A sudden commotion behind a hedge of cedars made us all jump and spin around. A man staggered around the trees and ran up to us.
“She is gone!” he cried. “Just like that … gone!”
We looked at each other, not sure what to say to him. He was in his forties, I guessed, and wearing cargo pants and a short-sleeved shirt with lots of pockets. He spoke with an accent—maybe he was Swiss, or German, or from one of those Scandinavian countries.
He looked vaguely familiar, but since I didn’t know anyone who had an accent like that, I gave up thinking about it.
Rachel, obviously feeling bad for the man, said, “Yes, death can be very sudden. But we’re very sorry for your loss, Mister.”
The stranger squinted at Rachel, and then shook his head. “No, no, no. She is not dead.”
“It’s nice that you come out here,” Eric said, waving his arm around the graveyard, “to keep her memory alive.”
The man was clearly upset about his wife’s death. I nodded solemnly. “You should always keep her alive in your heart.” I think I read that on one of the newer granite memorials.
“No,” he squeaked again. “My daughter. She vanished only a moment ago. I saw it happen. Please help me!”
“What?!” Eric said, alarmed. “You mean, like a bear took her or something?”
I nervously scanned the area for black bears. Usually we made enough racket to keep them away, but it was possible there was one in the area.
“Please come with me,” he begged. “We are running out of time!”
He disappeared around the cedars again.
Rachel grabbed her backpack from the wheelbarrow and followed the stranger, leaving Eric and me little choice. And if there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s not having a choice. I was about to protest to Eric, when he shrugged and began tailing his sister. Oh, well, I thought. Maybe we could spend a few minutes humouring the man.
When we reached the oldest part of the cemetery, on the very edge of the wilderness, the stranger stopped. “It happened here,” he said.
I noticed an old army-style rucksack on the grass. Scattered next to it was a tape measure and a bunch of pencils.
“What happened here?” Eric asked.
“My daughter, Anna, vanished.”
CHAPTER
2
“OKAY,” RACHEL SAID, gently pulling the man down, forcing him to sit on a toppled gravestone. “Just take your time and tell us exactly what happened.”
He had been frantic and mumbling nonsense for five minutes, so it was good that Rachel was taking charge. I pulled a bottle of water from her backpack, opened it and passed it to the mystery man. After eagerly sucking down half the bottle, he seemed to calm down a bit.
Eric, getting impatient, said, “So this is where Hannah disappeared, huh?”
“Anna,” Rachel corrected.
“Soooo,” I said, “you want us to help you look around for her?” I didn’t like all the weirdness and mystery, and to be honest, I was starting to feel pretty anxious.
“My name is Dr. Wassler,” he finally said. “I am an archaeologist from Germany.” That didn’t really answer any of the questions we’d just asked, but at least we knew his name.
Dr. Wassler stood up, looked at his watch, and walked over to an old granite gravestone. After taking a deep breath, he said, “Does this stone appear familiar to the three of you?”
We looked at each other, and then at the four-foot-high rock.
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to remain calm. “Nope,” I said.
Eric shook his head.
“Sure,” Rachel said, “there are two more. One’s over there behind those Jack pines. And the other one is next to that poplar.”
Eric and I looked where she was pointing.
“Go figure,” Eric said. “I never noticed it before, but you’re right. There are three graves with similar stones.”
“They are not graves,” Dr. Wassler said. “These stones are astronomical markers. Together they make up an ancient petroform.”
Rachel looked at the moss-covered pillar, then turned and said, “Sorry, Dr. Wassler, but what do these stones have to do with Anna’s disappearance?”
“Yes, yes, I am getting to that,” he said, glancing at his watch again. “And please call me Bruno. That is my first name.”
Rachel told him her name, then pointed to us and introduced Eric and me.
“How can they not be graves?” Eric asked. “They sure look like old tombstones. And we are standing in a cemetery.”
“They may look like memorials,” Bruno said, “but they are not. They have been here for hundreds of years—perhaps thousands. Settlers to the area likely imagined they were gravestones, and over time this became a community cemetery. But these three stones are definitely not headstones.”
“I guess that’s kind of interesting,” I said. Then, to keep him focused, I added, “But what does that have to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”
Bruno took another deep breath. “I will show you, Cody. And thank you for listening. I know this will sound extraordinary at first.” He waved us closer to the nearest pillar and pointed at a symbol carved into the stone, near the base. The moss that he (or his daughter) had peeled from the rock was heaped on the ground. “Do you see this glyph?” he asked.
We nodded at an odd pattern of shapes surrounded by a box. Rachel pulled her camera out and began taking pictures of the chiselled objects. She had received the camera for her birthday and had been snapping graveyard photos all week.
“These are Mayan calendar symbols,” Bruno said. “And they can’t be found anywhere else in Canada.”
Rachel nodded.
I nodded.
“So why’s that a big deal?” Eric asked.
“The big deal,” Bruno said, “is that the Mayans lived in southern Mexico and northern Central America. They were never in Canada.”
“Whoa!” That was me.
