Sebastian looks at me suddenly as I watch their interaction. “Jesca, truth lies in the illusions. What I saw over there, beyond the veil, it was truth. Truth that is resurfacing because it is the only way to save what is left of our world.”
His words release a deluge of reflections. The conversation beyond the veil; our ancestry, our roots in Georgia, the Etowah Mounds and link with Orion’s Belt. Sebastian calling Michael Sanderson’s father a murderer.
Ezra interrupts my reasoning, “Sebastian, what’s going on?” Ezra looks shocked, something I’m not accustomed to seeing. How could he not know? Unless Sebastian withheld the truth about my lineage.
My eyes meet Sebastian’s. “Wait, you never told Ezra? Why wouldn’t you tell him?”
For years, Sebastian had Ezra guarding and protecting those mounds without telling him the deeper reasons. That the mounds held the possible salvation of our world.
Ezra hisses between his teeth, “Tell me what?”
Eyes focused on me, Sebastian shakes his head slowly from side to side. “I never told any of them.”
My mind begins slipping away.
“It was for their own protection.”
Slipping further.
“I didn’t expect Michael to make it back. I thought this battle between our fellowships would end beyond the veil with his death. This battle between our lineages would have been over.”
Slipping into detachment.
“Now, the legacy our fellowships have been masking must become transparent to save us all.”
Complete separation from emotions.
“In order to save us, we must transcend the legacy.”
I’ve heard of disassociation before, removal of oneself from a situation or series of events for self-preservation, to avoid emotions or some type of trauma.
Ezra throws the sheet from his body and bolts upright. Sebastian and Monica jump back from Ezra, but I remain unmoved. I watch Ezra advance. “Damn it, Sebastian, tell me what is going on!”
It must be the tangibility, the palpability of my legacy, manifesting, rooting, festering deeper in me that has dislodged the emotion to fear, to feel anything right now. I look at Ezra, standing before Sebastian yelling so hard that his face is turning purple. The words he is shouting no longer have meaning, just the movement of his mouth. Sebastian’s eyes are downcast as he takes each verbal blow. Monica has angled herself between the two of them; hand on Ezra’s chest, just in case his swelling temper gets the best of him.
I mutter, “We need to go.”
Each of them looks at me, but Monica is the one who speaks, “We need to leave in the dead of night. It is our only shot of being camouflaged.”
Ezra staggers back from Sebastian and Monica, sitting back on the bed. Monica steps in front of him and guides him to lie down on the bed. She runs her hand over his forehead; the gesture is intimate in a way. “You are still fatigued. Rest, we will need you strong when we move.”
Ezra closes his eyes and nods, succumbing to her suggestion. I swallow hard, slight jealousy of Monica’s and my father’s interaction. He belongs to Anna, my mother. I interrupt the moment between them. “Tonight. It has to be tonight. Michael is already headed for Georgia.” I move around the bed to leave.
Monica calls to me, “Where are you—”
Without breaking my stride, I answer her as I twist the knob on the door, “I need to see it for it to be real.”
As I pull the door open, I am met by two striking blue-green eyes. I pull the door shut behind me and just stare at him, stunned to see him in front of me when just moments ago I thought he had died. Nate is leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. His voice is deep, but gentle. “Hi there.”
My intention was to respond back, but before I realize it, I am colliding with him, arms wrapped around his shoulders and burying my face in his neck; eucalyptus and mint. His arms close around me, like a cocoon, and the familiar warmth within that Nate has always been able to conjure within me is evoked. I feel; even with the link gone, I still feel. The realization of losing Nate hits me and is greater than I ever expected. I stifle a cry and bury my face deeper in the crevice between his chin and shoulder. I feel his mouth rest on the side of my head and he delicately hushes me, while running his hand down the back of my head. My words are choppy and muffled, but I don’t care. “I thought you died.”
I feel Nate shake his head slightly and whisper, “No, not without a fight.”
