SECRET OF THE NILE VALLEY
(Second Draft)
BY
J. A. Hall
Prologue
The therapist’s probing questions ferried Thomas back across the waters of time to the days of his youth in Natchez, Mississippi. The sun was closer than usual that hazy August afternoon. As a cure for the repressive heat, Thomas and his three closest buddies grabbed some cokes and headed for the red clay banks of the Mississippi for a cool dip. Thomas was twelve and others were nearly the same. They could never have guessed that the course of their lives was about to change forever.
After barreling down a dirt path that snaked through a thickly wooded area, they were stopped dead in their tracks. Their bodies stiffened and the jaws tightened. Mild irritation at the sight of blacks in their neck of the woods swelled into outrage, a reaction cultivated a life time in one the state’s poorest white counties.
“What the hell are you niggers doing over here? This water hole belongs to us. Yours is clear over in Dalton.” Thomas had known Billy Ray since before grade school. And, while Billy Ray said what they were all thinking, Thomas dredged over what his friend would do next. Billy Ray outweighed most kids his age, and exercised that advantage every chance he got. The two black boys’ splashing and frolicking came to a halt. The looks on the two boy’s faces stopped just short of panic. Thomas guessed the black boy’s ages at about ten and twelve. They emerged cautiously from the water, the sun’s rays dancing off the surface of their dark, frail bodies.
The older of the two boys tried to hasten past Billy Ray, ignoring the large boy’s cascade of insults. As the boy bent to gather up their clothing, Buddy pounced, hurtling his fist hard against the side of boy’s face. The boy collapsed to the dirt, clutching his head. “You nigger have to learn to stay in your place,” Buddy shrieked, while continuing his assault. Thomas remembered staring at the second boy, noticing the close similarity between the two boys. They had to be brothers, Thomas thought. The younger of the two black youths, standing timidly near the edge of the water, did the only thing he could. He ran to the defense of his older brother.
Skipper and Denny seized the younger boy by his arms. Suddenly, the young boy let out a spine-chilling scream, startling his keepers. Skipper and Denny, panicked, releasing their grip long enough for the boy to make a break for it. Terror engraved on his face and still screaming, the younger boy bolted up the trail.
Billy Ray, his face twisted and red, glanced up from his onslaught in time to spot the escaping boy. “Don’t let him get away, he ordered. Denny started after him followed by Skipper. Thomas looked back at Billy Ray. He saw in Billy Ray’s cruel stare his own father’s sneering disappointment at his hesitation. Unable to resist the whole of his red neck upbringing, Thomas gave chase.
Jarred from his thoughts by Dr. Adams, Thomas looked up in puzzlement. “Well, Thomas, it would seem our session is up. Continue notating your dream diary and we’ll discuss them at our next session,” Dr. Adams muttered, wiping the film from his thick-rimmed glasses. “And since you conference has been cancelled; let’s schedule next week. What if we say same time, same place,” the doctor said with dry laugh. The good doctor’s feeble attempt at humor, Thomas thought. Thomas nodded. “Maybe then we could begin discussing you experiences in Iraq. Thomas rose lazily from the oversized-leather chair, thanked the doctor and strode out.
On the ride home, thoughts of the murder trial caused him to miss his exit, forcing him to double back. While the therapy sessions were helping him to sleep, the conjured thoughts were sometimes emotionally overwhelming. He turned into Michael’s Woods where is resided since being released from the Veteran’s Hospital. Two years ago had chosen Hampton, Virginia because of it proximity to his therapist and to William and Mary College, where he was pursuing his master’s degree in history.
Chapter One
Newport News, VA
2012 A.D.
The debriefings were becoming harder to stomach. Thank god that this would be his last. Tire of being analyzed by shrinks for post battle fatigue, and probed and prodded by the medical staff for any signs viral infection, his mind was made up. It was all getting quite old. He saw it in the eyes of short-timers when it was their time. He suspected that the newbie could see that same dreadful stare, casting more of an icy indifference than a steely certainty. He would not reenlist. A young corporal approached him outside the doctor’s office. “Captain, Dawson, your release papers have be cut, you may leave. Good luck.”
Captain James Dawson, retired U.S. Army, was beginning to sound good. It wasn’t the combat that he had come to detested, but the craving for the blood, destruction and death. The carnage of war had seeped into his flesh and wormed its way deep into his soul. Strangely, since departing for home, he started experiencing dreams more gruesome then his normal combat-induced night terrors.
