“Wait a second, you’re losing me. Are you trying to say this Shaman guy was an Aztec? That’s not possible, is it? I mean, that’s like four thousand miles away.”
Lonetree shrugged. “My father and brother thought he might have been Olmec, a civilization that pre-dated the Aztec. But there’s no solid proof. Besides, after the other discoveries here, that seems almost trivial. Look at this.” Lonetree pointed to a spot on the carving. “See the Sumac warriors line up in front of Shaman after the ritual? He lays his hands on each of them. This is where the god gives the gift to his followers.”
“I don’t follow.” Jack said.
“Look at the carvings. None of the battles show a Sumac dying. Even old men are fighting like they are young warriors. My father believed that the Shaman gave the warriors special powers. Powers that made them all but invincible.”
Jack groaned and shifted his weight uncomfortably.
“I know how it sounds,” Lonetree said. “I’m straight-edge military. I spent fifteen years in a world of hard and fast rules. You don’t think I know this sounds crazy? Stay with me though. Just keep an open mind. I mean, just look around you for a second. Remember what’s happened to your family in the last few days. This is some strange shit, but it’s real. It’s going to test your beliefs big time. But it’s real.”
Jack took a deep breath. “All right. Go on. I’m listening.”
Lonetree shuffled over to the next panel, about half way around the circumference of the stone structure. Shaman was depicted horizontally, surrounded by warriors hacking at his body. “Wow, looks like they got tired of whatever this guy was giving them,” Jack said.
“Or greedy for more of it. No one knows, but my father’s theory was that the warriors demanded something and the Shaman refused, so they decided to force it from him.”
“And so they killed him,” Jack said.
“According to the notebook, that didn’t end the terror. The Sumac continued the ritual sacrifice. With one small addition.” Lonetree pointed to a scene where decapitated bodies were stacked up. Next to the table to was a round hut, a smaller version of the stone structure in front on them.
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“A new part of the ritual they incorporated after the shaman. An idol. A temple, something like that. My father wasn’t sure. He thought maybe they put the Shaman’s body there. Whatever it was, it’s obviously an earlier version of this structure here in the cave, so it had to be important to them. Anyway, to keep the rituals going they needed more victims. For years, they lived in a constant state of war, ranging far to find new tribes, killing the men and capturing the women. My father studied Native American folklore all over the Eastern seaboard and up into the Great Lakes. Over and over he found stories that matched up with this. Even the plains Indians of the Midwest have references in their mythology of a tribe of cruel and evil warriors. A tribe who enslave women and who could not be killed by an arrow. They called the Sumac the ‘ones who walk with dark spirits’.” Lonetree cleared his throat. “Anyway, it wasn’t long before the Sumac destroyed the tribes nearby. Others simple moved away to avoid the danger. So without an easy source of people for their sacrifices they had to get more creative.”
“So they grew people. Like growing a crop,” Jack muttered.
“They bred them in captivity. Primarily women since that was what the ritual called for. They no longer had to hunt. They had a renewable supply for their sacrifice. This worked for years until a man from a distant tribe discovered their secret.” Lonetree pointed to a spot on the carving. “It shows it here. This warrior goes back to his own tribe and returns leading a war party.”
“To free the slaves?”
“It’s a nice thought, but unlikely. The tribe probably wanted the power for themselves. In any case, they failed. You can see it right there. At the end there isn’t a single man from the invading tribe standing. They slaughtered them all. But the village sustained heavy losses themselves.”
“I thought they you said they couldn’t be killed?” Jack said.
“I don’t think they thought so either. But with massive enough injuries they died like normal men. There’s a difference between infinite longevity and invincibility. They could live forever, but they had to be careful. Accidents, war, anything that could inflict a massive trauma could kill them. Understanding this changed everything.”
Jack traced his fingers over the rock, resting his hands over the scene where the crowds of women were herded into a hole in the ground. “So they went underground to keep it secret,” he whispered.
“And to keep out of harm’s way. Look, it shows they brought the round structure down with them. They must have built this new building later.”
“But how did they get in here? They couldn’t have come the way we just did.”
“Maybe, this whole area is unstable. Most of the tight spots we came through are that way because of cave-ins. There might have been an easier way in that’s since collapsed.”
Jack looked around at the great cave, especially at the jagged stalactites pointing down at them from high above. “So this place could cave in at any time?”
“Possible, but unlikely. The smaller tunnels are a greater risk. This whole area is a giant catacomb. There’s a similar system in West Virginia that’s over a hundred miles long. Who knows how far some of these tunnels go.”
“But it’s stable?”
Lonetree shrugged. “The drought this year makes cave-ins more likely. The water table is low and that can cause shifts.”
“Shifts are bad?”
“Yeah. But I wouldn’t worry about it. This place has made it this long, right?”
Jack pushed aside the thought of being crushed by millions of tons of rock and returned his attention to the stone structure. “How long did they use this place?”
“See these panels here? These moons represent time. There are seven hundred and ninety of them.” He held up the notebook. “My father assumed they were months, that the cave was used for about sixty years.”
Sixty years. Jack couldn’t imagine it. If true, it meant that generations of children had been born and lived their entire lives underground. Most would have been sacrificed in the ritual but others would have been spared and allowed to grow to adulthood. These would be the breeding stock. His thoughts turned to the adult skeleton in each cage. The poor souls. Jack couldn’t imagine an entire lifetime down in this place, imprisoned in a cage. “You said your father assumed the moons in the carving represented months. The way you said it, you made it sound like his assumption was wrong.”
Lonetree cleared his throat. “My brother was methodical where my father was more instinctive. It made sense that it would be months. Almost every primitive society learned to mark time by the waxing and waning moon. But my brother wasn’t satisfied. And he had access to more sophisticated instruments. He conducted more tests. He was always careful, always needed specifics...” his voice trailed off.
Jack turned away from the rock wall and moved into Lonetree’s line of sight to get his attention. “And?”
“They’re not months. The moons are years. Each one is a year.”
“You mean to say that…” Jack turned in a circle to look at the cave. Its stone cages. Its darkness. Its terrifying isolation.
“That’s what I’m saying. If my brother’s calculations are correct, humans were bred in this cave for almost eight hundred years.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Jack refused to believe what he had just heard. His mind blocked out the revelation as long as it could, trying to put off the implication of what Lonetree was saying. But it crept in, unbidden and unrelenting.