The clearing of a throat from behind us startles me. I angle my head to see Xander standing stoically in the shadows, watching us. Feeling the weight of his intrusion on Nate’s and my private moment, I pull away and create distance between the three of us. It is a standoff of sorts. Both Nate and Xander are looking at me, studying me.
“Are you trying to read me?” I scoff, “Won’t work. With the link gone—”
Nate pipes in, “It doesn’t change everything.”
I look at Xander to see if he shares the same sentiment. “He’s right. Even though our link is gone, I still care about his sorry ass.”
Nate cocks his head in Xander’s direction. “Thanks, Xander.”
Xander cocks his head back, “Anytime cousin.”
CHAPTER 28: PROPHECY
Ezra
Monica hands me a glass of water. “Drink. Don’t need you getting dehydrated.”
I ignore her commanding tone and take the glass, still absorbed by what I have been kept in the dark about. I prop myself up on my elbow and drink, eyes trained on Sebastian. “What truths don’t I know, Sebastian?”
Sebastian pulls a vacant chair over to sit. “Our lineage in Georgia. Our legacy there is deeper than what I led you and the others to believe when we were protecting the Etowah Mounds site.”
He has known the whole time.
Sebastian stares off. “The mounds, they had always fascinated me. I visited them briefly as a child, but it was the dreams, premonitions, that kept me marveling over them. Dreams of living among the mounds long ago in ancient times.”
He blinks, snapping out of his hypnotic reflection of the dreams. “While attending university, my late-night studies would land me in the library much of the time. It would start with the intended coursework, but I would drift and become charged with the research of the mounds. Night after night, I would collect pages and pages of notes from book after book. The ancient mound builders’ living patterns in the Georgia area. Names of tribes. The librarian liked me and even divulged some of the rarer books regarding the local tribes. Then, one night a name stood out among the data. One possessing the last name Onoch. That was the proof I needed to link the ancient Indian mound builders and my bloodline. I started digging up the Onoch genealogy in local records. Living relatives on the Onoch side of the family were dwindling and I would have asked my mother and father about our family, but they had their hands full with my sister’s crippling headaches and sleep afflictions.”
Sebastian looks at me questioningly, making sure I knew what he was referring to. I knew that he was referring to the trademark affliction that Sebastian, Anna, and Jesca all possessed: sleep paralysis and the premonitions. “The genealogy and the documentation lined up, but I needed the confirmation that my conclusions were absolute. That the Onoch bloodline mingled with the very Indian mound builders’ blood that once occupied the Etowah Mounds. An expert. I asked around campus and the name that kept surfacing in regards to knowledge with my professors and fellow classmates was Jaegar Sanderson, professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture.”
Monica mumbles, “Sanderson. Michael—”
Sebastian nods. “Yes, Michael Sanderson’s father.”
Sebastian scratches his forehead, eyes downcast shifting left to right. “I met him, showed him everything I found, how I thought my family was linked to the mounds. I even divulged the premonitions I have had since I w
as a small child. He made it so easy to talk to him, because he was intriguing. His knowledge of the mounds, the rituals and ceremonies performed among the tribes honoring the cosmos, was just as captivating and a little uncharacteristic for a history professor. That was my first concern. The second was when he made the comment that he knew the bloodline of the ancient mound builders would surface again when the world was approaching an evolution.”
I swallow hard. “Your bloodline resurfacing was a prophecy of this.”
Sebastian nods quickly. “Yes.”
“Why your bloodline? You said that Jaeger spoke of rituals and ceremonies performed by your ancestors honoring the cosmos.”
Sebastian eyes are steady on me now. “Jaeger said the rituals were done to link beings that were once here, but had transcended our world.”
“You mean other humans?”
Sebastian tilts his head. “And others. He said that the ancient Indians thought they could seek protection during times of war from ‘these gods’ above. The protection would come in the form of abilities, gifts, to act as guardians, and when the time came, to protect our world during an apocalyptic evolution. As the ancient Indian blood thinned, mingling with the growing Anglo-Saxon population, the ideology of the ancient Indian mound builders transformed to one of survival among the growing population.”
