The Secret of the Stones by Ernest Dempsey (reading fiction .TXT) 📕

Brown signs pointed the way to a picnic area nearby. Ulrich had not said much for the last few hours. The SUV came to a stop in front of the building, and the three men got out amid a flurry of schoolchildren. Apparently, their field trip had run a little late. Tommy wasn’t sure if he would rather be in his current situation over having to drive one of the buses back with the screaming kids on it.

“Where to, Thomas?” Ulrich interrupted his thoughts.

Tommy glanced around for a second then pointed to an enormous pile of rocks about sixty feet away.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Rock Eagle was that it looked as if someone had been standing on a thirty-foot-high scaffold, directing the placement of the stones. Why they had done it was a whole other matter.

Tommy led the way over to a historical information plate that stood a few feet from the base of the stone bird’s tail. An elderly couple had just finished reading the placard; they were slowly making their way back toward the parking lot.

His eyes scanned the raised metal words. He’d probably read hundreds of those things over the years. According to what the sign said, a sort of earthen wall had originally surrounded the bird effigy. It went on to say that the entire stone representation was raised about four feet higher than the rest of the ground around it. Historians could not offer a logical explanation as to why it was there, but a few details were mentioned that Tommy thought interesting.

Of course, he already knew the story. Archaeologists had assumed the sites to be mass graves, but the remains of only one human had been found at both Rock Eagle as well as the sister site of Rock Hawk—only a few miles away. He was also aware of the quartz arrowhead that had been recovered from the bones of the male skeleton in the pile of stones before him, a little detail that needn’t be mentioned to his captors at the moment.

Ulrich seemed unimpressed by the information. “What does this mean?”

“Nothing. I just thought there might be some helpful info here. It’s just the story about how this place was discovered. Maybe we should check out the welcome center and see if there is anything helpful in there.”

Ulrich only thought for a second before he nodded and fell in behind Tommy, who was headed toward the old wooden building.

Having been there a few times, Tommy remembered that inside the information center, artifacts on display were few in number. The three men entered through the single glass door and casually made their way over to a map in the corner of the room. A small group of schoolchildren was filing out, complaining that they had to go back to school. If they had been able to understand the concept of time, they would have realized that by the time the bus got back, school would be out for the day.

Ulrich seemed uncomfortable around the children, and the guard, in particular, looked a bit out of sorts.

Tommy smiled to himself as he stepped closer to a poster-sized aerial photo of the location. “Okay. This is us,” he said as he pointed at the building in which they were standing, marked by the usual You are here dot. His finger then traced the outline of the giant stone bird effigy from where they’d just come a few minutes prior.

“This is Rock Eagle,” he stated. He then moved his hand to another, similar formation opposite of the one he’d just mentioned. “And here is Rock Hawk.” He tapped the map and took a step back. Staring at the map, Tommy was puzzled by the entire scene.

“So where is the chamber hidden?” Ulrich asked plainly.

Tommy gave him a drop dead look. “Beats me. There’s a lot of land between the two formations. Rock Hawk is about seven kilometers from here. It could be anywhere.”

The clock on the wall read, 4:25. Right on cue, a nondescript woman wearing the light-brown button-up shirt of a park worker announced that the building would be closing in five minutes.

Tommy ignored the woman, still gazing at the map in an effort to find a hint, anything that might show them the way. The screaming voices of the elementary students just outside the windows made thinking difficult.

His mind wandered to the ancient people who’d built these places. The reason behind Fort Mountain was clear to him. A three-dimensional stone replica of the Nile was a clue to the early settlers’ mysterious past, but the giant rock bird effigies stumped him. Though animals were revered in ancient Egypt, it was still unclear why they would be here, unless that’s all it was: a clue to the past.

Perplexed, he pulled the sketch of the amulet he’d found out of his pocket. His eyes pored over its contents. The clue on the back was clearer, but not complete. They’d found the birds the riddle spoke of, but something was still unsolved. Tommy examined the picture of the birds again in hopes that there was something that would spark the answer.

His two captors remained calm, standing a breath away, but Tommy could sense the urgency in Ulrich’s eyes. The man had become extremely impatient, jittery even. It was a characteristic he’d seen in many treasure hunters throughout his life. The closer they came to their goal, the more inexperienced treasure hunters hoping for unimaginable wealth could almost taste their dreams of a life of ease and luxury. Even this trained killer seemed to have caught the fever. Or was it something else that bothered him?

The woman in the brown shirt had started closing up her counter and was about to announce that