Unmapped Darkness

Lucas Lex DeJong

Description

In recent years, the Vatican Secret Archives has declassified and disclosed the bulk of its once-private catalogue. Buried within was a journal.

More than a century old, its entries had been written in a wide variety of languages, and it had been filed away as an oddity with little historical value.

Meticulously studied and translated by Dr Anthony Waterman, a scholar of Western Esotericism, it told of a journey which crossed continents in pursuit of an obsession.

Presented here is the personal account of the explorer Laurent Leroux - The Red Raider - and his lifelong search for the fabled Starless Citadel:

Nástur

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Historical
• Archive
• Secrecy
• Language
• Langage
• Darkness
• Suspense
• Archives
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 25 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669830948
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Unmapped Darkness
The Journals of the Red Raider
Lucas Lex DeJong

Copyright © 2022 by Lucas Lex DeJong.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022913983
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3096-2

Softcover
978-1-6698-3095-5

eBook
978-1-6698-3094-8
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 08/10/2022
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.Xlibris.com.au
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Contents
Volume One
In Medias Res
A Passage Through India
Volume Two
The Listening Pass
The Himalayas
The Refuge
The Song of the Night
Brahmaputra
At Sea
Volume Three
Malacca
Saigon
Satyrica
The Jungle
The Black City
Parting
Volume Four
Capture
Marooned
First Contact
Among the Amungme
The Amungme Marriage Rites
The Amungme Funeral Rites
A Year
Volume Five
New Horizons
The Watchtower
The Vengeance
The Reef of Heaven
At Sea
The Devil-Fish
Volume Six
The Bounty
The Tempest
The Blue Desert
Necessity
L o s t
 
The Opus Nocturne
The Identity of Herman Edmon
A Work of Fiction?
Further Reading & Final Acknowledgments

 
 
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.
To search it out is the honour of kings.
- P ROVERBS 25:2
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dedicated to Harry & Thea De Jong
Their Adventure Concluded.

Letter sent from Basrah
Where the Tigris and Euphrates Meet
September 8, 1888
The city inhabits my dreams. Not ruins, but towers of gilded obsidian splendour. It has burrowed there, a leech within my mind, feeding on the limitlessness of wonder. I see the road to it as though paved in light, but when I awake the path before me is as ephemeral as the dream itself.
That yearning comes upon me like a cramp within the muscle of my being, or an overabundance of anxious energy. I find myself moribund, morose, meandering about listlessly, seeking a means to be rid of it. Then, I hear it: a siren sounding within my soul. More than a pilgrim’s calling, greater than a lover’s longing. The beckoning of far places, so that my eyes may touch what so few have. The curiosity – nay, the aching – for the unknown keeps me sleepless at night, restless by day, distracted in society, and at peace only when surrounded by the absence of civilisation.
No man truly has a place of his own upon the face of this earth, lest he wrest it from the mysteries beyond the edge, in the blank spaces between the known places. This is the truest calling of my heart: to lay eyes upon that which no living man has seen, and make myself a part of its history.
What higher purpose could there be?
All men with any sense of valour must cherish very nearly the same feelings as I. It is the thread which binds the fabric of the imagination: that organ of speculation with which we rise above the other animals. It begins from the first impulse of a primitivity, to wonder to oneself: ‘what lies over yonder hillside?’ It conquers the land as the human spirit embeds its roots in the most hostile of soils. From the famished Bedouins of the yellow sands to the tireless Sherpas of the white peaks. From the hidden Amazonians of verdant darkness to the nautical Polynesian diaspora, nesting at night amongst blue waves. Let any man lay the world’s map before him, and regard the dark unknowns upon its surface, and then ask him if he does not yearn to be the first to place his feet there.
This demonstrable urge climaxes with the dizzying megaliths which exist because someone envisioned that they should exist. They saw not the world as it was but as it could be made; tangible reality forged from the ether of the mind. Why else would all corners of the globe be discovered with the progeny of those orchid-thieves already upon them?
Every religion has their hidden worlds, from high Shambhala of the Tibetans to the sunken island of Atlas invented by Plato. Even modern man envisions a perfected world, as did Thomas More. The Jews threw off their chains to seek out a Promised Land, though none of the lands from the Nile to the Euphrates have yet struck either milk or honey from their riverbeds. Still, they fared better than the Spaniard’s search for the fabled el Dorado .
Without the whole world, I am nothing. So long as there remains a single unseen corner of this earth, there will be an unfilled chamber in my heart.
Discovery is the right of every man, bestowed by God in the form of His mysteries. There are many whom I wish might have joined me. These journals are for them, so that in every step, with every sight, in every strange landscape and stranger character they might walk by my side in the infinite of their imagination. I intend to document here not merely events in their broad sense. To the best of the abilities of my unusually reliable memory, every sight, sound, conversation, and experience will be as fully formed in these pages as they were before me. Walk beside me, and uncover in these journals the wonders which the world hides from us.
My journey is not a straight line. The earth is curved, and so too is my path. It shall touch upon every terrain and trace the lineage of every tongue, to uncover secrets long buried and long forgotten. If I have but one guiding principle to my life, it is this:
The unmapped darkness of the world exacts a price for its secrets.
Your Narrator,
Laurent Leroux


