The Time Collector Read online

  He got up and opened the poster tube Stuart had hidden with his computer. Inside he found a map of the world with specific sites on every continent marked with bright yellow Xs. He unrolled it on the far side of the dining table. Melicent and Jocelyn joined him to look at it.

  “So these Xs are all the ooparts he’s sure about?” Melicent asked. There were over three dozen Xs circling the globe.

  He noticed the frown on Melicent’s face. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” She blinked several times and rubbed her eyes to clear her vision.

  Jocelyn noticed. “You must be tired. Why don’t you both look at this with fresh eyes in the morning? How long will you be staying?” she asked him, appearing hopeful.

  “Just tonight,” Roan answered. “I’ve arranged for us to fly back to the States in the afternoon.”

  “And is it one or two bedrooms?” she tried to ask with nonchalance.

  Only Roan could tell his mother was struggling to sound casual. Then he watched with fascination as Melicent’s face bloomed a solid pink. Between her and his mother acting like Mary Poppins it made him want to laugh. “Two, please.”

  “Of course. Let me make up the beds.”

  “I’ll help.” Melicent hurried to follow her.

  He watched the two head up the stairs. Melicent was saying, “You have a lovely home.”

  “I wouldn’t say lovely. I haven’t dusted in years.”

  Roan shook his head to himself as they disappeared. Poor Melicent. Not many people tried to strike up conversation with the prickly professor.

  Jocelyn had bought the house ten years ago when she first moved to Oxford, intending to stay in England for good. When she crossed the ocean, Jocelyn left her previous life in New Orleans behind. Roan was always the one who had to travel to see her. And she preferred not to know if her son was still using his abilities. She’d made her stance on that clear after Turkey. She believed that Roan’s gift would one day kill him.

  His mother might not approve if she discovered Melicent was like him—even worse, Melicent had peered into the private recesses of her life.

  He’d stood riveted in the doorway watching the expressions on Melicent’s face as she experienced the imprints within the picture frame. He would have loved to ask her what she’d seen, but that wouldn’t be fair to his mother. Melicent had overstepped by touching that photograph—but she hadn’t thought about the consequences. That kind of understanding and foresight could only come with time and experience. Creating boundaries was something she would have to learn.

  Roan sighed and went back to studying the computer and the map, trying to understand what it was that Stuart had discovered. And he couldn’t ignore the feeling festering inside him that if only he’d helped when Stuart asked him years ago in Colorado, then his friend wouldn’t be missing now. Stuart had shared his findings with the wrong person.

  Roan was anxious to hear back from Sun. He also needed to find out more about Gyan. Gyan might be the key to all of this. He looked back at the list of files still left to go through.

  A file named “Circles” made him sit up straighter with an edge of excitement. He’d just found Miguel and Stuart’s research on crop circles.

  25. THE BOOK

  “ARE THESE YOUR BOOKS?” Melicent recognized the titles of Jocelyn’s work on the guest bedroom bookshelf. Jocelyn had authored two theoretical history books, Chasing History and The History of Time. A dozen copies of each were perched on the shelf.

  “Those would be mine,” Jocelyn said dryly, busy making up the spare bed.

  “May I?” Melicent asked.

  “Of course.” Jocelyn gave her a tight smile and went to the door. “There’s fresh towels in the bathroom and bottled water downstairs. Please help yourself. Good night.”

  That was the extent of the conversation. Jocelyn was not in the mood to visit. All Roan’s mother probably wanted to know was how Melicent knew her son and if they were sleeping together.

  At this point Melicent was too tired to worry about what Jocelyn thought of her. She was too tired to even shower. She could do that in the morning.

  Instead she brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas. In New Orleans she’d bought long underwear and a long-sleeved shirt to match, the kind that could be worn under ski gear. Thermals had seemed the best bet for England in December, and she was glad she’d gotten them. The house had a frosty nip to it, just like the professor.

  She crawled into bed with one of Jocelyn’s books and for a moment simply enjoyed the luxury of the feather comforter. Then she reached over for her purse on the nightstand and grabbed her cell phone to call her brother.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hey, you okay?”

  “That’s funny.” She smiled. “I was calling to ask you the same thing.”

  “How’s London? Did you find anything?”

  “Some. I’ll fill you in when we’re back. We should be there by tomorrow night. You staying put at the hotel?” she asked, unsure whether he would think her return was a good thing. The truth was that ever since she’d discovered her brother had been planning to run away she didn’t know what to say to him.

  For a moment neither said anything.

  “Mel, I’m sorry.”

  She expelled a breath, feeling tears coming on. There. He’d finally opened a door to discuss it. Of course he’d waited until she was thousands of miles away.

  “For what? Planning to leave me?” Her voice broke.

  “It wasn’t like that.” He pleaded, “I didn’t want to be a burden to you, for you to have to take care of me.”

  “Was I complaining?”

  “You didn’t have to. I knew you didn’t want to come back home. I knew how much you were struggling. Then Mom died and we were gonna lose the house—”

  “Were you even going to get in touch? Let me know you were safe?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” His voice wobbled and he broke down. “I just miss her so much.”

