The Time Collector

by Gwendolyn Womack

  “You’re saying it’s all Stuart?”

  “Yes.” Melicent could barely get the word out. “Everything was planned.” She shook her head, her mind in a fog, unable to believe it. She’d seen the moment Stuart locked the laptop in the safe. He’d created a show to fool Roan and he’d calculated the outcome. “He staged his own kidnapping so Roan would save him. He put flowers everywhere to record the violence.”

  Holly put her hand over her mouth. “But that’s insane.”

  Melicent nodded. It was beyond insane. The man had hired thugs to beat him up. “But it worked. Roan’s doing exactly what he wants.”

  Melicent’s emotions were clouding her ability to see further than that. She needed to touch the laptop again to try and sense more details, but she wasn’t sure she could stomach ever touching it again. “Roan needs to touch this—he needs to see.”

  Holly nodded, shell-shocked. “We’ll bring it with us.”

  * * *

  It was much harder to break the news to Jocelyn. Jocelyn couldn’t believe Stuart would commit such atrocities. She had been the one to introduce Roan to Stuart and encourage their friendship.

  “Why would he do such a thing?” Jocelyn thought Melicent was somehow wrong. “It’s just not possible. You have to be mistaken.”

  Melicent, Parker, Holly, and Jocelyn were on the plane en route to Naica. Parker was sitting beside Melicent and surprised her when he reached out and gave her hand a squeeze in reassurance. The love and care in his touch wedged a knot in her throat, and she squeezed back.

  Jocelyn asked her for the hundredth time from across the aisle, “Are you sure you couldn’t be confused?”

  Melicent was trying hard to keep her patience with Roan’s mother. If Stuart was so incapable of doing harm, as Jocelyn believed, then somewhere along the way he’d become capable.

  Melicent was grateful that Holly didn’t question her judgment or seem to doubt her. But then Holly had worked with Roan every day, for years. She knew the power of an imprint and the information it could impart.

  Melicent looked out the plane’s window at the clouds. The imprints from Stuart’s laptop were still swimming in her mind. She’d seen glimpses of him in Jordan, when he’d found his first oopart. He’d begun to believe there might be a way to travel through time, to not only witness the past but to actually go back to the moment. He began to study every theory he could on time travel—wormholes, cosmic strings, time gates and ladders. Stuart was trying not only to read time but to bend it. He’d become demented in his obsession. She thought back to the moment she’d stood in his bedroom, how disturbed she was by what she’d seen.

  This man had taken everything away from her, and now he might take Roan, too. The thought was too much to bear.

  Holly made a call to the ground. “Thank you so much. We’re due to land any minute.” She grew still. “I see. Then we’ll join them shortly.” Holly hung up and any semblance of a smile left her face. “They’re already there.”

  Jocelyn put her hand over her mouth, becoming more upset. “He won’t touch the crystals. He knows he can’t survive it.” She was talking more to herself, her voice faraway.

  Melicent knew Jocelyn was reliving memories of Turkey. Melicent had already noted with surprise that Jocelyn had her old wedding ring on and was twisting the ring back and forth on her finger. After touching the picture frame, Melicent had been privy to the solemn pact Jocelyn and Robert had made with each other. Their marriage might have ended, but they had promised each other that they would protect Roan as long as they lived.

  Holly didn’t offer Jocelyn words of comfort. Perhaps because she knew Roan too well. Like Holly, Melicent wasn’t sure if Roan would touch the crystals or not. Throughout Roan’s life his gift had brought him to the brink of understanding time’s force in the world, but the deepest answers had always eluded him. If those answers were waiting in the Crystal Cave, he might take the risk.

  Melicent understood the temptation. If she were Roan, if she had lived his life, she might do the same. Her thoughts returned to the picture frame and Jocelyn and Robert’s last fight in Turkey, and she found herself agreeing with Robert West. Roan had been put on this earth for a reason, and the ooparts had led him to Naica.

  Roan’s one mistake was that he hadn’t taken her with him.

