Oracle--Sunken Earth

by C. W. Trisef

“But, sir—”

  “Now, Quirk! We must be going.”

  “But what about—”

  “Cooper? Yes, Mr. Cooper, I will see you in my office, first thing Monday morning.” Mr. Quirk continued to complain as Principal Stone carried him away into the night. After a motionless moment of silent confusion, Ana and Paige sped toward the parking lot. Ret bent down to aid in unearthing the two bodies, fully conscious but dazed. He used his shirt to wipe a trickle of blood that was dribbling from the nose of the first man. When Ret turned to help the other person, he was stunned to find the female ticket-taker buried under the dirt. Speechless, he staggered to his feet and hurried after Ana and Paige.

  “How vath ze game?” asked Ivan, the Coys’ Russian butler, as the trio piled into the limousine waiting for them in the parking lot.

  “Inconceivable!” Ana blurted out, her thoughts of what she had just witnessed exploding from her mouth without fully contemplating her words. Realizing her blunder, she quickly tried to play it off, saying, “Inconceivable…that…that we would win by so much.”

  Sitting together on the back row of the limo, Ana leaned across Paige and quietly, though earnestly, asked Ret, “What was that all about?” Her dumbfounded face demanded an explanation, but all Ret could provide was a pair of raised shoulders and a vacant expression. He relaxed his clenched fist to allow a moment’s glance: the scar was still illuminated, clearly visible despite the unusual darkness inside the car.

  Immediately upon entering the limo, Paige’s spirits seemed to sink when her father was nowhere to be seen. “Looks like Dad just sent Ivan again,” she mumbled almost inaudibly. Though dejected, she wasn’t too surprised.

  Silence prevailed for the remainder of the short ride home. The sun had long since slipped behind the horizon when they arrived at the Cooper home. The porch light bathed the front yard in a triangular glow, evidence that Pauline was expecting her children.

  “Thanks for the ride, Ivan,” Ana said as she hurried toward the house. “See you on Monday, Paige.”

  “Yes, thank you, sir,” Ret agreed. Arriving at the front door and finding it to be unlocked, they turned to wave goodbye to Paige, with Ivan politely idling in the driveway, waiting for the Coopers to safely enter their home.

  “Bye,” the Coopers waved.

  As Ivan pulled out of the driveway, the voice of Mr. Coy was suddenly heard from the other seat bench in the limo.

  “On the boy’s hand…” he whispered to himself from the shadows.

  “Oh, Dad!” Paige said, a bit startled. “You are here.”

  “…Where have I seen that before?” Mr. Coy continued, his mind still fixed on the scene of Ret and Ana waving goodbye to them.

  “Oh, you mean the purple spots on Ret’s hands?” Paige groped for an answer.

  Mr. Coy broke his trance and then slowly lowered his gaze until it focused on his daughter. With great concern, almost alarm, in his eyes, he asked, “What spots?”

  CHAPTER 4

  TRIANGLES, TRUNKS, AND TUXES

  “What the blazes was that?” Ana barked at Ret, following him into his room and carefully shutting the door behind them so as to not alarm Pauline.

  “Of all the crazy stunts…

  “Granted, we are in high school now, where it seems like everyone’s got a whoopee-cushion or a rubber chicken or some kind of gag stuffed in their locker…

  “And it was the biggest game of the season, which always seems to bring out the beach balls and crowd-pleasing, game-stopping nonsense…”

  She was pacing around the room now, her gaze fixed on the circular trail that she was wearing into the floor.

  “Of course, there are loads of people who know kung fu or karate or jujitsu or tae-kwon-do. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re buff and brawny and good at just about everything, but—”

  For the first time, her rambling tongue and swirling mind stopped to give her a chance to look at Ret. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, slowly and methodically taking off his shoes, looking as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Ret!” Ana yelled, trying to break him out of his apparent apathy. Still ignoring her, she walked across the room and sat next to him on the bed, leaning forward so that she could look Ret directly in the eye. In a more subdued tone, she said, “What was that tonight?”

  “Pretty cool, huh?” he answered, rocking his head back and forth with a smile like a motorcycle-lover who had just been given a Harley.

