Final Solstice

by David Sakmyster

  He tried to picture the hand that wielded the crayon that wrote Solomon’s name on that rocking horse. Was it just coincidence? Mason didn’t even entertain the notion. He was given this location, sent here to find out something firsthand about Solstice. Discovering Solomon’s name here could not be anything but what it was. He lived here, surely, as a boy. Did that make him a relative? Foster child? True son of this Palavar, one who later changed his name?

  That answer would have to wait. The Palavars seemed to have left in a hurry. But the larger question remained. What had happened here? Several years of unusual weather leading up to that four-pronged tornado assault that somehow spared this house. It was like being struck by lightning and surviving. Four times.

  Mason tapped out a section of out-of-tune “Chopsticks,”then headed for the stairs. The banister was weak, the screws coming loose from the molding. Sticking to the center panels, Mason climbed, noticing faded square sections on the walls where pictures must have been hung. The second floor landing creaked just as Mason saw a figure standing to his right, coming out of the shadows.

  He launched himself to the side and slammed against a wall, then scampered back until he realized no one was coming after him. Just a sheet over something. He got up slowly, feeling ridiculous, like Shaggy jumping at shadows in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Lifted the sheet and saw a beautiful grandfather clock underneath. Ornate numbers and a gold leaf plated face.

  They left that too, he thought. What did they take? Or did they think they were coming back someday? As he moved farther down the hall and the soft light dimmed and the gloom deepened, he thought about Solstice and wondered if they were looking for him now back at Lawton. And for a moment, he thought of something more disturbing. Why hadn’t they called? That would have been the normal thing to do, find out where he was and why he wasn’t at the runway.

  They would have called. Unless they already knew he wasn’t there.

  Unless they knew he was here.

  He took out his phone and looked at it. GPS tracking? Did they have his location? He stood there, wobbling, thinking of the Star Chamber and all the surveillance systems, the weather satellites and meteorological stations; and he had the sudden notion that not only could they track him any time they wanted, but maybe Solstice’s overall aim was something far more sinister than mere data collection. Big Brother on a global scale, perhaps?

  He was about to pull the backing off of the phone and yank the battery, hoping that would put an end to any traces, but he realized if they had been tracking him, the point was moot right now.

  Instead, he turned on the flashlight function, and in the lengthening shadows he stopped at the end of the hall and tried the two doors.

  One was a completely empty master bedroom and bath. The other … a kids’ room. Again, full of dust and some torn old books. A frame for bunk beds, which gave Mason pause. The flashlight’s cone of illumination caught the west wall and something on the ceiling: a mobile, one of planets revolving around a sun. Saturn had fallen and was on the ground in a corner. Mason was about to leave when the light caught something else on the wall.

  More writing? He came closer, then knelt down near the metal bedpost. He aimed the light directly at the wall, imagining the bed, when it was made and the mattresses covered with boyish action prints, would have been pressed up against it, just below where the black marker sketch began.

  His blood chilled. He was sure there had been an attempt to paint over the drawing, but time had worked its spell and what was covered had endured while the latex paint had peeled away, flaked and revealed not the whole thing, but enough.

  Four angry black swirling masses, clearly intended to represent tornadoes. In the middle of the tornadoes: a hastily drawn A-frame house. In front of the house, between two smaller trees (young willows), was a circle of stones. It could have been Stonehenge in any other setting.

  Inside the circle stood a stick figure, a boy with his hands raised. Squiggly lines issued out of his mouth toward the direction of the largest, closest tornado.

  Mason looked hard at the drawing, feeling a sense of grand significance approaching. He thought of Shelby’s paper, of the shamans of early Briton, these nature sorcerers. Druids. The boy in the circle …

  Solomon.

  What was he doing? Was it just an overactive imagination? A boy making sense of the frightful wrath of nature, and by surviving the experience, attributing his survival to supernatural powers? Is this what had set Solomon on his current career path?

  Mason kept looking at the sketch. The stone circle in particular. He stood up and peeked out the window after rubbing off a layer of dust. Between the now much larger willow trees there were what he had first taken for bricks, arranged in a low fence.

  Remnants of a true henge, dismantled and demolished?

  Possibly, but still … was this what he was meant to find? He looked at the sketch again. Now he had the sense that it wasn’t about fantasy, not meant to be some wild flight of boyhood imagination. It looked more like he had drawn this as a chore. A project. A lesson, something he had done in successive tasks.

  The tornadoes, appearing from different vectors … It was almost as if … Mason thought about shooting ranges, recruits at a police academy, gun drawn waiting for the metal cutouts to pop up from any direction, having to be ready to deal with anything.

  Was that what this was?

  A test?

  Mason felt he was on the verge of figuring it out, how it all fit together: not just Solomon and Solstice, but Shelby and Gabriel, the U.N. And Mason himself.

  Why did they want me?

  Was Lawton supposed to be my test?

  He looked again at the stick figure screaming at the tornado, and now imagined himself in its place.

  But then he saw something else—a slight red smudge beside the drawing of the boy. He scraped at the area with his fingernail. Scraped a little more as the old latex paint crumbled and scattered and then he stepped back, mouth open.

