The Crossing Point Read online

  What he did know was he needed air, and he needed it now. Or surely within another moment or two he would slip away and come to rest among the litter of skulls in their wake—not just his head, but his entire body left to drift in an eternal slumber in this underwater graveyard. Jacob’s struggles increased. No longer did he care about the Gate. No longer did he care to lay witness to and set foot inside the biblical paradise promised on the other side; all of it, as elusive as its legend, and now proving to be just as dangerous.

  He began thrashing about wildly, flailing and punching until he felt his body free itself from the angel’s hold. His legs kicked with all their might desperate to force himself upward away from Gotham and toward the surface that appeared to be floating a hundred miles above, but a hand grabbed him by the ankle halting his ascent and yanked him back down. And as it did his mouth opened and the last gasp of air held inside his lungs escaped him in a precious burst of bubbles.

  Face to face with the angel, Jacob’s eyes were wide as saucers and fixed with a knowing terror. He tried to exhale, but there was nothing left inside him. The last bit of life squeezed from his chest. And then he heard a voice.

  “Relax, Jacob!”

  It belonged to Gotham, but Gotham’s mouth did not move to speak. Gotham reached out and grabbed Jacob by the back of the neck and pulled him toward him. In an instant his mouth clamped down over the boy’s nose. Jacob’s eyes widened even larger and he struggled to pull away. The angel’s hold was firm. And Jacob felt a breath move past through his nostrils and journey down into his chest to fully inflate his withered lungs.

  The panic quickly subsided, and so, too, did Jacob’s struggles. Gotham held the boy’s head in his hands, and in the watery stillness Jacob heard the angel’s voice echo from within his head.

  “We’re almost there. Just a ways longer. You trust me?”

  The eyes staring back at Jacob appeared like swirling spheres of molten gold and a great calm came over him. He nodded in agreement and the angel took hold of him once again and led him through the murky unknown. They soon reached what appeared to be the lake floor. There the stromatolites grew thicker, extending in every direction like prehistoric tree roots twisting and curving and jutting upward suddenly, creating a vast mountainous underwater sculpture pocked with arches and cave openings. It was a mesmerizing sight. So amazing was it, in fact, it seemed to take Jacob’s attention away from the skull-splitting pain that continued to hold him in its grip. Never had Jacob seen, or imagined anything like it. And yet there was a strange familiarity to it all.

  They made their way through a maze of arches and tight, narrow passageways that eventually led to the mouth of a giant cave-like opening. As they approached it, Jacob’s heart quickened.

  He began to feel his lungs start to strain once again, and the blackness which lurked inside offered no sign they were closing in on the end of their trek. Still, the panic that had previously engulfed Jacob remained at bay, for he now knew the angel would see him through safely. And yet he was unable to keep his body from tightening when they passed through the cave entrance and into the pitch darkness waiting inside.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Journey Through the Gate

  T

  here is darkness.

  And then there is a darkness beyond the reaches even the deepest of blacks are able to color. A darkness which manages to swallow from memory anything and everything that ever existed outside its realm. An infinite void of nothingness. An utter, and inescapable grip of absolute emptiness.

  Such was the darkness Jacob found filling the inside of the underwater cave into which Gotham led him.

  Solid.

  Thick.

  A wall of black impenetrable by even the brightest of lights. For here, light had long ago been vanquished, if it ever existed. Any glint permanently extinguished by this living breathing entity unto itself, consuming everything in its path. And it was in that instant Jacob knew there was no gate, at least not as he had imagined in his mind. A gleaming ornamental barrier welded of steel bars chained and padlocked shut did not exist. No, this—this blackness—this was the Gate. For what made for a more impregnable passage than this unwelcoming darkness? Or the merciless Powers posted as guards at its entrance? And to anyone who doubted a breach was possible, a pile of skulls strewn along the threshold offered a final, definitive warning.