My throat suddenly became extremely dry, realizing the comparison of us and the ancient Indians. “Adapt, evolve, survive.”
Sebastian intertwined his fingers and rested them behind his neck. “When Jaeger Sanderson warned me that it would be best for me to leave well enough alone, finish school, and forget about the past, I knew the opposite was my destiny. I led him to believe that I was not going to pursue anymore. Told him that I had to concentrate on finishing school in two years, find a job and focus on my career. That, along with keeping my continued research on the ancient Indian mound builders of Georgia to myself, was enough to get him to back off. I also did some research on Jaegar Sanderson. I couldn’t ask around for fear he would catch wind of my questioning others about him. So, I broke into his on-campus office one night. I was careful and cautious, making sure not to leave any evidence of having broken in. In the dead of night, I flipped through file upon file of every culturally significant event known. With that being the pattern, I was stumped to find a document within a file among the stacks revealing Jaegar Sanderson as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
It is ironic to think that the Sanderson family had influence and deceptive control over our government’s involvement both then and now. Did we ever have a chance of steering clear of them or was it destined to always be the case? I shake the thought out of my head and focus on learning how Jesca is really, truthfully, at the center of all of this. “Look, I get that Jesca has Onoch blood running in her veins. She is her mother’s daughter and your second niece. How does that make her the sacrificial lamb meant to save our world? Why wasn’t it Anna? Why not you? You had the premonitions of the mounds, just as Jesca.”
Sebastian rises and starts to pace. “No, not like Jesca. She has seen something that I never have. Orion’s Belt at the apex of the largest of the three mounds.”
Sebastian stops abruptly, his head snapping in my direction. His eyes search the room and land on the white sheet lying on the floor. He scurries to pick up the sheet. He looks at Monica. “Pen please.”
Monica stares at him, confused.
More agitated now, Sebastian raises his voice, “Please, pen, now!”
Monica reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a pen, slapping it down in his hand.
Sebastian lays the sheet on the lower half of the bed and smoothes it out a bit. He takes the pen and begins drawing. “The Andromeda constellation, it’s a black hole.”
Hovering next to me, Monica whispers, “Yeah, black hole from hell.”
I look at Sebastian, just as he stops drawing and looks at me. We both turn to Monica, and she shrinks back a little.
Sebastian goes back to drawing the representation of the Andromeda constellation, above is the Andromeda galaxy. Below is Orion’s Belt and Orion the hunter constellation. Sebastian draws a definitive line through the center of the Orion constellation then creates a hemisphere encompassing Orion and the line. “That line through Orion is the celestial equator, basically cuts the universe in half.”
I was aware of what it was, but I let him continue to explain. Sebastian traced over the hemisphere encompassing Orion. “This is our galaxy, the Milky Way.”
He then draws a small sphere below Orion and within the hemisphere. He taps his pen on the sphere. “This is us, our world.”
Then his pen moves just below Orion’s Belt and the celestial equator. He makes a dark, filled in circle and says, “This is a black hole within our galaxy.”
I reach for his pen and quickly sketch Sagittarius off in the far distance. Near the constellation, I create another small black circle. “That is the super-massive black hole in our galaxy. You are telling me that there is another one.”
Sebastian nods and snatches back his pen. Looking down at his rendering, he says, “See how everything lines up?”
He taps the black hole in Orion again. “Orion is perfectly positioned to stand guard between our world and the Andromeda galaxy’s black hole.”
Monica scoffs, “Stand guard? You say that like it is a living creature.”
Sebastian hovers his pen over the sheet on Orion. “Think of Orion as the protector from the bull that is charging us, sent by Andromeda, aka the black hole from hell.”
He looks up from the sheet to both of us. “Now let’s relate this scene to our world, shall we. Malicious beings, soul-like entities, from within the black hole of Andromeda are invading us. Orion is the defender of our world, our side of the celestial equator. How? Through those born with the abilities to guard our world, guardians. Do you see the logic of the ancient Indians of the mounds now? The black hole within Orion holds our salvation. Jesca, she divined it. I have not. She has the answers within her. She is the keeper of the path we must take on this journey.”
