Mount Shasta attracts a large following of New Agers. Some of Shasta’s special clouds and atmospheric phenomenon have helped convince believers of supernatural essences that Mount Shasta is, indeed, one of Earth's major power centers.
Abraham is considered the patriarch of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The appearance of Abraham's Tree above Mount Shasta is, no doubt, seen as a sign of Mount Shasta's sacredness to some people.
The sound of the musical keys and footsteps approaching down the main hall caused me to pull back from Aaron’s locker. I closed it and the other two I had bypassed. I turned back to spraying and wiping down the lockers.
Bernard came into view. “Close it up. We’re done.”
I checked my watch. An hour had elapsed.
Bernard shoed me away from the locker I pretended to be working on and closed it.
“What about those,” I said acting as though I really cared about a bunch of lockers being left open. Come to think of it, one of them was mine, so...yes I did have concern. Not that I had anything to hide, just that I didn’t like peering eyes.
And I should speak!
“I’ll take care of it,” Bernard said as he led me down the hall and opened the front door. “See you Monday morning.”
Sleet and rain fell as I walked home. I pulled up my collar. Now would be a good time to let my hair down. Keep my neck warm. For six short blocks I didn’t feel like bothering. I turned left to Cherrie’s house rather than right toward the cabin. If I couldn’t sleep in on Saturday, neither should she.
Cherrie had her own entrance into Grandpa Garl’s house. She lived down in the basement, which was made up of one big room with a small bathroom off to the side. I swung around the back, tip-toed down the steps and, before entering, kicked and then knocked on the door.
I found Cherrie, fully dressed, lying on top of the covers of her bed. She wasn’t the neatest housekeeper I knew, so I had to side step clothes, magazines, and a lawn mower.
Lawn mower?
I tapped Cherrie on the shoulder. If somebody crept into my house and poked me in the shoulder while I slept, you would have to peel me off the ceiling.
Not Cherrie. She rolled over.
“Jason’s not here,” she muttered.
I searched the dim corners of the room for a Jason. The bathroom door stood open, so I figured he wasn’t in there.
“Who’s Jason?”
“What?”
“You awake?”
Cherrie sat up. She pulled the covers around her.
“Julis, what are you doing here?”
“It’s Saturday.”
Cherrie glanced at her watch. “It’s Saturday night!”
“Morning for most people.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Someone talked me into skipping school. Remember?”
“It’s a free world. You made your choice.”
“Yeah. And ditching class got me a date with the janitor.”
“Cherrie looked at her watch again. “Then what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be scrubbing toilets or something?”
Obviously Cherrie had done a stint or two in detention.
“I was let go early for good behavior.”
“You?” Cherrie chuckled. “Since when?”
“Since I started hanging with you.”
“Yeah. Right.” She attached the unlit cigarette to her bottom lip. She sat up, stiff backed, against the wall. “What’s up?”
I curled up on the bed in front of her. “Mr. Bernard made me clean lockers.”
“Sounds intriguing. What other earth shattering news do you want to share before I go back to sleep?”
“Just that I got a peek inside Aaron Delmon’s locker.”
Cherrie shrouded her face with her hand. “Oh my god! And?”
“He doesn’t have any girl pictures in his locker. I don’t think he has a girlfriend.”
Cherrie guffawed. “Duh. Join the club. Thought I told you, once or twice, the Delmon gang doesn’t associate with us lower class peons.”
“I don’t think Aaron’s that way.”
“Okay,” Cherrie said. “Let’s back it down a bit. This love-sick puppy stuff is about to gag me.”
“Who said anything about love?”
“Then what are you planning?”
“Just want to get to know him. He seems interesting.”
“I’ll tell you what is making you all hot and bothered.”
“What?”
“He looked at you. You never had a boy look at you before?”
“Sure. But not a god-man. So you admit it. He wasn’t looking at you.”
“He’s had his chances. I confess. He looked at you. So now what? You’re going to go bug-eyed over him?”
“Maybe. You said he isn’t a climber.”
“He isn’t. Not in the truest sense of the word.”
“Why do you suppose his locker is lined with pictures of Shasta?”
“The mountain?”
“Yes.”
Cherrie nodded to the one window in her room.
“Because it’s there?”
“More than that, I think. He seems infatuated with the mountain.”
“Maybe so. Bernard takes them up on Shasta all the time.”
“Bernard?”
“Yeah. Their brother.”
“You mean Bernard the janitor at school?”
Cherrie sat up. She removed the cigarette from her mouth. “Bernard was at school today?”
I could feel Cherrie stiffen as I answered. “Yes. He said he runs detention.”
“Not all the time. Usually it’s an administrator. He didn’t see you in Aaron’s locker, did he?”
“Why?”
“Because he’s Aaron’s brother.”
“Are we talking about the same man? This guy is old.”
“Yep, that’s him. Did he see you or not?”
“No. I don’t think so. He would have said something. Don’t you think?”
“Probably so.”
“Come to think of it, Bernard does have the same smell as Aaron and his brothers. And he looks like them too.”
“They’re not his brothers, the other two. They’re cousins. They all live together. Bernard, from what I hear, takes care of them.”
