Fire, The (3 page)

He returned the glass to a coaster on the nightstand and resumed reading about his late-and-sometimes-not-so-great relatives. He didn't even get to the bottom of the page, however, before he was interrupted by the sum of all his fears: a brown spider the size of a minivan that had crawled up the side of the bed to within six inches of his side.

Before he could decide whether the arachnid was a venomous killer or merely a frightening nuisance, Kevin swatted the beast to the floor with the reunion book. In the process, he swatted the glass of iced tea to the floor as well.

Kevin swore up a storm over the loss of his drink and the seemingly irrational reaction that had caused it. He was a big boy, a man of science, and an intelligent human being. He knew better than to freak out over an eight-legged creature he could destroy with a flick of his wrist. But he hated spiders. He
really
hated spiders.

Kevin caught his breath, slid to the edge of the bed, and glanced over the side. He looked for the spider but found a mess instead. Ice cubes and tea soaked a spot on the hardwood floor about the size of a large serving tray. Fortunately, the glass itself remained intact.

He turned away, shook his head, and laughed. No wonder he couldn't keep a girlfriend. He was a big chicken. What girl would want a guy who was afraid of spiders?

Kevin sighed as he pondered the chore ahead. He would have to clean the spill before the tea stained the red-oak planks. The last thing he needed was another surface to scrub in the morning.

He adjusted the nightstand lamp to its brightest setting and glanced again at the floor. This time he saw more than a spreading puddle. He saw iced tea drain through four long, straight cracks – cracks he had not seen before.

Kevin got off the bed, walked to the far side of the bedroom, and picked up a clean rag that he had tossed on the floor earlier that day. He turned on the overhead light, returned to the side of the bed, dropped to his knees, and wiped up his mess. When he took a closer look at the cracks, he saw that they were more than imperfections in an otherwise smooth and seamless floor. They were the boundaries of something created by design.

Kevin ran a finger along the slits, which formed a rectangle about two feet by three, but found nothing to suggest that they were anything more than grooves in wood. The dark brown strips within the rectangle perfectly matched those around them. If this was a repair job, the handyman had at least gotten that much right.

Then Kevin applied pressure to one end of the rectangle and felt the wood shift. The thin seams suddenly became wider breaches. Unable to move the floor any more, Kevin got up on his feet, aligned his bare heels to a short side of the rectangle, and jumped. When he came down on the floor, the space opened up. He fell back toward the nightstand but managed to grab enough brass on the headboard to prevent a violent and noisy collision with the stand and the bed.

When he picked himself up, he again glanced at the rectangle and this time saw more than grooves on a hardwood floor. He saw a divided storage space filled with gems, coins, banknotes, books, and other valuables.

Just that quickly Kevin set aside concerns about damage to the floor. He could explain tea stains and cracks but not this. He had found something he was never supposed to see, something his parents and maybe his grandparents were never supposed to see. He had discovered one more tidbit for Roger's reunion book. He had uncovered a secret cache.

CHAPTER 4: KEVIN

It took Kevin less than five minutes to realize he had discovered items that had not been seen by human eyes in decades. His grandparents had been sensible, practical people. There was not a snowball's chance they would have stored anything of value below the floor of a guest bedroom, much less hundreds of double eagles, silver pieces, and diamonds. There were enough diamonds in one tray alone to fill a coffee cup.

Kevin tried to calculate the value of the cache but gave up after examining fewer than half of the compartments. The coins alone were probably worth a hundred grand. The government no longer minted double eagles and the price of gold had soared in recent years to more than a thousand dollars an ounce. He had no idea what a cup of diamonds fetched on the open market, but he figured it was enough to buy a few houses.

Kevin resisted the temptation to immediately tell his parents about his discovery and instead commenced a search for answers. He grabbed what appeared to be a diary, lying atop the largest pile of gold, and returned to his bed. He now had something better to read than a reunion program.

