“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.”

This is an episode of my life that I am not proud of, but must write down in hopes of purging it from my mind. I start this entry in my journal saying that I never believed in ghosts. Perhaps I still do not accept hauntings, but after what happened on my last journey into the mountains of Uzbekistan, the certainty of spiritual infection is a reality.

Let me begin by saying that I, Elijah Blackthorn, archeologist and historian, have a great need to write this down. Since the following text can never be told to the families of the men involved, I must banish thoughts of a public confession and resort to a quest for personal redemption. Even the eccentric professors at the Miskatonic Institute of Technology would not understand the ravings of their fellow teacher. This may not be the hero’s way to Valhalla, but it is the only chance I have at solving the troubles in my mind and asking the Almighty One for forgiveness.

On that lurid day, our motley troop of adventurers could not have been more diverse. Our guide, Abdullah Akkadian, native of the mountains of Uzbekistan where we traipsed, was a small man wrapped in layers of dark clothing to ward off the cold. An illiterate man, who probably could recite the Koran by heart, was whom we three educated individuals entrusted our lives to. His dark eyes danced in the sunlight reflecting off the snow as he gave his professors profound lectures on the territory.

“Keep with me or you will never see Termez,” Abdullah winked at Professor Ellis, teacher from Arizona State University and me.

“Like that is a bad thing,” Dr. Dave Ellis remarked to me from out of his furry hood. A small man, but hearty and determined, the fifty-year-old man let his weariness slip out of his mouth. “It was like a living cliché back there, all of those bazaars, shady folk and filthy conditions! How such mountains and frozen wasteland can be at the edge of a desert country…” he fumed, yet let his voice trail off.

Abdullah seemed unaffected by his comments. Resilient and reeking of that rice dish we ate earlier, Abdullah craned his neck to look into up at me, a man of considerable height, and winked at me. He then directed his false threat at the others by saying, “Be good or you will never see the Genii in the ice.”

I waved at Dr. Ellis and glanced at the fourth member of our group, Uri Slotkovitz, imminent archeologist from the Ukraine who operated out of Turkey. While my colleague (late of Soviet environs) smiled in the frigid wind, I noted Dr. Ellis probably lamented the heat of Arizona. Both men had heard of my talent for touching objects and glimpsing ancient history—psychometry—and thought it a bit far fetched. They were still good friends who tolerated my bizarre gift and me.

“Termez is within spitting distance of Afghanistan, correct?” I asked Abdullah, knowing the answer but wanting him to tell me more.

He nodded as we trudged up the steep mountain. I was glad that the rise was not so difficult that we had to be tethered. Abdullah said, “Yes. Over there!” He directed a gloved hand at the snow-covered mountains that went on perpetually to the misty south. “That is Afghanistan. I know the trip feels longer, my friends! There are caves and tunnels that go on almost forever in these mountains. It would take a smart man to find the correct one, Professor Blackthorn. You are lucky one of those loyal to the Taliban did not discover the Genii in the ice. They would’ve blown it apart by now.”

I was a quite bit taller than the other men with me and I stood straight, rubbing my back. “Yes, true enough.” My long black hair itched inside the suit and I wished it could be free.

“War is coming again,” Abdullah muttered as we heard jets fly overhead. “I feel it has only been a recess, as you say in your school.”

Uri stopped and rested, leaning on a walking staff as we looked over the deep crevasses near where we trod. “Elijah, these folk know nothing but war all of their lives. Abdullah is blessed to be from Uzbekistan. Quieter here, Da?”

Abdullah gave Uri a sour look and pointed at a small opening in the snow across from us. “Elijah’s people were natives in your America before you all killed them off. His life is nothing but war, too.”

I shrugged. “Some of my ancestry is European, friend. No one is of pure blood anymore. Navajo Indian by name, I got these blue eyes from somewhere.”

The uncomfortable situation broke as the Arab pointed and said, “There.”

Off to our left was a small rocky ledge under a snowy bulb in the side of the mountain. The grade of the mountainside rose gently, not sheer, so I did not fear falling to my death if I slipped from the ledge under the hole. Glancing down, I recall thinking a bob sledder would have a field day at the slope. Venturing out first on the stone ledge the exhilaration of discovery was boiling in my skull. I will never forget brushing the snow away, shining a light in the narrow gap in the rock and seeing the image in the ice. “C’mere!” I gasped, never taking my eyes from the cave.

