by Phil Lollar
Young Whit and the Shroud of Secrecy
© 2019 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved.
A Focus on the Family book published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.
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Editor: Larry Weeden
Cover design by Josh Lewis
Cover illustration by Sergio Cariello
Interior illustrations by Michael Harrigan
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ISBN: 978-1-58997-585-9
ISBN 978-1-68428-173-2 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-68428-174-9 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-68428-172-5 (Apple)
Build: 2019-03-20 11:00:20 EPUB 3.0
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Chapter One
John Avery Whittaker stood perched on the rooftop of the oversize shed in his backyard, his breath held in a mix of fear and eager anticipation. From where he stood, the distance to the ground must have been at least twenty feet.
Surely that will be enough to achieve lift, he thought.
His arms wagged up and down, but the drag from the wings he had fashioned out of a mixture of cloth, leaves, and feathers did little to elevate him. Instead, it made his arms feel heavy and tired.
Not a good sign.
His prior attempt with papier-mâché wings failed before it ever began. His stepmother, Fiona, made him abort his flight out of a fair concern that he would break his neck in the attempt. He realized she was right. Those wings were far too heavy. Almost as heavy as his arms felt at this very moment.
But these wings, which had been patterned roughly after Leonardo da Vinci’s “ornithopter” flying machine, had enough resistance to displace a good chunk of air—surely enough to levitate a lean ten-year-old boy. And they seemed light enough to somewhat oppose the laws of gravity. At the least, he should land softly enough to avoid a trip to the hospital. That was the hope, anyway.
Johnny stood on the roof’s edge, wondering whether this was how young Icarus felt. Johnny had read the Greek myth that detailed Daedalus and his son Icarus’s attempt to escape imprisonment by Cretan King Minos, using wings fashioned of feathers held together by wax. Johnny’s smile disappeared when he recalled that their attempt failed when Icarus flew too close to the sun. The wax melted, his wings fell apart, and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.
Undeterred, Johnny girded his courage, flapped his arms fervently, and, setting fear aside—in a leap of faith encouraged by the science of ornithology—jumped mightily into the air.
As his body thrust inches above the rooftop, he imagined himself besting the glorious flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright, the pioneers of aviation.
When he finally awoke from his concussive state to see his father hovering over him, he realized that the Wright brothers’ record had surely survived . . . just as he somehow had done.
“John, if you live to be fifteen, it’ll be a miracle,” his father said.
As Johnny saw his father loom over him, he realized two very important things. The first was that he wanted every kid to have the opportunity to feel the way he felt when he jumped off that ledge. The thrill of that moment, when he experienced the effortless exploits of the simplest baby birds born every day, was unimaginable.
The second was that he wanted every kid to have that experience . . . without jumping. As thrilling as the jump had been, it could never surpass the pain of the crash landing.
But as Johnny lay there gasping for breath, he already knew that both joy and pain would most likely be his constant companions through life.
There has to be a way to cheat pain, he thought. If only we could have the same thrill inside our imagination.
Chapter Two
Roads are remarkable things. Each curve and turn may present a new view, an unexpected adventure, or an unforeseen challenge. So when John Avery Whittaker walked down the country road of Newbury County, North Carolina, just outside his hometown of Provenance, he wondered what the next bend would hold.
The last few weeks had certainly shaken Johnny’s world. He and his friend Emmy Capello had solved a seventy-year-old mystery involving his great-granduncle; the great-grandfather of his nemesis, Wilson Knox; the grandfather of the school janitor, Benjamin Huck; a mysterious boy Johnny still hadn’t met; and a treasure of Confederate gold.
Solving the mystery had made Johnny and Emmy famous around Provenance and pretty well-known throughout the county and state, too. It seemed they couldn’t go anywhere in town without someone pointing at them, slapping them on the back, or shaking their hand. And Johnny and his family had only been living in the town for a little more than two months!
The excitement seemed to be wearing down finally, and Johnny was grateful for that. He had lots of other, more important things on his mind.
He trekked along the dusty, tree-lined lane with his dog, McDuff, a cairn terrier with a penchant for not listening. Since the day they met, when Johnny accidentally stabbed him with a sword, the dog had decided to give the boy a little mischief of his own.
The sun alternately peeked through and hid behind clouds that skidded across the October sky. Shafts of light warmed for a moment before the cool fall air reminded him that summer was a thing of the past, and the future.
McDuff sniffed every interesting log, bush, and plant, seemingly gathering some vital piece of information from each. Atop the dog’s head sat a makeshift deerstalker cap like the one Sherlock Holmes wore. Johnny tore through mystery novels, and Holmes was his favorite detective of the bunch. He figured that since McDuff always sniffed about for clues, he should be garbed like a detective.
