by Ray Garton
“In case I get caught.” He recapped the bottle and put it in his coat pocket. “I’ll just be a drunk old man lost in the woods. Um, let’s see.” He went to the closet and took out the cane he’d brought with him, then began to pace back and forth, perfecting his aged walk and posture—stooping a little, limping a bit, giving his head and left hand a slight tremble. Then he made some harsh grumbling noises in his throat until his voice became hoarse and he recited “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in an old, shaky, gravelly drawl, then turned to Lauren and smiled.
“Fun, huh?” he said.
Her smile was sincere, but not very enthusiastic. In fact, Jordan thought it was rather sad. “Well, I’m off. Wish me luck.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No, not at all. I didn’t say that, did I?”
“Well … no.”
“Oh. Good. No, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I don’t know what else to do. They’ve blocked off a large area out there; I suspect it’s for a reason. And after what that Paul Kragen fellow said about a cave just before he died yesterday—”
“A cave with children in it,” Lauren added urgently.
He nodded, “—and after what everybody else in town didn’t say, I think there’s a good chance I might come across something.”
“If you say so.” She looked away from him, either terribly disappointed or suddenly preoccupied.
“Don’t look so sad,” he said. “I might find something that’ll lead us to your son.”
She closed her eyes and breathed, “I hope so. I hope so.”
He nodded toward the door, and as they’d planned earlier, Lauren opened it, took a look up and down the corridor and said, “It’s clear.”
As Jordan started out of the room, Lauren placed her hand on his back and whispered, “Good luck. And be careful.”
He winked over his shoulder and, in his flawless old man’s voice, said, “Why, thank you much, young lady.” Then he hobbled down the corridor.
4.
A bright full moon glowed over Hester Thorne’s Camelot.
The rubber tip of Jordan’s cane thumped on the concrete path behind the hotel as he walked at a leisurely pace, looking around as if he were admiring his surroundings. Old-fashioned street lamps—the kind that reminded him of black-and-white Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone—surrounded the green, casting circles of light onto the grass and Jordan walked under them casually, just an old man, unable to sleep, strolling the grounds with nothing to hide.
A couple of the young Alliance men saw him walking through the lobby; he’d nodded at them and they’d smiled without raising a brow. A young woman wearing a waitress uniform paused on her way from the restaurant to the hotel to give him a perky, “Good evening, sir,” and Jordan had replied, “Hello there, hello,” with an unsteady wave.
In the dark, the hedge animals took on an ominous appearance, looking as if they were about to attack the first thing to come along. Live ducks lazed on and around the pond. Moths darted around the lamps, casting enormous shadows that flitted over the grass and trees.
As he neared the edge of the woods, Jordan carefully looked around and made sure no one was paying him any attention. He spotted people here and there, alone or in pairs, but all seemed on their way to someplace, probably to turn in for the night, and Jordan hobbled on until he reached the trees that flanked the gallery.
There were four bright lights positioned at each corner of the rectangular plot of land behind the hotel. Jordan avoided them. He went, instead, to a patch of blackness that lay beneath a few of the tall pines, walking carefully until he found the wall. Standing beneath it and looking up, it seemed unsurmountable, but he tried not to think that way. Instead, he tossed his cane up and over the wall, heard it land in the brush on the other side, then turned to the closest tree, an enormous pine that stood about four feet from the wall. He looked behind him, took a deep breath, and trying hard to recall the tree-climbing days of his childhood, hugged the prickly trunk and began his laborious ascent, crunching the chip-like bark beneath him as he dragged himself upward slowly, grunting and grinding his teeth, further and further up, gummy pitch sticking to his palms, until he was high enough to get a hold on the first branch and pull himself up to another, and another, until, exhausted and out of breath—
—he turned to his right and saw the top of the wall.
About four feet away.
Grumbling softly under his breath, he climbed a bit higher, until he was looking down on the top edge of the wall. Testing the strength of a branch with his foot, he finally decided it was heavy enough to hold him and carefully moved around the trunk until he was standing on the branch facing the wall, and then, bracing himself for the inevitable pain of the impact—
—he jumped from the tree, pushing himself outward, and hooked his arms over the top of the wall when he hit it. His breath exploded from his lungs as his chest slammed into the wall, but his arms remained firm on the edge, holding him up. Gasping for air, he tried to recover fast, shaking the fog from his head as he lifted his right leg until he was able to hook his foot over the top of the wall and pull himself up. He sat on the wall as if it were a horse and looked around, his eyes now well adjusted to the darkness, until he spotted another tree on the other side just a few feet ahead of him, even closer to the wall than the one he’d just climbed. Crawling along the top of the wall, he reached the tree, launched himself over the small gap easily enough, endured another bone-rattling slam as he hugged the tree, slipped down a few feet, nearly screaming aloud from his fear of falling, then shimmied the rest of the way down, noticing for the first time just how good the ground felt beneath his feet.
He took out his flashlight, found his cane, then stood staring into the deep, black woods.
