by S A Jacobs
Through my jeans, I felt the source of this pain. The coin in my pocket was hot. I quickly reached into my pocket to pull it out. As my fingers gripped it, my reflexes took over, and I pulled my hand from my pocket, letting the coin fall onto the floor. Searing pain shot through my hand, as if I’d just touched a hot stove. I clenched my fingers into a fist, wincing as I looked for the coin. It was glowing. A brilliant gold light emanated from it in every direction.
I cautiously reached for it, holding my hand slightly above it to see if it was still hot. In the glow of the coin, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. Under Robert’s signature on the beam was a circle. Drawn in the same pencil, this circle appeared to be the exact size of the coin. Confident that the coin was cool enough to touch, I picked it up and brought it towards the circle. As the coin neared the beam, the gold glow started to flicker like a light bulb ready to burn out. Then, when it was directly over the circle, a bright white light emanated from the coin. I pressed the coin against the beam with all my might. The white light became blinding. I closed my eyes. Suddenly my body went limp, and I collapsed onto the floor.
I opened my eyes to a completely different scene. I was sitting in a leather chair inside an elegant room decorated with dark woods. A fire roared in the massive marble fireplace. As I tried to take stock of everything I was seeing, I made a stunning realization: it was Cloudland. The gentle ticking of the clock was the only sound aside from the crackle of the fire. I turned my head and saw a figure staring out the window with his back towards me. He was dressed in a suit, and in his hand, he gently swirled a glass of whiskey.
“You have finally arrived.” The man spoke in a stern yet quiet voice.
“Uh well, I’m here if that’s what you’re saying.”
“Indeed.” The man turned to face me. “I trust you understand your responsibility as a protector. You are the one who holds the coin.”
“The coin was my father’s. He gave it to me.”
“Yes, of course he did. As his father gave it to him along with implicit instructions regarding his role in protecting that sacred spot.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I had no instructions. Only the coin. But I certainly didn’t want to reveal that fact.
“Oh, perhaps you don’t know your role?”
I swallowed hard. “I am a Sentinel protecting your cache.”
As I spoke those words, his face became stern. It was clear that my response was not what he’d been hoping for. He slowly stepped over to the chair facing mine, unbuttoned his jacket and sat down.
“As I suspected. David, this role of protection is something very different from what the Sentinels were intended to provide. It is a role I created for your great-great- grandfather. A role which had been successfully passed down through your bloodline. It makes no difference now though. Things have changed.”
“What do you mean things have changed?”
“The world has changed. The KGC no longer has a place in molding its future. Additionally, the precautions we have taken have left me trapped here. I need you to set things right so that I am able to move on.”
“Why me?”
“You carry the coin. It is your birthright, a sacred bond forged years ago, but there is more. You are different, unlike anyone I’ve seen before.”
“Different how?”
“You vanquished Samuel, the most powerful of the Sovereign Lords!”
“And now you expect me to help you so you can rise to power and take Samuel’s place?”
Robert stood up and walked across the room. He approached the grandfather clock and leaned against it, staring at me. His eyes were fiery with rage. He took a sip of his whiskey. As the glass left his lips, a smirk appeared on his face. Then he threw his glass across the room to the fireplace. The glass exploded when it collided with the marble hearth.
“I am not Samuel. Samuel may have been my brother in the KGC, but our intentions and motivations were quite different. The problem is, you don’t know your role.”
His words triggered anger in me. If there was one thing I knew, the Sovereign Lords were anything but good people. He may not have agreed with Samuel, but I had no reason to believe he was any better. “Well then, why don’t you enlighten me.”
“Oh I would love to. But, much like that coin you carry, your role is passed down. Your father must be the one to help you understand.”
“My father is dead!” I stood up and approached him as if I was going to fight him. “You know I vanquished Sam, but you don’t know that? You want my help? But I can’t help you unless I know what the hell you’re talking about.”
A softer expression appeared on Robert’s face. He stepped closer and put he hands on my shoulders.
“David,” he said in a whisper. “I am aware of what happened to your father. He died, much like I did many years earlier. Yet I am speaking with you. Your father may have left the world of the living, but his voice is still here. You must find it.”
As he finished speaking, a blinding white light overtook the room. I shielded my eyes with my hand. Just as quickly, the white lights began to dissolve like water going down a drain. In a moment, I was back in Melanie’s attic. I shook my head and took a deep breath before crawling out of the attic and into the loft. I shut the door to the attic and knelt, looking around the room.
I’d been frozen like that for a few minutes before I realized the coin was clenched tightly in my fist. I opened my hand and put the coin back in my pocket. I looked at my hand and saw that the pronounced relief of the cross on the coin had left an imprint on my palm. As I rubbed the palm of my hand, it slowly started to dissipate.
I looked at my watch only to realize that somehow I’d been in that attic almost two hours. Not ready to move, I took a moment to gather my thoughts about what I’d experienced. I knew it was Robert, and I knew that I had been transported to his room in the Cloudland. But there was something else I was missing. There was something about the scene that was familiar to me. Yet, I couldn’t quite place it. Sitting in that room had a comfortable feeling to it, as if I’d been sitting in my own home. There was definitely something there. Yet, no matter how hard I thought about it, I simply couldn’t place it.
