“There are definitely striking similarities,” admitted Jenna.
“Each one is looking beyond the camera lens. They are looking into the future, Jenna.”
“I suppose it’s possible. There are those with reputations, people ahead of their own times.”
“It’s no longer a secret that our government continues to conduct studies and experiments in the areas of remote viewing, time travel, or interdimensional travel, and much more. Many of Nostradamus’ quatrains have in fact been realized. Tesla and Cayce both saw the future long before it happened, and even today, mathematicians continue to be amazed at the accuracy of Ramanujan’s equations.”
“You really have been busy, haven’t you?” she joked.
“I’ve been painting.”
She saw the easel, and the canvas covered with a cloth. “You’ve finally finished her portrait.”
“Not quite.”
“Well, may I see it, please?” she asked excitedly.
Removing the cloth slowly, he saw Jenna’s expression change from one of anticipation to anguish. He felt her hand clutch his arm, as though she was trying to turn him back toward her. “I haven’t decided if I want to finish it, or for that matter, if I can finish it.”
“The eyes! What have you done to her eyes?”
“Nothing, I left them unfinished. There’s no reason to be upset.”
“Look at them, Ben.”
When he put the cloth over the painting, it must have smudged paint higher up on the canvas. The fresh paint around the eyes, which caused the unpainted eyes to bulge out of the canvas, inadvertently gave the entire face a distinctly freakish appearance. Realizing immediately the reason for Jenna’s distraught reaction, he wanted to explain that he’d not decided how to paint the eyes, but said instead, “It’s a rather unnerving portrait.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear this was deliberately done, just to frighten me.”
“It’s nothing more than paint smudged in all the wrong places.”
Jenna looked hard at him before speaking again. “I can’t wait for you to finish painting her portrait, and, furthermore, why should her eyes be more difficult to paint than all the other eyes you’ve painted?”
“They shouldn’t—but they are.”
“Why can’t you just paint a pair of normal everyday eyes?”
“Sorry, Jenna. I didn’t expect that. It’s a bizarre coincidence, and not done intentionally. Besides, her eyes are not everyday eyes.”
“When she’s looking back at me with eyes I understand, I’ll feel a lot better about things.”
Bob Bergman arrived precisely at seven o’clock. When Ben opened the front door, Jenna beside him, neither recognized him at first. Bundled in a heavy winter coat, gloves, galoshes, and a hat and scarf, he looked like he was ready for a trip to the Arctic.
“Is it really that cold, Bob?” Ben asked.
“It is. Better wear long underwear if you got any.” Bob kicked the snow from his boots before entering the foyer. “You have the crystal?”
“It’s right here in the closet.” He handed a box to Bob while he and Jenna finished putting on their winter gear.
“How are you, Bob?” Jenna asked.
“I guess I’m as anxious as you guys to see what happens,” admitted Bergman who smiled and reminded her that the idea remained nothing but a hunch. “Quite frankly, I don’t know what to expect—if anything at all.”
Ben was just slipping into his boots, when they heard a noise in the kitchen. “It’s nothing,” he assured them, “all kinds of noises in this old house.”
Jenna said, “Sounded like someone opened and shut a drawer.”
“Maybe one of the ghosts is in the cutlery drawer,” Ben joked.
“Not funny, Ben,” she answered, slipping into her coat, then winding a scarf around her neck.
With Ben and Jenna carrying flashlights, the three made their way to the tower, which at night took on extreme surrealistic overtones. Standing out against the sky in a space between the trees and against the low moonlit horizon, the thing looked as if it had legs, arms, and a head leaning to one side. A light snow was falling, and the closer they came to the bridge, the more excited they became. Bob carried the galena crystal in a cardboard box, which he set in the snow when they stood before the edifice that only days before had offended Anna Atwood.
Ben shined his light in the direction of the bridge, until the snowman was trapped in the yellow beam. It was still wearing the hat and scarf Anna had left behind. Cruelly attacked by a few hours of sunlight that had covered the landscape during the past week, the snowman still leaned heavily to one side. The dead eyes looked directly at Ben, leaving him somewhat distressed. To say this was a pilgrimage taking on the appearance of ritual, might have been the case to any clandestine observers. But it was only the three of them in a night full of stars, and standing with their backs to the moon, each wondered if anything unusual was about to occur.
Chapter 38
It was a wonderfully clear evening in Saint Meinrad, Indiana. Walking Einstein and Smith stood in front of a huge rock which had no remarkable features other than its size. Although Smith had no idea what to expect, Walking Einstein hesitated to reveal information that might explain to Smith precisely why they were there.
“This is where it’s going to happen then?” asked Smith evenly.
“I don’t know.”
“Well let’s get it over with if you don’t mind.”
“If the trinity is complete, then we’ll see it happen.”
“Trinity?”
“The signal must be triangulated. There have to be two other transmitters present if it is to happen.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“No, not entirely,” answered Charlie indifferently, “but it makes sense.” After pausing a moment, he added, “There’s always the risk of proximity though.”
