They stared at each other for a split second as Jack made out Ann’s features. Not knowing who this hooded man was, Ann let out a loud scream.
In front of her and only a few yards away, a hooded man stretched out his arm towards her. His hand was almost over her mouth and she thought he wanted to suppress her scream and rob her. Having been trained in self-defense, Ann instinctually lashed out at the figure, swinging her fists as if she was possessed. She thought she landed her right fist into his left cheek such that any man would have been sent tumbling backward. To her surprise, her fist passed through his cheek and she almost fell forward from the lack of contact as she twirled around in a half circle. He simply stood there for a moment and pulled his hood back behind his neck waiting to see if Ann recognized him. He was about to speak when a loud deafening screech infiltrated his mind. Cum-Hau’s telepathic bark snapped Jack back to his mission and smothered the humanity that just moments ago was emerging from a long sleep. He pulled his hood forward and disappeared from Ann’s view.
Shocked by what had just happened, Ann struggled to regain both her physical and emotional footing. She looked in staccato glances at where the man had disappeared. When she turned around to get her bearings, she almost bumped into him. The man had reappeared only a few yards in front of her, again with his arm reaching out. Ann was not able to get into her car so she quickly darted left down an alley and ran at full speed. She emerged onto 11th avenue and headed down toward Judah Street. There he was again and Ann darted right, through another alley. How was he able to do that? He was disappearing and re-appearing at will. She stopped mid-block to take a breath and was unsure of what to do. She had her phone so she reached in her pocket, pulled it out, and dialed 911. Just when she thought her phone was connecting, the strange hooded man was at the alley behind her. She tried to scream as before but this time nothing came out. Not a peep or even a crackle of her voice. “SARINA…” she mouthed, “SARINA…” Ann looked down at her phone and as there was no evidence of any connection on the other end of the call. She fumbled with her phone and dropped it as she burst into a full run again and came out onto 12th avenue and kept running out onto Fusion Avenue, made a quick left onto Fusion and sprinted again down toward Judah Street.
Ann was just about to pass St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic Church when a bright flash of blue light burst into her eyes followed by a loud crash. Then everything went silent and there was no more running and no more hooded man.
Ann felt paralyzed. She saw a brilliant white light as she moved up seemingly bodiless through a void in space toward the light. She felt peaceful and looked down in time to see the image of a man who looked like her father carrying her physical body towards the steps of St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic Church. Ann wasn’t sure what the flash of blue light or the loud crash was. She wondered if she was dead and in some kind of spirit form. Time seemed suspended as she looked at herself. She felt weightless as she floated upward. She had no physical body yet she was aware of her consciousness and had cognitive memories. She could see and hear and feel but not reach out in any physical way. She realized she had no voice so was not able to talk or shout anything. All she was able to do was be aware of the scene below her.
The direct scene of her physical body was like a camera focused in high definition on the central subject with a special lens that blurred out all other peripheral images. She stared at her body, noticing every detail from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers and toes. One of her body’s hands was clenched tightly around something she assumed was the bracelet and the other contained the note from the mysterious hooded man.
The man laid her body on the steps of the church, knelt down, and kissed her forehead. He seemed to be crying. He stood and stared at her body for a moment, now filled with emotion, recalling Ann as a child.
There was another screech from Cum-Hau and Jack continued to follow the ritual sacrifice to the letter. Jack remembered that he had to find the bracelet and it wasn’t in Ann’s car so she must have had it with her. He spoke some words and motioned with his hand and her clothing burst into what appeared to be a flash of sparks. They were gone and her keys appeared from where her jeans pocket had just been. But there was no bracelet. He clenched his teeth in frustration. Just as he was about to dissolve into thin air. He spied a piece of chain that was trickling out of Ann’s clenched hand and was about to retrieve what he realized was likely the bracelet when the loud sirens and lights of the San Francisco police department caused him to pull his hand back. He quickly looked up in Ann’s direction and it appeared that, even in her spirit form, he noticed her. He made a slight gesture to her from below with his hand as if he was waving goodbye, but Ann was not quite sure if that was his intention. He looked down at the clenched hand of her body one more time and disappeared, still clenching the document, inside the envelope, through his cloak.
Ann looked away from her body and toward the bright light and everything was quiet and peaceful. Ann drifted upward and the feeling was much like when she was a little girl when everything was right with the world. She remembered her sister, playing in their backyard in the late summer evenings. Those were the good days. She remembered her father and how he was always present and playful. Ann recalled when she and Sarina and her mother used to visit the museums with him. Her father seemed so content in those days of her early childhood, back before all the fighting. Back when, as Sarina used to say, things were normal. Back in Idaho…
Chapter - Zero
“ROBERT, STOP DOING THIS TO OUR FAMILY! THINK OF YOUR DAUGHTERS ANN AND SARINA!” Mona yelled. “I NEED YOU TO STAY WITH THIS FAMILY AND PUT THIS OBSESSION BEHIND YOU!”
“I cannot let this go, Mona. I am so close to finding the answers and this work is very important to the future of the human race,” responded Robert.
