The Vilcabamba Prophecy: A Nick Randall Novel (14 page)

“Seen what?”

“
Vilcabamba
.”

“What? How?”

“After Phil, Mike and I
fell into the chamber, I walked ahead trying to find a way out and get some
help for Mike. I walked for hours and felt like I was just moving in circles.”

“And?”

“I walked into a gigantic
cavern. I mean
,
this was an enormous opening. Remember
Paititi
, where you saw the temple with the tablets?”

“Yeah.”

“
Vilcabamba
is twice as large.”

“That’s impossible.”

Randall was looking
directly at her now. “And there was some sort of artificial sun illuminating
the cavern. I walked down a long staircase that led me straight into the heart
of the city, but I didn’t see anyone there. I felt like I was in a dream. I
kept walking and looking, but the city was empty.”

A shiver ran down Sam’s
spine. “What happened?”

“I had the weirdest
feeling that I was being watched, and I turned around to look back at the
tunnel I had come from, and then it happened.”

“What?”

“I met them. I met some
of the inhabitants of
Vilcabamba
. They were …
different,
I guess you’d say. They didn’t look like
Yupanqui’s
people.”

“What did they look
like?”

“Long narrow faces with
large eyes. Barely a hint of a nose and no mouths I could see. And their skin
seemed to be almost translucent, but milky in color, and it seemed like they
glowed. They didn’t have any body hair, either. They were completely smooth.
They were about the same size as
Yupanqui’s
tribesman, but I guess the interbreeding of the jungle tribe caused
Paititi
tribe to take on more human characteristics.”

“Did you talk to them?”

“We didn’t speak, but it
seemed like they could read my thoughts, and I could read theirs. Telepathy, I
guess. They told me that you were in trouble. Then, one of them put their hand
on my cheek, and I fell into a dreamlike state. It was like my mind was free of
my body and floating above the Earth. I saw a compound in the jungle. It was
under attack by men in uniform. I saw you and knew you needed my help.”

Sam watched her father’s
face carefully, looking for signs that he might be joking or misremembering the
events that had transpired. She saw no signs of either. “What happened after
that?”

“I woke up. I was lying
on the ground across the chasm where we were when that firefight broke out. I
had a pretty bad cut on my face and a big bump on the back of my head.”

“So, you didn’t actually
find
Vilcabamba
. You landed on your head, were
knocked unconscious, and your subconscious mind dreamt about these creatures
and the underground city because you have been pre-occupied about this theory
for years.”

“Maybe, but it seemed
real, and the memories are so clear and they followed a logical sequence. I
think it really happened. Besides, how do you explain that I knew about you
being in trouble?”

“Well, you might have
logically theorized that once you were lost, Francisco would contact me and ask
me to go looking for you. Given what you went through in the chamber room, it
wouldn’t be a stretch for you to have believed that the same people who were
after you would also pose a threat to me.”

“Your logic is sound, Dr.
Randall, but I know what I saw, and I feel like the experience was far too
vivid to have been a dream or hallucination.” Randall stood, grinning and
dusted himself off.

With a suddenness that
took them both by surprise, the cavern began shaking, violently. Dust and rock
began crumbling from the walls and ceiling. A boulder jarred loose from the
wall above, and Randall instinctively moved to protect his daughter, knocking
her to the ground and out of the way of the falling rock. In a moment’s time,
the shaking stopped, and the two professors huddled on the floor of the cavern,
heads covered in a protective stance.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, no damage.”

“Phil …”

The elder Randall
searched the dust-filled tunnel, looking in vain for his assistant. The cavern
resembled a burning building, dust choking the air and reducing visibility to a
few feet.

“I can’t find him, he was
right here.”

“Dad, where are you?” Sam
moved carefully through the smoke-filled cavern, following the light from her
father’s flashlight. Appearing at her father’s side, in the area where he had
set Phil down, Sam saw nothing but open floor.

“He’s gone Sam. Phil’s
gone.”

Chapter twenty-two

Ackers
stood next to
Dumond
in the tunnel system, clearly
perplexed at the turn of events.

“There’s
no sign of them, Mr.
Dumond
.”

“This
is most disappointing, Colonel. Once again, two professors and a student have
eluded you and your men. I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake to hire
you for this job.”

“Mr.
Dumond
, we’ve completed a sweep of the tunnels in
such a fashion that if Randall, his daughter and his helper were here, we would
have found them. They are not in this tunnel complex.”

“You
sound so sure. Have your men discovered the underground city then?”

“No.”

“I’m
beginning to wonder if
Kristoph
was right in his
assessment of you and your team, Colonel. Fortunately for me, I have something
that Randall is looking for,”
Dumond
said, grasping
the medallion. “Sooner or later, they will need this item. Tell your men we are
returning to our base. I need time to plan my next move.”

