Chapter 1 – Probable Cause
1995 Orick, California
Officer Randall
flipped his lights on as he pulled up behind a posh black 1975 Camaro with
tinted windows. Nothing pissed him off more than tinted windows. Unable to see
if a driver was worth harassing was an automatic qualification for harassment
in Officer Randall’s modus operandi. Plus, he loved flipping his lights on and
knowing the immediate spike in fear most people felt when they discovered the
five-oh was on their ass.
Pulling out his
new tint meter, Officer Randall swaggered up to the driver window with his
right hand resting on his sidearm. The driver had only lowered the window a
small crack, with their license, registration, and proof of insurance card
already sticking out the window.
“Please lower
your window,” Officer Randall said curtly as he took the proffered material.
“May I have
your badge number and name please?” an older woman asked as she lowered her
window another inch.
Great…some stupid lawyer. Probably has one
of those portable phones.
Letting his
tone grow colder, he gave the woman his badge number and name, which she wrote
down on a legal pad. With a frown, he decided to check her information before
interrogating her more. She was definitely outside of the demographic of people
he was interested in harassing.
“Dispatch, I
need plates run for 2 7 9 urinate, rectal, nuisance, for a 10-37” Officer
Randall radioed when he returned to his car. Technically, he was supposed to
radio dispatch before he approached the driver.
“Very funny,
Randall,” Susan rasped back dryly. “Remember what the Captain said about using
proper phonetic spelling on the radio from now on.”
“Fine…Union,
Robert, Nora,” Officer Randall griped into his radio. After some bored citizen
with a police scanner took offense to their department’s less than polite
phonetic alphabet, the Captain had made a point of making everyone on the force
practice the proper phonetic scheme.
“1975 Camaro
registered to an Alican Moore,” Susan spoke after a moment of radio silence. “No
prior record. Insurance is current. What was your PC?”
“Tinted
windows,” Officer Randall replied shortly.
“10-4,” Susan’s
voice had the professional tone that Officer Randall had come to recognize as
her way of conveying disapproval.
Getting out of
his cruiser, Officer Randal walked up and handed the information back to the
woman.
“I’m going to
need you to lower your window more to test the tint,” Officer Randall told the
woman firmly.
She lowered the
window another five inches without replying. As he slid the tint meter over her
window, he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. A young woman was
walking down the opposite side of the street. She had some kind of goofy hat
with earflaps and a pair of rose-tinted glasses.
He glanced back
at his meter and grunted irritably. Thirty-five; right at the edge of legal
tint.
“Thanks for
your time, ma’am,” Officer Randall said distractedly. “Drive safely.”
Without a word,
the woman closed her window and drove away.
“Bitch,”
Officer Randal muttered under his breath. His heart wasn’t in it though. His
mind was already focused on the girl as she passed him on the other side of the
street. This was much better than some dried up old hag.
“Excuse me,
miss,” Officer Randall said curtly as he marched across the street to confront
her. “We’re conducting a search for an escaped felon in the area. Can I see
your ID, please?”
She paused as
he stepped in front of her and he had a moment to get a better look at her. She
was shorter than he had realized, probably not even five feet. The part of her
face that wasn’t obscured by her goofy hat and glasses hinted at very striking
features. Large breasts were prominent even under the thick white jacket she
wore. Her feet were adorned with an odd pair of green boots that stopped just
below the knee. Her toned thighs were covered in thin white leggings that made
his pulse quicken.
“I’m sorry, did
I make a wrong turn somewhere?” the girl asked in a musical voice. “I thought
this was still America. I haven’t made a point of carrying my papers with me
since I left Nazi Germany over half a century ago.”
“Unless you
would like to be charged with obstructing justice, I suggest you produce some
identification,” Officer Randall said belligerently. “Lose the hat and
glasses.”
“Which part of
the fourth amendment did you misunderstand while going to cop school?” the girl
asked with a contemptuous twist of her mouth. “I’m guessing it was most of it,
since it probably required a degree of literacy. What kind of moron do you take
me for? There aren’t any prisons in the area for a felon to escape from. Why
don’t you go find another law-abiding driver to harass? I’m sure there are more
cars with tinted windows that are probably hiding several kilos of unlawful
substances you need to inspect.”
