The Cataclysm Scroll - Chapter 6
-6-
Laura slowly returned to consciousness from her deep sleep and vivid dreams. As she raised her head off the desk, she remembered the night's dreams in detail. Before she had straightened herself in a chair, she looked across the strange metallic scroll in front of her. She was astonished to see what looked like a volcano hovering about one inch over one of the squares on the board. This strange hologram was in motion, a small pillar of smoke rising out of the mouth of the volcano and red lava flowing down its side. To her, it looked like an exact replica of what she had seen in her dream that night, in miniature. As she set up in the chair, now fully awake, the volcanic scene before her started to dissolve in the same manner that things had in her dream. In only 15 seconds, the hovering hologram had dissolved. It was entirely gone. Laura was stunned and disappointed it had disappeared so quickly.
She studied the metal plate in detail, looking at it in many different angles as she arose from chair, trying to get the hologram of the volcano to return. No success. The image was gone, but immediately below where she had seen the active volcano, contained within the icon of the particular square, she could make out a tiny diagram of a volcano within the icon itself. The morning light helped in showing more detail than she could see in candle light.
"
Fascinating," she said to herself. With the morning light coming through the drapes she went to the window to pull them back to get more light upon the board. Before she could return to the metal board, there was banging on her motel door and she went to open it. Her two students were standing there with smiles, all holding McDonald’s bags.
“We've got breakfast for you boss,” said Josh, smiling. “We're packed and ready to go when you are.” Laura excitedly dragged them into the room and pointed at the scroll. All three stood there in disbelief.
“What’s that!?” exclaimed Katie. “Was that in the metal thing?”
Laura nodded, “Yep. It opened up when I pushed on that little circle on its side and that flat metal board just opened up when I pulled on it a little bit.”
Josh was standing over it, studying the icons inside eight squares. “Cool drawings! Any idea what kind of language this is?” He looked at Laura for an answer, but she just shook her head.
“I’m not familiar with it. I’m hoping Professor Katz will know more about that type of glyphs.”
“There’s not a wrinkle in it, boss,” Josh said, gently touching the surface. “If you look real closely, there’s tiny drawings inside the larger ones. I see one here with a tornado, another one looks like a tidal wave, and…”
Laura interrupted him. “And one with a volcano, yes.”
“Yeah!” Josh exclaimed. “And you’re not gonna believe this, but when I touched that volcano just now, it felt warm!”
Laura smiled and said, “And I’ve got one better than that. When we’re on our way, I’ll tell you what that volcano was doing just now when I woke up! And I had a crazy dream you both need to hear about too.”
She’d been wondering how to get the board to curl back up so she could return it to the canister. As she gently touched two corners in an effort to see if it would roll up, it suddenly popped back into its original form. It looked like a perfect scroll about six inches in diameter in seconds.
“Cool!” Katie exclaimed. “That was the neatest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Josh was speechless. Laura gently placed the scroll back in the canister and closed the opening. Without a click or anything to indicate it had sealed, the seams just disappeared without leaving a trace it had ever been opened.
“Let’s get to the lab!” Laura said, still excited at what the professor could figure out about this strange object.
They grabbed all their bags, picked up the canister, and hurried out of the room, still carrying their sacks of breakfast with them. Laura decided to detour toward the air force base again so she could contact the professor to let him know what she’d discovered about the canister.
They ate breakfast while driving east on I-64 toward Scott air force base. Rain had suddenly started. It was a dark, windy morning as they drove. When they got within a few miles of Scott, Laura noticed she had some signal on her cell phone.
She dialed professor Katz after checking to see what time it was. While it was ringing, she told the students they only had two hours to get there. Josh was sitting in front flipping through the radio stations when he heard the news. He turned up the volume on the radio, frustrating Laura when he did. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as if to say “I’m on the phone here!”
Josh exclaimed, “No, no! You’ve gotta hear this!” He turned the radio up even more.
KMOX radio had a news flash announcing that the volcano Vesuvius had interrupted just a few hours before. All three looked at each other in amazement. The news went on to say that tens of thousands of people had been buried in volcanic ash and soot when Vesuvius went unexpectedly. The small city of Ercolano, which was built around the old ruins of Herculaneum, was also being buried.
Josh said, “And that volcano on the metal scroll was warm this morning! I felt it, I’m sure of it!”
Katie could hardly find the words. “Professor, do you think this has anything to do with a volcano that we saw on that metal board?”
“I’m afraid you may be right Katie,” Laura said. She had almost forgotten the phone was ringing. Professor Katz answered. “Katz here.”
“Professor! This is Laura. You’ll never guess what I discovered inside the canister. Last night I pushed a little button on the object and it opened up. Inside was a metal scroll of some kind, and when I went to try to roll it open, it just flipped down flat all on its own. It was weird, moving on its own like that. And there were no scratches or other imperfections that we could find are on it anywhere.”