The
flight back to the base was short, but exceptionally tense, with
Ackers
emoting the mood of an angry teenager who had just
been scolded by his father. When the helicopter finally touched down at the
base,
Ackers’s
fury was evident as he grabbed his
Sargent’s collar.

“Post
a man on the perimeter and have the others assemble for debriefing in five
minutes!”
Ackers
screamed into his ear.

“Affirmative,
Colonel.”

Dumond
exited the chopper and made a
beeline for his office, closing and locking the door as he entered. To say he
was confounded by Randall’s ability to once again elude
Ackers
and his
men,
was an understatement. Not accustomed to
facing the sort of difficulties Randall had dealt to him,
Dumond
needed to focus and regain his edge. He sat down at his desk and removed a
small photo he kept hidden there for moments such as this. The photo was of a
small, sad boy standing in front of a dilapidated shack. Looking at the picture
of himself as a young child immediately took him back to the chapter in his
life which served as the very nexus of this project.

As
a boy of eleven, Francis
Dumond
had been abducted,
and the experience forever changed him. He was a skinny, painfully shy boy,
the
result of years of physical abuse at the hands of his
alcoholic father. His family was also poor, living in the shantytowns in
Villeurbanne, northeast of Lyon, France. The neighborhood was rough, and young
Francis was the frequent recipient of beatings at the hands of local bullies.
These beatings were mild, however, compared to the punishment meted out by his
father. He still recalled being very small and hearing his mother and father
arguing loudly in the adjacent room. The small, fragile child popped his head
out of his room just in time to see his father strike his mother in anger,
knocking her to the ground. Francis, a child of seven at the time, ran to his
mother’s side, trying to comfort her as she lay sobbing on the floor, a large
welt forming on her left eye. His compassion for his mother was met with a
brutal beating from his enraged father, who struck him with such ferocity that
Francis thought he would surely die.

He
didn’t, and sadly this would be the first of repeated beatings Francis would
receive at the cruel hands of his father.
Beatings that
continued until that fateful night so many years ago.
He could still
remember the details with such incredible clarity that the events of that
September evening seemed like yesterday. It was very late in the evening, and
Francis in his bed, the cool night air drifting over his body, as he lay there,
unable to sleep. It was a rare moment of quiet for the young boy, and he was
almost in tears, contemplating the shabby condition of his life. The stillness
of that evening was almost tomblike as the sounds of the world outside were
quiet at that late hour, and Francis remembered feeling like he was the only
person alive.

It
was 2:07 a.m. when the low humming sound started. At first, he wasn’t sure if
he was imagining it. After all, the mind of an eleven year old can certainly
create flights of fancy, especially at night. The sound persisted, however, and
grew stronger. As he lay there, young Francis realized that the cool breeze had
stopped and the air was suddenly and completely still. The humming noise
stopped, too, and there was complete silence, again, but Francis felt that he
was not alone in his darkened room. The young boy was suddenly filled with such
terror that he lay in his bed motionless, unable to open his eyes. He could
sense the entity there in his shanty room, standing over him, watching him. His
heart beat furiously, and tiny beads of sweat began forming all over his body.
Finally, the anticipation became too much and Francis opened his eyes to see
…nothing. He was alone in his room.

Or
was he? Out of the corner of his right eye, Francis detected very faint
movement. The young boy, his heartbeat pounding in his chest, slowly turned his
head in the direction of the movement. A sight that would forever change him
met his glance. The face of the creature was slender and long, its skin a
strange bluish-gray hue that almost seemed to make it glow. Its face lacked
normal human features, its nose simply being small slits in the front of its
head. The creature stared at him with dead, black eyes that seemed to pierce right
through the eleven-year-old boy. Mixed with a combination of terror and awe,
Francis realized that he couldn’t move. He felt drugged, as if heavy lead
weights were attached to his extremities.

Then
the creature lifted its hand into view. The long slender fingers reached out of
the darkness toward him. Francis wanted to scream, but he could only manage a
muffled cry reminiscent of the all too familiar nightmare known to everyone.
But this was no nightmare. This was really happening, and he lay there unable
to defend himself, as the long slender finger reached out for him, slowly
coming to rest between his eyes. The boy immediately fell into a deep trance.

When
his eyes opened again, his vision was blurred as if he were viewing the world
through a gauzy veil. He could hear the muffled sounds of talking but couldn’t
make out what was being said. Blurry shadows danced at the periphery of his
vision; Francis felt completely and utterly vulnerable. Trying with all of his
might, he struggled against the unseen shackles holding down his body, but he
still couldn’t move. He let out a weak whimpering sound and felt absolute and
complete terror. He would most likely die
here,
disappearing forever from the squalid hellhole he called his home. Would anyone
even notice he was gone? Surely his mother would, and she would shed a tear for
him, but she may also think that he finally decided he had enough of his
father’s abuse and run away. Aside from her, no one gave a damn about him and,
most likely, any memory that anyone had of Francis
Dumond
would fade away amongst the backdrop of the noisy, brutal neighborhood in which
he lived.

