The Caleb Collection Read online

  Zakkai dropped to one knee and lowered the flame into the hole. He bent over and waved the torch to his right. An underground wall glowed three meters further in. “Big. It’s a full room.”

  “Empty?”

  “No.”

  Zakkai dipped his head through the opening. The torch’s flame suddenly seared his arm, and he instinctively jerked it back, dropping the fire.

  “That was smart,” Jason said.

  Zakkai ignored him. The room below flickered in the torchlight, a treasure trove of artifacts. Not artifacts of antiquity, but those of a recent day— simple furniture, bookcases stuffed with dusty books, a couple of chairs. And on the far side, another opening, gaping black in the shadows.

  Zakkai scrambled to his feet. “Help me in.”

  “You sure? Is it safe?”

  “Please, just do as I say.” He stretched out a hand. “Lower me in.”

  Jason grabbed his hand and lowered him into the hole. It felt like his shoulder might pull out of joint, but Zakkai hardly cared.

  “Are you down?”

  Zakkai looked down. The floor was a meter below him. “Let go,” he called. His voice sounded dead in the hollow room. Jason released him and he landed easily among the pile of rubble they’d hacked from the ceiling. He picked up the torch and turned it slowly around the room.

  The chamber was roughly three meters by five meters, hewn from solid rock and worn smooth over many years. A small table and a lone glass lamp sat to his left, both covered in a thick layer of dust. Behind the table, two old wood chairs. To his right, short bookcases lined the wall, housing dozens of books.

  “Should I come down?”

  “Come,” Zakkai said. The word sounded too loud for the small room.

  A rope dropped down beside Zakkai. Jason eased himself into the chamber. For a moment they stood, side by side, silent.

  “I . . . I recognize this room,” Jason said softly, as if afraid to disturb the stillness.

  “You do?”

  “It’s where I first met Caleb. This is where Father Matthew brought me. I wonder why we never found it when we rebuilt . . .”

  Zakkai turned and motioned towards the far wall. The entry to what appeared to be a collapsed tunnel faced them, choked with large slabs of rock.

  “That’s why,” Jason said. “The tunnel has collapsed.”

  “But Caleb must have known that his room was here. Why didn’t you just excavate?”

  “We were building new lives,” Jason said. “Not digging up old ones.”

  Zakkai turned back to face the opening beside the table. “And have you been in there?”

  “No. Caleb came out from there.”

  Zakkai swallowed and bent down to read the spines of the books nearest him. The bookcases were low to the ground. He blew and dust puffed. The Seven Storey Mountain—Thomas Merton. Another dozen books by the same author. A collection of works in Hebrew, others in Amharic.

  “Does Caleb know Hebrew?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is incredible. He lived down here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard some things. But I couldn’t have imagined this. It’s not where you’d expect to find a ten-year-old boy.”

  “No.”

  Zakkai stood. He could nearly hear the voices of Caleb’s old teacher echoing softly off the stone. The workmanship of the walls took Zakkai back to the blind priest’s story. How long ago had the room been carved out of the rock? And by what kinds of instruments? If the old man’s story was right, the Templars themselves had brought Celtic masonry and construction methods to Ethiopia. This monastery and, if so, this room could have been carved under the supervision of a lost order of the Templars.

  Jason stood in silence, taken back in time by the images that now surrounded him. He looked stunned.

  Zakkai walked up to the arched entry into the second room and Jason followed. He fed the torch into the room and knew immediately that they were looking at Caleb’s bedroom. He stepped in. A wool blanket neatly covered the small wood-frame bed along one wall. Above the bed, a single painting of Christ on the cross. Beside the bed, a nightstand with a dusty oil lamp. And on the other wall, more books. As many as there were in the main room—ancient books written by monks and scribes—names unfamiliar to Zakkai except by the titles preceding them.

  “What kind of boy lived here?” he asked in wonder.

  Jason looked around. “He was abandoned at the gate as an infant. A war child. Father Matthew took him in and raised him as a son. Until the day the monastery was leveled, Caleb never once stepped outside these walls. He was ten then. We took him to the United States because we thought that would be best for him.”

  “We?”

  “Leiah and I. She was a Red Cross nurse then.” He paused. “His pure faith changed America in ways we could never have imagined. But America changed him too.”

  “The miracles,” Zakkai said. He’d heard the incredible stories.

  “Yes. But most people don’t know the price he paid. Caleb has lived a tormented life, divided between two realities.” Jason averted his eyes, but Zakkai could see the moisture glistening in the torchlight.

  “I’m sorry,” Zakkai said.

  “I think Caleb is one of the few who knows why Christ sweat blood when he asked God to remove the cup. It wasn’t the physical suffering; it was a greater suffering, the kind that tears at your soul. Caleb never has recovered.”

  Zakkai looked away, suddenly awkward in the heaviness of the moment.

  Jason seemed to come to himself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to go on about Christ to a Jew—”

  “No, no. Not all Jews despise the man.”

  They stood in silence for several long seconds.

  Zakkai took a deep breath. “Well, I think it’s time we begin our search.”

  “The closest thing to an Ark you’ll find here is a picture in one of these books,” Jason said.

