The Fire (Northwest Passage Book 4) Page 3

  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 f
ound 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.

  Kevin walked to the south side of the bedroom and opened a window. He stuck his head through the opening, looked up, and saw a nearly full moon loom in a cloudless sky. Then he looked down, toward the far edge of the property and saw a structure he had seen a hundred times but never given a second thought: a storage shed made of local river rock.

  He laughed and shook his head. It couldn't be that close or that simple, but it probably was. The building in back was more than a shed. It was the chamber of stones.

  CHAPTER 5: KEVIN

  Friday, June 21, 2013

  Kevin stared at his coffee and pancakes with bleary eyes as the obnoxious device above his head did its obnoxious thing several times. No wonder people in pictures from a hundred years ago all looked a little crazy. They had to listen to nutty devices like his grandparents' cuckoo clock twenty-four hours a day.

  He couldn't blame the clock for a mostly sleepless night though. That was entirely his doing. For several hours, Kevin had obsessed over his discovery and, more importantly, what to do about it. Sometime between four and five in the morning, he had decided that he would keep the knowledge to himself, at least for now, and give Asa Johnson's time machine a spin.

  "Are you sure you don't want to come with us, honey," Shelly Johnson said as she walked into the large kitchen. "It might be your only chance to hit the stores while we're here."

  "I'm sure. You guys have fun."

  Kevin knew they would. They would spend all day at the shopping malls in Spokane, ninety minutes to the west, and engage in their signature rituals. Dad would check out the latest in consumer electronics, Mom would get her nails done, and Irene, or Rena as Kevin had called her since grade school, would buy more shoes than Imelda Marcos.

  The three would then go out to a nice restaurant, watch a summer stock theater performance, stay at a four-star motel far from the noise of Interstate 90, and return to Wallace happy and refreshed by noon Saturday. Kevin didn't know everything, but he did know his family.

  Brian Johnson carried a small suitcase to the front door, dropped it to the floor, and grabbed a windbreaker off a coat hook. He opened the door and glanced at his son.

  "If you need anything, Kevin, just call," he said. "I may need a break from your mother and sister if they spend too much time in shoe shops and lingerie stores."

  Kevin laughed.

  "I'll be fine, Dad. Buy me a tie-dye shirt, if you get bored."

  Brian smiled.

  "I'll do that."

  "I know what I'm going to get him," Irene said as she pranced down a flight of stairs.

  She glanced at her father by the door and mother in the kitchen before turning her attention to her brother. She flashed a mischievous grin that had grown on Kevin over the years.

  "If we go to the Oktoberfest steakhouse, I'm going to get you one of those busty waitresses. Inga or Greta will get your mind off Lori."

  Kevin chuckled. His sister was one of a kind.

  "Her name is Lisa," Kevin said.

  He didn't know why he felt the need to correct the record. He was in no hurry to hear that name again, just as he was in no hurry to ever hear about extreme sports or edgy guys or people in love. The last thing he wanted or needed was a reminder that he had failed, once again, to hold onto a girl he really liked. But he appreciated his sister's attempt to lift his spirits.

  "As for the waitress, pick me a winner, Rena. I'll take a blonde this time, with big blue eyes" and a smile that reminds me of Joel Smith's wife.

  Irene smiled.

  "A blue-eyed blonde it is. See you, Kevin."

  Irene followed her father out the door to the driveway, where a 2013 Lincoln Navigator and a 2009 Volkswagen Beetle stood next to each other. The Johnsons had purchased the shiny black Bug, with its cream leatherette interior, for Kevin as a high school graduation present.

  Shelly Johnson had wanted her son to have the same kind of car she had owned and enjoyed as a high school senior in 1979 and 1980. It was the year a mysterious woman named Michelle Jennings had come out of nowhere, possibly the future, and changed the lives of Brian Johnson, Shelly Preston, and many others in Unionville, Oregon, forever.

  Kevin stared into space and thought again of his parents' alleged time-traveler encounter when his mother kissed him on the head and brought him back to the here and now.

  "I pulled a couple of steaks from the freezer and put them in the fridge to thaw," she said. "There's also some milk and fruit in there. I'll make lasagna tomorrow night."

  "I'll try to keep from starving, Mom. Run along or you'll miss a shoe sale."

  Shelly shook her head and smiled at her son.

  "Don't just watch TV, Kevin. Do something different. Have an adventure. Do something you wouldn't do with your boring old family around. I mean it."

  "I'll think of something. I promise. Now go."

  Kevin watched his mother walk out of the kitchen and out of the house. A moment later, he heard the SUV pull out of the driveway and zoom away. He finally had the place to himself.

  He got up from the kitchen table, poured his remaining coffee in the sink, and glanced at the nutty clock on the wall. The hands indicated seven fifteen. Cuckoo had gone into hiding.

  Kevin walked into the nearby bathroom, threw some water on his face, and stared into a brightly lit mirror. A brown-haired man with deep blue eyes, his mother's eyes, stared back.

  It was still not too late to choose another course, he told the man in the mirror. He could check out one of those mysterious mines or give the Hiawatha another spin. He hoped to ride the fifteen-mile trail of tunnels and trestles at least one more time before he left for home.

  Kevin knew he could also join his family in Spokane. An eighty-mile drive was nothing, particularly on a freeway where a speed limit of seventy-five miles per hour was not just allowed but encouraged. He could ride his bike for a few hours and still meet the others for dinner.

  But he knew the minute he pulled his light cotton jacket from a nearby closet that he had no intention of leaving Wallace, at least not today. He had a curious mind to satisfy and another agenda to fulfill. He would do something different and perhaps have an adventure, though probably not the kind his mother had in mind.

  Kevin put on his jacket, grabbed Asa Johnson's diary, exited through the front door, and walked around the residence to th
e large yard in back. He considered turning on the sprinkler, but quickly decided against it. If he were gone more than a few hours, he might have some explaining to do when the others returned.

  He turned his head and put a hand above his eyes. A warm, bright sun – the solstice sun – rose above the mountains to the east. It was yet another sign that he had something better to do than shop for clothes or see a show.

  Kevin zipped his jacket and walked the remaining fifteen yards to the south edge of the property, where ferns, tall grass, and weeds marked the division between civilization and nature. When he reached his destination, he pulled out the leather journal and flipped to a dog-eared page. Anxiety quickly replaced confidence as the primary tenant of his mind.

  Kevin arranged more than twenty of Asa's double eagles neatly on the ground, said a quick prayer, and opened a weathered wooden door. He entered his great-great-grandfather's house of rocks and stepped into the year of the fire.

  CHAPTER 6: KEVIN

  Friday, July 22, 1910

  Kevin needed no more than a few seconds to realize that he had traveled to another time. When he stepped out of the chamber of stones, he stepped into thicker air, a darker day, and a neighborhood that looked a whole lot different than the one he had left.

  Grandpa Roger's house still stood on Garnet Street, but it didn't stand alone. Stately homes occupied nearby lots, including two Victorian mansions that looked like they had been built in the past twenty years. The inhabitants of this Johnson house did not live in isolation at the end of a wooded lane but rather in the company of others at the end of a crowded street.

  Kevin gave the back of the residence a quick inspection. When he didn't see any lights or faces in the windows, he walked to the middle of the yard and raised his arms.