Officer Randall
had tried to break into her tirade several times, but she had just spoken
louder each time he tried to interrupt. With a growl, he grabbed her arm and
pulled out his cuffs. A split second later, he found himself doubled over into a
fetal position as a blinding white pain erupted in his groin. He let out a
pitiful howl as he hurriedly un-holstered his pistol.
He looked
around from his fetal position for the source of his near-castration, fully
intending to put a couple slugs in the little bitch. He swung his head around
in every direction without spotting her. With a pathetic groan, he rose to his
knees and peered up and down the road. She had vanished without a trace. There
was no way she could have run away that fast; the closest trees were almost
fifty feet away from the road. He continued scanning the area with his gun
half-raised, convinced she was hiding in the short grass somewhere. After
almost five minutes of half-crawling, half-staggering around, he gave up and
went back to his car.
With a vicious
curse, he noticed his legs were wet with a significant amount of blood. She
must have sharpened the toes of her boots to have caused so much damage.
“Dispatch, I
need an ambulance at North Lake Road,” he groaned into his radio’s mic.
2014 Orick, California
Harmony sighed
as she finished unboxing the last of the dishes. Now all she had left to unpack
was the winter clothing, which would be needed quite soon if the cooler
temperatures were any indication.
“Aunt Harmony,
can we go exploring after dinner?” her ten year old niece asked excitedly.
“Sure, Aurora,”
Harmony replied with an indulgent smile as she observed her dark-eyed niece. “Just
make sure and get your jackets from the winter box.”
“Grandma
Norella said there’s a giant wall in the forest that nobody’s ever been inside
of,” Aurora’s eleven year old sister said with a determined grin. “I’ll bet we can find a way in!”
“I’m sure we
can, Serenity,” Harmony laughed, getting caught up in their excitement. It
never ceased to amaze her how fascinating the world was to young minds. “We’ll
just walk around it.”
“You can’t walk around it, silly,” Serenity
said reproachfully. “It’s a big circle. Grandma Norella says it goes on for
miles and miles.”
“Ooooh…”
Harmony gasped in mock amazement. “I’ll bet there’s all kinds of treasure
hiding inside of it!”
“That’s what we
think too!” Aurora nodded eagerly. “I’ll bet there is a whole bunch of Spanish
gold inside of it.”
“Well of course it would have to be Spanish gold,” Harmony said dryly.
Aurora squinted
at her suspiciously for a moment as she tried to figure out if Harmony was
teasing her, or just agreeing in a very unusual way. She finally settled for
agreement, spinning around and running for the last of the moving boxes.
“Were you just
being sarcastic, Aunt Harmony?” Serenity asked disapprovingly. “Our teacher
told us sarcasm is the refuge of a bitter mind.”
“Well I
definitely have a better mind, so I guess I was
being sarcastic,” Harmony replied with a straight face.
“Bitter not better, silly!” Serenity corrected her, stamping her foot for
emphasis.
“Why would I
have a butter mind?” Harmony asked in mock confusion. “Oh I see; you’re saying people who are sarcastic have fat brains.”
“Bitter!” Serenity shouted, stamping her
other foot. “Bitter, bitter, bitter!”
Aurora came
running back into the kitchen with two jackets, throwing one of them to
Serenity as she climbed onto one of the bar stools. “Who’s bitter?”
“Serenity said
she wants some lemons to go with her dinner,” Harmony told Aurora with a shrug.
“She’s got an even more bizarre appetite than a pregnant woman.”
“She’s lying!” Serenity gasped in amazement. “I can’t believe you just lied, Aunt Harmony!”
“I’m an author,” Harmony told her
with a wink. “We’re given artistic license when it comes to telling the truth.”
“What does that even mean?” Serenity demanded indignantly.
“It means that while in this
universe you may have meant something else, I was pretending that we were in
another universe where you meant you wanted lemons with your dinner,” Harmony
explained innocently.
“But there’s only one universe,”
Serenity declared insistently. “Otherwise it would be called an omniverse.”
“Who told you
that?” Harmony asked curiously.
“It was on Jet
Li, The One,” Serenity replied, pointing at their stack of DVD’s.
“Well if it was
on TV, it has to be true,” Harmony nodded sagely.
“You’re being
sarcastic again!” Serenity said accusingly.
“That’s because
I have a butter mind,” Harmony replied calmly. “And with a brain as fat as
mine, I can be as sarcastic as I want.”
“You can be so infuriating, Aunt Harmony!” Serenity
complained shrilly.
