by Brandt Legg
“But we only have one-half of the globe. Don’t you think we need both casings?” Gale asked.
“We’ve got Josh’s photos of the other half. Anyway, I’m almost certain it’s related to the sequence we see when the Eysen starts up . . . the Cosega Sequence.”
“It could take a lifetime to decode something like that.”
“Depending how long we can stay alive.”
Chapter 22
Sean jogged three blocks from the bus station to the beach, took off his shoes and socks, then walked in the surf for the final forty-three blocks of his journey home. Tourists still lingered on the beach, but many had moved into the seafood joints along the boardwalk.
It had been a few weeks since his parents had seen him and they welcomed the surprise. The Stadlers were a close-knit family and, as soon as his mother saw his face, she knew something was wrong. Sean looked awful, dark circles under his eyes. They followed him out onto the deck overlooking the ocean. During the bus ride he’d debated where to tell them, not wanting to ruin forever their view of the Atlantic, but finally deciding that the ocean might help comfort them.
He started at the beginning of the story, as he knew it; there was no other way. Hours passed; the sky went turquoise and crimson as night came. The moon found itself on the black ocean. Tears mixed with sadness and rage. More hours went by, silence, and whispers. A pink band grew on the horizon where the ocean caressed the sky; orange and gold as the sun rose from the sea. Only then did they sleep.
While the storm raged through the mountains of North Carolina, Rip worked. He wrote notes about the Eysen, trying to document all the images it had displayed and in what order, made measurements of the three artifacts, and typed theories and questions on his laptop. Finally, Gale coaxed him out of his den. They sat in front of the living room’s picture window overlooking the pond and back lawn, watching lightning split the silver rain. They talked about the Eysen.
“Do you know there is a story that when the American Indians first saw Columbus in his ships approaching them, they could not see the ships?” Gale asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“All they saw were strange waves on the horizon; they had never seen a ship. So, they could not see it. After a while, a shaman trained himself to see the ships and he explained to the rest of the Indians that what they were looking at were not waves, and he described the ships to them. Then, they all saw the ships.”
“I’ve never heard that before.”
“Makes me wonder what other images were in the Eysen that we couldn’t see. I mean, all we saw were things that were familiar to us. Maybe pictures of things we can’t comprehend flashed but we couldn’t see them.”
Rip already had a headache and this wasn’t helping. He asked her if they could just sit quietly for a while. Soon, the rain stopped, the lightning moved into the distance, and the sun found a few holes to shine through as it sank into the trees.
They fell asleep in the living room. Rip woke a short while later, with a grinding headache. He questioned every action they had taken since finding the Eysen; the possibility that he’d made nothing but mistakes troubled him. Gale sat up and put her hands on his shoulders. She stared into his eyes; the blue engulfed him. “Meditate,” she whispered.
“I don’t know how,” he said, embarrassed, not because he didn’t know how, but because he didn’t want to disappoint her. She had him move to the floor, crossed her legs, and pointed so that he would do likewise.
“Take a deep breath.” He did and his eyes closed. “Keep your eyes open, Rip. Look into my eyes.” His back felt warm, as if a soft heated blanket was draped around him. “Feel yourself breathe in slowly . . . now feel yourself breathe out slowly.”
Already, the controlled breathing soothed him.
“From your stomach, low,” she said. “Bring the breaths from deep within.”
Josh and the Eysen swirled in his thoughts, the FBI and helicopters, back to Josh. His breathing quickened.
“Rip, just feel your breaths. Nothing else matters.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Look into my eyes, take my hands.” She moved her hands closer to him; their knees were touching as they sat cross-legged, facing each other. He reached up and put his hands in hers.
“Focus on my pupils and try not to see anything past the irises.” Her voice sounded like a lullaby. The blue captured him again – a Caribbean lagoon reflecting sunlight off white sand and coral. He heard his breaths, which were suddenly as loud as if that were the only sound there was. The tension in his body melted. The out-breaths were longer than he ever knew possible; they carried off his fears.