Frustrated, I gave up for the time being. It was late, and Melanie would be coming to my house soon. I wanted to be there when she arrived. I hoped seeing her could help me clear my head and look at the situation from a new perspective.
Back at my house, I tried to let go and enjoy a normal evening. Over dinner, I brushed off talking about the cabin or my dad by trying to steer the conversation toward other topics. For a time it worked. Melanie and I talked about her day and for a brief moment it felt like we were normal people.
After dinner, we moved to the couch and watched some TV. Melanie had been resting her head on my chest when a commercial break came on. She sat up and looked at me. Her eyes showed concern, and she let out a sigh.
“When are you going to talk to me?” she asked, slumping her shoulders.
“What do you mean?”
“Ever since you went off the grid for a couple days, you haven’t been yourself. You don’t speak at all about anything. Not my house, not what’s been going on… it’s like you’re shutting down on me.”
“Melanie, I’m not shutting down,” I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m just… it’s just that I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Oh c’mon David! I’ve known you forever and you’ve always headed straight into the unknown without hesitation. That is part of who you are. You don’t know, but you figure it out. You step back and look at it in a way that no one else does and that is what causes it all to make sense.”
She was right. I never did walk in with concrete knowledge. I was the one who put the puzzle together without a road map.
“Look, this is just different. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Different because you realized your dad was part of the KGC?”
&nb
sp; “That’s part of it I s’pose.”
“Who cares what your dad did? That doesn’t change who you are. Why are you letting that get to you?”
“It’s not just that. It’s everything. It’s me.”
Her face softened. She was looking at me like I was a lost puppy.
“Look, everything in this whole damn case goes back to me.” I stood up and started pacing around the room. “It’s your cabin, not mine. You are the one with the Sovereign Lord in your attic fucking with you, not me. But he isn’t looking for you; he’s looking for me. Everything in this case leads back to me. I don’t know how to do this. I help people. I help people understand what is going on and figure out a way to bring closure to hauntings. But here, I’m not helping someone else understand, all I’m doing is looking at myself.”
There was a long moment of silence. She bit her lower lip and tilted her head to the side.
“David, sit down. Just talk to me. What happened there today?”
“What happened? The same thing that has happened every damn time I look at anything. It goes back to me and my dad.”
Frustrated, I sat back down and tried to get a hold of myself.
“Okay, so this all goes back to you. I get it. I’m just trying to help, y’know? I care about you, and I’m worried about you.”
Another long moment of silence passed. I didn’t know what to say. I was mad but didn’t even know who I was mad at.
“Look I’m sorry,” she said, breaking the silence. “Maybe coming here tonight was a mistake. I should just go back to my cabin.” Her words were cold and unemotional.
“Melanie, don’t go. I’m sorry, I just don’t know what I’m doing.”
“So what? That has never stopped you before. Why now?”
“Because it’s me! When it’s someone else, I can pick everything apart and see what makes it fit together, but I can’t do it for myself.”
Before I could speak another sentence, she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me. It was slow and deliberate, leaving my mind clear of anything but her.
“You know,” she said softly as she pulled away from me, “it sounds like you’re a little scared.”
“I’m not scared. It’s just different.”
“Look, I don’t blame you one bit. Look at me and my past with Austin. There is so much shit locked tight in that trunk that I never want to open. I’ve dealt with it. I’ve moved on. I don’t want to relive any of it. But just because I’ve dealt with it for now doesn’t mean it isn’t a part of who I am. A new perspective of that time in my life can always provide a different insight.”
That was the Melanie from my past speaking. That was the girl who had always connected with me. She wasn’t saying anything profound. But what she said aligned so precisely with what I needed to hear. I realized why I had so deeply missed having her in my life. I knew I had to keep digging into my past. I realized, with Melanie by my side, I didn’t have to do it alone.
13
The next morning I sat at my kitchen table, the box of documents I’d grabbed from my dad’s office open in front of me. I sat there staring at it. Between sips of coffee I rolled his coin idly across my knuckles. I knew I had to dive in and see what I could find. But Melanie was at work, and the more I stared at the box, the more I realized I wasn’t ready to take that leap alone.
I found myself distracted by the coin in my hand. Watching as it rolled across one knuckle and then the next, my mind started to drift. It went back to that day in the woods when my dad gave me the coin. What stuck out in my mind was that everything he’d said about it was related to that one area of the forest.
In a flash, I stuffed the coin in the pocket of my jeans. I stood up, took one last sip of coffee, and got ready to leave. I was heading to the trail. Reading and researching often filled the gaps of information, but my real skill was being able to read the energy I felt in a place. The box of documents could wait. I needed to be on that trail to feel where it directed me.