When Kevin opened the leather-bound book, he saw that it was indeed a diary – a journal that had belonged to his great-great-grandfather. Asa Johnson had apparently had a lot to say about the events in his life between April 1, 1895, and January 25, 1910. He had filled nearly every page.

Kevin adjusted the nightstand lamp, repositioned his pillows, and settled in for a long read. He had a hunch he was about to read a few chapters of his family's history that had not been passed down in any form. Within minutes, he found that his hunch was correct.

Much of the journal fell short of riveting fiction. Most entries, in fact, were pretty dry stuff. Asa had recorded the prices of commodities such as gold and silver and the names of individuals in Wallace, Coeur d'Alene, Missoula, and Spokane who apparently traded in those commodities. At least a dozen pages contained nothing but names and numbers.

As Kevin quickly discovered, however, Asa had done more than keep a meticulous ledger. He had noted gossip about prominent citizens, made tender observations about his wife and sons, and recorded details of major events, including the Spanish-American War, the financial Panic of 1907, and the appearance of the Daylight comet in January 1910 but
not
the coming of Halley's comet three months later.

He had also kept a log of places he had visited and, astonishingly,
years
he had visited. Kevin shook his head and rubbed his eyes before diving a second time into the diary's last entry.

January 25, 1910. Took another leap today, this time to MMXII. Arrived on November 28 and went to Spokane. The city is getting far too big for my breeches. Automobiles are now more numerous than people. Thank God for hired drivers and ample assets! Mercer said that prices are rising again. Gold closed at 1710, much higher than the last time. People talk of financial crisis and the reelection of President O. Can't imagine what the boys at the club would think of him. Also saw an interesting sign in a window: Flu shots. Could there be a treatment for influenza? Will have to investigate on my next visit.

Kevin read the passage again and shook his head. Could it be possible? Could Asa Johnson have traveled to 2012? Could he have passed this way just seven months ago? The reference to Barack Obama was unmistakable, as was the Roman numeral date. Excited and increasingly nervous, Kevin thumbed through earlier pages for a similar entry. He found one in seconds.

February 5, 1909. Arrived on May 16 in MMXI. The warmth of spring was most welcome. Saw Mercer and the broker. Mercer said uncertainty over the economy could affect prices. He advised patience on gold. The broker reported limited inventory but said more synthetics are coming. The new sparklers are as pretty as peaches! Saw an interesting contraption called a television. Images were fascinating, the content dubious. Something called Seal Team Six is in all the papers. Also stopped in a fancy store to get face lotions for Celia. It's good to be home.

Kevin lowered the book and stared at the back of the room. He could not believe what he was reading. If the entries in this journal were true, then his great-great-grandfather had traveled through time on more than one occasion and apparently made a bundle doing it.

Suddenly, the abundance of gold and diamonds in the hidden space made sense. The price of gold had remained stable for decades through the first part of the twentieth century at about twenty dollars an ounce. By bringing that cheap gold into modern times, Asa Johnson could have realized returns exceeding eight thousand percent.

The attraction of synthetic diamonds was no less obvious. Asa could not have spent twenty-first-century banknotes, with their colorful graphics and inconvenient dates, in the early 1900s. He would have had to convert the modern cash into a commodity he could sell.

What better commodity than something that had become cheaper to produce and just as easy to obtain? Asa had discovered the possibilities of synthetic diamonds and become rich playing both ends of the time spectrum.

Kevin opened the trap door and reexamined the contents of the cache. In addition to the double eagles, silver pieces, and diamonds, he found modern banknotes and coins. That too made sense. Asa would have needed twenty-first-century cash to pay twenty-first-century bills.

The hard assets were just the beginning. Kevin opened ledgers detailing even more business transactions and two envelopes stuffed with receipts. The oldest receipts dated to 1907, the newest to 2012. Asa Johnson had been a wheeler-dealer of the first order.