  “Cool?” Ana repeated indignantly. “Cool? So you planned this whole thing?”

  “Of course not, Ana,” Ret explained. “Don’t get so worked up.”

  “Worked up?” One thing that Ret had learned about Ana was that when she was upset, she began all of her responses by repeating the word or two that she most disagreed with. “I’m not worked up.”

  Ret shot her a look that said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Okay, so I’m a little worked up.” Ana couldn’t hide from her flushed face, glistening forehead, and frazzled bangs. “But I just can’t believe what I saw tonight. You hurled dirt at those guys like how Spiderman shoots web! What, is this a normal occurrence for you or something because I only ever see this kind of crazy stuff on TV and in the movies?”

  “Want to see something else that’s crazy?” Ret teased. Ana’s eyes widened.

  “Promise you won’t scream?” Ret asked. Ana nodded.

  “Take a look at this.” Ret slowly unclenched his fist, revealing his glowing scar. Ana inhaled a lungful of air and then quickly clamped her mouth with her hand. When the shock and awe had passed, she removed her hand and poked the illuminated scar.

  “What do you think it means?” she asked him, full of curiosity.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “It’s obviously in the shape of a triangle, so that could mean a lot of different things. And then there’s this small mark inside the left angle.” He pointed to it on his palm.

  “Maybe it’s a booger,” Ana suggested. Ret wasn’t amused.

  “It’s never glowed before,” he added, “so something must have happened tonight that set it off.”

  “Hmm…I wonder what that could have been,” Ana said sarcastically. “Well, don’t look at me for an interpretation. I guess we could always take you to a palm reader.”

  “Clever,” Ret smirked.

  “You’re right; it’d be a lot easier to just take you to good old Captain Quirk. He seemed to know a thing or two about what was going on.”

  “Yeah,” Ret remembered. “What exactly did he say to me?”

  “Something about your gifts, I think.”

  “That’s it—my gifts!” Ret said, as if he had deciphered the next part of some ancient riddle. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re gifted,” Ana explained, making quotation marks out of her fingers to signify some special status.

  “Gifted at what?”

  “Hurling dirt at people, of course,” she said. “By the way, what was it like?”

  “Well,” Ret thought back to the event, “it felt really good, actually. Not because I hurt those people or taught them a lesson or anything like that. I just knew that they were going to hurt you and Paige, so it felt good to prevent that, I guess.” Ana listened intently as Ret tried to describe something so surreal. “And then I felt strong, I felt powerful—like everything was in a vacuum, weightless, and I could somehow control it. And then it just kind of stopped.”

  “Weird,” Ana remarked, dumbfounded. “And did you feel tired or drained afterwards?”

  “It actually left me feeling happier—and lighter. And then I felt awful for hurting those two goons. And, Ana, you’ll never believe this: One of the goons was that girl who said ‘hi’ to me when she took our tickets; you know, the one you told me to stay away from?”

  “No way! Who was the other one?” Ana asked.

  “Not sure,” Ret said. “Some guy.”

  “Well, I guess they got wh
at was coming to them, Ret,” Ana said, trying to make him feel better. “And besides, you stopped them from hurting us, and we were innocent.” She smiled at him. “Thanks, by the way.”

  “Sure,” Ret replied. “Anytime, I guess.” They laughed. Just then, Ana received a text message. It was from Paige. Ret didn’t have to try very hard to look over Ana’s shoulder to read the text. “Is Ret OK?” it read. Ana didn’t reply and tried to shove her phone back into her pocket before Ret could notice.

  Ret raised his eyebrows and said “Sure am” as Ana stood up, smiled, and left the room.

  * * * * *

  The next day, Ret breezed through his homework so that he could devote the rest of the weekend to studying a subject that was much more intriguing: his gifts, as Mr. Quirk had called them. With the warm sun shining in the sky and shimmering in the sea, Ret slipped away to his favorite nook, where he knew he could be alone to concentrate and to experiment.