At that same instant, two things were happening that, in a short while, would directly affect Jordan: Hester Thorne was knocking on Mark Schroeder’s door, knocking hard enough to wake him because it was not yet eleven o’clock; and thirteen children holding lanterns and wearing white robes were forming a circle in a small clearing about twenty feet from the yawning black mouth of a cave.
As Jordan trudged through the woods, trying not to make too much noise as he pushed branches and bushes aside with his cane, heading straight for the circle of children and the white-robed woman who stood in the center, Mark walked down the corridor away from his room, groggy with sleep, and Hester took his hand and said, “Others will join us there. Everything is being prepared. You’re in for quite an experience.” Thinking of his bed and craving more sleep like a trembling, dry-mouthed alcoholic craving liquor, Mark looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes, and a little while later—
—Jordan heard voices and slowed his pace, switching off his flashlight and hunkering down into a thick patch of ferns.
The voices grew closer—a man and woman—and with them came footsteps hissing through the weeds and snapping brittle twigs. Jordan froze and listened to the voices.
They were polite, soft, discreet, almost … reverent, but the words were unintelligible.
A couple of young Alliance members out for a forbidden late-night tryst beneath the pines? Maybe a couple of visitors who, like Jordan, were sneaking around after hours to see what they could see?
No.
The woman’s voice—the one doing the most talking—sounded familiar as it grew closer.
“—that will prepare you for your destiny,” Hester Thorne said. “The Universal Enlightened Alliance, and Orrin himself, need you very much. We want you to know how important you are to our movement, Mark.”
Mark? Jordan wondered. Schroeder? Maybe …
They passed directly in front of him wearing white hooded robes, one of them carrying a lantern. Jordan cocked his head slightly, listening.
“The only people brought into the Inner Circle,” she went on, �
��are those who will, at one point or another, be able to do great work for the Alliance and who can, if they choose, directly aid us in ushering in the New Age that Orrin has spoken of. You’ll see things you won’t understand tonight, but that understanding will come later as you …”
Her voice faded into the night and, a few seconds later, so did their footsteps.
Still hunkering in the bushes, Jordan frowned. They were on their way to something, but what? What was the Inner Circle? And what “great work” could Mark Schroeder do for the Alliance? He filed the questions away in his memory and stood very slowly, with no more than a hushed sound of movement, but—
—he dropped back down when he heard more footsteps coming from the same direction the others had, moving toward him. More people this time. Muted voices, some talking over one another, one chuckling. Closer … closer … until—
—they passed by rather rapidly, five of them, all carrying lanterns and dressed in the same flowing white robes, three with the hoods pulled up over their heads, two without, speaking so quietly he could understand nothing they said. Watching their backs as they moved away from him, he noticed how bright the light of the moon and lanterns made their robes and how it glinted off the golden stitching around the collars, hems and cuffs.
What the hell is going on? he thought as they disappeared into the woods.
After waiting for a few minutes to make sure no one else was coming, he came out of hiding and headed in the direction of the white robes. He quickly became extra cautious and tried to avoid open spaces because it didn’t take him long to realize that the woods were alive with the presence of others.
Voices filtered through the darkness from all directions and the surrounding crackle of footsteps jerked his attention from left to right, from front to back. The sounds faded slightly as they moved beyond him, then seemed to merge some distance ahead to be joined by other voices that sounded quite different. They were higher in pitch and seemed to be chanting something in a gentle tone.
Children … they were the voices of children.
The realization reminded Jordan of Paul Kragen’s dying words and a chill crept over his body like an army of tiny ants. He went deeper into the woods, even more careful to be silent than he’d been before, heading in the direction of the chanting voices. And as Jordan pressed on—
—Nathan Schroeder stood in the circle, holding hands with the children who flanked him—just as all the others were—concentrating hard on his request as he chanted—which, of course, was the same request that all the other chanting children were making of the Ascended Masters: to be chosen on this night for the Translation.
Mount Shasta loomed over them and the moon gave a sheen to their robes, but Nathan noticed nothing, not even the others around him or the tall figure who stood in the center of the circle or the robed adults who passed by to gather at the mouth of the cave beneath the mountain; he was even unaware of the hands that he held, of the meaning of his chant and of the length of time that he chanted before—
—the woman that stood in the center clapped her hands hard a single time and the chanting stopped instantly, the children opened their eyes and looked at her. Nathan looked into the oval of blackness in her hood where her face was hidden by darkness.
Standing in one spot, the woman began to turn slowly, like a figurine on a music box, as she spoke.
“And now we must concentrate on strength,” she said, as—
—Jordan huddled down behind a patch of manzanita and listened.
“We must ask the Ascended Masters to send to the Chosen One the strength needed for the important task at hand.”
She lifted a hand and the children closed their eyes again and continued to chant, but now Nathan’s thoughts were focused on the strength needed by whoever was chosen for the Translation. He held the hands and chanted the chant and the world fell away quickly as Nathan became lost in his concentration and—
—Jordan watched, fascinated, as the children chanted what sounded like a series of names—one of which was Orrin, if he wasn’t mistaken—and swayed ever so slightly with the rhythm of their words. The woman in the center continued to turn slowly, her cauled head bowed slightly so she could look at each child as she moved.
