Blood Falls – Chapter One (with audio)

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Preface

Valley of the Shadow

Behold, I tell you a mystery….
—1 Corinthians 15:51

A full moon rose over Puowaina, the Hill of Sacrifice, bathing the entire National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in ghostly light. In the depression of an old volcanic crater once used for human sacrifice to pagan gods, the memorial to America’s war heroes now held the remains of more than 53,000 souls.

Tonight, the moon illumined the broad steps leading to the statue of Lady Justice adorning the face of the memorial. Her form rose high above a blue pool, poised on the prow of a ship as if reaching out a stone hand to comfort the bedraggled body lying face down before her.

A flashlight’s beam caught the back of the man’s rumpled jacket.

 “Oh, great,” groaned the security guard.

Winded from the trek up the stairway to the memorial, he still bounded up the last steps two at a time and crossed the courtyard to lean over the body.

A second breathless guard joined him. The memorial had closed for the day, and a tourist leaving the park mentioned he saw an old guy who “looked stoned” wandering around the area.

“Well, it looks like the tourist’s report was right, after all. There was somebody hanging around. Guess we shouldn’t have finished our break before we checked it out.”       

“It probably wouldn’t have made much difference. Looks like a dead homeless dude.”

They pulled the man away from the edge of the water and turned him over.

One guard checked the man’s pulse while the second guard slipped a wallet from the man’s tattered suit pocket. “Who wears a suit to visit a park in Hawaii? Tony, look at this.” In the second guard’s hand lay a water-stained veteran’s ID card. “He was a Navy vet.”

“Is a vet, Brian,” Tony corrected his friend, looking up. “He’s alive. He’s just very drunk.”

With difficulty they shook the man awake and helped him sit.     

“Do you think you can stand, Bud?” Brian asked him.

“He’s a veteran, man. Have some respect,” Tony scolded. He bent over the thin figure and gently asked, “Sir, can you make it to a service road if we help you? We can get you a ride out of here and home.”

The old man tried to focus as he struggled to stand. Brian radioed for assistance. Then each man took an arm, and they hefted the veteran to his feet. The man wobbled a moment, seemingly oblivious he was falling-down-drunk under a full moon in a cemetery.

Instead, he caught sight of one of the flagpoles upon which the American flag flew during daylight hours. He attempted to stand at attention and salute the empty pole.

Brian snickered.

Then the ground moved under them.

No, it didn’t move. It exhaled, as if the earth released its spirit with a single sigh. The air seemed to bend upward like heat waves in the desert. A thick but unseen darkness descended upon the Hill of Sacrifice, rushing to fill the black void that hung in the night air.

Yet, everything looked the same.

Lady Justice still glowed under the autumn sky.

The drunk looked skyward, an unknown fear etched upon his withered features as a heavy oppression settled over the place. Tony, who with his co-worker struggled to keep the man on his feet, saw and felt nothing. The radio buzzed with the announcement that a park vehicle was on its way.

Moments later, the airwaves exploded with more news.

Across the world, two men in sackcloth stepped out of the Judean desert and into the heart of Jerusalem.

Chapter 1

Dark Eden

It was also given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them,

and authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation was given to him.

-Revelation 13:7

Darren Imgalrea pushed through the door of the red weather haven kitchen tent lugging a box full of personal items to be packed for the trip back to the States. He trudged the short distance to his own tent, head bent down against the relentless Antarctic wind. His eyes burned in the bright sunlight. He shivered, set the box down for a moment and pulled his parka hood down over his head. He wound his thick red scarf tighter around his face. From the neck up he probably looked like a scarlet mummy, though he didn’t care. The cold was getting to him today. He picked up the box again and leaned into the wind.

His buddy Niko strode up to him at the exact moment Darren looked up and tripped over one of the multitude of rocks littering their campground below Blood Falls.

Niko caught him as he pitched forward and chuckled. “You’re not supposed to be celebrating already, Yukon. The party at Grace’s place isn’t for a couple of hours yet.”

Darren groaned. “Not funny, Niko. Stop already or I’ll breathe on you, and you can fly home with your own special souvenir of Lake Bonney.”

Niko feigned shock and replied, “Oh, no, anything but that. Seriously man, it’s too bad you’re sick. How about we bring you back some of Grace’s cooking tonight?”

At Darren’s eager nod, he grinned and placed his hand over his heart. “You got it, my friend. Dinner when we get home. Hope you can wait to eat until… midnight. Radio us if you need anything.” Niko loped off with a laugh.

Love you, too, Buddy. Darren blew a sarcastic kiss in Niko’s direction and stumbled the rest of the way to his tent. He stepped through the opening, securing it behind him. He shoved the box into a corner of the tent, climbed into his sleeping bag, and sighed.

He was still fully dressed and cocooned in his bag when the ATV’s roared by him on their way to Lake Bonney Camp. Darren stirred, tried to swallow, and gagged. His inflamed throat burned with every breath.

Miserable flu. There’d be no work tomorrow for him. He glanced at the work that lay untouched beside him. He was getting too close to the deadline for comfort. His time in Antarctica was soon ending, and he hadn’t completed his report.

Not the one that mattered.