  He spent several minutes just analyzing his hands. His magnifying glass afforded him a closer look at the triangular-shaped scar on the palm of his right hand; at least, Ret had always thought that the marks on his hands were scars. Purple in color and slightly raised, each looked like some sort of cauterized branding. The designs had meant nothing to him until now. Ret even zoomed in on the small speck inside the left angle of the triangle, just to make sure that it really wasn’t a booger. Also illuminated, it looked like a single-pointed hook. The light brown glow, though now much dimmer than it had been the previous night, shone through the tissue and clearly distinguished the hook and triangle from the other two, unlit scars on that same palm.

  Still clueless, Ret set aside the magnifying glass and tried a more hands-on approach. He did everything that came to mind. He picked up fistfuls of sand and clenched them as tightly and as long as he could, hoping for something to happen. He gathered handfuls of sand and let the small granules sift through his fingertips. He let his hands hover above the sand; he sent his fingers crawling underground. He even formed two crude statues out of wetter sand and held up his hands to stop them, attempting to recreate the previous night’s more threatening scene.

  Hours passed. Ret was out of ideas. He felt no powers take control; he saw no flurries of dirt lunge from the ground. He was beginning to think that this was all some masterfully-planned practical joke, though he realized that was impossible. He was glad to see Ana approaching him from across the beach.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked brightly.

  “Nothing,” was Ret’s honest reply. He had his chin resting in his hand, so the few words that he spoke were slurred.

  “Any luck with the dirt moving?”

  “None,” he said, sounding very disappointed.

  “Maybe it only works with a certain kind of soil?” Ana suggested hopefully.

  “I’ve tried a dozen different combinations.”

  “Did you try getting it wet?”

  “Tried it.”

  “Keeping it dry?”

  “Tried that, too.”

  “Well gosh,” Ana said, “maybe it only works when you don’t want it to.” Ret had never considered such a condition.

  “What’d you find at the library?” he asked.

  “Loads!” Ana admitted, whipping out her phone to revisit the list that she had made. “After sifting through the 150 thousand results that came up when I Googled the word triangle,” she rolled her eyes at the exaggeration, “I found a few leads that might interest you.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Okay,” she cleared her throat, ready to show off her hard work. “Have you ever heard of…,” she said, pausing for dramatic effect, “…the Pythagorean Theorem?”

  A few crickets chirped from the nearby brush.

  “That only works with right triangles,” Ret informed her.

  “Right,” she said, undefeated. “Next: Pascal’s triangle?” Ret scoured his memory. After a long, silent pause, Ana resumed. “Zero for two.”

  “Okay, how about this one,” she pressed on, scrolling down the list on her phone. “Penrose triangle?”

  “Sounds impossible,” Ret said, recalling the unfeasible shape.

  “Equilateral triangle?”

  “Definitely not true of this triangle,” Ret concluded.

  “Didn’t think so,” Ana agreed. “Besides, I think that’s some place in Guinea. How about the Pyramids of Giza?”

  “Triangular sides, yes, but square base.”

  “Close enough,” Ana moved on, losing patience. “Sierpinski triangle?” Ret gave her a confused look, having never heard of such a thing. “Yeah, got nothing on that one,” she said. “Alright, this one sounds promising: isosceles.”

  “Ana,” Ret called her by name, emphasizing the ridiculousness of such a simple idea that wasn’t even true of the image on Ret’s hand.

  “Alright, alright,” she consented. “I just remembered him from Greek mythology, that’s all.” Ret shook his head but let it go. Ana fed him another possibility: “Sydney Opera House?”

  “What does that have to do with…”

  “It looks like triangles, okay? I’m trying here; come on, Ret.” Ana shut her phone in failure.

  “Looks like we’re both at dead ends,” Ret said.

  * * * * *

  At school on Monday, Ret was captivated by yet another fascinating lecture in science class. As part of their unit on rocks and minerals, the teacher had invited a guest speaker to educate the class on his field of work as a glass blower. Somewhere in the speaker’s explanation of the process of melting sand into glass, Ret heard the word stone. Ret’s heart stopped.

  “Principal Stone,” he mouthed. Ret had completely forgotten about the brief moment the other night when Principal Stone had asked to see him first thing this morning. Ret hoped that the Principal had forgotten, too.