Volume One
In Medias Res
A RCIS S UPRA S TELLAE C AN ō
D’une citadelle que je chante, au-delà des étoiles
Poussé par le Destin vers ses rivages sur voiles
Zèle – Une cantique de zèle sans remords
Pour découvrir les hauteurs sacrées de N ÁSTUR
Of a citadel I sing, beyond the stars
Driven by Fate to its shores on sails
Zeal – A song of zeal without remorse]
To uncover the hallowed heights of N ÁSTUR
T hat I should venture into the depths of the Arabian desert and abscond with a treasure of ages, only to be relieved of my personal journal by a street urchin in the crowds of Bombay… Well, I seek history, and history is not without a sense of irony.
Let them keep it. Perhaps it may one day aspire to be a footnote in history, should the thief who lifted it from me ever realize what he stole. More likely, it will fall into the hands of one of my rivals. I hope they find cool relief in my shadow.
To me, it is no more than a loss of sentimentality and memoriam. Even to the most unscrupulous vendor, it would simply be a guide to an empty chamber in a ransacked tomb. Archaeologists may follow in my footsteps – if they do not disappear in the quickly shifting sands – and find some value within those walls of black granite. I myself could have spent decades in study of all the mysteries etched into those stone cartouches. But I do not have decades to spare; if any man truly does. I have a dream. I have a destination. And I possess now that which I have sought for so many years.
My destination is far beyond the horizon of the earth, if the prophesised words are any indication. As the final piece of the Litany states: ‘ Where lands vanish like stars in an endless night .’
And so, may this record stand anew. One day I may have to reiterate the long road which has led me here – from Carnac to Karnak, and beyond. Or perhaps the wretched urchin will earn himself a few copper pieces at the grace of budding Melville, and he will see some shadow of an Essex in my journal. I should be much amused at seeing my life unfold as a dramatic romance, but I will be the author of my own finale.

Bombay, December 4, 1888
It is my third morning since arriving in Bombay, and I am not yet accustomed to it. In these latitudes the early sun wrestles against an omnipresent humidity, wresting through thick dawn haze to an amber victory. The beauty is short-lived – as all beauty should be, in order to preserve its value. Within a few narrow hours the light brightens yet the colour fades, and one faces the next twelve hours of sweat and misery in whatever shade they can muster for themselves.
Bombay is a portside city bustling with spice and hue. Spice to cover the rot of flesh and hue to mask the pallid decay of once-beautiful youth. Bombay has grown old under its sin; the so-called light of civilisation has washed out the true beauty of the colony. The British are clearly entrenching their imperial mistakes in this end of the world, as so many of