Atlantis: Gate (3 page)

She had walked every foot of that plain and knew every stone, and more importantly, every line cut into the surface of the plain where there were no stones. She was seated in the midst of what some called the world’s largest work of art. For its size, covering almost five hundred square miles, it was also the least visible work of art as the complex patterns cut into the surface of the plain could only be truly appreciated with an aerial view, an enigma given that the lines had been cut well before the birth of Christ.

Reizer knew all the designs by heart. She came to this spot, a small knoll where she had first realized the magnitude of the complex so many years earlier, for solitude. Several lines originated on the knoll, radiating outward at various lengths. Also, what she called the master line, terminated here. The master began with a huge wedge cut into the plain five miles due south of her position. The wedge was almost a mile long, and at the small end a line extended which stretched five miles to this location.

The few tourists who came to the site, when they found out vehicles were forbidden to enter the plain, went to the nearest large town, Ica, and took the small plane tour, looking down on the site. The tour plane only flew once a week as this site was very remote and difficult to get to. She’d camped for days in the middle of the complex and not seen another human being.

The Nazca lines had first been noted in the 1930s when planes surveying for water had spotted them. A person walking on the ground might note a line when they crossed it, the ever-present small stones removed, a gouge cut in the hard earth, but the magnitude of the lines and the designs many of them formed would escape the person on the ground. The lines and geoglyphs were well preserved given the dryness of the climate, the lack of rainfall—less than twenty minutes a year-- and the remoteness of the site.

There were over three hundred designs cut into the plain, and almost as many theories about why they were built and by whom. In 1969 Erich Von Daniken had proposed that they were ancient runways for extraterrestrials, but Reizer had never heard of a monkey shaped runway. There were indeed quite a few large wedge-shaped patterns besides the master, some more than twenty-five hundred feet long with lines extending from them for over five miles, but the lines dwindled to less than a foot in width, hardly space for any decent sized craft to land upon. And even the straight lines went over knolls such as this one, or into small gulleys, which precluded a level landing field if they were just markers.

Others had postulated that the lines were astronomical designs, keyed to various stars. But a close examination of the designs, even regressing star-fields to the time they were supposed to have been built, found that less than twenty percent had any connection to stars, certainly not a significant number, well within the range of statistical chance. Reizer had even projected out all the lines to see if they lined up with specific peaks in the mountains that surrounded the plain, but had had little success. In her younger days she had traveled to the few peaks that she had come up with but found nothing of significance on them.

Some said the lines were the work of an ancient cult, but where had the people who made up the cult come from? Reizer had questioned. Pottery from the Nazcas and other people who had lived in the area held designs, but nothing similar to the Nazca lines. Wouldn’t it have made sense that there would be similarities? She had argued.

Another thing she took issue with was the dating of the lines. The best guesses had come from radiocarbon dating of ceramic and wood remains in the area. But that simply proved the people who used those artifacts lived or passed across the plain at that time, not that those people made the lines. She felt that would be like dropping her backpack on the plain and a thousand years from now someone radiocarbon dating it and announcing that the lines were made in the twentieth century.

Reizer felt the lines were much older than anyone realized. And she had always believed that their existence was the result of something no one had ever considered. Given the events of the last several months, with the proof of the reality of Atlantis and the existence of an ancient enemy, the Shadow, that attacked the world through gates, she had come to believe that the lines were somehow connected to these recent revelations. How, though, she wasn’t quite sure. She had come here today to ponder possibilities.

She spent most of the day in quiet contemplation, occasionally pulling out a sketchbook and jotting down thoughts as they occurred to her. She shifted the umbrella to keep in the shade as the sun arced overhead. Having emigrated from post-World War II Germany, she still savored the quiet and solitude of the plain.

As dusk approached, she saw a dust cloud to the west, near the edge of the plain. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a small set of binoculars and brought them to her eyes. Twisting the focus, she zoomed in on the solitary figure walking across the plain toward her, the truck that had brought him already heading back to the village.

He wore new khakis, she could still make out the store creases, and of all things a pith helmet. She had a good idea who he was—she’d had correspondence from an Englishman named Davon several times in the past year. She had always thought from what he wrote that he was, as the English would say, a bit daft. After recent events, though, she was viewing his theories in a different light. His last fax, yesterday, had indicated he was en route to Peru.

“Hello!” he called out when he came within fifty feet, his voice carried by the slight breeze.

Reizer simply waited. Years walking these plains had given her immeasurable patience. The young man was perspiring when he finally arrived even though the sun was almost down and it was at least ten degrees cooler in the past hour.

“Doctor Reizer, I presume?”

Reizer shifted her umbrella, keeping her face in the shadow. “You expected someone else?”

“I’ve sent you several queries, but you never responded. I’m Davon. From the Dragon Project.” He was looking about. He could see the nearby lines, several of which extended to the horizon and beyond. “Amazing. To actually see them.”

“To see what exactly?”

“The lines. They’re all over the world, you know. But here, you can see them on the surface.”

Reizer had entertained many so-called experts over the years. “And you think they are?”

“
Lung mei
. That’s Chinese for dragon paths. Lines of power.” He raised his arms and turned slowly while Reizer watched with an amused smile. “Can’t you feel it?”

Reizer did grant him that—the first time she had come here so many years ago she’d felt something, a power in the atmosphere, like the way the air felt before an approaching thunderstorm, but the power came not from above, but from below, from the belly of the Earth itself, she felt.

“Is it a good power, though?” she asked.

Davon shrugged. “It’s power. That’s neither good nor bad. It’s who uses it, and how they use it that determines good or bad.”

“Tell me more about
lung mei
,” she said.

