Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) (13 page)

They were connected.  No question.

“So…” he managed, swallowing hard as he stepped back for a longer look.  “Is this based on our little pyramid, or was ours based on this?”

She shrugged.  “Who can say?  No way they’re not connected.  I mean, they’re too much alike.  But our pyramid wasn’t made of stone.”

Right.  They’d given it to Professor Nakamura who’d had it analyzed at the University of Pennsylvania.  No one there could say what it was made of, but it sure hadn’t been stone.  All they’d been able to say was that it was many thousands of years old – and then it had disappeared.

Jack stepped up to one of the megaliths and felt its surface.  “Granite?”

Weezy moved up next to him.  “That’s what it feels like to me. Except…”

“Except what?”

“There’s no granite in the Barrens, or anywhere near here.”

Jack never understood where Weezy got all her information, but he’d learned to believe her.  She wasn’t a bull slinger.

Eddie joined them, saying, “So that means somebody cut these pizza slices somewhere else, drove them all the way out here, and made a teepee out of them.  What for?”

Jack was thinking that “teepee” was a pretty good description when Weezy said, “‘Drove’?  I don’t think so.  Can’t you see how old these are?  I’ll bet they were dragged here on rollers.”

Jack looked at the stones and tried to imagine their weight, and the work it must have taken to carve each from a block of granite and then transport it here from wherever.  He remembered Eddie’s last question.

“But
why
?”

“And look,” Eddie said.  “It’s not even put together right.  They left spaces between the rocks.”

“They’ve probably shifted over the ages,” Weezy said.

Jack wasn’t so sure about that.  He’d noticed the spaces, but they seemed pretty uniform.  Wouldn’t shifting and settling over time have resulted in uneven gaps?  These all looked to be an even ten or twelve inches apart at their bases, tapering as they went up.  That couldn’t have happened by chance.

He peered through one of the gaps.  The empty space within was lit by strips of daylight streaming between the stones.  Its floor lay about three feet below ground level under a couple of inches of rainwater.  Jack could make out a layer of sandy soil beneath the surface.  A stone column, maybe a foot in diameter and four feet high, stood in the exact center of the space.

Weezy and Eddie had moved up to gaps of their own on either side of him.

“It
is
a teepee!” Eddie cried.  “Just like I said: a stone teepee!”

Weezy’s voice dripped scorn.  “A teepee is a place to live, so it needs a doorway – you know, one of those handy openings you use to get in and out?  Plus, it’s supposed to protect you from the weather.  This flunks on both.”

“All right, Miss Know-It-All, what is it then?”

Weezy hesitated, then, “I don’t know.  But maybe if I look at it from another angle…”

To Jack’s surprise, she turned sideways, squeezed through the gap, and jumped down to the inner floor.  She landed with a splash.  He noticed she was wearing old sneakers.  He looked down at his own battered Converse All-Stars.  They’d been soaked before, no reason they couldn’t get soaked again.

Jack squeezed through his gap – a tight fit but he made it – and eased himself to the floor to avoid splashing Weezy.  Cool water filled his sneakers as he looked up and saw Eddie watching from outside.  He made no move to join them.  Jack was about to coax him in when he realized that even if Eddie wanted to join them, he couldn’t.  No way he’d fit through the narrow opening.  Or worse, if he forced himself in, he might not be able to get out.

Jack turned in a slow circle, uncomfortable with the trapped feeling that stole over him.  He saw a triangle of cloudy sky above the damaged megalith. The broken-off apex rested at an angle against its base. 

What had happened?  A weakness in the stone?  A lightning strike?  He’d never know.

“Look,” Weezy said, pointing to the perimeter of the sunken area. 

Jack saw how the sides sloped away at an angle, following the inner surfaces of the megaliths.

“How deep do you think the stones are buried?” she asked.

Jack shrugged.  He had no idea, but the megaliths were even bigger than they appeared from the outside.

He heard splashing and turned to see Weezy making her way toward the short column in the center.  Her speed increased until she all but leaped the last few feet.

“Jack!  Look at this!”

When he joined her he found her running her hands over the top of the column.

“Look!  It’s the same shape, the exact same size!”

Jack immediately saw what she meant – a six-sided indentation in the top of the column, a perfect fit for their lost little pyramid.  No doubt about it now – the two pyramids were connected.

“What do you think it did here?”

“I don’t know but…”  Anger washed across her features, leaving steely determination. 

“But what?”

“Somehow, some way, I’m going to get our pyramid back and find out.”

Jack shared her desire but couldn’t see any way to make that happen, so he looked for a way to change the subject.  He turned and pointed to the megaliths.

“Why go to all the trouble to drag these things here and set them up like this?”

Weezy shook her head.  “
Stonehenge was set up as a sort of solar calendar.  Maybe this is something like that.  Maybe the sun shines through one of these cracks and – ohmygod!”

“What?”

“Our pyramid.  I’ll bet they placed it right here in the center so that at certain times of the year a shaft of sunlight hit it and…”

“And what?”