The documents answered many questions, but not all. Even as Kevin built a case in his mind that his great-great-grandfather had, indeed, traveled a hundred years forward in time, one question continued to nag: How did he do it? How did even an educated English immigrant manage to pass from one century to another in the blink of an eye?

As a man of science, he felt compelled to dismiss the idea immediately. Time travel was impossible. It was impossible because a photon could not move faster than the speed of light. A team of physicists at a Hong Kong university had proved as much in 2011. Yet here was this cache of modern banknotes and business documents that had apparently been compiled by a man who had been dead for 103 years.

As he tried to reconcile what he saw with what he believed, Kevin let his mind drift to a night in August 1999 and a conversation he wasn't supposed to hear. He was eight at the time, an inquisitive boy who never hesitated to knock on the door to his parents' bedroom when he needed an answer to a question.

On that night, however, he had stopped short of the half-closed door and not announced his presence. He had instead eavesdropped on a conversation in progress, a heated exchange about a matter that seemed to defy science, logic, and all things possible.

Shelly Johnson had argued vehemently in favor of revisiting a site near Mount St. Helens in Washington. She had insisted on keeping alive the memory of a woman who had died in the volcano's May 1980 eruption, a woman who had apparently traveled through time, a woman Shelly had referred to at various times as an older version of
herself
.

Kevin thought hard about the long-ago night. Had this woman, who he later identified in a yearbook as Michelle Jennings Land, a school secretary, really traveled through time? If so, how had she done it? Shelly Johnson had not provided details, just as Asa Johnson had not provided details about how
he
had traveled through time. Or had he?

Kevin picked up the book and thumbed through it again. This time he started from the beginning and went through the journal slowly and carefully. He focused on words and phrases that stood out and within minutes found a piece to the puzzle: a passage from April 14, 1907, that referred directly to time travel.

Went to see J.M. today and attend to his affairs. He did not live to see the sunset or manage to keep a sound mind when the Lord called him home. He barked at Elizabeth in his final hour and sent his beloved away as the end drew near. When I asked him about the property, he spurned me as well. He later called me back to tell a tale I considered quite fantastic, a story that I readily dismissed as a delusion of a dying man. The chamber of stones, J.M. revealed, was no mere space. It was a portal to distant times that could be unlocked by placing "godless gold" at its gate. I beckoned a doctor at this declaration, much to J.M.'s dismay, but remained to hear his story. The gold, he insisted, must be as pure as a stream and arranged in the Roman year in the light of a solstice sun or the shadow of the fullest moon . . .

Kevin flipped forward through the diary in search of more details but found only a terse confirmation of what he already suspected. On April 28, 1907, Asa wrote:

J.M. was
not
a delusional man.

Kevin read the passages again and closed his eyes. He had in his possession knowledge that could turn the laws of physics on their head. He had what appeared to be an unbelievable formula. He did not, however, have all the information he needed.

He understood the parts about Roman years, celestial phases, and even the gold. Kevin knew that double eagles contained a little copper, so he guessed that "pure" probably meant uncirculated. He was less certain about the reference to "godless" in "godless gold," but he figured it was probably some sort of warning against the corrupting nature of money.

The rest of the passage was far less clear. Who was J.M.? And where was the portal? The chamber of stones sounded more like a Druid temple or a Harry Potter book than a magic venue in Idaho. Was the chamber a cave that allowed mere mortals to travel through time? Was it a supernatural mine, the kind of place Professor Smith had warned about? Asa Johnson hadn't mentioned anything about strange blue lights.

Kevin flipped through more pages for clarification but found nothing useful. He found no addresses, directions, or maps that might lead him to this mysterious chamber. After several more minutes of fruitless searching, Kevin got off the bed and walked around the room. He tried to recall if Grandpa Roger had ever said anything about a stone structure.

Then he remembered something he had read in the reunion book. He grabbed the book off the bed and turned to Page 5, where the narratives of his American ancestors began. Asa Johnson had purchased this very property from a fellow speculator, a man named James May.