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part 2 of the story
Happy New Year

Mark Pearce

    A monk with a tray of food approached Drake’s cell. Another monk stood beside the door, guarding it. He unlocked the door.
    The monk entered the cell. It was dark. The torch had been extinguished. He proceeded tentatively. “Mr. Drake?”
    The monk tripped over something in the dark. He fell to the ground, the tray crashing loudly as its contents hurled across the room. The guard came rushing in. Drake swung the chair and smashed it into him. It broke apart as he fell to the ground. Drake ran out of the cell.
    Drake ran wildly down the torch lit hall. Shouting could be heard in the darkness behind him. A bell began to sound, and more shouts and running could be heard.
    Drake saw a heavy oak door which was secured with a sliding bolt. There was no window on the door. Drake quickly slid the bolt, opened the door, and rushed through.
    Drake entered a hallway unlike any he had seen thus far. It was lined with cages, like a zoo. The interior of each cage was a replicated primitive environment—barren rock, or thick jungle, or frozen tundra. But the astonishing thing was the inhabitants of the cages. Some were human, yet almost subhuman—Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Java. Others contained animals from a prehistoric nightmare—sabre-toothed tigers, palaeosaurs, pleistocene reptiles, etc. The hallway was filled with a cacophony of noise—growls from the tigers, roars from the other beasts, grunts and shouts from the humans.
    Drake stood in astonishment for a moment, his brain unable to take in what his eyes were witnessing. Then a hood was quickly drawn over his head, and two monks grabbed his arms as a third bludgeoned him unconscious with a single blow from a short club.

* * *

    Drake lay in his cell, unconscious upon the bed. He awakened and looked groggily around, then sat up and rubbed the back of his head. The door opened. The Abbot entered with two monks. He saw that Drake was docile and signalled with a wave of his fingers for the monks to leave them alone. They exited, and the Abbot sat in the chair across from Drake’s bed.
    “Good evening, Mr. Drake,” he said. “My name is Andrew. I’m the Abbot of this mission.”
    Drake leaned forward, tense, almost in shock.
    “What did I see, old man? You tell me that. What have you got in those cages?”
    The Abbot gazed deeply at Drake. His manner was grave. “You pose a terrible problem, Mr. Drake. You have stumbled upon a secret as old as time itself. A secret which must never be revealed.”
    “What secret?”
    “What I am going to tell you will be difficult to believe. But I must tell you, and you must believe. Because there is a decision you will have to make.”
    “I don’t believe in mysteries, old man. Just tell me straight.”
    The Abbot paused, carefully weighing his words. “Mr. Drake, the cave you saw, the one the monks were guarding, is a portal through time.”
    “A what??”
    “A time portal. One of several throughout the world. At certain places in the Earth, there are openings in the fabric of time. A cave, a cleft in the side of a mountain. Enter one of these openings today, and you exit into some countless yesterday or endless tomorrow. Step into a cave in 21st Century Europe, and you might emerge in 12th Century Asia; walk into a cleft in prehistoric Africa, and you might find yourself emerging in Classic Greece.”
    “It’s not possible.”
    “Yet it is so. You yourself have seen the evidence with your own eyes—prehistoric men and animals who wandered into caves before the beginning of recorded history and have emerged into our time.”
    “Why don’t you just send them back where they came from?”
    “Attempts have been made through the eons to map the portals, but to no avail. When a traveler enters an opening, there is no way of determining when and where they will emerge. We thus have no way of sending the poor devils back to their own time. And we cannot simply force them back into the portals to be foisted upon another era. Each generation must care for the wanderers who exit into their time.”
    “I saw dinosaurs . . sabre-toothed tigers . . If what you’re telling me is true, why don’t you just destroy them when they come through the portal?”
    “It is not our purpose to destroy life. Ours is a sacred trust. Until the Maker of All Things descends to reveal all mysteries, we must stand as the guardians of time. You have to understand. The first travelers did so by accident. Then they began to meet others who also had wandered into the eons. Eventually, temples were built to guard the openings. We are the guardians of the portals. We determine who may enter. And we deal with those who arrive from other epochs.”
    “And you expect me to believe this fairy tale?”
    “You are an educated man, Mr. Drake. If you choose not to accept the evidence of your senses, I’ll not attempt to persuade you.”
    “You couldn’t have kept something like this a secret all these centuries.”
    “There have been indications throughout recorded time. Legends of hidden lamaseries in Tibet with monks living hundreds of years; tales of Spaniards in the New World discovering the Fountain of Youth in a forgotten Aztec temple. Many of the world’s myths have stemmed from the Temples of Time.”
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “Because there is a decision you will have to make. Occasionally, a person such as yourself stumbles upon our secret. When that occurs, they have only two choices. They must either become one of us, or they must remain a prisoner of the mission. Either way, they can never see the outside world again.”
    “You’re insane! There are people who know where I am.”
    “No one will ever find you. There will, perhaps, be an inquiry, but your disappearance will forever be a mystery.”
    “Is that what happened to Hunter? Have you got him locked away in one of your cages?”
    “Barkley Hunter was an archaeologist and a man of imagination. This was the ultimate exploration. Once he had discovered our secret, he was determined to enter the portal. What could be more of an adventure than to step off into time? Now you must rest. You have had much to absorb this day. We will talk again in the morning.”
    “I don’t want to talk again in the morning. I want to leave right now.”
    “I’m afraid that is no longer possible.”

