Leaning back in her chair, Susan placed the brief she had been given nearly an hour ago,
on her desk. She had read it many times and still found it hard to comprehend. Three months ago
an ancient temple had been uncovered, after an earthquake of magnitude 8.5 on the richter scale
had rocked the Franklin. The temple was composed of petrified wood and had been dated somewhere
between 52,000BC and 60,000BC.
More astonishing than this was that an outer chamber of the temple had written on the wall "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth:
Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into
blood, before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.' While an inner chamber of the
temple had been found to contain several hundred different languages including: hieroglyphics; Mesopotamian text; Ancient Greek; Latin; Arabic; Hebrew; Cantonese;
French; Shakespearian English; Modern English and even Hip Hop. All of which repeated the one
message, 'The day is near'.
Susan was not a woman who panicked easily, but the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach was
becoming hard to ignore. The question that kept going through her head was 'Why me?'
'Why have they given this brief to me?' Obviously the first thing she was going to have to do was
contact this Michael Bronx, the man who had written the brief.
As Susan stepped into the Ford
Territory, supplied for her forest
treck, a noisy young man introduced
himself as Christopher
Nuygen, a reporter from 'The
Australian' and he flopped out his
identification. Susan was surprised
that the newsworld had got
there so fast. She wasn't prepared to
speak to the press just yet. What was
she going to say?
But more importantly, was her lipstick on straight?
Was her hair combed? Would she appear authoritative
or like an empty-headed ditz?
Her fears were groundless. The reporter
strode towards her, admiration evident
in his direct gaze. He was on her side.
But, she thought, this was no time to
be taken in by first impressions.
She put on a civil smile.
'I hope you don't mind Ms Ruffel,
I've been given permission to ride
with you to the site.' smiled
Christopher.
'I'll be happy to have the
company,' Susan lied.
In fact a hot reporter was the
last thing she needed.
The ride was pretty uneventful. Most
of the time they just stared out the car
windows looking at the magnificent Tasmanian
wilderness.
Just when the atmosphere was begining
to feel uncomfortable, Chris let out a
slow gasp. Susan leaned over to see
what Chris had just gasped at. There
in the distance stood a structure
about 10 stories high, with
what looked like strange stone
carvings all over it. As they got even
closer, they could see that some of
the carvings were of gargoyles and
others looked like chinese dragons.
'What a story this is going to be,'
exclaimed Chris as he released a slow
whistle.
Susan tried not to look astounded,
but her jaw dropped all the same. What
the hell is it? she thought.
As the SUV pulled up in front of the
edifiuce, Susan felt like the carvings
were staring at her.
A strange sadness swelled within her
and she felt surprisingly alone.
'Did you see that?' Chris's voice
startled her.
'You scared the hell out of me. What are
you talking about? I didn't see
anything,' Susan said unconvincingly.
'Are you sure??????? I think you know
something I dont.'
'Honestly I know
nothing.'
A shadow passed across Chris's face.
For a fraction of a second Susan could
have sworn that Chris's features were
carved from stone, the tanned skin
seemed to have disappeared to be
replaced by granite.The illusion
passed as quickly as
it had come. Chris looked
confused...
'What was that?' he
asked absent-mindedly.
'what?'
Susan replied.
'That feeling in
the pit of my stomach. It tells me to
stay out, but...' he grinned
mischievously, 'I don't think I will!'
Fleetingly she thought that the
reporter was probably going to prove to
be a royal pain in the #&*.
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Note: If you want to start a new paragraph, just begin the sentence with <br> and type your first word directly after it with no space
Act 1-(Set up)
Develop the characters in view of the outline.
The story is moving along quite fine, but now it's time for a bit of conversation and some temple spotting!
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