Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) (10 page)

She started quick-walking along the mound until she came to another intersection.  As she stopped to mark in her notebook, Jack looked around for Eddie and spotted him a couple of dozen feet back.  He was down on one knee, fiddling with his sneaker lace.

“Come on, Eddie.  Don’t want the Jersey Devil to catch you.”

He grinned.  “You kidding?  I have JD sausages for breakfast every morning." 

He jumped up and started trotting toward them.  When he neared he jumped and landed inches in front of Jack.

“Boo!”

More thunder then, but another sound too.  As Eddie’s feet thumped onto the surface of the mound, they kept on going, breaking through the outer shell with a crunch.

Jack looked down and saw Eddie’s sneakers sunk ankle deep in the softer sand within.

“Jeez, man!  What’d you
do
?”

He heard Weezy hurry up behind him and gasp.  “Oh, Eddie!  How
could
you?”

Eddie’s face reddened – whether with anger or embarrassment, Jack couldn’t tell.

“Hey, I didn’t–”

“You are the most unbelievable klutz!  This mound’s sat here undisturbed for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and you’re here, what, ten minutes, and already you’ve desecrated it!”

“It was a soft spot!  How could I know?”

Lightning flashed, followed quickly by a roar of thunder that rattled Jack’s fillings.  He looked up at a sky completely lidded with dark clouds looking ready to burst.  Jeez, this storm was coming fast.    

“Time to take cover, guys,” he said.

He grabbed Weezy’s arm and started pulling her back toward the bikes.  He knew if he didn’t she’d probably stay in the open, storm or no storm, drawing her diagram.  She didn’t fight him.  Eddie followed.

Just as they reached the bikes, the sky opened like a bursting dam.  They huddled in the center of a thick copse of young pines.

“Under a tree,” Weezy said. “The worst place to be in a storm.”

Jack knew that, but didn’t see as they had much choice. Even under the trees they were getting soaked.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Weez,” Jack said, “we’re in the middle of the
Pine Barrens.  If you know of a place without trees, I’m all ears.”

Weezy said nothing more, just crouched on her haunches, her eyes closed and her fingers in her ears.  Eddie too.  They both jumped with every thunderclap. 

Jack didn’t get that.  He
loved
thunderstorms – their fury, their unpredictability, their deafening light shows fascinated him.  Same with his father.  Many a summer night they’d sit together on the front porch and watch a storm approach, peak, and move on.  Sometimes Dad would drive him over to Old Town where they’d park within sight of the Lightning Tree.  For some reason no one could figure, the long-dead tree took a hit from every storm that passed overhead.

The thunder grew louder, the lightning flashed brighter, the rain fell harder.  The world funneled down to the copse and little else.  Nothing was visible beyond their clump of trees.  Water cascaded through the branches and swirled around their feet.  Might as well have been in the shower – except Jack wished he could have cranked up the hot water handle.

He felt his Converse All-Stars filling with water.

Swell.

3

After a couple of forevers, the storm tapered off.  When the rain finally stopped they stepped out of the copse and shook themselves off. 

Jack took off his T-shirt and wrung the water out of it.  Eddie followed suit. Weezy didn’t have that luxury.  Her Bauhaus shirt was plastered to her; she pulled it free of her skin as best she could.  Her soaked hair looked almost black, her bangs were plastered to her forehead, and her ponytail had become a rat tail.

“Look at us,” she said.  “Three drowned mice.”

“At least we didn’t get hit by lightning,” Eddie said.  “Let’s get home.  I need to dry off.”

“But I haven’t mapped the mound yet.”

Eddie rolled his eyes.  “You’ve gotta be kidding!  You can come back any time–”

“Just give me a few minutes.”

“Come on, Eddie,” Jack said, nudging him with an elbow.  “What difference is a few more minutes going to make?”

“Okay, okay.  I’ll stay with the bikes.”

She pulled out her notepad and regarded it with dismay.  “Soaked!”

But that didn’t stop her.  She hurried ahead, hopped on the mound, and began retracing her steps.  The sun popped out as Jack followed.  Now he welcomed it.

Weezy stopped where Eddie had broken through the crust and pointed to the edges.

“See this?  I was so mad at him I didn’t notice before, but it’s really weird.”

Jack saw what she meant.  Eddie had shattered a four- or five-foot length of the crust into about a zillion irregular pieces, but the edges of the broken area – the near, the far, and both sides near ground level – were perfectly straight.  Could have been cut by an electric saw. 

The rain had done a number on the soft sand within the mound, washing it out and fanning it around the break like a cloud.  Jack didn’t know what kind of cloud it resembled, but he was sure Weezy could tell him.

He kicked over a random shard of crust and spotted something shiny and black beneath it.  Before he could react, Weezy was on her knees and all over it.

“What’s
this
?”

She started scooping away the surrounding wet sand, gradually revealing a black cube the size of a softball.  Gently, cautiously, she wriggled her fingers beneath it.

“Why don’t you just pick it up?” Jack said.

“Because it may be attached to something.”  Her fingers must have met on its underside because suddenly she lifted it free and held it up.  “Heavy!”

She laid it on the ground between them and began to examine it, tilting it a little this way and a little that.

Jack knelt opposite her.  “What do you think it is?”