  Jacob fought to keep his hands at his sides and not hold them out in front of him to feel for any unseen obstacles lurking ahead. From the feel of the icy currents flowing against his face, he knew they were still maintaining a great speed through the never-ending emptiness and it unnerved him to be going as fast as they were and not be able to see anything in their path. That and feeling Gotham’s breath which filled his lungs start to give way made his heart begin pounding wildly inside his chest. And Gotham, feeling the manic drumming beneath where his hand clutched the boy by the chest, offered a comforting squeeze while tightening his hold.

  “Just a ways further,” the angel’s voice once again reverberated reassuringly inside his head.

  And just when the blackness smothering them vowed to stretch on for all eternity, Jacob felt an inexplicable shift within the bottomless pit. He couldn’t see anything, but there was definitely a change in the direction they swam. They were moving upward. And the pain from the crushing grip that had taken hold of his head began to slowly recede. Then, suddenly, in the far distance, a flicker, piercing the void. A pin-prick of light, like a distant star in the night sky. Dim at first, it slowly grew brighter the closer they swam toward it. And larger. For a moment, it was a comforting sight. Then a jarring thought came to Jacob. From out of nowhere his brain regurgitated the memory of a TV show he once saw on near-death experiences and the people who had them. They each shared the same story of traveling toward a light at the end of a dark tunnel. Was he now passing through some tunnel of death to “The Light”? Had he, unbeknownst himself, succumbed to drowning he wondered as he clenched his hands into fists to ensure he was still a physical form of flesh and blood while staring cautiously at the brightening light ahead.

