King of the Dark Mountain (3 page)

The day was overcast, but the weather channel said it would be clearing out in the afternoon. He loved the weather channel, considering its present form one of the best innovations that had come about in the past few decades. If people could have figured out how to predict the weather (more or less) why in the world couldn’t they figure out the other mysterious forces that kept everybody perplexed so much of the time, he often wondered.

He looked up at the sky and two frowning eyes seemed to glare down on him in the sky. When he saw a face like that in the clouds, it always meant a storm. As a kid, he’d called them storm giants for that reason. He had made up stories about them to entertain Ellie. The funny thing about it was that when the faces were clear they always harbingered rain, even though he knew it was just a game. He brought the gardening tools he’d taken outside to examine in the sunlight back inside the barn and bolted it.

When he got back to the house, he rang his neighbor Fred, and explained he would be gone for a few weeks and asked him to keep an eye on the place. Fred never asked for explanations. He was a retired army lieutenant and owned the adjoining farm. His house lay about a mile to the north, but he sometimes made his rounds on an ATV along their joining fence line. It would be easy for him to check on the place when he was making his usual inspection of the fence row. It didn’t take long to pack up the truck.

He googled Wind Gap, Pennsylvania on a hunch and got driving directions. It was in the general vicinity of where along the AT Ellie should be, given the amount of time that had passed since she had last contacted him, and something in the name resonated with him. That made it around a 500 mile drive and he planned to drive straight there. He would have to find a motel somewhere nearby, once he got there but that shouldn’t be too hard since the town wasn’t far off the Pennsylvania turnpike. It had been a long time since he’d taken such a long drive. He hoped the old truck would hold up. It wasn’t used to going any farther than the nearest mall, a mere twenty miles down the road, and that only on rare occasions.

He drove to Olivia, a town just over the state line to fill up on bio fuel. Even though it was an older truck, it was a flex vehicle and ran well on E85. That was the mix that contained 85% ethanol. He figured it was a good way to support his fellow farmers. It also might encourage the day when the old sludge in the ground could just stay there. That would be a great day indeed, considering all the havoc, political and climatic that the stuff was causing.

Ellie said disturbing remote wilderness areas created problems on subtle levels as well. He believed her when she told him about the things she saw crawling out of the deep oil wells in the far corners of the world. She thought it had something to do with removing locks that had been put in place in the distant past. Epic wars had been waged and barriers been erected to keep those places securely closed and the ancients probably thought they were enough. They hadn’t counted on the rapacity of modern people to dig and probe and lay waste in areas that must have seemed too desolate to ever draw human beings, back in their day.

He didn’t bother to go in and speak to the clerk, Shane, but paid outside with his debit card. He knew all the clerks at this particular gas station since only a few in his general area offered E85. He had mapped out where to fill up along his route to Pennsylvania. There were more and more gas stations that offered it but it was still something he had to take into consideration when planning a trip. The truck got good mileage on the open road, so there shouldn’t be a problem. Just in case, however, he also filled up a five gallon container that he kept in the back of the truck. With any luck he would make it to his destination around midnight. Then first thing the next day he could start trying to get some information, which would lead him to the next leg of the journey.

It would take another half day’s journey to get to New Hampshire. He hadn’t found any useful information about Ted online, but he knew generally where he lived. His instincts told him to follow as closely to the route Ellie had taken as possible in order to make it. This wasn’t just a trip about finding Ellie; there was more to it than that. He had to do the search the right way so that when he found her, he could actually do her some good. This was something he sensed, more than knew consciously. He couldn’t drive the hiking trail of course, but he had tried to plan his car trip as near to the Appalachian Trail as possible, and also make good time on good highways. He didn’t plan to stray too far from the interstate.

He was about to pull out of the parking lot, when Shane came running out waving at him, holding his cell phone. “Hey Hez, there’s someone on the phone for you.” He turned off the motor, and took the phone. “I gotta get back in, just bring it back when you’re done.”

Hez nodded putting the device to his ear, “Hez, listen it’s me. I know you’re planning on coming up but it’s not necessary. I’ll be home in a few days.”

“How in the world, did you know I was here?” he demanded.

“It’s hard to explain. I know it’s been crazy lately, even for us, but I will be there soon and explain everything.”

“Are you sure, because I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing, Ellie. I can be in New Hampshire in a day or so.”

“No, no, there’s no need. I’ll be home soon. I’m with Ted, everything‘s fine. I’ll see you really …” her voice cut off suddenly.