But McDuff hated having the cap on his head. The first time Johnny got it on him, the dog twisted and turned every way he could to get it off, like a wild horse bucking its rider. But eventually he succumbed to the wishes of his master. At least he didn’t have to tote the calabash pipe that Holmes smoked. Johnny gave up on that when the ornery dog chewed it in half.
Johnny was on his own investigation. He’d been mulling over what to make of the conversation he’d overheard between his father, Harold, a professor at Duke University, and Harold’s colleague, Professor Karl Mangle, a few days prior. Mangle had mentioned what surely was the ancient journal Joh
nny had found in the old, wooden trunk he’d inherited from his grandfather, Jackson McClintock.
Mangle said he’d been searching for the journal and that it contained information about a special cloth that had power to heal and give long life. Johnny had a strong feeling that Mangle was after the cloth Johnny had wrapped around McDuff after he’d unintentionally stabbed him in the forest while practicing to be one of the Three Musketeers. After all, the pup had seemed to be dying. But when Johnny had returned from getting medical supplies, he’d found the dog hadn’t died.
He’d been completely healed.
The cloth, neatly folded on the ground beside the pup, hadn’t had a spot on it. And that cloth had come from the same place as the journal: the trunk.
Johnny had taken McDuff home and asked for permission to keep him. For Johnny’s stepsister, Charlie (their nickname for Charlotte), it was love at first sight. They ran and jumped and tumbled and wrestled, McDuff smothering the girl with slobbery dog kisses and Charlie nuzzling into the scruff of the pup’s neck and hugging him so tightly his eyes bulged. Fiona also took to the pup. “It’ll be good to have a guard dog about the place,” she said.
“I don’t know about that,” Johnny replied. “From what I can tell, he’s too much of a coward. It’s more likely we’d be protecting him instead.”
Johnny turned to his father. Here was where the whole thing would likely hit a wall. His father never cared much for dogs. What kind of person doesn’t like a dog? Johnny thought. He chalked it up to a character deficiency.
Harold said nothing at first. But between Fiona cocking her head and smiling coyly at him, and Charlie’s nonstop stream of begging and pleading—“Please Daddy? He’s so cute! We need him and he needs us! Please-please-pleasepleasepleasepleeeeeeease!”—Harold’s resolve melted. He sighed deeply, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth. “Fine,” he said.
Johnny’s father had no difficulty saying no to anyone—except Fiona or Charlotte. They seemed to know how to get him to agree to anything. He turned to Johnny. “But he’s your responsibility, young man. Not mine, not your mother’s, not your sister’s. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” He understood completely. One wrong move and the dog would be gone.
Normally Johnny might have balked at such a constraint. After all, Charlie clearly loved McDuff, too, so it would only be fair for her to share some of the responsibility of caring for him. But aside from keeping McDuff, Johnny had an ulterior motive for not pushing back at his father’s edict—a motive that also had to do with the journal.
At dinner two nights before, Johnny had felt his father staring at him so intently that he wondered whether Harold had burrowed into his mind and was reading his every thought. As they finished dessert and Fiona took Charlie upstairs to get ready for bed, Harold had said, as casually as he could, “I’ve discovered the meaning of those foreign words your friend Emmy recently asked about. Would you like me to tell her, or would you like to deliver the message to her yourself?”
Johnny’s heart had done a flip, but he had remained as casual as he could. “Oh, yeah! I forgot about that!” he’d said. “I can do it, if you want.”
Harold’s face had remained impassive, but his eyes had bored into Johnny’s. He then reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded slip of paper, and slid it across the table. Johnny picked it up and put it in his pocket. “I’ll give it to her on the way to school tomorrow.”
“Don’t you want to know what it says?”
Johnny shrugged. “Emmy will tell me if she wants me to know.” It wasn’t exactly a lie—since he had given the words to Emmy in the first place, she would definitely want him to know. Still, he had felt bad about skirting the issue like this, but then he recalled that his father had also lied to Mangle about where the words came from.
On the way to school the next morning, Johnny gave Emmy the paper with the transcription. “So this one,” he said, pointing to neamhnaid fior pris, “means ‘pearl of great price,’ and this one—” he pointed to beatha fhada—“means ‘long life.’”
Emmy gave him a sideways glance. “I can read, y’know.”
“Old Scots Gaelic?” Johnny smirked.
“That’s what that is?” She shrugged, refolded the paper, and put it in her pocket. “Okay, good to know in case I ever go to Scotland.”
“It’s important to know right here in Provenance,” Johnny corrected.
“Why?”
“Because my father might ask you about them.”
She stopped, concerned. “You think he will?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he asked you whether I put you up to giving them to him in the first place.”