To make things worse, the caretaker at the nearby field camp had invited the entire research team to dinner to celebrate the end of a successful mission. Now he couldn’t go and took little comfort in Niko’s mocking promise of leftovers. He really wished at least one person would have stayed to keep an eye on him. They were only a twenty-minute drive away on their ATVs, but it didn’t give him much comfort in the desolate wilderness.

Instead, he lay alone, sick, in his tent.

He cursed inwardly and instantly regretted it.

“Sorry, God,” he croaked aloud. He huddled back farther in his cocoon and willed himself back to sleep.

Hours later, he awakened stiff and groggy. He slipped his phone from his jacket. The time said nearly twenty-two hundred, although it wasn’t dark outside. Antarctica only had two seasons: winter and summer. For this first week in October, the sun shone for sixteen or more hours. The rest of the night lay in twilight.

Darren sighed.

The others must be celebrating hard. So much for dinner.

His phone didn’t work here to call out. He could, however, bring up a document. The science community had outlawed the Bible, but he’d recently obtained a bootleg copy from an itinerant preacher. This was as good a time as any to do some reading away from prying eyes.

He scrolled through the Psalms until he found his favorite place:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

A low growl snarled outside the opening of his tent.

Darren froze.

He strained to hear it again, but the only sound was the wind buffeting the Scott polar tent that separated him from the Antarctic wilderness. For a moment he forgot his cold as a new terror tightened his throat. No wolves or polar bears or big cats lived here, so he couldn’t imagine what lurked outside his tent. A chill shuddered through him.

He carefully emerged from his sleeping bag and crawled over to the opening. He lay there, breathing shallowly through his raw nasal passages as he listened to the wind. He chastised himself for neglecting to grab his two-way radio, just in case.

I fear no evil, for You are with me.

He debated easing open the tent just a little to get a look outside.

At that moment, the silence was torn by the sound of a knife slashing through the canvas.

Two men dressed in black, faces covered with balaclavas, jumped through the jagged hole. He lunged toward the tent opening, but they shoved him hard to the tent floor. He fumbled for the personal locator beacon hanging around his neck. One man got to it first, yanked it from his hand, and tossed it before he could send out an emergency alert. The men taped his mouth shut, bound his hands behind him, and threw a hood over his head.

Darren thrashed as they pulled him to his feet. They dragged him kicking out of the tent and toward Blood Falls, his mind reeling with terrified understanding.

A heavy silence lay over Taylor Glacier as two figures finally shouldered their backpacks and hiked out of the twilight shadows into the vast wilderness of Antarctica’s Dry Valleys.

The wind howled through Lake Bonney Camp, whipping at the utilitarian buildings that clung to the boulder-strewn ground surrounding the lake. Inside the camp’s round Jamesway Quonset hut, Grace Higgins ignored nature’s temper tantrum. Seasoned veteran of Antarctica and camp caretaker, she respected the fickle weather, however, and ensured that each new group of campers did, too. The first thing she taught them at Lake Bonney was how to secure all the gear around the camp against the fierce katabatic winds with rocks hauled from the area’s plentiful supply.

The Jamesway, a repurposed left-over from the Korean War, wore the stark military bearing of a battered vet, including the old bullet wound in its canvas wall. Its somber exterior belied the quirky and happy chaos happening inside most days. Grace ran the camp with humor and impish creativity. Her warmth disarmed even the crustiest explorer.

Tonight, the hut buzzed with activity. Laughter and savory aromas enveloped the table as Grace served up her amazing fish stew to the guests from the Blood Falls camp. Fully in her element, she flung her long, graying braids over her shoulders and bustled about the little kitchen while she reveled in their banter.

As the scientists related their stories from the two-week research mission at the falls, she mentally filed away the new information to savor later. She never grew tired of hearing about the strange red flow that oozed to the surface from the iron and microbe-rich lake lying below Taylor Glacier. This tantalizing window into the world of strange biology beneath the ice drew researchers from around the world and earned it the title “Dark Eden.” If she still taught public school, it would be so fun to share this fascinating knowledge with a roomful of bright young faces.

Except the children were gone.

After dinner, Grace coaxed her niece Vanessa into serving the group the chocolate cake baked especially for the occasion. Nessa crafted amazing cakes from whatever she scrounged from the kitchen. No one ever asked what was in the sweet, rich cakes, for which Grace was secretly grateful. They did a lot of improvising in the wake of the most recent famine.

It was late when the group finally loaded up for the trip back to their camp. Grace sent along a hearty serving of fish stew and Nessa’s cake for their sick team member. As she watched them roar back toward their camp full of food and booze, a nameless but sour anxiety churned in her stomach. Someone should have checked in on Darren during the evening.

He possessed both a radio and a personal locator beacon to contact help in an emergency, so he was probably fine. She ducked back into the Jamesway and closed the door, chastising herself for being such a mother hen.

Forty minutes later, she received the frantic call that Darren Imgalrea was missing.

2025 Copyright. Pamela Thorson. Arrow Light and Power. All Rights Reserved.

No portion of this book may be used without the written consent of the author and publisher.

Blood Falls by Pamela Thorson is available on Amazon and other fine book stores. Learn more at bloodfalls.net or cmaddict.com.