“Ellie, Ellie, shit!” he said. He checked the bars on Shane’s phone and they were fine, so it had to be on her end that the call got dropped. He took the phone back to its owner who was ringing up a customer. Hez laid it on the counter, nodded in thanks and went back to the truck. He didn’t want to go straight home so he decided to go to a greenhouse and buy some plants. This was a chore that he really enjoyed.

It was a lot like picking out colors for painting back when he’d dabbled in that.

He wanted to add blueberries to his expanding garden. They wouldn’t bear for several years, so it didn’t matter that it was late for setting them out. He drove a few miles to Katie’s Garden Store. It was a little more expensive than one of the big chains but it had a broader selection of herbs, which he was also experimenting with growing. You could do a lot with herbs to improve your health and the taste of food he had found out in the past few years since taking up running and being more health conscious overall.

While he was perusing the aisles looking at some oregano and debating whether to buy the plants or start them from seeds, a thought suddenly crossed his mind. Why hadn’t Ellie called his cell phone? Why had she rang him up on Shane’s? He set the oregano down and picked up a pot of rosemary instead. In one of his running magazines, he had read that rosemary was good for improving memory. It was also some lore you could mine from the bard as well, “rosemary’s for remembrance.”

Well, his wasn’t as sharp as it once was, so he was going to give it a try this year. Ellie complained about being forgetful but hers seemed as sharp as ever to him. The plant would be a nice surprise for her when she got back, even if she didn’t need it. It was a beautiful specimen, with lovely tendrils falling through the openings on the side of the pot. Katie took great care of her plants, another thing that set her store apart from the big chains, which seemed to waste as many of their specimens as they sold through neglect.

He paid Katie and carried the big pot out to the truck and started for home. As he drove, he became more and more disconsolate. Something wasn’t right; it was more than just the call to Shane’s cell phone. “This isn’t right,” he said out loud and as soon as he said it the heavy feeling lifted. He pulled into the driveway of the First Presbyterian church and turned around. He might not make it to Wind Gap by midnight but it wouldn’t be much later, if all went well. The weather was fair and the road lay ahead. “Guess you’re going to see a little bit of your native land,” he said to the rosemary bush and turned on the radio. It was already tuned to the oldie station, which was actually playing the old standard in honor of it, parsley, sage, and thyme. Well that was an interesting case of synchronicity he thought and took it for a good sign.

Chapter Three

The three men took turns explaining to Ellie in layman’s terms what they meant by the Theta paradigm. “We were going to call it the Iota-theta paradigm but we’ve shortened it,” Ian explained during some point in the long discourse, complete with power point displays and videos of constellations, ancient ruins and local mountain peaks. During the whole time, Ellie would glance surreptitiously at Ted to see if he showed any sign of skepticism regarding any of the fantastical claims. His face remained impassive, except when it was his turn to fill her in on some aspect of the prototype, which was related to his primary branch of study.

At somewhere near the mid-point of the long discussion, she asked, “So this is something you uncovered while studying Irish pre-history?”

“Oh yes, yes,” said Ted, “I gave up looking in the over labored fields of history and began to pore over the marks on the ancient stones, made before we have any written records, at the most ancient sites. When I got what it was that was etched in them, I put it into novels, and you know what success I had with those.”

“But those are just fantasy tales,” she said perplexed.

“Dear girl, after all you’ve seen with your own eyes how can you think that still? Of course the novels are fantastical but there’s solid research behind some of even the most far out elements in all of them.”

“It’s hard to believe what I’ve seen with my own eyes, well go on then,” she said feeling like Alice racing along underground. Ian picked up the narrative. His specialty seemed to be astronomy. They made a screen of the empty wall across from the fire place. It was also new technology to her, though of a less esoteric sort. She had seen something like it in public places already, but with much poorer resolution. However unusual these fellows might be, they certainly had access to devices that were impressive.

She prided herself on being up for every extraordinary experience, but for all of Ted’s ardent enthusiasm and the cleverness of the two agents, her mind could not accept much of what they were saying. For Ted’s sake, she wanted to believe that the thing they were describing was some great breakthrough for the human race, but how many of those had appeared in the past and been immediately adopted for bad purposes? She had respect for Ted and gratitude to him for his role in mentoring her in her wide range of esoteric studies, but who or what was really behind the two men, she wondered. Whenever she tried to ask them anything about who they worked for or where they came from, they steered the conversation in a different direction.

