Aeturnum (The Book of Adam 2) Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DEDICATION

  Look for “Town Secrets” - Book 1 in “The Book of Adam” series

  At most major ebook retailers.

  Copyright © 2015 Scott Gelowitz

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Adam sat in the chair feeling uncomfortable.

  It wasn’t that the chair was uncomfortable. The chair was perfectly fine. It was what he had just been told.

  “We don’t know many details yet, but they nearly had him at the prison when it happened.”

  Gurpreet Gupta looked at Adam as he spoke in his low voice and rich East-Indian accent. Concern showed in his eyes, although the rest of him seemed calm.

  Adam had just been informed that Larix had escaped. Aggie’s warning had been correct, even down to the time of day. The realization gave Adam goose bumps as Aggie’s words triggered a flood of memories while the others in the room continued discussing the news.

  Adam remembered the day Kevin burst into his garage to tell him that the residents of Waldron had disappeared and the town was in shambles. A mysterious fog had surrounded Waldron and when it cleared no one could be found. The same thing had happened a week before at another town, Langenburg.

  That news came right after Adam had discovered his dad’s mysterious lapel pin. At that point he had no idea how significant that discovery would be.

  He also remembered listening to Don Chen and Gurpreet Gupta telling him and his friends about the Sentinel League – the centuries old secret organization that built the town. Most surprising was the fact that almost all of the adults in town were members.

  A lot of information was shared in that short meeting, like the revelation that the stories of Atlantis were mostly true but the inhabitants of the island, called the Teneo and Decreta, had one major disagreement between them – how to treat the ‘Common’ people living everywhere else in the world. The Teneo believed that Mankind were capable of evolving and learning – one day to be as intelligent as they. The Decreta believed that Mankind would never be anything more than mildly intelligent so they should be used as lab rats to further their own scientific knowledge.

  Suddenly, Elianora’s face popped up in his mind. It was the first time he had ever seen Elianora and soon after Grayson had been surrounded by the fog. He immediately recognized her from the picture of people standing in front of Town Hall at the Grand Opening in 1910. She looked so young but yet she was really old. Just how old he didn’t know, but he knew it was centuries.

  Elianora had shown the boys the history of Larix, the leader of the Decreta, and the power he controlled in the Heartstone - the mysterious glowing object he carried with him always – using it to control Mankind and kill anyone, including the Teneo, who stood in his way. No Teneo could get near without causing it to explode, but ‘Common’ humans could. In 1908 at the battle of Tunguska, Larix had lost the Heartstone and believed it destroyed, but it was found by one of the Sentinel League members soon after. Since then it had been guarded by the Sentinel League under the supervision of Elianora, moved from hiding place to hiding place and eventually ending up in the small town of Grayson – a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Canada - and there it stayed for far too long.

  Tasked with helping to keep the Heartstone hidden, Adam thought about how lucky he and his friends had been to escape being caught time and again. They found the Keystone in Town Hall and arrived back to Elianora just in time to see her shot full of the drug that was controlling the townspeople, making them tell their most intimate secrets while acting like zombies. The sound of the gunshot in his memory still made Adam jump.

  Elianora had believed that no drug could control her - but she was wrong. She told Larix exactly where the boys were hiding and that they also had the Keystone.

  The group split up in order to keep the Keystone from Larix and hopefully save all of the townspeople. Adam decided that he and Kevin would try to find the Heartstone and get it out of town, but they needed to get to the site where it was hidden first. Although he would have liked to forget it, the memory of riding double with Kevin on Elianora’s flowery bicycle crept into his mind.

  It was the only way, he reminded himself often.

  The flood of memories continued as Adam remembered hearing his mother’s voice while climbing out of the caves hidden under the Radome - the huge golf ball shaped structure located south of town. Her voice lured him out to be caught by Larix, who had already drugged Kevin a couple of minutes earlier.

  Larix explained to Adam that the Keystone was actually called an Impression Stone, an object that can store instructions within forever. The Impression Stone would have instructions how to navigate the Radome caves and get past the traps, but only Adam had the ability to connect with it and receive those instructions. Larix promised that if Adam helped, Larix would leave Grayson without hurting anyone. Not believing him, Adam led Larix and two of his soldiers through the caves anyway since he had no other choice.

  The rest was a blur as Adam made it through the traps and finally to the last chamber where he pulled the Heartstone from its hiding spot. Only, it wasn’t really the Heartstone – just a fake. He connected with it and read the instructions inside:

  “To whoever is connected with this stone: this is not the Heartstone you are looking for. It is a copy. The real Heartstone has been taken away without the knowledge of Elianora or any others in the Sentinel League, in the hopes of keeping it safe.

  We know our locations have been compromised. Elianora was unwilling to believe, so we have taken over.”

