Dreaming in their waking moments, their prayers leaving their spirits unwittingly to unite with unattainable principals from the depths of the universe, they fell silent. A hunt for historical treasure had waned in the magnificence of the order of the spirits and gods, where the word was not associated with worship, but with becoming.
The dark grey skies brought a frigid gale on the weary group, but they were too high to quit for the day and too close to return to the river until the winds ceased. The scenery was sublime when they saw the shrine. Calisto felt desperately ill and disorientated. The vision of the awe-inspiring structure that crowned the beauty of the range shook her to her core, evoking a sense of peace and forcing her to crave the dissociation from her mortal coil.
"It makes me want to die," she gasped out loud, curling the corners of her mouth in a faint smile that unsettled Sam greatly.
"That's wonderful, sergeant, but that will not be happening today, all right?" Sam said with a clear voice and grabbed her by the arm to keep her from falling into a trance or collapse entirely. He had stopped to set up his tripod and mounted his panoramic lens onto it.
Nina, Purdue and Gary also stood in awe, waiting to take a moment.
"Mr. Cleave, are you getting this?" Purdue asked without looking back at Sam.
"As we speak," he heard Sam's voice in the distance behind them.
The shrine was superb and timeless in its antiquity, its layered ledges like an oriental pagoda, and it sat right in the bowels of the mountain, part of the stone, but created by man. In the center of the lopping stories of marble and rock carvings, an enormous face of a Nepalese deity protruded. The face had a look of calm benevolence from under its intricate crown of animals and flowers. It looked alive and half unsettling in its age, lending an unmistakable intelligence to its visage.
"Can I take a few pictures on your handheld while you finish here?" Nina asked Sam.
"Sure, go ahead," he answered through his face pulling and lip licking, as he concentrated on getting the perfect shots in such poor light. Nina took a few photos, mostly of the members of the expedition, but when she flipped through the earlier pictures taken in the village, she saw what Calisto had been looking at that day. Behind Sam and the village elder she could see Björn and Eickhart in the distance and it made her stomach churn.
"Nina," Sam jolted her back to reality with a loud voice.
"Yes, I'm done. Calisto! One more with you?" she asked the bodyguard, and Sam snapped one of Nina with Calisto, Purdue and Gary with the shrine in the background.
"Good, now pack up, Mr. Cleave. The weather has no mercy for explorers, especially those digging into the womb of the gods," Purdue smiled.
"We have reached the shrine. Now to find the entrance. I thought it would be a little statue with a lid at its feet or something," Gary remarked. "This thing is fucking huge. How will we know where to go?"
"Dr. Gould said that the book mentioned numbers where the trail ends. Hopefully we can find those numbers on my GPS and find our way in that way," Purdue said, rubbing his hands together. "Good God, the wind is freezing up here, and I must admit, I am also finding it quite taxing to breathe."
"Me too," Sam agreed, as he zipped up his gear and started toward the waiting members of the group.
"That face is moving," Calisto ranted from the back of the bundle.
"That is the mountain sickness, my dear sergeant. It is distorting your perceptions, especially up here," Purdue assured her, but she was adamant that the cracked and peeling masonry of the deity's face had shifted.
"Calisto, you are freaking me out," Nina whispered to the bodyguard, as she helped her move over a pile of rocks she stumbled on.
"That goddamn face is moving, I tell you," Calisto insisted. The gale swept their jackets and the straps of their backpacks as they labored closer to the shrine. It stood as silent as a forgotten desert, fraught with the presence of long dead worshipers and obedient priests. Up on the ledge they climbed, reaching the chin of the stone god's face, where they could have sworn they heard the footfalls of a thousand pilgrims from bygone millennia pass underneath.
"Don't… say it," Nina warned Sam before he opened his mouth.
"That doesn't mean it's not true," he replied.
"Shut the fuck up, Cleave," she frowned and busied herself with helping Calisto's frail frame onto the first step. There was no sign of a possible entrance and it left the party standing in confounded wonder. Thunder rumbled in the distance, creeping over the stony valleys below. The group noticed that the clouds had begun to move rapidly overhead. Sam thought it resembled time-lapse footage and it gave him the creeps. They were now in the presence of something so old and powerful that even nature obeyed it.
"There is no way in," Purdue threw up his arms, "Dr. Gould, can you shed some light on this predicament?"
"I have no idea. We have come to the exact coordinates as mentioned, but it doesn't say anything more about entering under the shrine," Nina replied. She hated feeling like a failed interpreter, but she had nothing to go on.
"The god's face is moving. Why is no one listening to me? It speaks, for Christ's sake! How can you not hear it?" Calisto barked from the ledge step just below them. They all took a moment to figure it out, ignoring the unease her words brought them.
"Sergeant, I think you should stay here while we continue on. I don't want your condition to grow worse," Purdue said.
"Don't take me for a fool, Mr. Purdue. I am your bodyguard, not your wife. You do not patronize me," she growled from warning black eyes, circled with darkening skin. "I can hear a chime, a song in the stone. I don't give a fuck how sick I am!"
The men stood ready to detain the fuming woman.
"Wait," Nina shouted suddenly. "Calisto, you might be right."
"Please don't say that. I have had my fill of terrifying shit on this trip," Gary moaned from behind Sam, who nodded with him.
"The book! Wait," she panted and fell to her knees to consult the texts. "It speaks, right? It needs to be spoken to for us to gain access."
"A password?" Sam asked in perplexity.
"Sort of. Look, here is a grid with letters on the page next to the map. This, gentlemen… and lady….is a Masonic cipher!" Nina cried with a birthing smile. "It will tell us what to say."
Amazed and thoroughly surprised they looked at Nina.
"You're welcome," Calisto's low voice hummed from her angry stare, and Nina could not help but give her a rough embrace in utter glee and absolute relief.
Sam was still reeling from the talk of giant gods moving their faces.
Chapter 21
On Deep Sea One, two days after Mr. Purdue and his party left for Nepal, the oil rig played host to some strange events that Liam at first ignored as superstition and such, but when it became downright uncanny he had to share his astonishment with his colleagues. Flicking his cigarette from the smoker's area into the eternal oblivion of the cold water beneath the structure, Liam was in deep contemplation. He had noticed that the weather had become increasingly erratic during the past few days, defying the readings on their weather warning system entirely. It had caused two accidents among the few men employed on the platform, on two consecutive days, until they discovered a pattern and avoided a third mishap the day after.
The water shimmered in silver across the vastness of the moonlit waves as the ocean breathed deep and occasionally whispered with a foamy hiss. Liam squinted his eyes and looked to the horizon, but it was obscured by an approaching fog that also showed up uninvited and unannounced. But by now, few things about the great blue mystery surprised him.