My two colleagues joined me as Abdullah called out, “There are grand tales of the Genii in these parts. In ancient times they thought these mountains were carved by the sword fights between the spirits.”

Wishing I could reach in and rub the frost away from the ice coating, it was clear enough to see what a strange quirk in earth motions revealed. On a long stone surface that likened to a couch lay the frozen body of a tall man. The profile was Middle Eastern, an arched nose sporting a jutting jaw. I found him much taller than I thought a native of the region, but his colored clothing tied him to the realm. The long scimitar blade frozen in the ice with him at his side made my heart race.

Dr. Ellis gasped, “Good God, you can even see his beard!”

“From the turban on his head, I see why they call him a Genii,” I commented, suddenly reminded of sideshow silliness visited as a youth “Merciful Jesus, I wonder who this man was?”

Uri squinted in at the body and coughed a liquidy, heavy smoker’s gag. “A chieftain of some kind? Da, but how can we ever excavate here with these…” Uri paused and glanced at Abdullah. “The locals will never let us tear open the grave up here.”

Abdullah grinned and shrugged. “Who knows of it but me and you?”

Dr. Ellis gasped, the thinner air getting to his lungs and stated, “If this is a burial chamber, think of the possibilities!”

“Yes,” I said and tried to adjust my feet on the ledge. I noticed Uri stepping back off the protuberance to give Dr. Ellis and me more room. “Uri, my friend, you are disappointed?”

The frowning man with squared features rubbed his upper lip and said, “The search goes on for the great Khan, eh?”

I recall laughing as I fell. The foothold I stood on was gone in an instant and I plummeted down the mountainside. Sliding fast, not falling, I surfed along spinning about for over a hundred yards toward a deep chasm. Then, as suddenly as I fell, I dropped out of the snowy realm. The shock of my sudden fall doubled when my side impacted with a hard surface. Pain shot through my body as I bounced and slammed onto a level surface. My motion stopped, my head spun, and agony rippled through my left arm.

“Abdullah,” I moaned, looking up into opening above that showed me only sky. The snow kissed hole framed the gray sky, revealing from hence I came. I sat up; massaging my arm, praying to God my shoulder was not dislocated, and looked at my surroundings.

My first thoughts were that I swam in a concussion-induced hallucination. I sat inside a small cave replete with a tiny stone couch just like the one I just beheld up the mountain. I took a breath and my heart rushed as I beheld another mound of ice…another long, bearded body encased in frozen glass.

“Abdullah! Uri!” I shouted, but could not hear anything as I climbed back to my feet. God, did Dr. Ellis fall too? Surely, I would have heard his screams, I recall thinking. Blinking as my eyes adjusted to the light, I doubted my vision. Damning the fact that my flashlight remained up the mountain with the supposed Genii, I leaned over, cradling my sore arm, and gazed at the new discovery.

In the ice shell that almost looked like a tube slumbered the body of a giant man, but he was not of middle-eastern extraction. I gaped at the face…a broad forehead; a giant nose nestled between high cheekbones framed by a bushy beard…colored red. A burial strap masked this individual’s eyes. The runes on this piece of material almost made my heart stop. The man’s skin was sunburnt, scarred, and dirty, but obviously Caucasian.

“Elijah?” The voice of Dr. Ellis drifted down to me. “Are you hurt?”

“I dunno about that, but for the love of God! Look at this!”

Beams of light shown in the chamber as three heads peered down at my discovery and me. I heard a sharp gasp but could not tell who did it.

“Look!” I exclaimed, stabbing my finger at the ice over the huge man’s bicep. “Do you know what that is?”

“Arm torque,” Dr. Ellis said, breathlessly.

“See the swirls?” I shouted, trying to get my breath. “That’s Celtish! For the love of God! Look at the burial wrap on his eyes!”

Uri mumbled, “I can’t see it, Elijah. What is it?”

“Nothing odd if it were found in Europe!” I laughed. “Swastikas! Backwards, not like the Nazi ones so do not get excited. It’s an old symbol but…” My voice ceased as I ran my gloved hand over the area of the ice near the Celtic man’s right arm.

