by Brandt Legg
“Are you going to go after him?”
“It’s a big ocean. Maybe he went back to San Diego. Maybe Mexico. Trevor’s going to sail back to San Diego, and Brookings, to see if he shows up there.”
“Maybe the time alone will help him,” Amber said.
“What if Lightyear finds him?” Kyle asked, searching for smokes.
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. “Spencer is working on it too.”
“How’d he take the news?”
“He’s very concerned but said that this is so out of the blue, it could end up changing things enough to actually help us. Meantime we’ve got a couple of days to teach you guys as much as possible.”
For two days we laughed, played, and worked hard on powers. Everything was lighter and easier without Dustin. Maybe that’s why he left. The girls mastered all the Vising techniques. Kyle, who wanted to absorb books more than any of us, was having difficulty but was great at Solteer. He even made me think I was getting run over by a fire truck. “Paybacks are hell.” He laughed.
All of them got the basics of Foush but only Linh could Skyclimb, and no one could do a Lusan yet. Gogen was another tough one. All three could move sticks and pebbles, and Kyle was tossing around large rocks and even moving ocean waves by the end of the third day.
I took them to meet Wandus on the final afternoon. He and I wave-o-tated for them, but they weren’t at that level yet.
“You have much filling your head just now,” Wandus told them. “Let your new skills settle in and then the rest will follow. Fear prevents much.”
Everyone smiled because no one could deny that they were scared of what was to come. Wandus began a lecture on oneness and, at the same time, spoke to me on a completely different topic. I could hear both his monologues, but he said the others could only hear his talk on oneness.
“The Outviews you have seen are not random. This is not like using a television remote and switching through channels. Understand this: your soul is telling Nate a story. Those lives are all about secrets—finding them, keeping them, telling them. But mostly, they are about protecting secrets.”
“What secrets?”
“This you need to know.”
“So tell me,” I said, watching the others listen to him talk about oneness. Kyle asked lots of questions, and Wandus never wavered. It was rather incredible to see. The others had no idea I was having an entirely different conversation with him.
“If I tell you the secrets that I see in your eyes, you will never understand them,” Wandus began. “These secrets cross time. You need to learn them from their origin. Understand?”
I didn’t really but nodded anyway. He smiled.
21
I secretly stayed with Linh on their last night. We held each other and whispered about things we’d done together over the years and things we still wanted to do. When it was time to meet the others for breakfast before sending them off, I didn’t want to go. I was desperately afraid of losing her, of letting her die.
I don’t know how Amber knew but she did. “Did you two find anytime to sleep last night?” She wasn’t being nasty but wanted me to know she knew. Perhaps she’d come to my room looking for me. I was about to answer but her glance and smile waved me off. Just then Spencer arrived.
“Nate, you’re leaving today too. I believe Lightyear’s remote viewers will be capable of zeroing in on your location here within the next few days.”
“Is he coming back to Ashland with us?” Linh asked, excited.
“No, to DC; you have a meeting with Luther Storch.”
“You’re going to let him meet the head of Lightyear?” Kyle asked, rising from his chair.
Amber knocked over a glass of orange juice.
“Yes. I know Nate and some of you share reservations about the Movement and have been focused on just trying to stay alive. However, those goals do share one thing in common: the Movement cannot succeed and you four cannot stay alive if Lightyear is allowed to survive.” He was quiet for almost a full minute while we all looked at each other. Everyone knew he was right. Lightyear had to be brought down. “Now, this part may give you pause, but Nate is the only one who can stop them. It’s part of his destiny.”
“I believe you,” I said. My words shocked me even more than they did my friends. The only one who didn’t seem surprised by my support was the person who should have been the most: Spencer.
“In order to beat Lightyear, Nate has to know who Luther Storch is.”
“Don’t we already know who he is?” Amber asked.
“I mean his soul. Nate must learn what connection he and Storch share. What is their karma? Without that knowledge, there is no chance to defeat him.”
