Keeper of the Black Stones (9 page)

“Now's as good a time as any, Evans,” I whispered to myself. “Quit stalling and get it over with.”

I pulled my legs out from under my covers and placed my feet on the cold floor, trying to avoid the squeaky board that always gave me away. Getting past Paul was simple; he was out for the count. Getting past Doc wouldn't be so easy. He slept lightly, and I was willing to bet that he was sleeping even lighter than usual tonight. I kept to the side of the hall and walked as slowly as I could, holding my breath as I crept past his room, and praying to any guardian angels in range. When I finally got to the stairs, I exhaled as quietly as I could, and made my way down to the living room.

We didn't have night lights in the house, but we'd never needed any. A lone streetlight stood just outside our home, right in front of our porch steps. The light, in my opinion, was twice as strong as it needed to be, and three times as annoying as any other light anywhere. Instead of illuminating the patch of street directly in front of our home, the damn thing lit up half the block. Light from the lamp poured through the kitchen and den
windows all night, despite the fact that the blinds were closed and the curtains were drawn. It was absolutely impossible to sleep in either of those rooms, or get through them without casting shadows and drawing attention.

Tonight, though, that lamp was my best friend.

I made my way through the living room and den to reach the kitchen. Doc was brilliant, but he was also a creature of habit. And it made him easy to track. He always left his book bag in the kitchen beside the mudroom door, right next to the refrigerator. Unfortunately, I too was a creature of habit; my bag always sat right next to Doc's. Today hadn't been the first time that I'd grabbed the wrong bag or set of books in the morning. I had planned for this tonight though, and my book bag was sitting safely upstairs, in my room. Doc's bag was here, all alone. And what I sought was still inside. I'd checked on that earlier, when I came to get my bag.

I took a knee on the floor beside the book bag and glanced over my shoulder to make sure that I was alone. I knew that what I was doing was wrong. Trust was a virtue that Doc valued above all others, but this was important. I absolutely had to know what was inside the journal.

I took a deep breath and reached into the bag. There was the journal–right where it had been earlier. I let my breath out again, with both relief and fear, and pulled out the leather-bound volume. Reading this journal may or may not answer my questions about Doc's sanity. The bigger question, though, was whether I actually wanted to know those answers. Either way, something told me that I needed to read the book.
Something
was going on, and Doc knew at least part of it. I eased down to sit against the wall and stilled, listening. Just the groaning and creaking of our old home, though there was a deep thrumming coming from somewhere … a thumping in the ground, almost as though someone was playing heavy drums a few houses down. I paused, listening, and felt the beat enter my bones, and then my heart. Something was there, I could feel it, though I shook the feeling off. I thought I heard footsteps from upstairs, then, but decided that it was my overactive, guilt-ridden imagination playing tricks on me. I wasn't used to sneaking around like this, and my nerves weren't taking to it like I'd hoped they would.

For a second I thought about returning the journal and walking back
upstairs. But only for a second. I was in too deep to back out now, and my curiosity would never let me sleep. Besides, now that I was here, there was no reason to let the opportunity go to waste. Nowhere to go but forward. I opened the journal to the beginning, resolute on reading it cover-to-cover instead of skipping around like I had earlier, and tilted it toward the light from the street lamp. Bending down, I began to read. Slowly at first, and then more quickly as the story caught me and held.

For over an hour and a half, time stood still. I read every word of the journal as it unfolded. I read many of the entries two and even three times, to make sure that I had it right. My heart raced the entire time. Not from fear of being caught, but from the story itself. I knew without a doubt that the journal was real, at least in my grandfather's mind. These were not the words or emotions of some creative writing assignment. Whether that meant he was losing his mind was a different question altogether. I still had my doubts about his sanity, but as I read, I began to believe, despite myself. What if he had found a way to do it? What if these happenings
were
real? But if it was actually going on … if the journal entries were recorded as fact, and not as the incomprehensible raving of an old man, then everything I thought I knew–everything I thought important in my life–had been turned upside down and inside out. This would rip apart the fabric of reality as we knew it, and the basic bindings of my everyday existence. I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. What in the world was Doc hiding? And did the break-in mean that other people knew about it too?

I felt rather than saw the presence of someone walking into the kitchen, directly across from where I sat in the mudroom. I gulped and opened my eyes, my thoughts frozen. My sixth sense hadn't lied to me. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring back at me.

5

A
light blue minivan pulled into the Lebanon High School parking lot and rolled to a stop beside the beige sedan. The parking lot was dark and deserted for the night, with only one lone streetlight to illuminate the expanse of blacktop. It was well off the main roads, and away from prying eyes. The perfect place for a meeting of this sort. When the van pulled up, a passenger got out of the sedan and walked quickly toward it.

This man went by the name of Briegan. He had a runner's build–tall, broad in the shoulders, and thin in the waist. Certainly a person that appeared to take good care of himself, the driver of the van noted. He wore a pair of jeans, a loose sweater, and a pair of hiking boots. His hair was cut short and his eyes were cold, gray, and quick. They darted around the parking lot, taking in every inch and drawing conclusions about safety and security. He paused and straightened, then opened the van's passenger door.

