“Well?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know exactly, but I think we should look some more,” I said.
I got up and began walking, not sure why I was going where I was going. My feet seemed to steer me to the west corner of the graveyard. Fanny and Jake followed behind. My feet led me to a small grave marker almost at the very edge of the cemetery.
It was different from all the others. It wasn’t shaped like the usual tombstone but instead was a small obelisk shape. It stood only two feet or so above the ground, and it looked like it used to have a point on top but it had worn down. It was covered in lichens and moss and had turned a yellowy green rather than grey stone.
It was such a small, plain stone, most would probably walk by it and not notice it at all. It had no carvings or writing. But as soon as I approached it, I got that tingly feeling again all up and down my spine and my arms. The hairs all over my body stood on end.
I bent down and gingerly put my hands on the stone. I felt for a mark of some kind. I didn’t feel any markings with my fingers, but as I touched it, I saw the letters ‘SCS’ appear in my mind, just like in my dream. As in my dream, I saw verdant hills and a circle of stones in my mind’s eye. And there it was. The torc glowed gold and hovered before my eyes. The vision was so powerful, it made me dizzy. I began to wobble.
“Em, are you okay?” asked Jake. He bent down to steady me.
“This is it,” I said in a low voice. “Here. We dig here.”
Fanny and Jake looked at each other and at me. Their mouths hung open like when I’d thrown Muriel against the wall. It was like they were in a daze.
“Jake, Fanny,” I said. “We’re running out of night. Come on, let’s dig.”
Jake came out of his stupor, grabbed the shovel and dug. It wasn’t long until Fanny had had enough of Jake’s slow and methodical digging. She snatched the shovel from him and hacked at the ground.
“Be careful,” said Jake. “You don’t want to break it.”
For close to an hour, Fanny dug and found nothing but worms and slugs. As the first light of dawn peaked over the hills to the east behind us, Fanny hit something hard.
“Hey, I think we’ve got something,” she said.
I shined the flashlight into the hole. I saw something glint in the hole as I shined the light. All three of us used our hands and the shovel to uncover the object Fanny had hit upon.
“Do you think this is really a grave?” Fanny asked.
“I don’t know, but this is creeping me out,” I said. “I don’t want to find a corpse.”
But our fears were soon alleviated. There was no coffin. Our digging revealed the shape of the object in the hole. It was a small box, no more than six inches all the way around. In no time, we had it out of the ground completely and began wiping it off.
“It’s metal,” Jake said. “And look, it has something carved on the top.”
“What is that?” asked Fanny.
I shined the flashlight on the top of the box. “It’s a tree,” I said. The carved tree took up most of the top of the box. It was a magnificent tree with many branches. It looked like an oak tree. But the weird thing was that all its branches ended in a flame. “It’s a flaming tree.”
“Open it Emily,” Jake said. He’s been holding the box and he pushed it into my hands.
“No, you open it.” I tried to shove it back to Jake.
“No, you should open it,” he said.
He was right of course, but I was afraid. What will happen when I open it? Will that torc thing crawl up my arm and wrap itself around me? Will I become someone – or something – else? Will the ground open up and swallow me into it like it did with Saorla?
Even though questions of worry swirled in my brain, I decided to open the box like Jake suggested. I tried to pry it open with my fingers, but it was stuck shut, the clasp caked with dirt and age. I handed the box to Jake and he tried but it was no use.
“Oh, give me that,” Fanny said. She took the box, knocked it on the ground a few times, and with one mighty pull opened it. As she held it open, I shined the flashlight into the box.
The light caught the golden metal. The torc lay inside.
It didn’t move on its own or crawl its way onto me. It just lay there, a beautiful arm bracelet made of many strands of twisted gold that all came together in an oval. Each end was capped with a carved finial. One finial was in the shape of a bird. It looked like a hawk or maybe an eagle. On the other end was the head of a woman. Her hair streamed back from her face and ended in flame. A chick with her hair on fire! What’s with all the fire?
The torc didn’t glow or look in any way magickal. It looked like an old, hung of metal.
“I can't believe we found it,” Fanny said.
“Yeah, I hoped we’d find it. But I had my doubts,” Jake said.
I couldn’t say anything. It was great that we’d found it of course. And yeah, it made me believe again in Hindergog, that weird little guy. But the truth is, I was kind of disappointed. I guess I expected it to glow like in my visions and for something magickal to happen when I found it.
“What’s the matter, Em?” asked Fanny.
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “It’s just that it looks sort of looks, you know, ordinary.”
All three of us stood peering into the box and stared at it for a few minutes. Jake finally broke the silence. “Put it on Em.”
“Oh, I don’t think I should,” I said. “Look, the sun is coming up. We need to cover this hole and get the heck out of here.”
Jake didn’t argue with me, but he eyed me cautiously. I think he could see that I was scared of the thing, but he didn’t push me. At least not then.
21. ON THE RUN
We hoofed it back to the inn and arrived as the town was coming fully alive for the day. We put the shovel back inside the shed and looked forward to falling into bed for a long sleep. As we walked inside the inn, there were already a few people gathered around the dining table eating breakfast. When we walked by the front desk, Paddy looked at us with raised eyebrows.