As he passed through the front gate of Fort Eustis, an Army transportation instillation, he thought of his wife Rose and daughter Heather. They were there to greet him at the touchdown, but since then, he’d only spoken to them on the phone. Thoughts of home helped him to slide into a reverie of happier days ahead.
He had been stateside two days and two nights. Each night brought scenes of mayhem and destruction on a scale far greater than he had ever witnessed in his three tours of duty. In the haunting dreams, he saw millions burning in a sea of molten lava, food for devilish fish of fire. Among the eternally damned were his wife and daughter.
He knew that it had something to do with the book, the one with the extraordinary symbols, and the primeval guise. He thought back to how he found it, or about how it found him. It had been six years since the start of his personal war with the Sword of Muhammad, an Islamic clearing house for Jihadist and their escalating crusade against the presence of the West, particularly the United States, on Arab sand.
His outfit had been assigned a mopping up detail in city of Kirkirk, which had been rendered a ghost town in the wake of the bloody civil war between the Sunni and Shi’a extremist.
Years early, Syria and Iran had formally joined the fighting; with Al-Qaida, HAMAS, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades doling out an assembly-line of human bombs, marking the start of World War III.
By, the year 2008, when the Iraq national government failed to garner the support of the people and were faced with key resignations in the assembly and wholesale desertions in the army, America found itself smack dab in the middle of another Vietnam. Only this time, it wasn’t facing an insurgency backed by a non-combative China, and Russia, but one backed by the whole of the region.
Home was 126 Hickory Point Boulevard, mere minutes from the base. The entire housing complex was transformed into military residences with 24-hour guards manning the main gate and barbed wire fences around the property. Before fishing for his key, he stopped to listen to the sound of his daughter, Heather, quizzing her mother about his arrival.
“Daaaady, you’re home,” Heather exploded, throwing herself into his arms.
After a small feast and a movie, the family retired for the evening. Restless, he headed out to the garage for a smoke. Or at least that’s excuse he used when his leaving woke Rose. In reality, he needed a place to stash the book. His wife rarely ventured out to the garage, so it seemed a safe place.
In the wee hours of morning, he sat at his workbench, carefully unveiling his most prized possession. The detailed images on the cover seemed more elaborate, more opulent. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember its original appearance.
He remembered how his company had stumbled into an ambushed outside Mosul. Pinned down by heavy fire, including a sniper in minaret of a mosque, he called in an air strike which leveled onion-domed structure. Checking the charred and cratered place of worship, he found the book perched on a mound of rubble, remarkably unscathed by the devastation. First, he thought the book may have had some Intel value, and wrote of his find in his report. But, when he turned it in, he found the pages blank, his writing deleted somehow. He decided to keep it as a souvenir. It was about time that he started having the dreams. Nevertheless, he found impossible to leave behind.
For months he carried his secret around tucked under his flak vest. He received not a single scratch while he carried it. Over the next few months he saw scores die in ambushes, as a result of rigged explosive and in house-to-house skirmishes. What remained of his company was reinforced with green recruits, who deified him based on the rumors they’d heard. They had all heard the stories of his nearly twenty firefights without so mush as a case of sunburn.
He woke the next morning in a fog. Not sure of where he was, he reached for his rifle. Relieved by the sight of familiar surroundings, he collapsed back into bed. Before he could drift back off to sleep, he felt a presence in the doorway.
“Daddy, are you feeling okay?”
“Yes, dear, everything’s fine, except I could use with a morning hug,” he said, sitting up. She ran and hurled herself on to the bed and into his chest, flatting him.
“Mommy had to go out. She said to tell you that breakfast was in the microwave and that she’ll return as soon as she finish running her errands. He was partly relieved. He had so much to talk to his Rose about, and didn’t know where to begin. First, there was the book. He had been wrestling with whether to share his secret with her.
He couldn’t explain it, but something felt wrong. His thoughts turned to the book. After breakfast, with Heather immersed in the Disney channel, he slipped out to the garage. After moving the box of rags that concealed the book’s hiding place, his feeling was confirmed.
Enraged, he chucked aside the boxes widely and rummaged through pile of junk under the work bench.
“Heather. Heather, get in here,” he yelled.
“Yes, daddy,” she replied, appearing in the doorway.
The fearful look on his daughter’s face melted his arid tone. “Did mommy say where she was going, sweetie?” Her answer was interrupted by the jiggle of key at the front door.
