Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 18



Washington D.C.

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE consisted of nineteen museums, 144 affiliate museums, and nine research centers in its public sector, but that wasn't the entire Institute by any means. Many of its 136 million objects, art works, and specimens were not displayed, but tucked away in special buildings and locations for only researchers and museum employees to handle and study. These were places the public and most of the Institute's employees knew nothing about.

On a hunch, Jianjun filled out the document request form with the information he’d found on Lionel Rempart’s “Smith Inst” note and twenty minutes later a museum attendant brought him a box of materials. Success! He carried it to a carrel.

Opening it, he found dishes, rusted spoons, tools, knives, and penny nails from the failed Mormon community at New Gideon, Idaho. He wondered why Rempart would care about this old junk. But digging deeper, he found strange Indian trinkets and then an aged and battered bound journal with a thick leather cover.

He opened the journal and stared with amazement at the date—1806, a year after the Lewis and Clark expedition. The writing had turned so faint over the years, brown-tinged ink on age-darkened pages, and the formation of letters so curvy and embellished, that he was forced to read slowly, making out one word at a time. But as he read, his skin rippled with goose-bumps.



Journal

Property of Francis Masterson

The Spring of Our Lord, 1806



All hope is gone. Evil is victorious.

In the time I have remaining I will, herewith, impart a tale so filled with Dread and Terror that my heart overflows with immeasurable Sorrow to tell it.

It began with the highest of Good Will and Promise and, on my part, great Excitement. I can only trust to Providence that one day this small account which I leave in a land of unimaginable desolation and Wildness, may be discovered, and that it will serve to warn others of the wickedness that may ensnare Good men.

Ours was to be a Secret Expedition, and we were, each and Every One, to keep our own Journal in accordance with our discipline. As the Journey continued, however, such writings lessened, and so I have taken upon myself the sad Burden to record a brief History of our group since I fear we will never meet our Loved Ones again this side of Heaven.

It all began simply.

President Thomas Jefferson, scandalous rumor to the contrary, was neither Rosicrucian nor Illuminati, but he had an understanding of the world beyond the ken of most men. He realized that there are Wonders on this Earth that Rational Science and the strange Beliefs of the Churched could not begin to fathom.

I beg your indulgence, My Future Would-Be Reader (if you do exist), as I recount some of the History of this time, for I have not the foresight to know how much of it has become common knowledge.

When Jefferson sojourned in Paris some years before his Presidency, he met a group of Occultists. It was our misfortune that Jefferson took little notice that Occultists often involved themselves in the Study of Evil. If he had, perhaps our adventure would not have come to this frightening condition.

He continued this association into his presidency. Among those Occultists was a Medieval scholar who had studied the ancient practice of Alchemy. The man told Jefferson that one of the most important Alchemical texts of all time may have been brought to America by a Frenchman. The man, said to be a Seer and an Alchemist, ventured into the area the French explored, but which was now under dispute between the English and the Americans after the Emperor’s sale of Louisiana.

Desiring the land, the text, and the Alchemist’s gold (if it did exist), Jefferson contacted Ezra Crouch, a retired Captain in the Army of the United States of America as well as a student of Freemasonry and Rosicrucian history, to pursue the matter.

Captain Crouch learned that a French explorer had indeed discovered Pure Gold as well as Arcane and Magical materials and symbols near the Nez Perce nation. The Indians refused to touch it, insisting it ensured Death to anyone who did so. Included in the findings was a most peculiar Symbol:



Jianjun scarcely believed his eyes. The journal contained the same symbol Michael had found in Mongolia.

Jianjun continued to read.



Jefferson dispatched to the Medieval scholar a finely wrought drawing of the symbol. He foreswore mention of the Gold.

The man replied with clear excitement, saying the symbol was from the selfsame Alchemical text he had spoken of, the one that taught the sorcerer Nicolas Flamel the Art of Transmutation.

In Great Secret, Jefferson gathered our little group with Captain Crouch as our leader. We were given one Mission: to go to the locale where the Alchemical symbol had been found, and bring back all that was there, including the Gold.

He then organized the Corps of Discovery which would be led by Captains William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. Our duty was to follow them. Of course, it could not become General Knowledge that Jefferson was spending the Public Treasury for our Mystical adventure. Thus, we were dispatched in complete secret from everyone we knew and from all we held dear on this Earth.

I can little convey the excitement with which our most Remarkable expedition set out. My particular friend, Noah Handy, was well versed in the study of Astrology and the Heavens. He entertained us with Numerous stories about the Stars and their meaning. Reuben Hale was an older man, perhaps in his fifties, and I feared for his Health on this journey. He was a devotee of Medieval sorcery and knew a great deal about cures and potions. I found him amiable, but strange. I will confess to little amity with Orril and Asa Munroe, who were first cousins, and who professed to be practitioners of Mentalist Powers. They held themselves as Superior to me in every way simply because they were skilled Hunters and Frontiersmen. I found their constant prying about my Thoughts and ridicule of my Weakness as destructive to our mission, and often wished they would leave the group. I feared their hearts were corrupted by Vice and Arrogance.

