Bakkian Chronicles, Book I - The Prophecy (3 page)

Steve glanced over at Sarah. She was staring idly out at the passing scenery. She clearly wasn’t paying attention to the book anymore, either. Time for Plan B. He reached behind his seat to pull out a bag of beef jerky, procured at the last gas stop they made. Knowing his wife could never resist her favorite road trip snack, he tore off the top and opened the bag. A split second later, Sarah's head snapped around.

“
You sneak! When did you get that?” Sarah was trying to act insulted that he hadn't offered it to her the instant he had bought it, but she knew Steve liked to surprise her. If her playful tirade of insults would have lasted any longer, then she would have ended up spraying jerky everywhere. Happily chewing away, the boring audio book was promptly ignored, which might be due to the fact that Steve had surreptitiously turned the volume down.

“
What do you think we'll find up there? Run-down house, trash everywhere, junk cars in the yard…” Steve was drawing himself a pretty good mental picture of this when Sarah finally swallowed.

“
I don't think they were rednecks.” She stifled a giggle. “Maybe an outdated house in need of a new paint job, and a couple of pink flamingos in the front yard.” She grabbed another piece of jerky. “I'm curious about the land, though. According to your map, their tract of land extends well into the forest. The land is probably worth more than the house itself.” She bit off another piece of jerky.

“
I wonder what type of people they were,” Steve mused, clearly not on the same page as she. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to have contact with their family.”

“
Maybe they wanted to, but didn’t know how to.” Sarah was still chewing on her jerky. “Maybe your dad and his parents had an argument, and your dad decided to sever the relationship. That’s what I think happened.”

“
Dad never talked about his parents,” Steve said. “Every time I tried to bring the subject up, and wonder why we never went to visit, or why they never visited us, he always said he had no desire to see them. Never said what he had against them. I wish I knew. Sad way to live, if you ask me.”

Sarah nodded. She bit off another piece of jerky. “Let’s listen to some music, ‘k?”

Two bags of jerky, four music CDs, and a hasty overnight stay at a run-down motel later, they pulled in to a Coeur d’Alene gas station just off of I-90 to verify the directions they were given. Steve got out of their Santa Fe and headed inside. Sarah decided the station looked nice enough to get out and use the restroom. She passed her husband and headed to the back of the store. The attendant was studying the map.

“
Holt Lane. Hmmm. Your map says it’s off of French Gulch St. Haven’t heard of that one, but if your map is correct, then go out to that stop sign and hang a right. Keep going until you hit Harrison. Turn right. Harrison will turn into French Gulch. It should be on your left.”

Steve thanked the attendant and got back in their car. Sarah returned several minutes later with a fresh, cold bottle of water and they were on their way.

They found Holt Lane without any problems. The street ended in a cul-de-sac, backing up against the forest in all directions but the east. There were three houses that met their gaze. All of them, Steve thought joyfully, were large manors with well kept grounds. A fourth driveway could be seen, only it had locked gates securing the entrance, with the private road disappearing off into the woods Steve looked at the first house on the left.

“
439 Holt Lane. Look at the size of that sucker! It’s gorgeous!! That’s gotta be worth at least a half mil, easy!”

Sarah looked at the large, Tudor-style manor. “That’s a beautiful house. They all are. Great neighborhood. Lots of land around. Forest for a backyard.”

Steve had unfastened his seat belt and was reaching for the ignition when Sarah grabbed his hand.

“
Umm, wrong house. We’re looking for 419 Holt Lane.”

Steve looked over at the next house on the right. “Hey, fine by me! That one is even bigger.”

Sarah, however, was looking at the gated driveway. She pointed to it. “I think that’s ours.”

“
Huh? How can you tell? I don’t see an address.”

Sarah unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the SUV. Walking over to the gates, she moved some of the brush aside, revealing a tarnished brass plaque set into the brick wall.

“
See? 419. This is it.”

The gates were old, thick, and very formidable. They were set into solid brick foundations and, Steve was willing to bet, would be able to withstand any attempts of forced entry. A large, weathered lock kept the gates chained securely together.

Steve got out of the car and started trying the various keys he was given. After a couple of attempts, he found the correct one and pushed the gates open. Belying their rusty appearance, the gates effortlessly opened, smacking into the brick wall with a resounding clang. Ahead of them, the driveway stretched on for about a hundred yards before disappearing into the forest, curving off to the right. It looked as though someone had cut a swath right through the middle of the trees, clearing just enough room for a car to squeeze by. Steve glanced at the other driveways. The houses at the end of each were situated about fifty feet away. He looked back at the gate and chuckled.

“
What's so funny?” asked Sarah, once he was back in the car.

“
I keep expecting to see a green van with a great big dog in the back seat.”

Sarah stared blankly at him.

“
You know, like Scooby Doo. Are we going to find some type of mystery that needs to be solved? This is how they always seem to…” He trailed off after noticing his wife’s look, which clearly said, ‘You’re a dork.’ in any language. “Right. On we go.”

Steve nudged the Hyundai through the gates and drove slowly down the lane. After they rou
nded the bend, it took a full ten
minutes of driving (at ten mph - for some reason Steve couldn't bring himself to drive any faster) before they passed what could only be referred to as an authentic fruit orchard. They slowly drove by apple trees, pear trees, apricot trees, and several Sarah couldn’t identify. At last, the trees cleared and their newly acquired house came into view. And what a house it was!

