Two days to departure and I watched Graham like a hawk. There was something that I couldn’t place. Yes, by now it’s well established to the point of tedium that he was decidedly freaky. But there was a fresh aura of mischief about him now.

That silent placid gaze in which nothing could be read but everything was mocked. The thin cruel smile that was unsettlingly familiar yet unplaceable.

I even decided to try a trick. He was reading something a few yards away. I fetched a loaded Colt from the arsenal.

Removing my shoes I slowly crept behind him. I was absolutely certain that the ambient noise of the jungle masked any stray noise that escaped my stride. I’d taken the safety off yards and yards away. I’d already cocked.

I stood a mere ten feet behind him. I aimed directly at his head and allowed my finger to tease the trigger.

Fluidly, he turned his head so that I was able to see that smile in profile. “And what’s the point of that?”

I was momentarily lost. “Just testing your situational awareness.”

Hoyt laughed in a hollow amused sort of way. “There are more situations to be aware of than you can possibly imagine.

I believed him.

“Graham,” I said. “What happened back at the lodge.”

“Well, you know already. I dreamed about a jaguar and had a stimulant induced seizure. Because of Sam’s picture. Right?”

“Yes…but…” Something kept me from prodding further. Like an invisible sucking drain that drew away all will to know.

Hoyt just regarded me with the same cold amusement.

“Nevermind.” I said departing and he returned to his reading.

There was a blankness in my mind. There had been something strange about his terse sentences. Each word, each phrase, its order, its cadence took root somewhere deep in the spine and suggested vistas and chains beyond all reckoning. I wasn’t the only one that felt this way.

I didn’t mind accidentally killing him during that test. That’s what I found the oddest. It was like he was a nonperson. It wasn’t even hatred or disgust or any such thing. There was something in me that wanted to join oblivion with oblivion. Of course I couldn’t because oblivion had become flesh.

‘I guess I’ll just let zero unfold.’ I said as I drew an ankh in the dirt.

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“It’s done!”

“And well that it is…” I said as I shoveled the last bit of earth over the fragments of that shattered stone.

I gazed at Jones. His lip was aquiver. It was odd to see such a tall man so contorted by fear.

“Take courage…what can they do…they have no flesh.”

Jones gulped.

“Is there something you want to tell me Fred?”

He stared into the middle distance for an inordinate period.

“It’s not true.” He said so faintly that I could barely discern the words among the woodland noises.

“What’s not true?”

“That they do not have flesh.”

I laughed heartily and slapped him on the back.

“You take that Crowley fellow far too seriously. The man is a charlatan… a con artist. Thrilling conversationalist when he’s in a pleasant mood… but damn it man! He’s as unemployed as I and utterly lacking in inheritance. Charms and perversions have long been the trade of loafers the world over.”

Jones shook his head. “No…no…I saw them..”

I laughed again. This was a welcome break from the monotony of musing on my failures. “My man we have spent too many nights on the moors. I myself have had strange nauseas and fancies and I was born here. This desolate house is no place for an opium hound like yourself.”

“I have not touched the stuff in three years. I’m quite sane Roderick…a bit too sane really…a certain sleep has left me. I must say…I do not fancy the light of dawn.”

His words had a certain poetic quality that made them settle in my brain most oddly. I was momentarily dumbfounded.

“Look! Opium or no opium all this hullabaloo with spirits and orders and the like. These are fantasies. I mean we entered into this for the fun of it for the distraction…to rid ourselves of moneyed dissipation and now…it’s gone too far…we must quit this place Freddy. Let’s go to Spain …Italy even.”

“He is in Italy.”

“Who?”

“Perdurabo and his chief…”

I had no idea what he was talking about nor did I have time to question him because just then I turned round to glance back towards the house. A figure was dashing towards us across the moors.

“What on earth…!”

I took out my binoculars. It was Beatrice! Her red locks all akilter my revolver in her hand…I’d never seen her run so fast.

I lowered the glass and just stood and stared while Jones leaned against a tree.

In the span of a quarter hour the diminutive figure reached us. To my great surprise I saw that she was barefoot.

I stared as she collapsed a few steps in front of me breathing heavily.

I leaned down and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Betty…betty what is it?”

And odd sort of half groan half whimper came from the quivering nightgown that lay before me.

“Roderick…” She hissed…. “Roderick…the house…the singing…”

“Beg your pardon?”

“It…IT HUMS…Roderick…”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Wheeling round I saw Jones face wear a somber tight lipped expression that sent shivers throughout my frame.

“Zo..d…e..c..ah”

It was unbearably hot and humid. The grim face that the hand on my shoulder possessed belonged to Graham Hoyt. His words were quite at odds with his bearing. “Are you coming to dinner?”

I rose from my folding chair and followed Hoyt to the mess tent.

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I found it amusing that only a few of even my own group understood my reference. There is something of inevitability in the unfolding of history. I do not believe in predestination and in fact count it as a blasphemy. There are however instances of such incredible confluence that a defacto form of predestination can be said to exist.

One such phenomenon is the global power of English. How is it that a small island nation surrounded by a frozen sea informed and continues to inform the whole Earth. How small the number of her sons, how great in number the adversaries and perils that beset her, yet she sat as regent of the world. While power proper has inarguably waned… for good or ill the world is still so very English.

Did Dee’s designs so many centuries ago help seal Britannia’s destiny as sovereign? Given the nature of our research, the heritage of the United States, and our current relationship to that jilted forbearer I could not but help feel that we were continuing Dee’s work.

So I knew that we would soon head north and east. I knew that we would be successful. What I did not know was the nature of that success. Even now I can not fully grasp the enormity of the implications that we uncovered for the sake of civilization. But I get ahead of myself.

Our training ground was actually just west of the true location of Dead Horse Camp. I have already described the first week of the second round of training. A lot of calisthenics, hygiene, and packing drills, basically what one would expect.

Week two was a lot more of the same. Except that it was tinged throughout with dire warnings of death.

“I will leave you, which means they will leave you, once we are more than a hundred miles in the depths, if the equipment fails or the helicopters aren’t avaialable, you will die. So don’t get hurt.”

One thing that I didn’t understand throughout all of this is why exactly we had to do it on foot. I mean…we had the coordinate why not just airdrop our way in? Of course the answer was a mixture of pride and ambition.

Cook had long wanted an excuse to risk his life and the lives of whoever was mad enough to accompany him to mount an on the ground expedition. An expedition where he could travel slowly and take in the terrain, the locals, what artifacts he may find. It did make sense from a scientific standpoint. The closer you can get to your subject the better.

I was relieved that upon hearing of all the random shootings, robberies, and deaths Anna was no longer keen on joining us. Honestly I wasn’t too keen to get a lung full of birdshot from the Amazon’s version of Johnny Cash. Some folk shoot you just to see what its like to watch a man die. Lobo had made sure to recount a recent case of a kayaker’s narrow survival after multiple shotgun blasts.

“He was lucky he was close to a village. We are not going to be close to a village.”

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