“Isn’t there another way to find that out?” Kyle asked.
“I have to look into his eyes,” I said.
“It’s too risky,” Kyle said, pacing now, blowing imaginary smoke from a new cigarette.
“Kyle’s right,” Amber said. “Nate has been running from Lightyear for three months, and now he’s just supposed to walk in and meet their leader? They’ll kill him.”
“Do you trust me?” Spencer asked me.
I stared at him for a few seconds. “Yes.”
“I’ve seen this tens of thousands of different ways. For longer than you’ve been alive, I’ve watched you wage this battle. In every case, when you did not meet Luther Storch, Lightyear has won and plunged human civilization into a darkness lasting farther into the future than I’m capable of seeing—millennia.”
“Have you seen him not surviving the meeting?” Linh asked quietly.
Spencer turned his gaze toward her. His face gentle, eyes filled with compassion. “Yes, Linh. His success is far from assured. You deserve to know. I’ve only seen him survive twice.”
“Twice out of tens of thousands of times. What then? You’re telling us Nate has something like a one-in-ten-thousand chance to survive?” Amber shouted.
“Probably not that good,” Spencer said.
“Listen, if I don’t go, Lightyear will win for sure, which means the rest of you die along with me anyway. Let’s not waste any more time. I’d rather talk about how it’s going to happen and what I need to do to survive.”
“That’ll have to wait until the flight to Washington. The plane is ready. You’ll all fly to an airfield in California together, where you three will pick up another flight to Medford and Nate will continue on to DC.”
The plane was richly appointed, with tan leather chairs, a tiny kitchen stocked with goodies and a miniature conference room in the back. Amber grabbed the seat next to me. “About last night,“ I began.
She quieted me with a quick kiss. “Nate, she loves you too. We’re all in this war-zone mentality. It’s cool. But can’t I go with you to Washington? There’s a great place to hide back in the conference room.”
“Spencer would never allow it.”
“I don’t care about him. Would you allow it, if you could?”
“Yes.”
She smiled, closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat.
“We’ve stopped climbing,” Kyle called from the conference room. Ever since they came to the island, Kyle had wanted to talk about the gold box and pages from my dad’s desk. Something always seemed to be happening, but I promised we’d spend time on the flight discussing them. Kyle was intensely focused on saving the girls above all else. He explored other ideas and wanted to solve the mysteries we’d encountered for one reason: stop Lightyear so the girls could live. I had a million distractions. Kyle grounded me and kept my attention on what was most important. Amber followed me back to the conference room where Kyle and Linh were already waiting.
“See,” she whispered, pointing to a narrow cabinet that might be just big enough to hold her.
Ignoring her, I sat down and pulled the gold box and four pages from my pack.
“Shouldn’t you have left those on Cervantes where they’ll be safe?” Linh asked.
“I won’
t be going back to Cervantes.”
She didn’t ask how I knew. Instead she just stared at me, wondering if we’d ever see each other again.
“I’ve gone over these with Spencer and Dustin. Spencer keeps telling me that I’m wasting my time trying to figure them out and that the answers are in my Outviews. Wandus wants me to study the Outviews, too, but maybe not for the same reason.”
“Do you still think Spencer knows what the box is about?” Kyle asked.
“Yes, but for some reason he can’t or won’t tell me.”
“Why not?” Amber asked.
“What I’ve figured out about him is he can’t be figured out.”
“Have you gotten anywhere?”
“The gold box has shown up in two Outviews. The first time I was a Mayan about four hundred years ago, and the conquistadors killed me while I was trying to hide it. They pushed me into a cenote, a deep sacred pool, and the box would have been lost except that a friend dove in and retrieved it after they left. The friend was my father from this lifetime. And then about a hundred years ago he and I were together again. We were Americans and went to Chichen Itza, in Mexico, to retrieve the box. I was killed. I don’t know what happened to my father.”
“Wow!” Amber exclaimed.