  “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but we are in Caleb’s room. The same Caleb who may very well hold the key to the Ark’s location. Short of the man himself, we could have hoped for no better find.”

  “It’s the room of a child.”

  “And according to Hadane, Caleb was a child when Father Matthew hid the Ark.” Zakkai stepped into the main room and planted the torch into an old bracket on the wall.

  “What are you planning on searching?” Jason asked, following.

  “We need more light down here. Two more torches at least. And we could use some help. Do you think your wife would be willing?”

  “I guess that depends. I’m pretty sure she won’t be up to swinging a pick around. What are you planning to search?” he asked again.

  “Everything,” Zakkai said through a grin. “Every square inch. Every piece of paper, every page, every bit of furniture. Everything. There is something here; I can feel it in my bones. And believe me, my friend, I know bones.”

  The sun beat at his back and Caleb thought he was only a few meters from death. How he had managed to walk this long he could not remember because his mind had started to close down an hour ago.

  If there had been a breeze, his sweat may have provided some relief, but the air refused to move. Or if it did move, the movement was straight up, rising with the force of heat, like a blast furnace reaching up into his pant legs and baking his knees. The only thing that was missing was the roar of the flames.

  Each footfall sounded with a dull thud, and the thuds had slowed as of late. His mouth had dried completely, so that if he tried to open it—which he no longer did—his lips at least objected. They had glued shut. Water became a desperate dream. Waterfalls crashed through his mind, and he spent the hours tasting each drop of mist they threw in the air. He would’ve cut off a leg for a splash.

  The horizon was flat except for the lump to his left. And even that lump wasn’t a lump at all, but a node in his mind, rising to mock him.

  In fact, maybe the desert wasn’t a
desert at all. Maybe he was walking through his own life. Plodding into his own heart. A landscape stripped of its water and left to die.

  How had he come to this point? There was a time not too long ago when he could sing and fill the desert with rivers and a thousand trees. But even the memory of that time sat like an obscure lump in his mind.

  A lump like that lump on the edge of the desert ahead of him.

  His right leg suddenly gave way and he fell. His upper torso slammed onto the hard salt before he could move an arm to break the fall. His breath left him and he lay, arm pinned under his body, suffocating, thinking that the moment of death had finally, mercifully come.

  But then his wind returned. He thought about licking the salt, but decided that prying his lips apart to get his tongue out would be too difficult.

  It took him a long time to maneuver his body to stand because his right arm had stopped functioning. Pain throbbed through his side when he tried to use it. Maybe it was broken; maybe it was dislocated; maybe it was just gone.

  Caleb looked around, disorientated. Which direction had he been walking? He turned slowly with his right shoulder dipped. The lump on the horizon filled his vision. Yes, he had been walking towards the lump. The node in his mind.

  He shuffled forward.

  And what was he doing in this desert? Looking for water. No, looking for a priest named Hadane who could give him water. No, looking for help from a priest named Hadane because his mother and father needed help. Although right now a cup of water seemed more like help than any of . . .

  Caleb stopped. It was the lump that stopped him. That lump on the horizon which, now that he thought about it, had been there for a while. He straightened and squinted at it.

  A wet squishing sound filled his ears. His heart had decided that this lump might be important. What if it wasn’t a lump?

  The image jumped into focus, as if his mind had been waiting for that question to connect itself to his eyeballs. It was a rock formation! Not a round lumpy rock formation, but a square one that jutted out of the white flats like a cluster of skyscrapers on the horizon.

  Caleb couldn’t contain the emotion that flooded his eyes. He let out a sob that parted his lips. He could feel the skin tear, but the pain hardly registered.

  Hope, sweet hope, was swallowing him. He shuffled forward without removing his eyes from the rock. “Oh, God, thank you! Oh, God, thank you!”

  The first blister appeared ten minutes later. One moment Caleb was unaware that his right foot was rubbing raw, and the next he was limping through a jagged pain.

  And the rock formation had not come any closer. Which meant that it was very large, and that was good. And very far, which was not good.

  The sun was in the western sky, halfway to the horizon. He had to reach the rock by nightfall.

  13

  Rebecca pulled out her binoculars and carefully scanned the horizon, then looked down. Caleb’s footprints looked less distinct, like he was dragging his feet. He was slowing, but he still was nowhere in sight.

  Because of his head start, she was beginning to think they might not catch up to him by nightfall. And once darkness fell, they would not be able to follow.

  She saw the rock formation then, through her lenses. “The rocks. He will head for the rocks.”

  Michael had his glasses up as well. “How can you be sure? His tracks are headed to the right now.”

  “His trail goes to the right because when he was here he couldn’t see the rocks without binoculars. When he sees the rocks, he will change course towards them.”

  A distant wail carried thinly through the air.

  She lowered the binoculars. “Did you hear that?”

  “Sounded like an animal.”

  She nodded. “Okay, we’ll cut him off. There’s no way he can make it past the rocks by nightfall.”

  They veered from Caleb’s tracks and headed directly for the distant formation.