“Now the name of this star is Theta and it is contained within the famous sword of Orion. We have named the paradigm after it because the role of these stars is so important to the playing out of the sequence of time altering events,” Ian said pointing at the image of a bright star on the wall.

“Is this a prophecy you’re talking about?” Ellie asked, wincing a little at the use of the word with men of the scientific persuasion.

“It doesn’t make any difference, discussing events in time is the same as describing objects in space, and objects in space are energy forms, as Einstein showed us. If you think of it that way, it will go a long way in helping you grasp the pivotal concept of what you and Ted will be able to do.”

“But didn’t Einstein also prove that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light?”

“Yes ordinary light is limited, but we believe this event involves an older form of light with different properties. Because it originated before what physicists call the inflation episode after the big bang, it does not share those limitations. We believe it is usually locked out of our universe, but that at certain times it gets through certain portal sites, such as exists within the Orion nebula.”

“And it takes both Ted and me to unlock it?” she asked incredulously.

“Now that is another key concept in understanding how energy works, polarities. You are the receptor, he the activator so to speak. The two of you can amplify this power if you are placed in the right environment at the right moment.” He drew back from the image of the star and the back wall was filled with the image of myriads of stars. “Here is the area where we’re expecting the burst to come from, breathtaking isn’t it?”

She nodded, admiring the lovely display. “Is that a Hubble image?”

“No, this was taken by a secret probe sent out a few years ago in the direction of Orion. The solar system is located on what is called the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Some of this work has been progressing for a number of years. Many of the stars in the constellation are relatively close, within a thousand light years. I know that sounds like a great distance, but in terms of the galaxy as a whole, it’s close by indeed.”

“We figured out that we could learn some important information if we pointed our telescopes in that direction. I happened to come across some of Ted’s research in the area of Irish pre-Celtic lore, dealing with stars. That information provided a missing piece of the puzzle that has allowed us to leap forward in our research.” He paused then added, “We think we will be able to collect this energy out of the center of Orion’s sword to transform everything.”

“Out of stars?”

“Well, through the nebula actually,” he pointed to the center of Orion’s sword. “It’s a star-forming region, but there’s more to it than that. We believe that at certain long intervals, it opens up to allow the energy out into our region of the galaxy. If we’re right and we have many indications to show we are, then we’re on the verge of a civilization transforming event.”

“But we’ve got to be ready to receive the energy and that’s where you and Ted come in,” Aliester added.

“Who would think that a place so far away could have any impact on our lives, let alone such a big impact,” Ellie said.

“Consider how our ancestors regarded the sun as somewhat incidental to their lives. It took science to figure out how truly pivotal it is. You know 99.9% of the solar system is the sun and you can’t learn that from casual observation. What we’re finding out is how important other stars are to our existence. We’re groping our way towards a sense of ourselves as creatures of the galaxy. We’re linked, not just to one star, but to others nearby. In the distant future, we will extend that no doubt to include the whole galaxy, but we have to proceed step by step. Recognizing our nearest neighbors’ contributions is a step in that direction.”

“Why wasn’t this known before, especially if something in the distant past carved on stones gave you an idea of how to work it all out?”

“We think it was known, and then forgotten. Now we’ve found it out again.”

“We don’t know how much was known or if it was known in the same way. Information always has to be worked through the prevailing paradigm. A pre-literate society might stumble onto information, use it and not even know what it was. There’s a fairly universal idea of Orion as a hunter. We think this might be a clue as to how they used the force that can be accessed from there.”

“It would have allowed them to procure things from great distances perhaps. It might answer some of the mysteries surrounding the transport of blocks of stone to places like Stonehenge and the pyramids at Giza. The latter are particularly interesting since they seem to have been built to link awareness back to Orion’s belt. They were telling us for years where the force came from for their construction, but we didn’t understand the language. I’m sure you’ve heard how the three Giza pyramids are laid out to mirror the Orion belt stars.”

“You’re not talking about ‘pyramid power’ or anything like that, right?”

“No although the belt of Orion is really a triangular shape, the middle star extends farther back in space and the other two are approximately about the same distance apart. So if you looked at it from a different perspective, you could see that. We think that is related to how it connects to our star. All four stars would make the sign of the cross, if you could ever see them all together from the right angle.”

“You mean the Christian cross?”

“Like the central chamber in Newgrange in Ireland,” Ted said.

“I thought you agreed with the theory that it represented the swan constellation or something like that,” Ellie said.

