“Way,” Miss Pembrook assured them and took out more photographs. “And there’s more. These symbols were found in each of the churches.”
Aimee stared at the pictures. They looked like Chinese symbols. “What do they mean?” she asked.
The teacher shrugged. “They predate modern Chinese. The only people I’ve been able to talk to think it’s some kind of unusual regional form of Cantonese.”
Dalton was squinting at the pictures, as if by staring hard enough she might be able to unravel their mystery. “So these things are in all three churches? Three churches that all look alike?”
“Yes, all three. They’re chiseled into the stone around the top of the interior walls, so it’s hard to see them unless you climb up with a ladder. No one even noticed them in the Middleburg church until they were restoring the stained glass windows a few years back.”
Dalton set the pictures down but continued looking at them, with a mixture of fascination and distrust.
“But I haven’t told you most interesting part yet,” Miss Pembrook went on, almost bubbling over with excitement. “My old professor had the wood beams in each of the churches tested. They’re all made of cedar from Lebanon—the same material used to construct Solomon’s temple in ancient Jerusalem. Radio-carbon dating done on the wood confirms that they were all built within fifty years of each other.”
“When were they built?” Aimee asked. The whole thing was starting to give her a funny, excited feeling and she was catching the teacher’s enthusiasm.
Miss Pembrook leaned close. “Approximately 1200 A.D.,” she said and then sat back in her chair, looking smug and satisfied that she’d piqued their curiosity.
Aimee started to ask a question but then stopped as she tried to process the impossibility of what she’d just heard.
“There were no Christians in North America at that time,” Dalton protested. “So who built it? Native Americans?”
“How would they get wood from the Middle East?” Aimee asked.
“Well,” Miss Pembrook said quietly. “That’s one of the things I’d like to find out.”
Dalton raised her eyebrows and gave a little nod. Without another word, she took a stack of index cards, opened her book, and got to work. Aimee did, too.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday after school, Zhai sat in Kate’s train car, sipping root beer from a glass with blue flowers on it. He’d swung by Master Chin’s house first, but when he found the kung fu instructor not at home, he told Bob to take him to the train graveyard. He wasn’t sure exactly what had prompted him to seek out Kate of all people, and to decide he wanted to confide in her. True, he was thinking about her more and more these days, and when he tried to think of someone to tell what was going on with him, she was the first one who came to mind. He’d never felt comfortable sharing his most secret thoughts with anyone, not even Li, but he trusted Kate—and he had to talk to someone.
As he sipped his soda he couldn’t suppress a smile, despite his worry. Kate was wonderfully level headed and had a practical, no-nonsense way of looking at things—and besides, seeing her again just made him feel good. Being in her presence was not only intriguing and intense—it was comforting. And comfort was exactly what Zhai needed.
His strange encounter with Lotus last night had shaken him. Although he believed she loved his father, Zhai had always seen his stepmother as basically self-serving. Her warning about the Order of the Black Snake had left Zhai feeling hemmed in on all sides by something he didn’t understand, and he had to figure it out.
He stared into his glass for a moment, wondering how to uncover the mystery surrounding his father now. How did he know those men in the hats? What was the Order of the Black Snake and how did Lotus know so much about it? Now Zhai felt like he didn’t even know himself. He tipped the glass to his lips, drained it and set it down on Kate’s little makeshift table. And again he stared at the marks on the back of his hands.
Slave.
He’d tried to research the Order of the Black Snake, but there was only a small amount of information on the Internet—in English, anyway (and “Translate this” didn’t help much). He’d printed off one page—a single blog entry from a journalist in Hong Kong. Kate was reading it now, her beautiful brow furrowed in concentration. Zhai had read it so many times he could remember it almost word for word. The journalist had written about a friend of his who’d met a man who claimed to be a defector from the organization. This defector planned to write a book about the Order and expose what he claimed were terrifying secrets:
. . . It was four years ago when my friend, who I’ll call Peng (not his real name, of course) first met with an operative who claimed to be a defector from the legendary Order of the Black Snake. At first, Peng was skeptical. After all, most Chinese view the stories of the Order as mythology, a fairy tale meant to scare children into doing their chores and going to bed on time. According to legend, they were a cult of sorcerers whose supernatural abilities included necromancy, divination and mind control. They were also purported to have their own deadly martial arts style, Venom-of-the-Fang, which was a closely guarded secret.