Beyond the circle of children, Jordan saw a group of robed figures milling about before the cave he’d hoped to find; others came from the woods and joined them.
Watching the children, Jordan wondered what the hell they were doing, what the “important task at hand” was, who the Chosen One was and if Nathan Schroeder was among them. He couldn’t find out now. For the moment, he was more interested in finding out what the people outside the cave were doing and saying, so, staying behind bushes and trees, Jordan crept around the circle of children toward the cave as—
—the woman in the circle stopped the chanting with a clap of her hands and removed from the deep folds of her white robe a small dark box. Removing the lid, she walked from one child to the next, proffering the box. Each child reached in, removed a round plastic coin-like object and held it in a fist. When the woman was finished, she returned to the center and—
—Jordan stopped and listened, not wanting to miss whatever was going on as—
—the woman said, “You may look.”
The children held their plastic coins to the lantern.
Nathan was disappointed to see that his was blank; he’d hoped to be chosen. But someone in the circle had received the coin bearing the Alliance emblem and the small shrouded heads began to lift and look around, until—
—a hand rose slowly and the quiet voice of a little girl said, “I have it.”
Beckoned by the woman, the little girl stepped into the circle, leaving a gap that was quickly closed. The girl stood in front of the woman with the woman’s hands on her small shoulders.
“Now,” the woman said, “we must ask once again for the strength of the Ascended Masters so that our Chosen One, Katie Coogan, may properly fulfill her destiny and rejoice in her re-embodiment.” The children began their chant as—
—Jordan thought, Re-embodiment? What the hell is that?
There was something very familiar about that name, Katie Coogan. A relative of Bill Coogan’s, maybe? Then he remembered Coogan’s daughter and how upset Coogan had been with her on the day Jordan and Lauren had first met him.
Katie was Coogan’s granddaughter.
Jordan was certain then that he had found something in those woods that was bigger and more important than he’d expected—or even intended—to find. Turning his attention from the children and their haunting, almost hypnotic chant, Jordan headed toward the cave, positioning himself behind a large rock jutting from the earth and surrounded by manzanita just a few feet from the growing crowd, where he heard Hester Thorne saying quietly—
—“Mark Schroeder and he’s joining us for the first time. So this is a very important, exciting night for him.” She turned to him, smiling. “Isn’t it, Mark?”
He was so tired that it was difficult to speak, but he managed a feeble smile and a weak but affirmative response. It was important, he was excited … he was just too tired to show it. His muscles ached, his head was filled with a thick, murky fog and his eyes burned so from weariness that they were not to be trusted. But he fought to show his enthusiasm and met the other eyes with his own, smiling and nodding.
Hester took his hand and said, “I’m taking him inside to get him familiar with the territory. I’ll be back out in a moment.”
She led him into the cave and as they passed through the low opening, Mark heard someone say happily, “They found the Chosen One! It’s a little girl!”
He wondered what that meant as Hester sidled up to him, snaking her arm around his waist.
“What’s the Chosen One?” he asked, his words sliding together lazily.
“Hmm. I think that’s information best left
for the future, Mark. But …” She stopped, faced him and placed a hand on his neck, stroking his skin. The lantern swung on its U-shaped handle and a circle of light danced around them as the rest of the cave remained dark. “… the very near future, I promise. We need you, Mark. Orrin needs you. That’s why I’ve brought you here so early on in your education. We have to speed up your enlightenment so you’ll be ready to meet—and to understand—your destiny. We can’t wait for you, Mark. You’re too important.”
“What is my destiny?” he asked.
She grinned, ran her fingers through his hair and said, “You’ll see.”
Then they continued walking deeper into the cave, deeper into the damp chilly darkness, where Mark got the gnawing, clinging sensation that they were being watched, as—
—Jordan bristled with excitement at having heard Hester Thorne mention Mark Schroeder. Could he have possibly gotten so lucky so soon? If he could somehow contact Schroeder, let him know that Lauren was with Jordan, maybe he could get some information from him, learn some things about the Alliance, about Hester Thorne … and about what happened to Harvey Bolton. He wiped away the beads of sweat that were prickling on his forehead, then followed them quietly, keeping a safe distance and staying behind bushes and trees as—
—Hester Thorne squeezed Mark’s hand and began to walk faster, saying with breathless anticipation, “Come on, let’s hurry. We don’t have much time.”
“For what?”
“There’s something I want to show you before everyone else comes in.”
They continued in silence. Hester obviously knew her way around the cave—she never hesitated or missed a step, even though she was walking so quickly—but Mark was uncomfortable. He would be uncomfortable in any cave, but this one was especially disturbing. The darkness that blanketed them seemed to be concealing something; Mark not only had the unshakable feeling that they were being watched, but he sensed they were being watched from all directions—from above and the sides, from ahead and behind—and if he listened closely as they walked, he could almost hear sounds … small, moist sounds of movement so faint that they could just as easily be aural hallucinations brought on by his fatigue.