The Emerald Tablet: Omnibus Edition

by JM HART

  Casey placed his hands against the stack and closed his eyes, pushing with his mind. He heard Terry say “on the count of three”.

  “One, two —”

  He put a little of his energy into his shoulder ready to push, but Terry never said three. Casey’s eyes flew open, fearing the worst, and saw Terry standing clear of the suitcases. They had already moved and the hole was clearly visible.

  Amy and Terry were quiet and still.

  “Ah, good, good,” Terry finally managed to say.

  Terry picked up the torches and they moved into the tunnel. “Can you put them back across the hole from this side?” Terry asked.

  “Maybe, yes.” He again imagined in his mind the hole and the bricks that had filled it, and the cases piled high in front of it. Just the way it was when they first found it. He opened his eyes. He couldn’t tell if the trunks were against the wall or not, because the cavity had been filled. They were entombed.

  8

  The talking stick: Jade. Australia.

  The house was quiet when Jade crept out of Alex’s room careful not to wake Kath and tiptoed into the hallway. She could see the light under Callie and Daniel’s door as she moved towards Kevin’s room. She stopped to listen.

  “We have to go. We have to leave the city,” Callie said. “If we can’t find Shaun’s family, we will have to take him with us. His hands will need to be cared for.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Saddleback Mountain. There is enough space, it has solar power, back-up generator, batteries — everything we need. My parents’ belongings are there, including dad’s light plane, a Piper Cherokee 6-300. Nothing has been touched.”

  Jade could hear Callie blowing her nose as if she had been crying. Feeling guilty about listening, she started to moved away.

  “I have to tell you something about Ellen.”

  Jade was immediately glued to the spot.

  “Ellen said, ‘Hide. An ingredient has disappeared. I have failed.’ Daniel, when she said it, I knew she was talking to me, telling me to run, to get out of the country and that’s what I did, I ran. I watched them force her from the lab. She asked them where they were taking her and one of the two men, who had Russian-sounding accents, pulled her violently by the hair and pushed her towards the stairwell door. They were only inches away from the door to the bio unit where I was hiding and I held my breath. The man was telling her to stop asking questions, she would have plenty of time to finish her research. They opened the door and pushed her into the stairwell.

  That’s when I ran. I wanted to go to her family, to the authorities. Instinctively, I knew I should run and not look back. I took what she had been working on and ran. I felt like I abandoned them. I also think whoever took Ellen killed my parents and have been looking for me ever since.”

  Jade started to cry silently.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I never changed my passport from my maiden name. My mail still went to their place and my parents died a week after I returned. I think they, whoever they are, have been looking for me and I believe they have found us.”

  Jade backed away from the door and leant against the wall, trying to decide what to do next. She wiped her face with the bottom of her shirt before opening Kevin’s bedroom door.

  Jade pushed him gently, but Kevin was dead tired and didn’t wake. She tried again and he woke with a start, nearly falling out of bed. Tim snored on, stretched out on the floor under the closed window. The full moon shone into the room, bathing them in the reflected light of the sun. The unity of the movements of the worlds fascinated her and she became absorbed in the essence of the moment, trying to forget what Callie had said.

  “Jade, what are you doing?” Kevin said. She didn’t answer. He waved his hand in front of her, casting a shadow across her face, as if he thought she might be sleepwalking.

  “Stop doing that,” she said. Jade watched him lean across to his side table and turn on the light. Kevin rubbed his eyes, waiting for them to adjust.

  “How do you do it? I have to know,” she said.

  “Do what?” he said, sitting up and throwing his legs over the edge of the bed. He didn’t have a shirt on and Jade admired his muscle definition.

  “You work out?” she asked casually.

  Kevin looked down at his chest. Looking self-conscious, he grabbed the shirt lying at the bottom of the bed and put it on.

  “You have the body of an athlete. You should figure out what sports you like best. You will excel at whatever you choose. Anyway,” she said, sitting and making herself comfortable on the floor in front of him, “you have to tell me how you do it.”