I shall admit, although I enjoy good health, I am not as physically strong as most men for I have spent the majority of my twenty-eight years in the pursuit of knowledge. I am a writer. I have published several books on the Occult, not as a believer, but as a scholar. The books sold only passably well in our practical America, but I have a devoted following in England. The public there are especially curious to learn of the beliefs and practices of the American aboriginals. Mine was to be one of the first learned books on the subject when we returned.

I shall not recount here, as we followed Lewis and Clark, of our troubles with the fiercesome Lakota Sioux, or of the hardships of our first Winter on the plains. Suffice it to say that without our Guides, Eli Borah and Miles Weiser, fine men with good knowledge of survival in the Implacable Wilderness, we would be long dead.

Instead, I shall proceed forward to the fateful day when Noah Handy peered through his spyglass and saw that Captain Clark was separating from Captain Lewis, who seemed to be in ill Health. By this time, we believed we must be near the Nez Perce land, for we had traveled far longer without falling off the edge of the continent than we imagined was possible. We looked forward to achieving our Goal and returning Home.

I longed for Home. My own Susannah Revere, the truest, most honorable woman I have been privileged to meet, had promised her hand to me before I left Maryland. I vowed that after I returned, I would never again leave her side.

Upon Captain Crouch’s order, we followed William Clark and his small band. I should have known, as soon as we entered this strange Land, that something was dreadfully amiss. The mountains, tall, and blood-red at sunset as a Beast’s maw, stretched farther than I ever imagined they would, and were far more Barren and Inhospitable. We were at such an altitude the Air was thin and we struggled to breath.

If the land our Ancestors had found in the New World had been as empty and forbidding as this, with murderous aboriginals and monstrous, ferocious bears called Grizzlies whose roar caused men to fall to the ground quaking in terror, they never would have settled it, but would have fled back to England and kissed the ground with gratitude for their deliverance.

Our group was forced to lag some distance behind Captain Clark because we knew Scouts would travel between his camp and that of Captain Lewis. For the first time, we were unable to simply follow the trail the Corps of Discovery had created, because to do so would have placed us in the path of the Scouts. We were forced to blaze our own trail.

And that was our Undoing.

To keep clear of the Scouts, we traveled far to the South.

The second night, dry Lightning continued into the early morning hours, and we awoke to a Sky yellow with smoke. The forest blazed, and Fire progressed toward our camp with terrifying rapidity as if it were some great Hellish demon devouring all in its wake.

The next day, we traveled south to avoid the path of the rapidly approaching blaze.

We reached a deep canyon. The gorge precipitously yawned straight down, and was impossible to descend. We were forced westward, following the gorge, and hoping to find a way across. Once the fire diminished, we would circumambulate back to regain Captain Clark's trail.

As we continued, however, hope of finding our way back to Clark diminished, and should the fire be burning toward him, we knew not if he would be able to return to Lewis, or if he would perish in the hellish flames.

That night we had recourse to prayer, a remarkable thing for men who had turned our backs on the One God of our fathers, and had in truth lived most of our lives in search of other, more Aesthetically pleasing, more Rational and Modern deities.

The Fire galloped at great speed with strength and endurance. We ran, but it pursued, jumping boundaries and heading our way like a ravenous monster in search of nourishment.

We crossed a wide creek only to watch in dismay as the fire vaulted over it. Was there no safety from this monster? We could see the crown of it, with flames higher than a hundred feet into the sky.

The blaze created a clime of its own. Furious temperatures sucked the heated air into a column where updrafts whorled smoke into a vertical cloud.

We could only shake our heads in frightful wonderment as we watched in helpless awe at the power of nature and prayed that we not be consumed within its cavernous maw.

After four days, we wondered if it would ever end. By the eighth day, temperatures lowered and the moisture in the air increased contrary to the usually blistering dryness of this climate. With this change, the rate of combustion slowed.

The following morning, cloud edges had darkened to a gentle gray, and by noon, a steady drizzle had become a drumming rain. Trees and rocks grew cooler. By the next day, almost an inch of rain had fallen.

Like a giant beast that is spent, the fire burned itself out as we slept.



As the overhead lights flickered on and off a couple of times, Jianjun slowly returned to this time and place. The Institute was about to close.

He slid the journal into the fake bottom in his laptop computer case, the same secret compartment that held lock picks, key cards, SIM cards, and other tools of his trade. He returned the boxes of materials to the librarian, then calmly walked through security and out the museum doors. As he tried to put the pieces of a nightmare puzzle together, he wondered how the journal had been ignored. Had it been dismissed by hasty readers as crazed fiction? A frontier tall tale? And he wondered who else had read it.