She shook her head, looking as baffled as he felt.  “I don’t know.  Some kind of stone – onyx, maybe?  It’s got no writing on it, but I get this feeling it’s… old.” She looked up at him.  “Know what I mean?”

Jack couldn’t say why, but he knew exactly what she meant.

“Yeah.  Very old.”

“And where there’s one there’s probably others.”  Her eyes were wide with wonder and excitement.  “Help me, Jack?”

He laughed.  “Try and stop me.” 

He wanted one of those cubes for himself.

So they started digging – not easy in the wet sand.  But they kept coming up empty.  Frustration was beginning to nibble at Jack when his fingertips scraped against a hard surface.

“Got something!”

He dug his fingers down on each side of whatever it was and pulled it up.

And found himself looking into the empty eye sockets of a rotting human head.

He stared in mute, open-mouthed, grossed-out shock.  Beside him, Weezy screamed.

You can find the rest here:
Jack: Secret Histories

1983

JACK: SEC
RET CIRCLES

The secon
d volume of the Teen Trilogy – in which Ernst Drexler II and the Septimus Order (and the Barrens, of course) play a central role. Also, Jack gets a look at one of the Seven Infernals.  Another Infernal will trigger a harrowing episode in his adult life.  And Jack has a near-fatal run-in with a survivor of the First Age.

I never saw myself writing for kids, especially since I already have a fair number of teen readers, mostly sixteen and up. But a motley array of forces converged to goose me into writing novels geared toward the under-fifteen crowd.  If I’m going to write a book about Jack as a teen, why not aim it at teens (and maybe hook some new readers in the process). 

I was told at that time that I was the first author to do this – take an adult series character and do young adult novels about him.  I don’t know if it’s true.  I do know George Lucas did it with young Indy, but that was film, not prose.  Since I started with Jack, other writers have followed suit. 

As luck would have it, I’d already placed Jack’s hometown in Burlington County, which juts into the mysterious and fabled Jersey Pine Barrens.  Perfect. I could work all sorts of magic in a million acres of wilderness with places no human eyes have ever seen, where strange lights jump from tree to tree, and the Jersey Devil supposedly roams.  I peopled his town with weird characters and places – like an old woman (with a dog) who's supposedly a witch; the town drunk who’s rumored to be able to heal with a touch but always wears gloves (you’ll recognize him if you’ve read “Dat-Tay-Vao”); Ernst Drexler II, son of Ernst from “Aryans and Absinthe” shows up.  And then there’s USED, the store that sells old… stuff.   

Here’s how it begins…

JACK: SECRET CIRCLES

(sample)

SATURDAY

Little Cody Bockman disappeared on a rainy morning

1

Jack dodged puddles as he pedaled his BMX along
Adams Street to the Connell house.  Even though the sky was overcast now, the air felt dry.  He hoped it would last.  He was sick to death of rain.  People were saying this could turn out to be the rainiest September on record and –

“Hey!” he shouted as he almost collided with a little kid scooting by on a red bike.  “Cody!”

The kid braked and almost fell off his bike.

“Jack!  Jack!  I can do it!”

“What?”

“Look!  No training wheels!”

Cody Bockman was five and lived two doors down from Jack.  His long hair was a blond tangle and his blue eyes sparkled with excitement.  Cute kid, but a little wild man.  Jack liked him except when he attached himself and followed him around like a dog.  Somehow he always chose times when Jack felt like being alone.

“That’s cool, Code.”  Jack looked around.  Not an adult in sight.  “Your folks know you’re out here?”

“No, but it’s okay.”

“Yeah?  You mean, if I go back and ask your mom and dad if it’s all right for you to be cruising the streets, they’ll say it’s fine with them?”

Cody looked down.  “Well…”

Jack put on a stern look.  “You gonna go or am I gonna have to take you back?”

“I’m goin’!”

He turned his bike around and pedaled a wobbly path back toward
Jefferson.  Jack watched him a little, then continued on to the Connells’.

Weezy’s brother Eddie had asked him over to play,
Berzerk
, the new game his father had bought him for his Atari 5200.  The game was simple and so fun when you could trick the robots into walking into walls or shooting each other, but so nerve racking when that deadly smiley face came bouncing through.

But no videogames today.  He’d played enough during the rains.  This morning he was going to drag Eddie off the couch and into the sunlight. No easy task, considering Eddie’s weight and resistance to any activity that involved moving more than his thumbs. 

As Jack glided past the unlidded garbage cans at the curb – Wednesday and Saturday were garbage days in Johnson – he noticed a couple of familiar items from Weezy’s room in the nearer container.  He stopped for a closer look and saw copies of
Fortean Times
and
Fate
.  Weezy treasured those weird paranormal magazines.  Why was she throwing them out?  

Maybe she was in a cleaning mood.  She had all sorts of moods lately.  Spin the dial and see who appeared.

Or maybe she didn’t even know.  Her parents were always on her case for not being like other teenage girls.  Had they simply gone in and started tossing stuff?  That wasn’t right. 

He spotted a half-folded photo, an aerial shot of the Pinelands, the million acres of woods beyond the town’s eastern edge.  He recognized the scene: an excavation of the mound where just last month he and Weezy had found a corpse and a mysterious little pyramid.