Otherlander
A Long Way From Home
T. Kevin Bryan
For Linda and Hayden
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness…
Ephesians 6:12
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Epilogue
Through the Storm
Acknowledgments
T. Kevin Bryan
Also by T. Kevin Bryan
Chapter 1
Daniel Colson trudged across the field. His coat, wet from the driving mist of the coming storm, whipped in the wind. Even this close, he still feared he might be too late.
Ominous clouds filled the night sky. They churned and boiled. Lightning flashed, followed by the deep roll of thunder.
Daniel stopped. Pulled the spectacles from his face to reveal deep blue eyes, like the churning ocean. His hair, tousled by the wind, was dark brown and streaked with gray at the temples, it gave him a scholarly look that helped with the more seasoned professors at the university. He wiped away the gathered moisture from the lenses. He peered back over his shoulder. From this distance, he could still make out the village’s glow, peeking over the horizon.
At age thirty-seven, he was a man torn in two. One half was secured to this world, held fast by the anchor that was his family—a wife and their son. But it wasn’t enough to overcome the rage he was feeling.
His other half was being driven relentlessly to take back what was his, the years of research that was stolen from him.
Daniel didn’t think of himself as a man of action, but a man of learning—an archeologist from Stanford University doing work at Edinburgh.
He replaced his spectacles. Adjusting the strap of his leather bag across his shoulder, he set his face into the stiff wind and marched steadily on.
It was miserable going now, as Daniel continued to trudge up the almost imperceptible rise in the landscape. He leaned into the wind, walked with greater determination.
Peering into the thick darkness, Daniel wondered if he’d lost his bearings—easy to do in this starless-night fog. A crack of lightning illuminated the surrounding landscape, and his final destination: huge monolithic stones standing black against the stormy sky.
Another flash revealed more hulking stones, some standing like giant rustic pillars, others like massive bowling balls left by the children of giants. They formed a full circle, like the apse of some ancient cathedral. In old Scotland, it was known as “Mairead Fhada.” But the local folk today just called it “Long Meg and Her Daughters.” It was one of over thirteen hundred stone circles scattered across Britain, Stonehenge was the most famous. Daniel knew it held secrets; ancient secrets for it had stood watch over this landscape for over thirty-five hundred years. It was those secrets that drew him to this land. It was their pull that caused him to uproot his family and move across the Atlantic.
Daniel dropped his leather bag to the ground, then searched through its contents: a couple of wrapped sandwiches, three reference books, his laptop computer. Beneath all that was what he was looking for—an ancient illuminated manuscript. He opened it to reveal pages of strange script. It was known as illuminated because each page had been decorated with drawings of scenes that shed light upon the pages contents. Also some of the letters were written with gold leaf that seemed to shine on the page.
His fingers ran the length of the page, searching. From inside his coat, he pulled a small leather notebook, worn smooth from years of use. He opened it, and the wind tore at the pages. He referenced his own hand-drawn sketches and diagrams and compared them to similar drawings in the ancient book.
The storm grew. Daniel felt that at any moment, the howling winds might sweep him away. With difficulty, he placed everything back in the bag but the notebook. He kept that out for reference.
Reshouldering the bag, Daniel looked to the most prominent stone of Mairead Fhada, the rock known as “Long Meg.” She stood southwest outside the circle by about twelve paces. He checked his notes and then moved directly to the giant, silent monolith. At over twelve feet high and at least nine tons, the stone dwarfed him.
Daniel stopped in front of it, checked his position against his notes, then walked resolutely along the interior perimeter of the pillared circle. He slowed as he neared the third pillar on his traverse, checked his notebook, then stopped.
Another glance at his notes, then looking down to his left and his right. Yes, this is the starting point. Then, hesitantly, he took the next step.
Immediately, lightning struck that third stone. Daniel cringed but then was mesmerized as he watched the bolt, rather than receding into the stormy clouds, clutched the giant pillar in an eerie, electrical grip.