“I think the gates that are opening now are nodes for the dragon paths,” Davon said. “Where major lines intersect.” He frowned. “This though—” he pointed at the nearest line, a two foot wide etch in the surface of the planet, the main channel—“is different in some way.” He turned to her. “Is there a gate of the Shadow near here?”

“I’ve never seen one nor heard any reported anywhere close by.”

“Strange. There’s nothing like this anywhere else in the world. We have the cliff drawings in England, but that’s not at all similar. I’ve been there. No sense of it like here. I’ve felt something like this at nodes near standing stones and megaliths. But lines, no, I’ve never seen lines even though I knew they were there.” The words were coming out of him like water rushing down a mountain stream.

“There’s Avebury, the Rollright Stones, Carnac, and of course Stonehenge. Massive stones aligned in circles or lines. Along the leys of power. The ancients knew something, didn’t they? Or did they even make them? Maybe the stones are something else?”

Reizer remained quiet, letting the words pour out of him.

“I was visited by a woman a couple of days ago. In England. She was American. Ariana Michelet. She wanted to know about the dragon paths. The nodes. The stones. She said they were connected to the gates, but I already knew that. I took her to the Rollright Stones. I camped in the center of the stones one night. A year ago. And I heard the screams of the damned. And saw the creatures come out of a dark circle in the center of the mist. White, hard skin. Red, glowing eyes. Others who have been in the circles have seen people from other times, did you know that?”

Reizer listened to his manic litany and didn’t interrupt or answer. Everyone had their cross to bear in life and she realized his was his own mind, skittering between lucidity and mania, not completely under his control. His body mimicked his mind, moving about, unable to stay still.

“Tell me about this place.”

Reizer was almost startled by the change in his voice and demeanor. He was still, his tone level and rational, his body still.

She quickly related the various theories and why she didn’t believe them.

“What do you believe?” Davon asked.

“There’s something very important that most people don’t take into account about the Nazca lines,” Reizer said. She paused, finding it strange to be talking here on the plain where she had spent so many years in solitude.

“Go on, please?” Davon pressed.

“I think there are
two
sets of lines on the plain made at two different times. The geoglyphs, or forms—, which are primarily animal forms-- made at a very ancient time, and then the lines and wedges made after that.

“There are many places where the lines or wedges cross the various forms and take supersedence. I think ancient people who lived in this area and sensed the power made the forms. They drew the figures as a means of worship.”

“And the lines and wedges?”

“I don’t think men—or women—” she added with a smile—“ made them.”

“Who then?”

“I think those came from below,” Reizer said. “From the power inside the planet.”

“The Shadow?”

“Seems likely given all that has happened recently.”

Davon looked around at the barren plain. “Why here?”

Reizer hesitated, and then answered. “I don’t know.”

Davon nodded. “Inside the planet—you know scientists really don’t know what’s far inside, at the core.”

“I know.”

Davon looked at her oddly. “Why have you stayed here for so many years?”

For the first time Reizer was uneasy.

“The driver of the truck I hired to bring me here,” Davon continued, “said you were a witch.”

Reizer laughed. “That is because of the brooms.”

“‘The brooms’?”

“When I first arrived here after the war, the lines weren’t clean. Dust and small stones covered many of them. So I swept them.”

Davon looked around. “All of them?”

“All of them. It took me four years. And many, many brooms. And brooms are linked with witches. The people didn’t understand why I came into town every so often and bought more brooms.” She laughed once more. “Perhaps they thought I was flying about.”

“You’ve been here since just after the war, right?”

Reizer nodded.

“And you were born in Germany in 1903.”

Reizer didn’t immediately respond. She’d known there was always the chance someone would find out the truth. “That’s not right. I was just twenty when I came here.”

“Now I know you’re lying.”

Reizer sighed.

“I did some checking on you,” Davon added. “You were born in 1903. To Maria and Klaus Reizer in Dusseldorf. You were married once; your husband was drafted and died on the Eastern Front. I believe his name was Eugen.”

Reizer closed her eyes. She could still see her husband’s face, peering out through a dirty, cracked window near the rear of the train, his hand raised in a farewell as he went back to the war from a short furlough. She had felt in her heart that she would never see him again. She had felt his despair and hopelessness throughout the short five days they’d had together. He’d wanted to leave her with child, but she had taken steps to avoid that. To bring a child into the future that

Germany faced? It would have been insane.

Davon’s voice intruded on her memories. “I am correct?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t look your age.”

“The desert air is—” she began, but he cut her off.

“That’s why you stay, isn’t it?” Davon pressed. “The power of the lines. They keep you from aging as quickly, don’t they? You hardly look fifty, yet you’re twice that.”

“I am not sure that is exactly it,” Reizer said. “I think over a hundred years has passed in the rest of the world, but not here.”

“What do you mean?”

Reizer was about to respond when the hairs on the back of her neck tingled, the sensation spreading into her body, racing along her nerve endings. She stood so suddenly the chair fell backward. It was dusk, the sun low on the western horizon, it’s rays almost horizontal.

“Oh, my,” she murmured as a glow appeared due south of them, emanating up from the surface.

“What the hell is that?” Davon demanded, taking an unconscious step toward the glow, which was getting brighter.

“I think you should move,” she said to Davon, who was now straddling the main line.

But either he didn’t hear her, or he ignored her words. She could see that the glow was getting stronger because it was coming closer. She’d never seen the like before, but her heart pounded in anticipation. After all these years waiting for something to happen!

Then she saw it, coming up the main channel line. Like a line of fire ten feet high from the earth itself. She turned to Davon, to warn him, but he saw the danger and began to move, but he was too slow, the fire too fast. It caught his right leg as he tried to jump free.

Davon screamed as he stared at the stump where his leg had cleanly been severed at mid-thigh. He collapsed to the ground, blood pulsing out.