I drove like a bat out of hell. The wheels of my truck were on the edge of losing traction, slipping as I navigated the tight turns of the mountain road. I flew past the turn-off to Melanie’s cabin and headed straight up the mountain. It was still early when I reached the parking area at the Gap. The air was crisp and the mountain was silent, aside from a few people who were unpacking to get an early start on a hike. I parked near the trailhead, the same as everyone else. However, my destination was the old trail on the opposite side of the parking lot. To the average person, it appeared there was no trail there. But, if you knew where to look, a few feet inside the foliage, the trail began.
As I approached the overflow portion of the parking lot, I saw one car parked away from the others, near where the old trail began. A car parked in an Appalachian Trail lot was not an odd sight. Typically it was simply a section hiker who was out for a few days and left their car in the lot. But that wasn’t a random hiker’s car. It was Melanie’s neighbor. Zeke. It was the same car I’d watched speed out of her drive yesterday when he went looking for his dog.
A wave of concern overcame me. Zeke didn’t strike me as a hiker at all. Zeke was out looking for his dog yesterday, a journey that should have sent him home by nightfall if he was unsuccessful. My head rattled through the hundreds of purely legitimate and reasonable reasons for his car to be there. While they were all possibilities, something felt wrong. I didn’t know Zeke at all. I had no reason to assume anything. Yet, the feeling in my gut told me I needed to be concerned for him.
As I approached the brush hiding the entrance to the trailhead, I noticed some of the saplings were broken. It was a sure sign that someone had walked that way very recently. I became hyper-aware of my surroundings, constantly looking and listening for anything. I made my way to the abandoned trail and entered the dark and cool canopy. The path was overgrown but still defined. The old shelter on the trail was a good mile’s hike from there. Every step of the hike I looked for some sign of Zeke.
After about a half hour, I made it to a clearing and the shelter, Spearfinger’s Shack as we used to call it. It was a simple structure not unlike most of the shelters on the Appalachian Trail. A raised platform with three walls and a roof, just enough to offer some respite from the elements. It was decrepit, but still standing. I set my backpack down in front of the shack and sat down. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to absorb everything.
That area of the forest was particularly quiet. The wind still blew and the trees swayed and creaked, but it was devoid of any animal sounds. As I sat there and thought back, that area had always been that way. Like in my youth, that spot felt completely safe. It felt like a small sanctuary protected from the world.
While I sat there, my head streamed through a slideshow of memories that had taken place in that very spot, from going there with my dad, to being there with Melanie. Every one of the memories was peaceful. It was my retreat from the confusing and sometimes painful world after my dad died. Some kids have a clubhouse in the backyard. The Shack was my variation of that, the one place I was safe, the one place where I was king.
I came to the Shack intending to find direction and a clue to who I was, who my dad was. However, I felt nothing outside of peace. There was no residual energy for me to tap into.
I started to think back to my time in high school when I would come down there. I was the weird, punk kid with my leather jacket and dirty hair. I made it my mission in life to push everyone away, except for Melanie. I built an emotional wall and put it up between me and the world. I was an angry kid and wanted to do things my way. This shack became my escape from the world. The one place I could be me. The one place I could let my walls down. The one place where, when it came to Melanie, I had confidence and a voice. There, no one could mess with me… until someone did. The last time I had been to the Shack was when Melanie told me she was marrying Austin. That was the moment that destroyed my safe place. At that moment, it was as if someone hit stop on my boom box. My an
them was gone and so was my sanctuary.
I slowly stood up and shook off my trip down memory lane. Aside from realizing how misguided and depressing my youth had been, I’d learned nothing by coming back there. I took a deep breath and caught the smell of smoke. There was a campfire nearby.
The scent was coming from further down the trail. Without thinking, I headed in the direction of the smell. With every step, the scent got stronger. I quickened my pace. I took another deep breath and realized it didn’t smell like smoke from clean, dried wood burning. It was heavier, almost acrid. I couldn’t place it. A little further down the trail, I reached another clearing and the source of the smell.
There was a large fire pit in the center of the clearing. I realized the acrid smell was not of a live fire but the more overpowering smell of a fire being extinguished. The wood in the pit was only partially burned. I stooped down and put my hand over it. It was still hot. The fire had gone out only minutes prior.
“Hello?” I yelled.
I stood unmoving, trying to hear anything in response, be it words or even the snapping of a twig under someone's foot. There was nothing.
The ground was damp and soft, and as my eyes scanned the area, I realized that my footprints were clear. I could even see the logo imprinted on the ground from the soles of my hiking shoes. Yet, my footprints were the only ones there. There were no tracks of any kind, human or animal, leading in or out of that clearing. Yet, the fire was real, and I could still feel its heat. I took a closer look at the fire pit, and my eyes stopped on a blue piece of fabric. It was on the edge of the pit, lying against one of the rocks.
I picked it up and looked at it. It was only a couple inches square and burned on all the edges. Then, the image of Zeke flashed before my eyes. Zeke telling me about his dog before speeding off. Zeke wearing a blue shirt. I shoved the fabric in my pocket and continued to examine the ground around the fire pit. I tried walking as lightly as possible around the pit. No matter what I did, it was impossible to be near the pit without leaving some print.