  There was another stone there, this one lying flat like a table.

  Or an altar.

  And there was another small stick figure lying on it, but with Xs for eyes. And a lot of red trickling from a jagged line over its chest.

  He looked again from the altar to the boy, and realized he held something small and pointy in his upraised right hand.

  Suddenly the light flickered and a call came in.

  Speak of the devil, he thought before he looked at the screen. They must have found me.

  But it wasn’t Solstice.

  The caller ID said: San Diego General Hospital.

  He answered it, even as he knew, knew what they were going to say. And he was racing for the stairs before the doctor on the other end even started talking.

  Chapter 28

  He spent the entire flight on the phone and trying to get some kind of update from the staff. All they told him first was that Lauren had been found by a neighbor who Mason would have check on her when he was out for too long. Emergency medics worked on her in the ambulance and the early diagnosis was that she had suffered a brain hemorrhage.

  Fearing the worst, fighting off every kind of suspicion and conspiracy, his brain swam with theories about Solstice, about Solomon and this Palavar. About stone circles and weather manipulation. In between calls to the hospital, he finally got a hold of Gabriel. His son was there with her, so at least that was something. But they weren’t talking to him either, not while Lauren was in surgery.

  For the rest of the flight, Mason had time. On his laptop, he searched further into the Department of Agriculture’s holdings and cross-referenced tornadoes and weather modification. Nothing there, but the Department of Commerce, in conjunction with the Navy, had undertaken what was called Project Stormfury, which remained in operation from 1962 to 1983. Stormfury was an attempt to weaken tropical hurricanes by flying aircraft into them and seeding them with silver iodine, hoping to freeze the super-cooled water inside the eye and, it was thoug
ht, lead to a disruption of the hurricane’s inner structure. In reality, there wasn’t enough such water to be effective, and the hurricane’s behavior was too chaotic and intense for any attempt to be judged meaningfully different than if nothing had been tried.

  Mason knew of some other earlier attempts at weather control as well, but despite millions of dollars and the highest of hopes, science just couldn’t compete with nature. Statistically and micro-physically, science was outmatched every time and the results were inconclusive at best, dangerous and wasteful at the worst.

  That wasn’t to say there might not have been other projects, still declassified. Mason considered the farmhouse, the tornadoes and bizarre weather over the years. How would the government have reacted to what they must have tracked and documented on their own? Obviously they moved in and bought out the property at the very least. Palavar, by all accounts, made his own fortune by placing huge bets on commodity prices, unerringly guessing at weather conditions that would benefit or plague the commodity, and riding the wave of selling or buying accordingly. But did the government threaten him because of his success? Bring legal action unless he divulged his secrets?

  Surely they couldn’t overlook the fact that four devastating cyclones had hit the same area at the same time, and Palavar’s home, which seemed to be the epicenter, was spared. Mason imagined teams of scientists and soldiers storming the place, searching for technology they could possibly appropriate for weather modification, national security and defense.

  Did they find anything? And if not, was it all ascribed to luck and investment prescience when it came to the weather? Maybe Palavar made them think that way.

  And maybe it wasn’t Palavar, Mason thought chillingly. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so foolish as to bring all that scrutiny to his front door and then have to deal with the full force of the United States government.

  Somehow he had survived it. Somehow, against all odds …

  Mason thought for a moment. Thought about the small band of unarmed druids on Anglesey Island, standing up to the Roman force.

  Was there a similar blanket of wool pulled over the invaders’ eyes on Palavar’s ranch? A cloud of misdirection and confusion while the true power moved elsewhere?

  Still lost in these thoughts, Mason didn’t realize the plane was in descent.

  He was home.

  O O O

  In the hospital waiting room, he expected to find Gabriel, but all the chairs were empty and no one at the reception desk had seen him recently. Mason tried calling his son but it kept going to voicemail. Lauren was in ICU still and he was promised that he would hear as soon as she was out. In the meantime, he could wait in the room they had prepared for her.

  Inside, he found someone waiting for him. It wasn’t Gabriel. Not even close. But the man in the dark, sitting in corner beside the empty bed, was undeniably familiar.

  “You,” Mason said, staring at the black face pulling itself into the light.

  The Haitian man smiled and twirled thin cane. “Come inside, Mr. Grier. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Chapter 29

  Without touching it, Mason heard the door ease shut behind him and felt a warm, salt-air breeze blowing from the direction of the occupant.

  “You can call me Jack,” the man from his dream said. Now it was coming back to him. The frozen lake, the Central Park bridge.

  “How are you real?” Mason asked, taking another step but keeping the bed between him and Jack.

  Suddenly, the TV hanging from the ceiling turned on. Jack glanced at it and smiled back to Mason, who stared, amazed as the very image from his dream appeared there. Jack, digging at the ice, pulling up a body. And another staff—something he hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a giant icicle, but it was really—

  “Benji’s staff,” Jack said, reaching down by his feet and retrieving something that he set on the bed.

  Mason frowned. “What are you doing with it?”

