In the Orient by Art Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

for Robert to change his mind, she steppedforward and led the group through the narrow crevice and into the dark recesses of the massive mountain.
    A mysterious opening
    As they began their treacherous trek inside the mountain, Robert Liu almost didn’t make it. After becoming momentarily wedged in between the rocky sides of the less than two-foot wide entrance, he drew in a deep breath, held it, and with great effort barely squeezed his way through the narrow opening. Once free on the other side, he looked back and wondered how much trouble he’d have exiting in ten minutes.
    Leading the group, May picked her way through a rocky passageway that couldn’t have been more than four feet wide and six feet high. After climbing and winding upward on a thirty-degree incline, the dark tunnel suddenly veered to the left and began to descend at a slightly steeper grade.
    May suddenly stopped five minutes later when the beam of her flashlight illuminated a wall of sheer rock that blocked the passageway. However, four feet up the rock wall was another opening—a ragged-edged hole about three feet in diameter. It almost appeared as though a giant fist had punched the wall, trying to break through to the other side.
    As May approached the dark hole and pointed her flashlight into the pitch-black void, she saw another rock wall and floor on the other side. May was about to report what she’d seen when she and the others heard noise from somewhere inside the hole.
    The moment Jockabeb’s ears picked up the muffled laugh coming through the jagged opening in front of him, one terrifying thought raced through his mind as he blurted out loud, “That’s the exact sound I heard in my dream, seriously! I don’t believe that another one of my dreams is coming true!”
    “You don’t know that for sure,” Archibald said with conviction, even though he wasn’t entirely convinced that his brother wasn’t right.
    The next haunting laugh and words that echoed out from the other side of the thick wall of rock left little doubt that Jockabeb’s clairvoyant dream had accurately foretold the future. “Gau mengh ā ! Gau mengh ā !”
    “See!” Jockabeb yelled triumphantly, “Those are the exact words I told you about this morning.”
    Since she grew up roaming the abandoned subway tunnels below New York City, Willow had no fear of being in dark, cramped, underground spaces. And even though she believed Jockabeb had probably dreamed something similar to what was happening now, she had no qualms about crawling through the dark hole to help the person who was apparently trapped in the shadows on the other side. So in a desperate voice, she pleaded, “Come on, we have to help whoever is in there.”
    “How do you know it’s a person?” Jockabeb asked, remembering the rest of his dream.
    “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Archibald said, reaching for May’s flashlight.
    Pulling the flashlight back, May responded with steely finality, “I understand the language that he or it is speaking, so I’m going in first, thank you.”
    “And not without me,” Robert Liu added, looking at the hole in the massive rock wall and wondering just how he was going to squeeze his body through it.
    The decision became final when Archibald announced, “Okay, we can’t see what’s going on in there from out here, so we’re all going in together.”
An Ancient Legend Re-emerges
    May was the first to climb up and disappear through the shadowy hole in the wall. Since she’d finally agreed to give Archibald the flashlight so he could illuminate the opening while the others crawled through it, May couldn’t see exactly what she’d entered, and wouldn’t until Archibald finally arrived. However, even though she couldn’t see anything in the dark after she lowered herself hand-first to the rock floor on the other side, she could smell a rank odor similar to the smell Jockabeb had described in his dream.
    Jockabeb was the second one through the