  37. THE MINE

  OSCAR GONZALES HATED HIS JOB. There was no escaping the heat in a sweltering control room one thousand feet below ground, even in the antechamber with fans running at high speed. He had thought this oppressive sauna would at least help with his weight problem, but his girth had not shrunk in the five years he’d been operations manager at the Crystal Cave.

  Today he was in a terrible mood, partly due to the lunch his wife had packed him earlier: an apple, three celery sticks, and half of a tuna sandwich with a speck of mayonnaise. Now he was starving and ready for dinner but had to stay after hours to give a tour to some wealthy tourists who were friends with the president—of the company or of Mexico, at this point it could be either, because only a select number of scientists were allowed inside.

  The tall man in black and the little Asian woman were an odd pair. They were probably space engineers from NASA; the strange ones always were. The tall man’s brother was running late and due to meet them any minute.

  Oscar finished shaking the man’s hand and gave him a pained smile.

  Why me?

  Roan pulled his hand away from Oscar’s and put his glove back on, feeling satisfied. Oscar Gonzales had no idea why they were there. The poor man just wanted to go home and have dinner.

  Oscar snapped his fingers and pointed at him, remembering. “A woman named Holly something called. She said she was having trouble reaching you and for you to call her when you got here.”

  Roan smiled and nodded. He had no intention of calling Holly; he didn’t need the distraction. They were waiting outside the mine’s main entrance for Stuart to arrive, and their tour guide was growing antsy.

  Oscar checked his watch and rubbed his hand across his face in frustration. They’d been waiting almost thirty minutes now.

  “He’ll be here,” Roan insisted. He’d come too far to leave Stuart behind. This was Stuart’s discovery, and he deserved to be in the cave as much as they did.

  Sun was staring off into the distance with her arms crossed. “Here he comes.”

  From afar they could see the car kicking up dust as the taxi made its way up the mountain.

  Roan could make out Stuart sitting in the back seat, and a rush of relief hit him. After witnessing the attack at Stuart’s house, he thought he’d never see him again.

  Who were the men who had taken him? And where were Miguel and Gyan?

  Oscar hurried to greet the taxi and help Stuart out of the car. Stuart had his right arm in a sling and looked like he hadn’t showered or slept for days. His face was haggard, with deep circles under his eyes.

  Oscar herded Stuart toward the doors, anxious to begin. “Good, good. Come, come. We’ve been waiting.”

  “Sun?” Stuart stopped short when he saw her. “How…?”

  “I found her through Hanus’s key.” Roan didn’t have time to explain.

  Stuart looked at Roan in amazement. “Looks like you found a lot of things.” He motioned to the building. They had so much to talk about, but right now Oscar was hurrying them inside to sign in with the guard at the front desk.

  “Have you heard from Miguel or Gyan?” Sun asked, her face grave.

  A pained look came over Stuart and he shook his head. “It was only me in the warehouse. What’s happened to Gyan?”

  “He’s missing too,” she told him.

  “My God.” Stuart couldn’t have looked more taken aback.

  “He left the ring behind,” Roan said. “It’s what got us here.” There was so much Roan needed to discuss, but they couldn’t talk freely in front of Oscar, and right now they didn’t have time. This hour was costing them one million dollars, essentially $16,666
per minute. It was the most expensive block of time he’d ever purchased.

  Oscar led them into a conference room for their orientation, where he opened up a large wall closet and started handing out the safety gear. “Without the proper suits you would have only ten minutes—fifteen at most—in there. With the ice suits you’ll have forty-five.”

  The ice suits were really two vests and a caving suit that went over both of the vests. The inner vest had hand-size ice packs sewn inside, and the outer vest protected the ice. They were also given respirators that blew frigid air, as well as protective boots, gloves, and a helmet with a headlamp. The getup looked close to what an astronaut might wear.

  Oscar struggled to put on his gear as well, the fabric of his suit straining against his middle. For now Roan kept his gloves on, though soon the time might come to take them off. He helped Stuart zip up his suit.

  “Did you bring the ooparts?” Stuart asked him.

