Keeper of the Black Stones (26 page)

“Here we go,” I whispered to myself.

Reis appeared next to me, glancing at his watch. “We have less than three minutes, people!” he barked. “Quit staring and get your butts down the ladder!”

I scrambled down first, followed closely by Tatiana. We got out of the way just in time to avoid Paul, who missed the last several rungs in his hurry and landed belly-first on the ground.

I heard a soft roar behind me and turned from my fallen friend to the stone. The last time I'd seen it, it had been glowing brightly, its symbols dancing their ageless dance in the air above it. And it had held the fading form of my grandfather. Now it sat stark black and foreboding, waiting for us. The black of the stone pulled the light from the air around it, sucking energy and warmth to itself. It wasn't open–not yet–but it was readying itself. And it was speaking to me, whispering quietly of its power and the window it was about to open. I couldn't take my eyes off it, and my feet moved toward the stone of their own accord.

Tatiana, who hadn't seen the stone yet, walked toward it in a trance. She knelt down before it, sighing, and reached her hand toward its surface. As her fingers neared the stone, though, her hand jerked back like she'd been burned.

“Can I touch it?” she whispered.

“You won't have much choice if you want to come with us,” I replied. I put my backpack quickly on the far end of the stone, wondering if it would make the jump, and turned back to the group.

“What do we do?” Paul asked quietly.

“Put your bags on the far end of the stone next to mine and get on the stone,” I replied. I heard my voice–low and intense–and realized that I sounded like my father. He had always been steady and calm in emergency situations. I could only pray that I was as capable now.

I glanced down at the stone for help and breathed out slowly. The window wasn't open yet, but it wouldn't be long now; the stone was starting to glow as it had before, and the symbols were aligning themselves and taking on a distinct form.

“We're right on time,” I said quietly. “The window hasn't opened, but I think the stone's ready for us. Doc was lying on the stone when he jumped. Everybody get to it.”

As they moved toward the stone, my mind raced through the practical questions, casting shadows of doubt. Would we all fit? Would our stuff fit with us? Did we have to be touching the stone to travel? What would happen if someone's foot was hanging off? Would they arrive in the past without it?

And then suddenly I thought of the biggest question of all–would they be able to come with me at all? Would my friends come through safely? Or would I land on the other side of history, scared, facing enemies and a mission I didn't understand, and completely alone?

None of this occurred to Paul. “Well I say I lay next to Tatiana,” he quipped, grinning at her.

“Oh my God,” she muttered, shaking her head.

Reis pushed Paul to the side, growling impatiently. “We don't have time for antics, Paul,” he snapped. He turned quickly to meet my eyes. “Jason, we're following your lead here. Move.”

I nodded wordlessly, turning to the stone and holding my hands out over its face, palms down. A rush of energy shot up from the stone, hit my hands, and coursed through my body, and my senses grew unbelievably acute, until I could hear, see, smell, and even feel things that I hadn't a moment ago. Reis' pulse, the smell of the detergent left on Paul's shirt, and the brush of Tatiana's dusky skin against my arm. The scent of blood and deep, dank earth from the other side. The pull of the stone itself.

“It's time,” I mumbled. “Everyone on. Quickly.”

Paul took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and crawled onto the stone next to his bag. Tatiana took a tentative step onto the stone, and folded into position next to him. Reis turned and sat, watching me closely as I joined them.

Beneath us, the stone's hum took on a deeper tone, as if it sensed our presence and approved. The roaring in my head grew louder and began to drown out the conversation around me. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the hum and roar, to guide the vibrations through my bones and into the jump.

“So how do we do this?” I heard Paul ask.

“Shut it, smarty,” Tatiana snapped. “Can't you see he's trying to concentrate? What do you want to do, screw him up and put us all in danger?”

“Hey, I'm just trying to figure out what to expect here,” he mumbled, abashed.

At his tone, Tatiana relented. “I heard Jason's grandfather talking to John once,” she said quietly. “At first, you'll feel something in your stomach, like you're falling. Then confusion, lots of noise and scenery.” She paused. “I don't think it's pleasant.”

Paul blew his breath out with a whooshing sound. “Sounds terrific. So glad I signed on for this.”

I heard a scuffling, and Reis' guttural reply. “Paul, if you'd rather stay here, this is your chance. Otherwise, shut it. The time for jokes is long past.”

A deafening silence descended over the group then, and I opened my
eyes. The air around us was glowing a bright, shining gold, and the symbols, finally free of the stone, danced before my face. Beyond them, and through what I assumed to be the ‘mists' of time, I saw a dark room, unlit, with moss and ivy growing from the walls. That was our destination, then. Now the stone's roar became overwhelming, and everything else disappeared. My mind went absolutely blank.

“Here it comes,” I breathed. I put my cheek down against the stone, closed my eyes, and braced myself. “Keep your hands and feet inside the ride. Breathe.”