“I DON’T CARE HOW IMPORTANT YOU BELIEVE THIS IS FOR OTHERS, THIS FAMILY NEEDS YOU! I NEED YOU!” cried Mona. “Please let it go, if not for me, then for your daughters. Robert, this obsession of yours is tearing this family apart!”
1980 was a year of renewed enthusiasm for Robert John Conti, or Jack as his friends called him. His life purpose had revealed itself to him as he searched through documents late one night for his public relations position. Jack made a new discovery as her read through these documents. He found information outlining the ancient Mayan calendar. This new discovery had ignited a new interest in the ancient Mayan culture and the development of their famous calendar. In his droning day-to-day work, he had felt he had lost his purpose, and the discovery about the ancient Mayan calendar sparked a renewed interest in his life. His purpose was to gain as much knowledge as possible regarding these new discoveries that not only involved the calendar but also the German Nazi party. He was not certain why he felt the need to research this work. After all, other fascinating subjects had held his interest. Jack was also interested in the history of the great wars that happened over the United States history and specifically WW II. Even so, those other interests seemed pale in comparison to his new findings about the Mayan calendar and he let go of everything to focus on this subject.
For the next year Jack was somehow drawn to the Mayan calendar. His dreams were always about water. He was in a boat on a great sea without any means of navigating. He had no motor, no oars, or any other way of making the boat move. Often he was drifting with the tides or currents. The scene was always the same; a boat, in the water with no glimpse of any land mass. He would spend his days pondering its meaning until one morning when he woke up and recalled a distant land in his dream. He was compelled to get to that land mass, whatever it was. He decided that it meant that his drifting was coming to an end. But what end, he didn’t understand.
Subsequent dreams revealed more. He saw a large shadowy figure perched upon, what looked like a throne of some kind. Every night he came closer to that land mass and the being became clearer. The being was large and mysterious to Jack and a bit foreboding, but still he was compelled by i
ts energy. He had no oars or motor but he was drawn to this being. It was as if he was being pulled in his boat simply by focusing on the being and feeling a great desire to be next to it.
Jack’s dreams kept him on edge and he was becoming agitated as he did not fully understand their impact in his life. All he knew was that the dreams were recurring and he wondered if someone or something was calling to him. But Jack was not one to explore the deeper meaning of his dreams and his military career was very demanding, which gave him an excuse to not explore his dreams further. That worked for a while.
His job’s demands were not the only problem Jack was juggling. His career had Jack moving his family from state to state every three years for the past fifteen years and they were all growing weary of constant relocations. As a public relations officer for the United States Air Force, The military required Jack to move wherever and whenever they saw fit. Jack was a loyal and patriotic man and knew what he was in for when he agreed to this position. The military needed him to review top secret projects and create press releases concerning various operations or new weapons anywhere there were bases in the United States. Jack needed access to classified information not readily available to the average civilian reporter, and he needed to go where the information was housed because the military was not willing to transfer these sensitive documents from base to base for security reasons. Over the years Jack had been exposed to a variety of new weapons and operations and had had the opportunity to advance his rank to Lt. Colonel, and the potential of the prestige that was associated with that rank. But just as he was getting positioned to reach for this brass ring, Jack’s dreams were causing him to lose interest in his work. The prestige with his position was now less important to him. Instead of reaching for the outer glory, he pulled back and brooded within.
Jack’s dreams were haunting him and consuming his thoughts. He was getting older and had enough service years to retire. He decided he had been in the military long enough. The timing had been right to move on and write a book or two about where he’d been and what he’d seen. Jack wanted to become an author or at least a journalist, and this small town seemed perfect for his transition out of the military and into civilian life and distract him from the turmoil of his dreams.
Jack hoped to experience through his writing the adventure he had gotten from his career but without uprooting his family every few years. His daughters, Ann and Sarina, wanted stability and Mona was hoping to remain in this small town in Idaho and finish the job of raising their two daughters in a stable environment. He truly wanted the best for his family and he looked forward to making this small town his permanent home.
Jack was working toward this goal to become a writer and secure his family’s stability when he stumbled across information about the Mayan civilization while researching information about WWII for his military position.
When Jack was rifling through the files about the Mayans, he came across an image that caused him to literally fall back against the file cabinet, short of breath and nearly passed out. It was the shadowy figure on the land mass that Jack was drawn to in his dreams. The caption contained a reference to Mayan gods and their importance in the Mayan mythology that Jack did not understand. The name Cum-Hau stood out on the page.
Once Jack recovered from the image of Cum-Hau, he began to focus more on his dreams and scribbled other images from his memory on a note pad. As he poured through more files he found another image from his dreams, but this time it was one that he was actually looking for. The image was labeled as the Mayan calendar. He had no knowledge of the ancient calendar, but it matched his sketch perfectly. He made a notation about its meaning from the file he had read.
From then on, Jack’s passion had become the Mayan calendar and its accurate prediction of events throughout history. Jack was interested in history and although he was interested in exploring the Mayan culture and the ancient gods associated with their beliefs, it was the calendar that fueled his zest for life. The calendar was indeed history. He found page after page about how the calendar predicted significant points in history and read translations about various events and powerful people and when they appeared at precise points on the calendar.
