Ancient Illusions

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Michael spent the afternoon on the patio reading Kwaidan, which he found quite enjoyable. The ghost stories of Lafcadio Hearn were poignant—and of course more exotic—than those by Edgar Allan Poe or H. P. Lovecraft. And they were tinged more with human sadness than with fear.

Being here also caused him to remember how much he always loved Wintersgate’s setting: the beach, the cliffs edging it, the choppy blue waves of the Atlantic. He understood why his father wanted to protect it, but it made no sense that his father wanted to keep it away from Irina Petrescu, or what her family might have had to do with his mother’s death.

When Michael returned to the house, Patience told him William Claude had retired for the night. Once again, Michael dined alone.

After dinner, a call from Charlotte Reed surprised him.

“Michael, I’m sorry to bother you, but something is going on here in Salmon.” She told him about the animal mutilations and the nervousness all around her.

“How’s Jake handling it?” Michael asked.

“He tries to ignore it, or deny it’s anything weird. Instead, he bellows at people—including me—who try to talk about it.”

“Why do you think that is?”

There was a pause. “He thinks people are still nervous.”

“Which is not unreasonable,” Michael said. “What happened out there two years ago was unique and frightening. So now, anything weird would naturally have people up in arms.”

“Maybe.” Her voice was tiny.

“You think I should go out there and talk to Jake? Check things out for myself?”

“I don’t know. I hate to say it, but there could be something else going on.”

“Like what?”

“Something mundane … something I don’t want to admit.”

“You’ll need to explain, Charlotte,” he said.

“God, I don’t know if I can bring myself to say it.”

“Hey, you can talk to me, you know,” he said gently. “Out with it. Okay?”

She hesitated, but once she began, the words tumbled from her like a dam bursting. “I think he may be seeing another woman. He denies it, but I’ve seen him with her several times. And he looked happy! He told me I was seeing things. But I wasn’t. Maybe it’s as simple as that. He’s met someone else.”

“Do you really think that’s what’s going on?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know, Michael. A part of me says ‘no,’ and yet…. The other woman—what a clichéd life I’m living—is probably ten years younger than me, with long, shiny blond hair, and a body that looks like the best money can buy. Why wouldn’t Jake be interested?”

“Because he has you at home waiting for him.”

“Thank you, Michael. I knew there was a reason I like you so much.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Two, three weeks I’d say.”

“I just can’t imagine Jake caring about anyone else. Maybe the livestock deaths have him rattled. It can’t be anything serious with Miss Salmon City there.”

Charlotte tried to laugh at his lame joke. “I hope you’re right. I’m sorry I troubled you. But I think our conversation helped me put things in perspective.”

“I’ll come out there if it might help,” he said.

“No. Not yet, at least. I’ll try talking to Jake. But thank you for offering, and for listening.”

The conversation over, Michael couldn’t help but reflect on it. He had the feeling this wasn’t the last he would hear about it.

After a while, he returned to the library to look at more of the Lafcadio Hearn material.

One book of stories and essays with the awkward title of Kotto, Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs, had a bookmark jutting out of the top. He flipped to the page and found a lightly penciled arrow directing his eye to a passage that began, “Transmutations there may be…. But nothing essential can be lost. We shall inevitably bequeath our part to the making of the future cosmos—to the substance out of which another intelligence will slowly be evolved.”

As Michael continued the passage, he discovered that Hearn followed the philosophy of the alchemist—that nothing ever died, but transmuted into some future form of life. The belief was that the atoms that made up everything in the world never ceased to be, but continued to exist in different forms. They become part of the inevitable chain of life, and all of us are a part of that chain.

Michael turned his attention back to the books. He selected three of them and took them to his bedroom where he stayed up half the night reading and then fell asleep, too tired for dreams.

Vancouver, British Columbia

Every day, Li Jianjun said a little prayer that Michael Rempart would decide to do an archeological dig in some remote corner of the world. The remoter, the better.

Jianjun was Michael’s assistant and technical expert. Age thirty-seven, born in China, now a Canadian citizen and a computer genius, he handled the logistics for the digs, including getting all necessary governmental okays. It was a job that could take weeks, but Jianjun never minded fighting with government bureaucrats. He had never yet failed to receive a go-ahead. Maybe he didn’t always act in the most up-and-up way, but he did nothing that would harm anyone. Just a few hacks into government systems and databases, and things turned in his favor.