“Somehow the box got into your dad’s desk in the current time. So for at least three lifetimes, probably more, he and you have been trying to protect this thing.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve been killed twice, that we know of, doing it,” Linh added.
“Is it possible that Lightyear wants it?”
“Anything is possible.”
“What about the pages? Are they connected?”
“Well, the one list has nine names, including Spencer Copeland and Lee Duncan. The ninth name is just ‘you,’ which we assume is me. So who are the other six?”
“Have you done an Internet search?” Amber asked.
“I was afraid to after what happened last time.”
“I’ll find a way to do it,” Kyle said, as he copied the names down.
“The other three pages are a code and Dustin believes they aren’t connected to the gold box but to Aunt Rose’s journal, or what I thought was her journal. It’s actually a transcription of papers written by a man named Clastier, who was me a couple of hundred years ago.”
“How do you keep all these different lives straight?” Linh asked.
“It used to be hard, but then Wandus taught me that there is really only one life—that my soul is the true me. All the personalities and human identities are really just expressions of that.”
“Even the bad?” Amber asked.
“Even the bad. All of it is part of the soul’s experience.”
“If the code is connected to Rose, I’d like to work on it,” Linh said.
“Okay, if you think you can get somewhere. I’ve got them memorized,” I said, handing her the three pages.
The jet landed at a small airfield in southern California. A car was waiting to take Amber, Linh, and Kyle to a larger airport where they would catch a flight to Medford, Oregon. After refueling, I would fly on to Dulles International outside Washington DC.
The influence of paradise now faded, Amber was careful not to make too much of our kiss goodbye, but I could feel her apprehension. She wanted to come with me, and we both knew she would have if it weren’t for Linh’s feelings. I didn’t know if Amber was safer with me, or apart.
“You guys keep practicing those powers; we’re going to need them.”
Linh handed me a poem. I held her a long time. “I’ll see you again,” I promised.
As we hugged, Kyle whispered to me, “We’re standing at another precipice. Save them.”
I watched as they drove off. It was like a recurring nightmare: once again we were searching for Dustin, trying to avoid Lightyear, and worrying about the safety of my friends. I read Linh’s poem and, as usual, her poetry anticipated my feelings and explained them back to me.
I am as full as an ocean
filling the shore, my eyes, my heart
swelling like a bruise, hit with apprehension
and fear whose sides penetrate like a drum
through every fold and shadow
not dark, nor painful, just full
like the sun. And it burns to hear
silence below the surface,
Can you see this sense of movement
in our lives? It is a dream
unannounced, proclamations of dissent
into emotional depths, like a storm
quickly it turns and passes
but destructive and consistent at the ready.
I am here, always, battered, torn, vacant,
pungent, like birth.
Don’t indulge, now. Gently, hero,
step delicately and steadfastly,
our warrior hands, trigger-happy smiles
and quick, sensual clips suddenly seem
to thread the pieces together into
a scenic overture,
listen. I am here.
Always and time-soaked,
dirty and oppressed, absent and second best
but here. Spilling into pools reflected in the
sky-like worlds available, disclosed and
naked, and true. True, hero, step through
this veil, this war-splattered body, this
crazy sense of living. This is life,
live the steps like a flower, just open,
accept the wind, the rain, the hand that
desires. Your life is cut and adorned.
It is not up to you, or me.
It is not up to you, or me.
The need for Kellaring meant I was literally powerless. Spencer told me that if the remote viewers found me during the flight, they would blow the plane out of the sky—it had happened in another universe. There was no way to search for Dustin. That would have to be left to Spencer until I was in a safe place again. When would that be?
I passed the time during the flight talking to Spencer over the astral. For some reason that didn’t interfere with the Kellaring. He gave me instructions for the meeting with Luther Storch. It seemed incredibly risky, but he’d seen it too many times for me to bother arguing. Before my meeting with Storch, there was something I needed to do in Washington that I hoped would answer the questions we’d been trying to solve since I first discovered my father had been murdered.
