Deep Sea One

Chapter 22

Carefully, Nina decrypted the grid cipher by using the dots and corners as reference to the letters randomly written inside the nine squares. One by one she added letter after letter until she had a line of gibberish with spaces between. It did not make sense — in English. However, in the local dogmas of deities this particular collection of letters represented a mantra recited by followers of Mañjuśrī. Its giant face enthralled Sam, but Calisto avoided its countenance now, for the sake of composure. She was nauseous and her head throbbed like a bass drum, forcing her to sit in the dirt while Dr. Gould was arranging the spaced words and the men huddled around her to watch. Finally she had it done. They all frowned.

"Oṃ a ra pa ca na dhīḥ."

"Seriously?" Gary asked, trying to pronounce the grotesque alien phrase he was convinced was incorrect.

"I think so," she said almost imperceptibly, slightly uncertain herself.

"Well, we won't know until we actually read it out loud, so let's get to it," Sam suggested. He could see the group growing tired and leaking morale in copious amounts.

"How the hell are we supposed to know how to pronounce that last word?" Gary said with a miserable scowl on his face.

"Just say it until it has the right sound, damn it," Calisto chimed in from the discomfort of the gravel and thorns.

Nina and Sam tried the mantra. Starting slowly, they read each word not to confuse the consonants that followed consecutively.

Nothing.

"Pfft," Purdue puffed from the rock he was seated on. "It's not working. Now what?"

He felt utterly miserable for having come so far, enduring such peril and reaching the fabled shrine only to be locked out by a grinning god with weather cracks and a bad case of obesity.

"Try again. We must be saying it too slow," Sam urged and Nina nodded in agreement.

Again they began chanting the words over and over until they became familiar with the sequence and before long they started feeling the rhythm of the mantra. It was quite simple once they got used to the sound of it and eventually Purdue joined them. Calisto also said her bit from where she was struggling to keep her equilibrium in check. Gary just watched. He was not the eloquent type and enjoyed being a Canuck so much that he did not care to try and take in the culture.

Blots of dark sand appeared all around their feet as the giant raindrops commenced their pelting. Above them the swiftly floating clouds had now calmed and hovered in their place to accommodate the coming downpour. Instinctively the group sought shelter under the trees surrounding the shrine, but they kept at the mantra until the four of them found their unison, even throwing in a tempo as they grew comfortable with the words. The thunder growled so loud that the mountain shook under them and sent them cowering in fear of a rock fall. But the party soon realized that the thunder did not come from the heavens above them, but emanated deep from the bowels of the mighty peak that towered so high that optical illusion provided a terrifying impression of it falling forward over them.

"Oh my God, we're going to die," Sam shouted at Nina and grabbed her arm firmly against him. Calisto lowered her head to avoid any injury she might sustain from whatever the earth had planned for them. Purdue hid behind a tree trunk nearby, waiting it out.

In front of them the gargantuan face began to move, not as a face should, but instead rearranging its features by shifting the marble blocks that it consisted of into some portal or doorway. Moving simultaneously by the hand of some ancient engineering genius, the giant slabs of white stone parted. Purdue and his group stood in dumbstruck awe and no small amount of fear, beholding the wondrous transformation without a thought for the Spear they had come to find.

"I told you its face changed," Calisto shouted with newfound vigor, as she moved forward to where Nina and Sam stood to fully regard the majestic event. Nina was mute, not in awe, but in concern for not knowing if she would have to face a cramped dark space again. Behind the open doorway it was black as coal. There could be nothing but a constrictive chute to usher her inside and who knew what was waiting there? What if she got stuck in a confined doorway and found herself unable to breathe properly? All these intimidating notions swam through her mind, but only the thought of the money and academically kicking Matlock in the balls drove her to cultivate some emergency courage. Sam had his high-definition camera out and recorded every shift in the slabs as it happened.

Purdue smiled. He felt regal and invincible now, having attained the goal of finding the shrine that was so carefully hidden in surreptitious clues. The showering rain did not perturb any of them and Gary stole closer to the others when he finally relaxed from his agitation. By the time the structure had completed its metamorphosis it looked nothing like a face, save for the glaring multicolored eyes, which remained intact with the forehead. It had formed a stunning entranceway adorned around the edges with a plethora of decorations, etched on the opposite sides of each slab, now turned to face outward.

Sam captured the detail with his extended lens and asked Nina to find his video camera in his bag. It also had an infrared/ thermal interface for filming in the dark. Purdue stepped forward where the entrance beckoned, stunned slightly by the awful stench of rotten plant matter, old air and guano released for the first time in decades. The others followed him into the rocky corridor that led into the darkness. Tapping Calisto on the arm, Sam pointed to a pile of old tarnished copper bowls and goblets, an old bent gong and a stack of folded rotten cloths, which might have been the attire of priests a very long time ago. It was all left there in an old forgotten corner of excavated rock that functioned as a small room a good century ago, by the looks of it. From inside the chamber the light coming from outside hardly illuminated more than three meters past the threshold, lending them no visibility whatsoever.

"Flashlights, people," Purdue said in a low voice. He was wary of speaking too loudly and drawing attention from whatever was inside, if anything. Also knowing how old the shrine was, and that it responded to sound to open and close, he was reluctant to tempt fate by emitting above normal sonic waves. His company was equally careful at this and within moments they were reduced to five floating orbs of light inside the enormous cavernous chamber known as the Godwomb.

"It is quite imperative that we keep our voices as low as possible. The acoustics in this cavern are extremely sensitive to aural vibrations. The very walls in here reverberate our energy and I don't even want to know what will happen if we speak up. So please, people, whispers," Purdue informed his party before continuing into the passage.

Nina remembered reading the same warning in the grimoire before she knew exactly what the Godwomb was. It read that the mountain consisted of various geomorphological agents, some of which were potent conductors of sound. Now she knew why the mantra was the key. Sound was the language of the mountain. In a straight line they walked behind Purdue and Nina, Sam and Gary with Calisto lagging behind. Her face was pallid and her breathing labored, but she walked on her own without much discomfort. Sam, the gentleman that he was when the mood took him, carried part of her pack with his to alleviate the weight from her weak body.

In the stale white beams of their flashlights they moved slowly, careful not to tread too loudly. Their torches explored every crevice along the walls and clay-like ceiling no more than a meter above Gary, the tallest of the group. Trying with all her will to ignore the narrowing tunnel she navigated, Nina studied the terrain on which they were walking. The cavern floor was immensely slippery, the product of guano and trapped permeating water similar to the nature of the walls. Fighting her impending claustrophobia, Nina busied her mind with thoughts of what they might discover and what it would mean to her career, but just underneath her positive aspirations lurked the constricting threat of the gradually shrinking passage of cold wet rock and infinite darkness around her. She dared not show it. Another meltdown was out of the question this time, she had promised herself before she came on this expedition.