His wife entered to find the both of them staring at her strangely. “Go to your room, Heather, daddy has to talk with mommy, privately,” he commanded. He watched her bounce off to her room down the hall, before turning back to Rose.
“Did she wake you? I told her not to…” Rose asked, headed toward the kitchen. James stepped in front of her.
“Never mine about Heather, Rose. Where have you been and what have you done with it?
“You mean with the book?”
“No, I mean with the QE2, of course with the book. Now, where in the hell is it?”
“Maybe I should be asking you when you intended to tell me about it.” He ignored the question for the moment, and continued with own cross-examination.
“Is that it?” In his haste to recover the book, he nearly pulled Rose off her feet. Frantically, James checked the content before looking up. But, Rose had already started toward the bedroom. When he entered, she was gathering clothe and suitcases from top of the closet, heaping them on the bed.
“Rosie, wait, I’m sorry. You don’t understand, he said, cutting off her path to the bed. Gazing into her eyes, “There something that I should tell…”
Rose pushed pass her husband. “No, James, it’s you who don’t understand,” she chimed in. “I have packed to leave a hundred times. But each time, I was unable to go through with it. I thought of Heather and how hard it would be on her without her father. She loves you so. At no time did I think of putting my needs first. If I had, Heather and I would have been long gone.
“Its not just the fact that you’re away from us for long periods of time, but it’s the faces of deceased soldiers being plastered on the nightly news. Each time the phone rings, I jump, afraid that it the call that all military wives dread.”
But, that’s behind us now, Rosy. I’m home to stay,” he whispered, moving closer to her. She stood frozen, arms filled with dresses.
Yes, you’re home. And I am grateful to God for that, but what are you coming home to? What are your prospects? The nation is in the grips of a depression, and there aren’t a lot of career opportunities for ex-army, or haven’t you heard. You have given the last six years of your life to this country: you deserved more than career in law enforcement. Anyway you look at it, it means more sleepless night for me. And, while you’re chewing on that, chew on this,” she said, throwing the dresses on the bed.
“I hate this tiny two bed-room dump that the Army calls a deluxe nucleus family occupancy. Every time we pass through the gate, it’s like entering a prison camp. I never wanted Heather to grow up like this.
Living off a Captain’s pay grade along with that from my part time job on the base, we were barely able to make ends meet. So, yes, I took the book to have it appraised. At the first antique book shop that I stopped at their tongues nearly hit the floor. The owner said that he had never seen a book of such rare and exquisite beauty. He could tell me little else, except we need to have it authenticated. He gave me the number of a serious collector. But, he seemed certain that the book is quiet valuable.”
There was a long uncomfortable silent.
“I thought you may have been hiding a little something in the garage, something special for Heather and me. Stupid me! Look, dear, there’s nothing wrong with wanting more, is there?” she asked. “And, the book, well…just consider it a gift from God. I don’t know how you came upon it, but it is the way we can begin a life together, a real life.”
That night, James woke from a haunting dream, and found himself standing over Rose. He felt something in his hand, cool and hard. Then, the object’s identity raced into his awareness with the speed of thought. It was his field knife.
There was a brief but powerful urge to plunge the blade into her his slumbering wife and then to go into the next room and perform the same act on his little angel. Snapping out of his trance, he dropped his knife clad hand to his side, and backed out the room, tears flowing down his cheeks.
Rose the next to the sumptuous aroma of scrambled eggs, blue berry pancakes, and link sausage, all of her favorites. Her husband was already up and preparing breakfast for her and Heather. She was use to her husband’s early rising, but the sight of breakfast was a pleasant surprise. Before she could speak, he handed her a cup of hot coffee.
“Honey, you’re up just in time.” Rose, stood watching thoroughly mystified by her husband’s sudden change in mood.
“Mom, daddy’s going to take us on a vacation.”
“What’s this talk of a vacation, James,” Rose inquired, taking a sip of black coffee.
“I was thinking about what you said last night. I thought we’d get away for a few days, just the three of us. One of my buddies has a time share down at Nags Head: I don’t think he’ll mine. We could pack a few things and spend some time together swimming and dinning out, and maybe even get in some shopping.”
Heather’s eyes lit up as she bounded up and down on the stool. Yeah, mommy, can we, please?
Rose’s smile fell away, as she turned back to her husband. “What have you done with the book, James,” her eyes tinged with suspicion.
Not to worry, we can figure out how to cash it in when we get back. It’s somewhere where it will be safe until we get back. From now on, things are going to be different, you’ll see.