Bruno pulled an old toothbrush from one of his shirt pockets and led us over to the second stone. He scrubbed lichen from part of the rock. “And do you see this chiselled text?” He tapped the worn characters with the worn bristles. “These are Chinese symbols from the Han Dynasty—the second century B.C. The ancient Chinese have never travelled here either.”
“What about these?” Eric yelled, pointing at some etchings on the third pillar. “These look almost like … like hieroglyphics?”
Bruno wandered over to Eric. Rachel and I followed.
“Ah, yes,” Bruno said, “I was going to show you those.” He poured water from his bottle onto the granite, which made the characters easier to see. “They are from Egypt. Around 1300 B.C.”
I took a step back. My brain tried to process what he was saying, but it couldn’t. Nothing he was showing us made any sense. And I felt torn. My worry-wart side wanted to run home to escape all this nonsense. But my curious side wanted to help Bruno find his daughter.
“These three stones,” he continued, “have glyphs and text from a dozen different cultures—Incan, Mayan, Druid, Native American, Aztec, Khmer, Egyptian, and the list goes on. Yet nowhere in recorded history do we have evidence of these people ever being in Canada—except for the Native Americans, of course.”
I took a few more deep, calming breaths.
“And,” Bruno said, “I have found similar stones in France, Scotland, Egypt, Mexico, and Thailand.”
“But what does any of that have to do with Anna running away?” Eric said.
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “You mean there are stones just like this in other countries?” I pointed at the glyph-covered stone.
“Absolutely,” Bruno said. “They may be fading or deteriorating at different rates—depending on the local climate, you understand—but each stone is covered with similar glyphs, symbols, and codes. Some messages are etched in a coating of mortar, some are chiselled or carved into the stone, and a few are even painted.” Rachel leaned in to take more pictures.
“And some of the symbols,” Bruno continued, “are dates that make reference to time periods before, or well after, that culture existed. Some of the Mayan dates, for example, overlap the dates referenced by the Chinese Han Dynasty. This should be impossible, because the Mayans existed one thousand years before that dynasty.”
“But how can that even be?” Rachel asked. “How can the stones here in our graveyard be decorated by ancient people from so many faraway places?”
“Look,” Eric said, “do you want us to help you search for her, or not?”
Bruno glanced up at the sky and then down at his wristwatch again.
“If all those petroforms are real,” I said, “wouldn’t this be a huge deal? Wouldn’t all archaeologists be talking about it? I never heard about Egyptians coming to Sultana.”
“Until we made it up,” Eric added.
Rachel shot Eric a nasty look and told the archaeologist to continue with his explanation.
Bruno took a deep breath. “Scientists do know about the sites,” he said. “But no one wants to talk about it, because no one wants to consider the most likely answer.”
“Which is what?” I asked.
“Time travel,” Bruno whispered.
“Okay,” Eric said. “That’s it. We better get back to work. It was nice chatting with you.” He turned to go, and motioned for me to follow, but I was curious and wanted to hear more. Sure the whole time travel thing sounded nutty, but somebody must have left all those messages. Right?
“What do you mean about time travel?” Rachel said. I guess she was curious too. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“What do you know about atoms?” Bruno asked.
Eric groaned, like he thought Bruno was trying to change the subject again. Maybe he was.
Rachel, feeling more indulgent, decided to humour him. “They’re super-small and they make up everything,” she offered quickly.
Bruno nodded. “Very good, Rachel. And atoms are made up of many even smaller subatomic, or quantum, particles.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” Rachel said.
“Whatever,” said Eric.
“And,” Bruno continued, “in laboratory studies, quantum particles are always appearing and disappearing.”
“So?” Eric said.
“So where do they go?” Bruno asked.
“I don’t know,” Eric said, getting frustrated. “This is your story.”
“Many physicists believe that the particles can—and do—travel back and forth in time.”
“Okay … that’s all very interesting,” I said. “But I still don’t see what any of that has to do with this petroform or with Anna disappearing.”
“Yeah, we got work to do,” Eric said. “Wrap up your story already.”
As you can see, Eric and I were both on the same page. We needed to him to get to the point, so that we could get on with our day.
Bruno ignored us both and carried on with his lecture. “I have a theory that every once in a while—under the right conditions—the past bumps and touches and rubs against the present. And when the timeline of history is affected this way, something incredible happens.”
“What’s that?” Rachel said, still intrigued by his story.
“A window—sometimes called a wormhole—opens up that permits people to move back and forth along the timeline. Scientists have already moved quantum particles forward in time using laboratory equipment. And I believe ancient people time-travelled using these astronomical markers.”
Eric shook his head. “Now you really lost me,” he muttered.
“But how?” I asked, getting exasperated. “And what happened to Anna?”
“To put it simply,” Bruno said, “she fell into a wormhole. The same wormhole described and documented by the writings on these stones.”
“Wow,” Eric said. “So the bottom line is: you believe your daughter time-travelled from this cemetery? Today?”
Bruno nodded, drank the rest of his water and wiped his mouth with his wrist. “I think there is one timeline—one history—for everything that has ever happened here on earth. And I believe these pillars mark the exact location of wormholes that will take a person back to specific moments on that timeline.”