Because of his rank and the staff he now oversaw, Jack was able to use his time more selectively. And so during his remaining years with the Air Force he spent more and more hours researching this ancient calendar. Taking that research and turning it into nonfiction books about the Mayan calendar was how Jack would take his passion to the next level while at the same time fulfilling his dream to become a published author. Jack’s desire for uncovering mysteries was surpassed only by his need to understand the facts and resolve these mysteries that were woven into the calendar. He used his dreams as a tool to help guide him on his quest to understand this ancient and lost culture and their calendar.
Jack’s dreams were becoming more mysterious. He began to notice documents in the boat he was in. These documents were in languages he did not understand, but the documents seemed to be important because he felt slight electrical pulses when he touched them. Jack began to look forward to revisiting his dreams and felt more alive as he kept notes about his dreams.
But dreams can be tricky. They are rarely literal, and so Jack decided to find a dream expert. Jack was in San Francisco on some business with the Air Force, and he had a few days to himself between meetings. He was reading the local papers and saw an ad in one called Eucalyptus and was flipping through the professional services section when he saw an ad by a dream interpreter named Dana Raskin. It read, “I can interpret your dreams and bring peace and understanding of the self.” Jack was intrigued and picked up his phone and called Dana. Per chance, Dana had a cancellation and was available that day. Jack asked a few questions and was satisfied that Dana seemed to have quite a bit of experience in this area and specifically the Mayan culture, which was a part of Jack’s dreams. Because Jack had never experienced dreams like these and because they were beginning to consume his conscious life, he had to do something. He decided to give this man a chance so he went to see Dana.
Dana revealed the meanings of Jack’s dreams in a way that Jack understood. Dana said, “To see calm, clear water in your dream means that you are in tune with your spirituality. It denotes serenity, peace of mind, and rejuvenation as well as something unknown or something that remained unnamed.” That seemed to resonate with Jack. Dana also talked about Jack’s need for adventure as he was feeling less and less drawn to his military work. Again, Jack was in accord with that interpretation. The documents in his dreams were somewhat different. Dana explained how Jack must be involved with secret information in his job with the military and these documents were a symbol of that work. He asked Jack if he was interested in an ancient culture that no longer in existed on Earth.
“I did stumble onto information about the ancient Mayan people,” Jack said.
“Anything specific?” Dana asked. Dana was familiar with the ancient Mayan mythology and the various gods that played critical roles in that cultures development. He decided to let Jack reveal anything about the Mayans without asking him specific or leading questions. So he allowed Jack to relate his story.
Jack shared with Dana his new found passion around the Mayan people and their importance in history and his fascination with their calendar. He explained his interest in the mechanics of the Mayan calendar and the research of historic travel journals that included accounts of World War II as they related to it.
“Tell me, what you discovered?” asked Dana.
Surprised that anyone else would be interested in what he was doing, Jack eagerly told Dana his story. Jack had wandered into a musty bookstore in Boise, Idaho after he discovered the first Mayan documents, where many of the volumes looked as if they hadn’t been touched in years, he discovered a book authored by Dana and Ginger Lamb called Enchanted Vagabonds first published in 1935. This story was about Dana and Ginger’s journeys into the jungles of Guatemala in 1933. Their accou
nts were in a journal format and it was their tenacity and their taste for adventure that moved him to keep reading until the bookstore was closing. Jack bought the book, took it home, and continued reading late into the night.
Dana and Ginger Lamb’s second book, Quest for the Lost City recounted their 1937 journey deep into the jungles of Chiapas and Guatemala in search of what may have been a lost group of authentic Mayan people in an ancient village somewhere in the jungle. These people, with their ancient cultural practices, had been untouched by modern civilization. Jack loved how Dana and Ginger came to live with the people and learn their ways. He was intrigued when the couple was forced to leave and return to Dana’s home and sort out his father’s estate in the South after his father’s death and after the beginning of World War II. Jack learned that the ancient village was invaded by the Nazis after Dana and Ginger had left and when the two explorers were able to return, the city was in ruins with its people scattered and forced deeper into the jungle. The Nazis invaded sacred pyramids and temples deep in the Guatemalan jungle removing gold and other valuable archeological artifacts and religious works of art.
Jack was in his office one night after he read the books by the Lamb’s, sifting through classified military documents about the Nazi movements in Central America. He stumbled upon some information concerning the area Dana and Ginger visited in the late 1930s when the Nazis were searching for gold and artifacts during the early years of World War II. The information did not appear terribly interesting, mostly historic in nature and containing nothing about the Mayan calendar. But a reference to Guatemala intrigued him. He knew the Nazis were on a worldwide hunt for gold and other resources to fuel their wartime machine. The fact that the Nazis landed in Guatemala in the heart of the ancient Mayan ruins fascinated him. Maybe he was on track to uncover more documents about the calendar. He was looking for as much information as possible and was becoming more and more obsessed about the Mayan calendar. He needed to find more information about the calendar so he dug deeper.
The Song_A mysterious tale of the Mayan spirit world and the Mayan calendar Page 2