“So I’ve been
told,” Harmony replied unconcernedly. “If you take notes, you’ll be pro’s
before you know it.”
“Why would we
want to be pro’s at infuriating people?” Serenity demanded exasperatedly.
“Because it’s a
lot of fun,” Harmony replied with a smirk. “Can’t you see how much fun I’m
having?”
“I’m telling
Grandma that you lied,” Serenity threatened.
“Who do you
think taught me how to do it so well?” Harmony asked with a raised eyebrow.
Serenity stood
spluttering for several seconds, and then folded her arms and narrowed her eyes
in a manner that would have been stern, if she were a decade older. Instead, it
just looked adorable.
“I’m telling
Grandma that you called her a liar,” Serenity stated huffily.
“Okay,” Harmony
replied amicably. “I’ll make sure and tell her you called her an old bag.”
“But I didn’t!”
Serenity objected in confusion. When Harmony just kept smirking at her, her
eyes grew wide in sudden understanding. “You’re going to lie!”
“Don’t forget,
we call it artistic license around here,” Harmony corrected her with a wide
grin.
“You’re unbelievable!” Serenity shrieked, glaring
at her sister as Aurora started giggling.
“Now you’re
getting the hang of it,” Harmony nodded in satisfaction. “All liars are
unbelievable by default.”
Serenity glared
at her for a moment before settling for an affronted silence. Harmony shook her
head in amusement as she started preparing dinner. She had only gained custody
of her nieces a couple of days ago, and it was proving more fun than she had
thought possible. It was the only silver lining to her sister’s untimely death
several months ago. Her nieces had been living with their grandmother while
Harmony tried to decide if she could handle being their guardian. At twenty-three
years old, she felt woefully inadequate at taking care of two girls on the
verge of becoming teenagers, but leaving them with her ill mother was something
she couldn’t allow without her overzealous conscience keeping her up at night,
sick with guilt.
By the time
they finished eating and were preparing to go exploring, Serenity had forgotten
that she was giving Harmony the silent treatment. The two girls were running
into the forest behind their two-story house with reckless abandon before Harmony
could even get off of the back porch. With a grin, Harmony ran after them,
thankful that she went running every morning and had the stamina to keep up
with them.
After fifteen
minutes of zipping through the trees, the girls were finally slowing down to a
more acceptable pace. Harmony glanced at the horizon calculatingly as the sun
sank behind some clouds near the mountains. They probably only had another half
an hour of good light left. She glanced at her iPhone’s GPS app, making sure it
was marking their progress with breadcrumbs so that they could find their way
back to the house. God, I love
technology.
“Wow!” Serenity
exclaimed in amazement. “It’s humungous!”
Harmony put her
phone away and looked up to see what they were so excited about. Then she saw
the wall and gasped. It must have been three hundred feet tall! The enormous
redwood trees around it were at least a couple dozen feet shorter. In a state
of bemusement, Harmony slowly approached the giant wall. Who in the world would build something so massive in the middle of
nowhere like this?
When she
reached the base of the colossal structure, she reached a hand out to feel the
surface. It was as smooth as glass. It had flecks peppering it that almost
looked like granite. She pulled out her small pocket knife and experimentally
tried to score some of the surface loose. The steel blade didn’t even scratch
the hard material. With a frown, she picked up a rock and tried pounding the
butt of her knife against the surface of the wall. After a few taps, the blade
of her knife snapped in half. Curiouser
and curiouser.
She pulled out
her iPhone to take a few close-up pictures. As she slid the unlock button on
her iPhone’s touch-screen, the screen suddenly flickered like it was possessed,
then winked out. Just bloody great. Now I
have to find my way back without breadcrumbs.
“Aunt Harmony,
I can almost see over the top of the wall!” Aurora shouted excitedly from
somewhere up high.
Harmony felt a
sudden chill as she looked up and spotted Aurora several hundred feet high in
the branches of one of the redwoods.
“Aurora, get
back down here before you break your neck!” Harmony shouted urgently. She could
tell the branches Aurora was on were getting extremely thin.
“It’s okay, I
climb trees all of the time,” Aurora shouted back down reassuringly.
“I think you
should come back down,” Serenity called up to her sister from where she was
perched about halfway up the tree.
“Listen to your
sister, Aurora!” Harmony shouted insistently. “We are in a very bad place for a
medical emergency.”
