The Old Wayfarer - Chapter 3

Orion excitedly ran home to tell Grandmama all about what Chief Molu had told him at the station. However, as soon as Orion entered his house, he realized that Grandmama was nowhere to be found.

"Grandmama, are you here?" he repeatedly asked, searching every room until he noticed a small note on the kitchen table. Orion picked it up and read it:

"Ori,

Please don't be alarmed. I'm going to visit the old excavation site that Grandpa used to study when the meteors started hitting us years ago. Be a good boy and check with Oglu in the marketplace to see if he has any work for you. I should be home by dinnertime.

Love,

Grandmama"

Orion couldn't believe it. Grandmama went to visit Ground Zero? Why would she do that when other people who visited the site in the past disappeared? Part of Orion wanted to stay and do as his grandmother requested, but another part of him panicked when he pondered the kind of danger she was in. She would have left well over an hour ago.

"I have to make sure Grandmama's okay," Orion told himself as he held onto Grandpa's research folder and left the house to go find Ground Zero, the meteor site on Sur del Mar that Grandpa first explored fifty years ago.

As he ran through town, Orion couldn't help but marvel at how trivial all of his previous problems seemed now. School fights, haggling merchants, bugs in the house, and even common colds receded into the back of Orion's mind as he pondered the looming mystery that had consumed much of his short life. Now it was time to finally take action.

When Orion arrived at Ground Zero, he saw no one near the house-size wooden box that covered the gaping hole inside that pulsated white light from its dark, dreary innards.

"Grandmama!" Orion shouted. "Where are you?"

Orion ran around the entire box structure in search of his ancient grandmother, but she was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe she left," he rationalized to himself. "Maybe she's visiting friends now."

Orion thumbed through his grandfather's research notes hoping to find something on the impenetrable wooden dwelling before him that housed the answer to his questions. He wanted to see the phosphorescent maw within, but he saw no entrance to the structure.

"Why would Grandmama even bother coming here if there's nothing to see but this big box?" Orion puzzled.

Just then, he thought of a way to penetrate the structure and see the hole for himself. Orion figured that he would be detained by the police if they caught him vandalizing town property, but he thought the risk was worth it.

"There's also a chance I might end up like those other scientists who have tried finding out what's in that hole," Orion nervously muttered to himself.

Seizing on this thought, Orion ran around the corner to the nearest house and snuck into an adjacent shed. This was Emru Elha's dwelling. Emru was an elderly man who slept most of the time when he wasn't recounting old tales to sailors in Portsmouth. Orion found a large axe in Emru's shed and stealthily ran back to Ground Zero, first making sure there was no one else in the area who would see him.

Orion immediately started hacking into the wooden wall before him and found that, although the wood was thick and sturdy, he was forging a sizable hole in the wall. All Orion could see inside the wooden frame was pure blackness punctuated by a bright, blinding white light that ebbed and flowed from the darkness. As he continued to chop away at the Ground Zero fortress, a patrolman spotted Orion and began to run towards him.

"Stop, boy! Stop what you're doing!" the officer shouted as he sprinted toward Orion.

Orion frantically sliced more of the wood away and kicked a few pieces in before the officer finally reached him. Just before the cop could grab him, Orion closed his eyes and jumped into the darkness.

A moment later, Orion opened his eyes and found himself in a dim, blue room that resembled the inside of a bank vault. However, unlike the wooden box that surrounded Ground Zero, this room had a wall-sized door on it, but it could only be opened from the outside. Orion was too afraid to move for a few moments before boredom started to kick in and he wondered how he'd be leaving this place. He stood up and started banging on the vault door.

"Hello! Is there anyone there?" Orion shouted. Nothing but silence followed his query.

Hoping that someone would eventually come, Orion sat on the floor and read through more of his grandfather's research notes. He found the page that chronicled the ancient myth about which Chief Molu told him. The page read:

"Around 3500 BCE, the Sumerians recorded an event that historians have consistently dismissed as mere superstition. The Sumerians claimed that large objects, which we would called meteors today, fell from the heavens all over the world. One of the meteors supposedly impacted the city of Kish and left a pulsating hole in its wake that frightened nearby residents and prompted the king to close up the site. The king decreed that a royal scientist would check on the site every 100 years and make necessary repairs to the containment dwelling.

When Sumerian scientists checked on the site circa 2100 BCE, they found that the pulsating hole had disappeared. The king predicted that the meteors from 3500 BCE had been a warning from the gods, but he did not know what the warning represented. Since then, the Sumerians worried about a return of the meteors and that perhaps they would bring great devastation to the planet. One wonders if the meteors that the Sumerians saw, assuming the myth is true, will ever return."

While he read, Orion heard some activity outside the vault door. He jumped up and simultaneously felt fear and joy. The large blue portal swung open, and the most curious of creatures greeted him at the threshold.