  A strange symbol appeared at the end of the message.

  It was at that moment that he decided he would have to run for it and hope for some luck. He didn’t run as if his life depended on it; he ran because his life depended on it.

  At the end of his run fueled by fear fear, he sprinted up the last steps leading out of the caves and dove to the side quickly.

  That’s when he heard the two gunshots.

  At that moment he thought he was dead, but instead of drifting in to darkness, he heard the gruff voice of Ben Casey. It was far from angelic, but it sounded like safety to Adam.

  The last wave of memory was the warning from Aggie as he sat in front of the grocery store, one week after the events in the Radome caves. “Larix is about to escape,” was the last thing he remembered Aggie saying before he was pulled back to reality once more.

  Don Chen paced in front of the crackling fireplace in Elianora’s living room. “I don’t get it. It had to be an inside job, but we hand-selected the transport team ourselves. They were top military people.” He banged his hand on the mantle in frustration.

  Elianora sat silently in her rocking chair, knitting a pink pastel blanket while she listened. The firelight reflected on her face since it was th
e only source of light in the room that evening. The Lumiens on the ceiling above were left sleeping and cast no light. The Lumiens, Adam had discovered, were microscopic creatures that consumed carbon dioxide and released light when they were awake. They were one of the many secrets the Sentinel League protected.

  Don’s frustrated strike brought Elianora out of her silence.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourselves. You know as well as I do that this isn’t the first time he’s escaped – and we’ve thought we covered all of the loopholes each of the other times too.”

  Don shrugged in a reluctant agreement. “I know, but it’s just so frustrating. We thought we could let down our guard for a while.”

  Elianora nodded. “His history tells us that we can relax - for a while,” she replied. “Larix usually hides for some time before he starts poking around again. We’ve rattled his cage and he doesn’t feel quite as invincible as he did before.”

  “On another note,” said Gurpreet, “So far it’s only the senior members of the League that know exactly what happened in the Radome caves, if you don’t count the four boys. Have we decided to let the boys keep those memories?”

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought,” said Elianora, “and I think we will let things stay as they are, but we must impress upon the boys the importance of the secrecy of the message inside. It seems that a lot of people in the Sentinel League already know about the Heartstone.”

  Gurpreet nodded. “It would have been too risky to wipe the memories of all our townspeople, plus the ones in Waldron and Langenburg. Especially the children.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” said Elianora.

  Adam sat and listened, but up to that point he had felt as though he were eavesdropping rather than having been invited in on the conversation.

  Elianora turned to Adam. “You’ve told Gurpreet about your encounter with Aggie, but can you tell me exactly what she said?”

  Adam pushed his memory, trying to make sure he got it right. It had just happened a few hours before, but he wanted to be as accurate as possible.

  “She said, ‘Larix is about to escape. He thinks it was your fault he was captured and that you know where the real Heartstone is. He will come for you, but I can’t see when. You need to stay safe.’ Then she shivered and continued on with Martha like nothing had happened.”

  Elianora nodded, absorbing the words as Adam spoke. Adam waited for her to say something until he couldn’t hold back the question that had been bothering him almost as much as the fact that Larix had escaped.

  “How did Aggie know that he was going to escape? Is she some kind of psychic?”

  Elianora and Gurpreet exchanged looks, and after a pause Elianora nodded.

  “Well,” said Gurpreet. “Kind-of. She is a special type of psychic – one that doesn’t realize what she’s said afterward. We call her an ‘inter’. It’s short for ‘intermediate’. There are lots of names for what she does, though, like medium or seer. It’s a pretty rare gift, but it doesn’t work like you see in the movies. When she gets a signal or message, she understands it completely in the moment but always loses it afterward. Sometimes she thinks she’s in the future moment that she is talking about, and other times she knows it’s the present and she’s telling about the future, like when she told you about Larix coming back. It happened more when she was younger, but now that she’s older it rarely happens. We actually thought she was done intermediating big events anymore. When it happens now she mostly just tells everyone what the person next to her will have for lunch the next day.”

  A thought came to Adam about a story Mark had told him.

  “You never told Aggie about your anniversary present when she spilled the beans to your wife, did you?” asked Adam.

  Gurpreet shook his head. “Nope. She got a signal in the checkout line at the store because my wife was next to her. Too bad Mark was there at the time.”

  “So she doesn’t remember anything she says?” asked Adam.

  Gurpreet shook his head. “We’ve told her about it over the years, but she doesn’t really believe us.”

  Adam nodded, although he didn’t totally understand. “Doesn’t Martha realize what Aggie is doing? She was there each time Aggie said something about the future but she didn’t seem to think it was strange.”

  “It’s hard to explain, but Aggie and Martha are a lot the same. Martha is like an antenna for Aggie and Aggie gets more signals with her around. Martha has the same lack of memory as Aggie afterward,” said Gurpreet.