It can’t be only Jesca. We are all guardians willing to fight. Sebastian draws three raised mounds on the earth. Between the mounds, he draws the same band of dots, mimicking the position of Orion’s belt. “Orion’s Constellation Theory, Ezra. You have heard of it. Giza pyramids, the Hopi Mesas in Arizona. Why not the Etowah Mounds. The ancient Indian mound builders, my ancestors, Jesca’s ancestors intended to build the mounds in relation to the lines of Orion’s Belt. Why? I can only fathom that they were contacted by benign beings willing to protect them.”
Monica cuts in, “Benign beings?”
Ezra approaches her question with caution of rejection, “Where there is dark, there must be light. Where there is bad, there is good. Andromeda’s black hole holds lost souled beings pursuing our destruction. Orion’s black hole might hold beings wanting to aid in our salvation. The ancient Indians trusted them, that is significant. Jesca’s premonitions, my premonitions, Anna had them too. She told me how she feared for Jesca, for you.”
His speaking about Anna telling him something she withheld from me raises my temper instantly. I look away from Sebastian, down at the empty glass I am holding. I didn’t want to hear what she had chosen to tell him, but withheld from me. I shake my head. “Don’t, just don’t!”
Sebastian rests his hand on my back. “She withheld her premonitions to protect you, just like I had.”
I set my glass on the table to my right and lay back on the pillow of the stiff makeshift bed. I close my eyes and try once more to reach her. Anna.
Nothing.
A knot lodges in my throat. Keeping my eyes shut, I speak around the lump, “Since passing back through the veil, I haven’t been able to reach her.”
Sebastian doesn’t offer any words of hope or wisdom, yet his silence holds comfort.
> My mind drifts to Jes and how she is holding up with the added pressure being placed on her shoulders. She is strong, but she isn’t unbreakable. None of us are. If I was her and I was handed the ancestral bomb Sebastian just dropped on me, I would have caved right then and there as a twenty-something young adult. I open my eyes halfway and look at Sebastian hovering over the bed now. “Have you told her everything you just told us?”
Sebastian pushes his hands in his front pant pockets and shakes his head. “No, I waited to tell you first.”
I steady my gaze on him, unable to read him mentally, but understanding why he told me first. “You want me to tell her.”
Sebastian says nothing, just nods.
I slowly sit up and rise from the bed. My legs, my body, feel stronger than they did moments ago. The vertigo is almost completely gone. I look at Monica. “We need to brief everyone.”
Monica throws a set of clothes at me and heads for the door. “I will gather everyone. We will be in the conference room in ten minutes.”
“Hey, Monica?”
She angles her head toward me, hand on the open door knob.
“Thank you.”
Monica nods once and disappears out the door.
Sebastian turns to leave as well. I pull the white robe from my body and pull the shirt over my head. “Sebastian.”
I don’t turn to look at him, but he calls back from behind me, “Yes?”
“Have you tried to reach her? Dobria?”
Sebastian’s voice is so low it is almost inaudible. “Yes. I cannot hear her though, not since passing back through the wormhole.”
I continue dressing. “Do you think we will hear them again?”
Sebastian replies, “Yes, we will hear them again, somewhere, sometime, some place.”
I hear the door open, and then close. I dress quickly to find Jesca before meeting the others.
CHAPTER 29: INVASION
Jesca
I storm through the hallways, lights flickering above. My ears catch voices, an audio recording, coming from an open door ahead on the right. I approach the unsealed door slowly and survey inside. It’s the room I found before leaving our world to ascend the veil. The room where I saw how the Sondian fellowship took control of the chaos in our world within a matter of days. It has been a year now. Panic rises just thinking of what implications that bears. Drawn to the images streaming through the two computer screens, I enter the room and sit in the vacant swivel chair among them. I focus on the screen to my left first. The scrolling feed at the bottom of the screen is dated, but it doesn’t matter. I have no idea what today is, a year later from when I left.
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