“What in the hell are we–”

I didn't know who was speaking, but they didn't get to finish. The world dropped out from under us and we fell sharply into a sphere of bright light and color. Images and memories of my life washed over me, one after another; the death of my parents, the loss of my first tooth, my first steps …. my birth. Mingled with my memories were snapshots of the past–knights in armor, bloody, terrible battles, a man with white blond hair and the eyes of a murderer. The images flashed and flickered, appearing and then disappearing in nanoseconds, with the exception of one. A girl, no older than myself, with long blonde hair and penetrating green eyes, stood out from the chaos behind her. I'd never seen her before, and yet I felt as if I'd known her my entire life. While the other images danced around me, jumbling together as one, hers remained steady. I looked past her at everything else, trying to take it all in, remember what I was seeing. The images began to whirl around in a tornado of sight and sound, pushing us farther and farther into the void. Then everything stopped.

18

I
felt like I'd been on the worst roller coaster ride of my life. I didn't know how long the ride had lasted–two seconds, two minutes, two hours?–but I knew when it ended. It stopped suddenly, as though whatever cart we were in had hit a brick wall. That feeling was reinforced when I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a large expanse of rock. Dark rock, in fact, that looked distinctly … solid.

“What the…” I mumbled softly. The concrete walls of the garden shed had changed to gray, pitted stone cut in rough blocks. Ivy and moss grew haphazardly across the wall in front of my face, and a rivulet of water ran slowly down a section of wall to my right. I took a deep, gasping breath and almost choked on the thick, dank air. I didn't know what the room smelled like, exactly, but it was awful.

There was a muffled cough to my left. “Dude, I feel like we just went through a blender,” Paul said, sitting up.

I gasped in relief at his voice and turned to him. “How do you feel? Is everyone okay? Are we all here?” Beside him, Tatiana was pushing herself to a sitting position and scraping the hair out of her face. Her eyes widened as she took in the room, and I turned to look at what she saw.

If I didn't know any better, I would have thought we'd stepped out of our garden shed and directly onto the set of Bram Stoker's
Dracula
. The room was enormous–at least as big as a basketball court, and as cavernous as an empty stadium. Gothic beams crossed the ceiling and supported arches
in the walls. At least a dozen large white candles sat in ornate iron candlestick holders, spread haphazardly around the room. There were no windows, though I spotted a row of manacles and chains along the far wall. The only furnishing in the room was a large straight-backed chair, sitting right next to the stone.

Reis was already off the stone, moving steadily along the wall toward the corner. He had his rifle propped firmly against his shoulder, and a flashlight attached to the side to light the way. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my own flashlight, and stepped off the stone to follow him. Paul moved next to me, brushing some of the dust from his pants.

“Right, so we have your basic creepy room, here,” he noted. Then he glanced at the far wall and gulped. “Complete with chains and manacles. Holy crap, we really did it, didn't we?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied, stunned.

Reis strode suddenly out of the gloom to our left and laid a hand on Paul's shoulder, making him jump. “Everyone try to relax and get your bearings,” he said quietly. “I think we're alone in here, so we're safe to look around. I'm going to find the borders of the room, and look for the way out.”

The three of us nodded, then moved together to follow him across the room. He'd said we were alone, but that didn't mean we wanted to leave the man with the gun. I cast my narrow beam of light across the stone floor ahead of us, moving it all the way to the massive rafters that stretched overhead. The light wavered across the beams of wood, and I glanced at my hand. Until that moment, I hadn't realized how badly I was shaking. I clamped my other hand down over the flashlight to keep it still. Paul made a strangled noise to my left, seemingly in response, and my flashlight shot in his direction.

“Are you guys okay?” I asked.

Tatiana nodded her head and bit her lower lip. “Fine!” she breathed. She
gave me a quick grin, showing a confidence that surprised me, and I worked to grin back.

Paul looked at Tatiana and back to me, blinked twice, and nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess so. I just … this is pretty heavy, you know what I mean?”

“I know, it's nuts,” I replied. I took a deep breath and glanced around the large room. Something about it caught my attention, and I cocked my head and looked again, with the distinct feeling that I'd been here before. Yes, I was sure of it. I couldn't have said why, or how, but something about this room was familiar, as if I'd seen it in a dream, or a movie. If I thought about it, I realized I'd already known what this room would look like. And what it would hold. In fact, if this intuition was right … I moved the beam of light to the far corner of the room and smiled. The stairwell was there, just as I'd thought it would be.

I'd felt this way before, I realized, in the shed at home. This strange sense of knowing something I couldn't possibly know. It had been the stone showing me where to go, then. Here … could it be the same? Had the stone somehow shown me what would be in this room? Or was I just imagining that I knew where everything was?

I pointed my flashlight back at the stairs and knew immediately that there were 102 steps waiting to carry us out of the basement, despite the fact that I couldn't see them. I also knew that some truly horrible things had taken place in this room. If I concentrated hard enough, I thought, I'd be able to hear the screams of the men and women who had been tortured here. The thought made me sick to my stomach, pressing in on my brain the way it did, and suddenly I needed to get out of the room, away from this dark, haunted place.

“We have to get out of here,” I whispered, my voice shaking.

Paul turned his flashlight toward my face. “Hey, are you okay? I didn't even think to ask.”