Keeper of the Black Stones

by P. T. McHugh

  I turned back to the room, where I found Paul on his phone.

  “Mom, I’m good… I’ll be home in a few hours… Everyone is okay, I just want to help clean up… Yeah… Okay… Bye!” He hung up the phone and made a face. “She never cares where I am or what I’m doing, and suddenly she wants to know when I’m coming home. As if Derrick and I are going to sit down for dinner, say grace, and talk about our day.” He shook his head in disgust. “My mother, ladies and gentlemen.”

  He finished his tirade and glanced at me again, registering the look on my face. “Hey, are you losing it on me? You haven’t moved from that position in at least five minutes. You aren’t catatonic with fear or something, are you?”

  I didn’t answer, but turned back to the window and waved Paul over. He got there just as Doc was leaving the shed. We watched as he closed the door and quickly replaced the padlock. He looked around again, presumably to make sure that he was alone and unobserved. In any other situation it would have looked staged. And corny.

  I turned to face Paul. “Why in the world would Doc spend five minutes examining the contents of our garden shed before coming inside to check out what happened?”

  “What?” Paul asked, looking more closely at Doc.

  “Why would Doc care about four shovels, a bag of mulch, and some rakes? He went in there instead of coming into the house with us. The house, where we keep the valuable stuff. Don’t you think that’s a little … odd?” I asked.

  Paul shrugged his shoulders. “I guess the man loves to work outside.” He shoved me with his shoulder. “Maybe we should go help him out.”

  I nodded and watched my grandfather walk around the corner of the house. I didn’t know what he’d been doing, but he’d lost the tension in his shoulders, and didn’t look as grim as he had before. I guessed that meant that he was relieved, or at least satisfied. But satisfied about what? What was so damn important in the garden shed? From his actions, I was willing to bet that whatever was in there was also what certain people had been looking for. Or at least Doc thought it was. And judging from his obvious relief, they hadn’t found it. Did this have anything to do with his journal, or was I letting my imagination take over again? This was all more than a little odd, but based on the already-odd day I’d just had…

  I sighed. Too many questions and not enough answers, and that never sat well with me. I wanted to get to the bottom of this, and there was only one way to start doing that. I had to read the rest of that damn journal. Get a better idea of what Doc was up to, and how deep he was. Then maybe I could figure out what to do about it. That meant that I’d have to get my hands on it one more time, and tonight was as good a time as any.

  By 10PM, the pots, pans, and dishes were mostly back in their proper places. The books, DVD’s, and CD’s were on their shelves, and the picture of my parents had a new frame. It had taken us six hours to put the house back in order, throw away the broken stuff, clean the floors, and make the beds. My sense of self was a bit scattered, and our house still felt a bit off, but at least things were back in place. We’d been too busy for me to put my plan into action, though I’d spent several hours planning how I would do it. When we were done cleaning, Doc ordered a pizza for delivery and Paul chose a movie: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was one of his favorites–born of a lifetime obsession with movies–and he was thrilled to find it on TNT. It also gave us some much-needed distraction. Communicating with aliens via flashing lights was, if nothing else, a break from the complexities of the real world.

  Two hours later, and well past midnight, the three of us stumbled upstairs to turn in for the night. Paul pulled out the mattress that lay beneath my bed, retrieved an extra pillow and comforter from my closest, and collapsed. He was asleep before I could say goodnight, and well before I got to my own bed.

  Paul was like that–he could fall asleep anywhere, at the drop of a hat. He wasn’t a pretty sight when he slept, though, by any stretch of the imagination. His mouth was always open, and he never closed his eyes all the way. He also snored. Not loud enough to wake me, but loud enough to keep me up if I wasn’t really tired. Tonight, his snoring and my racing thoughts had me wide awake. I looked at the clock for the hundredth time at 2:15AM and sighed. Time to get moving.

  “Now’s as good a time as any, Evans,” I whispered to myself. “Quit stalling and get it over with.”

  I pulled my legs out from under my covers and placed my feet on the cold floor, trying to avoid the squeaky board that always gave me away. Getting past Paul was simple; he was out for the count. Getting past Doc wouldn’t be so easy. He slept lightly, and I was willing to bet that he was sleeping even lighter than usual tonight. I kept to the side of the hall and walked as slowly as I could, holding my breath as I crept past his room, and praying to any guardian angels in range. When I finally got to the stairs, I exhaled as quietly as I could, and made my way down to the living room.

  We didn’t have night lights in the house, but we’d never needed any. A lone streetlight stood just outside our home, right in front of our porch steps. The light, in my opinion, was twice as strong as it needed to be, and three times as annoying as any other light anywhere. Instead of illuminating the patch of street directly in front of our home, the damn thing lit up half the block. Light from the lamp poured through the kitchen and den windows all night, despite the fact that the blinds were closed and the curtains were drawn. It was absolutely impossible to sleep in either of those rooms, or get through them without casting shadows and drawing attention.

  Tonight, though, that lamp was my best friend.

