James Axler – Demons of Eden

The floor inclined in a gentle curve and at the center, surrounded by a collar of interlocking silver and gold slabs, was a perfectly round hole. Ryan guessed it to be fifty feet in diameter. A terrific blaze of green light shimmered from below the collar of metals, almost painful in its intensity. The light was a shifting, dancing column that appeared to swirl, to twirl, to shrink, then grow.

In the steady, unearthly blaze, all of them saw things that astounded and bewildered them. On the floor, arrayed around the well of light in a circular pattern, were wafers of gold, some studded with single crystals, others with three or four. Several of the rectangles were missing, showing the rock beneath. Either the weight of ages had pushed them out, or greedy human fingers had pried them loose.

Ryan tore his eye away from the glittering splendor of the dancing light and looked up, catching his breath in awed wonder. On the far side of the well, in a place that the shimmering radiance had first hidden from him, reared a five-tiered ziggurat of silver-encrusted stone. Atop the ziggurat sat an effigy gazing down at him, causing his flesh to crawl and his mind to reel with impossible possibilities. Ryan, Krysty, Doc, Jak, Mildred, J.B. and Sisoka stared, stunned, shocked, awed.

And terrified.

Enthroned in a massive chair that looked to be fashioned from gold was the huge, skeletal figure of a man. On closer inspection they saw that the figure wasn’t quite a skeleton, nor quite a man. No man, at least none that they had ever seen, even in the most rad-blasted hellpits of Deathlands, had ever attained such a height or stature.

Though it was hard to tell in the wavering emerald-hued light, the figure appeared to be at least seven feet tallsitting down. The figure was outfitted with a weird array of trappings a threadbare buffalo-hide cloak, a beaded belt and rotting boot moccasins. On its head, canted at a jaunty angle, dented and dull with age, was a casque from the days of Coronado and his conquistadors. A dented breastplate from the same era encased the torso.

Lances decorated with feathers and beads leaned against the side of the throne, and at its feet were shattered, rust-eaten matchlocks. The skin of the figure was brown and stretched drum-tight over the bones. The shadows the shimmering light cast across the mummified face lent it an expression of indescribable, inhuman ferocity.

Ryan finally got his lungs and voice working again. He dragged in a great breath and asked, “Nanabozho?”

Sisoka only nodded, too numb to speak. Then she lifted her eyes, her arms and cried, “Nanabozho! Uncir!”

J.B. and Ryan recognized the word for “grandmother.” The cavern walls threw her voice back.

Ryan continued to stare at the figure atop the hand-hewn altar. He was sweating, and his heart threatened to glide up his throat. He remembered what Joe and Sisoka had told him of the cavern’s history, and though he hadn’t flatly disbelieved it, he hadn’t truly accepted it, either. If the history was true, then what Mildred had theorized about the nature of the energy trapped within the cavern might also have truth to it.

He stepped over to her. She was gazing in stupefied wonder at the light, and he had to call her name twice before she managed to tear her eyes away from the shimmer.

“Is this like the quantum-stream stuff you were talking about?” he demanded.

She blinked her eyes, shook her head and let out a dry, humorless laugh. “God, Ryan, I don’t know. Physics isn’t really my field. But now, to see thisI don’t know what the hell it is and I’m afraid to find out.”

Ryan pointed to the giant cadaver on the throne. “And him?”

“Maybe the First People were the sources of legends about giants in the earth, the Grigori mentioned in the Bible.”

Krysty suddenly moved forward, walking around the edge of the floor that overlooked the lip of the well. She stepped down and walked toward the rim.

“What are you doing?” Ryan shouted, starting after her.

“I want to know what the hell it is, and I’m not afraid to find out.”