“Anything?” he asked, climbing in. He settled himself down into the passenger seat, but maintained a stiff, formal posture. The lines around his mouth bespoke a tense, stressful life, with very little laughter to dull the work, and a deep groove ran between his eyebrows.

The man seated behind the wheel of the minivan had his Mets baseball cap pulled down tightly over his eyes. His light blue t-shirt was a size or two smaller than it should have been, and stretched tightly across a well-muscled torso. He had no outstanding features, nothing useful for identification. His face was that of an everyman–relatively attractive, pleasant, and easily forgotten. People who saw him in the market almost never remembered seeing him, and couldn't have described what he looked like afterward. He had been born with the face, but had worked long and hard to learn this
subtle trick of disappearing in broad daylight. This was what made him so good at his job.

When he answered Briegan, though, his voice was low and rough–frightening rather than subtle. “We didn't find anything that looked out of the ordinary. Books, photo albums, CD's and DVD's, computer hard drive … you name it, we looked through it.” The man shook his head. “We didn't take anything, but we didn't find anything either.”

Briegan grimaced. This wasn't the news he'd wanted. “Were you spotted?” he asked. He looked out the window toward the poorly lit high school, as though he would rather be anywhere but with the man next to him.

“I'll pretend you didn't ask me that,” the other man growled.

Briegan nodded. “I appreciate your patience. I wouldn't have asked, but my employer is paying us both well. I need to be sure that we're doing all we can, and in the absolute best way. This is not a mission that allows for failure.”

The man grunted in agreement. “Perhaps we would have had more success if you'd been more specific,” he noted dryly. “‘A diary of some sort' isn't exactly … descriptive.”

Briegan snorted. “If you'd needed more information, obviously I would have shared it. All I've been told to share is that there's a journal, and that it has important information in regard to the old man and something that he might possess. My employer learned this directly from the … contact, so we have no reason to question the information.”

The man behind the wheel smiled. “Is this a government job or a real government job?” he asked sharply.

“Excuse me?” Briegan replied.

The man grunted, unwilling to respond.

Briegan turned from the high school to fix the other man with his gaze. The conversation turned deadly serious, and the other man sunk further into his seat. Briegan worried him, and he wasn't interested in making
trouble with the man.

“You're not paid to be curious, or ask questions. You're paid to get results,” Briegan said quietly.

The driver of the van nodded and cast his eyes down. He didn't know exactly who Briegan worked for, but he knew that it was a powerful organization. He couldn't afford to be too cavalier. “Yes sir. So what now?”

“Watch the house. Follow the old man,” Briegan said. He kept his gaze on the other man, pinning him to the seat with his eyes. The driver of the van didn't have to ask – the look promised terrible punishments for failure.

“And the boy?”

Briegan looked back to the school. “Nothing for now. We don't move against the boy until we're told to do so. At this point, we don't think that he's involved or … important to our mission. We need the old man, his journal, and whatever else he's hiding in that house.” He got out of the van and closed it firmly, ending the conversation.

6

A
gasp of air exploded from my mouth like a gunshot, and I gulped another down. Paul. It was only Paul. He stood in the doorway with his eyes wide open, staring at me. Following his gaze, though, I realized that he was actually looking at the refrigerator. I started to say something, then remembered that Paul had a habit of sleepwalking. At the most random times, and for the oddest of reasons. He had told me once not to wake him up, as it just confused him, so I watched quietly and tried to calm my pounding heart.

Sure enough, Paul walked right past me and opened the refrigerator door. He grabbed a bottle of orange juice, took off the cap, and chugged nearly half the bottle, then put it back on the top shelf. Before I could move to stop him, he'd shut the door, turned, and disappeared back into the living room. A few minutes later I heard him stumbling back upstairs.

I shook my head, thankful that sleepwalking didn't run in my own family. Talk about inconvenient. Paul had done me a favor though, and snapped me out of my trance. The hours had flown by, and Doc was an early riser. It was high time to get this journal back where it belonged, before I really got caught. I'd read all there was to read, and couldn't get any other answers from the book itself. The next step was going to have to be a bit more … active. I slipped the journal back into Doc's book bag and made sure to leave both the book and bag exactly as I remembered finding them. I didn't know whether Doc kept track of things like that, but there was no harm in being careful and covering my tracks.

As I made my way upstairs and crawled back into bed, I allowed the argument to take shape in my head. Facts. What were the facts? As the grandson
to a physicist, and son of two historians, I knew that the truth – the real story – always started with the proof. So where to begin? I still couldn't believe that what I'd read was real. No proof there. But the other option – Doc going stark raving mad – was just as bad. My mind and heart both refused to believe it. My instincts, those surreal feelings that had always guided me before, were in turmoil. I wanted to believe Doc, wanted to allow the possibility of his story. The dreamer in me wanted to believe that it could be true, and something deeper was pulling at me, telling me to accept the story. The real question was whether that was the right move, though, or just more wishful thinking and denial.