God Stones: Books 1 - 3

by Otto Schafer

  Lenny shrugged Garrett off and took an unsteady step towards Mr. B. “Why did Garrett call you that? Why did he call you a Keeper of the Light?”

  “Because you see, Garrett is right, Lenny. I am a Keeper of the Light, just as you are.”

  Lenny stepped back, confused.

  Garrett looked at Lenny. “What? What does he mean, Lenny?” Garrett asked uncertainly.

  “Don’t look at me like that! I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

  “Come, sit down,” Mr. B said, beckoning with his hands. “You have both passed your test. You weren’t testing for a second-degree black belt in a taekwondo academy. No indeed. You were testing for so, so much more. Now, come and sit, and I will make you a promise.”

  Garrett turned back to see a warm smile stretching across Mr. B’s face. His arms were outstretched with his fingers splayed open, as if to show he had nothing to hide. But Garrett knew better. Mr. B had been hiding plenty. “You can make your promise while I am standing right here,” Garrett said, making no effort to hide his anger.

  Garrett glanced over to Lenny, who stood, arms crossed, in a defiant stance that contrasted with his look of utter confusion.

  Mr. B lowered his arms with a defeated sigh. “I understand, you’re confused, you’re sore, you have a lot of questions. Sit down and I’ll try to answer all your questions about the Keepers of the Light and the journal you and your friends have found.”

  Garrett blinked.

  “Ah, yes, Garrett, I know about the journal. I know about everything. I even know about the strange behavior from your family and friends. Sit with me,” he said, patting the mat. “I’ll tell you who you can trust and who you cannot trust. I’ll tell you of the past and of the present. And most important… I’ll tell you of your destiny. But be warned – time is not on our side, and we must begin now.”

  No one spoke for a time as all three just stared at one another.

  “Did I mention time is of the essence?” Mr. B asked.

  Lenny leaned in close to Garrett’s ear, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Garrett, I don’t like this. Something is wrong with him. We should go.”

  Garrett hesitated. He could leave now with Lenny and never come back. Could he really walk away from a chance to understand? Of course, on one hand, it could all be a trick of some kind. On the other, he needed answers – wanted answers. Then Mr. B made his decision for him.

  “Garrett,” Mr. B called. “Don’t you want to know why you’re having the dreams of fire?”

  A chill ran up Garrett’s back as his arms broke out in goose bumps. How could he know? How on God’s earth could he know?

  “Time is fleeting. All your chosen will be here soon, now please come.”

  Garrett frowned. All my chosen? Chosen what?

  “Garrett, are you sure about this?” Lenny asked.

  “No, Lenny, but he knows about my dreams,” Garrett said, approaching Mr. B cautiously, as if approaching a poisonous snake. Keeping his distance and remaining out of reach from the seated Grand Master, Garrett sat down across from him, taking on the same cross-legged position. He glanced back at Lenny with a pleading look.

  Lenny was already off the mat, but hesitantly he stepped back on and took a seat next to Garrett.

  “Good. Now allow me to explain—”

  A frantic pounding erupted from the front door, rattling the blinds and causing both boys to jump.

  40

  Petersburg

  Wednesday April 6th, 10:45 a.m.

  Day One

  Oak Island, Nova Scotia

  Breanne came bursting out of the camper with a backpack containing her laptop slung over her shoulder.

  Paul had just finished loading Edward and Charles into the chopper and was impatiently waiting for his sister. “The chopper is ready – we need to get to the hospital. Did you figure out where we’re going?” Paul asked, taking his sister’s hand and helping her climb aboard the helicopter.

  “Yes, we’re going to Illinois. Petersburg, Illinois,” Breanne said, strapping herself into the copilot’s seat. “Will they be okay?” she asked with concern. She craned her neck, assessing the position of her father and brother, both strapped into the rear seats.