  I made my way through the living room and den to reach the kitchen. Doc was brilliant, but he was also a creature of habit. And it made him easy to track. He always left his book bag in the kitchen beside the mudroom door, right next to the refrigerator. Unfortunately, I too was a creature of habit; my bag always sat right next to Doc’s. Today hadn’t been the first time that I’d grabbed the wrong bag or set of books in the morning. I had planned for this tonight though, and my book bag was sitting safely upstairs, in my room. Doc’s bag was here, all alone. And what I sought was still inside. I’d checked on that earlier, when I came to get my bag.

  I took a knee on the floor beside the book bag and glanced over my shoulder to make sure that I was alone. I knew that what I was doing was wrong. Trust was a virtue that Doc valued above all others, but this was important. I absolutely had to know what was inside the journal.

  I took a deep breath and reached into the bag. There was the journal–right where it had been earlier. I let my breath out again, with both relief and fear, and pulled out the leather-bound volume. Reading this journal may or may not answer my questions about Doc’s sanity. The bigger question, though, was whether I actually wanted to know those answers. Either way, something told me that I needed to read the book. Something was going on, and Doc knew at least part of it. I eased down to sit against the wall and stilled, listening. Just the groaning and creaking of our old home, though there was a deep thrumming coming from somewhere … a thumping in the ground, almost as though someone was playing heavy drums a few houses down. I paused, listening, and felt the beat enter my bones, and then my heart. Something was there, I could feel it, though I shook the feeling off. I thought I heard footsteps from upstairs, then, but decided that it was my overactive, guilt-ridden imagination playing tricks on me. I wasn’t used to sneaking around like this, and my nerves weren’t taking to it like I’d hoped they would.

  For a second I thought about returning the journal and walking back upstairs. But only for a second. I was in too deep to back out now, and my curiosity would never let me sleep. Besides, now that I was here, there was no reason to let the opportunity go to waste. Nowhere to go but forward. I opened the journal to the beginning, resolute on reading it cover-to-cover instead of skipping around like I had earlier, and tilted it toward the light from the street lamp. Bending down, I began to read. Slowly at first, and then more quickly as the story caug
ht me and held.

  For over an hour and a half, time stood still. I read every word of the journal as it unfolded. I read many of the entries two and even three times, to make sure that I had it right. My heart raced the entire time. Not from fear of being caught, but from the story itself. I knew without a doubt that the journal was real, at least in my grandfather’s mind. These were not the words or emotions of some creative writing assignment. Whether that meant he was losing his mind was a different question altogether. I still had my doubts about his sanity, but as I read, I began to believe, despite myself. What if he had found a way to do it? What if these happenings were real? But if it was actually going on … if the journal entries were recorded as fact, and not as the incomprehensible raving of an old man, then everything I thought I knew–everything I thought important in my life–had been turned upside down and inside out. This would rip apart the fabric of reality as we knew it, and the basic bindings of my everyday existence. I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. What in the world was Doc hiding? And did the break-in mean that other people knew about it too?

  I felt rather than saw the presence of someone walking into the kitchen, directly across from where I sat in the mudroom. I gulped and opened my eyes, my thoughts frozen. My sixth sense hadn’t lied to me. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring back at me.

  5

  A light blue minivan pulled into the Lebanon High School parking lot and rolled to a stop beside the beige sedan. The parking lot was dark and deserted for the night, with only one lone streetlight to illuminate the expanse of blacktop. It was well off the main roads, and away from prying eyes. The perfect place for a meeting of this sort. When the van pulled up, a passenger got out of the sedan and walked quickly toward it.

  This man went by the name of Briegan. He had a runner’s build–tall, broad in the shoulders, and thin in the waist. Certainly a person that appeared to take good care of himself, the driver of the van noted. He wore a pair of jeans, a loose sweater, and a pair of hiking boots. His hair was cut short and his eyes were cold, gray, and quick. They darted around the parking lot, taking in every inch and drawing conclusions about safety and security. He paused and straightened, then opened the van’s passenger door.

  “Anything?” he asked, climbing in. He settled himself down into the passenger seat, but maintained a stiff, formal posture. The lines around his mouth bespoke a tense, stressful life, with very little laughter to dull the work, and a deep groove ran between his eyebrows.

  The man seated behind the wheel of the minivan had his Mets baseball cap pulled down tightly over his eyes. His light blue t-shirt was a size or two smaller than it should have been, and stretched tightly across a well-muscled torso. He had no outstanding features, nothing useful for identification. His face was that of an everyman–relatively attractive, pleasant, and easily forgotten. People who saw him in the market almost never remembered seeing him, and couldn’t have described what he looked like afterward. He had been born with the face, but had worked long and hard to learn this subtle trick of disappearing in broad daylight. This was what made him so good at his job.

  When he answered Briegan, though, his voice was low and rough–frightening rather than subtle. “We didn’t find anything that looked out of the ordinary. Books, photo albums, CD’s and DVD’s, computer hard drive … you name it, we looked through it.” The man shook his head. “We didn’t take anything, but we didn’t find anything either.”

  Briegan grimaced. This wasn’t the news he’d wanted. “Were you spotted?” he asked. He looked out the window toward the poorly lit high school, as though he would rather be anywhere but with the man next to him.