Chapter 23
Friday July 14th
Just after ten a.m., Larsen stopped at the Sand Bar Convenience-and-Souvenir shop about a mile from his house at Cape San Blas, Florida. He stared out at the ocean before he went in; it was good to be home. He picked up some basics and planned to sleep on the beach for the rest of the day. The salt air and gulf breeze peeled back layers of stress and kept him in a fog of denial. Then, while retrieving his held-mail, he found himself chatting about local gossip with the part-time postmaster, as if all the terrible things hadn’t happened. Larsen drove the final eight blocks to his driveway.
As he walked through the front door, he almost tripped over a lawn chair with a note taped on it. Still standing in the front hall, he looked around nervously, then grabbed the note; reading it twice before shoving it in his pocket. Larsen tensed as he walked to his bedroom and stared, only for an instant, at the two men tied and gagged on his bed. One appeared dead; the other looked straight at him and tried to yell through the duct tape on his mouth. Larsen quickly closed the door and dashed out the back. Once on the deck, he surveyed the scene – a few dozen sunbathers scattered up and down the beach, a group of teenagers wading a pair of mini-cat sailboats past the surf, and several couples walking the shoreline. Larsen’s house sat on stilts and afforded a long view; the only danger appeared to be in his bedroom. He moved slowly down the steps to the dunes between him and the beach, looking suspiciously at everyone. He was terrified.
The note told him that one of the bound men had been sent to arrest him, the other to kill him. It finished with a clear warning: “If you want to remain alive and free, leave the house immediately. Go to the pier and a man in a green ball cap will find you and get you to safety.” Larsen assumed the unsigned note had been left by one of Booker’s people, but wondered, is it safe to assume anything?
Taking off his shoes and socks, he tried to look natural; it was roughly twenty-six blocks to the pier and every step of the way he considered running in the opposite direction. He wanted out of the madness his life had become.
Larsen thought back to when Josh had visited the previous summer, the two of them went shark fishing at midnight off the end of the pier. They didn’t catch anything, but a few of the old-timers around them had had better luck. Larsen didn’t care; it was more about the moon and stars caressing the ocean in that pale light that exists only on a hot summer night in Florida. They stayed out all night, sipping cold beer and listening to fishing stories in various southern accents, then slept most of the next day on the beach.
Half way to the pier, he moved slowly away from the breaking waves and slipped into the white dunes, ignoring a sign promising all kinds of terrible fines and punishments if he walked on them. The wind-created dunes act as a buffer to protect coastal lands from salt intrusion and erosion. He needed a concealed place to think, and he found a low spot ringed with ten- to twenty-foot-high dunes topped with sea oats.
Since they found the Eysen, Larsen had known they were in way over their heads.
In Erie, Barbeau studied maps of Virginia and Pennsylvania, not looking for anything in particular, just trying to get a feel for how his targets had slipped away. Barbeau loved maps, and he pulled them out whenever he was stressed or upset. He could just as easily be looking at one of Norway or Prague. Something
in the lines, how they defined borders, rivers, and roads was appealing, orderly; he could see so much from above, and maps gave him control.
He stared at the contours of the Jefferson National Forest, approximately 700,000 acres, but it abutted the George Washington National Forest, which added another million acres. The mountains were dense with pines, steep cliffs, and tumbling waterfalls. “Hell, they could still be up in those mountains,” he yelled, as Hall entered the room.
Hall looked at the conference table covered with maps and also wondered how the fugitives had disappeared. “Why would they still be there and what about the Jeep tracks near Indian Rocks?” As soon as he mentioned the Jeep, he regretted it and quickly tried to change the subject. “Let’s get some people back in the mountains if you think Gaines might still be around.”