“Bit early, huh,” he said.
“We wanted to see the sunrise,” I said as we walked up the stairs to our room.
When we got to our room, Fanny and Jake both flopped down on their beds to get some well-deserved sleep. “I think Paddy was a little suspicious of us, don’t you think?” I asked.
“Ugh-huh,” was all Fanny said in reply. I think Jake was already asleep.
“I gotta go hit the head guys,” I said. I tiptoed out into the hall and closed the door behind me. As I turned to go down the hall to the toilet, I heard Paddy talking to another man down the stairs in the reception area.
“Imagine that, some German tourist lady falling into a hole out there in that old graveyard,” the man said.
I heard Paddy chuckle loudly. “I’d have liked to seen that mate! Old bird was she? Falling right in a hole.”
“It ‘taint funny Paddy. That’s some serious stuff now,” said the man.
“Well the ladies out there at Monasterboice said the German gal wasn’t harmed. So what ‘taint funny about that then, Officer Kelly?” Paddy asked.
“Oh the old bird going down, that’s funny mate. But the hole being there? Now that’s another story. The volunteer ladies who run the place, they said that half to nine a German tourist came to them and complained that his wife just twisted her ankle in that hole back there. They ran to where the old bird was down and when she got up, they got to lookin’ at it, and it was a right proper hole someone dug up. Fresh too. Wasn’t there yesterday when they locked up. In the night, someone dug a hole at one of those old grave markers.”
“Can you believe it, some heathen defiling an ancient grave that way!” said Paddy. “Do you think they’re after treasure or something?” he asked.
“Probably some teenagers, you know, pulling some kind of prank. Or maybe it’s random vandalism like kids do these days,” said the other man.
“Did they take
anything, you knows, out of it?” asked Paddy.
“They don’t rightly know seeing as how it’s so old, no one knows if there was anything in there still. But the hole was pretty small, so who’s ta say.”
There was a pause for a minute then Paddy said, “Hey wait a minute. There are some youngsters staying here. American kids, teenagers.”
“Yeah, so?” queried the other man.
“Well, my groundskeeper was out early this morning, and he couldn’t find his shovel in the shed,” said the innkeeper.
“Oh yeah? Tell me more.”
“Well, those kids, they came in early this morning. They said they was out for sunrise, but I reckon they was out all night,” said the innkeeper.
Then there was another silence. I didn’t wait to hear what they’d say next. I ran back to the room and opened the door.
“Guys, wake up. Get up man, we gotta’ go.” I madly threw my stuff into my bag.
“What are you doin’?” Fanny asked. “I wanna sleep for a few hours.”
“No time, Fan. We gotta’ leave now. A local cop is down there and he’s real curious about our shovel pinching. They’ve already found the grave that we dug up, and he doesn’t sound too thrilled about it.”
Jake and Fanny were up like a shot. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Jake move that fast. He and Fanny stuffed their junk into their bags and shoved their feet into their shoes. We heard the loud steps of the portly Paddy and Officer Kelly coming up the stairs.
“What do we do?” asked Jake. “We can’t go out the door. They’ll see us.”
I looked around the room. There was only one window in the room and it was small and fairly high off of the ground. It would be a squeeze, but it was our only way out. “There,” I pointed. “Let’s go.”
Fanny was the first out. She fit easily through the window, stood outside on the small ledge, and jumped to the gable roof below us. Jake and I poked our heads out of the window and watched as she walked along the roof to the small shed at the back of the inn. Jake turned to me and said, “I can’t do that, Em. I’ll fall.”
“You’ve got to. Come on, Fanny will help you.”
As I tried to summon Jake’s courage for him, Paddy knocked on the door. “You kids, open up now. Officer Kelly here wants to talk to you.”
Jake took one look at me, swallowed hard, and jumped to the gable just as Fanny had. He stumbled a little and looked like he might fall off, but somehow he righted himself and ran to the shed roof.
My turn. I was quite a bit bigger than both Fanny and Jake. I had to squeeze to get through the small window, but somehow I did it. I jumped and ran without thinking, all the while hearing the innkeeper and Officer Kelly yelling for us to let them in.
We ran down side alleys and across neatly mowed yards. We didn’t know where we were going, only that we needed to get out of sight of the inn. As tired as I was, the danger allowed me to find the juice in my legs to run like I’d never run before. We ran south and west for a long time. Before long we were on a small country two-lane road with nothing but fields of grass and sheep on either side.
I was too tired to keep count of time or distance. I knew only that we had to keep moving.
After what seemed like an eternity, we came to a thick woods just off the side of the road. It was looked primeval. It was dark and scary, but it was a place to get out of the open and hide.
We walked until we were far into the dense wood. Without saying a word to each other, we threw off our packs and fell down. I don’t think we were awake for more than a minute. Sleep while we can. This is only the beginning.
22. ZOMBIE MAN WAKES
The day that his wife died, a large part of Liam Adams died too. Liam was like the stone foundation of a house, but Bridget was the fire that burned in the hearth. Without her passion for life fueling him, Liam reverted to the only other comfort he had ever known: Science.
