“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Too ghoulish?”
“No. Just not possible. Both my parents were cremated.”
“Where are their ashes now?”
“Scattered across the Yosemite Valley.”
Sam nodded. “All right, that might make it a little difficult,” Sam agreed. “What about a picture?”
“Yes, just one. I’ve kept it with me all these years, but I don’t see what you can do with it.” Ben handed him the photo from his wallet. “Here have a look at it.”
Sam took the photograph, a Polaroid, and examined the image.
It showed two adults in a cave — presumably his real parents — and a small child standing inside with them. Sam studied their faces. His father was roughly the same age as Ben was today, and could have easily passed as his brother. There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that the man was his real father.
Sam met Ben’s eye. “This is your family?”
Ben nodded. “As far as I know. I don’t recall their faces. You know, I look at this picture, and I feel like it was real. I even recognize the location, but I can’t in all honesty say I recognize my parents. Does that sound crazy?”
Sam tilted his head, trying not to look at him directly. “You were very young. It’s easy to forget.”
“That’s just it. I don’t forget. I have what the doctors tell me is an eidetic memory — an ability to vividly recall images from memory after only a few instances of exposure, with a high precision for a brief time after exposure, without using a mnemonic device — and yet, I can’t remember my own parents. Does that sound strange to you?”
“Like I said, you were very young. Even the best of memories can’t be expected to hold true at that age.”
Ben’s eyes welled up. “I’ve stared at this photo more times than I’d like to admit, searching it for some sort of clue about where I came from. I’ve always known I was different. Always have. Sometimes I don’t even look at the photo, I just search the image I have indelibly embedded in my mind.”
“And still you find nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
“But you remember the location?”
“No. I remember exploring the location. It was surreal, like something out of one’s fantasy… I’ve often thought if I could just find the cave, it would jog my memory, and maybe reveal something about my past that it appears my parents have gone to great lengths to withhold from me.”
Sam smiled. The story was sounding more and more like just that, the imagination of a child, longing to recall the past, rather than to recall anywhere in particular. “I have a friend who’s pretty good with computers. When we get out of here, and we get a new cell phone, I’ll send her a copy of the photo and see what she can find. Maybe she can correlate the image with a cave on her database.”
Sam’s eyes turned to the cave itself. It had a unique purple hue to it. A crepuscular beam shined down on the polished rockface behind them, making it stand out like a prized painting at a gallery.
Something about the image caught his eye.
There were elaborate pictograms etched into the rockface. The photo’s resolution wasn’t good enough to make out the intricate details, but there was no doubt about the basic design. He stared at the drawings etched into the rockface for a minute.
There were seven in total.
Each one depicted a human face. Although, the more Sam looked at them, the more he doubted whether that was true, deciding that they were most decidedly near-human. A missing link on the scale of evolution, perhaps? He would need the expert advice of an anthropologist, but at a guess, he thought the faces were of cavemen.
Sam handed the photo back to Ben without saying anything.
Ben took it, his jaw set and his eyes fixed with defiance. “Well? Go on. Aren’t you going to ask the question?”
Sam grinned. “What question?”
“The same one everyone asks. The first thing everyone wonders when they look at the photo.”
Sam grinned. “Okay, what’s the story with the ancient faces?”
Ben nodded. “Every person who’s ever seen that photo has asked the same question.”
“What’s the answer?” Sam challenged him.
“I have no idea who the strange masks belong to. I’ve spent years searching for some reference of them, but have found nothing. I’ve looked for the cave, too, without any luck.”
Sam nodded. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to have had any.”
“Why?”
“Because, if my instinct is right, that cave has been buried in perpetuity and the identity of those faces long forgotten.”
Ben patted his hanging pants to see if they were dry yet. “So then what do we do?”
Sam replied without hesitation. “We head to North Dakota.”
“Really?” Ben asked. “What’s in North Dakota?”
“Someone who might just be able to give us answers about why you’re so valuable… or dangerous to the world.”
“All right, sounds good. You got a plan how we’re going to get there?”
“I’ve got some ideas, but it depends.”
“On what?”
“How you feel about white water rafting the Shenandoah River during the spring runoff?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was 8 a.m. before Sam woke up.
He’d had just three hours sleep in the past twenty-four hours. There was no way of knowing how long that wildfire would burn. Already, there was a good chance the wreckage of the helicopter might be accessible. And when it was, they would discover no bodies. He could just imagine the subsequent manhunt that would unfold.
No. Three hours would have to do. He and Ben needed to get moving.
They picked the first raft they found in the summer camp’s storage lockers. The thing was mildly deflated after spending the winter out of the water in storage. Ben found a pump and it didn’t take long to have it fully inflated again.
Sam broke into the emergency supplies locker and found some out-of-date canned food — vegetable stew — bottled water, blankets, first aid kit, and a map of the whitewater rapids.
By 8:30 a.m. the six-person whitewater raft was loaded with supplies and paddles. Sam and Ben donned a pair of wetsuits, helmets and lifejackets. They placed their now dry clothes into a dry bag, and pulled the raft onto the bank of the Shenandoah River.
“You sure you want to do this?” Ben asked.
Sam ran his eyes across the wide river. It was flowing, but didn’t look all that dangerous in the daylight. He nodded. “Yeah, this looks like the fastest way to cover ground. Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s spring. That means the winter snow has melted and its runoff is feeding this river, making it flow much faster and meaner. Didn’t you think it was strange no one else is on the river yet?”
“Hadn’t really thought of it.”
Ben’s face crunched up into a slight grimace. “Only the die-hard rafters would even attempt the river this time of the year.”
“The die-hard rafters and those running for their lives.” Sam grinned. “Come on; let’s get this raft in the water.”
“All right. Can’t say I didn’t warn you though.”
Sam stepped barefoot into the shallow water at the edge of the river. The water felt like liquid ice as it stung at his protesting lower legs. He dragged the raft deeper.
When the water reached the top of his knee, Ben climbed into the back of the inflatable and he said, “Come on, Sam. Get out of that cold water!”
Sam pushed down hard on the bow of the inflatable raft, taking his weight off the ground and swung his legs over the edge and into the boat. He picked up a paddle, and together, in silence, the two men synchronized their paddling until they were into the deeper, faster flowing river, where the powerful current caught them.