  “I don’t know, Jade. It just happens.”

  “Nothing in this world just happens. We create our own reality; we are the cause of our lives. Let’s say the thing just happens to you. Is it happening now? No. So there has to be certain criteria, a particular state or energy force that creates it. It’s like the story about a mother seeing her child stuck under a car and she is miraculously able to lift the car. There is an energy force that comes from within her that enables her to do this. She is in a different state of being. What state of being is your body in when you are able to step through time?”

  “I wouldn’t say that I step through time. I don’t know where it is; it’s not here, but it is. It’s like running through the cavity between the inner and outer walls of a house,” Kevin said, scratching his shoulder.

  Jade twirled the ends of her hair and started running the soft end up and down her cheek like a paintbrush. “A corridor, perhaps. It didn’t look like Earth, although it also did, just more vibrant. The colors were radiant and I saw Great Turtle.”

  “You saw what? A turtle?”

  “My great-grandmother. So it can’t be just out of your imagination. It has to have an existence in time and space. It seemed to be parallel to this reality. Tell me what your state was each time it happened.” Jade studied him carefully.

  Kevin looked deep into her eyes and he saw a flicker of light. “Do you wear contacts?” he asked. “I can see the light reflecting off the right side.”

  Reactively her hand shot up to her eyes. Wearing contacts was one of the changes she had made since her mother went missing, substituting the chunky black- rimmed glasses for them. “Yes, I do,” she said feeling a little defensive.

  “Are they uncomfortable?” he asked, mindful of Tim, asleep nearby.

  “Not as uncomfortable as being teased for being intelligent. The glasses attracted negative attention. Now tell me, what was your physiological state when you created an opening and stepped out of our time and space?”

  Kevin tilted his head slightly to the side nearly resting it on his shoulder. The ceiling was absent of answers. “There was always urgency. Trying to avoid something, to prevent a disaster occurring. I am still trying to work this out myself. What you heard me thinking about in, what shall we call it … Kevin’s world?”

  “That’s too egotistical even for you, K,” Tim said sitting up. “Having a midnight powwow without me, are you. Who has the talking stick?”

  “Go back to sleep. Don’t mind him,” Kevin said, looking at Jade.

  “Actually, that may be very perceptive of him. Why did you say that: powwow and talking stick?”

  “It’s the first thing that came to me. I thought I could smell wood burning, which reminded me of a campfire,” Tim explained.

  “I am part Native American on my mother’s side, my traditional name is Raven Wings. My great-grandmother, Great Turtle, was a medicine woman, a spiritual healer and could talk to the spirits in the afterlife. I had never seen proof of this until we disappeared in front of that wolf, into another dimension, where I saw Great Turtle watching us.”

  “Can we call you Raven Wings?” Tim asked.

  Jade stuck her neck out and eyeballed Tim. “No!” she said firmly and turned to Kevin. “Tell me what state you were in when you opened the doorway.”

&n
bsp; “When I saw that boy drowning, nothing was happening to anyone. I was alone.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “I wanted to swim and keep swimming.”

  He does that,” said Tim. “He will jump in the pool at school and lap swim for over an hour and he will do the same at the river.”

  “Do you get into a rhythm?

  “Yes, it’s peaceful in the water.”

  “Do you swim when unhappy or upset, or when you’re happy, excited?”

  “Both, I’ve seen it happen.” Tim’s eyes widened, understanding. He knew why Kevin swam so much. “He is slow, swimming for ages, when he has a fight with his mom.”

  “Shut up, Tim.” Kevin frowned at his friend.

  “Let him speak,” Jade said.

  Tim stood up and paced in front of the window as if he was solving a riddle.

  “Okay, Sherlock, lay it on us,” Jade said.

  “When he is excited, he swims like a rocket and splashes a hell of a lot, like a man possessed.”

  “So, K — Can I call you K?”

  “Sure.”

  “What were you thinking about before you went to the river?”

  “This is stupid.” Kevin felt reluctant to admit he had been crying, and wanted his nanna to come back, and wanted his mother to hug him again.

