The Sentinel's Warning

Several long days had passed since I had committed my name to the lie. The official report, along with the telegram, was far south in London, buying us the arrogance of the Society's complacency. In the vault beneath Caisteal Inbhir Lòchaidh, the waiting had stretched my nerves so taut that I needed to get outside.

The days were short, but the weather pleasant as I sat in the garden, but I felt such oppression in my mind, body and spirits, that I could not find any joy in them. Not even Seonaid's ministrations and delicious lemonade could lift my spirits. She approached. 

"Might I join you Doctor?" I was taken aback at her question. 

"Dear Seonaid, you don't have to ask that. Sit down, please." She simply looked at me, that I found the colour rushing to my cheeks under her gaze. 

"Ach, like a wee boy who's done mischief and awaits punishment." I smiled slightly. "You've done the right thing. Valkyrie may seem a wee bit stern, sure of herself, but she's a wee lass with dreams. Her heart is in the right place and she'll see no harm comes to you." I was so touched by this that I felt my eyes prickle with tears and a sense of shame that I was so melancholy. "You're on the brink of the greatest revelation in the history of the world. However you envisioned your future... well you can add ten-fold." She smiled and nodded her head slowly. "Excuse me, Seonaid." I smiled. "But there is important work to do." "Ach lad, away you go." With that I made haste to the vault.

Miss. Gerehardt and I stood before her analytical engine that she had named 'The Sentinel'. It had been built by her own father with the help of a friend, Charles Babbage. Miss. Gerehardt herself had added her own unique genius to it, linking it to the Magma-scope in order the receive it's data without the need to be in it's presence. The heat derived from the magma of Ben Nevis continued to power that colossal machine. 'The Sentinels' brass coils hummed with a low, steady thrum, and the banks of vacuum tubes emitted a tranquil, celestial blue light- the expected signature of the ancient, distant ancestral echoes. We were discussing the printing logistics in Geneva, speaking in low, urgent tones, planning a future as fugitives.

Suddenly, the tranquil hum of the machine was broken. A deep, metallic CLUNK echoed from the central cylinders as an internal mechanism engaged, seizing the silence. Simultaneously, the array of vacuum tubes snapped from celestial blue to a searing, angry scarlet. The air around the brass coils began to whine- a high, unnatural sound like a tortured violin string. Miss. Gerehardt’s head snapped up. Her eyes were now fixed on the violently spiking needle of a large gauge labeled 'Terrestrial Magnetic Flux'.

"The Sentinel," she whispered, a grim satisfaction in her voice. "It has locked onto their signature." I stared at the scarlet light, feeling the heavy vibration of the bedrock beneath my boots. 

"The express train? Where are they, Miss Gerehardt?" 

"Glasgow," she stated, calculating instantly. "They chartered a special locomotive- fast, heavy, driven by power and self-importance. They will make the journey to Oban. Then the steamer to Fort William and then... here." 

"Two days, then," I confirmed, my mind racing. "Two days to make the final hide and vanish." Miss. Gerehardt stepped away from the alarm. "The Magma-scope has done its job, Doctor. Now, we finish our own."

The vault seemed to pulse with the Sentinel’s warning, every brass coil alive with the tremor of approach. Gerehardt’s eyes gleamed in the scarlet glow, her voice low but resolute. “Two days, Doctor. Two days to conceal the truth, or to reveal it on our own terms.” I felt the weight of her words pressing against my chest. The skeleton loomed in the hall above, silent and immense, while the crystalline lattice beneath the microscope whispered its impossible testimony. My mind raced: crates to be packed, manuscripts to be smuggled, lenses to be hidden. Geneva was our hope, but Fort William was our battlefield. Seonaid’s words returned to me-“Her heart is in the right place.” Yet I wondered: was Gerehardt’s heart fixed upon truth, or upon dominion? The line between guardian and zealot blurred in the scarlet light. No! Seonaid was right, she knows Miss. Gerehardt. This was just her exuberance, her grit, her determination. Trust her, that was all I needed to do.

I steadied myself, gripping the edge of the table. “Then we must decide, Miss Gerehardt. Do we hide the skeleton, or do we confront them with the truth?” She turned to me, her gaze sharp as steel. “We will do both. The skeleton will vanish into the bedrock, beyond their reach. But the truth- your diary, my notes, the Sentinel’s readings- will remain. They may silence us, Doctor, but they cannot silence the archive. Come!”

I followed her back up the stone steps and into the grand hall where Seonaid was already standing beside a clock built into a wall of the main hall. Miss. Gerehardt nodded in her direction and Seonaid pressed a hidden catch concealed within the carved wooden face. A loud, grinding whirr of gears and ropes echoed through the hall, followed by the deep, protesting groan of stone. I started at the sound as if I expected the Society to hear it in Glasgow. Miss. Gerehardt noticed and gave out a soft chuckle. 