At various times in history, the state media used the Order as political propaganda, associating it with revolutionary liberal intellectuals, the Democratic Movement and Japanese spy services.
According to Peng’s defector, all the outlandish claims people have made about the Order’s paranormal abilities are true—and then some. He claims they are bound together in purpose by prophesy laid out in an ancient, secret Taoist text, The Scroll of the Wheel, of which the Order possesses the only known copy.
Though the defector had never seen the scroll himself, he’d heard his superiors discussing it and had pieced together enough to know that it told of a war between light and darkness and a potential end of the world as we know it. There was also a certain location described in the scroll, a hill that was once a temple, or a temple disguised as a hill (his description of it was vague and muddled) that the Order had been seeking for nearly a millennium.
At first, everyone had believed it was in China, but now the Order’s leaders were convinced it was somewhere in North America. This hill (or temple) was, according to the scroll, a nexus of great heavenly and earthly metaphysical importance where a profound alchemical event was destined to take place. The primary goal of the Order was to find its location. What was to happen next, the man either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell Peng.
He was frightened of the Order and repeated often that he was risking his life by talking. He advised Peng to be careful, and frequently set their meetings in remote areas under the cover of darkness.
As terrified as the defector was that the Order would find him, he seemed to be even more frightened of what they would do when they found the mysterious temple. His purpose in contacting the journalist through Peng was to secure a publisher for a book he’d written that he claimed would expose the real purpose of the Order and its connections within the upper echelons of the Chinese government. The revelations it contained, he claimed, had the potential to change the world on a spiritual level, and to avert what he called, “the impending desolation of humanity.”
Unfortunately, on the day Peng was supposed to meet with the mysterious defector and pick up the manuscript, he arrived at the assigned meeting place, a hotel room in Hong Kong, and found that firefighters had cordoned off the hallway. Using his press credentials, he got inside and learned someone had set a fire in the room and burned its contents. All that was left were ashes and the charred, unidentifiable remains of a man. The manuscript, Peng guessed, was burned as well.
Four months later, Peng died of a heart attack at the tragically young age of thirty-six. Even in my grief, I remembered the strange stories he’d told me about the Order and I had to wonder if they had found him and killed him, too. I’ll probably never know for sure, and even if I did I wouldn�
��t be able to prove it.
Still, I can’t help but wonder what was in that lost manuscript, and what effect the Order of the Black Snake might one day have on the destiny of humankind.
Kate’s eyes were wide as she handed the printout back to Zhai.
“So those men in the hats—you think they belong to this Black Order?”
Zhai shrugged. “That’s what my stepmother said. I don’t know much about her past, only that she knew a lot of people back in Hong Kong. It’s possible she knows more than she’s saying.”
Kate glanced at Zhai’s hands, then back to his face. “Well, it certainly seems like some sort of sorcery, doesn’t it? There was a time I never would have believed in such things but . . . that was before I came to Middleburg.”
“So you feel it too?” he asked. “Things in this town are just weird?”
“Yes, I do feel it,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry to lay all this on you. I just don’t know who I can trust, or who would understand, and you’re . . . you’re easy to talk to.” He smiled, feeling suddenly, deliciously lightheaded. He couldn’t believe he was finally sitting here at last, talking to her, being with her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Well, I dare say you’re easy to listen to,” Kate returned warmly, answering his smile with her own, and the touch of a blush on her face. “But I think we should get those marks off your hands.”