Professor Katz was really excited. “Excellent!” he said. “Was there anything on it?”
Laura said “Yes, there were things on it! Icons, drawings and some type of writing I can’t interpret. I’m hoping you can understand them or are familiar with the glyphs. We’re coming that way as quickly as we can.” You have to see this for yourself.”
“Absolutely,” professor Katz said. “I'm very anxious to see it. Kirk Perry and I are here waiting in the lab already. Where are you now?”
“I have a weak cell phone signal and will probably lose it soon, heading east on 64. I'm going to go north to I-70 and we should be there in just a couple hours. This storm is really nasty, though. Is it raining there?
“No,” the professor answered. “It's clouding up, and looks like there's one helluva storm coming, but hasn't started raining yet. You guys be careful if the storm is bad there. We can wait. Kirk is already doing some research on what you found, based upon what you’ve told us already. He’s on the computer systems now.”
They had been so excited about the scroll, Laura and her students hadn’t noticed how much more heavily it was raining. Just in the last few minutes it had really gotten worse. Wind was coming from the north pushing the rain nearly sideways in front of them.
“We’ll be careful, professor. And we’ll get there are fast as we can. Laura closed her cell phone and glanced over toward Josh. His eyes were wide-open looking at the windshield at the extreme weather they were driving into.
They hit Illinois route 4 and went north. Then east on I-70 toward another interstate, I-57, which would take them to Champaign.
The storm seemed to get worse as they drove. Although there were many exciting things to talk about, neither of the three said much. They were all concentrating on the road in front of them. Rain had come down so hard, Laura had to fight the steering wheel several times to keep the car from hydroplaning.
They kept the radio on, listening intently as the news continued about Vesuvius. Experts in volcanology were explaining as much as they understood about this particular eruption. They said that there had been no warnings, no earthquakes or other indications that Vesuvius was about to wake up.
Laura said, “This is just too damn weird. I have this feeling in my stomach that somehow that scroll created this. And if it did, all those people are dying because of it.”
Josh was already shaking his head when Katie also disagreed, saying, “There’s no way it could be your fault, professor. It's just a coincidence. If I remember my history, Vesuvius erupted a couple times before the big one when it buried Pompeii, right? And it’s erupted several times since.”
Laura nodded. “You're right Katie, it erupted at least two times that we know of before 79AD. But this is just too much of a coincidence! Let me explain the dream I had last night to you both.”
Josh and Katie looked at her intently, urging her to continue. As they drove east on I-64, Laura explained the strange dream about the old Indian she’d had the night before. Although the dream was very intense and easily remembered when she had first awakened, some of it had faded from her memory since. She hated that. She’d been trying to retain as much of the dream that she could remember, but with the storm, the news of the volcano, and her conversation with professor Katz she could not recollect the entire dream in detail.
When she had finished explaining what she could remember of the dream, she glanced to her side at both students. Katie was sitting on front of the rear seat, her arms rested on Laura and Josh's seats. Both of them waited a few seconds before saying anything.
Josh said, “I understand how you can think it’s related to what’s going on now, but you might have had some kind of psychic dream letting you know this was going to happen.”
Katie agreed. “I’ve heard of people who had dreams telling them not to get on airplanes, and it goes on to crash, and other stuff like that. Josh may be right. It could have been a kinda psychic thing.”
Josh asked, “Do you remember your dreams a lot? I never can. I don’t think I dream.”
Laura answered, “Only once in a while. I’ve read that everyone dreams, every night, but many can’t remember it the next day. But this one I had was so amazingly real, you can't imagine how it felt to be there! I actually understand what these people are going through right now with that volcano going off because I believe I was there last night in my sleep! I know it sounds weird, but…” Her voice trailed off.
The students had never seen her so emotional. Tears were welling up in Laura’s eyes as the news on the radio continued. Neither Josh nor Katie knew what to say to make her feel better, but they knew they needed to cheer her up.
The wind from the thunderstorm was pushing the car around and Laura had a problem keeping it straight on the road. Gusts were pelting the car with heavy rain that was coming down in sheets. She had the windshield wipers on as fast as they could go, but Laura could barely see the road in front of them. It was so dark from the storm, it looked as if the sun had set eight hours early.
“Katie, put on your seatbelt please,” Laura requested. She’d noticed Josh already had his on, but Katie had been leaning forward during the dream description. Hail began hitting the car’s roof, splattering on the windshield as if the rain weren’t enough.
When Katie looked up after snapping the belt, she saw it. All three of them saw it at the same time. The tornado came out of the darkness through the intense rain like a monster bearing down on them. A funnel, directly in front of the car less than a hundred feet away, spinning in the middle of the road.