Dr. Ellis sounded confused as I felt when he asked the obvious question, “What’s a Celt warrior doing in the mountains of Uzbekistan?”

I could hear Abdullah muttering a prayer as Uri called down, “What are you doing, Elijah?”

“I landed on him,” I said as calm as I possibly could manage. “I broke the ice…” When I said this, my hand ran over the cracks and the ice fell away.

The three heads above me yanked back and I heard Abdullah said, “Allah akbar!”

Lying near the arm of the Celtic warrior in the crushed ice was a long Spear. I leaned over, quelling the terror of my excitement and admired the workmanship of the relic. The iron spearhead measured a foot and a half long, affixed to the heavy wooden pole of the weapon. Near the place where the iron met the wood were two long feathers. On the iron blade was the profile of a wolf’s head intricately carved by some genius thousands of years ago.

Uri sang out, “Damn! Is the spear free?”

Abdullah said in a panicked voice, “Perhaps you should not disturb this man.”

Dr. Ellis chuckled before pronouncing, “Oh, come now. No time for superstition, my good man. We are men of science, not grave robbers!”

I touched the wooden staff of the long spear. My eyes focused on the bronze ball on the bottom of the rod that balanced it out. Before I knew it, my hands took ahold of the spear and lifted it up. It was very heavy in my hands as I held it fast, intoxicated with every inch of it.

“Beautiful!” Uri gasped, pushing a tiny rain of snow down onto my hooded head.

“Careful,” Dr. Ellis cautioned me. “Don’t cut yourself! It that damn thing is infected with something frozen a couple thousand years!”

Their voices seemed far away as I turned the spearhead over and saw that a finely carved profile of a raven was on the reverse side of the wolf. “The workmanship is astonishing. My God, the eye of the raven! It’s a tribute to the Spears of Lugh!”

Uri grunted and asked Dr. Ellis, “Lugh? What does he mean?”

Dr. Ellis words came rapid and rang hollow in my ears. “Lugh of the Shining Spear is the supreme God of the Celts. He worked in metals and weaponry, was accompanied by ravens and wolves. Sometimes, Lugh had one eye.”

The weight of the spear in my hands seemed to ebb away as Uri replied, “Sounds like Odin.”

“That’s a thought for another time, comrade. Elijah? Why are you removing your gloves?”

I heard his question but I never replied. When my flesh touched the spear, I fell again, but this time it was into my own primeval soup. Brilliant light bathed by eyes as the spear riveted to my hands and all I could see were thousands, nay, millions of warriors staring back at me. In a communal voice, they shouted at me in a deep, guttural roar that stretched beyond my life and echoed throughout eternity.

The corpse next to me did not rise but he did not have to. Millions of his brothers, endless faces of his kin entreated my mind from beyond my life. As my brain boiled I felt the sensation of falling again, but this sensation brought to me great knowledge. Abruptly, I knew that the family tree drawn up by my distant cousin Lyn Gywnn was accurate. Elements of my family were Norse in origin, crossed with Natchez tribes hundreds of years before Columbus landed in the New World! These barbarians blood did originate far from their home in Wales…and they were Celts. Some of them died at the hands of Romans along with the Druids on Anglesey…then called Mona. I could see the sacred Oak Groves burning and heard the wailing of children before they were stifled forever under the murdering blades of Roman soldiery.

Not forever. The cries of the slaughtered and the battle roar of the warriors encircled my ears. They were carried in the blood, in the genes of every combatant taken into slavery or left to wander the Earth due to encroaching civilization. There’s no way to know how closely related to this Celt giant I was save for the fact that our ancestors were of the equivalent family genome. In the grip of the spear, I felt every voice, every holler, and every prayer of a warrior class.

When I leapt up onto the ice-covered corpse and then directly out of the hole, all I could see were my enemies of old. In front of me loomed a broad faced man, a brute not unlike those who lived in the lands beyond Germania. His long face and eyes hooded in a mono-brow glare betrayed him as a foe. Holding the spear to the sun, scarcely visible in the graying sky, I let the spearhead pass across the view of my God’s eye and prayed, “LUGH OF THE SHINING SPEAR!” Then, in an act of primal revenge, I impaled the ugly bastard in front of me. My arms, mighty and full of searing heat, lifted the opponent off the ground. His face was frozen, full of more shock than pain. This changed as he slid down the spear staff. I dispensed with this piece of refuse fast, avoiding his bloody vomit as it gouted. Pulling out my spear, I allowed his body to roll down the hill. The other two men were shouting as the corpse of this outlander flipped repeatedly, decorating the snow with crimson, and vanished over the cliff far below us.