"My parents, Doctor," she explained over the sound of grinding stone and pulling a heavy iron lever from a recess, "were not merely archaeologists; they were engineers of necessity too. They installed this huge dumb-waiter, as you might call it, large enough to move anything from a disassembled steam engine to their most sensitive treasures." 

As she spoke, a fifteen-foot square section of the hall floor, directly beneath the Nephilim skeleton, began to sink on massive, slow-moving ropes. The skeleton descended silently, carried by its mechanical platform into a dry, concealed sub-cellar. The light vanished into that deep, black pit. With a final, satisfying clunk, the floor section rose back into place, sealing the giant away, leaving only the polished granite and the scent of old wood. "That," Miss. Gerehardt stated, returning the lever to its original position, "is the advantage of owning the rock upon which you stand. Now we secure the proof and prepare our flight. We take only what cannot be replaced, Doctor, the rest- the Magma-scope, the notes, the house- is bait."

In the two days that followed all preparations were made. I carefully dismantled the Immersion Microscope, placing its brass components and specialized lenses into a small, nondescript wooden crate labeled "Fragile Botanical Specimens." I copied my final notes from the diary onto a slim, dense sheaf of paper. Miss. Gerehardt secured the crystalline fragment of the Nephilim femur, threaded onto a gold chain through the fragment's central channel, a channel impossibly regular and geometric, and dropped it over her head, tucking it securely beneath her high-collared bodice. The proof was now literally a part of her.

As the second day passed we were alerted by friends of Miss. Gerehardt that the Society's chartered carriage laboured slowly up the mountain road. Our time was done here and now to hand the reins to Seonaid. "Away ye go." she shooed us out the back door without tears or ceremony. For my part I hid to the side of the house just within hearing as Miss. Gerehardt set off to meet the friends who would escort her to the steamer quay. 

Seonaid met the delegation at the heavy oak door. She played the role of the confused, put-upon housekeeper to perfection. The delegation was led by Professor Hastings, a thin-lipped man I knew from the Society's Council. 

"We are here by warrant to inspect the alleged specimen of giant remains," Hastings announced, producing the document. Seonaid paid the document no heed. "Ach, that ugly bag o' bones! It was stinking up the entire hoose, it was." Seonaid exclaimed, wringing her hands. "Then Miss. Gerehardt says to me "Git rid of it, it's nay longer of any importance!" She continued, her voice rising in pitch. "Three days, I tell you! Three days I hauled that disgusting thing all the way oot to the peat bogs and buried it, just like she asked. She's dreadfully eccentric, you see. Ach, I would'na fed those bones to a starving dog!" 

Hastings was momentarily flustered, but the official report was the key. Here I made my brief appearance, having slipped from the secret tunnel and arranged my clothing and hair to appear windswept but resigned. "Ahhhh, Professor Hastings!" I greeted him, offering a weary handshake. "I fear a regrettable waste of your valuable time. My formal report was accurate. The specimen was a mineralogical curiosity- a fraud exacerbated by Miss. Gerehardt’s unfortunate zeal. I explained my findings on the "carbonate deposits" and confirmed that the entire structure had been "disposed of due to public health concerns." 

Satisfied by my authoritative lie and the lack of a skeleton, and unwilling to wade through a Scottish peat bog, the delegation departed, their mission accomplished- Darwin was safe. I made my goodbyes to Seonaid until we met again. 

"I'll have a fire in the grate for your return." she said by way of goodbye. 

Several hours later, the sun setting in a blaze of red over the misty loch, Miss. Gerehardt and I stood on the crowded steamer pier in Fort William. An acquaintance of hers had secured our passage and as the West Highland Steamer pulled away, carrying us down Loch Linnhe toward the open sea, the Highlands receded into shadow. Miss. Gerehardt held up a key, "Your cabin Sir. I'm sure you'll find it much more comfortable and warmer than your previous one. We're assured a smooth passage and a still night." She said this with an amused smile that brought colour to my cheeks. I thanked her and looked at the distant, silent peak of Ben Nevis, where the Magma-scope still stood guard. Miss. Gerehardt looked at me, her eyes shining with the fierce light of a revolutionary. 

"It will be there still when we return." I nodded in ascent and in a more serious note she continued. "The lie has saved us. Now, the truth begins." 

I added to that, "My friends in Geneva will publish your work. We will secure the backing of the continental medical establishment- the scientists who fear no doctrine. They will verify my microscopy, and they will declare the truth: the architectural bone is the indisputable proof that man's origins, however remote, were marked by a divine architecture. And then... "

"From the personal notes of Dr. Thaddeus Wren

    In the spring of 1888 people flocked to the Natural History Museum in London for the unveiling of the Nephilim Skeleton. Months of examinations by the most prominent names in science had proven, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the skeleton was indeed genuine. Professor Gerehardt's paper was published. Proponents of Darwinism reacted with outright rage and disbelief, while the rest exalted in the certainty, and the restoration, that their own existence was indeed of divine origin as narrated by the Lord God himself in the Bible."

(C) Jane Wileman 2025