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Kindle Edition
Amazon
Amazon
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 1976208408
Type: Fiction
Pages: 506
Copyright: Sept 10, 2017
ISBN-13: 9781976208409
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
A coming of age mystery blossoms from the unraveling of ancient Celtic mysteries and world myths that bring an upstate New York doctor’s son on a quest to clear his father’s name, win the hand of a mystery girl, and finally help bring in the final Camelot of ages.
When Michael unexpectedly finds a letter in his father’s small-town clinic, he discovers that the rumors concerning his parents’ past has suddenly disrupted his mediocre lifestyle. Magic, world myths, and saving of his small town of Jordan escalates into deciphering the nature of his birth, and the true purpose of his Mom and the mystery girl’s motives in pursuit of an artifact called The Swaddling Stone. This search takes Michael on a journey, beginning at a local hotel historically involved with Jack THE RIPPER, and Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth. There he encounters Caroline, whose sudden kidnapping by his father’s nemesis Dr. Prelati, are a catalyst for a series of murders connected to experiments In Rochester, New York. Michael Gunning first encounters his own nemesis, David Hellyner, at the Skaneateles, New York’s library locally called the Sphinx. Clues and further kidnappings leads him and his father to a final showdown that ends with Michael being arrested, and sent with his father as their new patients at the mysterious Split Rock Orphanage.
Excerpt
Prologue
Island of Jura, near Scotland
The sound of waves, like the heartbeat of a mother, brought a rhythmic beat to my ears as its restless foam dashed the ship against the rocks below. A cooling sea breeze caressed my skin, creating a dreamy state, as if I was in a womb bordering on sleep and reality. I was exhausted, and sleep was tempting, but dawn’s blood red rays had slipped through the narrow opening of the cave. As I opened my swollen eyes, I saw the shoreline below like a stage of some ancient ritual play.
I washed in a grimy aluminum bowl taken from the wrecked ship. Shimmering light caught the reflection of my face. A pair of blue eyes gazed from a frowning brow, framed by black hair matted with blood and dirt. As I crawled to the cave entrance, a familiar smell of rotting seaweed, mixed with the salty taste of fresh air, wafted from the beach below.
A sliver of hope replaced the intense pain of my swollen hands and feet. On my back, in its leather sheath, was a sword. It served as a reminder that the world was in the grip of something supernatural. I wore a loincloth, with knees scrapped and torn from crawling; my feet were raw and blistered. At that moment, I couldn’t help laughing to myself. I had pictured Harry and Mrs. McCallum, along with a group of bedraggled veterans, arrayed against a formidable adversary. Old age pensioners challenged the greatest adversaries in the world. Their only proof of the impeding secret war had been an armload of mythology books. The internet remained down, but the old library endured intact. The outdated Morse code my dad had taught me from his WWII Signal Corp experience proved useful after all. A few hours ago, I had sent a message from the newly erected communication tower on the Island of Jura to the Campbeltown Lifeboat station. The message declared that I would give myself up, but only if Officer Timms would come alone to verify my bullet wound. Oh, by the way, I had said, a large bomb will go off somewhere in the Kintyre area. Please, leave Campbeltown immediately.
For a brief moment, my mind had jumped back to my goal of rescuing Caroline McCallum. I recalled the recent summer cruise on the antique paddle steamer Waverly. We had passed by the southwest coast of Scotland near the Island of Jura, while a full moon illuminated the waters like a boiling cauldron of shimmering stars. As I slipped the Celtic ring bearing the engraved twin owls onto Caroline’s finger, our eyes had met. I had gently pulled her close against my chest. I remember how Caroline and I had urgently made love on the boat, so urgent we didn’t even question whether the lights were northern lights or something else. Suddenly, bluish white balls of light had emerged from the whirlpool called Corrie-Vreakon. Like mermaids, its myriad colors had drawn us toward their rocky gloom.
Three weeks later that treasured memory had revived me. Nearly naked, I lay on a cliff outside the mouth of the cave. I heard waves crash against the rocks of the lighthouse below me. It sounded like the drumbeat of a demented giant. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon. I sighed, taking in great gulps of air that I no longer took for granted. Being young was like being in a cocoon, and then you emerged. You grew, but sometimes the growing caused the light in you to change. It altered your feelings from compassion to indifference. I imagined how ideologies had often hampered an individual’s way of seeing the true world. Common similarities were lost in translation. It was as if my own awareness of reality had been stifled by being Saran wrapped by my ancestral upbringing. Darkness often enchanted teenagers. It allowed them the freedom to choose between being either an anarchist or idealist. Like having a good time out on the town, rebellion could draw a person into a world of vices. But, in the end, the reality of the light was only altered. The world forgot that the heroic flame could also maim. The Berlin Wall fell, so did Russia. Then the Arab Spring began. I lamented, oh, John F. Kennedy and the eternal flame of Camelot, what has become of your forgotten fame’s remedy?
The place where the bullet had entered my chest was now a throbbing scar. Its residual pain reminded me of Caroline, and our past tsunami of love making that continued to haunt my soul. I had ignored the previous warning Dad had given me about love. Now, like a phantom limb of someone who has lost a body part, sex seemed as real as the words used to explain love. But not now. A wounded man’s imagination can be a catalyst for some mitigating circumstances. Dad had said, “You must know when to move forward.”
What of the book I was supposed to write? Why was I supposed to choose sides between Lord Monboddo and David Hellyner? It seemed less important on this island. But it was selfish of me to ignore my great responsibility. A flood was coming, both real and metaphorical. All I had to do was to find the source of the mythical (Swaddling Stone (*Kvod Adonai , the Shekinah of Glory) and its familiar groups of (Ogham) stones that peppered the world’s landscape and literature of Celtic theory. (Flight and metaphorical Eternal life through brain wave DNA?) I had to act. It remained the only hope of salvation for all those people I cared for.
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