PYRAMIDION

Sample

PROLOGUE

Dion Wexler smiled grimly as he regarded the cage, finally able to look upon what he had summoned. Or perhaps summoned was the wrong word – kidnapped or abducted were likely more appropriate. It had taken years of study, hard work, and more than a modicum of treachery to get to where he was today... the beginning of the end. But it wasn’t the apocalypse he was chasing – he wasn’t that trite, nor was he self-loathing. He simply craved truth. And, like many men before him, he craved power. Absolute, unrelenting power.

He’d known for a long while that the world wasn’t quite as it seemed. There was something missing in the “now” that hadn’t been missing in the past. At first, he had thought it was faith – the Egyptians believed in the gods and the power of the almighty Pharaoh, and so they built glorious monuments to them. The people of Easter Island had thought their land to be so special that it needed to be guarded by great stone golems, eternally looking inward. The Greeks lived in fear and awe of the Olympians.

In his younger years, Dion had studied these religions, and always came to the same conclusion: humanity had spent eons living side-by-side with the divine... and then it all ended. The gods had abandoned humankind. Everywhere he looked, every culture, every continent, everywhere, without fail – the gods were no longer present… but people still had faith. The Bible, the Talmud, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita - regardless of personal persuasion, faith told the stories of the gods that once lived among us.

He racked his brain for years, travelled to the ends of the Earth and back, spoken with scores of scholars, investigated thousands of tombs, examined many a dusty book of forgotten lore. Over years, via some secret organisations with which he’d come to be associated, he’d discovered the truth. But he didn’t want to just understand it – he wanted to see it and live it for himself. But more than that – he wanted it for himself.

And now, he stood in a cold, dark room, empty but for a large, oppressively heavy-looking cage in its centre, tables stacked with books lining the walls.

The thing in the cage was difficult to see – the room was dark, and inside the cage was darker, but there was clearly movement there. And breathing… The loud, laboured breathing of something very large.

He struck at the cage with the black cane he held in his left hand, and the subsequent clanging echoed throughout the room. Yet strangely, the creature trapped in the cage did not strike out. In fact, it barely moved, and remained silent.

“It seems to be intelligent, as well it should be,” said Dion, motioning to another man standing in the shadows to the right of the cage. “It knows it’s trapped for now - evaluating its options. Do you know what language they speak?”

The other man shook his head. “I’ve never actually seen one before,” he replied. His voice had a heavy South Asian accent. “I should recognise the language if you could make it talk. That is… if they still speak the same language, of course. These ancient languages haven’t been spoken on Earth in thousands of years; who’s to say things aren’t the same… where he comes from?”

Dion sighed. In truth, he had been wondering the same thing. Supposedly, thousands of years had passed since these creatures had walked the Earth. Why would he expect that their language had not evolved, mutated… changed? Even his own mother tongue, English, had changed dramatically in just the last few hundred years. He was no linguist. That was why he had brought his colleague.

And how could he make it talk? Just walk up to the cage and say “Hi”? The idea seemed ridiculous.

He lit a cigarette, drawing deeply through the filter, and leaned back on the heavy desk behind him. He watched the end of the cigarette as the embers quickly burned the tobacco and the paper that surrounded it, leaving a red and black stump. Exhaling, he flicked the cigarette away and stood up. It was now or never.

He walked up to the cage and raised his right hand in greeting. “Hi,” he said, then cringed. He shook his head at his own stupidity.

The caged creature didn.t react. It just stood and looked at him. Dion stared back. He really didn’t know what he expected – deep inside he had been hoping it spoke English, and that it would simply greet him in return, but of course he knew that was impossible.

As he turned away, a deep voice rang out behind him.

“Ma-inim ensi-nata este. Enlil-ropur simsala-et es.”

The voice was guttural and choral, like a group of people speaking at once, a disharmony. It almost sounded as if the throat that uttered the words had more than one voice box – and perhaps it did? Regardless, it was not a voice that Dion would soon forget.

The room fell deathly silent as Dion turned to face his colleague.

“Well?”

“It sounds like Sumerian,” the man replied.

“Can you talk to it?”

“I think so.” He walked up to the cage, and spoke timidly to the entity in the cage, in a language that sounded not dissimilar.

And it spoke to him in return.

The man turned towards Dion. “It wants to know why it’s here.”

“Good,” he replied. “Tell it why, then. And make sure it knows that I’m the one that holds its sigil, and I’m in charge.”

​

CHAPTER ONE

“Why is it that when I want to go on holiday, every idiot and his dog gets on the freeway?” Luke cursed at the traffic, annoyed that it had once again come to a standstill. He’d been weaving between cars in an attempt to find that magical lane that was faster than the others, but now he was trapped, and he was frustrated and annoyed. He watched as the cars in the lane he had just abandoned passed him by.

“Calm down. Don’t drive like a maniac.” His wife, Danielle, looked at him from the front passenger seat. “Whichever way you look at it, we’re on holiday, so there’s no need to stress.”

“I know,” Luke replied with a sigh. “I just want to get there!”

They’d only been driving for an hour, heading down to the beach for a well-deserved family getaway. It was their first for several years – the first since the birth of their daughter, Ellen, who was sleeping peacefully in her booster chair in the back seat. Usually this road was clear – it was a freeway, after all, and it led away from the city – but today roadworks were slowing things down considerably. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t drive so much for his day job.

Driving was anathema to Luke. He used to enjoy it, when he was in his twenties and only had to drive locally, but he was older now, with larger responsibilities and a well-paid job that he needed to keep to pay the bills. Except that job was on the other side of the city, and the commute took him up to two hours… each way. Sure, he could take a train, but as a salesperson, he needed access to his car, so… every day, he bit the bullet. Every day, he braved the freeway carpark in order to get to the office on time.

