Later that morning, after a late breakfast at the East Center Stage Stop, Paul and Brandon gathered in the church office with Chuck and Curtis Krankovich. Dr. Minger and Willie Sykes, who had joined them for breakfast, were there as well. Ben and Dr. Minger's son, Matt, headed outside to play while the men talked.
An overturned copier paper box lay along side of a small folding table set up in the middle of the room. Mr. Thompson, the bank manager, had given them the carton to carry the safety deposit box contents back to the church.
They sorted through the clippings, arranging them chronologically across the desk. Curtis kept track of the clippings, logging each on a yellow legal pad. Pastor Williams' letter was passed around as well for each man to review.
Willie, who ran a computer consulting company, had taken the day off to help build a web site for Dr. Minger. Consequently he had brought in his laptop, a unique machine of his own design, in with him. Out of curiosity, he began to enter the dates and locations for each incident into his computer. As the others shuffled through the papers he shuffled through the data with a variety of filtering and pattern finding programs.
“Whoa...Hey! Look at this!” Willie turned the laptop around so that the others could see the screen. “I was fiddling around, trying to find some sort of pattern or relationship – other than the twelve and thirty year cycles – to these incidents and, just a second...” He tapped a few more buttons. “Take a look!”
The room went silent for a moment. Only a slight whirring from the fan on Willie Sykes computer disturbed the silence.
“Unbelievable,” breathed Dr. Minger.
Paul stared at the screen for a few seconds. Abruptly turning away, he grabbed a box of colored pushpins from the counter behind him. Heading over to a large map of Wildwood and the surrounding areas hanging on the wall, he pointed to the legal pad in Curtis' hand. “May I borrow that?”
Taking the pad he began sticking pushpins into various locations on the map. Realizing what he was doing, Brandon began to help as well. The others watched in amazement as the pattern on the computer screen gradually took shape on the wall map.
When they had finished, Paul and Brandon stepped back from the wall. Nearly all of the incidents collected by Pastor Williams were clustered into eleven points. Five of the points formed a large outer ring. Five more points formed a smaller inner ring surrounding a central point.
Chuck handed Paul some red yarn from one of the cupboards. Stepping back up to the map, Paul attached the yarn to a pin in one of the clusters and then began stretching it back and forth between the outer clusters according to the image on Willie's computer. Reaching the last cluster he took out his pocketknife, cut the yarn, and tied it off.
Stepping back again, he looked at the perfect image of an inverted red pentagram centered over Wildwood with the church near its center.
Karen Brown had woken that morning with an uneasy feeling. Call it premonition or a woman's intuition. Maybe it was a combination of the time change and recent events. Whatever it was it nagged at the back of her mind as she went to wake up her daughter, Alex. It didn't go away while preparing breakfast.
Alex chattered on about the church, Uncle Brandon, and Wildwood while they ate their pancakes. The chatter put Karen at ease and she managed to put aside her earlier fears while they ate. She even found herself laughing a bit watching Brandon's cat, Sicillia, convincing Alex to part with a few bits of sausage. “That cat will have her trained in no time,” she chuckled to herself.
Leaving, Alex, to clean up in the kitchen, Karen went into the living room to call her parents. Her father, Jessie Florensen, was getting over the flu and she was still a little concerned about him. He had been sick enough to keep him and Karen's mother from traveling to Ohio to welcome them home from Tunoa on Friday. Her mother, Louise, answered on the fourth ring.
Louise apologized again for not being at the airport when they arrived. Jessie was doing much better, she said, and, against her better judgment, was outside planting beans.
”Mom!” protested Karen; “Dad shouldn't be out working in the garden! Tell him his nurse said he needs to get back inside and not overdue it!”
“You know how your father is, dear! He hasn't had a fever since yesterday afternoon and was feeling as fit and frisky as new colt this morning. He's been itching all weekend to get out in the garden. Your brother, Glenn, came over and retilled some of it Saturday morning just to keep him off the tractor. I managed to set out two dozen tomato plants and a dozen peppers Saturday. Threatened to plant your father with them if he didn't stay in the house. He is doing a lot better though.”
“Well, just make sure he drinks plenty of water—not coffee. Water and rest. Last thing we need is for him to come down with pneumonia. Is Glenn still planning to bring you and dad up later this week?”
They talked for several more minutes. After hanging up, Karen got her Bible and sat down in the living room with Alex for a quick mother-daughter devotion before getting on with the day. She felt a little better after talking with her mom.
Putting her earlier concerns aside, she knelt beside the couch with Alex. After they prayed they turned to Alexandria's memory verse from Sunday school, Genesis 22:14, and read it out loud together, “And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.”
“What does 'Je-ho-vah-ji-reh' mean?” asked Alex, sounding out each syllable carefully.
“Well, the key to it is right here at the end of the verse, 'In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.' Jehovahjireh literally means that Jehovah, God, will see to it, meaning that the Lord will provide.”
“Like He provided a ram in place of Isaac?”
“Right! And what do you suppose it means for us today?”
“Does it mean that we can trust God to give us what we need when we need it?”
“I couldn't have put it better myself! Now, let's go over it a few more times to memorize it and then we'll join Daddy and Ben at the church.”
Karen and Alex put on sweaters and light jackets. They were still adjusted to the warm tropical weather that they had left behind a few days ago. Alex was anxious to try out her new sneakers, though she was more comfortable in sandals or flip-flops. Heading out the door, Karen spotted the letter that Pastor Williams had given Paul in the van lying on the counter. Glancing over it briefly she folded it up and put it back in its envelope and put it into her pocket.