  “Come on. Look at this scientifically, an experiment.”

  “I wanted to see my nanna, I missed her.”

  “That’s right! Soon after his mother returned from the USA, they were killed in a car accident on the way to his place.”

  “Tim, shut up!” Kevin growled.

  “I know about your grandparents and I’m sorry,” Jade said. “That was a bad time for us all. So you were upset, wanted to see your nanna and went for a swim. You dived into the river, but when you surfaced you saw a boy fall off a footbridge where usually there was no bridge. No footbridge ever existed where you swim, right. I think you dived into, and surfaced, in his time and space, becoming a witness. Did you go on the internet to search for the details?” Jade was getting excited and leant her body forward waiting for his answer.

  “Yes, and there were no missing persons or death-by-drowning reports. There were weather anomalies across the world that day. Nature had a seizure. There was nothing I could find, the virus had washed up on our shores and the authorities thought my mind was infected.”

  Jade looked solemn, remembering her experience of that day, seven days after her mother went missing. “We are all connected.” She reached up and pulled Kevin’s pillow off his bed and lay on the floor with her legs resting on it. “Who’s the pebble?”

  “What pebble,” Tim asked.

  “The cause of all these effects. Everything starts in the Middle East.”

  “I thought you were a geek with a sci-fi brain,” Tim said. “Thought you would believe in the Big Bang theory.”

  “I do, but who created the big bang, the one sonic clap, the one pebble. We are all connected: six degrees of separation.” Jade had gone off into a spiral of thinking, believing there was something in front of her she wasn’t seeing.

  “When was the next time you stepped out of this reality?”

  “Last week there was a fire.”

  “There was more than a fire, K,” Tim said. “It was a scorcher of a day and we went for a swim; all good. I heard something on the other side of the creek, so I went to check it out. There was a bunch of dropkicks smoking and I hid behind a tree but one of them saw me and the next thing I knew was a fist ramming into my face and a foot stomped on my leg, hard, breaking it in two places.”

  Jade looked at his leg. “Impossible,” she said.

  “I know, right. We were burnt to a cinder from the sun when we came round and the whole place was ablaze. Kevin here made a splint for my leg while I was unconscious then dragged me to the edge of this wall. I kept passing out.”

  “When Tim didn’t come back,” Kevin interrupted, “I went to find him and saw Shaun and his mates beating up on Tim. They saw me and I was knocked out with a king-hit. Before I hit the ground, I saw the petrol bombs lined up, so I know Shaun and his mates set the bush alight and left us there to fry. I regained consciousness and before I opened my eyes, I could smell burning sage. My nanna used to burn sage and lemongrass. Then I saw the wall and couldn’t see if Tim was breathing, or was it the other way round? I don’t remember. The wall was a massive ripple of energy and I could see through it. It went to somewhere not part of this existence, but there was nowhere else for us to go, we would have died. Once we penetrated the wall’s membrane and we were on the other side, Tim’s leg was healed and the sunburn vanished. The fire engulfed us and we didn’t feel a thing.”

  Jade sat mesmerized by the story. “You were healed? That’s why, as soon as I stepped into the parallel universe, the atmosphere was calming and I didn’t feel dizzy and my head stopped hurting. So when was the next time?” she asked.

  “We were at the same place looking for the wall and couldn’t find it. A couple of morons came around trying to pass themselves off as fire investigators. We knew they weren’t and I freaked. That’s when I saw a ripple, like a mirage. It wasn’t in the same place as before, and this time we rode our bike into the rippling wall. We skidded around to face the men and it was evident they couldn’t see us. They gave chase, but they couldn’t see the wall, they couldn’t see us, or hear us. I know they couldn’t hear because this one didn’t shut up,” he said, thumbing towards Tim. “The rest you know.”

  “I think those guys have been looking for your mom. Your mom thinks they might be the ones who kidnapped my mom. She said tomorrow we are leaving for Saddleback Mountain. Okay, I want you to trust me,” Jade said, jumping to her feet.