“Soap and water doesn’t work—I tried it,” Zhai said absently. “Anyway, I’ve got to head out.” He took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the time. Six-thirty exactly. “The football game starts in a few minutes and I promised my friends I’d go. Maybe, uh . . . would you like to come along?”
“Well,” Kate said brightly. “I thought you’d never ask! It would be my pleasure, indeed.”
With a clatter, she gathered up their empty glasses, put them into her little dish tub and grabbed her shawl from a hook on the wall. As Zhai watched her, he marveled once again at how different she was from every other girl he’d ever met. Of course, she wasn’t from Middleburg, but the difference was much deeper than that. Even her clothes were different—and although faded or well mended, they were spotless. The way she looked, spoke, thought, and acted was just so wonderfully—different. And for perhaps the hundredth time, he said a silent prayer of thanks that she’d come into his life.
A look of shock registered on Kate’s face as she sank into the luxurious Nappa leather seat in the rear of the Maybach.
Zhai laughed. “I know. It’s comfortable, right?”
“Why—only the softest thing I’ve ever sat on in all my life! It’s . . . it’s . . .” she scrunched down in the seat, wiggling her behind and sighing happily as the driver headed down the dirt road leading to the main street. “It’s the closest thing I’ve found to heaven on earth,” she finished.
“Hey, Bob. The football field, please,” Zhai instructed, and then he raised the partition between him and Kate and his driver. As they went, Kate gazed out the window at the last departing rays of sunshine slanting through the forest and glittering off the snow.
“What a beautiful evening!” she exclaimed.
“Look up,” Zhai said, and he touched a button on the car’s center console. As he did, the glass ceiling above, opaque and black, suddenly became clear, revealing the first few timid stars, beginning to peek out through the deep blue of dusk.
Kate gasped. “It’s like magic!” she said.
“That’s what the salesman told my father, anyway. It is pretty cool, I guess. We have TVs, too.”
Kate stared at him blankly.
“Right here,” he said, pointing to the black screens built into the partition in front of them.” She still looked confused, and Zhai laughed. “Haven’t you ever seen a television?” he joked.
“Well, of course I have!” she exclaimed. “Through people’s windows, and some of the wee ones on display at the Lotus Pharmacy. I even have one—I just don’t know how to get the moving pictures to come on it.”
It was incomprehensible to him that she’d never enjoyed the wonders of the SyFy Channel, MTV, endless re-runs of Two and a Half Men, and news and weather reports at the touch of a finger. It was also intriguing and refreshing. Where had she been, never to have watched TV?
“Would you like to watch now?” he asked, delighted he could show her.
“Oh, aye—I would indeed.” She looked eagerly at the screen.
Zhai picked the little remote from its place in the center console and turned it on. It was a cop show, with some young detective chasing a perp down a beach in Hawaii while they exchanged gunfire.
Kate stared at the screen, wide-eyed, then reached forward and tentatively touched the glass just as the camera angle cut to a wide shot of Waikiki beach.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered. “And so real.” She watched for a moment and then asked, “Do you think you could get my little TV to work?”
“I’m sure I can,” he answered, adding silently. I’ll buy you a new one, and a generator to run it on, too. And get you wired into cable or satellite.
But how, he wondered, could an amazing, intelligent girl like Kate never have been exposed to television? Even if she came all the way from Ireland, she would know about TV, unless she’d grown up in a convent or something. Before he could ask her about it, the car slowed to a halt in the parking lot of Middleburg High.
“We’re the Phoenixes, we rise from flame! We’re the Phoenixes—remember our name! We’re the Phoenixes, yeah, yeah! We’re the Phoenixes! Woooo!”