“Quit talking in riddles,” shot Smith. “What the hell does that mean . . . the risk of proximity?”
“There can be hallucinatory effects on the brain. Perception can be affected by proximity of light transmissions.”
“In other words, what we see might be nothing more than hallucinations—that is if we see anything at all?”
“Possibly.”
Another three feet of the larger rock had been uncovered, and the sandy soil dumped at the far end of the ball field. With the new excavation, the large rock had taken on a slightly tapered bottom. In the moonlight, the vein of quartz that circled the base of the rock glistened enough to show a clearly defined circle. Inside this circle, Chase laid down several quartz crystals and then pressed a larger crystal into the fissure.
“What do we do now?” asked Smith.
“Wait.”
“That’s it?”
“And watch the sky,” Charlie said easily.
“Watch for what?”
“You’ll know it when you see it—I think.”
While Smith and Walking Einstein continued to wait and watch, Ben Manning held in his hands a piece of polished galena crystal. Those doubts that existed before were still present. Standing in snow, a cold wind cutting into them, each was having second thoughts.
“I’ll do it,” asserted Jenna, and before either Ben or Bergman could protest she attempted to fit the crystal into the space. “It seems to fit perfectly,” she smiled, backing away and looking at both men confidently. “So now we wait for something to happen.”
And almost immediately, while the three of them looked at each other in disbelief, something did happen. A bolt of green light shot high into the sky. Another, thinner line merged with the heavier line to form an apex. Much to their surprise, a thick green line slowly joined with the other two, until the three intervening lines formed a distinct triangle, the center of which was directly above their head
s. Covering the ground all the way to the woods, and pushing deeper into the trees toward Shanklin’s pond, a wash of dim greenish light became visible. But that was not the most shocking occurrence, not by any stretch of imagination. It was the thing in the sky above where they were standing that took away any hint of satisfaction or accomplishment, a UFO caught for a few seconds where the three beams of light converged.
On the ball field at the Abbey, Smith gazed into the sky with astonishment. “You’ve done it, Charlie.”
“A trinity is complete. Like I said, X-ray eyes.”
Smith had a handheld GPS that marked the coordinates of the area beneath the apex of the triangle. “Got it. You got to remove the quartz—quickly. We have what we need to proceed.”
When Charlie took the quartz from the large rock, the three bands of green light faded and then disappeared, leaving the sky just as it was minutes earlier. Methodically, like one who had performed a ceremony he was just now concluding, Charlie Chase took up the several smaller crystals and returned them to the canvas bag, into which the large crystal or “trigger stone” had already been placed. He smiled at Smith who was still looking at coordinates on the GPS.
“You mentioned a trinity.”
“Yes . . . it took three transmitters to open a gate.”
“That means someone else knows.”
“Possibly, or it could be entirely coincidental.”
“You already know how I feel about coincidences.”
“They do happen,” Charlie told Smith.
“Not in my business.”
If there was any real euphoria that night it was in Newburgh, Indiana where the three pilgrims regarded each other through the light snowfall, each wondering what had just occurred. For no longer than 30 or 40 seconds, they had seen something spectacular. Not one of them knew what had happened on this frigid December night. But something they did had caused it to happen. They’d figured something out, but didn’t know what, only that the polished piece of galena quartz had caused spikes of light to appear in the sky. As confusing as the beams of light were, it was the UFO, that in some strange unexplained way seemed connected to the light, that had caused the most commotion.
Early the next morning, a convoy of military vehicles and equipment passed through town. Ben immediately became suspicious. People were already talking about a possible military presence. The convoy did not stop in Newburgh, however, but continued east on the French Island Trail. Although it didn’t happen often, there were times in recent years when military personnel on maneuvers had used this section of Route 66, traveling either to or from the National Guard Armory in Evansville.
With both Bergman and Jenna working, Ben knew what he had to do. Lifting the cloth from the unfinished portrait of Anna Atwood, he observed it for several seconds, thinking Anna had either tried to guide or deceive him. Looking again at the two photographs, he was convinced that the answers remained in her eyes. There was no deception intended. It was not so much about painting the ethereal, as Ben had imagined, as it was about painting the absolute truth. Ben had wanted Anna Atwood to be the ethereal, and that was why he could not paint the reality she was. It was in the photographs of her. That was the reason her expression was the same in both photographs. She was revealing the truth about who and what she was, just as she tried to do when she had told Ben that the veil she had worn had been a mourning veil—a veil of circumstance. Anna had asked him to lift it and said that he must recognize the impossible before he could paint what she had not tried to hide. The veil was the barrier between them—a barrier of space and time.
At least now, the portrait could be completed with assurance that it was Anna Atwood’s face. It took less than an hour to put it right, only 60 minutes of painting to capture the depth of her gaze. She was not staring into her own century, but into his. He knew that now. It was in the two surviving photographs of her, but what she saw, he couldn’t even imagine.