* * *

    The monks sat around their meeting table in the midst of a heated discussion.
    “No!” said Bocephus. “We cannot risk the possibility that he might escape. We have to send him into the portal.”
    “Let us not make such a decision in haste,” said the Abbot. “When he has had time to assimilate what he has seen, he might well choose to join us.”
    “We can’t risk it. We’re not talking about some wandering shepherd here. This is a reporter for an American newspaper. If we send him into the portal, he will be unable to harm us, no matter when he emerges. Even if he should escape from whatever temple he finds himself in, he would be strange to the era. The asylums of history have no doubt occasionally held escaped travelers who were considered insane for the tale they told.”
    “It is a difficult thing to be displaced in time,” said the Abbot. “We must offer Drake a chance.”
    Sarah spoke: “There is something else to consider.”
    “What is that?” asked the Abbot.
    “If he is to be given a chance to become one of us, he will have to be told about the Shriekers.”
    “No!” said Bocephus.
    “He cannot make an informed decision if he does not know all that it would entail,” said Sarah. “That includes the Shriekers.”
    “Sarah is right,” said the Abbot. “We have to tell him.”
    “We cannot!” said Bocephus.
    “Let us vote,” said the Abbot solemnly.
    One by one, each of the monks placed his or her right hand, palm down, onto the table. Only Bocephus refrained.
    “It is decided,” said the Abbot.

* * *

    Drake sat on his bed. The door opened and the Abbot entered.
    “I trust you slept well.”
    “I don’t know whether I slept at all. Or whether I’m sleeping now, for that matter. It is becoming difficult to determine the difference between reality and nightmare.”
    “There is one more truth to be revealed to you. You will please come with me.”
    The Abbot and two monks led Drake down the halls to a bolted door. They stopped. The Abbot nodded to one of the monks who pulled a heavy key from the folds of his robe and opened the door.
    The hall resembled the “zoo” where the prehistoric men and animals were kept. But the humans in these cages were quite modern. In manner of dress they might almost be contemporary except their clothes were tattered and torn. Each cage held only one person, and each person was obviously insane—shrieking and drooling, babbling and giggling, and crying and shrieking all over again. Drake was badly shaken.
    “What’s wrong with them?”
    “These are the Shriekers—an anomaly of the portals which is seldom discussed among us. The Shriekers have been a problem since the first temple in the dark ages of history. These are the people from 2040 A.D.”
    “What do you mean?
    “Every person who has ever arrived from 2040 has been stark raving, babbling drooling mad.”
    “All of them? But why?”
    “No one knows. We can determine their year of origin by the identification they carry. But they are unable to tell us what has happened to them. Travelers who have arrived from periods through 2039 have no knowledge of any impending disaster, disease, or mayhem that would cause the phenomenon. But every person who has ever emerged from the year 2040 has been insane.”
    “What about those from beyond 2040?”
    “In all the history of the world, in all the millennia which stretch back to the dawn of time, no traveler has ever arrived from beyond 2040.”

* * *

    Drake lay on his bed, his arm over his forehead. He stared blankly at the ceiling. A key turned in the lock, and the Abbot entered.
    “Mr. Drake. I know that what you’ve seen and heard is hard to take. But we will need a decision soon.”
    “I’ll never join this chamber of horrors.”
    “I would ask you to reconsider. It is a grave fate you are choosing.”
    Drake did not answer. The Abbot left the room.