“Damn Sean Stadler!” Barbeau shouted. “We got the Jeep! We know the tire tracks match, but even though we had his dead brother’s house surrounded; this dumb college kid just walked away. Hell, Gaines is probably having a big party right now; it could be in the lobby of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, and we still couldn’t find him.” He slapped his hand on the table.
Hall thought of volunteering to hike the Appalachian Trail; willing to search for them himself, just to get away from Barbeau. “You said yourself they’ll make a mistake, it’s just a matter of time. We’ll get them.”
Larsen didn’t know what to do; it might be a trap. Surely Booker wasn’t crazy enough to have people assault Federal agents. While Larsen contemplated his next move, a man walking the beach, listening to what appeared to be an MP3 player, began moving toward Larsen’s house, entering it surreptitiously. A few minutes later, the man having untied his fellow agent, they exited the house, leaving the other man tied up for later questioning.
Those two joined two other FBI agents already on the beach, all of them dressed as tourists. They were moving quickly in all directions. Larsen had no clue.
A stocky woman, standing near a neighboring house, watched the feds come down the stairs and assumed Larsen must already be on the beach. She crushed her cigarette out in the sand; then scoured the beach, angry that she had missed him. Even in their shorts and colorful shirts, the FBI guys stuck out on the expansive beach. Watching them fan out, she thought, “They don’t have any idea where he is, but neither do I.” She’d memorized Larsen’s face, but even without the photo, a guy standing six-foot-seven should be easy enough to spot on an open strip of sand. A pretty college girl, playing guitar caught her eye, and not far from her she saw footprints leading into the dunes. Most folks respected the dunes, but maybe a scared man hadn’t. She followed them.
Larsen moved toward the pier, weaving through dunes, sweating, while debating each step. Twice cheating death in forty-eight hours left him edgy. Unbeknownst to him, someone was just thirty yards behind him and closing.
At the same time, the two feds heading toward the pier caught the attention of Finn Lambert, Booker’s man in the green ball cap, who was waiting for Larsen. A former agent himself, Lambert spotted them right off. Instead of staying, he began walking to his car parked on a dirt side street leading to the pier.
The stocky woman caught up to Larsen in the dunes and drew her weapon. “Larsen Fretwell- stop where you are.” She shouted the order from less than ten feet away.
Chapter 24
Rip awoke at dawn and, while Gale slept, he sat on the porch reflecting on the extraordinary week. He was about to get the Eysen when a cardinal interrupted his solitude, emerging from a nearby evergreen, and flying close. Its bright red coloring told him it was a male and he remembered a similar bird from childhood.
He’d been eight years old, playing near the stream not far from the house, when a cardinal had landed and looked directly at him. Back then he thought blue jays and cardinals were brothers and sisters. He fell back through memories to a day, three decades earlier, when as a young boy, he’d whispered to a cardinal, and the path of his life forever altered.
”Pretty bird, pretty bird,” he’d said. The cardinal moved its head in a circle. “Shh-oo-wee, shh-oo-wee,” he hushed, just like Topper had taught him. The bird came closer and young Rip reached for it. Amazingly the cardinal flew and flapped in front of his face, like a humming bird, then turned and glided toward the trees. Rip had followed as it led him into the woods. He pursued it farther into the forest than his uncle allowed; past the old tree fort, around the big rock outcropping, and across the ravine. All the while, the bird stayed close, just out of reach. He slowed in the meadow, having never been beyond it. The bird teased in the wildflowers. The perfumed breeze of late spring in the mountains pushed him on as the bird fluttered toward the trees.
Young Rip followed and was soon lost. Just as he realized he didn’t know the way home, the cardinal landed on a high, stone, wall.
“It’s a castle!” he said out loud.
Even to a young boy, the tall structure seemed out of place, hidden by the trees, somehow majestic in its ruin. He went through the doorway and inspected his royal fortress. Imagining himself to be a prince, commanding armies of knights, protecting the town outside his palace, he climbed the walls, and surveyed his kingdom. The bird landed on a corner, and perched there while Rip continued to explore. The four aging roofless walls towered around the little boy. He wondered who built it, and why. How long had it been there?