“Which you did.”
“Right, but he doesn’t know that.” Johnny started walking again, and Emmy followed.
“Sounds like you think he does.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s wishful thinking. I’d prefer to be able to talk to my dad without hiding stuff, but you’ve seen how we are. We just don’t get along that well. Not since my mother died.”
Emmy stopped again. “Wait—Fiona’s not your mom?”
Johnny shook his head. “Stepmom. My birth mom died a few years ago.”
Empathy emanated from Emmy’s face. “I’m so sorry. That must have been really hard.”
“We’re in a great depression. Everything’s hard.”
They trudged the rest of the way to school in silence.
Life had certainly been a mix of challenges and ambiguity, Johnny thought. So many things had gone upside-down in his young life. First his mother died, and soon after, his Grandpa Jackson. After that his father remarried, and they all moved, and everything he loved was gone or being replaced.
The most curious thing of all—the mystery that kept running through Johnny’s mind these last few days—was that Grandpa Jackson wrote Johnny’s name as the final entry in the journal. Why? What reason could there be to write his name there? Was it just to designate who was to receive the journal next, or was it something more? And since the journal had been given to him, what was he supposed to do with it, especially since he only knew a smattering of Latin and couldn’t read old Scots Gaelic, either—or any of the other languages in the journal, for that matter?
Johnny found that the best way to work through one problem was to mull it over while you worked on another. Either his brain enjoyed the extra activity, or solutions simply came easier when he wasn’t overthinking the issue. Either way, he usually seemed to find a solution better if he let it stew in the sauce of activity. So the next day, which was Saturday, he happily rounded up all the items he needed to create his All Hallows’ Eve costume.
His parents didn’t allow the celebration of Halloween—they said the holiday glamorized evil spirits and witches—but his father did allow them to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day. At first Johnny intended to dress up as d’Artagnan from The Three Musketeers, but since that’s how McDuff got stabbed, he quickly went off the idea. And since All Saints’ Day commemorated the saints and martyrs of the church, he thought his stepmother would be pleased if he chose to dress up as the biblical figure he knew the most about: Moses.
And now, as he walked down the road on a glorious fall Saturday with McDuff scampering about, Johnny was about to create his costume. He was a half mile outside of town, carrying the supplies he believed would create a paste that, when combined, would make him glow like Moses’ when he descended Mount Sinai after receiving the Ten Commandments. In addition to a few items he found in the forest, like some mushrooms and fungi he had observed glowing in the dark, the clerk at the town drugstore had given him supervised access to anything deemed safe that he needed from its lab supplies—one of the perks of his newfound celebrity status.
Johnny came to the end of the road, then took the short trail leading to what had recently become his favorite spot: a small clearing beside the Enoch River. It nestled up to a rocky
mound where a sort of grotto provided a perfect campfire enclosure—and a great place to think and work.
When he arrived, he saw a few empty bean and soup cans littering the ground. Within the trees, about ten yards off, he noticed that several things had changed. Rocks were piled in a heap. A tree that had fallen was moved from where it had lain and was now propped over a hole—it appeared as if someone had been digging. Carved into the side of the tree facing the path were symbols, one that looked like two diamonds, the other like the number 8 divided in half.
Johnny wondered what the symbols meant. He hadn’t seen them the last time he came. He frowned, disappointed that someone else had found “his spot.” Whoever it was must have camped there.
He quickly built a small fire and began to prepare his glow concoction in a cast-iron pot he had smuggled from the house. He had decided it would be much better to cook the experiment outside. Fiona didn’t appreciate it when he created a mess in her kitchen, especially when that mess was accompanied by the odors his experiments usually brought with them. Besides, she always thought his concoctions would blow up. It had only happened that one time, and that was last year, back in their house in Charlotte—and how could he have known that ethylene glycol had a flash point of 111°C?
He ground up the various components, adding them one by one into the pot. The concoction soon became a soupy mix, and a greenish tint emerged, which brought a smile—and the hint of a radiant glow—to Johnny’s face.
Both vanished, however, when McDuff bolted after a squirrel scouring nearby for food. The dog’s barks came in rapid succession, twenty or more in five seconds. He sped along, nipping at the squirrel’s flailing, bushy tail—jumping over logs, through dead branches, and around moss-covered boulders in hot pursuit.
“McDuff! Get back here!” Johnny commanded. But McDuff either couldn’t hear him or chose not to. Johnny took off after the dog, irritated by his mutinous behavior. Within seconds, Johnny found himself near the river’s edge, where he slipped on a loose rock and went down hard. He only fell into a few inches of water, but the splash was enough to fairly drench his clothes. He jumped up and renewed his chase, though with a bit more care for where he stepped.