The late morning sun was quickly driving away the early morning chill as they crossed the park and headed down Center Road. Alex, curious as always, skipped back and forth, sometimes racing ahead or lagging behind investigating flowers and pausing to look at some of the houses and the occasional squirrel along the way. Her mother kept a careful eye on her, reminding her occasionally to stay back from the street. The traffic moved a bit faster here than in Tunoa where huge potholes, frequent puddles, and darting pedestrians conspired to make it hard to go over twenty-five miles per hour.
Nearly thirty minutes later they arrived, slightly out of breath, at the church parking lot. Alex spied her brother, Ben climbing a tree at the back edge of the parking lot with Dr. Minger's son, Matt. Matt's sisters, Serena and Lizzie were picking dandelions nearby. With her mom's permission Alex scampered off in their direction while Karen headed into the church.
Karen walked into the office moments after her husband stepped back from the map on the wall. The sight of an inverted red pentagram on the wall of the church office startled her. Regaining her composure she looked a little closer at the occultic symbol outlined over the town. A sudden thought occurred to her and she drew the envelope that she had pick up back at the house and opened it up.
Paul looked at her curiously. “I know that look. What are you thinking?”
Karen paused for a moment, studying the list of properties that was in the envelope. “Paul,” she began, scanning the list and comparing it to the map, “Why didn't you use just one pin for each of these properties?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look.” She pointed to the bottom point of the pentagram. “This is about where 2466 CAK Road would be. Up here and here,” pointing to the top two points, “Should be 5232 Seven Hills and 5171 Mystic.”
The men gathered around Karen while she read off each of the eleven properties on the list. Sure enough, all eleven corresponded to each of the eleven clusters of pins on the map. Each property, with the exception of the church property were located either at one of the five points of the pentagram or at one of the five intersections of the yarn strung from point inside the pentagram.
“With everything going on the past few days, I completely forgot about the envelope Pastor Williams had given us in the van,” apologized Paul.
“Don't feel bad. I forgot about it too,” confessed Brandon.
“Well, we have it now,” said Chuck, “Let's see what we got here. I recognize a couple of these properties right off. The CAK Road address is where the Clearwater Tavern is located. Its owned by Arnold Narsch – he tried to put an adult book store in there several years ago but we managed to keep them out. There's the old orphanage property there on Nathaniel. Narsch Industries bought the property from the state shortly after the fire.”
“Several other points are connected to the Narsch's as well,” interjected Brandon, “Look here's the Narsch Foundation's Enlightenment Center up on Mystic and Narsch Industries headquarters up over here on Seven Hills. Down there is a youth hostel operated by the Gaia Society, which Simon Narsch is active in. That would be our best bet to link this list with the Gaia Liberation Front.”
“Hey! There's your house, Mr. Hayes,” interrupted Curtis Krankovich tapping the map, “It’s on the list, too.”
“Yeah, Arnold Narsch tried to get me to sell after my wife, and Paul's parents, were killed back in '79.” Brandon tapped the map thoughtfully with a forefinger. “Paul's parent's owned this other property, which is also on the list. I kept him from getting it, too—sold it to Paul's cousin Dennis Brown. He sold it to Arnold a few years later though when he went into politics. Seems like the Narsch's either directly own or have tried to buy up every property on this list, including the church. But why?”
Dr. Minger, who hadn't said much, had been studying the map and the list that Karen had brought in. He noticed the aerial photograph that had fallen out of the envelope that the others had overlooked. His attention was drawn to the strange symbol made up of two small equilateral triangles, connected by a smaller rectangle and the reference to the shamballah opening scribbled on it.
Excusing himself for a minute, Dr. Minger headed over to the prophet's chamber where he was staying to retrieve a book from his briefcase. He thumbed through the book as he returned to the church office.
“I think I have something here!” he announced excitedly. “I've been doing some study on New Age and the occult for a booklet I'm writing. And, well, look at this...”
Holding the open book in front of him he showed them a section featuring a glossary of New Age and occult terms and symbols. “Look, here on page 379. There's that weird symbol that's drawn on the aerial photo of the church property. Says here that it’s an øAntakarana Bridge’. It represents a bridge between man and Satan. Now, look at page 408: 'Shamballah – dwelling place or residence of Lucifer and the Masters of Wisdom'.”
“Who're the Masters of Wisdom?” asked Willie.
Dr. Minger flipped back a couple of pages. “Let's see...here it is. The Masters of Wisdom are identified as the archdemons of Satan, his top lieutenants.”
Paul furrowed his eyebrows and chewed on his lower lip. “Well, it seems like there's a bit more going on here then we realized. I think we better have a word of prayer and then take a walk out back. Karen, would you mind checking on the kids while we pray?”
Karen left the room as the men knelt to pray. The sense of foreboding that she had felt when she woke was back, stronger than before as she left the building. Worried about what might be out in the woods, she did not want to alarm the children. She didn't see them but she could hear them hollering in the woods behind the parking lot. Hurrying toward the woods, she called out, “Benjamin! Alexandria! Come out of those woods right now! There's poison ivy back there. You'll be covered from head to toe!
“Mommy! Mommy!” little Alex came running out of the woods crying. Dr. Minger's daughters were close behind. “I saw the box! I saw the box the bad men put Daddy in!”