* * *

    Bocephus and two other monks proceeded down the long, dark hall. They reached Drake’s cell and unbolted the door. Drake appeared to be asleep on the bed, covered with his blanket.
    “Mr. Drake, wake up,” said Bocephus. “You will have to come with us . . Mr. Drake? . . Mr. Drake?”
    Bocephus reached the bed and drew back the blanket. Drake was not there. He had set pillows in the form of his body.
    “He is gone!” shouted Bocephus. “Sound the alarm!”
    They rushed out of the cell.
    A bell began tolling throughout the mission. Bocephus hurried down the hall. He saw the Abbot come from one of the rooms.
    “Drake has escaped!’ he said.
    “How did it happen?” asked the Abbot.
    “I don’t know. We just went into his cell and he was gone.”
    “We must find him before he gets too far.”
    They rushed down the hall.

* * *

    Drake’s cell was empty. A few moments passed, then Drake crawled from under the bed. The monks had left the cell door open. Drake went to the door, glanced both ways down the hall, and slipped out.
    In the courtyard, a group of monks had mounted horses. The Abbot spoke to them. “Drake must be found at all cost. Under no circumstances can he be allowed to announce our presence to the world.”
    The monks rode swiftly toward the gate.
    Drake crouched in the hallway, peeping out the window which looked into the courtyard. He watched as the monks rode away.

* * *

    Many hours passed. The sun began to rise. Weary monks approached the temple on horseback. The Abbot stood waiting for them.
    “There’s no sign of him anywhere,” said Steven. “Not on the mountain, not in the village. He must have had a confederate waiting for him. We should have searched the surrounding mountainside when we first captured him.”
    “It is too late for recriminations now. It is time to decide what we must do.”
     Drake crouched in the storeroom, peering out the window. He watched the priests enter the main temple. He then quietly rose and slipped through the dark. He ascended the stairs to the catwalk at the top of the mission wall. He crept along the catwalk, then climbed up onto the wall and reached out to the branch of a nearby tree. He swung across.

    Drake hiked through the jungle as swiftly as he could, headed down the hill toward the village. He kept looking over his shoulder. He worked his way further down the mountain without detection. He was panting and sweating. Suddenly, he heard a massive explosion. He turned and looked up the hill. There were two more explosions which ripped apart the mountain above the mission. A series of smaller explosions blasted inside the mission itself, tearing it apart as its resulting rubble was buried under the avalanche of rock created by the explosions in the side of the mountain.
    “No!” shouted Drake.
    Further explosions caused more of the mountainside to avalanche down, thoroughly burying the rubble of the mission. Drake dropped to his knees as he watched the destruction and burial of the temple.
    “No . . no. . .” He began to cry. “You didn’t have to do it, old man. I wouldn’t have told anyone. I swear I wouldn’t have told!”

* * *

    Drake sat in the newspaper office late at night. He was much older now; his hair turning grey. He sat behind an ornate mahogany desk. A bottle of bourbon rested on the corner of the desk. He held a half empty glass in his hand. In a chair across from his desk sat an attractive woman in her late twenties.
    “They had sealed the portal,” said Drake, sadly. “I went back and dug among the rubble, but it was no use. All of those lives, all of those monks, lost because of me.” He sat silently contemplating. “I like to think they escaped into the portal before the detonations. A later excavation turned up some ruins of the temple, but no tunnels and no caves.” He drank. “I told Hunter’s sister that her brother had perished in an avalanche. I don’t know if she believed me. I’ve spent the intervening years searching the world for another portal. Africa, Asia, Europe . . North America, South America. Even an expedition to the Antarctic. The stories I covered along the way won me a Pulitzer Prize. But I never found another portal. Never.” He looked at her. “You don’t believe a word of it, do you?”
    She smiled. “I believe you’re still the best stringer of words this paper has ever seen.” She looked at the glass in his hand. “And I believe you’ve been celebrating a little heavily. But hey, you’re entitled—you just made Managing Editor.” She rose. “So are you ready to go back down to the party?”
    “You go,” he said; he stepped up to the window and looked out. “I’m going to watch the New Year come in from right here.”
    The calendar on his desk read: DECEMBER 31, 2039.
    A saxophone began to play “Auld Lang Syne” from a radio in the outer office.
    “There are some hard times ahead,” said Drake. “Really hard times.”
    The music continued as he stared into the night.

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