“Fine!” Aurora
sighed dramatically. “You guys are being babies though. I could climb this
thing blindfolded-“
She cut off
with a startled yell as a loud cracking noise reached Harmony’s ears.
“Aurora!”
Harmony shouted in alarm, hurriedly scaling the lower branches.
“I’m okay…”
Aurora shouted in a much less confident tone. “Um…I think I might be stuck
though.”
Harmony felt
her heart skip several beats as dozens of horrible outcomes flashed through her
over-active imagination. “Hold on honey, I’m coming up.”
“I think you
better hurry,” Aurora called back down. “I don’t know how much longer I can
hold on.”
Harmony panted
as she quickened her pace. She wasn’t sure if her heart was beating so fast
from exertion, or fear. She passed Serenity and kept moving as fast as she
could. It only took her a few minutes to reach a point where she had a clear
view of the situation. Aurora was hanging from a branch that looked way too
small to support her weight, with one arm hooked around the branch while her
other hand grasped another small sapling.
“My arm is
starting to slip, Aunt Harmony,” Aurora quavered, her voice tight with anxiety.
“You look like
you could use a hand,” a musical voice noted in amusement from several branches
below Harmony.
Harmony looked
down in surprise as a young woman quickly zipped past her like a squirrel up
the tree. It was dark enough that she couldn’t make out any of the girl’s
features, aside from a mass of brilliant long blonde hair. Harmony watched in
amazement as the girl scaled the last fifty feet separating her from Aurora
like an Olympic gymnast.
The girl calmly
walked out onto a small limb just below Aurora and reached up to grab her niece
around the waist.
“You can let go
now,” the girl told Aurora confidently. “I’ve got you.”
“There is no
way that branch will support both of you,” Harmony said nervously.
“Nonsense,” the
girl replied dismissively. “I need you to trust me, Aurora. Now let go.”
“Okay,” Aurora
took a deep breath and released the branch she was holding.
Harmony cringed
as the small branch the girl was standing on bowed slightly as she lowered
Aurora down. Somehow, the branch remained unbroken as it supported their
combined weight.
“Now just wrap
your arms and legs around me and we’ll head back down,” the girl instructed
Aurora calmly.
Harmony watched
in astonishment as the girl somehow balanced perfectly on the small branch
while Aurora complied. She must be part
squirrel!
“All right,
let’s blow this popsicle stand,” the girl said with a grin in her voice.
As Harmony
watched open-mouthed, the girl began hopping down the branches like she was
walking down a stairway. She finally snapped out of her astonishment when the
girl passed her in a blur of gravity-defying leaps down the tree. The girl was
only slightly larger than the tightly clinging Aurora.
Harmony
hurriedly began descending the large tree, shaking her head in disbelief at the
impossibility of the situation.
“Who is that?” Serenity asked in bafflement
when Harmony caught up to her. “And where did she come from?”
“Didn’t she
pass you on her way up?” Harmony asked in surprise.
“I didn’t see
anyone,” Serenity replied blankly.
Harmony frowned
as she looked down at the ground that was still a good seventy feet below them.
The girl and Aurora were both already chatting at the base of the tree.
“Come on, let’s
get back down,” Harmony said after taking another deep breath. She could still
feel adrenaline coursing through her system from the intense fear that had
filled her heart just moments ago.
The girl had
her head tilted upward as she watched them descend the last dozen feet. As soon
as Harmony reached the ground, she pulled Aurora into a tight embrace.
“Don’t ever
scare me like that again!” Harmony gasped as she felt tears spill down her
cheeks.
“I promise,”
Aurora said contritely as she patted Harmony’s back comfortingly.
Harmony took a
deep, shuddering breath and turned to thank their rescuer. With a frown, she
did a full three-sixty turn as her eyes failed to locate their heroine.
“Where did she
go?” Harmony asked in confusion.
“She’s right
here-“ Aurora broke off as she realized their mysterious rescuer was nowhere to
be found.
“Hello?”
Harmony called out uncertainly into the darkening landscape.
Silence.
“Where is she?”
Serenity asked as she jumped down the remaining few feet from the lowest
branch.
“She just
vanished,” Harmony replied in puzzlement. “I saw her two seconds ago, then she
was gone.”
“Maybe she flew
away,” Aurora suggested, looking into the sky.
“What do you
mean?” Serenity asked curiously.