“Where’re their parents?”
“Don’t know. Beaumont and Belmont are the other two you saw at the Crags. They’re twins, cousins to Aaron. They showed up a couple of years ago, while we were in junior high. Aaron arrived last year.”
“How old are the cousins?”
“They’re seniors. Why? You thinking about dating them too?”
“No. Just curious.”
“Well, here’s for curious. Everyone knows those four live together, yet no one, least no one I know, knows what they do behind closed doors.”
“You’re not...”
“Think about it. Three good looking studs in their prime who don’t date.”
“They’re brothers!”
“Cousins, or so they say. Maybe kissing cousins.”
I leaned back on the bed and thought about what Cherrie had just implied. The possibility existed. It was the same question that had shot through my head while I stood in front of Aaron’s locker, one, that I was quick to dismiss. Maybe too quick.
“You said the Delmon’s aren’t climbers.”
“They aren’t.”
“But they climb Shasta?”
“There’s a difference. There are rock climbers and there are mountaineers. The Delmons are mountaineers, not rock climbers.”
“I want to climb Shasta.”
Cherrie looked at me sideways. “You’ve been sniffing Bernard’s cleaning fluid? You mean climb to the top?”
That part didn’t make sense. I was a flatlander. I had never stood on a mountain, much climbed it.
“Not to the top. Maybe just part way.”
“You can drive part way.”
“You can?”
“Sure. All the way up to Bunny Flat.”
“How high is that?”
“Seven-thousand feet, I think. Half way up the mountain.”
“Can you drive me up there?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just want to see it.”
Cherrie smiled. “I see where you’re going with this. Aaron likes the mountain so you want to see why. I’ll save you the bother. Mountaineers don’t need a reason to climb. They just do because it’s there.”
“How many times did you say the Delmons have climbed Shasta?”
“Lots.”
I reflected back to the inscription on the Abraham’s Tree poster in Aaron’s locker. I remembered part of the caption talked about the supernatural and how some people believed Mount Shasta to be one of Earth’s major power centers.
“Cherrie, do you believe there’s something special about Shasta?”
“Me? No. Bunch of other people do though. The new agers they call them. Guess you could place the Delmons in that category. I followed them once, up to Casaval Ridge. Saw them sitting half-naked on an overhang.”
I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. I scooted forward, closer to Cherrie. “And?”
“And that’s all they did. Just sat there with their legs crossed and their eyes closed.”
“Nothing else?” (I was imagining the worse)
“Like what?”
I took the easy way out. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe meditating?”
“Maybe. Seemed like it.”
I had to ask the question. “So you don’t think they’re gay?”
Cherrie laughed. “What if I told you I thought they were? Would that back you off?”
“Well, do you?”
“No. No I don’t. Monks maybe but not gay.”
“So not kissing cousins.”
“Just messing with you.”
“But you think they might be Monks?”
“Could be. Saw them sitting there, cross legged, half naked, heat coming off their bodies, facing west toward Shastina.”
“Shastina?”
“It’s Shasta’s sister mountain, or some people call it her daughter. It’s a smaller mountain with a sunken top. It has unusual character. If you look at it the right way you can see what looks like a face on it with the ears of a mouse.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, but not as much as the Delmons. I watched them for an hour. They just sat there. No chanting. Not what you’d expect of a Monk. But I did see heat waves. Like they were burning up or something.”
“You said they were naked. How naked?”
“Half-naked, I said. Guess maybe more since they were in their shorts.”
“Can you drive me up there? Up to Shasta?”
“Ah, Julis.”
I pointed a finger at Cherrie. “You own me.”
“For what?”
“Yesterday. It’s your fault I had to serve detention.”
“I’ll drive you. But I don’t owe you. You skipped school on your own.”
“Okay. When? This afternoon?”
“Can’t. Have to take Grandpa to Redding. Saturdays are his big city day, grocery shopping and all that. Besides, I’m not done sleeping.”
“Tomorrow then?”
“Sure. Tomorrow.”
3 LEMURIANS
Dierdra was nowhere to be found when I got home. A note hung on the refrigerator explaining she had gone to Redding to take care of a client. She left me a reminder to do some chores; laundry, dishes, and to fill the wood box.
I headed for the computer.
I typed in Abraham’s Tree. Too generic. I added Mount Shasta. The first listing was entitled Clouds Over Mount Shasta. Sure enough, I found the Abraham Tree photograph along with a number of other photos. Nothing new Aaron’s locker hadn’t revealed. I scrolled down, clicked the next listing, (Mount Shasta’s Annotated Bibliography) and read.
The description talked about the lowly primate, the lemur, as being named after the ancient Roman mythological ghosts called ‘lemures.’ It mentioned Lemuria was a continent, which had submerged and had gone long lost. It claimed the people of the lost continent of Lemuria were highly advanced beings.
I was about to pass on the rest of the narrative when my eye caught. I zeroed in on the words.
In the 1880s a Siskiyou County, California, resident named Frederick Spencer Oliver wrote A Dweller on Two Planets, or, the Dividing of the Way which described a secret city inside of Mt. Shasta and in passing mentioned Lemuria.