Turning to face the other two, Lugh granted mercy in the form of this revenge. The man in front of me was old, but he reminded me of many of his brethren from the Mediterranean. Clean-shaven, balding and spoiled by years of rich living. He was Roman as sure as I was a Celt. He tried to run like the coward he exemplified, but I swung the end of the spear out, connecting the bronze ball with his head. Knocked off balance, he flopped in the snow and started to slide down the mountain toward the crevasse and oblivion. I stopped his progression when I wheeled the spear around and planted it in his chest. Striking the heart for true, I affixed him to the snow, causing a geyser of blood to spray in a scarlet belch. Stunned, I actually caught a few droplets on my lips. It tasted salty. It tasted familiar. It tasted good.

The final target was the small, dark man like those who I fought last in life. In moments, he scurried back up the mountainside and I followed him.

However, when he fell in front of a gap in the ice, I felt my feet set deep in the snow. Suddenly, I went to my knees as if all energy were being sapped from my body. My knuckles dropped to the snow but never released the spear. My eyes glared at the small man and the green glow emerging like a fog from the opening near him. Within these billowing folds, the outline of a humanoid shape took hold. Over my head materialized a shimmering yellow image rising out of the vault beneath me. My eyes traced out a huge persona in these luminosity…that of a bearded giant. Tall, thick set and naked, the hairy man roared in the halls of my brain as faced the other glowing individual seeping up from the other cave. The green radiance near the dark man formed into the image similar to the one flaring above me. This face was smoother, yet decorated with a trim goatee and a powerful look in the eyes that did as much to my soul as the giant’s primal scream. The smaller man in the snow witnessed this as well. I could tell because his head snapped back and he lost all footing. In moments, he slid down toward me. While I watched the barbarous, bearded creature bellow at the green image of the thing from the cave, the small man flew past me. His scream into forever faded fast enough as the luminescent beings clashed.

A wild flash blinded me and I flipped over. The spear came loose from my hand and followed the small man…Abdullah! That was his name! My quirk of chance, perhaps by design, I half fell into the tomb of the Celtic warrior again. I held on to the edge of the cave, watching the spear slide down the mountain and off into nothingness.

Turning my gaze back to the figures overhead, I watched the titanic clash for a few moments until it washed out of reality. My hands, so strong and boiling with energy were suddenly puny and wintry. I was alone, lying exhausted near snow decorated with long smears of scarlet.

I further amazed myself to learn that I could find my way down the mountain and to the town of Termez again. Recalling what I saw when I gazed into the crevasse…nothing…I was worried what I would tell Abdullah’s family. In the week while we were gone the United States begun their assault on Afghanistan and many locals left Termez. I assumed this attack was in the works and heard many craft overhead in my journey back. I did tell locals that Abdullah perished in the mountains, but explaining to the families of Uri and Dr. Ellis was just as hard.

There can be no confession outside of this writing. They would think me a murderer or crazy. Perhaps I am both, but what I have written is the truth as it happened. I pray that God judges me fairly for what I have done. I am so sorry that I was used as a pawn in a match between ancient forces, but whom can I tell? Only God will listen for he knows it was true. He was there.

A primordial, warm feeling exists in my bosom that I am not proud of. It eats at me to not feel guilt and revel in my actions. I try to crush this sensation and beg God to forgive me…yet my spirit is tainted by something long ago…something I was…and became…and will always be apart of.

I close by saying that I hope the families forget their silly notion of retrieving the bodies of those men from the deep cavern where they rest. Due to the war in Afghanistan, any guides or risk takers are not foolhardy enough to venture into such a place. Let us hope that time will heal wounds and they will abandon any hope of retrieving the remains. My heart races as I think of this fact: Even if none of their bodies are discovered and they rot to dust…or if they are encased in ice, I know that the Spear forged By Lugh will remain.

The other conclusion I have drawn from this is that if ghosts or spirits can infect places or homes…perhaps they can leave an imprint on objects as well.