  “Why, this is yours now. Came all the way here to get it to you, I did.”

  “Why?” Mason’s head hurt, his ears were buzzing and he kept glancing back to the TV, where now Jack was holding out the staff in both hands, grinning wildly and staring at the camera.

  “’Cuz you need one, brother.”

  “Why?” Again, none of this made sense.

  “The battle’s here. You in the thick of it, you just don’t know it yet.”

  “I’m clearly in the thick of something.” Mason shook his head, about to sit and ask for his own medication, but now on the screen there was a shift, like a rewind feature just sent time back, back to a scene with five people in a circle. The one commanding everyone’s attention was clearly Solomon.

  Mason swallowed hard. “You said we don’t have much time. Then talk fast. What’s happening? What is all this? How do I know you? I only saw you in a dream, and now you’re here. My wife just had a brain hemorrhage and she’s all I can think about, not—”

  Haitian Jack held up his hands, and now the screen shifted to an operating room where a woman—clearly Lauren, with her head bandaged, was being helped to a seated position. She was trying to smile.

  Mason started for the door. “Lauren!”

  “Not yet, my brother.”

  Mason turned his head, glaring. “I’m not your brother. What’s going on? How are you doing this, and that…?” He pointed to the screen. “Is it real?” He dropped his hands to his sides. “Is any of this real?”

  Haitian Jack’s smile faded. “It’s real and your wife … she was never in any real danger. Not yet. Just like your daughter. They got dangerous methods, the people you work for, but they need your cooperation. You … you be like a loose cannon, going off at all angles. Potential you got, to muck up the works.”

  Mason grit his teeth. “I’m set to muck up something if I find out someone was behind all this.”

  Jack set his hands down flat beside the ivory staff on the bed. “Now hear me. You right, not much time. We need you to be calm, to act a part.”

  “What part? Why? How can I be calm, and just who are you?”

  “Told you, I be Jack. Haitian Jack, and once me and your new boss, we had called each other brothers. But that man, the one who called this staff his?”

  “The one you pulled up from the ice?”

  Jack nodded gravely. “Yeah, we … we worked behind the scenes, we guided and helped and cured and we … we thought of ourselves like shepherds.”

  Mason frowned. “And your flock?”

  Jack spread out his arms wide. “The whole wide world. And everything, everyone on it.”

  “Okay …”

  Jack made a sideways glance to the TV, and now Mason saw on it his approach to the Kansas farmhouse.

  “What the hell? How did you film that?”

  Smiling, Jack shook his head. “Nothing filmed. I only see what’s in your head right now. I know where you been, which means they know where you been. Which means, that be why your wife’s in here.” He pointed at the screen. “You ain’t s’posed to know what’s in there. Not yet, least.”

  Mason frowned. “Yeah, I’m kind of guessing there were some secrets in there. I’m not quite clear though on just what happened.”

  Jack leaned in close, eyes searching his. “Oh, I think you be knowing just right. You just don’t be believing. Not yet.”

  He cocked his head, as if listening to the wind outside. And for an instant, Mason could sense it too. A different pitch, a sideways shift in convection, the currents moving slightly.

  Jack made a clucking sound with his teeth. “Ah, I best be going. They know I’m here. Sent in help.”

  “Just what are you? And these others you talked about. What the hell are these shepherds and how does Solomon and Solstice fit in? And the Department of Agriculture? Some guy named Palavar?”

  At the mention of that name Jack’s eyes flashed. “Ah, then you know enough. Follow that lead when you can. There may be other allies, others … indisposed at th
e moment, who might be awakened to your cause. In case you lose me.” His eyes darted to the window.

  “Why, where do you have to go?”

  Jack sighed. “There was a battle between ideologies, and the White …” he tapped the ivory staff, “lost to the Grey. Now the balance is destroyed and we can’t stop what’s to come, can’t stop what he’s planning. Not alone.”

  Jack fixed Mason with a hard look. “It’s you, it has to be you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you got talents I can’t even attempt. You came to me …”

  “That was a dream.”

  Jack shook his head. “Would that I, then, could dream myself elsewhere. No, I had to come here in person, in great danger to myself. But you …”

  “Me. Again with that, what am I going to do? I can’t even forecast a tornado’s approach five minutes away.”

  Jack laughed. “When you figure all this out, you won’t have to.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Follow Palavar, get help. But first … Go back to work.”

  “What?”

  “And play nice.”

  Jack was suddenly behind Mason, his hand grasping his shoulder reassuringly. “Let them trust you, and—just like you found out about Kansas—find out what they’re really up to. The U.N., the data, this weather gambit.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.”

  He tapped his shoulder, and then again he was in the far corner behind the bed, retreating into the shadows. “If we meet again, we will share a bottle of century-old rum, my brother. Until then …”

  But whatever he said was lost in the sound of the door opening, and a doctor coming in. He clasped Mason’s shoulder, and his eyes were bright.

  “Good news, Mr. Grier. Just came out of surgery, and your wife’s going to be fine. It was much less invasive than we thought at first. And in fact, the hemorrhage was …”