  “They’re secure. Let’s get them to the hospital. I already called ahead to the QEII Health Sciences Centre and they know we’re coming,” he said as he flipped a series of switches on the helicopter’s console.

  “Jesus, what did you tell them?”

  “Only that there’d been an accident, and we were coming in with one unconscious due to unknown injuries and one with a compound fracture,” he said as he turned to look at her. He paused, pressing his lips together in a tight line.

  “What?” she asked.

  “That’s not the hard part, Bre. The hard part will be unloading them and then leaving. I don’t know how we will explain that. They’re going to want to detain us for questioning.”

  She didn’t try to respond with a solution. They would just have to cross that bridge when they got to it. “I booked us a flight to Peoria, Illinois. It leaves from Halifax Stanfield International Airport at 12:00 p.m. We need to hurry.”

  The helicopter lifted off the ground as Paul navigated towards the hospital. “ETA fifteen minutes,” he said.

  Just as Paul hoped, hospital staff were waiting there on the helipad to meet them, stretchers at the ready. The siblings helped the staff unload their father and brother. Breanne began crying as she felt the grave reality of the situation weigh on her. A member of the staff, an orderly, or perhaps she was a nurse, began consoling her. She knew the woman couldn’t possibly understand why she was so upset. She was about to leave her brother, her father – and for what? To chase an imagined boy from a dream because a long-dead knight told her she had to. No, she knew it was much more than that, but it didn’t make leaving them any easier.

  “There now, child, it will be okay,” the kind woman said, wrapping an arm around her. “You’re in the right place now. Come with me. We’ll take care of you.” The woman was so kind and gentle as she attempted to guide Breanne off the helipad.

  “Please can I wait for my brother?” Breanne asked.

  “Of course, dear,” the woman said.

  Breanne watched Paul assist with getting his father and brother loaded onto stretchers. A tall older woman in a nurse’s uniform asked him what happened. She also had a warm, caring smile. A plastic badge hanging from a red lanyard identified the nurse as Doris. Carefully he explained, leaving out the parts about Oak Island, the secret dig, the God Stones, and Apep. “Doris, there’s been a collapse on an archeological dig. The collapse caused the site to flood, and both my father and brother were injured. I set my brother’s leg the best I could to get him out, but my father… he may have been shocked. There was a power source that became submerged in the flood – it must have shorted out through the water.”

  Breanne knew it was important for Paul to get as close to the truth as possible so that her father could get proper care, and an electrical shock seemed as good a way as any to describe the insane event with the God Stones.

  “We will take great care of your family. Now please come with me – I’m sure the doctor will have questions, and you both look just awful. We need to get you checked out,” Doris said, securing the buckles on the stretcher as she motioned for Paul to follow.

  “Yes… of course, let me secure everything here, and I will be right in,” Paul said, turning back to the helicopter.

  Meanwhile, Breanne caught the look from Paul and pulled away from the kind woman consoling her. “I need to grab my backpack,” she said.

  They both boarded the helicopter as her father and brother were wheeled inside. Paul leapt into the pilot’s seat and began readying for takeoff. The kind woman waiting patiently for Breanne was the only staff member still on the helipad.

  Breanne made a show of trying to find her backpack, stalling to give Paul time to get ready.

  “Okay. Sit down, B
re, here we go,” he said, as he fired the ignition.

  Breanne couldn’t hear the woman, but she could read her lips well enough to get the gist of what she was saying.

  “Wait!” the woman screamed, as she ducked instinctively and squatted to the ground. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  The helicopter defied gravity as it broke free from the helipad. Within minutes they would be at the airport, and with any luck boarding a plane to Peoria.

  “They will call the police, Bre,” Paul said.

  “What do we do?”

  “We get to the airport, get on that plane, and we hope to hell they stay confused long enough for us to get out of here,” he said, slipping on a radio headset.