  Roan took out Hanus’s key and Descartes’s ring from his bag and handed them over. Stuart opened his satchel. Roan froze when he saw Miguel’s oopart, the Chinese compass. The spoon and heaven-plate were in Stuart’s bag.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked Stuart.

  Stuart hesitated before answering. “Miguel gave it to me.”

  Stuart was lying, he could tell. A cold feeling washed over Roan—why did Stuart have Miguel’s compass? Miguel would have taken the oopart with him to Australia. The fact that Stuart had it now didn’t make sense.

  Roan met Sun’s eyes. He could see the same question in them. Why is Stuart lying?

  “Let’s go, people!” Oscar corralled them toward the back door. “It’s a twenty-minute drive down the main mineshaft. We’ll be a thousand feet under. Vamanos.” He led them down a hallway to the backside of the building where a row of fifteen-seat passenger vans was waiting.

  Oscar hopped into the driver’s seat of one of them. Sun took the seat next to him and Roan and Stuart climbed into the back. Roan’s mind kept circling around Miguel’s oopart. There was only one way Stuart could have obtained it. He’d been with Miguel in Australia. Everyone thought Miguel had gone by himself, that he’d disappeared in the outback. But Miguel hadn’t been alone.

  Suddenly everything began to shift into a different light. What other secrets was Stuart keeping?

  The van entered the mineshaft and began its near-vertical descent. Oscar did his best to play tour guide. “The cave you are going to see is one of the great wonders of the world. It was discovered in 2000 during an excavation for the Naica mine. Scientists are petitioning the Mexican government to have the cave designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site to protect the crystals for future generations. These crystals are very fragile, very rare. So please be careful where you walk. The chances of there being another cave like this anywhere else in the world are next to none.”

  Roan knew there was no other place like it on Earth.

  Stuart leaned toward him and dropped his voice. “All the way here I kept looking at the map you emailed me. And I could see how for years I’ve been traveling along its grid lines. I went to Easter Island, Machu Picchu, Giza, Paracas, Stonehenge, so many sites with the ooparts, thinking it would trigger something, anything. And here you found the center of the whole maze. Well done.”

  “It’s not a maze. It’s a labyrinth,” Roan explained. “The crop circles gave me the answer.”

  “So Miguel was right.”

  And Miguel should be here was all Roan could think. Miguel’s oopart was here, but Miguel wasn’t. What had happened to him in Australia?

  Stuart was amped up, not entirely himself. “What if this labyrinth’s center is a doorway to other times, other dimensions?”

  Oscar had been following the conversation and looked at them in the rearview mirror. “What kind of scientists did you say you were?”

  “Psychometrists.” Stuart gave him a brazen smile. Oscar nodded, clearly baffled.

  Roan glanced down, surprised to see his suit lighting up in the dark. He had thought the plastic plates attached to the fabric on his shoulders and knees were simple reflectors, but these suits had working lights built into them. It magnified the fact they were heading deep underground into another world.

  * * *

  When they arrived at the cave’s entrance Oscar parked. The area was well lit with floodlights, and Roan could see the shadows of the road behind them leading away like an ant trail.

  Oscar opened the enormous steel door to the anteroom of the cave, and the temperature shot up from 95 to 110 when they stepped inside. A big thermometer was mounted on the wall next to a clock.

  Everyone put on their helmets and Oscar passed out bottled water. “Drink. You’re going to sweat out every bit of moisture you have in you. When you come back, drink more.”

  Oscar turned and led them upslope toward a glass door to the entrance of the main chamber. “I’ll be waiting here inside the control room. Once I open this door you’ll be hit by heat that is going to feel like an elephant slamming into your body and sucking all of the water from your cells.”

  “Don’t mince words, mate,” Stuart tried to joke, but his eyes were wide with anticipation.

  “You will have thirty-five minutes to explore and ten minutes to get back. No more. When your time is up, I’ll come to the door and call you. I suggest you do not go far. The crystal beams are fragile and easily scratched by a boot or a fingernail, so please be careful. And you are not allowed to bring anything back with you. Understand?”

  Roan, Stuart, and Sun nodded and put on their respirators and headed up the path to the chamber.