  Caleb limped on, through the pain. A second blister swelled on his left foot, where his sandal strap crossed over his foot. The sun had baked the skin from his toes, he saw. He stopped and tried to adjust his sandals, but the attempt failed. He took both sandals off, but immediately put them back on—he might not have heard the sizzle, but the heat had burned his soles already. The Danakil reached temperatures in excess of 140 degrees and the salt more than that.

  But he was going to make it. He had made it this far. Caleb struggled forward in an awkward limp that sent searing pain through both feet.

  And what if he couldn’t make it?

  A desperate desire swam through his mind. I have to make it. I have to make it. Suddenly nothing beyond this one thought mattered.

  He walked for another ten minutes, and if he thought about it hard enough, the rock formation did look closer, didn’t it? A slight shiver of anticipation rippled through his bones. There, just ahead, was shade and relief and maybe a city with water. A small blister on his foot was not going to slow him, much less stop him. The resolve filled his legs with new strength.

  Caleb managed a full half-hour before the worst of it hit. The first hint of discouragement settled during one of the squinting sessions he’d taken to every few minutes. This time when he squinted the rock formation actually looked further away. Certainly not closer.

  The notion stopped him in his tracks. He blinked rapidly. The distant shape stood clearly in the rising heat. A wedge of heat ripped up his spine. It was, wasn’t it? It was as far away as it had been half an hour ago!

  He thought he should run, so he did . . . five steps before a screaming pain shot up his shins and spread through his loins.

  He uttered a cry and looked at his feet. At first he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. They were puffy with blisters and bleeding where some of the blisters had broken. Like boiled tomatoes with split skin. Behind him a thin trail of blood spotted the white salt.

  He looked up and stared at the rock formation, suddenly terrified. He looked back at his feet, and for a moment he thought he might throw up. No, you can’t throw up, Caleb—the vomit will draw desert rats. Desert rats will eat a disabled man to the bone. And the blood will draw more desert rats.

  You can do this!

  Caleb looked ahead and took another step. Pain shot up his leg.

  It was then that Caleb realized he would die in this desert. But it wasn’t for another full minute of desperate, halting steps that the realization passed from his mind to his heart and squeezed tight, like a vise.

  He gripped his hands to fists so that his arms trembled and forced his right foot forward. His sandal was wet and made a soft slurpy sound. He grunted and forced another stop. Fire spread up his ankles.

  Caleb slogged forward, every muscle strung like a wire, trembling from head to foot now. Tears sprang to his eyes and something in his mind snapped. He took a long step, and then another. And another. Now the flesh in his feet began to tear in earnest.

  But something had changed.

  He suddenly threw out his arms, spread his fingers wide, and lifted his chin to the sky. The scream came from his belly and tore past his throat, a wail that sounded like death.

  But instead of crumpling to the ground, he marched on. His feet were falling apart, he knew that, felt that. His flesh quivered and twitched like a horse’s fighting off flies. He was in shock, and he walked on knowing it well. He no longer cared if he lived or died. Only that he walked.

  So he walked. His scream gave way to sobs which eventually gave way to a clenched jaw. The only sound he could hear was his heavy breathing. That and the sound of his feet tearing.

  The pain soon faded into a numbness that rose up his legs. He was walking to his death. He was dying, from the feet first. Soon it would reach his heart. But he didn’t care anymore.

  In his mind he had already died.

  Zakkai paced in the subterranean room, stepping carefully around the piles of ancient texts they had worked through. Three torches crackled lightly in the silence. Jason a
nd Leiah sat on the old chairs by the table, looking at him with sagging eyes, exhausted.

  Leiah had refused to be part of the search at first. They had just discovered her son’s childhood bedroom, and tearing it apart sounded like an abomination to her. But once she understood that with or without her help the room would be searched, she elected to help, which evidently translated to “oversee” in her mind. Now they had come to the end of the search and she had already suggested once that they put everything back exactly as they had found it.

  “Please, Professor,” Leiah said. “You haven’t found anything.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “We’ve searched every page of every book,” she said. “We’ve examined the table and the bed with a magnifying glass. We even searched the floor, for heaven’s sake. There’s nothing here. And if there is, we aren’t going to find it in this light.”

  Zakkai barely heard her. His mind had taken a different track. “You are both certain that Caleb has never made any mention of the Ark.”

  “Never,” Leiah said. Jason shook his head.

  “And you honestly don’t believe he knows anything?”

  “I really don’t see how he could,” Jason said. “He’s told us everything he remembers.”

  “Then perhaps we should assume for a moment that you are correct.”

  “That would be generous,” Leiah said.

  Zakkai ignored her. “Suppose Father Matthew didn’t mean for Caleb to know about the Ark’s location. Suppose he planted the key to its location without Caleb’s knowledge.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Jason said. “What’s the use of a key if no one knows it exists?”

  “Someone does know about it. Just not Caleb. The old blind priest, Hadane, knew about it. And he knew about it because Father Matthew told Hadane’s brother, a Falasha Jew who has supposedly converted to Christianity. Joseph Hadane. The point is, under this scenario, Father Matthew obviously wanted to protect Caleb by keeping the knowledge from him.”

  “So you’re saying Caleb isn’t the key after all?”