I stopped, sat back, and thought for a moment. This was all folklore, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what they were saying in the article? A secret city inside Mount Shasta? Highly advanced beings? Stuff of movies involving aliens and spaceships? Not something I believed in. I felt too grounded for such nonsense, but I couldn’t resist.
I read on.
I picked out phrases and jotted them down on a prescription pad Dierdra had left by the computer. I couldn’t write fast enough. Too much information so, as I learned to do in school, I jotted down main points.
Frederick Spencer Oliver, A Dweller on Two Planets
Lemurian village at Mt. Shasta named Telos
Physical evidence of a lost continent once thought a myth.
I reminded myself this is nothing but mythical junk, but like a drug addict out of control I continued to feed my curiosity. The prescription pad filled up fast. I pulled a sheet of paper from the printer and scratched out notes. I couldn’t keep up with the information so I opened Microsoft Word and used the cut and paste feature to add bits and pieces from the narrative.
An interview with 'Sharula, princess of the underground city beneath Mt. Shasta'; Sharula states that Telos is a primary Lemurian outpost located within Mt. Shasta, with a small secondary city in Mt. Lassen, California. Telos means 'communicaton with Spirit.' My name is Sharula and I come from a city underneath Mt. Shasta, called Telos. The city was constructed about 14,000 years ago at the termination of the Lemurian continent. There was an original set of caverns there. We chose to enlarge these caverns to make them bigger and more livable.
The authors wrote as though they believed in what they were writing. One went so far as to claim the village of Lemurian had been seen through a telescope.
My curiosity wavered. Where was I headed with this? I was raised in the heartland of Minnesota. Sure, we had Paul Bunyan and Babe, his great Blue Ox, but everyone—at least past puberty—understood the story to be fable. As a child I believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny too.
By the time one is sixteen years of age, there pretty much isn’t anything that isn’t met with skepticism. The computer and the digital age can transform fiction into fact and vice versa. Who doesn’t, in this day and age, have this understanding? I realized I was reaching in entertaining the idea of a hidden city beneath a mountain and any connection of this mythical city having a connection with Aaron Delmon.
Still, I couldn’t help myself. What else was I going to do on a chilly Saturday morning? Clean more lockers? Do chores? This was far more exciting.
I scrolled down.
I found it interesting as time passed, the authors found new and inventive ways to keep the Lemurian myth alive, simply by adding another twist to the story. Now, as one author stated, the inhabitants beneath Shasta weren’t Lemurians, but Atlanteans and one of their tasks was to guard the Lemurians who are imprisoned beneath the Caroline Islands.
The Lemurians were prisoners?
I remembered reading in history class about some political prisoners who were a patient lot, waiting for the right moment to bring about change. Think Nelson Mendela, who spent twenty-seven years as a political prisoner before leading the way for multi-racial democracy in South Africa. Martin Luther King, I felt, was a political prisoner in a way, and had he not been gunned down, he would have been alive to see his dream fulfilled. Both held out hope for a time when change was realized.
But 14,000 years! The Lemurian Age, as I
read, ended 14,000 years ago. If they were being held prisoner in Hollow Earth by the Atlantians, their patience was astounding.
I patted myself on the back. My history teacher, Mr. Mattingly, would be proud. Here I was, on a Saturday, deeply immersed in the study of ancient civilizations. To him, though, my reading of the history of Lemuria would be the equivalent of reading a comic book or watching a movie about a super being. My glee fell a notch, but not my curiosity. I read more, and what I read about the present day mystic Lemurians made me sit upright.
I found an actual description of these odd-looking persons. They were described as tall, with long, flowing hair—nearly always blonde and wavy—with elongated, slender necks. They were known to be graceful, agile, and demonstrated unusual balance. One of their most unusual physical characteristics, the article stated, was a walnut-sized organ protruding from their foreheads. This sixth-sense, I read, enabled the Lemurians to communicate among themselves by extra-sensory perception.
Perhaps that’s why they were perceived as unsociable, as Cherrie said. Maybe they didn’t need to talk. I wondered if Aaron could communicate with me by extra-sensory perception.
The article also talked about the Lemurians possessing supernatural powers that enabled them to disappear at will, the reason they weren’t spotted very often. Well, that would leave Aaron out. Apparently he was spotted quite often. It was also said their powers allowed them to will an intruder away.
I sat back and visualized Aaron and his two cousins. They certainly were taller than most teenagers, but so was the basketball team. They were graceful (couldn’t say that about the basketball team) and agile. I couldn’t remember if they had slender necks or a bump on their forehead. It didn’t seem so, however, their manes of blonde hair could have concealed those characteristics.
Now I was torn. Was there something mysterious and mythical about the Delmons? From what I saw and, from Cherrie’s account, there certainly was something unusual about the trio that lived with their older—real older—brother. Mythical? I didn’t believe so. If they possessed super powers, why bother with the drudgery of life? Why bother hiking up Crown Dome when they could easily have disappeared and reappeared on top of the dome?
I checked the time. It said 2:00pm. Mom would be home soon and I had yet to do chores. I told myself a few more reads and I would call it quits.
Solstice - Of The Heart Page 3