The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (3 page)

"Identity confirmed," replied the cold computer, with its feminine sounding voice. The metal doors opened.

Peter walked up to a cage of metal bars and electrical wiring, obviously meant as a shock deterrent if a prisoner wanted to escape. He touched a nearby switch that enabled an audio speaker inside the cage, and then the prisoner spoke.

"Hello, Peter," the prisoner said.

Peter smiled contentedly. He exhaled with an attitude of satisfaction of control and replied, "Hello Haj!"

It was just another trick by Haj. He had nothing to say to Peter, so Peter pulled out his cell phone. It was time to make Haj talk—to an old friend of his.

Chapter 2

Young David’s Vision

In the Words of David

My dad thought I was a fag. I remember him telling my mother, "David is nothing but a fag!" Odd, these are some of the last words that I remember Dad saying to me.

I read a lot of books when I was a kid. Also, I seemed more intelligent than my friends were. Consequently, I didn't get invited to the trendy birthday parties, and I had few friends. I wasn't lonely. I was just more curious about the world than its people. I pondered how things worked. I was a born scientist. I had to know things. I invariably needed my curiosity satisfied.

I remember an autumn event during my childhood that helped define my life and direction.

"David!" the voice said.

"David! Are you listening?"—it was my homeroom teacher. She repeated my name again to get my attention.

"Sorry, Ms. Lindbloom," I muttered. I was late for recess. At the prompt of the teacher, I awoke from my daydream and ran outside quickly to play.

It was like that many times during school. I always tried to figure things out. Formal education was a major distraction. That particular day was certainly no exception. I performed my usual ritual and daydreamed in my sixth-grade science class. I contemplated my subject of passion, the subject of magnets. It was very addictive. I could never shake it off. I tried to imagine how magnets worked. I was always fascinated when a magnet attracted fibers of iron to it when stirred in the dirt on the ground.

It was the ground that I became more acquainted with on that day. Five minutes into recess, I tasted the dirt and was pushed into it by the school bully, Ricky Harrington.

First, I heard Ricky call me a name. “Sissy!” he yelled out.

Next, I felt a blow on the back of my head. My head was dizzy, and I heard Ricky say something else.

“Dick!” he added.

Bullies thrive on making fun of people that threaten them, or anything else that they don't understand. I was an easy target for a public school bully. No one understood me well, at school or home.

At home, my dad usually called me by my other name. He warned me to watch out for homosexual boys while he called me one at the same time. My dad wanted me to fight and stand up to people that kicked me around.

I always tried to come up with an alternative solution. I had seen secret agents use their wits instead of their might in movies. So I struggled with what was right about fighting. And if fighting was right, when was it right? This struggle was increased by the dichotomy of my role models within my household.

To my dad, fighting was always right. My dad was a retired military sergeant. He had been in the Marine Corps. He never let anyone forget it.

"Don't ever let anyone piss on you and get away with it," he used to say.

I was not sure of how this frequently used logic was meant to apply to every single situation. My dad once threw my mom against the kitchen wall when the iced tea didn't have enough sugar in it. With lips that bled, my mom calmly asked, “Does Daddy need a beer?"

I often wondered why my mom never fought back. Why didn't she just take something and hit him? Why did she allow him to hurt her? Did my mom also struggle over when it was right to fight back? Was she simply being an example of an alternative role model, a contrast to the harshness of a brutal dad? I had the overly abusive father as one example, and the excessively tender mother as the other.

I lay in the dirt, after Ricky shoved me down, for only a matter of seconds, but it seemed like hours. I shook my head. I lifted it slightly. I tried to focus. I tried to come out of my dizziness. I spit out what tasted like a combination of dirt, grass, and chalk. I then realized that I had fallen on a baseball chalk line on the playground.

Once I finally got up on my feet, I remembered what had happened. I had tried to pass Ricky, to get to the pond on the opposite side of the playground, but Ricky would not let me pass him. He harassed me about not playing with him and his
boys
during recess. It was true. I preferred passing my time during recess by talking to girls or watching the fish in a small pond swim lazily back and forth, instead of breaking a sweat and dealing with Ricky and his followers. After all, recess was only fifteen minutes.

Ricky and his
boys
occupied their time by playing rigged games that often caused frustration and created injury. In one game, they threw a pocketknife to the ground to see how close to someone's foot the knife would land, without actually hitting the foot. In the game, the one who could throw the knife the closest to their foot won.

Once, during one of those games, a boy had to be taken to a local hospital because he was the victim of one of those knife wounds. A knife penetrated his tennis shoe and broke a toe. The blood trail stretched from the scene of the accident to the parking lot, where an ambulance picked up the boy. When the boy later confessed to throwing the knife, it didn't matter that someone had coerced him. The boy got into trouble for bringing a knife to school, and the principal suspended him for a week. Nobody ever ratted on Ricky because of the fear of reprisal, but everyone knew it was Ricky who was the guilty party.

What I didn't know was this. While I was reeling from my fall, on the other side of Alameda, California, during that windy autumn day, an unforeseen tragedy had occurred. My mom had crashed her car into a concrete post to avoid a drunk driver. I found out later that she was going to leave my dad that day. She even wrote a letter to me with an explanation of her actions. The letter explained how she loved my dad and me, but years of abuse had taken its toll. She had enough.

I slowly stood up before Ricky. I heard the chanting of words like “fight,” or, “chicken,” or other select expletives from a gathering crowd of onlookers. I tried to come up with a good response, but I only asked a question.

"Why can't you leave me alone, Ricky?" I pathetically begged.

The response was an immediate punch in the stomach and a knee shoved in my face. I doubled over from the stomach punch. I was on the ground again. Ricky had conquered another unwilling victim, once again, so he started to walk away proudly, proclaiming his victory to his friends.