Finally tearing his gaze from the illuminated stone, he looked back to his notes, then continued walking his precise pattern to the next rock, counting each step as he went. C
rack! Lightning struck and held that stone, just like the previous one.
Daniel moved faster. He walked a loop to the center, then back out to another stone. As he passed each stone, a new bolt of lightning struck and held it. One after another, pulsing white tentacles of electricity reached from the clouds and haloed each of the stones.
He continued his cosmic dance with the stormy forces until lightning gripped every pillar and boulder. Finally, he froze at the very center of the ancient ruins, now glowing and white-hot under the electrical inverted umbrella. Outside the ruins, the storm raged on.
Daniel glanced from stone to stone. He could feel his skin prickling as the power of the storm roared. Then, through barely parted lips, he whispered, “Forgive me, Caroline.”
At once, lightning streaked from every stone and struck Daniel. The lightning held him in its luminous grip and lifted him from the ground.
He screamed. But his scream was cut short by a massive surge of energy, and in a blinding flash that popped, he disappeared.
The energy dissipated. The electric arms of lightning receded into the dark heavens with faint crackles. Thunder echoed in the distance as the storm died.
Smoldering, the leather notebook lay open on the ground where Daniel last stood. The wind tore at the notebook’s charred pages, and one by one, they scattered across the grass or were blown into the sky.
One frail page snagged on a stone, hung for a moment, then slipped to the ground, obscured between the monolith and the tall grass. It was the hand-drawn diagram of the stone circle known as Mairead Fhada.
Chapter 2
In a classroom at St. Vic’s Academy, Thomas Colson sat uncomfortably in his gray school uniform. He was twelve. He had the green eyes of his mother and the brown hair of his father, which was now a scruffy mess. In the summer, back in his native California, his hair would turn almost blonde, bleached by the sun. Around him, his gray-uniformed classmates feverishly scratched out sentences on lined paper with their No. 2 pencils.
Thomas surveyed the classroom, subtly, to avoid arousing the attention of Mr. Fergus, his teacher, who stood ensconced against the room’s back wall, hidden behind that day’s edition of the newspaper, with only the great white mop of his hair visible.
Turning back to his own exam page, where he should’ve been writing his essay, Thomas instead began sketching a strange circular pattern. It was almost a replica of the diagram in Daniel Colson’s notebook at Mairead Fhada.
After a few more pencil scratches, Thomas pulled absentmindedly at his uniform shirt’s stiff collar. His gaze turned to look out the drop-sprinkled window near his desk. Drizzling. Always drizzling.
At home in America, Thomas would call this “mist.” He wished it would either dry up or be a real proper rain. It seemed like all his time here in England was an in-between time.
Neither here nor there. The sky was neither black nor blue. Gray sky, gray clouds, gray land. Everything was gray. That’s how he felt inside: gray and drizzling.
Smack! A paper-wad to the back of his head knocked Thomas out of his daydream. He reached down and uncrumpled the ball of paper, smoothing it on his desk. “YANK GO HOME!” was scrawled in big black letters.
Thomas’s face flushed with anger. He glanced behind him. Everyone there was busily writing—except in the back corner. The boys there had their heads down snickering into their hands.
That’s it, Thomas thought. You picked the wrong day to pick on this “Yank!” Thomas wadded the paper back into a tight ball. He glanced back where the boys were pretending to work, almost right under Mr. Fergus’s newspaper. The teacher seemed to not have noticed at all.
This heartened Thomas. And so, despite him never having been much of a pitcher back home on his baseball team, he felt confident he’d at least hit one of the boys.
He continued squeezing the paper into a tight wad as he waited patiently for his moment. He didn’t have to wait long. One of the boys poked his head up to take a peek in Thomas’s direction.
“You’re mine,” whispered Thomas, and let the paper wad fly. At that exact moment, Mr. Fergus sensed something and glanced up over his newspaper.
