Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

so abruptly that chips of stone exploded against the Plexiglass, followed by billows of dust. The machine plowed ahead another meter before he could bring it to a grinding halt.

He peered through the cabin’s scratched panels. Had anyone seen his mistake? He needed this job if he was going to keep hiding out in Israel.

A voice, from his right.

“What’s wrong with you?” The foreman hopped onto the bulldozer and yanked open the door. “Another late night at the bar? Or were you chatting up that French clerk at the youth hostel?”

“No. No, sir. There’s this one girl, back in Oslo.”

“Kid, you listen to me. Women’ll steal your heart and then your soul. Trouble, every last one. Now, pull your head together or I’ll relieve you of your duties.”

“Sorry,” Lars said. “The machine just got away from me for a second.”

“Let’s hope you haven’t destroyed anything.”

Lars’s gaze followed the man’s outstretched finger. Where the bull-dozer had bitten into the slope, the detritus of the years had fallen away to reveal a square opening hewn by human hands. Though such findings were not uncommon on the Old City’s outskirts, this gave coworkers in dusty hard hats an excuse to gather and gawk, poking at the rubble with shovels.

“Leave it alone,” the foreman barked at them. “Step back.”

“Just an accident,” Lars said.

“Stop your mumbling.”

The foreman snatched the flashlight from behind the cabin seat and dropped to the ground. Lars climbed down to join the others. Together, they watched their boss stretch out in the dirt and stab a light into the unknown.

The Akeldama was open for the first time in eons.

The Collector breezed unseen past the work crew, relishing this momentous event as he slid through the opening. To think that man-kind—at long last—had come up with an apparatus capable of peeling away layers of rock.

And the one at the controls had been so susceptible. Weren’t they all?

Most Collectors had learned through the ages to manipulate human emotion and will. A whisper of insecurity or temptation. A tender spot in the memory. Yes, preying on weakness was as easy as sifting larvae from sacks of rice.

A shape solidified before him. He floated toward it, tried to identify it, but this was no easy task.

Minus tangible form, he had only the crudest use of the five senses. To him, the cave’s coolness was imperceptible. The object-strewn floor was a monochromatic landscape at best. He could detect only the barest whiffs of jasmine and diesel fumes from outside, mixed with these stale odors of death, and the workers’ voices were little more than atmospheric vibrations that buffeted his shimmery frame.

This, he admitted, was his curse.

The Separation.

As a result of the Master Collector’s defiance, Collectors everywhere had been stripped of the ability to indulge their physical faculties. They’d been left to wander, subjected to this planet’s wretchedness. Hollow and lifeless, yet alive, they were parasites. Always on the prowl. Seeking habitations through which they might find perverse and vicarious pleasure.

Man. Woman. Beast . . . Any host with a beating heart would do.

Or, in the case of the Akeldama, any skeleton sprinkled in blood.

The Collector brushed over the shape and recognized it now as an ossuary, a repository for the dead. Ages ago, through previous hosts, he had explored Gentile and Egyptian tombs where organs and fluids had been removed from the deceased. Here, he sensed an ambient clarity instead. The Jewish practice of leaving the blood in the corpse meant he would soon be able to smell—almost taste—the wispy afterglow of life and human recollections.

He counted three burial caves, each with adjoining chambers, and a total of forty stone boxes. Would there ever be more powerful revenants than those buried in this unholy ground? Fused with the Man from Kerioth, the Master Collector had allowed a portion of himself to stain this soil deep red; and all around, these bones were waiting to be knit back together by his dark ambition.

The hovering Collector decided it was time to summon his cluster.

A worker knelt beside the hole. “Anything in there?”

“Hard to tell.” The foreman grunted and slithered further into the recess, leaving only feet visible. “Some old cooking pots and vases. I see containers that could be coffins.”

“Big enough to hold an adult?”

“A child, maybe.” The man scooted back and sat up. “They might be ossuaries, which would mean they’re very old.”

“Great.” The worker rolled granite-colored eyes. “Another history lesson.”

“You’re a foreigner, Thiago. I don’t expect you to appreciate this.”

“I’m a Brazilian, sir, but a Jew. I respect my roots.”

“In that case, you’ll find it interesting to know that it was our ancestors’ custom to dig up bodies after they’d been a year in the grave, then to rebury the remains in sealed containers. Usually an ossuary was no bigger than the dead person’s longest bone . . . the femur.”

Thiago muttered an off-color remark, which earned a censoring look from his boss and a round of raucous laughter from the crew.

“Lars, come here.” The foreman offered the flashlight from his sitting position. “You found it, so why don’t you have yourself a look?”

Accepting this token of forgiveness, Lars lowered himself to the ground. He ignored his coworkers’ gibes and ducked his head into the opening. Beyond the cone of white light, he saw only blackness.

He worked himself forward and felt the entryway dip, feeding into a square chamber cut from granite. He noted arched niches built into the walls, limestone boxes, relics, and skeletal remains. On the ceiling, red-black stains gave the impression that blood had seeped down through the ages from above—a possibility, considering the generations that had built here upon previous ones.

Hairs lifted along Lars’s arms. This place was creepy, murmuring to him in sybaritic tones. His thoughts jumped to the mythological sirens who’d beckoned men toward their dooms, and he felt both fear and desire tingle through his loins.

He popped back into daylight. Took a large gulp of air.

“What do you think?”

“It’s amazing,” he told his boss. “Mind