Sunlight penetrated the treetops, sending a ballet of shimmering shadows and dappled light. He noticed a strange chiseled name on a smooth section of stone, “Clastier.” That, he decided, would be the name of his kingdom and he would be forever known as Prince Ripley of Clastier.
Soon Rip grew tired and hungry. He looked around but couldn’t figure out which direction to go. The scared eight-year-old, too frightened to cry, was alone in the woods. Without the bird, everything seemed different, but he remembered that the sun was in his eyes for most of the journey to Clastier Castle. So he walked with the sun at his back and eventually reached the ravine, the big rock outcropping, and, once he saw the old fort, he started to laugh. Rip’s first big adventure planted the seeds for all that came after.
Gale awoke thinking about the Eysen and let a hot shower wash away some of the stress, then found Rip on the porch.
“See that cardinal?” he asked her.
“Beautiful. My favorite bird,” she said.
“Really? It’s because of a cardinal just like that one that I became an archaeologist.”
“Then we’re in this mess because of a bird. Maybe they’re not my favorite anymore.”
He proceeded to tell her the story of Clastier Castle.
“Take me there.”
“We need to study the Eysen.”
“Bring it. I’ve got almond scones and I’ll grab a thermos of hot tea.” She smiled.
“Tempting.”
“Come on Rip, we need to breathe. I’ll throw in some apples.” But it was her twinkling eyes that made him change his mind.
While walking through the forest, their conversation centered mostly on what they were going to do next. Although they felt safe in Asheville, staying anywhere too long was not wise. They needed time to study, time to think, but with the forces aligned against them; Rip knew there was perhaps only one person powerful enough to ensure their escape and provide a place to hide – Booker.
“Wow,” Gale said, as they reached the castle. “I can’t imagine discovering this place as a kid. No wonder you became an archaeologist.”
“It’s been thirty years since that day with the cardinal . . . I’ve changed a lot since then, yet this place has stayed the same,” Rip said.
“You like that, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I love that about archaeology. The world keeps going after someone dies, even an entire civilization can end and the world keeps moving ahead – changing. Yet, all these clues are left behind – unchanged.”
“Like windows into the past.”
“Exactly.”
“Did you come back h
ere a lot after that first visit?”
“I’ll say. This old castle became the centerpiece of my childhood summers.”
“It’s magnificent.”
“You wouldn’t know it now, but I cleaned and cleared it. Man, I investigated every possible nook, made up endless stories about its origin and purpose.”
Rip silently recalled that after Clastier Castle, every old building he encountered stirred his interest. But Clastier cemented Rip’s future for another reason; one hot day during the summer he was sixteen. Ever since that particular day, he’d been searching- and fearing- the Catholic Church.
Gale wandered around the perimeter, running her fingers along the walls of beige, gray, and white stones. The structure must have been eighty feet long and half as wide. The odd part about the ruin was that the walls went up in varying heights, some parts as high as nine feet; there were no other stones around the area. “Where are all the missing stones?” Gale asked.
“Often when a building goes down, the stones are quarried for another structure.”
“Your uncle’s house?”
He nodded and followed her through the main doorway, now covered in grass and underbrush.
“It looks like it might have been a big church or a giant warehouse,” Gale said.
“As a kid, to me it was a castle, but you’re right, it was a church,” Rip said, not wanting to get into what he had learned during the intervening years. Two mature oak trees occupied the better part of the interior and several smaller varieties were attempting to join the congregation.
“It looks like there may have been a fire,” Gale said, pointing at the blackened higher stones.
“The building probably dates to around 1750 or so,” Rip said, ignoring her guess.
“Enough of that,” Gale said, sitting on a window ledge. “Will you meditate with me again?”