The manor was roughly 12,500 square feet, three stories high, and built in the early 1900's (by none other than Steve's great-grandfather, Luther, which he would not discover until much later). The house sat on a huge tract of land, with the forest encroaching from the north and west. Steve was not an architect, so couldn’t pinpoint what style the house was built to conform to, but it did look part Victorian, part Mediterranean, and it even had a medieval feel about the place. That turret on the western side of the house, for example. He blinked. No, that wasn't a turret. More like a round anteroom off of another room. The second and third stories also incorporated the same design as the first floor, so it certainly could be mistaken for a turret.

Flagstone decorated the base of the house, extending halfway up the second floor. Situated on the northern side of the house was a detached garage with enough room for four full-sized RVs with room to spare. The southern side of the house contained the beginnings of an immense Victorian garden that wrapped around the western side of the mansion, stretching all the way up to the edge of the forest. A small, gurgling creek wound through the gardens before returning to the forest at the northwestern perimeter of the property.

“
You know, I would prefer it if you could pull all the way up to the house. I really don’t want to walk the rest of the way in.” Sarah was smiling, shaking her head. She was anxious to check out their new-found fortune. Steve had stepped on the brakes the moment their new house had come into view as they were still a good hundred yards away.

“
Sorry. Just taking it all in.” He drove to the front of the house and parked their car. Look at that garage! Room for all of your toys. That’d be an apt description for a real estate listing, he mused. Sarah was out of the car first.

“
This thing is a mansion! Omigod! It's enormous!!” Sarah was slowly turning in place, trying to take in as much as possible. It was then that she looked to the south of the gigantic manor and saw the gardens. Her gardens. “Look at that! Do you see the gardens? Let’s go check it out! Please??”

“
Knowing you and gardens, that could take a while.” Steve immediately sidestepped to his left about three feet in order to avoid the imminent hit. “Tell you what, as soon as we’re done checking out the inside, we’ll look around the outside. Okay?”

“
As long as you promise to not rush me.”

Steve smiled. “Deal.”

They both approached the front entry. Steve dug out the keys again and started going through them.

“
Got it. Shall we?”

Sarah smiled as her husband held the door open. However, Steve had a change of mind when, instead, he decided to be the first one in. Sarah nodded, saying nothing. She was rather glad he had gone first. What if something jumped out at her? Besides, it was best to let him walk through any cobwebs first.

Steve and Sarah Miller stood in a foyer the size of their first apartment. The first thing he noted was how everything inside looked as though it belonged in a museum. There were several cast iron coat racks to the left of the main doors; a huge mirror with a carved, mahogany frame was directly on the right. Two sets of staircases, one on the left and the other on the right spiraled up and joined together on the second floor, and then continued as one up to the third floor. A fireplace was just visible through a set of double doors on the left side of the room. It was so big that the two of them could have stood in it without hitting their heads. The right side of the room also contained a set of double doors, but those were closed.

Both of them hadn’t moved more than a few feet from the front door.

“
How in the hell did they keep a house this big clean?” Steve wondered, looking around.

Sarah didn’t have to think of the answer. “Easy. If you can afford a house this size, you hire maids.”

“
You have a point.” Steve walked over to a narrow table that was just below the mirror. He ran his finger along it. “Do they still have maids coming to take care of this place? No dust.”

“
Do you usually go into someone’s house and check for dust?”

“
Hey, I’
m just saying that this room isn’t
dusty
.”

“
Well, you don’t know how long it’s been since your grandparents were here, do you?”

Steve admitted that he did not.

Together, they walked through the ground floor, going from room-to-room. Steve started a mental list to keep tabs of everything they had come across so far: foyer, kitchen, dining room, formal dining room, sitting room (Sarah’s term for the round anteroom), two rooms that could pass for studies or offices, three bathrooms and a laundry room. There was no way they were going to be able to remember everything they had found. Ascending to the second floor, they started looking around. They found a well-stocked library, three guest rooms, two more bathrooms, another sitting room and a hobby room (Sarah discovered several sewing machines, an actual spinning wheel that looked as though it would still work, large stores of fabric and yarn, and great quantities of blank parchment).

The third story had enormous vaulted ceilings spanning the entire floor. This level yielded what could be described as an observatory (a large, powerful telescope had been set up in the “round room”), a huge sitting area with numerous bookcases lining the walls, an enormous bathroom, and a massive set of carved doors leading into the late Simon and Grace’s personal bedroom. The vast doors were wide open.

Steve moved closer to inspect the unusual doors. The door frames stood at least twelve feet tall with carved figurines and symbols covering every square inch of the surface. The doors also had carvings covering the entire surface area. Whereas the frames had what appeared to be unknown symbols carved onto them, the doors themselves depicted one carved relief that spanned both doors. It was a scene of a valley, with mountains to the north, a sea to the east, with a multi-turreted castle to the northeast bordering the coastline.

“
Someone sure had plenty of time on their hands when they carved this.” Steve ran his hands along the unknown symbols. “What are these? Hieroglyphs?”