“Now I believe that the ancients knew somehow that we would come into tremendous knowledge in the Christian era. That’s true, of course even without this event. Now here’s something else to consider.” Ted said. He bent over his laptop, pushed some keys and suddenly the back wall was filled with the image of a carved rock.

“Isn’t that the entrance stone to Newgrange?” Ellie asked.

“Yes, now watch this,” he pushed some more buttons and the image of the stone was overlaid with another. “This is the nebula in Orion’s sword, notice how it fits over the carving on the left side of the stone. The wavy lines below we think represent the Milky Way.”

“Yes Orion lies near there so again the ancients in Ireland like those in Egypt were drawing attention to that area of the sky.”

“We think those lines in the triple spiral carving refer to how the energy will flow at the time it is released.” Ian added.

“And if we’re right and we get everything arranged just so, we will have the means to provide the earth with an unimaginable abundance of free energy when it gets released.”

“If it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands,” Ellie said.

“The entity we represent has the highest intentions of using this to benefit all of humanity.”

“And what entity would that be, fellows?” Ellie asked

“We don’t give out the name; it wouldn’t mean anything to you if we did.”

She shook her head. “And that’s my problem with all of this, the secrecy. It never leads to anything good.”

“A temporary secrecy until all the details get worked out, then of course it will all be made public so the public can benefit from all the research.”

“But why keep it secret if you plan on doing that anyhow?”

“Oh we have our reasons. There are other entities that are not so benign that would love to get their hands on it. If that were to happen, it could lead to terrible consequences.”

“Anyway, we’re hoping we can go to the top of the mountain and do the first experiment tomorrow.”

“So it has to be at the top of a mountain?”

“A granite mountain. We chose the White Mountains for their granite content, among other things. We have already set up a laboratory inside of one of them so we can run the experiments, without being disturbed.”

She sank back into her chair, “I have to let my brother know I’m going to be here a while--longer than anticipated.”

“We thought that was already taken care of. You have to understand, we want to keep as few people as possible in the loop.”

“He’s a good guy, kind of reclusive too, so you needn’t worry about him running to the papers or anything like that.”

“Well we hope you will keep the details we’ve shared secret for now.”

“I’m not going to lie to him.”

“Listen Ellie you can call him, but he’s not going to understand any of this so you might as well just tell him you’re doing a short term assignment for me. That’s not a lie; we just don’t want this to leak out.  I know Hez is a great guy, it’s just a precautionary measure.” Ted said earnestly.

“Okay, for now I’ll be vague about it, but not for long.”

“If all goes well, it will be front page news and everybody will know,” Ted said beaming. The other two men nodded in agreement.

She stood up. “I’ve got to go call him, unless there’s more you want to show me.”

“That will do for now. We appreciate your help in this important research project, Ms. McCane.” He handed her the gizmo again and she focused on Hez.

“That looks like he’s at the gas station in Olivia,” she said as the image came into focus. Ian punched some numbers into his computer.

“I’ll give you the cell phone number of the clerk inside.” In reply to her bewildered expression, he added, “We are familiar with most of his routines.”

“So you’ve been spying on him?” she demanded.

“We’ve got our reasons, which you will come to appreciate in time,” he replied. “Here’s the number.”

She shook her head and then punched the number he showed her into the phone. She made the call and then returned. “The call dropped, but I managed to tell him not to come up here, but I doubt he’ll listen. “

“Service up here is spotty.” Ted said, looking up from his laptop.

“I’d love to go take a shower,” Ellie said, suddenly feeling completely worn out.

“Of course and when you get done we’ll have some dinner. Irena left some really good food in the freezer for us. You know how she loves to cook. I’ll warm it up while you’re in the bath.” Ellie nodded and left the room.

Once inside the shower, her tears mingled with the hot water and the steam. The confusion and frustration of the past few days became suddenly overwhelming. She felt strange inside her own skin, as though she had been stuffed back into it in the wrong way. She thought of Hez at the gas station. It had been so good to hear the sound of his voice. Even though she had told him not to come, she didn’t think he would stay away.

The town Ted lived in wasn’t very big, and of course he was a hometown celebrity, so the locals would be able to direct him here, if she was right. She just hoped he remembered the name of the town correctly. His memory wasn’t as good as it used to be even if he wasn’t that old. She stepped out of the shower stall and grabbed one of the fluffy pale green towels, and as she dried herself off the fragrance of rosemary came to her. It made her feel better though she couldn’t say why.