  “Those two have an interesting history, but we will leave that for some other time,” said Elianora. “Right now, it’s getting late and you should be getting home.” She looked at Don and Gurpreet who nodded back.

  She looked to Adam. “Thank you for coming out here and telling me what you know.” She grabbed his hand. “I wanted you to be the first to hear about the escape because of your involvement, and I was worried how you might react. Now, I want you to relax and not worry about Larix at all. Aggie has been wrong in the past, and she told you she couldn’t see when Larix might come back. That tells me that it is far enough in the future to be out of her sight, ok?”

  Adam nodded as she patted his hand. Her words relaxed the knot in his gut somewhat, but not completely.

  The concern she showed him felt so foreign. Until recently, his own mother had never shown much concern for him – at least as far as he could remember. Elianora should have felt like a grandmother to Adam, but because he had never met his grandparents he didn’t know what that would feel like either.

  “If you get upset or start to feel afraid,” she put her hand up to stop any response, “I know - you’re thirteen and won’t admit it if you’re afraid anyway, but, if you do start to feel funny please come and see me anytime. We’ve decided to let you keep your Dad’s lapel pin so you can take the tunnels out here whenever you need. Just don’t tell everyone we let you keep it, alright?”

  Adam nodded. He was happy that they let him keep the pin, as it was the biggest connection he had to his father.

  “Let’s get you home,” said Don, motioning for the door.

  Adam pulled his hand away from Elianora, although he didn’t want to. Just her contact made him feel safer.

  “Thanks for telling me, and thanks for letting me keep the pin. It means a lot,” said Adam.

  Elianora nodded and smiled. She understood.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow after I get some reports,” Gurpreet said to Elianora.

  “You know where to find me,” she replied. “And you two need to relax as well.” She pointed at Gurpreet and Don. “We’re in a better position now than we were just a few weeks ago because we know Larix is in hiding again. We can analyze what happened over the next couple of months, but it does no good if everyone is stressed out and not sleeping.” She gave them a look like a mother scolding her children.

  Adam found it amusing that the two men looked like little boys being given a lecture by a parent.

  “Yes ma’am,” replied Gurpreet as Don opened the door and led the way outside.

  The night was clear and calm. An owl hooted in the hills nearby while the crickets chirped. It was a beautiful night in mid-summer as they walked toward the tunnel. They would return the same way they came – via the school. Adam had asked why they went that way, when the 6:00 tunnel went directly to Elianora’s. The way through the school was a little extra distance.

  The men chuckled and Don replied, “We aren’t thirteen anymore. Walking the extra distance is easier than getting on our hands and knees and crawling through that crawlspace. Besides, my wife would be upset with the dirt on my pants and worn out knees.”

  Gurpreet nodded in agreement.

  Adam hadn’t thought about it that way, but since they had pointed it out to him he couldn’t help but think that it was going to suck to get old.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Summer slipped away and school started once again. Life in Grayson had returned to normal fast, a
s if nothing unusual had happened that summer. News of the Sentinel League became old, and soon the standard motion of the town took over. Someone observant enough could set their watch by the daily movements of most of the residents.

  One of the few changes to happen was the addition of another class in school – History of the Sentinel League, taught by Ms. Howey. She was young, as far as teachers go, and had moved back to Grayson after recently finishing her own schooling. Because it was her first year teaching and this was the first time the Sentinel League history was being taught to school kids, the class was boring and seemed quite pointless. Adam tried to listen and learn as much as he could, but it was hard to hear over the multiple conversations going on at the same time during the class. Ms. Howey was far from strict.

  By far the biggest change was the interest in League Kurling. It began almost as a side note when teaching the older initiates about the Sentinel League. After a quick field trip to watch Karl Klein give a demonstration, the townspeople asked to see a full game. The following Sunday afternoon, Marius Miller and Karl played against each other, giving instruction throughout. The field was so packed with spectators that during the next week bleachers were built so everyone could see the game. Soon everyone wanted to try this new sport, but there were few people who could make even the smallest connection with the stones. Coincidentally, more windows were broken by adults in the following month than had been broken by children in the many years prior.

  Because of his knack for the game, Adam enjoyed learning everything he could about Kurling and practiced any chance he could. He still had a hard time believing that he was actually able to alter the flight path of an ordinary stone as it flew though the air. It seemed like something out of a wild fantasy novel. The fact that his father had also excelled at the game helped fuel his passion.

  When Karl Klein offered to give him some extra training in the early spring, Adam jumped at the chance. Every few days after the snow melted they would find some time to play a game against each other. Karl taught Adam new throws and strategy (usually by using them to beat Adam) and Adam got better at it every time, sometimes even getting close to winning.