  They landed moments later at Stanfield International Airport. It was already 11:30 a.m. and they still needed to get through security, but with the added perk of Paul being a military pilot they were able to cut through some of the red tape. As Paul hoped, there was no sign that the police were looking for them, at least not at the airport – not yet anyway. Soon they were safely aboard the plane bound for Peoria.

  Once in the air, the siblings were faced with a three-hour flight. Finally, they had some time to think, talk, and allow the reality of the situation to sink in.

  “When we land, I want to call Sarah – she’ll be worried if she doesn’t hear from Daddy.”

  “We’ll need a car,” Paul said.

  “I took care of that too.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “Wow, sis. How did you have time?”

  “I did it before we left, when I was trying to find Petersburg and book our plane. I knew we’d need a car,” she said, giving her brother a shaky smile. She was trying not to cry, but everything was hitting her all at once. She’d left her father and her brother behind. Edward would be fine, but leaving her father at the hospital might have been the hardest thing she ever had to do. The Templar’s words kept playing through her mind: Heed these words, child… You can’t help your father without first helping Garrett.

  Both sat in silence as the jet left the ground, soon humming southward above the clouds. Neither wanted to say what was really on their minds, though both couldn’t help but think of it –of him. But it would do them no good to talk about their father now. There was nothing they could do that they weren’t already doing. They had to find this Garrett kid.

  As the long flight wore on, the silence was broken as the two spoke in quiet whispers of the God Stones, Apep, and the dreams. Once they’d exhausted their recounting of the day’s events, they tried to formulate a plan, knowing any plan they could conjure was thin at best.

  “What will we do when we get to Petersburg?” Paul asked.

  “We have to find Garrett,” she said, confused.

  “I know, Bre, but how? How big is this Petersburg anyway?”

  “Not big, just over two thousand people,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

  “How will we find him?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to – we just have to.” Her voice was shaky. The truth was, she had no idea. Thankfully he didn’t press.

  As the plane descended into Peoria International Airport, the Moores’ anxiety rose. They half expected to find the police waiting for them, ready to take them into custody for fleeing the hospital. But there were no police. Neither had working cell phones, so Breanne tried to reach Sarah by payphone. No luck there either. Not reaching Sarah really wasn’t a surprise to Breanne, given she was on a remote dig site.

  By 4:00 p.m. they had picked up their rental car and were on the road. One hour and fifteen minutes later they descended the Highway 123 bridge over the Sangamon River. Coming across the bridge, Breanne could see the entire river valley stretched out before her. On the opposite side of the valley, the bluffs climbed steeply, speckled from bottom to top with Victorian-era homes, some as large as mansions, with their slate roofs peeking out from trees. It was picturesque – almost as if this little town had stopped aging over a century ago. They had finally arrived in the historic town of Petersburg.

  The beauty was lost on Breanne, her mind fixed solely on one thing – finding Garrett. “This is it. The land of Lincoln.”

  They hadn’t a clue where to start searching for this boy and were trusting in the faith of a dream as their only clue.

  “What now? We’ve made three laps through town, Bre, and we’re no closer to finding this kid. Are you just hoping we happen across him?” Paul asked.

  Actually, that was exactly what she was doing. She knew what the kid looked like and she knew his name, but that was all she had. “Wait… did you see that? Go back!” Breanne said.

  “See what? Back where?” Paul asked.

  “The alley behind the arcade. You didn’t see that group of kids?”

  “Was he there?” Paul asked hopefully.

  “No, but it’s a small town. One of them probably knows him,” she said.

  Paul sagged, then shook his head. “Alright, we can ask, but I don’t like the idea of stopping to talk to large groups of white kids.”

  They went around the block, then stopped in the mouth of the alley. Breanne didn’t get out – instead she just shouted toward the group of kids, maybe twenty or more. “Hey, excuse me, any of you know a kid named Garrett?”

  Everyone froze and stared expressionless at Breanne, like they had never seen a black girl before. Great, she thought. She had already started to understand that there weren’t many black people around here when they had stopped at a gas station in a small town on their way from Peoria. She went inside to grab some water and a map. An elderly white woman had looked in her direction, eyes wide. She quickly approached Breanne and grabbed ahold of her braids.