  The heat and humidity climbed to 136 degrees Fahrenheit and pressed on Roan like a wall of melting lead. He took slow, measured steps, pushing through the heavy air until he came to the opening of the cave and got his first look inside.

  Crystal beams soared to the ceiling in majestic towers and fields of translucent selenite glistened along the path of his flashlight. Beds of crystals clustered like gardens with daggered edges.

  Roan glided his hand along one of the beams. Even through the fabric of his glove, the crystal felt silky smooth and soft.

  The cave was unlike anything he had experienced before. The grandeur and magnitude hit him like a wave. Energy radiated in the air with the concentration of life force, and he knew without a doubt that the answer to the ooparts was there.

  “Magnificent.” Sun came to stand beside him and they moved deeper into the cavern.

  “Can you feel it?” Stuart whispered. He turned in a slow 360-degree circle, taking it all in. Then he brought out the ring, the key, and the compass.

  When the ooparts met the air, they began to glow with an otherworldly light.

  “My God,” Stuart whispered. “Would you look at that?”

  The ooparts came alive, shimmering in brilliance as they attuned themselves to their environment like three pitchforks being struck.

  A harmonic resonance began to sound, like a far-off hum, and a colorful prism of garnet, emerald, sapphire, and ruby appeared inside the crystals, lit by a mysterious source, and illuminated the whole cavern.

  Roan stood transfixed at the incredible symphony of light and sound unfolding before them.

  The ooparts were keys, and they had just unlocked a door.

  “You did it, Roan. This is it.” Stuart had tears in his eyes. He placed Miguel’s compass in his hand, setting the spoon on top of the heaven-plate. He held the plate out and watched the spoon spin on top of it and then stop. Like a divining rod used by the ancient magicians who’d held the compass before him, the spoon was guiding him to the center of the cave. The whole space was magnetized.

  Roan stood still, unable to move. The crystal pillar next to him reminded him of the stone pillar at Gobekli Tepe—so easy to touch, and yet he hesitated, unable to push past his fear.

  He took off both of his gloves and laid them aside. His bare palms could feel the energy permeating the space and his fingertips tingled.
To prepare he brought his hands into an Abhaya Hridaya mudra, the Fearless Heart mudra he and Melicent had practiced together. But for the first time in his life the mudra fell short, because only her hand in his completed it. If he touched a crystal and an imprint overpowered him he might lose his life—and Melicent. The choice at this crossroads was clear.

  He turned to Sun, his eyes shining with utter certainty.

  “I can’t,” he told her.

  For the first time he was choosing life over a memory.

  Sun took his bare hand and squeezed it, just like her grandmother had done with her when she did something right.

  “Good,” she said. “Never be alone again.” Her words moved him because she was right. He had walked through life alone, too caught up in the earth’s pain and suffering to allow himself to live, or to love. He’d reached the heart of his own labyrinth. But he hadn’t reached it alone. Sun, the strongest woman he’d ever met, stood beside him. She’d walked through the fires of this world and survived them, survived with a heart bigger than anyone he knew.

  “I will try for both of us,” she offered. But before she could, the ground beneath them began to rumble.

  Roan turned to find Stuart had placed the Chinese compass on a crystal beam that was lying on its side like a table.

  The spoon began to spin on the heaven-plate. Stuart was tapping directly into the energy of the cave with the ooparts. He let out a whoop. “It’s working!”

  “Stuart, don’t!” Roan called out—but Stuart placed Hanus’s key on the crystal too.

  The ground began to quake and tremble, every crystal reacting. The ancient fault line was awakening.

  Stuart placed Descartes’s ring down last and knelt before the crystals. “Take me back. Take me back. Take me back,” he whispered, looking like a desperate man praying at an altar.

  The humming magnified and the compass spun faster, like a windmill signaling a storm.

  “Move the ooparts!” Sun waved her arms, yelling at him.

  Roan started toward Stuart. The walls of the cave shook harder, and the lights within the crystals turned blinding. The ground had become a tightrope. “The cavern’s going to collapse!”