This
thought of the total futility of his life, the complete lack of importance of
his existence, strangely gave Francis a previously unknown sense of strength.
Lying on that table in that distant, dreamy place, Francis
Dumond
decided that, if he survived this ordeal, his life would be very different
going forward. The next few hours were difficult to say the least. His unknown
captors poked and prodded him in all manners imaginable. Francis lay there
naked to these cold and heartless creatures that didn’t care how terribly small
and afraid he was. They simply carried on their studies until at last,
mercifully, Francis once again saw a long slender finger touch him between his
eyes, and he fell back to sleep.

Upon
waking back in his bed, Francis was a changed person. After the terrifying
experience, Francis was no longer afraid of any earthly person or situation. He
decided that dealing with his father was the first order of business. On most
mornings, his father, still in a half-drunken stupor, would come into his room
for a morning session of cursing and hitting. Using a pipe he found at an
abandoned lot near his house, Francis waited for his father who came in as he
normally did. This time, however, was different. Francis beat the abuser to a
bloody pulp, leaving him dead on the floor of his room.

His
mother, having heard the commotion coming from her son’s room, approached the
door slowly and opened it in fear of angering her husband. She found her son
sitting on the floor next to his father’s body, lying in a crimson pool of
blood. The boy held his face in his hands, the bloody murder weapon lying next
to him on the floor. She slowly walked over to Francis and put her arm around
her son. He immediately turned to her and melted into her arms, softly sobbing.

They
disposed of the body in a nearby field under the cover of night. The next day,
the gendarme arrived at their front door with news of the fate of Mr.
Dumond
. Asking to come in, one of the two officers couldn’t
help but notice the reticent little boy, thinking it must be difficult for such
a young boy to learn that his father was brutally murdered. However, this
neighborhood was known for its violence, and Mr.
Dumond
had a reputation of having a terrible temper. The list of people who wanted to
see him dead was as long as the day. The gendarme made no promise of finding
the killer, but the widow
Dumond
seemed appreciative
of their attempts.

From
that day forward, Francis was a changed boy. Upon returning to school, he no
longer ran from the bullies, but stood up to them. After one such encounter,
the boy came home with his shirt torn, his lip bloodied, but with a big smile
on his face. “What happened to you Francis?” his mother asked.

“I
got into a fight, Mom, but you should have seen the other boy!” Francis
announced, proudly. Such would be the future for Francis
Dumond
,
who actually gained a reputation as a tough kid that you didn’t want to get
into a fight with. However, his newfound bravery didn’t help his social
awkwardness, and he remained a loner and grew to distrust people. Winning at
all costs became his primary passion, a passion that would serve him well in
the business world.
Dumond
quickly learned that
intimidation was the quickest route to success in business. But to intimidate
others, you needed power and money.
Dumond
made it
his professional and personal goal to become as powerful as he could, no matter
whom he stepped on in the process. This newfound passion was troublesome to his
mother, who still saw a lonely and scared child.
Dumond
ignored his mother’s warnings and focused his laser-like attention on his
goals. The culmination of the transformation of Francis
Dumond
was on a business trip in Spain. He was negotiating the terms of a contract,
favorable to his company, of course, when he learned from a close relative that
his mother passed away. When asked if he would be home in time for the funeral,
Dumond’s
response was that he had important business
to attend to, and since his mother was dead, it wouldn’t really matter if he
was
there, anyway.

Aside
from his drive to succeed in business,
Dumond
was
obsessed with the night that had changed his life. Specifically, he wanted to
know more about the creatures that abducted him. He began to conduct research
and spent every free moment trying to discover the truth about them. His
pursuit led him down a dark and mysterious path, crossed frequently by
crackpots and charlatans trying to make a quick buck at the expense of gullible
victims. These individuals quickly discovered, frequently to their dismay, that
Dumond
was not a man to be trifled with. Several
shallow graves in indistinct locations of the world attested to this fact.

It
wasn’t until a trip back to the east coast that
Dumond
finally discovered a possible connection to follow. He was on a business trip
to Washington, D.C., when he heard about a controversial young professorial
candidate who was offering a late afternoon lecture. The name of the lecturer
was Nicholas Randall, a doctoral student at Georgetown University. Apparently,
the young Ph.D. candidate caused quite a stir during a lecture he was offering
to archaeology students at the college. His demonstrations of the evidence of
past civilizations describing contact with what appeared to be extraterrestrial
beings piqued
Dumond’s
curiosity. As a result,
Dumond
decided to sit in on one of his lectures.