Liam’s only family was his sister Muriel, fifteen years his senior. He’d asked Muriel to stay with him for a while and help him to care for Emily. In the wake of his grief, caring for his child felt like a burden he was unable to carry.
Muriel didn’t just stay a few weeks. She moved in permanently. And while Muriel chipped away at the beauty of both Liam’s house and daughter, he threw himself into his work in theoretical physics at the University of Chicago. He became a zombie of a man.
But on that day that everything changed, Liam was jolted out of his zombie state. He came home from work and found his sister sitting in their parlor, an ice pack on her head. Her bags were packed and arranged neatly by the front door. Liam walked to the chair where she sat and stood in front of her. Muriel didn’t look up at him as she handed him a note.
“I told you she's trouble,” Muriel snarled. “Probably on drugs or something. You should have seen her when she attacked me. Her eyes were wild. She looked hyped up on something.”
Liam said nothing and quickly scanned the note. He flopped his large frame into the worn chair across from Muriel and read it again. He searched each line for clues or hidden meaning.
“Was she with anyone?” he asked.
“Those two no-good friends of hers,” Muriel replied.
Liam looked up from the note and looked at his sister. As soon as he looked at her, she screwed her face into a look of pain.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Okay? Okay? That brat attacked me! No, I’m not okay. You need to call the police, Liam. She needs to learn a lesson. If you don’t nip this in the bud, she’ll run wild all over you.”
“Did she hit you?”
“Hit? Well no, not exactly hit.”
“Then how did you get that knot on your head? Did she push you?”
“No, she didn’t exactly push me.”
“Dammit Muriel, what happened here?”
“I always knew she was strange. Just like her mother.”
“Muriel, unless you want another lump on your head, you best leave off bad mouthing my wife and daughter.”
Muriel’s lips pursed tightly. Her ‘baby’ brother had never raised his voice at her or back talked her in any way.
“Just answer the question. Tell me how you got that lump,” he said.
Muriel, still stunned, obeyed the request. “Well, you’re not going to believe me. But she threw me.”
“You mean to tell me that Emily picked you up and threw you?”
“Well no, not exactly. Maybe threw isn’t the right word, but that’s what she did but without touching me. She looked at me with a crazed look and I was thrown backward. Twice. The second time I fell against the wall. That blasted frame fell, hit my head and knocked me out.”
It was Liam’s turn to stare off to the horizon in a dazed silence. Any other father probably would think his older sister was cracked, the bonk on the head giving her brain damage. But Liam knew something that Muriel didn’t know. Liam knew that his daughter had special talents.
Emily and Bridget thought that they had a secret from Liam. They had thought it was just between them. But Liam had known all along.
When Emily was not yet one, he came into her room in the morning to get her up and change her. As he walked in, Emily was sitting up in her crib and a small stuffed animal dog flew across the room to her. She didn’t see her father there watching, but he could see her concentration on the dog. Before long it flew into her hands. She grabbed it, smiled big and played with the toy like it was the most normal thing in the world to make something come to you just by thinking about it.
Liam didn’t say anything to his wife. He assumed it was a fluke, perhaps a trick of his own mind. After all, there had to be a reasonable explanation. Objects don’t just fly around.
But as time went by, there were other flying objects. And Liam could swear that his wife and daughter communicated with each other without talking. He never said anything, and as time went on, Emily’s abilities – and Bridget’s too – became something that was ‘between them’. Liam assumed that wh
en Emily got older, she’d tell him about it if she wanted to. She never did. Liam had figured that maybe Emily had lost her strange abilities as she grew up.
When Liam heard Muriel’s story about Emily ‘throwing’ her across the room just by thinking about it, it didn’t surprise him in the least. In truth, Muriel’s story made Liam smile inside. He supposed that Muriel deserved it. She had been nasty to Emily. Perhaps she had it coming?
Liam resumed his study of Emily’s note. He read and reread.
“Dear Dad,
I’m leaving. Don’t try to find me. I have important work to do. A mission. I can’t tell you where I’m going. I can’t tell you when I’ll return.
I’m not running away – at least I don’t think I am. I plan to come back. But you should know that I won’t be putting up with Muriel anymore. I’m done with her pushing me around.
Don’t worry dad. Love, E”
Not a lot of clues. Acting on an intuitive sense that Liam wasn’t aware he had, he knew as he looked at the laconic note from his daughter that he didn’t want to call the police. This was a family matter, and Liam needed to take care of his family and of the mess he’d created.
“We’re not calling the police Muriel,” he said calmly.
“What! You can’t do this Liam. That girl needs to learn her lesson. You have to use tough love with dope heads,” she said.
“She’s not a dope head, Muriel. And no, she’s had enough of your tough love. If I call the police, I should be calling on you for child abuse.”
Muriel’s face turned as white as stone. That shut her up.
“No, this is something that I need to take care of,” he said.
No sooner had Liam finished his sentence and the phone rang. Fanny’s mom, Esther, sobbed on the end of the phone line. She had received a similar note. Her husband was out of town on business and she didn’t know where to turn.
“Come over, Esther, and bring the note from Fanny. We’ll find them. But don’t call the police. Not yet.”
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 10