Ssswhack! The projectile hit the man full in the face. Thomas spun and dove back into his essay. Why me? Why does it always have to be me? Thomas pretended to write as the whole class giggled.
Slowly, Thomas tugged his gaze up from his paper. Gray-flannel trousers standing at his desk filled his vision. Thomas looked up to face a very grim Mr. Fergus, clutching the paper wad in his fist.
“Mr. Colson… if you would kindly come with me?” Mr. Fergus said in his deep British accent.
Thomas stood and followed Mr. Fergus. As he did, the boys in the corner made faces and laughed.
Then, just before the reluctant Thomas was out of the room, he caught the eye of a round-faced boy with bright eyes behind spectacles. This was Pudge, and he was Thomas’s only friend in the school. Pudge just grinned and shook his head in disbelief.
Chapter 3
Thomas sat on the large wooden bench outside the headmaster’s office. The door opened and a voice from inside called, “Mr. Thomas Colson.”
Thomas stood and took a deep breath, “Well, here we go.”
As Thomas entered the headmaster’s office, he imagined how its decorator must have been thinking, “Early hunting lodge meets antique library.” Leather-bound books lined the shelves; animals’ heads lined the walls.
One particularly vicious-looking wild boar stared at Thomas from the corner. Thomas thought, If he were here many more times, the headmaster would find a space to mount his head.
Thomas slid into the hard wooden chair across from the headmaster’s desk, prepared for the worst. The headmaster adjusted his tweed jacket and pulled the pipe he never smoked from between his clenched teeth.
“Mr. Colson, I know you may not be with us much longer. But until you are gone, you could make your stay easier for us all by simply spending more time on your studies and less time launching projectiles at your fellow classmates.”
“Yes, sir,” said Thomas.
“I’m afraid I’ll need to talk to your father about this.”
Thomas stiffened.
“Sir, my dad is... uh, out of town... on business.”
The headmaster looked long and hard at the boy. Thomas felt like he was under a microscope—no, not a microscope, an X-ray machine. Could he see? Thomas wondered, could he see through him? But even though Thomas’s insides were churning, he held his face in sullen indifference.
Suddenly the headmaster snapped out of his X-ray mode, popped his pipe back between his teeth, and said with finality: “Right. Yes, of course. Well, your mother then.”
Thomas cringed.
Chapter 4
The school bell rang, breaking the silence. The building’s doors burst open, and a massive gray torrent of uniformed students came streaming out, laughing and yelling. Then the gray river turned to a trickle. Finally, one last student stepped through the doors: Thomas.
As he descended the school steps, Thomas untucked and unbuttoned his white-starched shirt like he couldn’t stand to be in it one more second. This revealed a T-shirt emblazoned with his favorite superhero: Wolverine.
“Hallo, Thomas!” A voice called behind him.
Thomas turned to see Pudge, coming his way alone as the current of other kids had moved on.
“Hey, Pudge,” Thomas mumbled.
The boys ambled away from the after-school ruckus.
Smiling, Pudge said, “That was pretty good pitching today. May I call you Mr. Baseball?”
Thomas’s mood was not so easily lifted. “Those guys are jerks.”
“How did it go with Chuckles?”
Thomas straightened to his full height, tilted his head, cocked his eyebrow, and announced in his best English accent: “I must concentrate on my studies and refrain from launching projectiles.” The boys shared a laugh.
“Come on!” exclaimed Pudge. “Today’s the big
game!”
“Pudge, you know how I hate this.”
“I promised the chaps I would find someone to take Walter’s position.”
Thomas looked at Pudge. His mind was reeling. He seized at something to get him out of this: “I—I’ve got a lot of library research to catch up on!”
Pudge rolled his eyes—“Nice try!”—And gave Thomas a punch in the shoulder. “Thomas, you’re a twelve-year-old lad. It’s time you started actin’ like it. And don’t worry; they won’t make you pitch.”