22
Booker’s driver slowed the car in the B section of the old cemetery that grew out of a parish started in 1712, in what is now the center of Washington, DC. Rock Creek Cemetery was a beautiful place, more a rolling park than a graveyard. There were more than eighty acres filled with the remains of powerful and famous people from the prior two centuries. The Hibbs mausoleum was the most elaborate, built in the 1890s to resemble an English chapel, with arched doorway, imported marble, and stained glass windows. I pulled the strange key from my pocket. Since my hurried visit through the portal from Crater Lake, I knew it would fit perfectly into the antique lock. The question was why my dad had hidden it for me, and what secrets were buried here.
Once inside, a symphony began playing, which startled me. The original builder had installed a sound system that, for a hundred years, would play continuously each time the door was opened. I stood facing a large, intricately carved sarcophagus, and gazed around the body-filled marble walls carved with names and dates long past. Light filtered in through colored glass and an ornate chandelier hung overhead, but it remained dark and dusty. I shivered, feeling a little trapped in the old tomb. Why was I here? Why the key? The Old Man of the Lake had told me the key protected secrets and asked if there were secrets I needed to know. The list was long, starting with the items found in my father’s desk: the list of names, the other pages, the gold box, the key. Why wasn’t Rose communicating from the dead? What did her “journal” mean? How could I stop Lightyear?
“What am I supposed to do, open every crypt?�
� I asked out loud.
I knew my time was limited. Lifting the cover of the sarcophagus carved from a giant slab of yellow Italian marble would be impossible without several strong helpers, or Gogen. Because using any powers would stop the Kellaring and immediately reveal my location to Lightyear, I had to start with crypts, but which one? If I could use Vising to read the walls, I could learn where my father had hidden something, but it would also bring Lightyear. I opened my pack and pulled out the tools I’d brought and silently asked my guides where to begin. That’s when I noticed the paperclip. It was on the ground behind the sarcophagus and seemed too modern for this place. I knelt down to pick it up and realized there were six cabinet doors concealed in the baseboard. The first one I opened contained plans, registers and details about the mausoleum. The next door was something entirely different. Sitting on the floor in the dim light, two stacks of twenty CDs in crisp white envelopes glowed before me. If the paperclip was too modern, then these were futuristic and the USB thumb drives in the next cabinet might as well have been from another planet. It wasn’t until I got to the fifth cabinet and found the files and letters from Lee Duncan that I realized my father had never been here at all.
There was no time to review everything, but it was clear that this was the case against Lightyear, enough evidence to expose and annihilate them. Suddenly, I was more afraid than ever. They would do anything to destroy these things and anyone who possessed them. It wasn’t just my psychic abilities they were after; they believed Lee’s stash was in my hands, and now it was. I knew the evidence should not remain here. There was no way to know how trackable I was, or even if they were still working to uncover Lee’s final movements. I shoved more than fifty thumb drives in my pack. The remaining files and CDs required three trips to Booker’s car. My heart was pounding. I scooped up the tools, ready to make my final exit, when the ceiling began spinning.
The Outview took me fast and my last thought as Nate was to wonder if an Outview would stop the Kellaring and allow Lightyear to find me. There I was, an older man walking through an enormous home tastefully appointed with antiques, fine Persian rugs, and oil paintings. As I passed a mirror in the foyer, I saw the white hair and guessed my age to be early seventies. I stepped out onto an endless front veranda and glanced at an elaborately landscaped lawn. Judging from the automobiles parked along the grand circular drive, it was the late 1930s and I was master of this great estate. I admired a splendid three-story tower overlooking flower gardens and boxwood, and then remembered that if this Outview was like the others, I was about to die. I quickly turned back, as Spencer had shown me. Instantly, I was the same man but younger. It was maybe thirty years earlier. A chauffeur drove me through the gates of the estate. The name on the car was Rolls Royce, and the carved stone column announced we were at Graydon Manor.