable. “‘Tell you what, smart ass. Just for that, we’re going to continue our tour over here by the stairs. If you have any other comments for me, you’ll get the pleasure of watching my ass leave yours down here alone!”

  Jeremy’s smile disappeared. Taking his threat seriously, Jack followed him over to the table on the left of the one with the crate bearing Mithra’s inscription. The crate contained green gems amid marble bearing sacrificial blood streaks. The emeralds were as beautiful and clear as any they’d ever seen. Even though they could easily be fakes, Jack’s intuition insisted otherwise.

  “Yeah, I know they look real enough,” said Jeremy, noticing Jack’s fascination. “Maybe if they weren’t so damned big.…For now, I’m going to rely on some common sense and treat them as glass. At least the inscription is fairly easy to decipher. The deity’s known as ‘Bochicha’, regarded as the Almighty Sun God and founder of all civilization and culture by the Chibcha people of Columbia in South America.”

  He reached in and picked up a smaller piece of marble, studying it for a moment.

  “The Chibcha offered this deity human sacrifices on a regular basis,” he continued. “I got a firsthand look at a Chibcha temple last year, with Oscar and Dr. Sutherland down in South America. In addition to Sanskrit, the other language here is Aymara, the pre-Inca language of the Altiplano in Bolivia. Folks still speak Aymara in that part of the world. Perhaps that’s more information than you wanted, but there it is.”

  Without waiting for Jack’s response, he moved over to the next to last table in the circle. As soon as he glanced into this table’s crate, he snickered and looked back at Jack, on his way over to join him.

  “Here we go again,” he said. “Only this time it’s rubies.”

  “For real?”

  Jack peered over the edge of the crate once he reached the table. The crimson gem fragments sparkled brilliantly amid the crate’s marble debris.

  “Oh, most certainly, Jackie boy!” said Jeremy, playfully. “If we were still kids, I’d be thinking this is pretty cool shit to be fooling around with. It makes it tough to keep an open mind.”

  “What’s this inscription say?” asked Jack, returning a palm-sized ruby he’d been examining to the crate.

  “This one is the first that’s completely written in Sanskrit,” said Jeremy, bending down to read the inscription. “The deity’s definitely from India, and I would’ve guessed it’d be ‘Brahma’, but it’s ‘Shiva’ instead. Then again, Shiva’s been linked to death and destruction throughout Indian lore, which would go hand in hand with the crates we’ve seen so far.” He stood up straight.

  “‘You ready to get this over with, bro?” he asked Jack while moving on to the last table in the circle. He soon snickered again. “It fucking figures we’d find something that looks like sapphires here in this last one. The best scams always throw in a common item or two in order to enhance the appearance of credibility, right? But, no-o-o-o, we can’t have that now, can we?”

  Jack caught up with him and looked inside the crate. The deep blue fragments were as magnificent as their cousins, the rubies, on the previous table.

  “What’s the name on this one, man?”

  Intently studying the inscription when he asked him this, Jeremy looked up, worried.

  “It’s from North America,” he said, quietly. “I’d be ashamed if I couldn’t decipher the symbols used by our own Mississippian Indians. Along with the Sanskrit, I’m ninety-nine percent positive this reads ‘Talusha’s star-point’.”

  Stunned, Jack took a step backward, nervously pushing his auburn bangs back from his forehead while his lower lip quivered. “Christ!” he hissed. His knees suddenly became weak and he lowered himself to the cement floor and sat down.

  “That’s Genovene’s daddy, isn’t it?” said Jeremy, his tone compassionate. “I remember long ago you mentioned this name, after visiting her world. She lived in his temple, right?”

  “Yes,” said Jack, his voice a mere whisper.

  Sapphire would certainly be the jewel of choice for Genovene’s wicked family, based on the color of Talusha’s essence and their eyes unearthly glow. The details revealed to him by Agent McNamee now more poignant, with a tower on its way to Alabama from Mississippi, it surely was Talusha’s home on the move again. Further confirmation came from the last two conversations he had with Dr. Mensch, including tonight’s dream and the last conversation he had with the still-living professor at his hospital bedside. According to him, Genovene had returned in all her seductive beauty; sweeping the professor off his feet by her copious charms, unaware of the heinous demon behind her alluring disguise.

  Jeremy seemed revived for the moment by this latest discovery. Silent, he seemed to be processing all
that he’d gleaned from the strange circle they found themselves in.

  “Jackie, I realize this is no picnic for you, man,” he said. “But, we’ve got eight crates down here with gemstones, or pretty impressive imitations of gems, and eight deities’ names inscribed on the sides of each crate. It has to be related to the eight towers on the move that your buddy Peter McNamee talked about before he died. It makes me that much more curious what Oscar has in mind for you to finish for him, especially since Genovene’s somehow involved.”

  Jack nodded.

  “That’s the only reason I’m willing to wait on Oscar’s notes about this shit, rather than pass off the sheer ridiculousness of what’s down here,” continued Jeremy.

  “Yeah, I feel the same way.”

  Jack stood up from the cool cement floor, surprised he didn’t feel quite as tired as he had until then. The shock from the circle’s last table was an effective stimulant.

  “I think we’re ready to look over Oscar’s journals,” said Jeremy. “But, before we check the desk, I think we should take a look around the rest of the basement. I want to make sure there isn’t some other way to get in and out of this place. It’d really ruin my night if the assholes that’ve chased us all day suddenly found us while we’re down here. Know what I mean? Besides, I’d hate to see this stuff fall into the wrong hands. If everything’s real, it could easily land someone on the next Forbes list.”

  He cracked a wry smile and Jack felt better about his brother’s mood.

  “I imagine so,” Jack agreed. “If there’s another entrance down here, I’ll bet it’s over there.” He pointed toward the basement corner on the far right of the staircase.

  “It does look like there’s something down that way, doesn’t it?”

  Jeremy walked quickly in that direction with Jack hurrying behind him. Just before he reached the corner, he slowed down enough for Jack to catch up to him.

  “What were the origination points that Agent McNamee gave you for the eight towers?” he asked. “Were they not the same countries or continents the deities inscribed on the crates come from as well?”