  “Wait, what, how do you know this?” Kevin asked.

  “I heard your mom and dad talking as I snuck past their room. Come on, don’t lose focus.”

  None of them felt tired. Kevin focused on the floor and noticed shadows moving quickly across the floor as if a full moon had moved into mid-heaven.

  Jade stood behind Kevin and said, “Tim stand beside me.” Tim rolled himself over the bed nearly hitting Kevin in the head with his ankle. Jokingly, Tim massaged Kevin’s shoulders as if getting him loosened up for a boxing match.

  “Stop it.” Kevin slapped at Tim’s hands.

  Jade ignored Tim and focused on Kevin. “Now, close your eyes, and I want you to think about that day when you could smell the sage, and the fire was raging around you. How did it feel seeing Tim lying still beside you? What thoughts were going through your head?”

  “This is sick,” Kevin said.

  “Relax, K.” Jade watched Kevin’s jaw tighten and flex, his breathing increasing. “How loud was the roar of the fire? How powerless did you feel?”

  “You’re making me feel like crap,” Kevin said.

  Jade fired off the questions. Kevin was feeling more and more helpless, wondering how he was going to get her to stop, when a hum, a low pulse and the sound of the rustling wind like slow-tearing Velcro entered into the room.

  “What the hell?” Tim said.

  “Shh,” said Jade.

  The scent of sage and lemongrass drifted past them. A metallic ripple of energy was forming in front of Kevin. A wall between two worlds. “Okay, Kevin, this is just a memory. You are safe in your bedroom with Tim standing right behind you and I’m standing next to Tim. Now open your eyes.”

  Tim couldn’t hold himself back and blurted out mockingly. “He loves me.” And held his hands to his heart and dropped onto the bed.

  Jade whacked him on the side of the arm and he dropped the child’s play. The three of them stared at the spot, as big as a basketball, shimmering in mid-air, a window in time. It wasn’t a major opening, not like the other times. The energy flickered, folded into itself and disappeared.

  “Awesome, K,” Tim said.

  “Alright,” Jade said. “Now we know how you can create it. Next we need to see if you can choose your d
estination.”

  “What do you mean?” Tim said.

  “She means, can we go anywhere within the universe?”

  “Well, I was really thinking a little smaller, like how about this planet first,” Jade said, tying her hair into a bun and sticking a pencil off Kevin’s desk into it. “Like maybe we could go to my place. Maybe we could go back in time before my mom was kidnapped and warn her. There are so many possibilities.”

  “I don’t think we can mess with time. I don’t believe we should play around with this, we don’t know what effect it has,” Kevin said.

  Kevin’s bedroom door squeaked open and Daniel popped his head into the room. “Guys, it’s been a long day. It’s after one o’clock so get some sleep. Jade, back to Alex’s room. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow and we need to get up early.”

  Jade, embarrassed, scrambled out of the room, ducking under Daniel’s arm. Tim jumped back onto his makeshift bed under the window. Daniel smiled at Kevin. “Lights out,” and started to close the door. Jade was halfway down the hall when Daniel said to Kevin, “Can you guys smell that?”

  Holding onto the door handle of Alex’s room, Jade whispered. “Sage.” She smiled and walked into the bedroom, gently letting the door click closed behind her.

  *

  Kevin was surprised he had slept so well. He lay still listening to the sounds of the morning when he felt his dad’s big hand stroking his cheek softly and he swatted at it as if it was a fly, but his dad pulled his hand away quickly and Kevin smacked himself in the face instead. Tim opened his eyes just in time to see the impact and started rolling about with laughter. He was lucky he was already on the floor. Kevin threw himself out of bed and landed on top of him, and started punching him playfully in the ribs.

  Daniel smiled, watching them for a second. Life almost seemed normal again. Then the smile fell from his face and he said, “Okay, you two, I need you to help me pack the car.” The boys stopped wrestling.

  “Where are we going?” He looked at Tim and back to his dad.

  “We are all going. Tim, your mom and sister will come too, as well as Shaun and Jade.”