“I thought
fairies could fly,” Aurora answered uncertainly.
“What makes you
think she was a fairy?” Serenity asked doubtfully.
“She had pointy
ears like a fairy,” Aurora replied with a shrug. “Who else has pointy ears?”
Harmony
frowned, remembering the strange points that were sticking up through the sides
of the girl’s hair. It had been too dark to see clearly, so she had just
assumed it was unruly hair. There’s no
such thing as fairies. Might as well bring elves and Santa Clause into the
picture while we’re at it.
“Come on, let’s
get home,” Harmony said briskly.
Aurora and
Serenity grudgingly gave up their search of the darkening skies and followed
her back toward the house. Holding her breath for luck, Harmony pulled out her
iPhone and held the power button down for a few seconds. A small apple appeared
on the screen as the phone came back to life. Thank god for small mercies.
Her nieces
remained unusually quiet as she used the flashlight on her phone to help light
the way back to the house. The breadcrumbs on her phone’s map were still
present, or they would never have found their way back in the dark woods.
“I think this
calls for some ice-cream,” Harmony declared as they walked through the back
door.
“You mean rice-cream,” Serenity corrected with a
roll of her eyes.
“It tastes just
as good as the real thing,” Harmony said with a shrug. “And you don’t have to
feel bad about torturing cute cuddly cows when you eat it.”
She took
Serenity’s silence as assent.
As they sat
around the kitchen bar eating rice-cream,
Aurora kept absently looking at the window.
“What are you
looking at, honey?” Harmony asked curiously.
“I was just
hoping to see the fairy flying around,” Aurora replied vaguely.
“Sweetie,
fairies don’t really exist, except in movies and books,” Harmony said gently.
“What if she
lives inside of that big ring?”
Aurora murmured, as if she hadn’t heard Harmony. “What if it’s a fairy ring?”
Harmony just
sighed and let it pass. She’ll get over
it in a few days.
“How did she
know Aurora’s name?” Serenity asked suddenly.
“She probably
heard us shouting it,” Harmony shrugged.
Serenity didn’t
look convinced.
“Come on, let’s
get you girls ready for bed,” Harmony said as they finished their dessert.
“School night.”
That was all it
took to get their minds off of fairies. After several half-hearted objections,
the two girls reluctantly began the nightly bedtime routine.
After both
girls were securely deposited into their bedrooms, Harmony sat down at the desk
in her bedroom and opened her laptop. Time
to see what we can find out about that crazy wall.
It took almost
five minutes of narrowing her search queries to even find any references to the
enormous structure. Very few people even knew of its existence, with most of
the information supplied from local Indian legends. Most of the legends were
spawned by the Kalapuya Indians and passed on by neighboring tribes after the
majority of the Kalapuya’s were wiped out from European plagues. The fact that
the Kalapuya had significant language barriers with the other tribes in the region
made the legends even more difficult to interpret and understand.
According to
the Indian legends, a Chepi, which was the Native American equivalent of a
fairy, was the caretaker of magical creatures that once inhabited the Americas.
After hundreds of thousands of years of coexisting peacefully with humans, the
Elders of the largest tribe in North America betrayed the Chepi and began using
the magical creatures they protected in rituals to steal their magic. The only
way a Chepi could reproduce, was to bind herself to a mortal man and bear his
offspring. The first child always inherited the mother’s powers and was given
the charge to protect the magical creatures in the land from evil spirits who
would use their magic to take mortal form. Once in mortal form, the evil
spirits would deceive the human tribes and initiate rites of human sacrifice to
feed their twisted spirits and gain more power over the spirit realm.
The Kalapuya
claimed one of the eldest of the Chepi found human men repugnant, and refused
to bond with them. Since Chepi’s only became mortal after bonding with humans,
this Chepi remained in a state of perpetual youth. When all of the other Chepi
in the land were deceived and their first-born children sacrificed to evil
spirits, only the Chepi known as the hermit remained. She gathered all of the
remaining magical creatures in the land and kept them safe from the Elders in
her circle of dominion. All of the other circles of dominion in the land had
decayed and been destroyed when their Chepi died. Only one circle of dominion
remained, proof that at least one Chepi still lived.
Wiping her tired eyes, Harmony closed her
laptop and flopped down onto her bed with a sigh. I can’t believe even these natives believe in fairies. I guess some
superstitions are just too good to keep on one side of the world.