Maggie did a toe-touch and shook her pom-poms in the air, but it was only habit. No real sense of school spirit drove her actions. With everything else going on in her life, it was almost impossible to concentrate on the normal stuff like cheerleading and schoolwork. Slowly she’d started getting used to the strange things she was seeing—the auras around some people and the weird, inhuman forms others took, that no one else seemed to see. But after a while, it all gave her a sort of mind overload, kind of like the brain freeze you got when you chugged a Slurpee. Several times, she’d consulted Lily Rose’s Good Book hoping to find a way to shut it off, but no new writing appeared. Nothing since Vision not of light . . . Eyes not required for sight . . . Close them, and see right.
Now, it seemed even the football game would be ruined. Usually, she thrilled at the roar of the crowd, the feeling of all those eyes on her as she did her little dances and toe-touches and flips. She loved the smell of the grass, the plastic snap as players’ helmets clashed together, the electric drone of the PA system as the announcer recapped the last play. But not today. Lisa Marie was next to Maggie and every time she moved, her thick pink aura bobbed up and down uncertainly, which Maggie found annoying, and there was a host of dark, semi-formless figures gathering between the woods and the chain-link fence on one end of the field. They seemed to Maggie like snooping, ill-tempered ghosts.
The crowd hushed as the players lined up on the field for kickoff. Everyone stomped on the bleachers and yelled as the opposing team’s kicker got ready to start the game. He ran forward, and as he booted the ball, the crowd erupted into applause. The cheering got even louder when Bran Goheen broke a tackle and ran the kick all the way back to the fifty-yard line.
“Woo-hoo! Go, Bran!” Lisa Marie shouted, her voice shrilly and grating. She’d had a crush on Bran for as long as Maggie could remember—almost as long as Bran had had a crush on Aimee Banfield.
The PA squealed to life. “Bran Goheen on the return. And taking the field for the Phoenixes, starting quarterback Rick Banfield.”
Maggie’s pom-poms dropped to her sides.
“Wasn’t Michael going to start?” Lisa Marie asked, her nose all crinkled up as if it were the mystery of the decade. “I thought Rick’s arm was broken.”
It is broken, Maggie thought. Everyone knew it. She’d noticed at lunch that he wasn’t wearing his sling but assumed he was just being macho.
“Well, how did it heal?” Lisa Marie persisted. “It’s only been a week!”
Maggie was looking out at the field, staring at Rick as he lined up to take the snap. She knew it was him in that familiar Number 13 jersey with BANFIELD on the back. Even the way he swaggered out of the huddle was one-hundred-percent Rick.
He took the snap, dropped back three steps, and launched a long pass up the center of the field, right into Michael Ponder’s chest, and the opposing team took Michael down on about the nineteen-yard-line. Now, the players were lined up in front of Maggie and her squad of cheerleaders. Everyone else was facing the spectators, going through the normal cheer routine, but Maggie ignored them, her eyes glued to the game. She could see the colored aura hovering around each player—except Rick. The only light coming from him was a strange, reddish glow, like a flicker of firelight emanating only from his facemask, where his eyes were. His body seemed unnaturally large and powerful, and it seemed to be pulsating beneath his uniform and pads.
The center snapped the ball again, and this time Rick pitched it to Bran on a sweep. Bran raced to the corner and then up the sideline. There were too many defenders there, so he changed direction, cutting back inside. For a second, it looked like he was going to make it to the end zone and a cheer went up from the crowd, but a safety on the other team caught him at the last moment with a solid hit that knocked the ball loose. The spectators groaned as one of the defensive players scooped it up and returned it, weaving past the stunned Middleburg team in just a few strides. Rick was the only one left to stop him.
The furious yell that came from Rick as he sprinted toward the defender made Maggie shudder. At first it looked like there was no way he would be able to get from the center of the field to the defender who was at the near hash mark, but somehow he did. There was a terrible sound—like cars crashing into each other—as Rick slammed into him. The defender went limp before he even hit the ground—clearly unconscious—and landed in a heap with his arms and legs at odd angles. D’von Cunningham fell on the ball, and the Middleburg fans roared their approval.
GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Page 22