“So you actually think these stones,” Rachel kicked the nearest pillar, “will allow a person to go back in time to get Anna?”
“Yes,” Bruno said.
Eric was speechless.
“There are other, more experimental methods I could try to use to go back and locate Anna on the timeline. But this is the easiest.”
“Wait a minute.” I said. “Are you saying there are other ways to time-travel?”
“Most certainly,” Bruno said, “There are Thomas Cylinders, Duncan Tunnels, and even Denny Entanglements. Any of these technologies could be used to travel back in time, but we need to travel to a very specific point on an unimaginably long timeline. And we need to do it now.”
“That just doesn’t make any sense,” Eric said.
“Yes, it does, Eric,” Bruno fired back. “Why would I use relatively unreliable Denny Entanglements to get Anna when I can use this petroform?”
Eric stared. “No, I didn’t mean the Denny thing. I mean, this is all crazy.” He waved his arms around the cemetery, making sure he included Bruno.
Rachel glared at her brother again for being rude. “So you have no idea where in the past Anna landed?” she asked.
“Because the timeline of history goes all the way back to the Big Bang, she could be anywhere. She might be with the Egyptians. She might be in a jungle where there are no people. Or she may have travelled to some period in prehistory we can’t even imagine.”
“My guess is she’s right here,” Eric said pointing at the ground.
Bruno nodded. “Yes, it is certainly possible she arrived at this location in the past. Perhaps three hundred or three thousand years ago. But she could also be at any of the other petroform sites, anywhere in the world.”
“No!” Eric said. “I mean, maybe she got lost in this graveyard and wandered back to the parking lot. Maybe she’s sitting in your car right now. Probably reading a comic book and sipping a root beer. I assume that’s your car back there?”
Bruno studied his watch again, but didn’t say anything.
We stood silently in the sun, forming a circle around one of the stone markers. I sort of agreed with Eric, and didn’t believe anything Bruno was telling us. I mean, sure it was kind of interesting, but it was just way too far-fetched. On the other hand … if what he was telling us was true … Anna was in big trouble.
Rachel finally broke the silence. “I hate to say it, but if she could be in any time and anywhere in the past, how do you expect to find her?”
“Luckily all those ancient cultures marked the pillars with glyphs and symbols. And those are the clues.”
Bruno shook his head.
“Unfortunately, Anna vanished before I could tell her their meaning. If she knew what I know now, she could even come back on her own.”
“But how exactly did she disappear?” Rachel asked.
Bruno walked to the centre of the triangle formed by the three stones. “Anna was helping me measure the distance from pillar to pillar so that we could triangulate the exact centre of the petroform site. The last time I saw her she was standing here.” He looked down at his hiking shoes and frowned. “After she vanished—”
“What do you mean by vanished?” I said, cutting him off.
“She was waiting for me to write down the geometric centre of the stone formation in my notebook, when suddenly she disappeared. There was a sharp electrical snapping sound, and Anna was gone.”
Whoa! Could that have been the noise I heard earlier? Goosebumps suddenly appeared on my arms. This is bad. This is bad. This is bad.
“Riiiiiight,” Eric said, “she just fell down into some wormhole and never returned.”
Bruno walked back to where we we
re standing, sank to his knees and began rooting around in his rucksack.
“I think I’ve heard enough,” Eric whispered to me. “This guy really is a bit loony. Let’s go.”
But my legs refused to move. All the ridiculous things Bruno told us suddenly seemed possible.
Rachel wandered over to the centre of the stones, where Bruno had stood seconds earlier.
“So you’re saying she was just standing here one minute, doing nothing unusual,” Rachel said, “and the next minute … ”
“NOOOOO!” Bruno bellowed. He jumped up, turned around and dropped his notebook.
But it was too late.
There was a snap of static energy, and Rachel was gone. I couldn’t believe it. When I saw it happen on TV or in the movies, I knew it wasn’t real. But this time I witnessed it with my own eyes.
She had vanished.
CHAPTER
3
“WHAT HAVE YOU done?!” Eric screamed. “Where’s my sister? Get her back now!”
Bruno looked stunned. He ignored Eric and started mumbling. “Oh no … oh no, no, no. This is a nightmare—terrible. Not again, not again, not again.”
I yanked on his arm and said, “What just happened? How do we bring her back? Tell us what to do!”
Bruno was shaking pretty badly, but he seemed to recover enough to talk. “I … I was about to ask if one of you would fetch Anna, but now this … ”
“Now what?!” Eric shouted.
“Rachel does not know the secret to return either. I was about to tell you, but it all happened so fast … ” Bruno gave Eric a mournful look.
“She does not know about the astronomical event. And now they are both gone … both trapped in the past.”
“This is not happening,” Eric muttered.
Bruno wiped his brow with his wrist. “The window will be closing soon, so we have little time to prepare.”
“Why can’t you just go and get them right now?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Eric said. “We’ll wait right here. Just go bring Rachel—and Anna—back.”
“That is the problem,” Bruno said. “I can never use the wormhole.”
“What!?” Eric screamed.
Stones of Time Page 2