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask me that,” the other man growled.

  Briegan nodded. “I appreciate your patience. I wouldn’t have asked, but my employer is paying us both well. I need to be sure that we’re doing all we can, and in the absolute best way. This is not a mission that allows for failure.”

  The man grunted in agreement. “Perhaps we would have had more success if you’d been more specific,” he noted dryly. “‘A diary of some sort’ isn’t exactly … descriptive.”

  Briegan snorted. “If you’d needed more information, obviously I would have shared it. All I’ve been told to share is that there’s a journal, and that it has important information in regard to the old man and something that he might possess. My employer learned this directly from the … contact, so we have no reason to question the information.”

  The man behind the wheel smiled. “Is this a government job or a real government job?” he asked sharply.

  “Excuse me?” Briegan replied.

  The man grunted, unwilling to respond.

  Briegan turned from the high school to fix the other man with his gaze. The conversation turned deadly serious, and the other man sunk further into his seat. Briegan worried him, and he wasn’t interested in making trouble with the man.

  “You’re not paid to be curious, or ask questions. You’re paid to get results,” Briegan said quietly.

  The driver of the van nodded and cast his eyes down. He didn’t know exactly who Briegan worked for, but he knew that it was a powerful organization. He couldn’t afford to be too cavalier. “Yes sir. So what now?”

  “Watch the house. Follow the old man,” Briegan said. He kept his gaze on the other man, pinning him to the seat with his eyes. The driver of the van didn’t have to ask – the look promised terrible punishments for failure.

  “And the boy?”

  Briegan looked back to the school. “Nothing for now. We don’t move against the boy until we’re told to do so. At this point, we don’t think that he’s involved or … important to our mission. We need the old man, his journal, and whatever else he’s hiding in that house.” He got out of the van and closed it firmly, ending the conversation.

  6

  A gasp of air exploded from my mouth like a gunshot, and I gulped another down. Paul. It was only Paul. He stood in the doorway with his eyes wide open, staring at me. Following his gaze, though, I realized that he was actually looking at the refrigerator. I started to say something, then remembered that Paul had a habit of sleepwalking. At the most random times, and for the oddest of reasons. He had told me once not to wake him up, as it just confused him, so I watched quietly and tried to calm my pounding heart.

  Sure enough, Paul walked right past me and opened the refrigerator door. He grabbed a bottle of orange juice, took off the cap, and chugged nearly half the bottle, then put it back on the top shelf. Before I could move to stop him, he’d shut the door, turned, and disappeared back into the living room. A few minutes later I heard him stumbling back upstairs.

  I shook my head, thankful that sleepwalking didn’t run in my own family. Talk about inconvenient. Paul had done me a favor though, and snapped me out of my trance. The hours had flown by, and Doc was an early riser. It was high time to get this journal back where it belonged, before I really got caught. I’d read all there was to read, and couldn’t get any other answers from the book itself. The next step was going to have to be a bit more … active. I slipped the journal back into Doc’s book bag and made sure to leave both the book and bag exactly as I remembered finding them. I didn’t know whether Doc kept track of things like that, but there was no harm in being careful and covering my tracks.

  As I made my way upstairs and crawled back into bed, I allowed the argument to take shape in my head. Facts. What were the facts? As the grandson to a physicist, and son of two historians, I knew that the truth – the real story – always started with the proof. So where to begin? I still couldn’t believe that what I’d read was real. No proof there. But the other option – Doc going stark raving mad – was just as bad. My mind and heart both refused to believe it. My instincts, those surreal feelings that had always guided me before, were in turmoil. I wanted to believe Doc, wanted to allow the possibility of his story. The dreamer in me wanted to believe that it could be true, and somethin
g deeper was pulling at me, telling me to accept the story. The real question was whether that was the right move, though, or just more wishful thinking and denial.

  After what felt like hours of arguing with myself, but was probably only moments, exhaustion overtook me. I felt that humming again, and it began to lure me into a stupor. I dropped into a fevered, disturbed sleep, and dreamt of ancient armies, time travel machines, and losing Doc to both.

  By noon on Saturday the house was, for the most part, put back together again. We’d finished organizing and moved on to cleaning. Nothing was missing, so it looked like the thieves had missed whatever they were seeking. Not that Doc was admitting anything of the sort – he maintained that we were lucky they hadn’t taken anything, and left it at that. The garbage cans, though, were full of broken glass, frames, CD cases, and light bulbs. We even threw away the old globe, which had cracked in the chaos. Paul finally left around 2 that afternoon, though he made it clear that he would return later that night to check on us and make sure that we were okay.

  It was downright gorgeous outside, but I was in no mood for sunshine or singing birds. Instead, I retreated to my bedroom and cranked out my physics homework. I wasn’t looking forward to the work, but I needed a distraction, and the painstaking logic and step-by-step process of physics was the most distracting thing I had available. I lost myself to it, and then went on to the final act of Shakespeare’s Richard III for English Lit. By 5PM I’d put in three solid hours of work and was paying the consequences; my stomach was protesting, my head hurt, and I was bored out of my mind. I got up, stretched, and walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, toward the mouthwatering smell of food.