  Warm tears slipped from her eyes. “I miss her too, Park,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I love you. We’re going to stick together.” Nothing more needed to be said. When she returned they could begin to rebuild their lives.

  After they hung up, Melicent closed her eyes, suddenly feeling alone and far away, like a planet out of orbit hurtling through space. She wanted to go back with Parker and be in their mother’s home. She wanted to make snow globes and run Tish’s shop, even though on some days it drove her crazy. But none of that was possible anymore. The fingerprint of her life no longer matched what it used to be. Parker was all she had left, and Roan had unknowingly helped tear down the invisible wall that had stood between them, which she hadn’t known existed.

  In the months before and after her mother’s funeral Melicent had sought out her mother’s things and touched them for comfort, worn Sadie’s favorite sweater, handled all her treasured knickknacks sitting out on the countertops and tables. But Melicent had never once thought to touch Parker’s things—to sense how he was on the inside. Roan had held her brother’s wristband and learned more about him than she had in years. What if she had thought to reach out sooner, to connect with him on a deeper level, to look past the surface? Maybe Parker wouldn’t have felt like he was such a burden.

  Roan knew how to look beyond the facades people wore to get to the inner truth. He’d seen past her facade, on that first day when he walked into the shop. He’d seen her. And he knew her.

  She replayed their last kiss in the study, wondering what he thought, how he felt. She wished she knew.

  And why hadn’t he mentioned her involvement in this whole situation to his mother? Or that she was a psychometrist too? Melicent was following his lead by staying mute on those details. But doing so stung. Jocelyn must be assuming she was some starry-eyed groupie. The whole idea put her in a foul mood.

  With a sigh she opened up Jocelyn’s book Chasing History to see wh
at Roan’s mother had to say about the subject since her son had been doing it his whole life.

  The first chapter, “The Future of History,” began with Jocelyn making the claim that the seat of recorded history would transfer to the realm of neuroscience, genetics, and physics. Current recorded history was selective and subjective, “the argument without end,” but it was objects that held the objective past—with no judgment, no bias, no editing, no censure. The past was a pure, simple recording, and she believed future historians, “futurians” as she called them, would one day be able to decipher history much better.

  Talk about facades. Jocelyn Matthis had perhaps the biggest facade of them all. One of the most respected historians in the world had a son who could rectify any historical discrepancy and yet she could never come forward with the findings because she couldn’t explain her source testimony was alive and well. Dr. Matthis’s tour de force through the past wasn’t a scholar’s quest for knowledge but the result of a mother trying to help her son.

  Her book delved into history’s discrepancies to show how historical narrative oftentimes went astray. There were the easy examples: how Napoleon wasn’t short but of standard height and Marie Antoinette did not infamously say “Let them eat cake!” Another queen did a hundred years before her. Jocelyn also took great care in pointing out historical “ghosts,” not ghosts in the literal sense but within written records. Ghosts were the opinions of scholars that had been passed down but were never challenged. The danger was that a ghost could become accepted as a commonplace fact. Jocelyn wanted to expose as many historical ghosts as possible because she believed, “when someone realizes the foundation of the floor beneath their feet has cracks, they will look closer at the ground they are walking on.”

  The more Melicent read, the more she couldn’t help but feel every word on the page was the result of a struggle, a struggle to reconcile the mechanics of time with the human experience. Jocelyn had been trying to keep up with Roan by researching what he was holding and where he was going with his mind. Along the way she’d begun to see history’s flaws in a glaring light, how fragile and subjective it was, how the past was shaped by the beliefs of the present and then used to form the beliefs of the future. Even Herodotus, “the Father of History,” was the first to admit he was only recording what he’d been told. Jocelyn had become an historian’s historian by default, not by choice.

  Robert West believed Roan had been born for a higher purpose and that his ability needed to be nurtured. All Jocelyn saw was her little boy struggling, unable to shoulder the past like Atlas holding the weight of the world.

  With that thought, an image popped into Melicent’s mind.

  Atlas.

  She sat up, realizing what it was about Stuart’s map that had been bothering her. She got out of bed and hurried downstairs.

  By the quiet of the house—and the silence of the TV—she could tell that Jocelyn had gone to sleep. She found Roan still sitting at the dining table with Stuart’s laptop. He looked up when she entered and his eyes traveled over her leggings and nightshirt.

  She took a step forward, feeling self-conscious in her silk winter thermals. Roan had surely seen sexier pajamas than this.

  He closed out the file of whatever he’d been looking at on the computer. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet.

  “No. I thought of something,” she said in a hushed voice. “It’s about the map.”

  Earlier when she’d seen Stuart’s map, the Xs had drawn her attention but they’d seemed off, like a painting that was warped. Her artist’s eye could see those Xs formed a shape.

  “Would it be possible to re-create the markings on the map but put it into 3-D? So it’s on a globe?”

  Understanding dawned in Roan’s eyes and he turned back to the computer. Within minutes he’d transferred Stuart’s oopart coordinates onto a virtual globe of the world. They didn’t even have to rotate it to see the partial geometric patterns taking shape.