  “Oh, wow. How long did that take you to braid your hair into those tiny braids? There must be hundreds of them!” the lady had said. Breanne knew it wasn’t malicious, more curious, but it felt invasive and gross – she didn’t know where that lady’s hands had been. She had learned through countless encounters like this that the fastest way out of the situation was to just agree politely and move on. Smiling at the woman patiently, she said, “It sure did take a long time.” In fact, the tiny braids were not themselves hand-braided, nor were they even her real hair for that matter. But she wasn’t going to take the time to explain the workings of black hair to a stranger whose hands, with untold amounts of grossness on them, were invading her hair.

  There was a different vibe coming from this group, though, and it wasn’t curiosity. Suddenly a very angry, very scrappy-looking kid stepped forward from the center of the crowd. “Why you askin’? You know Garrett or something?”

  “We’re looking for him. Have you seen him?” Breanne repeated.

  “You family of Lenny’s or something?” the angry kid asked.

  “No, I don’t know a Lenny,” Breanne said, crinkling her eyebrows in annoyance at the boy.

  “Well, listen, you tell that little bitch Garrett I’ll catch up to his ass, and when I do, I’m going to beat the shit out of him in front of the whole school,” the angry kid said, smiling and punching his fist into his palm.

  The whole crowd laughed except for one kid who rolled his eyes. Breanne caught the look and took note of the eye roller.

  “Test or no test, he was supposed to be here twenty-five minutes ago. So, if you find him, you tell him Jack’s waiting!”

  The crowd laughed again – except for the eye roller.

  Breanne rolled up her window. “Let’s get out of here before this gets ugly.”

  As they started to pull away, Breanne noticed the eye roller and two other kids slip discreetly away from the crowd. The eye roller, a geeky-looking kid with glasses, was holding hands with a cute nerdy-looking girl, followed close behind by a shorter stocky kid. They hurried down the street past the arcade and around the corner. In the center of the town stood a giant historic courthouse with streets on all four sides forming a town square. Each adjacent street was lined with connecting businesses facing toward the
courthouse. The three kids began making their way around the town square.

  “Hey, follow those kids,” Breanne said curiously.

  “I can’t – the street is one way and they’re heading the opposite direction. I’m not trying to get pulled over in this place.”

  “Well, pull across into the courthouse parking lot. Over there,” she said, pointing to the empty lot.

  They pulled in and drove across the lot towards the end, then parked facing the kids, who were now on the opposite side of the street walking towards them. Before reaching the end of the square, the three kids stopped and approached the door to the Taekwondo Academy. The eye roller twisted the door handle, evidently with no luck, then began pounding frantically on the door. Why the urgency? she wondered.

  “Look!” Breanne said, pointing. The door opened and a round man in a black martial arts uniform opened the door, ushering the three kids inside. Then just before closing the door, he did something strange. Something that prickled Breanne’s skin into instant goose bumps. He looked up, directly towards them. Then, even stranger, he began waving as if he were waving them to come over.

  “What the hell? He couldn’t possibly be waving at us?” Paul asked.

  “He couldn’t know we’re here. He shouldn’t even be able to tell we are in the car from this far away,” Breanne said skeptically. But she knew she was wrong. He was looking right at them.

  “Then who is he waving at?” Paul asked.

  She placed her hand on the door handle and pulled. “I don’t know, but grab your gear – we’re going to find out.”

  41

  Answers

  Wednesday, April 6th, 5:30 p.m.

  Day One

  Petersburg, Illinois

  A frantic pounding continued to rattle the door of the dojo.

  “Well,” Mr. B said, “I had hoped to be further along than this by the time everyone arrived, but maybe it’s for the best. Boys, please excuse me.” He rose quickly to his feet and hurried to the door.