  Gradually eating away at the surrounding shroud of blackness, the light beckoned Jacob and Gotham through a gaping breach punctured through the ceiling of the cave shaped like the giant blowhole of some ancient sea creature lumbering in the ocean depths. Bands of illumination spilled through the mouth and streamed toward them like phantom arms of salvation out-stretched to greet them. The fraying blackness began to retreat, recoiling in the presence of this undesirable intruder, this glorious light, into its lightless den. And with the light came sight from the temporary blindness that had enveloped Jacob; and what a sight it was.

  ~~~

  Coming up from the belly of the abyss, Jacob found himself ascending through an underwater cavern immense in size housing a colony of stalactites jutting down in all shapes and sizes from the jagged rocky skin inside the cave like massive fangs lining the jaws of a beast. It was both breathtaking and yet baleful in its beauty. And had his lungs not been engulfed once more in a burning strain to breathe, Jacob found he would have lingered there, mesmerized in the fact that neither he nor Gotham had met their demise impaled at the end of one of the twisted skewers of rock while shooting forward blindly through the blackness.

  Once they had emerged from the intestines of the cave, they were met by a vast, open sea and Jacob immediately felt the noticeable change. The water carried the color of an almost dreamlike swirl of blue and green-tinted turquoise. It flowed with a crystal-clear clarity, and unlike the waters of the lake they had left behind, it was teeming with life. Schools of fish of every kind and size swam in great numbers all around, and a rainbow of coral and sea plants formed an underwater paradise for as far as the eye could see. Jacob wriggled his way free of Gotham’s grasp, and this time his squirming for freedom wasn’t hampered by an overpowering hand to keep him clutched to the angel’s side. Instead, Jacob was given a forceful push that sent him streaming upwa
rd toward the glistening ripple of sunlight that danced on the water’s surface above. He paddled and kicked furiously towards it until he crashed through, mouth agape to inhale deeply the first gulp of the life-giving salty sea air awaiting him. With the first few breaths came a sharp pain that shot through his chest. It felt as if the air itself was infested with razor blades slicing through his starved lungs. And as he convulsed in a drawn-out fit of coughing and sputtering, he noticed Gotham bobbing upon the water nearby, exerting not so much as a gasp from their near-suffocating trek and calmly waiting for the boy to regain his composure.

  “Tell me again what the upside is to this Nephilim thing?” Jacob spat angrily, his voice laced with an envious resentment. “I can’t fly. I can barely hold my breath. I just now nearly drowned. All I seem to have been given from this deal is two humps on my back, the ability to understand some birds and a few fancy moves. Hardly selling points.”

  Gotham remained silent recognizing the boy’s growing frustration that soon subsided with the labored hacking and gasps of breath as his attention was drawn to the sea depths beneath him.

  “The water, it tingles,” noted Jacob. He lifted his arm out of the blue ocean upon which he treaded, his eyes following the liquid beads trickling across his skin as though he was expecting to see something clinging to his arm. What, he had no idea.

  “The Dilmun Sea,” said Gotham. “Filled with the waters that flow from the heart of Eden from which all life came to be.”

  “Eden? You’re saying we’re here?” asked Jacob. Yet there remained a guarded doubt in his voice.

  His eyes began searching feverishly the surrounding horizon. Yet all he could see was an endless expanse of water stretching every which way he attempted to look and coming toward him in a parade of gently rolling swells. The only other thing in existence besides the water was a bank of dense fog in the distance resting upon the surface of sea appearing like some impregnable fortress wall.

  “I see nothing,” Jacob exclaimed with a resigned disappointment.

  Gotham smiled. Not with amusement, but with a disappointment for which he seemed prepared.

  “Unfortunately, that remains your greatest obstacle,” said the angel.

  Before Jacob could press Gotham further about Eden’s location, the angel closed his eyes and retreated into a moment of silence. His mouth then parted as though to take a breath, and from his lips came a litany of whispers. They were spoken as words, but they met the ear as foreign sounds that Jacob had never before heard. And yet they were as familiar as the English he spoke. Repeated over and over in a string of hushed tones, they spilled out into the air, swirling about before dispersing its echoed calling into the silence of the water itself. Jacob waited but nothing seemed to happen. Then, there was a splashing sound and Jacob turned to find in the distance a dolphin leaping from the water high into the air before disappearing back into the depths. A moment later it leapt again, followed by a second dolphin. Soon a third could be seen, then a fourth. Within moments, what looked like a herd numbering at more than fifty could be seen stampeding across the ocean toward them like wild stallions galloping across the open plains.

  Jacob stared wide-eyed at the spectacle. Never had he seen anything so fantastic as this pod of dolphins ripping through the water with such aquatic grace and prowess. And for an instant he felt his heart begin to race when they were suddenly upon him and Gotham, cutting through the water a hand’s reach away and leaping overhead through the air in synchronized, balletic arches, their sleek gray bodies glistening brightly in the sun. When he realized there was no fear of being trampled, he turned to Gotham, who was smiling as widely as he was.

  “Take hold, and enjoy the ride!” Gotham cried out over the churning splashes with a mischievous wink. And with that he latched onto the dorsal fin of one of the passing dolphins and was swiftly whisked away.

  “Wait!” Jacob called out excitedly.

  He turned back to the approaching pod. The sheer number coming at him and leaping above was unnerving. His attempts to follow them all with his eyes while trying to decipher which one to grab ahold of made him grow dizzy and disoriented until, finally, he blindly reached out and managed to find a passing fin to latch onto and was jerked into motion.

  Jacob felt the adrenaline pumping wildly through his veins. If flying through the air while holding fast to an angel proved to be the biggest rush he felt in all of his extreme sport adventures, racing at high-speed on the back of a dolphin across the ocean’s surface with the cool, refreshing spray of water across his face was a very close second. Jacob let out a series of loud whoops. It was like riding an underwater bronco without the fear of being bucked off. The other dolphins followed along for a bit, continuing their stampede before they began to fall away one by one and disappear from sight into the depths of the ocean. The sea once again fell still and the two remaining dolphins with their passengers holding tight continued to skim across the tide toward the fog bank that loomed ahead. When Jacob saw where they were heading, his exuberant laughter and smile faded. Gotham looked back over his shoulder at the boy.

  “I’ll see you on the other side,” he called out before being swallowed up by the dense cloud-like vapor.

  For a split second, Jacob felt an urge to let go of the dolphin beneath him and fall free to the open water. Instead, his hold on the smooth fleshy rudder in his grasp tightened. The dolphin sped forward. The billowy barrier that became more massive in height the closer they approached it was coming fast at him, like a concrete wall in which he was about to smash into face first. His stomach tightened. He took a deep breath, even though he remained above water, and at the very last second shut his eyes tightly.