  But that was where the progress stopped, with a broken net of lines and partial figures. Melicent’s shoulders fell in disappointment. That hadn’t been helpful.

  Roan was frowning at the map, lost in thought.

  She offered, “Well, it was worth a try. Good night.” She hesitated and waited for him to look up, to see that right now she wanted to reach out to him.

  When he did look at her she could see the distance in his eyes—his mind was somewhere else entirely. She couldn’t help but take it as a rejection. An invisible barrier stood between them again. He was caught up in Stuart’s research. Now was not the right time. She would not be initiating another kiss.

  She was also done with facades, including her own. So she told him point-blank, “The next time we kiss, I want your gloves off. Period.”

  Without waiting for a response, she went back up the stairs, letting his soft “good night” fall behind her back.

  26. THE FILE

  AFTER MELICENT’S SURPRISE announcement and exit up the stairs, Roan had trouble returning to Stuart’s research. Before she’d come downstairs, he’d been reading the file on crop circles, and the map he and Melicent tried to create tonight had been a step in the right direction. He was on the brink of a discovery. He could feel it.

  He forced his attention back to Stuart’s notes:

  Makers of crop circles are masters of geometry. There are never any errors in their work, either in form or measurement. There are no footprints left behind, no broken stalks, and when the crop circle appears in a field of flowers, the flowers are never crushed but perfectly preserved. The precision within the technique is surgical.

  Even more perplexing, the designs have grown in complexity over the years, comprising intricate spirals, fractals, and knots with interlocking triangles, pentagons, hexagons, dodecagons, and other geometric shapes.

  The labyrinth is an important design element as well—the circles have a tendency to create a mazelike pattern within the design.

  Roan studied the aerial photography imported into the file. He could make out a labyrinth in many of the designs. But Roan knew there was a marked difference between a labyrinth and a maze. A labyrinth had only one path to take, and there were no false ends to become lost in like in a maze.

  In cultures around the world labyrinths were considered to be the enchanted path the mind walked in order to arrive at the answer at the center. Throughout the centuries and no matter which religion, walking the labyrinth was considered a path of meditation.

  These circles were laying down labyrinths.

  Stuart’s notes accompanied the images.

  Over ten thousand crop circles have appeared to date in almost every country, with the majority unclaimed, conjured by a group of silent artists. The circles’ designs have not once, ever, repeated themselves.

  The circles, like ooparts, are found near many ancient, sacred sites. They also form near water. Scientists believe that the ground near aquifers holds a greater electrical charge.

  Crop circles leave a magnetic charge in the soil where they appear. Using a microscope, biologists have discovered tiny micron sphere-shaped particles of iron attached to the stalks. These microscopic magnets seem to be remnants of some kind of energy source.

  The ooparts, when measured with the same instruments, show an altered magnetic field too.

  Stuart had underlined that last part. Roan frowned. He’d never touched the grass within a crop circle, but he could attest that ooparts felt magnetically charged. Stuart had drawn a correlation.

  The partial shapes the map formed in 3-D hinted that the ooparts formed a larger geometric design, but it wasn’t complete. Roan couldn’t help but think he was overlooking something.

  Knowing sleep was out of the question, he made himself a cup of Earl Grey and drew the curtains in the dining room. He wasn’t used to being in rooms with windows, and he found them disconcerting. The feeling he was being watched kept circling around him, and he tried to brush the sensation off. It didn
’t help that there were no flowers outside due to the cold.

  After closing the blinds and setting the house alarm, he sat back down at the table with his tea to study Stuart’s map. There had to be an answer here he wasn’t seeing. He’d never been so confounded by an artifact before, and now there was an entire collection of them spread across the globe.

  He went back to the crop circle photos and enlarged the picture of a labyrinth circle found near Cellé, France, in June 2014. The longer he gazed at it, the more the image began to remind him of tree rings within a trunk.

  The labyrinth had two openings on the outer edge. As Roan’s eyes traveled the path to its center he thought too how ooparts existed in two time periods. In essence they existed in two places—

  Roan stopped, gripped by an idea.

  Two places. When his eyes landed on the labyrinth’s center he found the answer.

  He went back to Stuart’s spreadsheet and entered in a new set of coordinates for each oopart onto the 3-D global map.

  So far they’d plugged in the coordinates where the ooparts were last found, not where they originally came from. The objects in essence existed twice and at two locations.

  That meant two points on the map, not one.

  Only a psychometrist would have been able to find that original coordinate. Together Stuart and Miguel had pinpointed each oopart’s city and country of origin.

  Excitement rose within Roan and a feeling of momentum took over as he entered the new data points. Goose bumps trailed over his arms and up his neck when he watched the geometric shapes complete themselves on the map. The labyrinth had just unlocked the secret.

  The connecting lines between all the ooparts with their twin sets of data points transformed the map of the world into a dazzling array of geometric perfection. All the lines crisscrossed and intersected each other to form intricate shapes within shapes in an arrangement of circles, triangles, diamonds, and starlike pentagons. It was like looking at the inside of a kaleidoscope.