She looked at him with a lost expression.  “I don’t know. But I’ve
got
to know.  And I
will
know.”

But Jack was thinking about something else.  He did a slow turn, taking in the placement of the megaliths, the spaces between, the way they were tilted inward, making them virtually impossible to climb…

He felt a little squeeze in his chest as it all came together.

“I don’t know about sunbeams and that sort of stuff, but look around.  Imagine you’re a tiger or a lion… those openings are wide enough to toss food inside but too narrow for something big to squeeze through.  I think this is some sort of cage.”

The story continues here…
Jack: Secret Circles

1984

JACK: SECRET VENGEANCE

The concluding volume of the Teen Trilogy.  Jack meets Glaeken for the first time, but thinks he’s just a strange old dude who happens to know Mrs. Clevenger.

This is where you see Jack developing his knack for solving problems from the shadows.  All sorts of bad stuff befalls the folks who deserve it, but it seems like bad luck. Or if it looks like they’ve been set up, they have no idea who was behind it. 

Readers want to know more about Jack than I’m willing to tell.  His last name, for instance.  Truth is, even I don’t know his last name because I’ve never given him one.  They also ask about his childhood – what sort of upbringing did he have? (The child being father to the man, and all that.)  That was another reason I started the trilogy.

What surprised me most was how much fun I was having with these books.  I delighted in peeking into Jack's past and populating it with people who would play parts in his later life, or arranging cameos of characters from other novels.  (Longtime readers of the series were delighted with a cameo by one of their fave characters.)  I also made sure that the teen books fed into the larger story being played out in the adult series.

The books practically wrote themselves. Like taking dictation.
 

At its heart the trilogy is all about
friendship and self-discovery and the secrets that hide behind the façade of everyday life.

Book three starts on an ominous note…

JACK: SECRET VENGEANCE

(sample
)

SUNDAY

Weezy was attacked on a Saturday night

1

“Jack,” his mother called from down the hall.  “Weezy’s on the phone.”

Jack poked his head out from under the covers, forced his eyes open, and checked the clock on the table next to his bed.  He saw
8:13
in glowing red numbers.  He squinted at his window.  A cloudy morning sky peeked around the edge of the drawn shade.

“I’ll call her back.”

“She says it’s important.”

What could be important at
eight thirty on a Sunday morning?

Groaning, he slid out of bed, pulled on his jeans, and padded barefoot down the hall past his brother’s and sister’s empty bedrooms.  Tom was finishing law school in
Jersey City and Kate had started med school in Stratford.  He veered right, into the kitchen where his mother was cracking eggs, and picked up the receiver lying on the counter.

“Hey.”

“Jack, I need to talk to you.  Real bad.”

“Well, hello, stranger.”

Except for brief conversations at the school bus stop, they hadn’t seen too much of each other lately.

“I’m serious, Jack.  I really need to talk.”

Something in her voice… he couldn't put his finger on it, but he sensed she was upset.  She didn't get along too well with her folks, especially her dad. Weezy was a little too strange for him.  Maybe a lot too strange.

Not too strange for Jack.  She was just… Weezy.

Maybe they'd had a blowup.

“Okay.  Want to come over for breakfast?”

“No.  I don't want anyone else listening in.  Meet me on the bridge and we'll bike into the Barrens where no one can hear us.”

Weezy…
always mysterious.  Well, he had some time before he was due for work at USED.   

“Sure.  Let me get something to eat and I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

“That long?”

“I’m hungry, Weez.  I’ll try for twenty.”

“Okay.”

He smiled as he hung up.  Now what?  Never a dull moment with Weezy Connell.  And Jack wouldn't have it any other way.

He heard voices coming from the living room – first a man’s, then a woman’s.  Radio?  TV?  His folks never played either on Sunday morning.  This was newspaper time.  If they played anything, it was one of Mom’s Broadway soundtracks.  He went to check and found his father seated before the TV, leaning forward, eyes glued to the screen.

And on that screen – a pile of burning, smoking rubble with fire trucks and ambulances milling around.  A caption said
Beirut, Lebanon
.  The little CNN logo sat in the lower right corner.

“What happened?”

Dad looked up, his expression grim.  “See that pile of concrete?  That was a four-story Marine barrack until some crazy Arabs blew it up.”    

Jack stared at the rubble.  Four stories?  It was barely one now.

“An air raid?”

“No.  Word coming out is some nut case drove a truckload of explosives through the front door and blew it up.”

Jack blinked.  “With himself still in it?”

“Yeah.  What they’re calling a ‘suicide bombing.’  Same thing happened to a French barracks a few miles away.  They think the dead count is going to reach three hundred.”

Jack was aghast.

“Are they crazy?  I mean, blowing themselves up?”

“Well, the kamikaze pilots during World War Two went on suicide missions, but that was in battle, during a war.  These kids were all part of a peacekeeping force.”

“But…why?”  He couldn’t fathom anyone doing this.