  ~~~

  Cold.

  It enveloped Jacob instantly and wholly with a biting chill that penetrated its way to his very bones. With some reluctance, Jacob opened his eyes and still found himself blinded, but instead of being thrown into another pit of blackness, he instead was immersed in a grayish white haze which, in an instant, obliterated the rest of the world. Even with the water spraying up from across the dolphin’s back, Jacob could feel the heavy mist hanging in the air and the dampness of a million tiny drops of wetness raining down on him.

  The fog seemed to stretch on endlessly, and what was only a few minutes within its clutches seemed to Jacob to last hours. He found himself trying to shrug off a growing chill that didn’t come from the cold of the water but an unsettling apprehension rising up inside him. What awaited him on the other side of this ocean barrier? Was there an other side? Or was this it?

  He called out for Gotham. Then again, louder.

  “I can’t see you!”

  At first, there was nothing. No reply. No sound. Just the sloshing of water. Then there came laughter. It was faint at first—a muffled, far off laughter tickling the nothingness before him and barely pricked his ears. He knew it belonged to Gotham, despite never before having recalled witnessing the angel laugh. It seemed to move toward him, growing louder and more robust, and moving dizzily about him like the swirling of wind before falling abruptly silent within the suffocating denseness.

  The dolphin beneath him surged forth showing not even the slightest hesitation inside the blank slate of gray. Its movements were confident and focused, as though it knew precisely where it was headed, and that somehow offered Jacob some ease. Still, he held on tightly to his escort’s fin, not wanting to chance somehow slipping free and finding himself left behind treading the cold waters lost and alone inside this phantom purgatory. Finally, the cloud mass began to separate and reveal gaping holes within the thick billowing innards much like a cotton shirt that falls victim to a closet full of moths. Glimpses of blue sky and sunlight from the blotted out world came into view and the apprehension which had crept up on Jacob and latched onto his shirt collar with its icy fingers fell away and disappeared into the wake waters churned by the dolphin’s tail. And then a short way ahead he spied Gotham, careening across the water like the most per
fect stone being skipped along the surface of a lake.

  “Is that the fastest you can go?” yelled the angel over his shoulder with a baiting cockiness. His gray wings were folded tight across his broad back and chunky strands of his shoulder-length hair had managed to slip free from the confines of its ponytail to dance with wild abandon about his head and face. The smile of relief that had returned to Jacob’s water-beaded face narrowed in concert with his eyes into one of caginess. Instinctively, he laid a hand upon the head of his aquatic steed near its eye and leaned forward.

  “Are you going to let your friend leave you in the dust like this?”

  He didn’t speak the words. Instead, he somehow felt an innate ability within himself to communicate with the animal silently and transmit his thoughts through his fingertips.

  “Come on, and let’s show them what we’re made of!”

  There was no logical expectation to Jacob that the dolphin would respond to his voice, much less his unheard thoughts. He may have had angel blood running through his veins, but the power to prod a dolphin to follow his whim, much less beckon a platoon of the magnificent sea creatures from the ocean depths as he had witnessed Gotham do, was beyond even contemplating with any hint of seriousness. Yet the dolphin did hear, and seemingly understood. And with a mighty jolt, it bucked beneath Jacob and lurched forward. Jacob let loose a yelp of startled exhilaration while holding onto the dolphin’s fin for dear life struggling to keep from being ripped away by the increase drag from the water that he found himself flying across at an incredible speed.