It wasn’t so bad at first, but it had eventually begun to wear him down, especially because the company didn’t allow for flexibility with regards to remote working. Even with the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets and notebook PCs, and widespread Wi-Fi, there still existed companies that expected its employees to be tethered to their desks when not in front of customers. This was further compounded by the fact that Luke had a minor disability – retinitis pigmentosa – a deformation of the retina that made it hard for him to see in low light, so he needed to get home early. This was, of course, a good thing, because it meant he would miss rush hour. You take the good with the bad.

He was lucky, though. Many that suffered from the same affliction had it much worse. Retinitis pigmentosa could severely reduce peripheral vision, eventually resulting in tunnel vision and, later, total blindness. In many cases, vision would simply decay over the years, but for Luke, who’d had the condition  his whole life, it had never gotten any worse… at least, not yet.

It was still early afternoon, but he’d had enough of driving, and given this was his holiday, he really hadn’t wanted to drive in the first place, so he continued to swear at the situation as he rolled the car slowly forward.

Things cleared up once they passed the roadworks, and they continued on their way at a speed more appropriate to freeway travel. Luke let out the breath he had been holding and pushed back into his chair, relaxing his grip on the steering wheel. The tension caused by the traffic was behind him for the moment.

He looked at his wife. “That’s better. Hopefully it stays like this the rest of the way.”

He’d met Dani at university some fifteen years prior. They had both been studying psychology and had hit it off immediately. Given psychology was less popular among males than females, he was actually the only male in his group of friends – not that it really mattered. His wasn’t the “traditional” university experience you saw in movies – he simply went to school, met with his friends, went to class, and went home. Kind of boring, really. He’d never been a party guy. He preferred the quiet home life.

At the time, he’d never thought of dating Dani. Not at first. He was somewhat insecure, and had low self-esteem, and felt she was well beyond his reach. Half Japanese and half Australian, he felt he looked too awkward to be attractive to an Italian-Australian beauty like Dani. He went the whole three years without asking her out once. He was content just to be her friend.

After graduation, Luke and his friends went their separate ways, and he hadn’t expected to see Dani again, having learned over the years that some friendships were transient. Even so, he was still sad to see her go on that last day. In the months that passed, he kicked himself for never having let her know how he felt. But when the whole group was reunited for their formal graduation ceremony just under a year later, he was still too shy to ask her out.

It turned out he never had to summon the courage, because she did the work for him, asking him out to see the latest Avengers movie the following week. He said yes, they went on a date, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Looking at her now, he realised maturity had sharpened her features, and without the round softness of youth, she was strikingly beautiful. While Luke felt lame to use the cliche that Dani “completed him”, he really believed it. She kept him on the straight and narrow. Even when they had arguments, he couldn’t bear to go a day without speaking with her. More than that, he couldn’t go a day without telling her he loved her. It was his thing.

“I love you, Dani,” he said now, wistfully. He was soft-hearted, and every time he said it, he truly meant it. “You’re so sweet,” she replied, smiling, flipping through the pages of a Woman’s Weekly magazine.

Ellen started whimpering in the backseat.

“Oh, what’s wrong Ellie, my little pumpkin?” asked Luke, looking in the rear-view mirror. Ellie was wriggling in her chair, crying out and screwing up her face. She was a little over four years old, and her personality was starting to come out. She was probably just annoyed that she had been woken up, and it wouldn’t be too long before she would drift off to sleep again. Her eyes were still droopy, and her head was lolling. Luke could see the shine of drool at the edge of her mouth.

“Oh, sweetheart – I love you too!” Luke beamed.

Dani laughed.

All was well with the world. Becoming a father had taught Luke that not only did children change your life in significant ways, but they really changed the way you experienced emotions. He realised that prior to having Ellie – a child of his own creation – it had been impossible to understand the feeling of love that a parent has for their child. He’d often heard his friends saying this as they became parents, one by one, and he had laughed it off. But they were right. His heart was full. He couldn’t imagine life without her. Without either of them.

In fact, two weeks after bringing Ellen home from the hospital, Luke had called his mother to tell her he loved her and to apologise “for being such a little shit as a child”, as he put it. This memory was now tinged with pain, as he had lost his mother three short months later. She had been young, only in her sixties, but she’d had a stroke, and it had taken its toll. It also didn’t help that the stroke had been not long after Luke’s father passed from cancer. She probably didn’t see much reason to hold on once she’d lost the love of her life, and she just slowly deteriorated… It had been painful to watch, and Luke was ashamed to admit that he had been relieved when she had finally passed – the stress of a family member requiring constant care is often overlooked, but it’s immense. Yet to lose both parents within such a short span of time? It was agony. Afterwards, he put all of his love and energy into his own little family. They were all he had left.

And yet the truth was, after his mother had passed, life just… went on. The world kept turning regardless of the interests of the multitudes that scurried across its surface. His pain was his to bear, but he wasn’t alone.

Things were in a good place now. Luke was an only child, so he received virtually everything by way of his parents’ wills, and as a result he was secure financially. Plus, of course, he had a loving wife, a gorgeous little daughter, and now – finally – he was heading off on holiday.

He cursed again as he slowed to approach another traffic jam, the result of further roadworks. He checked the rear-view mirror once more. Ellen had settled into sleep again. He smiled.

What he didn’t notice was the 18-wheeler that was bearing down on their car at speed, flashing its headlights.

The story continues in the novel "Pyramidion", by G.E. Newbegin.