Right now, he’d hack into the Pentagon if it would get him a job away from home. Working with Michael, traveling the world, looking into strange pieces of antiquity was more fascinating than he had ever imagined it could be. Not because of the archeology—that was Michael’s area–but because of the people he met and the places he saw. His job provided the best, and the worst, parts of his life.

The best because he never felt as alive or as needed as when he worked with Michael. And because the last time they had worked together, he met a woman named Kira Holt. She made him realize how wonderful life could be.

But he couldn’t think about Kira now. Not when he was home with Linda, his wife, who hated him. And that reminded him of the worst part of his job—encountering people and other creatures that seem to want him dead.

Living with his wife, he should have been used to it.

The last time he spoke with Michael, the archeologist was in New Mexico and had needed no assistance. That meant Jianjun remained stuck at home.

Jianjun was so ready to travel he would be willing to return to Mongolia, as desolate a place as he had ever seen in his life. He would even be willing to drink more of that awful yak milk if it would help. If not, there were a lot of islands around Indonesia he wouldn’t mind seeing. Right now, the jungles of Papua-New Guinea sounded good, cannibals notwithstanding, a clear sign of how desperate he was. Anything was better than staying home one more week. He couldn’t remember ever having been so bored or, frankly, so unhappy.

He was going through internet news sites trying to find some exciting place in the world to pique Michael’s interest when his phone rang. It was an international call.

“Li Jianjun?” asked an accented voice.

“Yes.”

“I am Yamato Toru, calling from Japan. I have been trying for several days to reach Doctor Michael Rempart, but he does not answer my call or messages. I am hoping you can help.”

“I'll try, but if he doesn’t want to talk to you, there’s little I can do,” Jianjun said dismissively. Michael received a lot of weird requests from people.

“Let me explain,” Yamato said. “I work for a family, the Nakamura family, whose ancestor was a daimyo, an important position if you know Japanese history.”

Jianjun had watched plenty of “samurai” films, and he knew daimyo as regional feudal lords. Samurai were their soldiers. “I know what daimyo are.”

“The Nakamura family has owned their land for many centuries. They have found many possessions buried on the land—items that would interest an archeologist. We would like to offer Doctor Rempart the opportunity to come here to the Nakamura estate to study the daimyo’s treasures.”

“How old are these items?”

“Some are from very early dynasties, 700 A.D., perhaps. We are in Western Honshu.”

Jianjun recognized Honshu as being the largest Japanese island. Tokyo was in the east, the important historical cities of Kyoto and Nara in the center, but he couldn’t think of anything much in the west.

“I doubt he’ll be interested,” Jianjun said. “I mean, the guy practically lives in museums all over the world. He’s seen a lot of stuff from all kinds of dynasties—and far older than fourteen hundred years.”

“But the family would like an honest, outside opinion on what their items are worth. They are hoping Doctor Rempart will be interested in helping them.”

“I see.” Jianjun did see: if the family called in a Japanese archeologist, and the items were truly old, the government might confiscate them as antiquities belonging to the state. But evaluating items wasn’t Michael’s area of interest. “Doctor Rempart prefers discovering antiquities, not pricing what’s already been found.”

“But many of the items have symbols from alchemy etched on them,” Yamato said hurriedly. “And we’ve heard that subject interests Doctor Rempart. And, possibly, some symbols are … may I say, demonic.”

Jianjun sighed. Demons scared him, but unfortunately, they intrigued Michael. Jianjun had encountered enough demons last year in China to last a lifetime. He used to think that alchemy and the demonic had no relationship at all, but then he learned that alchemy was a lot more than some sorcerer trying to turn cheap metals into gold. Something far more sinister existed in one arm of the ancient practice: the desire for immortality, a desire that had opened some alchemists to evil and the demonic.

Jianjun also heard the fear in Yamato’s voice. Clearly, more was going on than Yamato would say. “I’ll talk to Dr. Rempart about this. I’ll get back to you.”

“I studied your boss before calling you because I had grave doubts of the stories I heard about him,” Yamato said. “I thought he might be a con artist or thief posing as an archeologist. But the more I learned, the more convinced I became that he is an honest man. I have also read that he prefers to be left alone, but may get involved if something interests him on a personal level. I hope you can convince him that this is an area he would find personally interesting. Very interesting, in fact.”

“Personally? Why is that?”

“If he looks at what we have here, I believe he will find it so.”

“I have no idea what you mean, and I doubt Michael will understand it either,” Jianjun said. “But I’ll talk to him.”