What would be the advice of my role models, I thought. My dad, the wife abuser, would have advised me to stand up for my rights and to fight my way through. My spy heroes in the movies would have told me to save my fists. Heroes use their wits, I thought. Where was the gun up my sleeve? There was no knife or bomb in my boot or any secret pocket. I had an intelligent mind. Why couldn't I think my way out of this crap? The other option was my mother’s solution when dealing with my dad. I could give in or run away, like a scared cat or a frightened dog.

It was during my second fall that I noticed some white powder that stuck on my sweaty nose. It attempted to enter my lungs as I breathed heavily. It was the chalk powder of the baseball field. I had fallen into it once again. That was what I could use, I thought. I could grab some and palm the powder, to throw into Ricky's face. I would then be able to tackle Ricky. I grabbed some dirt and powder with my right hand, and I concealed it. My grip tightened around it.

I stood up once again. This time, I held my hands to my side as I tried not to call attention to them. My right hand secretly held my weapon. Ricky had turned and had started to walk away in triumph.

I called out to Ricky, “Who is the chicken,
now
?" I emphasized it like I had the upper hand. I was the pathetic eleven-year-old with powder on my face and hair, but I thought I was extremely threatening.

Ricky turned around and started to walk toward me unhurriedly.

"Recess is over David. I don't feel like beating you up again," Ricky said.

Whatever I thought before had changed. I heard my dad's words "Don't let anyone piss on you!" I released the grip on the dirt from my right hand, and both dirt and powder fell to the ground. It created a white, smoky, and brief cloud of dust. Without a gadget or weapon, I drew back my fist and slugged Ricky on his right cheek. I swung my right fist as hard as I could. Immediately afterward, we were on the ground, wrestling feverishly against each other.

I never found out who won that fight. Teachers rushed to the fight scene and broke it up, just as soon as the wrestling match started to become interesting. Recess was over.

An hour later, I sat in the principal's office, after a very brief visit to the school nurse. Just as I was about to explain my actions to him, the school secretary interrupted the meeting. She knocked nervously and rapidly. The principal saw her through a square piece of glass in the door.

She motioned the principal to the hallway, and he excused himself and left his desk. I only heard muffled whispers as they talked in the corridor outside of the office, temporarily spared the horrifying details of their conversation.

The principal soon returned with edited information. There had been an accident, and my mother was involved, he told me. My grandmother was on her way to pick me up, he added. My mother was in the hospital. That was the short and official story at that time.

I waited in the principal’s office for my grandmother to pick me up. At least I would soon see a familiar and calming face, I thought.

My grandmother, called Rose by everyone else, was weather-beaten in the face from years of sitting on the beach. She loved to watch the waves of blue water hitting the sands of the golden shores, near Monterey, California. She always had a genuine smile for anyone.

That day, however, she had a sad look on her face. When she finally arrived, she told me that she was taking me to my house in Alameda, to pick up some overnight clothes. We were going to her house in Monterey for the weekend, she said. Although, I was not sure which house she meant. At that time, she owned several houses in both San Francisco and Monterey.

On the way to my house, my grandmother broke the news to me, but I had already figured it out. My grandmother told me the truth because she believed that I could handle it. My mother died instantly at the scene of a major car accident, she told me. She was in a hospital, but it was for the customary autopsy. The doctors, through the police, had notified my dad, and he apparently had not taken the news well. He had called my grandmother, my mother's mother, and had asked her to pick me up from school. He wanted me to stay with my grandmother for a few days.

Even when I learned the news of my mother’s death, I was totally devoid of emotion. I would cry later, but, at that time, my tears were absent. They were replaced instead by shock.

We arrived at the house, and I quickly let myself in with a key, which I always wore around my neck. My grandmother waited outside in the car. She didn't get along well with my dad, and it was her way of avoiding confrontation.

I called out, "Dad?" I didn't hear a response. I thought he wasn’t home, so I quickly went to my room to pack some weekend clothes. I grabbed some shirts and pants. I randomly opened drawers and half-heartedly threw my stuff in a large backpack.

Just as I finished packing, I was startled by the sound of metal hitting the floor, and it seemed to come from my dad's bedroom. I rushed to his room only to come to an abrupt stop at the bedroom door. The immediate shock numbed my whole body, and time seemed not to exist as the scene of horror unfolded to my eyes and consciousness.

It was my dad. He sat on the floor. His back was against the wall under the bedroom window, and his right arm rested on the bed. Dark blood saturated his shirt and dripping globs of dark and bright red blood decorated what was left of his unrecognizable face. In his left hand was an old pistol, which he had purchased illegally from a friend—the gun had hit the floor. The gun had always reminded me of something out of an old west show. His right hand on the bed clutched a white piece of paper with handwritten writing on it. He held onto my mom’s letter, the one that explained her reasons for leaving him. It looked very much like my dad had read the news after hearing about her death. He had taken his life in a pit of despondency, grief, and guilt.

Had my dad truly learned how to fight? Had he learned when to give up? Had the years of guilt swelled up inside him and suffocated his pride? Is this what drove him to an obvious suicide?

I did not feel anything. I was in shock from that gruesome and grotesque scene. I could not yell to my grandmother for help. I could not even speak. My grandmother would want to know the reason for my delay, I thought. I should have run immediately to get her, but I did not.

Suddenly, while I contemplated and soaked in this second horrific tragedy of the day, a bright white cloud formed to the left side of the room. It was a long oval shape. It stretched from the ceiling to the floor. It emitted from its edges what seemed to be hundreds of tiny pink and purple lightning bolts. The shape of the cloud was wide enough for a man to walk through. It glowed with an intense bright white light in the middle of the cloud.