  But Ret couldn’t quite push his belated appointment fully out of his mind. He respected authority, no matter how questionable that authority seemed. Besides, he had committed no crime, and he hoped that maybe Principal Stone knew a thing or two surrounding the strange events of that night. And so, as much as he did not want to leave such a riveting lecture, Ret embarked for the principal’s office.

  Ret was about to knock on Principal Stone’s oak door when he thought he heard someone say his name. Intrigued, Ret put his ear up to the door and breathed more softly.

  “Yes, my lord,” Ret heard Principal Stone say. “Everything went as planned at the game: Cooper took the bait, and, according to Quirk, the symbol has been illuminated.” Hearing no reply, Ret figured that the Principal was speaking to someone on the phone.

  “We have not been so fortunate with that part of the plan, sir: Quirk tells me that Cooper has failed to demonstrate any recollection of the event. Shall I advise Ronald to instruct his students in a more comprehensive study of the Caribbean Islands?” Stone paused again and then said, “It shall be done, my lord.” He went quiet again.

  “There is still no sign of it, my liege,” the Principal responded to what must have been another question from his superior. “My men have searched every museum in the area and combed the shores dozens of times looking for it. It has been almost a year since the incident…” Ret could hear the static of a raised voice coming through the phone from the other end of the conversation. Whoever it was, he did not sound very pleased.

  “Yes, yes, my lord,” Stone’s quivering voice promised obedience. “We will widen our search.” There was silence in the office for several moments. Then Principal Stone spoke up again.

  “Actually, sir, there is one other thing I’ve been meaning to ask. I was wondering if there might be any way to, well, sort of speed up the plan?” He sounded nervous. “What I mean is I believe it’s only a matter of time before Quirk jumps the gun and foils the entire plot. Such a fidgety man, that Quirk, and even the other night, had I not intervened…” The raised voice was heard again.

  “My apologies, my lord,” a reprimanded Stone said a
few moments later. “I will remind Ronald that the plan must proceed at its current pace so as to allow you sufficient time to recuperate.” The conversation abruptly ended in the sound of a dial tone. After breathing a sigh of relief, Principal Stone emerged from his chair, which creaked loudly under his weight, and advanced toward the door. Ret scarcely had time to retreat a few steps when the door flew open. Principal Stone froze in the doorway, sporting a facial expression as cold as his name.

  “Mr. Cooper,” he said, “come to drop eaves, have we?”

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Ret reminded him, ignoring the accusation.

  “Yes, yes; come in, come in.”

  The office of Principal Lester W. Stone was suspicious, to say the least. It didn’t have any of the normal things one would expect to find in a principal’s office. There were no collections of encyclopedias or reference manuals, which was befitting since there wasn’t a bookcase on which to place them. There was no school flag hanging in the corner or any knickknacks that bore the school colors or mascot. The windows were shut and locked, and any light that wanted to pour in was snuffed out by the tightly-drawn curtains. Besides a small desk and its black leather chair, there was no furniture in the room, not even a chair for Ret to sit on. Two odd-shaped trunks caught Ret’s eye. Old and mysterious objects, they looked like treasure chests from a pirate ship, and they made Ret very curious. The trunks would have appeared shinier except for the dirt and moss stuck in the elaborate crevices of the intricate outer designs.

  Noticing Ret’s distraction, Principal Stone said, “Pull up a few of those boxes, why don’t you?” He pointed to a few unopened boxes accumulating dust against one of the walls. Ret found it odd for someone who was in his second year of serving as principal to still have unpacking to do.

  “So, Ret, my boy,” he said, leaning back in his reclining chair, “how’s school going for you so far?”

  “Fine.” Had he not been privy to Principal’s Stone’s most recent phone call, Ret may have confided more in him. These days, however, his childlike naivety was waning.

  “Well then, lucky for you last week’s hurricane barely missed the island, eh? Had it struck Tybee, we’d likely be sitting in a pile of wet rubble right now,” Stone said. Ret glanced down at the boxes of mismatched junk that he was sitting on.