Ben recalled what had happened the night before, and previously, on that night at Larry Collins’ house when the man had mentioned a church that once stood near the woods north of Atwood House. Both Collins and Anna had spoken of something in the ground, something that shouldn’t be there. The sudden thought that Larry Collins knew, or at least suspected the truth, struck him as odd. Ben also recalled Liz Raymond’s comments about several undulations she’d noticed. There was still a critical aspect missing. The portrait of Anna Atwood would have to wait just a little longer before it was finished.
Pulling on his boots and slipping into his winter coat and gloves, he grabbed a walking stick out of the foyer closet. Outside under a swollen gray sky, Ben Manning followed the stream northeast. Near the edge of the forest, the stream flowed past a tall cliff face until it disappeared into the deep woods. Although snow still hung heavy on the trees, there were several patches of bare ground, especially in large areas where the weeds grew tall. If there had been a structure somewhere near the woods or stream, there should at least be pieces of a foundation surviving, as Larry Collins had disclosed. After an hour of looking, first in areas where the ground was more exposed, and after poking the walking stick into the snow, he was cold and ready to return to Atwood House.
He thought it was a tombstone sticking out of the weeds. About 30 yards closer to the apple trees, but farther north, he brushed away a light covering of snow, to find several pieces of limestone, which could certainly be part of the church ruins. Without a shovel, uncovering larger sections would be slow going. He was convinced he’d found indications of an old building. Taking ten steps in one direction, then in another, and finally ten more steps in a new direction, he eventually found stone slabs, most pieces flat against the ground. If it was a church foundation, what did it mean? Did it have any real contemporary significance? During the summer and fall, the foundation would have been hidden in the thick broom sage and easily missed. No one really walked out that way, so again the foundation would have remained undiscovered, and even if found, who would have thought much about it?
After uncovering about three feet of what he was sure was foundation, he thought about the parsonage that Collins had mentioned. Maybe this was that foundation, and he hadn’t yet found what was left of the church. Walking back to Atwood House, one thing was abundantly clear. If he was going to continue the search, the snow would have to be plowed away. Ben hoped Matt Jennings would be available to do that. He felt sure Collins had a reason for telling him about the church, but he had no immediate idea why it was important to locate where it had stood.
“With all the snow on the ground, there’s not much surveying going on around here,” Matt said. “But we’re staying busy with plowing and removal for now. You say you want to run GPR on a piece of property farther back?”
“Property north of the house near the woods. It’s not a large area.”
“Are you building back there, or trying to locate something?”
“I’ve found what looks to be remnants of an old foundation,” Ben revealed.
“That’s curious. Didn’t know there had been anything back there.”
“I guess there used to be an old house, and possibly a church on that part of the property.”
“I’ve heard some talk about that from Keith Owen down at Owen’s Hardware. According to his father, there was a small church somewhere near the stream, which apparently burned to the ground a long time ago. Anyway, not much we can do with all the snow still on the ground, unless you want me to clear it.”
“No, it’s not that urgent,” replied Ben.
“We can do it when the snow melts, or if you’re not in any big hurry, we can wait till spring,” suggested Matt.
“Let’s at least wait until the weather breaks. I’ll call you as soon as we get a couple of good days,” assured Manning.
Ben wanted to ask Matt about the thing in Shanklin’s pond. He thought it might have some connection to what had hap
pened the night before when three bands of light were visible in the sky. But this didn’t seem like the right time to discuss it. The meaning of it all, Ben couldn’t determine—not yet anyway.
An Internet search turned up a 1901 article in the Evansville Courier that reported a church fire north of Newburgh with causes unknown. Witnesses reported hearing a loud noise after which flames appeared at or near the church. Since it was so late at night, and after fighting a large brush fire the day before, volunteer fire fighters were abruptly awakened from their sleep and equipment was slower than usual to arrive at the scene. The end of the article mentioned a brief military presence after the fire had been extinguished.
Standing in front of the finished painting of Anna Atwood, he stared long into her eyes. The mystery that was Atwood House was in front of him. Of that, he was now certain. Continuing to look in her eyes, there was a sudden and troubling apprehension that something was wrong—still unpainted, a salient aspect, which his mind refused to see. Again, maybe he had painted what he thought should be there, instead of what was there. Retrieving the two photographs from the desk, he held them up next to the portrait, studying intently the eyes in the photos and the eyes in the painting. The eyes in the painting did not belong to Anna Atwood.
Nearly 20 minutes passed before he saw it. Anna was not so much looking at the future as Ben suspected when he had painted in the eyes. The longer he looked at those eyes, the more confident he became that his initial presumption was a shocking misperception. The eyes in both photographs communicated a message he hadn’t considered—until now. Though he finally saw what was there with undeniable clarity, there was something deeper, something much more profound, and it was frustratingly perplexing. Anna didn’t possess those extrasensory capabilities associated with Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce. Anna had already seen the future. There was no doubting it. There it was manifest in the photographs of her, fixed forever in her eyes—and it was unequivocally real. Anna Atwood was the future.
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